Westward for the weekend - part 2

Back in November we bought tickets to see Bruce Springsteen in Cologne, along with our Hamburg friends Tom and Sonja. Shortly after that I found out that our Hannover friends Kaska and Thorsten were planning to go too (How did we get this social life? I fully expected about 10 months of Brian and I staring at each other after we moved here, and all of a sudden we are popular). The concert happened to be during a long weekend, which also happened to be the weekend that Tom had to scout at a baseball tournament in Bonn, which is near Cologne. Kaska and Thorsten have good friends in Cologne, who invited us to stay at their house too. It all fell into place.

I won't give you the hour by hour account of our weekend, but I will tell you about two parts:

It was a sunny Saturday in May and I was spending the afternoon at the ballpark watching high school boys play while their parents cheered, little kids ran around, and dogs sniffed each other. It was so familiar... except I was in Germany. There were three kinds of people at the under 20 German baseball tournament: German kids and their parents who spoke baseball English, as in " germanwords germanwords germanwords double play germanwords germanwords germanwords fast ball." There were also Americans, and possibly some Canadians, but they weren't wearing any maple leaf patches or Roots sweatshirts so it was hard to tell.  We even saw a family with a bottle of Mountain Dew and a package of mini donuts. Either they were serious junk food smugglers or they had just shopped at the store on a military base. And then there were the Latin Americans - mostly Cubans I think, but I can't be entirely sure because my skill at picking out Spanish speakers' accent has gotten pretty rusty since we moved. The dad sitting near us was a perfect stereotype - Cuban national baseball hat, mesh tank top, pencil thin chinstrap beard, and a big cigar hanging out of his mouth, speaking German with his Caribbean accent. That was one I could definitely pick out.

At the concert on Sunday we had to be on the defensive. We arrived 3 hours before show time to stake out a place in the stadium and had to use all of our elbows, knees, and other bony parts to keep away the invaders. We joined forces with a huge Dutch man next to use and a couple of our other neighbors in an effort to defend the territory. Eventually Sonja and Kaska and I retreated and went further back where we could move and actually could see a lot better. Brian joined us eventually, even though the team needed him as a defender.

I'd heard that Bruce Springsteen puts on the best show in music. I am no expert, but it was a pretty fantastic concert. Bruch played for three hours straight, with no opening band, which is pretty impressive for an old dude, and he even spoke a little German. Everyone in the stadium, about 30,000 of us, was having a great time but the people having the most fun were the ones on stage. Can they really do this night after night? Can they really be sincerely having a blast every time? I think so. Or if was an act, I was entirely convinced.

It took about two days for Brian and I to recover from the weekend, but we had a great weekend in Cologne. Loss of sleep is a small price to pay for seeing Cuban-German baseball fans and Bruce Springsteen live in one weekend. We are glad to have a few days to stare at each other in silence now. We've earned it.

Bike taxi - the conclusion

This morning Brian and I had our appointment at the foreigner's office. We did all the paperwork for our renewed visas, so they won't kick us out of Germany for at least another year.

I will not, unfortunately, be able to have a career as the first foreign female bike taxi driver in town. My residence permit does not allow me to be self employed. Could I try to be an illegal foreign female bike taxi driver? Perhaps, but in a country of rule-followers I have a feeling that it's not easy to work illegally. Plus, driving a bike taxi is not really something that's worth being deported over. If I'm going to be deported, I'd rather it be for some better reason, one that really counts... suggestions are welcome.

I do have to remind myself that I fumbled my way through two interviews in German and two test drives, and the people were still willing to hire me. So that might be some kind of success. Though as I was walking home from the bus stop today I realized I had told a lady getting on with her stroller that I was about to "get up" rather than "get off". Oops. That will keep me humble.

Part of me really wanted to drive the bike taxi, for a little fun, to practice speaking German, learn my way around the city, show I could do it, and make some cash. Part of me was also really scared, for mostly the same reasons. Living in Germany has made me do a lot of things that I find scary because they are thousands of miles out of my comfort zone. You know that though, since it's mostly what I write about in this blog.
I guess this time the government made that decision for me and my comfort zone will remain intact for a little while... unless I start talking to people on buses again.

Westward for the weekend - part 1

We had a long weekend in Germany. Yesterday was Pfingsten Montag, Pentecost Monday, which the last of the May holidays. My weekend was extra long, because it started at 4:30 on Thursday morning. That's when I got up to make the first train heading to Frankfurt. My very good friend Karissa was on her way back to Washington DC after a work trip to Turkmenistan, and she arranged for an overnight layover so that we could hang out. Karissa must really like me. After 10 days in Turkmenistan, she spent an extra 32 hours away from her baby and her husband and her half-rennovated house to see me.

What, you may ask, was she doing in Turkmenistan? Karissa works for an organization that helps students who want to come to the U.S. for exchange programs or to study at American universities. They do it as a type of diplomacy - the students will enjoy their time in the U.S., then come back home to be leaders in their own countries and will not hate Americans. This work brings her to some out of the way places. Foreigners are few in Turkmenistan, are closely watched, and have a 10pm curfew.

But back to me (isn't that what this blog is all about?)... Who rides the early train out of Hannover? A lot of people do, actually. Since it was a holiday weekend there were plenty of travelers on board. I recognized an international school student with her mother, and hid from in order to avoid awkward early morning chit chat. My favorite passengers were the two older couples across the aisle from me. They were wearing their traveling pants with the legs that zip off to make them into shorts and talking away as if it were later than 6am and they were having a great day already. At about 6:30 they popped open a bottle of prosecco on the train and drank it from plastic cups. Wherever they were headed on vacation, they were planning to have a good time. 

Karissa and I did very little in Frankfurt, actually, besides catch up on all the things you need to catch up on with a friend you haven't seen in 13 months. We wandered around town and talked, cooked up some plans for our friend Julie's bachelorette party in the Twin Cities in July, checked out the botanical gardens, and I learned all about visiting Turkmenistan. We also tried to order pay-per-view movie channel at the hotel and ended up with only the "adult" channels. A very embarrassed hotel employee told us as he blushed that we wouldn't have to pay for them and bolted out of the room before we broke down in giggles.

On Friday afternoon Karissa got on a flight to DC and I boarded a train to Cologne. I sat on my suitcase in the aisle for much of the ride because the train was so packed. I probably should have brought a bottle of bubbly and some plastic cups to make it more fun.

strikes and gutters

There is a lot of Big Lebowski quoting that happens among our friends here in Hannover. So among the little things I've had to do this week (bowling is not one of them), the best way to describe it is "you know, strikes and gutters, ups and downs".

On Monday I went to the foreigner's office to find out whether I am allowed to get the self-employment license that I would need to be a bike taxi driver. One of the things I like about the German language (some days there are very few of those things) is how literal it is. In the U.S., you have the Bureau of Customs and Immigration Enforcement. In Germany it's just called the Auslanderbehorde, the foreigner's office. I had found online that you can walk in and ask questions about certain situations there, but only between 8:30 and 11am and not on Wednesdays. So I got there and stood in a long line of other foreigners. They were holding passports and paperwork and the hands of little kids. They had varying heights and skin colors and were talking to each other or on cell phones in many languages I couldn't recognize. I entertained myself by trying to guess where all these people came from and how they ended up in Hannover. When I got to the front, I managed to ask my question in German as it had been rehearsed in my head (strike). Then the lady with bad hair and a good smile told me that I am not allowed to do any self-employment with my current residency permit (gutter). But Brian and I have an appointment next week and she said that we can ask in that appointment whether my renewed permit would allow me to be self employed (?).

Afterward I decided to try the Italian deli down the street. You can find every type of sausage here except a spicy Italian one, and I thought maybe the deli would be my answer. So I went in and asked the old Italian man, in German, if there was any spicy sausage. He asked how much I wanted, I guessed and said 250 grams. That is about half a pound, which didn't seem like much. Then he started slicing some kind of hot salami into and kept on slicing and slicing... I was envisioning a couple links of sausage and not a pile of salami. So I politely, said, "please, that's enough," and he reminded me that I had asked for 250 grams and that's what I was going to get. I got a hunk of parmesan cheese too and almost choked on sticker shock. 17 euros for the salami and cheese! That's about half of my weekly grocery costs right there. Definitely gutters. Now I am thinking up spicy salami recipes and cursing the mean little deli man...

Yesterday I got a hair cut. Those of you who are loyal readers have seen my hair cut stories before. It's a stressful experience for me, so I will just write about it again. I went back to the walk-in place down the street, which had worked out ok last time. It's like a Super Cuts but way trendier with techno music in the background and stylish looking staff. I had my hair picture in hand, and I had rehearsed the words for short and long and thick and curly - I was ready. The girl cutting my hair gave a great shampoo, was patient with me, and styled my hair for free even though you are supposed to pay extra for that. Definitely a strike.
I used to have undying loyalty to Will, my ultra-skinny heavily-tattooed hair stylist in Minneapolis. I broke up with him shortly before moving here and now will just have to be content with whatever person is available and non-English speaking at the hair place down the street. It's funny how my standards have changed since we moved.

So those are my mundane experiences so far this week. I have yet to go bowling in Germany, but I will write all about it when I do. I will likely have a lot more gutters than strikes.

The Kleingarten

On Thursday we did not pull a Bollerwagen around to grunt and eat bratwurst with the dads on Fathers' Day. We did our grunting and bratwurst eating in a Kleingarten.

A Kleingarten, also known as a Schrebergarten, is a plot on the outskirts of the city where people who live in apartments can do some gardening, enjoy the outdoors, and grill meat. The gardens each have a little shed and they are laid out in long fenced-in rows with little gravel roads running in between them.

When my parents came to visit and we were on the train from the airport, my mom looked out the window at a row of Kleingartens and said, "what is that place? Safety Town?".  The tidy rows with their tiny houses do like a village for small children on bikes, or better yet for dwarves and garden gnomes.

Here's a link to a good little article about the Kleingartens.

Last Fall, four of our friends from the international school went in together to but a Kleingarten. Andrew, who is the Australian chief gardener, celebrated a birthday on Thursday. He invited a bunch of us to a cricket game followed by a barbecue at the garden. Apparently the cricket was a good show - all the players had to wear white and they had a break for tea and cucumber sandwiches. I missed the cricket game because I had to invigilate (i.e. supervise) exams at the school, which the students had to take even though it was a holiday. It was so boring that one kid fell asleep while taking his own exam. I had to wake him up and it was the most exciting moment of the afternoon. I considered giving each of them just one sheet of scratch paper so that they would raise their hands to ask for  more and I would have something to do. Eventually the minutes ticked away and I headed out to the Kleingarten. After getting hopelessly lost for a while, we got to sit outside and hang out in front of a fire in the evening. That reminded me a little of home.

The main difference, though (other than the whole being in Germany part) is that when we had fires out back on the patio, our house was right behind us. In the Kleingarten, it's like they have outsourced the back yard.When you hang out there, you have to go home afterward, even if the garden is yours. You are not supposed to spend the night at the garden. I am not sure whether it's illegal or just against the rules of the Kleingarten association. The Kleingarten has electricity but no sewer system. Each plot has its own little well for water. There are also rules about how the size and shape of the plot, how large your shed can be, and what times of day you are not allowed to mow the grass. It sounds sort of like owning a condo. But of course there are rules. It's Germany.

Rules or not, we enjoyed our day at the garden. Our friends have put a lot of work into planting veggies and herbs and fruit trees there. I didn't see any dwarves, but that must be because they come out at night when all of the people have gone back to sleep in their apartments..

Here are some photos of the event:

Andrew tending the grill

Andrew, Brian, and Mark

Our small friend Noah, and Brian's cricket wear

Happy Vatertag

Today is a holiday in Germany. It is Ascension Thursday, known in German as Christi Himmelfahrt (remember how you used to whisper about her in high school?). But this holiday has a double identity. It is also Vatertag, Fathers' Day in Germany. Mothers' Day was Sunday, and it's celebrated here much like it is in the U.S. -  a meal with the family, flowers and gifts for mom, etc. But Fathers' Day is different. Instead of hanging out with the family, dad leaves the wife and kids at home and goes out drinking with the other dads. They walk around with a wagon full of booze, called the Bollerwagen ("Sorry son, you can't play with the wagon today. Daddy needs it to carry his beer"). There are stops for bratwurst (of course) along the way, and maybe a bonfire or some hanging out in a park. When the wagon is empty, the dads head to the bars. This makes sense in Germany, because it's ok to drink on the street, or on a train, out of a wagon, or pretty much wherever you like. In the U.S. you can carry a concealed weapon, but you can't drink beer on the sidewalk.

I am not a dad, nor will I ever be, but this sounds like a great concept to me. Appreciate dad by giving him a break and letting him have some male bonding time. If he makes a fool of himself, mom does not have to be there to know about it, or to drag him home. The two Germans I have most recently talked to about this celebration are my German teacher, Holger, and my conversation partner, Helga. Holger (who is, unlike me, a dad) thinks it's great and even wrote the word Bollerwagen on the chalkboard so we would learn it. Helga (who is a grandma) disapproves entirely and thinks it's just a terrible custom. 

Will dads be in church today for Ascension Thursday? A few of them will, probably. Some will stay home, and others will take little Klaus's wagon, fill it with beer, and go out with the boys.

Bacharach and the Rhine

Think about a fairy-tale town: winding cobblestone streets, crooked little brightly painted houses, little hidden courtyards and wishing wells, with a castle overlooking it all. That’s what Bacharach looks like. Is it touristy? Sure, it is. But it’s not a theme park – it’s all real and just well preserved. Bacharach is one of several little towns in the wine country along the Rhine River that have castles. In the middle ages, every robber-baron with a castle could stop ships passing by and make them pay tolls in order to get through. Most of the castles were built in the 1100s to the 1300s and many are still standing. Some have even been converted into hotels. We did not stay in a castle. We stayed in the hotel Gelber Hof, which is like a big old house that your German great grandmother owns and decorated herself several decades ago. Here are a few shots of Bacharach:

We arrived on Saturday afternoon and took a boat ride north along the Rhine to St. Goar. We passed three towns and three or four castles along the way. We hiked up the hillside in St Goar to Burg Rheinfels castle, then strolled through town. Was it touristy? Sure, it was. It was also beautiful, in a story book sort of way that makes you wonder if it’s all real. Would we have been as impressed with these towns if the fairy tales we learned as kids took place on a tropical island or a desert or a big city? Maybe not – we envisioned princesses and castles and forests on a hillside. The brothers Grimm were German, after all.

Sunday we hiked up to the castle above Bacharach, Burg Stahleck, and down along the ruins of the old city wall. Then we rented bikes and took a fantastic ride along the Rhine toward the town of Bingen. The weather worked out for us too, not summery any more, but sunny and dry. Germans do a great job of making nice bike trails with a lot of good signage. This trail runs on and on for something like 35 miles, but on our creaky rental bikes we had a long enough ride to Bingen and back. On the bike ride we passed three more castles and took in the river views. We thought about climbing up to see another castle but our legs were against that idea and we had to listen. Besides, I think the castles are most impressive from a little farther away. You can pretend to be a ship captain approaching in his 14^th century vessel, getting his coins ready to toss in the basket at the toll booth. Ok, maybe it wasn’t quite like driving on the tollway in Chicago, but close enough.   

Now we are heading back to Hannover. Hannover does not look like a story book at all. But it is where Brian is waiting, wired on the 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew that Emily brought in her suitcase. And he is my highly caffeinated knight in shining armor.

Sister visit, and Frankfurt

On Wednesday, my sister Emily came to visit. She’s only staying 6 days, which is a quick trip by trans-Atlantic traveling standards. So my plan was to keep her moving. On Thursday I went to my interview with the second bike taxi company and had to do figure 8s while Emily shopped. We had lunch with my friend Kaska, went to track practice at the school together, stopped at the grocery store, made dinner, and went for a cocktail with my Canadian co-coach Jessica. As Brian put it, Thursday was a good taste of the various activities I dabble in while living in Hannover. If you just added in a German class and some bike stalking it would be complete. 

On Friday we left Brian at home and headed to Frankfurt. It was the first stop of our weekend trip visiting castles and little towns along the Rhine. Since we’d have to go through Frankfurt anyway, we planned to spend Friday night there. It had been warm when we left Hannover but it was summer in Frankfurt. The sun was shining, the people were out, and we walked around in sundresses. I hadn’t heard a lot of great things about visiting Frankfurt, but any city on a beautiful day can be a good time. We walked around the shopping areas, the Romerburg (Frankfurt’s old town), ate ice cream in the old town square, crossed the river Mainz and wandered around some cute neighborhoods looking for apple wine until our feet hurt.  Friday night the storms blew in. We conveniently ducked for cover in a restaurant and the evening went from there.

Frankfurt is a big financial center and may not have the same charm or character as other cities, but it entertained us for the day. Here are some photos.

View of Frankfurt from the Zeil shopping street

That's us

The Romerburg

Getting lost in the Sachsenhausen district

Protests about the eurozone bailouts

Bike taxis

I have a new idea for a job. Because all I do now is cover teach and coach track and consult for my old job and take German classes and take Masters classes online… but all on a sporadic and part-time basis. So I thought it would be cool to drive a bike taxi.

Brian and I had been seeing them around town since the weather started to warm up. It’s more of a pod than a bike, kind of like a Smart Car crossed with a tricycle. They drive people to the zoo and soccer games and on tours around the city, and the passengers always seem to be having a good time. We never saw any women driving them, though, so Brian joked that I could be the only foreign female bike taxi driver in Hannover. It seemed silly but the more I thought about it, it made sense. I could make a little money, practice my German, get a workout, and learn my way around the city all at the same time!

This is what they look like

I decided to email them. What did I really have to lose? They probably wouldn’t reply anyway. Brian found the websites for the two bike taxi companies in Hannover, and I sent them an email in English and German. They both called me. The same day. In German. I managed to have a conversation and they still both asked me to come in for an interview and a test drive.

I’ve been on a lot of job interviews before but I don’t remember ever being as nervous as I was for my first bike taxi interview. I didn’t need a resume or a nice outfit or a list of references. I just had to do it all in the language that I didn’t know a word of 9 months ago. Driving the bike taxi was the easy part.

And… I did ok. I passed the bike taxi test drive, and understood most of what the bike taxi guys said to me. I even managed to ask a few questions. It seems like I can work at either place if I want to - the main issue now is whether I can do it legally. Bike taxi drivers are considered self-employed. They have to pay a fee (1-20 euros a day) to the bike taxi company to cover use of the taxi, insurance, uniforms (yes, spandex and jerseys), etc. Then the driver gets to keep the fares. In order to be self-employed in Germany you need a business license, and no one seems to know for sure if I can get one as a non-EU citizen with a residence permit.

So next week I get to go to the foreigner’s office to find out. That should be interesting. I can envision the conversation now. The grumpy government employee will ask –  What sort of business do you want to start? How it will contribute to the German economy?  And I will answer -  I want to become the only foreign female bike taxi driver in Hannover. It will help me learn German, and I look good in bike shorts.

Then I will either get the stamp of approval or get laughed out of the building. But if I can at least put those phrases together in German, it will be an accomplishment either way.

Field trip - 2

The other field trip I went on last week was with my German class. After a debate on whether it was a good idea to go to the movies (voted down - we don't think we'd understand enough to make it worth the ticket price), we decided to have a stroll through the Altstadt, Hannover's old town. We stopped at a couple of the oldest churches, checked out the old town hall, and pointed out a theater and a museum.

I'd walked around the Altstadt and learned about the buildings there many times, but never in German before. I'd also never done it while talking to my classmate Mohammed from Afghanistan about his opinion on Germans and living in Germany. He doesn't think it's the greatest place ever, thinks that the streets are too quiet, and misses the bustling, busy cities back home. There is an American girl in my class who is an au pair here. She's frowns a lot and doesn't talk much. I'd rather talk to Mohammed, or Muhamed, the guy from Iran, or Valentina from Russia. Thi Ai from Vietnam is the smallest loudest person ever but she makes us all laugh.

After our little stroll we stopped at a cafe, as you do in Europe. Our teacher asked me about American politics and who the next president will be. Trying to talk about that in German was a little more than I can handle. I don't know what to say exactly, even if I could handle the vocabulary and not get lost in the word order. I can understand a good amount of German but when I speak I feel like a 3 year old.

Participating in a field trip was a lot easier than chaperoning one. It was also good practice for leading the same sort of tour for my sister Emily when she comes this week. Luckily I will be able to do it in English.

Field Trip - 1

I spent much of last week watching kids take exams. The fancy British word for it is invigilation. I think it's Latin for boredom.
On Wednesday, though, I didn't invigilate. I chaperoned a field trip.
The word for field trip in German is Ausflug. It comes from the old German word for sneeze as in ah-ah-Ausflug, Gesundheit.
It was the international schools 8th grade walking field trip for geography class. It was led by their geography teachers, one of whom I happen to know very well. The field trip was a tour of the neighborhood of  Linden Sud (Sud = south), led by a pastor from a church in the area. Linden is a part of Hannover that has always been home to working class people who are employed at factories nearby. It has an interesting mix of houses that survived the war, and others that were destroyed and rebuilt. So Linden has buildings from the 1860s next to buildings from the 1960s.  Recently, parts of Linden have been gentrified and filled with loft apartments and little cafes.

Linden also has a lot of the poorer people in Hannover, including recent immigrants and others who have lived on government benefits for generations. The American in me (I guess that's all of me) would think that means the area would look run down, with buildings in disrepair, boarded up windows, litter on the street, etc. What we found instead were tidy little apartment buildings, playgrounds, park benches, and quiet. There was a little graffiti, but in Germany you find that all over. It's not necessarily a sign that there's crime in the area.

Statue of the idealized Nazi worker

Mr. McCarthy did not plan this field trip. Mr. Swift, the other geography teacher, did. Swifty is not nearly as organized as Mr. Mac and the trip was a little chaotic. It started when Swifty decided to lead the group of 30 kids through the fairgrounds rather than on the street. The carnival that had been running for few weeks was just ending and workers were breaking down the rides and the sausage stands and the stages. Brian and I said things like,
"Watch out for those sharp stakes lying on the ground, kids."
"Dont trip on the electrical cords."
"Look up from your iPhone and let that truck get through,"
while Swifty strolled calmly ahead at the front of the line.

Mr. Mac, dressed for safari

The tour went well for the first hour or so. But then Swifty and the pastor got wrapped up in the history of locomotive assembly at the Hannomag factory while the kids' attention spans maxed out, their bellies started to rumble, and they began to act like 13 year olds. The rest of the afternoon was chaotic - stink bombs were launched, we all had to wait 15 minutes for one kid to use the bathroom, we missed a tram and had to wait 15 minutes for another, and then the kids started to cut deals to leave early. If their parents called or texted to give permission, Swifty let them go home directly from the field trip without going back to school first. The American in me would never have let kids take off on their own, but here it's not a big deal.

Hannomag factory building

The Ausflug (bless you) was exhausting. It made me want to take a break and get back to invigilation.

May Day

Today is a holiday in Germany. Everything is closed - schools, shops, and the eyelids of the Germans living in Hannover. It's pretty quiet out there this morning. Brian and I took advantage of it and had a great bike ride with no traffic. May 1st is German Labor Day. I checked the internet, font of all cultural knowledge, to find out more about it.

The May 1st celebration was actually inspired by a workers' strike in Chicago in 1886. Socialist parties in Europe wanted to show their solidarity with the Chicago laborers and declared May 1st to be a workers' holiday, starting in 1890. May 1st is not just a German holiday; it's celebrated in many countries. But there's more to the history here:

"In Germany, May Day (erster Mai, May 1st) is a national holiday and an important day, partly because of Blutmai ("bloody May") in 1929. That year in Berlin the ruling Social Democratic (SPD) party had banned the traditional workers' demonstrations. But the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) called for demonstrations anyway. The resulting bloodbath left 32 people dead and at least 80 seriously injured. It also left a big split between the two workers' parties (KPD and SPD), which the Nazis soon used to their advantage. The National Socialists named the holiday Tag der Arbeit ("Day of Labor"), the name still used in Germany today."

I got this from about.com, which is a slightly more reputable source than Wikipedia. I hope that my librarian family members don't disapprove of my researching skills. I can include a reference list if it would help.

Another May 1st tradition is the May pole. A tall pole with a tree on top of it goes up in the village center, bands play, people dance around the pole, and then they eat sausages and drink beer (it's Germany - don't they eat sausages and drink beer every day?). That doesn't happen here - they only have May poles in Bavaria and other parts of Germany that are fun. The northerners don't like to party too much unless there's a soccer game.

May day is just the first holiday in May. On the 17th we have Christi Himmelfahrt. In English you'd call it the Ascension of Christ. Brian decided that it in German it sounds like the name of a girl that all the boys used to whisper about in high school. I just think it sounds funny.

Then there is Pfingsten, which is Pentecost, on May 27th and that Monday (Pfingsmontag) is a holiday too. In our household it is known as Boss Monday, since we are going to see Bruce Springsteen in Cologne on the 27th.

So happy May 1st to all of you. Show your solidarity today with the workers in socialist countries by eating sausages, drinking beer, and dancing around a pole. Don't confuse it with pole dancing - that's something that Christi Himmelfahrt would do.