Street music stereotype

There is one photo from Hameln that I didn't include in my post about that day.
It's of a three-man band playing the pan flutes that you often hear in airports or city streets. The interesting part is that these guys were all dressed like American Indians - they had headdresses, moccasins, even war paint.

I tried to explain (in German, so it was awkward) to my Colombian and Uzbek friends why I had to take this photo. I told them that musical act dressed like this in the U.S., it would be considered anywhere from distasteful to offensive or even racist, depending on who you asked. Sure, people in the U.S. use ethnic stereotypes, but they don't parade them around on the street and put out a hat for tips. I guess the equivalent would be a group of Germans dressed up like orthodox Jews and performing on the steel drum in Tokyo.

Hannover bomb scare

When I saw the news that a bomb squad was diffusing a bomb in Hannover, my American brain assumed that it had been planted by a terrorist, a fugitive from justice, or some modern menace to society. I was wrong. The bomb came from the U.S. military, seventy years ago.

A construction crew working in Hannover's old town unearthed a ten hundredweight (I believe that's 1000 lbs.) bomb yesterday. It was a World War II dud that had buried itself right in the middle of town. About 9,000 people were evacuated last night from apartments, restaurants, hotels, the train station and Hannover's red light district. The bomb squad built a barrier of 49 water-filled shipping containers to protect the city from a possible blast, and diffused the bomb safely. Other than the restaurant owners and the hookers who lost a night of business, everyone was ok.

This is not the only bomb around town. In January, 25,000 people in the Hannover suburbs had to leave their homes while several bombs were diffused. Last year, another bomb was discovered and safely detonated beside an apartment complex. In 2009, there was another one... and so on. In fact, WWII bombs are regularly discovered all over Germany. Roughly 10% of the bombs that were dropped never exploded on impact. The older and more corroded they become, the harder it is to remove the bombs without making them explode. With age, they can become so volatile that there's a risk the buried bombs could just blow up spontaneously.

Maybe I should be scared, but I am sort of fascinated by this part of history that is still being uncovered. After all, there's a much bigger risk that I could get hit by a car or die of a rare disease then in a bomb explosion. I am used to thinking that a threat to public safety is new and a result of poor gun control, violent culture, or some form of terrorism. Hannover's bomb threat, though, was planted seven decades ago, and by people from my own country. Maybe 'bomb scare' is too strong of a term for what happened in central Hannover yesterday. To the evacuees, maybe it was just a bad night for business.

The rat catcher

On Friday I went to Hameln, known in English as Hamelin, home of the pied piper. In German he is the Rattenfaenger, the rat catcher. I never understood what 'pied' meant, so I of course looked it up on the internet. Pied means multicolored, or having blocks of different colors, as the piper's clothes do in all the pictures.

Hameln is all about the rat catcher. He shows up in paintings on the half-timbered houses, he leads tours of the city, he comes out of the Glockenspiel in center of town three times a day. There are little metal rats that show up in the cobblestones of the old city every so often, and I even spotted rats carved into a pillar at the church. The legend, according to the brothers Grimm, is that the town leaders hired this guy to rid their town of rats by playing his enchanting songs. He got the job done, but when they didn't pay him he lured the children of the town away by playing the pipe. This must be the most romanticized kidnapping ever.

The Glockenspiel

According to what I've read it seems like there was a real pied piper. He could have kidnapped all 130 children. More likely, there could have been a rat-borne disease that killed most of Hameln's kids at that time. In that case, the piper may have been not a real guy but just a symbol for death itself (though we don't usually picture Death as wearing a rainbow outfit and a big long feather in his cap). Another theory is that the piper took Hameln's young people to populate a new colony in Transylvania or somewhere else in the east of Europe. This article has a lot more information if you are interested.


I went to Hameln with my Colombian friend Olga and her new Uzbek friend Slata. I had never met someone from Uzbekistan before, but I liked Slata. Having her along also made me practice speaking German, since Olga and I usually speak Spanish when it's just the two of us.

This is a really fantastic thing about living in Germany - I can travel to a tourist destination and come back in the same day. Ok, it's not a major tourist destination, but they have a medieval city that was never destroyed in WWII, cobblestone streets and half-timbered houses. I suppose when you grow up in Europe, those things get old. But I still feel like I've stumbled into a storybook.

Olga and me

The highlight was climbing the tower in St Bonifacius Church. We climbed narrow spiral stairs, crossed the attic of the church on a wooden gangway, went through some creaky doors, climbed more stairs, (feeling around for a light switch) went up a ladder and opened a trap door to the lookout tower and a view of the town and river below.

Accross the church attic

Olga and Slata

View of Hameln from the church tower

So to any Hamline University Pipers out there, you have a cool mascot.  I'm not sure whether the rat catcher was a good buy or a bad guy, or why he did it. It does seem odd that the people of Hameln really like to celebrate the guy who took all their children away. But who am I to judge? I come from the land of corn palaces and giant balls of twine. Give me some winding cobblestone streets and a creaking church tower, and I am impressed.

The couch

Yesterday we got a new couch.
The word for couch in German is (dramatic pause) sofa. See, you can already speak German. If only it were always that easy. The new couch is part of the evolution of our apartment. At first, it was just me, Brian and our air bed. Then came the Ikea phase.

I see Ikea as a necessary evil. Going through the store makes me feel like a hamster crawling through my little maze of tubes, hoping to find a little dish of food pellets at the end (i.e. where they sell the meat balls). The whole system works because the customer, like the hamster, is not that smart. Brian actively hates Ikea. He compares the route that you have to walk through the store to a Swedish-inspired death march. Instead of execution, you end up buying things with names like Lack and Ektorp and Kivik. This is followed by swearing and sweating back at home while you assemble the furniture. The instructions are so easy they are wordless, and drawings of smiling little guys show you just how easy it is. I hate those guys.

But when you are in a new place without a ton of money, and the few items of furniture you shipped are stuck out on a container ship somewhere, Ikea's where you have to go. During the Ikea phasse we added a bed (with Ikea frame) and our blue Ikea couch and some cheap Ikea tables to the apartment. We're not the only ones; almost everyone I've met in Germany has the same tables.

Now we are ready to take the next step and get some grown-up furniture... or at least one piece. In the two years we've had the blue couch (translation - sofa), we've complained about it for about a year and nine months. So we moved it to our guest bedroom, added a second-hand chest and deflated the air bed. (Since all of you who said you'd come visit have yet to show up, we will not keep the bed ready for you any more.) The new couch came from a real grown-up furniture store, where most of the couches are either ultra modern with no arm rests, or seem to be made for dentist's waiting rooms.

I know it's tempting to read into the purchase of our couch as if it's some kind of sign (a friend of ours called it an 'anchor' the other day). It's not symbolic of anything other than our liberation from Ikea, land of Swedish hamsters and maddening do-it-yourself assembly. Or maybe it's just a step toward liberation - we still have those tables, and so do all of our friends.

Naming rights

Earlier this week, I read a news story about parents in Tennessee who wanted to name their baby boy Messiah. Somehow this case made it to court, where a judge forbade the parents to use the name Messiah. Her reasoning was that the child would face unneeded scorn and social difficulty by sharing a name with the Big Guy.  The judge ordered the parents to name their baby Martin instead (the mom's last name is Martin).

The parents are not happy and the story made big news. Probably, the case will be appealed to a higher court where another judge will tell the parents that they can name their kid whatever name they like, including Messiah, Jesus, Mohammed, or Microwave. In the United States, you can name name your kid whatever you like. So whether you like Messiah or Tequila - go for it. That's what freedom is all about.

In Germany, however, that's not the case. There are rules.
1. The name must reflect the sex of the child
2. The name must not endanger the child's well-being in any way
Your baby's name must be approved by the local authorities before they will issue a birth certificate. In order to guide your choice, the government recommends that parents choose from a list. It's a book actually, called something like the 'manual of first names'.

While us Americans might be shocked at this sort of regulation ("what? I can't name a kid McKenzie, Adolf Hitler or Twinkle Toes?"), maybe the Germans have good intentions. They want to keep your kid from having to answer that awkward male/female question, or from getting teased too much in school. Germany is not the only country with laws like this. In New Zealand, a name cannot be unreasonably long. In Denmark, 15-20% of baby names are rejected because they are not on the list.

Our friends Serena and Ed, both Americans, got to know this law very well. Their baby Madeline was born in May. They named her Madeline Newman Mott*. Serena's maiden name is Newman, so it seemed like a good choice to me. The Hannover authorities did not agree. There isn't an option for middle names on the German birth certificate, but you can have multiple first names. Last names aren't allowed to be used as first names, unless you have two first names first, and then a last name as another first name after that. Got it? So Madeline Marie Newman Mott would have been ok, but that's not the name they wanted. Ed and Serena had to get a letter from the U.S. embassy, explaining that using a family name as a middle name is a common custom for Americans, and Germany should make an exception for little Madeline.

This seems like an appropriate topic because I feel like 30% of the people I have ever met in my life are having babies this year. That means by next year they will buy SUVs (the Americans) or at least SUV-quality strollers (the Germans) and move to the suburbs (everyone).

As for the judge in Tennessee, maybe she'd be happier in Germany where she could better protect parents from making bad decisions. After all, freedom means being able to name your daughter Sunshine and your son Jedi, or you can name either one of them Taylor. If they get laughed at in school, we'll all know who to blame.


*Names slightly changed to protect the innocent from Google searches

The squirrel question

This will be my last post about our trip to the U.S. Pretty soon I'll get back to writing about my cultural faux pas, or whatever you call them in German.

Our friends Luke and Jackie hosted a barbecue one evening at their Saint Paul home. They invited a bunch of staff from Como Park High School, so that everyone could pay their respects to us all at once. Among the guests was Mark Ross, Saint Paul police officer and friend of ours. For the past couple of years he has been assigned as the school resource officer for Como Park. (Europeans are stunned when I tell them that some American high schools have cops). But in the summers, Mark is back on patrol.

He told us the story of driving around in the neighborhood not far from ours, but far enough that the homes are really fancy. On a street with beautiful lawns and big houses, he saw three teenage boys wearing what he called the "just got to America" outfit: flip flops, ripped up shorts, ratty t-shirt. He knew right away that these kids were Kareni*.

*Informative side note: The Karen people are a minority ethnic group in Burma (Myanmar), and are killed and forced into labor by the military regime. Many have fled to refugee camps in Thailand and a large group of them has been resettled in Saint Paul, MN. The Twin Cities are been home to many refugee groups, including the Hmong (from Laos), the Oromo (from Ethiopia), Somalis, Cambodians, Liberians, Eastern Europeans and others. Brian played a little soccer with these kids when we were in town and he got schooled.

So Officer Ross sees these kids walking around in a backyard that is obviously not theirs, in a neighborhood where they don't belong, and he spots another squad car parked down the street. Cop #2 tells officer Ross that one of the neighbors called in because she saw these shabbily-clad teenagers and thought they might try to break into her car. That did not appear to be their plan, since they were paying more attention to the trees and bushes than to the street. The two cops approached the three kids, threw handcuffs on them (this is the point in the story where I question whether handcuffs were necessary), and started to go through their bags. One of the kids had a backpack, and inside it were three plastic bags. The first bag was empty. The second bag was empty. The third bag... half-dead squirrel!. Mark Ross looks just how you might picture him - stocky, tough-looking, ready to face bad guys. He screamed like a six year old girl at the sight of this critter twitching in the bag. Then the two cops go look in the Kareni kids' car. They open the trunk and find a few other bags. In one is a collection of carefully polished and rounded stones. In another is some rubber tubing. The rest of the bags are empty until... Half dead squirrel!  This is when two of Saint Paul's finest scream like a monster jumped out from under the bed and hope the neighbors didn't hear.

At this point in the story I ask Mark Ross, "So what's the penalty for squirrel hunting in the City of Saint Paul?"
He responds, "If it's me that catches you, it's go home and enjoy your lunch."
I also asked if the kids were scared to be wearing handcuffs. He said no - that was pretty common where they grew up.

The cops told the kids that it's ok to hunt squirrels with a slingshot, but it's not ok to do it in peoples' yards in broad daylight. A city park or some other wooded area would be a lot better. The boys may or may not have understood. They may have nodded after understanding about 30%, as I often do in Germany.

So what did the Kareni kid with a half-dead squirrel write on his blog when he went home? (Just 'cause he wears a ratty t-shirt doesn't mean he can't have a smart phone. I have a dumb phone and a laptop and am way behind the times). Maybe something like 'you wouldn't believe what happened to me when I was out catching food today... What's wrong with these people who don't eat their squirrels?"

The lesson of this story for me is this: There are cultures where you put squirrels in the zoo, there are cultures where you tolerate them and shoo them away from your flowers, and there are cultures where you take them home and eat them for lunch.

There is one common thread, however. In all of these cultures it's funny to see a big tough police officer scream like a little girl.

U.S. trip - thoughts

It's been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog. There are little ideas buzzing around in my head like mosquitoes at the lake house and they make my brain itch.

Here are some fuzzy, jet-lag laced thoughts on returning from a trip back to the U.S.:

Being away from the U.S. and then coming back makes me see it differently than I ever could have if we had never moved. It's like listening to yourself talk on video - the microphone doesn't lie, but it's not how your voice sounds in your head.

I just finished reading a book on loan from Dizzy's library-of-books-mostly-about-Africa called The Soccer War, by Polish journalist Rysard Kapuscinski. The author quotes a book by Levi-Strauss which is about his work as an ethnographer in Brazil. We don't have that much in common. He was Frenchman trekking around the jungles of Brazil; I am American riding a bike on the paved and quiet streets of Hannover. While my experience of living abroad is incredibly more tame and comfortable, I identified with this quote:

"Why has he come here? With what hopes or what objectives? ... does it result from a more radical choice, which implies that the anthropologist is calling into question the system in which he was born and brought up? ... Through a remarkable paradox, my life of adventure, instead of opening up a new world to me, had the effect rather of bringing me back to the old one, and the world I had been looking for disintegrated in my grasp." Levi-Strauss goes on to describe how, as he found the new people and landscapes, they were kept getting replaced in his mind by images from his homeland, from the culture he thought he had left behind.

After a month in the U.S., there are some things I really appreciate: the friendliness of strangers, the grocery store cashier who makes a joke as I check out, the sound of crickets and cicadas on a summer night, the shapes and colors or faces that all look different, drinking fountains, goofy yard art.

There are the things that bother me: vast suburban acres of asphalt and strip malls, so many streets where it's dangerous to be a pedestrian, patriotism used as a marketing ploy (has anyone seen the "close shave America, close shave Barbasol" commercial?), obesity, mosquitoes.

And those things I just never really noticed before: air conditioning and big cars and huge appliances and free public bathrooms.

I have another quote for you. I watched a movie on the plane called Night Train to Lisbon. It was ok, a little slow maybe, but some lines caught my attention: "When we leave a place, we stay there even though we go away. We travel to ourselves when we go back to a place where we have covered a stretch of our lives." 

Maybe that's what home feels like - little bits of who I am and why I am that way, all scattered around. It felt like home at the house where I grew up in Lisle, IL. Saint Paul also felt like home. And I'm at home now in Hannover.

Americana - photos

I didn't take as many photos on this trip as I have on some others, but I did try to get some shots of Americana. Here are a few iconic photos:

St Paul Farmers' Market

Mac n Cheese on a hot dog

Clifton Chenier and his Zydeco band, St. Paul

The Weinermobile, Madison

Giant mouse with cheese, Black River Falls

Orange moose, Black River Falls

Target Field, Minneapolis

Deep dish, Chicago

Chicago

Chicago

Grand Beach, Michigan

Bloody Marys, Eagle Street, St. Paul

Picnic with the Krois girls, Lake Calhoun, Minneapolis

Target Field, Minneapolis

Grand Beach, Michigan

Skipping stones, Grand Beach, Michigan

U.S. trip - the rest of it (abridged)

I'm a little behind on telling you about our trip to the U.S., so I will summarize.

The Twin Cities leg of our trip was great and busy - lots of friends to see, lots of visits to our favorite places, eating, drinking, socializing, fun. And the Royals swept the Twins, so some of us (I'll let you guess who) were really happy.

We had Joe visiting from Baltimore, Andrew from Kansas City, some mini golfing, some kayaking, and meals at some great restaurants.

I also took a 3 day trip to Madison, accompanied by my friend Julie, to visit Karissa and her family including new baby Tito, and miraculously did not catch their stomach flu.

Our house is fine, our renter is happy, and she, her daughter, the bunnies and the dog will be staying another year. We are grateful to our human host Mike and his canine sidekick Dalton for their hospitality.

After another week of relaxation time and another round of visits with my family, we are back in Hannover. 

Disclaimer

Hi everyone! I am back, in Hannover, that is. I have lots of ideas for posts and am ready to get back into the blog, but I have to warn you...
I am super jet lagged and cannot be held responsible for anything strange that I write in the next 2-3 days.

Transcontinental jet lag is a funny thing - you are not only sleep deprived but you also skip ahead in a mini time warp. The result is that my brain isn't sure where it was for about 7 hours yesterday/today/ whatever you call this day that never ends. So far Brian and I are functioning ok on our 20 minutes of plane sleep, and have only lost our fine motor skills and ability to speak in full sentences. 

Last year when we came back from the U.S., I got distracted while riding around town on my bike and ran into a post. I still have a faint gear-shaped scar on my ankle. The day after Brian flew in from Florida in the spring, he lost the only pair of sunglasses he'd ever loved. Hopefully this time there will be no casualties other than some wacky dreams and a little extra rambling on for you lovely people.

So keep alert for more posts to come, and I will try to do the same. (I'd love to think of a witty closing line for this little disclaimer, but the synapses are not firing very fast.)