Advent

Christmas is coming in Germany. It must be coming in other places too. Christmas in German is called Weihnachten, and to get ready, the Germans celebrate Advent - the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. Advent is called Advent.

This seemed funny to Brian and me. In the U.S.  no one really celebrates Advent outside of church. Sure, you see the occasional Advent calendar but that is all. Here, people celebrate Advent, even though most of them aren't religious in the going to church on Sundays sort of way. We first figured this out when stores rolled out Advent wreaths and Advent candle holders in early November. The calendars came out too. Then we learned that the Christmas markets (Weihnachtsmarkts) open the first Sunday of Advent. Anne and Andy invited us to an Advent Sunday party at their house. Apparently Advent is a big deal.

Compared to the US, Germans are more culturally Christian but less Christian in a religious way. It's ok to talk about Christmas break and Easter break rather than winter break and spring break. I am pretty sure that people will say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays". You can find an Advent wreath anywhere but a nativity set is harder to come by. And they set up a Christmas tree at Brian's school. That seems really weird to us.

There are non-Christian people in Germany. There are a lot of Muslim people, actually, at least in certain city neighborhoods. And then there is the whole history of the German Jews. And there seem to be many people who don't identify with a religion at all. But no one seems concerned about offending these people or making them uncomfortable with Christmas traditions. Is it because the holiday traditions have separated from their religious significance? Is it because the Germans know that the majority is Christian and they don't care what the minority thinks? Or maybe Americans are just extra concerned with being inclusive and politically correct?

I am not sure what the answer is. I am sure that I will be going to Christmas markets though. I will write all about that when I do!

p.s. I'm still taking votes on the tri club question - cast yours today!!

Swim training

Most of you know that I have been competing in triathlons in the summers for the past several years. There is actually a Hannover triathlon the first weekend in September. And there is a Hannover triathlon club.

Amateur sports here happen on a club level. Other than at the International School, there are no school sports. Kids, adults, anyone who wants to compete in something joins a club team. So when I learned about the Hannover 96 Triathlon Club, I looked into it and sent them an email. It's important to know before you read on that I never joined any sort of tri club back home. Partly because it's expensive and partly because I don't really like triathlon people. Actually the women are usually ok, but the guys are a little socially awkward, really into their gadgets and heart monitors and GPS watches, and say things like "I run 9 miles on my treadmill every night after my kids go to bed while I watch documentaries about bike engineering. Then I spend two hours on Play Station before bed." These are the kinds of guys I attracted in high school and college too. Thank goodness Brian came along.

Even though I knew the same kinds of people might be in the Hannover tri club, I thought it would be a good way to learn some new bike routes and get coaching on my swim technique, as well as a chance to practice speaking German. So I emailed them, in English and German (thanks, Google Translate). It turns out the price was not too high and they invited me to come to a swimming session to try it out. The weird thing is that they swim from 9-10pm on Tuesdays and Fridays. So after German class ended a couple of Tuesdays ago, I went off the the pool. I was nervous. I was nervous because I didn't know if any of them would speak English and I didn't want to have no idea what was happening in German. I was nervous because I don't think I have ever been swimming continuously for an hour. I was nervous because I am usually getting ready for bed at that time of night, not working out. I was nervous about biking home in the cold and dark. There were many excuses available but I decided to go anyway.

I headed to the pool after German class. I waited and waited and the team never came. I was at the wrong pool. In the complex where the Hannover 96 soccer team practices, there are actually two pools and I had gone to the wrong one. So last night I tried again. I was still nervous but not as much as before. When I got there and I was the only woman waiting and the coach talked to me entirely in German and I caught about 30% of what he said. Then I was scared. But I was in too deep (sorry, bad pun) to turn back so I put my suit on and headed out to the pool. It got better. The coach sat down with me and told me, in English, what lane I should be in and what the workout would be. A few other women showed up. And I was able to do the workout - mostly. I am not good at backstroke so that was a bit of a disaster, but otherwise it went ok. The coach talked in German the rest of the time but they were short phrases with some hand motions to go with them so I was ok. The other people there didn't really talk to me. I don't know if it's because they are German and therefore not outgoing, or because they could tell I didn't speak much German or what. But I was able to keep up and got home safely around 10:30.

I didn't talk to the guys much but I did spot one heart monitor and a few fancy waterproof watches. There may have been some conversations about Play Station, but I couldn't understand them.

I am getting better at doing things that make me scared and uncomfortable. There are a lot of opportunities for that since we moved here. (Yesterday I successfully bought parmesan cheese from the deli counter at the grocery store. I even knew about how many grams to ask for! There's no shredded parmesan here, you just do it yourself. Sorry for the tangent).

I hoped after last night it would be clear to me whether I should join the tri club or not, but it isn't. The pros of joining are that I could practice speaking German a little, my swimming would improve, and I might learn new bike routes. There is an outside chance that I would meet people I like. The cons are that the schedule is weird and I like to work out in the middle of the day now that I am not working full-time. The other cons are that I can see myself not really want to go to training, but feeling like I should go because I've paid for it and it's good for me. I might also feel awkward while I'm there.

So I will open it up for your votes and comments. Comment on the blog if you like ( I think you log in with your gmail address or create a google login) or send me an email with your thoughts.

Our Thanksgiving party

Epic is the word that we chose to describe the Thanksgiving dinner and housewarming party.

Vladimir the turkey filled the entire oven but baked up nicely, and I had a lot of help from Tom and Sonja with peeling and chopping.With the smell of the turkey and the mess of butter and potato peels on the counter, it felt like Thanksgiving. Anne, Andy, and Noah came to join us and we managed to fit around the table and used our  windowsills to hold the extra food.

The meal turned out well, but mostly I was happy to have people over. Brian and I realized that in St Paul, we used to have people at our house all the time. Sometimes they dropped by unannounced, sometimes we made a fire out on the patio or had people stay for dinner but there were usually people coming by. That hadn't happened in Germany yet, and somehow that's what was missing to make it feel more like home.

We had just finished stuffing ourselves and washing dishes when it was time to set out another round of food for the party. The first people that came were Klaus and Katrin from downstairs. You might remember that they are the ones who told the landlord that we were too noisy when we did laundry on the weekends. They apparently felt bad about that and were trying to make up for it, so they came to our party. Klaus speaks some English so we got to rehash the whole issue again. We had just started on an awkward conversation about how the apartments were laid out and why our kitchen is above their bathroom when the doorbell rang again. Within 20 minutes there were about 25 more people at our house. It was the most punctual group of party-goers ever. It was mostly people from the international school and their significant others. Just in that group are Australians, English, Scottish, Canadians, Americans, and their mostly German wives/girlfriends. At one point we made a toast and said cheers in three languages. Another set of neighbors came up and brought us bread and salt, which is apparently a German housewarming tradition. Two of my classmates from my German course showed up too and we all practiced speaking German with the neighbors. Noah was a champ and the life of the party until way past his bed time. The leftover turkey and potatoes came out when I got all excited about feeding our guests. Someone put ketchup on the turkey. The sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie were an exotic treat. All the food was devoured and some drinks were spilled. It was a great time.

Yesterday we were left with a mess and some sticky floors and great stories to rehash with Tom and Sonja.  There is enough wine left over to do it again, and thankfully some beer too. Carrying cases of beer up the stairs to our apartment requires two people, strong legs, and a backpack, so it's good that other people brought us more. We don't need to do that again for a while. There is no turkey left, but that's ok. Since you can find 4 pound turkeys here, I could just make one again for the two of us.

Now I understand the idea of housewarming. It's not that people bring you dish towels or bread and salt, it's just the fact that they come over that makes it feel like home.

Thanksgiving preparations

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day, but not in Germany. Even though we know that it's an American holiday (the Canadians have it in October) it's weird to be in a place where Fall just flows right into the Christmas season with no holidays in between. So since we enjoy Thanksgiving and it makes us a little homesick to be away, we decided to have a turkey dinner on Saturday. And since our shipment only arrived a month ago and our apartment looks almost totally put together, we decided to make it a housewarming party too. So our friends Andy, Anne, their son Noah are coming and Tom (Dizzy) and Sonja are coming from Hamburg for the weekend. We'll have dinner with them and we have invited everyone else we know to come in the evening for drinks, dessert, and screening of football and Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special. Everyone else we know didn't seem like too many, but now we are up to around 25 people coming in the evening.

It's taken a while to plan this meal since I wasn't sure what ingredients I could get here, or what they were called even if I could. You can find fresh geese everywhere, and pieces of fresh turkey, but no whole fresh turkeys. We bought the biggest frozen turkey I could find, which is 5.8kg (about 13 lbs). It's small by American  standards but I am confident that it was once able to walk on its own. The word for turkey in German is Pute. So Brian decided to name our turkey Vladimir, after Vladimir Putin. Vladimir came out of our freezer today so that he could occupy one-third of the fridge while he defrosts. He doesn't have a little pop-up timer so I will have to get a meat thermometer. Here is is previous home:

Things like mashed potatoes and apple pie and even sweet potatoes are not hard to do here. I even found fresh cranberries at the grocery store.The trick for baking is that you can't find brown sugar like we are used to at the store. They sell a coarse brown cane sugar that tastes, well, coarse. Then an American woman at the soccer tournament concession stand told me that you can find brown sugar at the Asian grocery store. I had just found an Asian grocery store, so I went and got some yesterday.

 For stuffing, they don't sell the nicely cut cubes of bread with the seasoning already in them. So I found a recipe and am now letting a loaf of bread go stale on the countertop in the kitchen. 

Gravy is the one thing I am not interested in making from scratch. At the gourmet grocery store I found some kind of a mix for poultry sauce. It tastes pretty much like gravy, so that will work. The remaining challenge was pumpkin pie. There is no canned pumpkin here, but I have steamed my own pumpkins before and that didn't phase me much. I just had to find pumpkins. The word for anything squash or pumpkin-like is Kurbis. Gourds are called Kurbis too. So I searched for Kurbis that looked like a baking pumpkin and couldn't find one . Then I read on a Hannover English speakers Facebook page (of all places) that you can cook the Hoikkado squash and it tastes a lot like pumpkin. So I got a few and tried it. They are small, round, and reddish-orange on the outside. Here is what they look like:

Then I had to look up the word for nutmeg, and get some sort of half and half or cream or evaporated milk to mix in with pumpkin. I found all of these different creams in the dairy section, all in little yogurt sized cups. I eliminated the one I knew was sour cream and took a chance on the one that had a strawberry with cream on the package. It turned out to be whipping cream of some kind, so I was ok. I did a practice pie on Sunday and it got good reviews!

This party also requires multiple trips to the grocery store, and the liquor store. We can only buy as much as we can carry! Yesterday I rode home on my bike with four bottles of wine in my backpack and four bottles of soda and juice in my saddlebags. It's a good thing no one tried to push me over because I would not have been able to stay upright! Then I got to carry them up five flights of stairs to our apartment.

So it won't be quite the same as at home but at least we have a celebration to look forward to, and pots and pans to cook with. You probably won't hear from me until after the party, because I am getting things ready today and working on Thursday and Friday. It will be my first time subbing in the primary school, with a 4th grade class. I will let you know how everything turns out, and how Vladimir tastes.

Girls' soccer tournament

I spent the past few days at the girls' under 14 GISST (German International School Sports Tournament) soccer tournament. I don't coach soccer. In fact, I know very little about soccer. But the teacher that I coached cross country with does soccer also and asked if I'd come along as a chaperone. So on Thursday afternoon we took 12 girls in grades 5-8 on a train toward Berlin. I say toward it because we didn't really get to Berlin. We went to Berlin-Brandenburg International School, which is somewhere near Potsdam.

Since the tournament was over 2 days, the girls stay with families from the host schools. Usually they are families with kids who play on the home teams. Planning one of these tournaments is a huge coordinated effort - each team comes in separately and needs transportation to the school, the athletic director needs to recruit families for housing, then they need to match up kids with host families and get their dietary and emergency information out, the coaches need hotel reservations, and then of course there are games to organize, score, referee, etc. Luckily for me, I just had to show up and supervise.

I stood on the sidelines during the five games that our team played and yelled non-descript things like "way to go" and "hustle" and "get that ball."  I kept Jessica, the coach, company and made sure the kids had their stuff and got to where they needed to go and that no one abducted them at the train station. The ISHR Mustangs did, well, pretty badly. We got 7th place out of 8 teams. Our final game, the one that determined 7th and 8th place, was a score of 0-0 and went into a shoot out, which we won. It was not a feat of athletic prowess. But, no one had a bad host family, there was only one episode of crying, and we had no injuries other than some sore toes.

On our way back to Hannover, the train filled up with rowdy fans coming from the Hannover 96 soccer game (They are a professional team, not an under 14 girls team). There were also police in riot gear to keep them in line. Nothing really happened, except that the soccer fans wanted to talk to the kids. This made us a little nervous since most of the fans were drunk and the girls like attention and are too old to not talk to strangers. They decided to tell all their new friends that we scored 16 goals each game and won the whole tournament. Thankfully we got them all off the train and back to their parents without losing them in the crowd.
I can't say I learned a lot about soccer over the weekend, but at least I now know 12 more kids in the school that I can call by name when I cover teach. I can also call out things like "be aggressive out there" and sound convincing.

Fashion

There are a few rules for German fashion, at least from what I have noticed.

Rule #1 - Wear a scarf.
It doesn't matter - men, women, children, dogs, everyone wears scarves in all weather. There is some German mother somewhere telling everyone they will get a cold if they go out without one, even in the summer. When we arrived in August we saw a lot of girls wearing tank tops and scarves. Women often wear darker clothes with a brightly colored scarf. Men wear a lot of plaid and solid color scarves. And yes, I have seen a few dogs walking around the lake in scarves too.

Rule #2 - Don't look like a slob.
People here look generally put-together. Even though Germany is probably not the most fashionable country in Europe, it is way more fashionable than the U.S. If there is another place where it is acceptable to wear sweat suits in public, I have not visited there yet. Here you only see people wearing work out clothes if they are actually working out. I think part of it has to do with transportation. That sounds a little odd, but if you are only jumping in the car in your garage and driving where you need to go, then why look presentable? If you are out walking the streets or riding the train, then other people are more likely to see you and you should not look like a slob.

Rule #3- Wear jeans.
There are a lot of jeans worn here. Skinny jeans are very popular with women and yes, with men too. Teenage guys wear saggy skinny jeans, which look like they would be difficult to walk in. And sometimes those jeans are not denim colored but green or red or bright blue.

Rule #4 - Wear skirts.
This applies (thankfully) to women only. I am a big fan of skirts myself so I like this rule. And don't be afraid to ride your bike in a skirt, just don't rip it as you get on the bike. Now I understand why ladies' bikes have that lower bar in the middle...

Rule #5 - Wear boots.
Women wear boots here all the time. They go well with both skirts and skinny jeans. I drool a little as I pass all the stores that sell boots. The boys at Brian's school often wear yellowy leather work boots that remind me of something you'd wear with a flannel shirt to complete your early 90s grunge look.

Rule #6 - All suits are black or gray.
Men's formal wear is pretty boring here. Almost all suits are plain black with thin ties that come in solid colors or very subtle prints. The suits are only more exciting if a man is wearing one while riding his bicycle.

I have yet to see anyone wearing lederhosen, though I did see them in a store once around Oktoberfest time. Maybe they are more common in the south of Germany. The north is more about black skinny jeans and scarves.

Church in Germany

Brian and I have been going to Mass in German. A good thing about being Catholic, we figured, is that Mass is pretty much the same wherever you go, even if you can't understand what they are saying. And after a lot of internet research, we gave up on any hopes for an English-speaking church. If we were Lutherans, we'd probably find one since there are a lot more Lutherans than Catholics here. It seems a lot easier to learn German than to convert.

St Hinrich's is down the street from us, about a 10 minute walk, and it looks sort of like a medieval fortress on the outside. There is a tall square steeple and the exterior is all dark stone and heavy doors. The inside is sort of bright and plain and generic, which makes me think that maybe the church was damaged in the war and redone.  When we first went there, we sat in the back and tried to pay attention to how things worked. Keeping a low profile was key, so we weren't too obviously foreign. Everything seemed pretty normal until communion. Rather than a single file line where everyone walked up to the priest, everyone filed up and  stood around the altar in a big square. Then the priest went around the square to each person, while everyone that didn't fit in the square stood and waited in the aisle. Then the first group left and the next group did the same thing. We were just on the edge of the first square, so Brian shoved me to the side so that he could fit in and wouldn't have to start the square for group two.

Then we found St. Elisabeth's. That church is definitely old. It's a little smaller and less imposing looking from the outside. Inside, every surface of the walls is painted or decorated with some sort of art. It has a lot of small stained glass windows, murals of the life of St Elizabeth, the ceiling is covered in paintings - it's beautiful. It's safe to guess that the church has been around, undamaged, for a long time. Maybe more than 100 years. Communion happens in a standard single file line. The kneelers are just wooden boards, no padding, so you know it's not for the casual Mass-goer.

Since both churches are in the same parish, they share a cheery Asian priest. He speaks very clearly and slowly in German, which means I catch about 15% of what he says. He likes to do songs with clapping and hand motions. Sometimes he calls all the kids to the front and passes the microphone around to them so that they can participate. On Sunday, he skipped the first two readings so that there would be time to act out the gospel, with props and everything. Maybe next time he will pull out a guitar. After Mass at St Elisabeth's, he jumps on his bike and heads down to St. Hinrich's. He's a busy guy.

I get a song book every time we go. I feel like following along by reading the words as I hear the song will help me learn better. I am not sure if it works.

Mass in German makes us feel like we are still somewhat practicing Catholics. We don't go as often as we did back home, though. We've even considered going to the Spanish Mass instead, though we'd have to ride a train to get there. For the time being, though, I will keep studying German and we do not plan to become Lutherans.

First week of cover teaching

Now that I have my work permit, I was able to start cover (substitute) teaching at the international school this week. I think that cover is a much better word than substitute - it makes me sound more important anyway.

I worked at least part of the day every day this week. It was weird - I had to do my chores around the house in the evening, or didn't do them at all, and I couldn't go grocery shopping in middle of the day or take 2 hour bike rides. It's funny how quickly I got used to setting my own schedule.

A lot of things about cover teaching this week reminded me of what it's like to have a new job. I didn't know where all the bathrooms are. I didn't know that I was supposed to have a key to unlock the rooms until Tuesday morning when I found that my room was locked. I wasn't sure who I should bother talking to in the staff lounge, or if it was worth hanging out there at all.

I observed a few classes but basically jumped right in to covering classes for teachers who were sick or away for some reason. I had English and ESL and math, history, chemistry (!), Spanish and even German. I did ok - no one made me cry or injured any other students. The only property damage that was done was by me accidentally writing on a dry erase board with a permanent marker. (The 7th graders were eager to show me that you can fix that by writing over it with a dry erase marker and then erasing it all. I got them to do that for me). I need to learn their names and work on being, as Brian says, "in command." I need to have authority but not be too mean or distant. I want them to like me but not so much that they won't listen when I tell them what to do. Luckily these kids are really good and respectful for the most part. I just need to give myself some time to get better.

It's a good thing that our clothes finally arrived because I have all these work outfits to wear to school now. I did learn, however, the limits of biking to school in a skirt. It's common here to see people riding bikes to work in heels and suits and all manner of formal clothes, so I figured I could do it too. I learned that the wider, more twirly skirts are ok, as are sweater dresses, but I don't recommend riding in a straight skirt even if it has a slit at the back. I tried that on Wednesday - it made a loud ripping noise as I got on the bike.

So the first week is out of the way, and I at least know a few names, where the bathrooms are, and where to get a key. I kind of enjoy talking to 12 year olds too, unless I am trying to explain math problems to them.

Pfand - tastic

Sorry for the cheesy title. I am again trying to make everyday things sounds interesting.

Germans are into deposits, which are called Pfands. The first time we encountered a Pfand was when we arrived at the Hannover airport on August 10th.  We had checked 4 bags, all of which were over the weight limit, one of which contained the aerobed we would be sleeping on for while. They have these handy little carts that you can use for luggage and they are free, except for the 1 euro pfand you have to pay in order to unlock them. We actually had some euros, but only big bills we got from the currency exchange. And the change machine was broken, and I had no idea how to ask someone to borrow a 1 euro coin. So we somehow wrestled them out of the baggage claim area. If you ever come to visit, remind me to mail you a 1 euro coin so that this doesn't happen to you.

There are Pfands for all variety of cans and bottles. When you buy a can of Pepsi, for instance, (yes, you can buy them individually at the store) it costs 39 cents including a 25 cent Pfand. So it's actually 14 cents as long as you return the can and get your deposit back. A bottle of water or soda or whatever works the same way. At the grocery store there is a big machine that you put the bottles in. It spins them around in circles and scans them, then the amount of the Pfand pops up on the screen. You keep feeding in your bottles and cans, and push a button when you are finished. The machine prints out a receipt that you take to the cash register when you buy groceries and you get credit for the deposit amount. You can also put a whole case of beer bottles in through a little door in the bottom and it scans them all at once.

It works at festivals and things too. If you buy a beer at an outdoor event it usually comes in a glass, a real glass with a handle and everything. You have to pay a 1 euro Pfand for it and you get that back when you return the glass. When we went to the Hannover Oktoberfest (again, think county fair more than a real Munich-style Oktoberfest) the big steins had a 10 euro Pfand. Brian went off to buy beers and then came back to ask me for more cash because they cost 34 euros. 34 euros? for 2 beers? that's like 45 dollars! Each beer was 7 euros plus a 10 euro Pfand for the stein. I like that it's not a plastic cup, but it's not ok if you don't have that much extra money on hand.

Some people have figured out how to make money out of this system. You'll see guys in the train station looking around for plastic bottles that people have left or have put in the trash can. It's sort of polite to leave your plastic bottles beside the trash or recycling cans if you don't plan to cash in on the Pfand, so that these guys can grab them.

In general I think the Pfand system is supposed to keep down waste and encourage recycling. Or it's just another way to confuse foreigners and people who drink beer out of big glasses. Sometimes they are the same people.

Feeling like an idiot, part 2

A while back I had a post entitled "Sometimes being a foreigner means feeling like an idiot". Consider this the second installment.

We had wrapped up a good weekend in Berlin and headed to the train station to catch our train back to Hannover. We went up to the platform and sat on a bench to read and wait. At about the right time for our train to arrive, both Brian and I heard an announcement for the train toward Hannover Hauptbanhof (main station), our destination. He grabbed our suitcase and headed toward the train, and I followed. We had assigned seats but didn't see the number of the train car we were supposed to be on. That's when I looked at the video screen by the door and realized that the train was headed to Frankfurt! "We are on the wrong train," I said in a voice that I thought sounded calm but I am sure has some undertones of panic.
The doors had just closed and I kept repeatedly pushing the button that I hoped would open them. The problem was that this was an express train and we had no idea when those doors would open again.
Brian led the charge to the other end of the car to try and find a conductor who could open them for us, and then the train started to move.
We did find a conductor - a woman with multiple piercings and a bright yellow streak in her hair that said apologetically (in English) that we couldn't get off until the train reached Braunschweig. I had never even heard of Braunschweig. We found a map as we stood there - me sort of stunned and Brian muttering swear words under his breath - and saw that luckily Braunschweig was just southeast of Hannover. When we had calmed down a little I asked the conductor again what we needed to do and learned that we could catch a local train from Braunschweig to Hannover. So in the end we got to Hannover just 30 minutes later than we would have, feeling like idiots but safely back home.

Berlin

To all my readers - I promise I am not neglecting you or getting lazy about writing. It's just that we were in Berlin from Thurs- Sun and I had no internet access. I felt a little deprived, but I am back with plenty to write about.

Berlin is a great city, and not like any other place I have been. It's a big capital city with no clear center or downtown, and almost every street has historic and ornate buildings next to angular and glassy 1960s architecture. There is construction everywhere, as old buildings are restored and new ones are built. People in Berlin seem to be going somewhere all the time, on foot and by bike and bus and train, but they are not in a rush. There is graffitti all over the city, but that doesn't mean that the neighborhood is dirty or run down, it's just... decorated. It feels kind of mismatched, but like it's supposed to be that way.  Berlin felt to me like it's continually being reinvented.

Brian was in a conference during the day time, so I played tourist. On Friday I took a walking tour that covered a lot of the sights and a lot of the history of Berlin. We saw everything from the original cathedral - there has been a church on that site since the 1200s - to the site of the Nazi book burnings and the Berlin Wall memorial. About 90% of the city was destroyed in World War 2, so a lot of buildings were either rebuilt and restored, or were replaced by something more modern looking. Former East Berlin has most of the interesting tourist sites - the museums and churches and monuments. It also has the cooler, edgy sort of neighborhoods with lots of shops and restaurants. Our hotel was in former West Berlin, which was better rebuilt after the war but is also a little more plain and predictable.

On Saturday I rented a bike and did my own little tour around the city. I was impressed by how many languages I heard people speaking as they walked down the street - English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Italian, French and others I didn't recognize. I decided that you would need a week to see most of Berlin. Aside from the historic places, there are also a lot of spots for nightlife and live music and art. Even with a whole week you couldn't see all of the museums there. So I kept a map in my pocket and pedaled around town to see what I could.

Sunday was museum day. I went to the Berlin Wall memorial and a museum located on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters. After Brian's conference ended, we went to the House on Checkpoint Charlie, which is a museum about the checkpoint and the Wall in general. It was in a couple of houses that journalists used to use to observe the checkpoint, which was one of seven places where people could cross (or try to) between East and West Berlin.

Red Rathaus and TV tower

Berliner Dom cathedral

Brandenburg Gate

Holocaust memorial

It was a great weekend - I have a feeling that we will be back to Berlin another time.

Ich bin ein Auslander

Yesterday I had an appointment at the Auslanders (Foreigners) office in Hannover. It was regarding my work permit, which will allow me to substitute teach at the international school. If you are a citizen of an EU country, you can work anywhere here. If you come from any other country, you need to first have a job offer and then apply for a permit.

In my work over the the past several years, I spent a lot of time dealing with government agencies and helping immigrants get through them. So I took a nerdy sort of interest in the whole process. The school sent in my application when I signed the contract for cover teaching (that's what they call it here - sounds way better than subbing) around September 1st. So it took about two months  to process the permit and cost 40 euros, which the school paid. Our lovely school secretary, Philippa, handled the details and kept apologizing for the hassle and the length of time I had to wait. She didn't realize the patience I have for such things. I don't know how long a work permit takes in the US, but it certainly costs more, and you can't even get an application for health care benefits approved in St Paul in less than three months.

The Auslander's office sent me a list of documents to bring to my appointment - Brian's check stubs from the past 3 months, a current bank statement, the lease for our apartment, a passport photo, my passport, my work contract, and Brian's work contract. This was oddly familiar. I felt like one of my clients, especially as I tried to explain to Philippa what the letter said without really being able to read it.

The Auslander's building feels more like a big post office than anything. It's not even as imposing as the county offices that I am used to and a lot smaller than a US immigration office. I can't tell you exactly where the other people waiting in the lobby came from, but from my experience with the my classmates in German class, I would guess they came from Turkey, Lebanon, and eastern Europe. Philippa came with me and we met with a relatively cheerful bureaucrat who put a big sticker in my passport. It took about 15 minutes.

As for all of the documentation I had gathered, I didn't need any of it. All she looked at was my passport. She did say that when it's time to renew my work permit in June, I will need to show them that I can speak some German and that I am integrating. I caught about 20% of that as she said it and Philippa explained it to me later. It seems fair that they ask that, though I think I am nervous about that interview already!

So now I am legal to work at the school whenever teachers are sick, which apparently happens a lot here. Once I start, I am sure there will be lots of blog material to write about! And in some way, having that work permit makes living in Germany feel a little more permanent...