Up a mountain in Wales

After Brussels, we caught up with friends in Birmingham. Our friend Jake grew up there and we got to meet his mom and his siblings and a few of his friends. We had 'a curry' (Birmingham is a hot spot for South Asian food) and visited a couple of pubs. There's not a lot in Birmingham, which is ok because we got out of there pretty fast and headed to Wales.

Jake, his girlfriend Viola, our pal John, Brian and I drove in our rental car to Snowdonia National Park in Northwest Wales. We stayed in Beddgelert, a small town which is actually inside the park. This seemed strange to me. As an American, I thought only park rangers and Yogi Bear lived inside national parks. But Beddgellert was crawling with hikers and cyclists and people who were enjoying rare sunny and warm weather over Easter weekend.

Beddgelert is a town with a legend. Welsh Prince Llewellyn the Great had a hunting dog named Gelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert and returned home to find the dog covered in blood and his son missing. Overcome with grief, Llewelyn killed the dog. A moment later the prince found his son, unharmed, next to the body of a wolf. Gelert had killed to protect the boy. Bedgelert is the place where Llewelyn buried his dog. But actually the whole story was made up by a man who owned a pub in Bedgelert. He needed to do something to bring in customers. At least that's what Jake told us.

In the British Isles, they calling hiking "walking." It is walking, in terms of putting one foot in front of the other. But when you are climbing rocks and hopping fences and sinking into squishy moss, I think another name is in order. 

In our case, we hiked up above the town the first afternoon, and back along a rocky river. The next day was a 5 hour trek over a mountain and down again, with no trail and no map. I had my whiny moments during the uphill part. I was whining on the inside, anyway. Any time Brian asked if I was ok, I answered with a look that said 'shut up and keep walking'.  My spirits lifted once we started climbing up rocks like actual mountain climbers, and then headed down, sometimes leaning back and scooting on all fours.

 

There is a movie called "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain". It's set in a village in Wales where the residents want to convince a surveyor that their big hill is really is a mountain. The one near Beddgelert is not a huge mountain either, but it was the only one I have ever climbed, so I am convinced. In my travel snobbery, I can compare hiking in Wales with hiking in Scotland and Ireland too. It's not as rugged and rough, but still very pretty and has at least as many sheep. And from what I saw of it, Wales is always 65 degrees and sunny. People tell me that's that not the case, but I choose to believe it's true, just like I choose to believe the legend about the prince and his dog.

Wedding guests

My friend Giulia and her husband Robert both work in the movie business. So it was only fitting that their wedding involved a cast of characters.

There were only 50 people, but you could have made a hit reality show by putting us all in a fancy house with some wine and a DJ to see what happened. Here are a few highlights:

Hugo - Hit actor/singer on London's West End and a friend of Giulia since first grade. He's currently starring in The Book of Mormon and has several other famous plays on his resume. Hugo hung out with the girls as we did hair in the bathroom at Giulia's mom's house, and played assistant stylist for Suzanne, who is also an improv comedian.

Tia Liliana - Giulia's Italian aunt is in her 80s. She chain-smokes and loves to make conversation with new people. The conversations at this wedding were mainly one-sided, because Liliana only speaks Italian. It didn't keep her from making friends, though, and she was certainly at home on the dance floor.

Eric - The groom's middle brother Eric is a music producer and performer in Nashville. He'd never tell you himself, but Eric is a big deal. He works with famous alt-country artists and is starting his own record label.

Samantha - A Chinese-Canadian equestrian rider who left home at 14 to train in show jumping. She renounced her Canadian citizenship in order to compete for Hong Kong in the Beijing Olympics. She's now married to a former classmate of mine, who has some some kind of Belgian noble ancestry.

Sarah - My fellow bridesmaid who travels the world as a missionary for an Evangelical church. She lived in Kyrgistan for five years, now is based in Alaska, and will soon move to Istanbul to train missionaries heading to Eastern Europe and Asia.

Deborah (and Elle P.) - When he first saw Deborah, Brian nudged me and said, "that person HAS to be from L.A.". She's barely five feet tall, with big bouncy hair, skin that's tan, shiny and taut. She could be anywhere from age 30 to 55 and wears thigh-high boots, a faux fur coat, sparkly jewelry and a shoulder bag. The bag moves. Inside it is Elle P., a Maltese dog that goes everywhere with Deborah. I really mean everywhere. It rides on airplanes, comes to restaurants and attended the wedding too. Deborah goes nowhere without Elle P., but if you try to touch her she'll bite (the dog, I mean - not sure about Deborah).

Lansdon - Childhood friend of the groom and Kentucky buzillion-aire. He owns a pet insurance company and the company that sells the extended warranty service to Best Buy (you know, the warranty you aren't supposed to buy). He got talking to Samantha about horses - he owns one that's racing in this year's Kentucky Derby.

By comparison, Brian and I are pretty unremarkable. We don't know any movie stars or own any horses, and live a relatively stable life in a relatively quiet German town.

At ease in the chateau

We didn't feel out of place, me in a David's Bridal and 15 euro shoes, Brian standing aloof at the back of the ceremony. We have no time to be intimidated by rich and successful and creative people. It was a lot more entertaining than a wedding full of computer nerds with mini vans.

And I looked pretty good in that David's Bridal dress, anyway, even though Hugo almost ruined my hair.

Meeting my Waterloo

I left town last week, which, thank goodness, means I have some material to post about that doesn't involve stalking joggers.

Last Sunday, Brian and I flew into Brussels for my friend Giulia's wedding. Giulia is my only friend who has the same name that I do, and she's also one of my oldest friends. I lived in Waterloo, Belgium with my parents when I was 16 and 17. For just one year I went to the international school there, and met Giulia. She was the rare student who had stayed in Waterloo from kindergarten through high school. Now living in L.A. and working in the film industry, she was coming home to get married.

My parents were there too. They'd wanted to visit Brian and me and also have a European vacation. So they joined the party and got caught up in some reminiscing along the way. It was funny going back to a place I lived 17 years ago. Mom and Dad had more 'remember when' moments than I did, more stories about getting lost and meeting the other expats and making cultural missteps. I had some memories of my year in Waterloo, but they came without much emotional attached. It was like remembering a place because I'd seen photos of it many times. I must have been so caught up in being a teenager that the world outside of my house and my school and my friends wasn't so important.

I did realize during this trip that Waterloo is a suburb that's a lot like an American suburb. It has subdivisions with street names that all fit under a theme, big lawns and homes with attached garages, a McDonald's and a Pizza Hut. It seemed odd to me now - why would we go to the trouble of moving to another country, and just to live in the same sort of place we'd left? But maybe my parents had chosen it for that very reason. Maybe picking up a suburb and putting it in Europe was change enough.

I also realized that Belgium is the headquarters for the European Union, NATO and various multinational corporations because it is centrally located mostly unremarkable. It's a country made from two halves stitched together, with a French culture and a Dutch culture but not a strong culture of its own. It's a place where foreigners are welcome and not completely out of place.

Manneken Pis, Brussels

Paris has the famous symbol of the Eiffel Tower. Rome has the Colloseum, London has the bridge, and Brussels has a statue of a little boy peeing. The Mannekin Pis is the major tourist draw in town. Belgium's other big landmarks are a giant chrome atom with mini-golf-course sized Europe at its base, and of course the Butte du Lion in Waterloo. When you say it in French it sounds fancier, but the Butte is a big mound with a lion statue on top, built to commemorate the site of Napoleon's defeat in 1815. It's kind of weird - just a little beyond the Pizza Hut are some fields where the

huge pyramid shaped mound pops out of the ground.

Butte du Lion, Waterloo

What I liked about Belgium this time around were those less famous places. I liked the winding streets in Brussels and the ruined abbey we visited. I liked the spring flowers and the old step-roofed buildings.
I probably would have liked Pizza Hut too, but we never made it there.

Grand Place, Brussels

Grand Place, Brussels

Brussels

Dinant

Villers a Ville Abbey

Spandex and scarves

I ran 12 miles the other day. At least I think I did, but I can't be sure. I do not have a GPS chip in my shoe or an iphone app that posts my mileage on Facebook or even headphones. I actually do own headphones, but haven't run with any since I was fourteen and had a special neoprene belt for my Sony Discman. That's how old I am.

Anyway, I ran 12 miles (ish) because I am training for the Hannover half-marathon. It wasn't my idea. Our friends Jake and Viola, people who run a lot less often than I do, decided to run it and convinced me to join them. I have since bought a blue headband with white stars on it. I figure if I race wearing that with a red shirt I will look either obnoxiously American, or a little like Wonder Woman. Both are good options.

German runners can look a little like super heroes too. It's mostly because they like to wear a lot of spandex. Running tights are not just for the ultra dedicated or the ultra fit here. Everyone seems to have a pair. Often the tights also match the runner's jacket and shoes. It's like they bought the outfit right off of a mannequin - very sportlich.

German runners don't wear superhero capes, but they do sometimes wear scarves. The jogger coming toward me might be wearing shorts, but she's not taking any chances on having a cold neck. Brian explained to me recently that a German's scarf is like Linus's blanket from Peanuts. Just like Linus can use his blanket as a whip, a Christmas tree skirt, or a flying carpet, a German can use a scarf as a turban, a napkin or a picnic blanket.
 
Solely for the purposes of this blog, I decided to hang out by the lake, pretending to stretch, and take photos of typical German runners. This is actually the third time I have tried to take sneaky photos of people by the Maschsee for this blog. First it was people with dogs, then the Nordic walkers, and now runners. I may be getting a reputation as that weird foreigner who pretends to take photos of the lake while actually stalking innocent exercisers. My mission was not totally successful; I didn't get any shots of a runner in a scarf.

 

Of course, this could be how runners in the U.S. are dressing these days, too. I haven't lived there for almost three years and I forget that things have changed while I've been away. But that's a topic for another post.

If Wonder Woman was a runner she wouldn't have a GPS. The chip would never fit in her go-go boots. So I will take a lesson from her and just keep running. Then I will have to guess how far I've gone.

Why are you here?

I recently got an email from Bob, the finance guy that I used to work with in Saint Paul. He wrote "Do you plan to stay in Europe permanently? I really thought you'd be back in the States by now."

We get this reaction from a lot of people: Bob, a woman I met at a party yesterday, teachers at the school, relatives, maybe even you.
I think what they/you really want to say is: 'It's been more than two years, you've gotten the travel itch out of your system, aren't you ready to get back to real life?'. I guess the answer is no, but said people don't expect that answer. They want us to have a plan, a deadline, a big alarm clock that wake us up and tell us it's time to go.

Another reaction I get is: 'You are from the U.S. Why are you here?'
This comment often comes from other immigrants, especially classmates from my German course. A few people asked us the same thing when we were in Egypt. The U.S. is a place where so many people want to go, so why would we leave? My classmates often ask if the U.S. is better or if Germany is better.   Both Fahima from Iran and your pal Mikhail the book thief recently asked me this question. I usually shrug with a non-committal, better in what? I feel a little guilty saying that we didn't move to Germany to have a better life. Our life was pretty good back in St. Paul. We moved here because we could, because we wanted to try something different, see new places, understand other cultures, see some of the world. We are immigrants by choice. It sounds pretty frivolous when you are talking with someone who came to Germany to escape unemployment, or political persecution, or even war.

So, Bob, in case you read this blog, the big alarm clock has not gone off yet. And while it keeps ticking away, we are not done with Germany yet.

Mikhail and the book shelf

Before I write about Mikhail and his books,  I am starting this post with an excerpt from a previous post.
Yes, I am quoting myself. Is this vanity? Perhaps. But it's good background info.
In case you have not yet memorized my post from November 29, 2012, here goes:
___________________________________________________________________________
Hannover, like many other cities in Germany, has free bookshelves. In addition to the public library system, there are bookshelves out in public areas where passers-by can take a book home, bring it back later, or donate their old books. Here's some info from a 2011 AP article featured in The Guardian :

Associated Press= COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — Take a book, leave a book. In the birthplace of the printing press, public bookshelves are popping up across the nation on street corners, city squares and suburban supermarkets.
In these free-for-all libraries, people can grab whatever they want to read, and leave behind anything they want for others. There's no need to register, no due date, and you can take or give as many as you want.
"This project is aimed at everyone who likes to read — without regard to age or education. It is open for everybody," Michael Aubermann, one of the organizers of the free book exchange in the city of Cologne, told The Associated Press.
The public book shelves, which are usually financed by donations and cared for by local volunteer groups, have popped up independently of each other in many cities across Germany including Berlin, Hannover and Bonn, and also in suburbs and villages. 

Public bookshelf in Hannover

Cool idea, right? Way to make literacy accessible to everyone. Until somebody steals all the books. Except that doesn't happen. Really. People actually bring the books back or replace them with other titles. Except for my friend Kaska's mom, who is Polish, and took a couple of books home to Poland with the explanation of "at least I will USE them". In the U.S., the books would not always come back, even in a nice neighborhood. They'd turn up at someone's house or a used book store. But in Germany, that's not a problem.

 ________________________________________________________________________

Hannover, meet Mikhail. He's a classmate from my German course. On the first day, Mikhail introduced himself and explained that his profession does not exist in Germany. Therefore he has not worked for the twenty years he has lived in Hannover. Mikhail was/is an ice dancer and comes from St. Petersburg, Russia.  He has a white-man afro hair and dresses neatly in a flannel shirt tucked into dark jeans. He always wears a fanny pack around his waist. I would not have guessed he was an ice dancer, but how would I even know what one looks like? Mikhail sometimes does ballet stretches during our 15 minute break.

Is this how Mikhail looked in his heyday?

On one of our first days of class, Mikhail showed me a list of all the public bookshelves in Hannover and their locations. Then he started to bring a big shopping bag full of books to class. He offers them as gifts to our classmates, in stacks of three or four. He has even given thought to who might be interested in which titles - the parents in our class get kids' books, others get novels, and since I once said that I like to cook, he offers me cookbooks. I am now the owner of two German cookbooks, published circa 1979, that were gifts from Mikhail (one is a selection of German traditional recipes that might as well be called "200 different ways to eat pig").  As an unemployed ice dancer, Mikhail is not buying these books. He's swiping them from the public book shelves around town. 

Mikhail's generous habits support my theory that the book shelf idea would not work in any other country A rule-respecting German might select a book or two. Then he or she would replace them with old books from home, or just finish reading and put them back on the shelf for someone else. Whoever came up with the bookshelf idea probably didn't take immigrants into account. A frizzy-haired Russian is now systematically raiding all of the city's book shelves, searching for fairy tales, schnitzel recipes and best sellers from 1972. All of these books are out there for the taking. And like Kaska's mom, Mikhail just wants someone to use them. If they all vanish in a few weeks, at least he got a hold of them before it was too late.

I've turned down several of Mikhail's books. Today he tried to give me a how-to book about bowling. I politely refused. Slobodanka, the Serbian woman who sits next to me, is not as firm with him. Yesterday she ended up with three abridged Hitchcock mysteries and a recipe for how to make buttermilk concoction that's good for the skin.

Is Mikhail a smart man? It seems so. Is he eccentric? Definitely. Is he thoughtful? Yes.
Is he German? Not in the least.

Mikhail was probably quite an ice dancer, too. If I were his unemployment counselor, I'd encourage him to pursue a new career in used book sales.

We don't need an invitation

An update from Sallstrasse 18 (that's our building):

Our first floor neighbors had a party in the backyard over the weekend. They did not invite Brian and me. Don't go feeling sorry for us, though. We didn't actually want to go.

I learned about the party from our third floor neighbor when I ran into him in the stairwell on Friday afternoon. When he asked if we were going to the party on Saturday, the blank look on my face was evidence that he probably shouldn't have said anything (is there an expression in German that's equivalent to putting your foot in your mouth?).

Were we not invited because the neighbors don't like us? Because it's just easier not to include us? Because we are strange foreigners? Because we drop things on the people below us? Or because Brian once told the hosts of the party that we don't need to be included, and that we don't like playing the token foreigners and disrupting the normal conversation to make people speak to us in English?

Either way, there were big picnic tables outside, a grill smoking, music playing, and neighbors inevitably gossiping about us as we stayed upstairs.

We couldn't hide out the whole evening, though, because we had to go to the opera. Our friend Ed is a singer in the Hannover opera company. He had gotten us free tickets to see the opera version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. While all dressed up and heading down the stairs (a lot happens on the way up and down the stairs when you live on the 5th floor), we ran into a second floor neighbor. I am sure she went out back and gave the neighbors at the party a full report.

Around this same time, I had a discussion with Brian about whether we have enough real German friends. How can I confidently write a blog about funny things that German people say and do if I don't know lots of them? Am I missing out on key elements of German culture by hanging out with ex-pats? Not that I don't know any Germans - there are the spouses of several of our friends, several German friends of friends, some staff at the school and, of course, the neighbors. But most of the people I like best here are other foreigners - they are more outgoing, seem to make friends more easily, and as foreigners, we all have something in common.

Brian thinks this is a ridiculous thing to worry about. He's probably right. I was talking to my Colombian friend Olga's Serbian mother-in-law recently. She told me that in 40 years of living in Germany, while speaking flawless German and being gainfully employed, she has mostly befriended people from Russia or Poland or some other country. The Germans she knows are only friendly with her, not friends of hers.

I did make an effort to meet the people who just moved in next door. They appear to be real Germans. I don't know whether they were invited to the backyard party or not. Maybe they didn't want to go either.

not quite a block...

I am sorry, dear readers, that I have neglected you.
It's just that the sun has been shining, flowers are blooming, we haven't gone on any trips and I am feeling a touch of writers' block.
Never fear, though, I am sure I can find more mundane stories of life in Hannover to keep you coming back.