Rubber necking

In mid-August, I returned from the land where every day, Donald Trump does something so awful that you can help but pay attention. It's like the whole country is rubber-necking to see just what kind of train wreck he caused this time. We know we shouldn't look but it's just hard not to.

And as so many Americans are excited for/worried about/fascinated by/tired of the drama that is Trump vs. Hilary, the people where I live are pondering whether to vote for this guy.

It's time for the city and regional council elections. Now Frank, who's running to represent my neighborhood, looks like a guy you could vote for. He looks like a guy with no skeletons in his closet and a lot of schnitzel in his fridge.

German election posters like Frank's lack a certain sense of flair. Or maybe they have a certain sense of sincerity. They look like the head shots that Germans are expected to place on top of their resumes (right next to their age and marital status... but don't get me started). After all, Frank is running for office, not for prom king or reality show TV star.

I've written about German elections before, but the contrast with the U.S. presidential election this year is too hard to pass up. With the gawking that Americans deal with, Frank and his straightforward posters are refreshing.

I was getting my teeth cleaned last week when my dental hygenist, who is an immigrant from Kazakhstan, asked me what's going on with our election. What do I think of it all, and will Donald Trump win? She's not the first one who's asked me that question. It puts me in an uncomfortable place, and not just because I was trying to answer while she scraped my teeth. How do you explain (in German, with your mouth open) how somebody like that gets so close to the top? How do you describe the voters he appeals to?

I have tried to do that in other conversations, to explain what I think is happening. It's a tough role to take on, to explain our political situation as the only American in the room. I think more Americans should have to do it. But at the dentist's office I just gave a few vague answers and spit.

Stay tuned

If you have noticed that I shut down (or shut up) for a little while over the summer, you are right. I had a week in northern Spain followed by 2 days at home and then 3 weeks in the US of A. I slept in seven different beds on my Midwestern visit, spent a lot of time with family, a few great days with friends and as much time as possible out on the lake. Everything was wonderful and familiar, except that  Brian was not with me. He was pursuing every boy's dream of being alone on the frontier. Except that his frontier was in Central Asia and his cowboy days were filled with pre-teens playing baseball. More on that later.

Now that my tan is fading, and my husband and our domestic bliss will soon return, I am back to the blog. And I'll be back to work on Monday but, as I promised my fans back home, I won't forget about you, dear readers. Stay tuned.

Play Global has a video

I know I said I'd sign off for a while, but I have one important thing to mention.

A few years ago, Tom Gillespie and I founded a nonprofit organization called Play Global. We use baseball as a way to bring people together. Here's our website: www.play-global.org
and our facebook page: www.facebook/playglobal

I've written a lot about our work on those sites, and occasionally mentioned it in this blog.  But now I'm actually able to show you what Play Global is all about.
We are excited to have our very own video. Click on this link to watch:

We need your support! Play Global's work is entirely funded by grants and donations. We are currently raising money to send a coach to South Africa this winter.
Visit our website for more information about Play Global or click here to donate online.
If you like what we are doing, please share the video and web link with your contacts.

Thank you!

Food!

Enough about social issues and world events.  Let's talk about food.
Brian and I came up with a list of the best, or at least the most memorable, foods we have eaten in most every place we traveled in the last several years. Here they are, in no particular order:

Riga, Latvia - Pelmeni in the market building

Cyprus - Oranges. Never thought they could taste so good. And octopus, cut up in meaty little chunks and grilled.

Georgia - anything that Ketino made at her house

Armenia - they make a good shawarma, which is similar to Döner or gyros but with an Armenian twist.

Krakow, Poland - Zapiekenka (see below)



Egypt - nothing.

Ireland - Brian votes for the full Irish breakfast. I do not. I think we had some good beef stew and crocodile in an Australian restaurant in Galway.

Birmingham, England - Indian food.

Lakes district, England - home made sticky toffee pudding.

Israel - (just me) fresh hummus, artisan ice cream, tabbouleh

Cuba - ham & cheese sandwiches, and ropa vieja, which is a slow cooked beef with rice and beans.

Istanbul, Turkey - Fresh falafel in the street. Bringing the humble chickpea to new levels.

Girona, Spain - ham. Brian ate a whole plate of it for dinner and claimed it was the greatest pork product ever, after JD Hoyt's pork chops in Minneapolis.

Finland - reindeer salami

Germany:
Regensburg - sausages from the Wurst Kuch'l
Templin - Schnitzel and Flammkuchen
Eisenach - Schnitzel
Erfurt - mustard
Bamberg - pork Haxe (knuckle)
Everywhere - bread


This is all making me hungry, so I'll sign off, for a few days in fact.
I am going to watch Tom and Brian coach the German junior national baseball team to glory in the Under 18 European Championships in Gijon, Spain.
You can follow along here:
http://baseballstats.eu/2016/gijon/schedule.php

I'll try to come back with a few stories about the food.

The ostrich principle

With terrorist attacks every few days, Brexit, refugee crises, global warming, Donald Trump praising dictators, it feels so heavy to know anything about the world. Throw in police violence, income inequality and war in Syria and it feels like more than enough.

It's certainly enough to make an American head to Canada, a Brit to apply for an Irish passport, or anyone else to burrow under the covers and not go outside. I understand now what the proverbial ostrich is thinking when it sticks its head in the sand.

I don't consider myself to be very political person and I don't write about politics here very often, at least in an obvious way. I do, however, try to know something of what's going on in the world and think about it a little. That's becoming tougher lately, but here's why I've decided not to hide under the covers all day.

I'm reading a book called The Radical King, which is a compilation of essays and excerpts from Martin Luther King compiled and edited by Cornel West (who I once met in an Indian restaurant in Hannover). West argues that King was a lot more revolutionary, a lot more socialist, a lot more radical than history has made him out to be.

What has struck me, however, is staying power of King's words. Most of what King writes is just as true today as it was during the civil rights movement. Whether that means he was a great thinker, or whether that means nothing has really changed, I'm not sure. Maybe both.

So in this time when people throughout the world, both loud ones and quiet ones, are calling for walls, divisions and 'sovereignty', this passage caught my attention:

"Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally 'in the red'. We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom and reach for a sponge which is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a European. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea or cocoa by a West African. 

Before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to half of the world.

In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

So before the word 'globalization' was in the common vocabulary, King was talking about it. Not in terms of a supply chain or manufacturing but in terms of people being linked to each other.

You can vote against immigration, but you can't avoid being dependent on the rest of the world. You can try ignoring what's happening around the world but even if you surround yourself with walls there will be a time when you get hungry and want to order in a pizza. You'll do that through your smart phone which was built in Asia with a number of African conflict minerals. Then someone driving a Japanese car fueled by gas from Middle East oil will deliver your pizza, which was cooked by immigrants using vegetables picked by different immigrants and meat that was processed by other immigrants in a small town that would have disappeared by now if not for the processing plant.
And it will be hot and cheesy and delicious.

Though sea levels are rising, you can still find a place in the sand in which to bury your head.
But the reality is that a German tourist will be lying in a Speedo nearby, on a towel made in Vietnam.

We are stuck with each other. Not just economically but practically, and morally as well.

Sad news

Something sad and scary and significant happened last night.
It was on Larpenteur Avenue, just a couple of miles from my St. Paul home. It happened in a place that was notorious for speed traps, getting pulled over for the littlest thing, for cops on the lookout.

In that spot a black man was pulled over for a broken taillight, and then shot and killed by a police officer as he reached for his license. There was a four year old in the back seat. His name was Philando Castile, he was 32 years old and worked in an elementary school cafeteria.

The victim's girlfriend, sitting next to him as he died, filmed it all. And posted it on Facebook. A few hours later, protesters showed up at the governor's mansion to wake him up.

I keep up on the Twin Cities news from time to time, and for a while today I almost wished I hadn't. Maybe I could have not learned about Castile and the officer who killed him. It wouldn't have worked though, because the story and the video (which I have yet to watch) have made international news.

These things are not supposed to happen in Minnesota. It's supposed to be the land of 10,000 lakes, a few million liberals, and a pretty great standard of living. We are supposed to be somehow above the problems that vex the rest of the country. If a German asked me how these kinds of things happen, I don't know what I'd say. I could only say how sad it all is.

I know this is my space to comment. But this time, I have no more commentary.

The blue Danube

Brian and I went down to Regensburg for the weekend. Around this time last year, this ancient town in Bavaria was our destination for hot weather, lightning strikes, massive beer mugs and the infamous crystal ship. This trip was a little more tame. We were heading to Regensburg so that Brian could be at a baseball tournament scout his own players and come up with plans for the big tournament.

That's right - after a few years of semi-retirement, Brian is a baseball coach again. He and our good friend and partner-in-crime Tom Gillespie will be leading the German Junior National Team to baseball glory at the European championships in Spain next week.

One thing we did repeat from last year was a stop at the Wurstkuchl - a little hut along the Danube that claims to be the oldest continuously open restaurant in the world.  From a start selling boiled meat to 12th century sailors, to dishing up grilled sausages and kraut to 21st century tourists today, I would imagine the place hasn't changed much. And the beer has probably changed even less. The Wurstkuchl has survived countless river floods which still have not washed the scent of pork smoke out of the walls.

While most of Brian's time was spent at the ballpark, I had big plans to take big bike rides along the blue Danube (cue the music). The Donau Radweg (Danube bike trail) is part of the Euro Velo 6, a trail that runs from the Atlantic coast in France to the Black Sea in Romania. It runs across 10 countries and follows the Loire, Rhine and Danube straight across Europe. I imagined myself a few thousand kilometers away by Tuesday.

But we only had two days. And all the trains that allowed bike transport were sold out. And it rained. So instead, I took the rental bike that was getting me between the ball field and the hotel, and I took it out for a three-hour spin on Sunday. Here's what I saw:

How they roll in Bavaria: One piece spandex lederhose.

Town of Bad Abbach

My first frog-crossing sign

We may never re-create last year's trip to Regensburg with St Paul-ites Luke and Jackie. But I'd be happy to keep trying. I don't think they'll run out of sausages for at least a few hundred years.