German smorgasbord

I had my last day of German class on Wednesday. Everyone brought in food and we ate way too much. I learned that in Polish, Russian and Serbian this kind of a meal is called "Swedish table". And you just thought a Swedish table was something you bought at Ikea. In English we just use the Swedish word, and call it a smorgasbord. Though I learned in Sweden that a smorgasbord is actually a big open-faced sandwich. Then I explained that Americans call this kind of meal a pot luck. Whatever you call it, there was a lot of eating to do.

Lefteris, the Greek guy in my class who is 21 and very adorable, came with some pastry-wrapped sausages, my teacher called them "Würstchen in Morgenmantel". That means little sausages in bathrobes. I told her that we have something similar called pigs in a blanket, which I translated as "Schweinchen in einer Decke". I think this is a much cuter image than sausages wearing robes. But it is not as cute as the fact that Lefteris brought his food still warm, because his mom made it. He had asked her to cook but forgot to mention when, so rushed around early in the morning wrapping sausages and feta cheese in dough.

Abdel from Algeria told me the story of how he met his German wife online. She had converted to Islam and was looking for a Muslim husband. She found him on the internet. Then she moved to Algeria and lived there for a year, and learned to make some kind of delicious Algerian cake with almonds and honey that Abdel brought to class for our Swedish table. Elias showed me the letter he'd received from U.S. immigration. He's a Kurd from Iraq, and had worked for the U.S. military as an interpreter before he got out and made it to Germany. Now he should be entitled to U.S. visa and then a green card, which would allow him to bring his whole family over. Unfortunately, he's having trouble gathering all the documents he needs for the visa application and it was denied. He's filing an appeal, hoping to get the verifications he needs another way. For the moment, Elias's family is ok, but living  without running water and electricity now.

As we were discussing the visa, Lalor from Nigeria decided to spice up the party by playing some German pop music from his phone. When I complained about it, he told me not to worry because he had some music in English that I would like - Celine Dion. I told him that was worse, so he played some Nigerian music instead. Michail the Russian ice dancing book thief brought his final load of 'free' books for us to choose from. His contribution to the meal was a bag of whole grain Russian cookies. He gave a 5 minute speech on how they were healthy and contained a lot of wheat, which is good for women, and are of highest quality. You can either buy them at a specialty Russian bakery on the outskirts of town or at Kaufland, which is our version of Walmart. They tasted like sawdust.

I made a quiche, which is not particularly American but it is particularly portable when riding one's bike to German class. Everyone seemed to like it, though Michail kept calling it an egg cake.

Our teacher told us that we were one of the most fun but least disciplined classes she'd ever had. We all left happy and with full bellies, like little pigs in bathrobes.

Back row: Abel (Algeria), Kasia (Poland), Elias (Iraq), Gaby our teacher (Germany), Lalor (Nigeria), Gada (not sure), Beate (Poland), Elena (Russia). Front row: Michail (Russia), Ali (Afghanistan), Lefteris (Greece) and me.

Germany 1 - USA 0

Thursday night was the Germany vs. USA World Cup game. I wish that I could give you insightful commentary about the battle between Germany, a long-time soccer powerhouse, and the USA, the underdog that managed to squeak its way out of the "group of death" and into the next round. Unfortunately, I don't know much about soccer (or football, as it's generally called). And I can't give you the details of the game. All I can say is that there was only one goal, it was raining really hard, and none of the players bit each other.

I will tell you is that there are a lot of flags flying on our street these days. Of course you can see numerous German flags. There is also a Nigerian flag, a Ghanaian flag, and on game days, an English St. George's Cross.

We rigged up the stars and stripes for the first USA game versus Ghana. We were trying to compete with those guys in the photo above. But when the wind blew, our flag kept getting tangled up and stuck on the windowsill. After a lot of fiddling with wire hangers and weights, Brian broke out the scissors and we defaced the American flag. I am sure that I can never run for office of any kind now. But that will all be ruined anyway once we take a vacation to Cuba. My political career is over before it started. I can't say I've inhaled, but I can say that I cut some holes in the flag to help it fly better while hanging out of our 5th story window in Hannover. This is the same flag that served as Brian's cape in his Captain America costume. It's been through a lot. So rather than defacing, I think it's really a matter of wear and tear. If we hadn't ever used it to show some patriotic spirit, it could still be in mint condition.

On Thursday we got that flag flying out the window and then took off for the international school's year-end staff party. We all watched the game there - a few supporters of each team and a lot of people who weren't cheering for either side. When Germany won there were only a handful of excited fans. It might have been the least excited bunch of spectators in town.

There are a lot of public viewing sites around town for the World Cup - huge screens set up at bars and biergartens. People gather in huge crowds sporting their jerseys and flags. In the U.S. there is nothing that really compares. There is no time that everyone in the country is cheering for one national team that is playing everyone's single favorite sport. I know we all like to watch Olympic table tennis, but it just doesn't compare.

As for our defacing of the flag, it was all with the best of intentions. This display of patriotism should really make up for that upcoming trip to Cuba. The embargo will end someday and it won't be such a big deal then. You can all vote for me with a clear conscience.

Inviting the neighbors over

The not-so-exciting conclusion to the story:

So I invited them over. Matti and Saskia came to sit on our balcony last Tuesday night. We talked about the neighbors, of course, but also about how Matti is going to study at Michigan law for a year, about how he wants to understand American football, and about how Saskia also has trouble finding a decent haircut. These conversations happened in English - his is great, hers is pretty good - and were remarkably normal. So we officially don't need to be afraid of those neighbors any more. We might even like them.

What happens next? I don't know. Do we do it again, or was this a one-time thing? Do we now get invited to more neighbor parties, or go back to polite hellos in the stairway?

I'm not sure. I have never lived in an unusually social German apartment house before. But I will definitely tell you when I find out.

The language pyramid

German class for this semester is almost over. That makes me reflect on my progress with learning the German language. It's harder to measure than just by counting the workbook exercises I've completed. Here are some examples.

Last Friday I ran into 3 of my neighbors who were chatting in the stairwell. Norbert and Jörg, our gay neighbors, were chatting with Matti from the 3rd floor. I managed a little small talk with them. My level of German language competence now is at "fluent in small talk". I can hold my own on topics such as weather, where I come from, whether I am married or have kids, how long I have lived in Germany, etc. I can even ask a few things back, like how long have you lived here or can I get a mushroom pizza to go.

I did break into the next level once, when I got really annoyed with the dry cleaner. Cleaners in Hannover take forever and cost a ton. Therefore, I have become closer acquainted with spray starch and better friends with my iron. This incident involved a pair of Brian's dress pants that wasn't done on time. The pants weren't ready when they were supposed to be. So I had to come back again a few days later. Then the dry cleaning lady couldn't find them. When I finally found the pants on the rack for her, the stain was still there. And despite all that she charged me something like 8 euros. The ensuing conversation went something like this :
Dry cleaning lady: That's 8 euros
Me (in German) : Ok, but I am not coming back here again.
Dry cleaning lady: but.. sometimes this happens... you know it's not our fault when it takes so long... we send these out somewhere else...
Me: Yes, but it doesn't matter to me where they are. I still have to wait. More than a week is too long.
Dry cleaning lady: Yes, but, but...
Me: Thank you, goodbye.

Score one for me, at least linguistically. Or score one less for German customer service. I guess my expectations are too high. In the U.S., the same dry cleaner would have probably given me the pants back for free, or at least given me a coupon for my next visit.  She probably could have located the pants without my help. And she would have apologized profusely and brought in the owner of the shop to apologize too. In English you say "the customer is always right". In German you say "the customer is king" (der Kunde ist König). The dry cleaning lady doesn't have that phrase in her vocabulary, apparently. I'd settle for her saying "yes, here are your pants."

Therefore, I have made this scale of my German conversational competency:

I am working on the level: understanding 50% at the bike shop

Other steps that I hope to achieve in the future will be: understanding radio DJs, reading newspaper articles, and composing emails in German without 18 trips to Google Translate. The ultimate success would be holding my own at a party. When several people are talking at once I slide down toward the bottom of the pyramid and start talking like a baby again. Learning a language is very humbling.

So back to the neighbors and the stairwell: Matti mentioned that he was hosting Kaffee and Kuchen the next day as some sort of a belated birthday celebration, and we were all invited. I made some kind of noncommittal reply and left him to talk about bigger things with Norbert and Jörg while I groaned on the inside. Kaffee and Kuchen is like my least favorite type of German social gathering. You come over to someone's house in the middle of the day with no music playing and sit inside and drink coffee (which I don't like) and eat cake (which I do). It's like sitting around with an elderly relative and listening to the clock tick (no offense to my elderly relatives, who are actually a lot of fun). Plus if it's a birthday thing then you have to bring a gift and I didn't know if it would be a lot of new people there and sometimes I am oddly shy and etc etc (fill in as many excuses as you like). Bottom line - I didn't go. But then I felt bad about it. After all, Matti and his girlfriend Saskia have really looked out for us in terms of translating documents from the landlady about how she wanted to cheat us, and accidentally inviting us to neighbor parties in which we weren't supposed to included. "You know," Brian told me, "if you feel guilty about it you could just invite them up here."

Story to be continued...

Pledging allegiance, or guilt and bumper stickers

World Cup time is approaching, and in a few days the biggest sporting event in the world will begin. At least in Germany, it's more popular than the Olympics. Each country has only one team in only one sport, which leads to a lot of fan worship, cheering, and excitement.

In Germany, the World Cup is a reason to wave the flag. It's significant because Germans are not overtly patriotic. Until the 2006 World Cup, flag waving was generally not ok. German national pride and conflicting guilt about the Holocaust and Nazis make it a complicated issue. I found a really good post on the topic from a blog called Bridgekeeping Traveller, written by a German woman:

 Whether I want it to be or not, Germany is part of me – and that includes its dark past. But with this dark past being such a dominant association with Germany, being proud of being German is something that doesn’t feel quite right. Add in the very important factor that an extremist form of patriotism is exactly what national socialism was all about, and you may understand why Germans are usually very very careful to express pride in their national identity.
What if we forget? What if we lose awareness of the responsibility we have? What if things got out of hand?

The view from our living room window. Our neighbors are getting ready for the World Cup.

Americans are at the other extreme. We are raised to be flag-wavers, to pledge allegiance, to put American flag patches on our jerseys and streamers on our bike wheels for the 4th of July. After September 11th, flag waving was everywhere, and nationalism more pronounced than before. Everyone needed a 'support the troops' magnet on their car and a stars and stripes lapel pin. In a messy combination of religion, nationalism and sports,  by "God Bless America" was added to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. Check out this very articulate and thoughtful article on that subject from the Washington Post.

The American flag has even been adopted as a fashion statement, at least in Europe. You can often see people with stars and stripes scarves, American flag Converse All-Stars, or T-shirts printed with some nonsense phrase in English like "limited special edition" and a worn-looking flag.

 I don't think any of that is wrong. I do think the way that Americans show their patriotism is often over the top (to use a good American saying), spoon-fed, misplaced. Of course, if there's one thing I've learned from living elsewhere, it's that everything in the U.S. is big and bold and over the top. It's good to be proud of where you are from and feel like you belong there. But do you need to put it on a bumper sticker?

I also think that some people believe that the U.S. is always right, it's Reagan's "city on a hill" and can do no wrong. But like religion, like family, it's possible to love your country even when you disagree with it, even when you've seen its flaws. In fact, when you can think objectively about your country's history and its current behaviors in the world, you can see what its strengths and weaknesses are. Maybe then you are even more patriotic than someone who doesn't look past country music lyrics and Chevy truck ads.

What does all this have to do with the World Cup? A lot, actually. Little Germans are now riding tricycles with flags taped to the handlebars. In a few days, people gathered in front of TVs around the world will be singing national anthems and painting their faces. It won't be the time to discuss National Socialism or collective guilt. Though it should be possible to remember that history and still cheer for your team.

Rev. James Marsh, the author of that seventh-inning stretch article you should read (that one I linked above) sums it up well. He writes, "Dissent is patriotic. We have the right to sit down when everyone else stands up."

All dressed up

We are celebrating the second long weekend in a row here in Hannover. Last weekend was Christi Himmelfahrt, which still sounds to me like the name of some gossipy girl you knew in high school. Himmelfahrt literally means trip to heaven, and it's Ascension Thursday, 40 days after Easter. Much more popular than the religious side of the day is its other purpose as Vatertag. German fathers' day has nothing to do with family picnics and grill tool gift sets. It's an excuse for German men, fathers or not, to go out drinking all day long. They start at 9 or 10am and head out with a wagon full of beer ('Dad's gonna need that Radio Flyer today, kiddo'). Then the parks and streets are full of idiots with their wagons. I respect the ones who are actually dads and use the day as a way to escape back to bachelor-hood. The rest are just idiots.

Then, after a 'bridge' (aka hangover) day off on Friday and a whole five day work week comes Pfingsten, or Pentecost. Pentecost Monday is a holiday when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit, apostles speaking in tongues, and the Pentecost ox. The Pfingstochse is a German tradition celebrated in the countryside of Bavaria, where they always seem to have more fun. Cattle herds are paraded through small villages, with the biggest and strongest ox coming last. Not only is he last, he is all dressed up. The Pfingstochse is decorated with flowers as a sort of bovine parade float:

And then, traditionally, he was slaughtered for the Pentecost feast. Boys who oversleep on Pentecost are also called the Pfingstochse, because they come last. Do they come covered in flowers? I am not sure. Are they slaughtered? No, definitely not. They are probably just laughed at because they are covered in flowers.

It's getting light here at about 4am now, so it's hard to be the one to a Pfingstochse even if you want to. But it's a nice time of year not to work too hard, and the weather is good for parades, and for dragging wagons full of beer.

Carfree carefree??

Last Sunday was Autofreier Sonntag in Hannover. That means it was a car free day, when streets in the center of town were closed and people were encouraged to get around any way other than by car. Car free days are celebrated in many countries - Canada, Bulgaria, Colombia, China, Austria, Brazil... the list goes on. World Carfree Day was established in 1994 and is celebrated on Sept. 22nd.

Some cities have taken it further. In Jakarta, Indonesia, every Sunday morning is car free, when the city's two main streets are entirely closed (this would be less effective in Germany, where no one gets out of bed before noon on a Sunday). Bogota has taken big steps toward reducing the number of cars driving through its city, by improving public transit and reducing car traffic during rush hours. Bogota even had a whole car free week in February, when some main roads in this city of 7 million were closed to cars.

In the McCarthy household of Hannover, every day is a car free day. It's not because we leave it in the garage, it's because we just don't have one. Usually I love not having a car. I never sit in traffic, never worry about oil changes, never pay car insurance. It doesn't keep us from going places; we even headed out to the suburbs twice last week in a marathon tram-bus-foot combination. True, once in a while the rain makes me want to go nowhere on two wheels. Once in a while I feel like a pack animal carrying a major load of groceries home. Surprisingly enough, getting rid of his pickup truck has not gotten Brian out of helping all his friends move.

Americans love our cars. We need our cars. Our country is huge, so are the roads, and, unless you live in a major city, public transportation is pathetic. So most households have at least one car, and more often two. The great American road trip and route 66 and the Ford Mustang are ours. Can Americans get behind a carless lifestyle? (New York City doesn't count). Guess what - we already have fewer cars per capita than Western Europeans. That's right. The Italians, the Poles, the French and especially the Germans all have more cars than the Americans do. I didn't make it up, the World Bank says so and so does The Atlantic.

Why is this the case? I don't know. I have done enough nerdy research for one day. I will let you go ahead and speculate. But it makes me think that living without a car is a little more realistic for Americans than it seems.

During Hannover's Autofreier Sonntag, the city streets were full of bouncy castles, skateboard contests, music stages and unicycle demonstrations. Ironically, it was a lot harder to get around by bike than on a day with normal traffic. Too bad we couldn't throw our bikes in the back of the pickup truck and drive out of town.

Join the club (or don't)

Saturday was my second appearance in the Limmer Wasserstadt (water city) triathlon.  I wrote about it last year too, in a post called Neoprene and the Random Channel. This year the water was warmer, the skies were sunnier, I was one year older, I wore the Wonder Woman head band... and I finished with almost exactly the same time. I guess that's good, considering I only signed up 2 weeks ago and I can still run a 5k far faster than I did in high school.

This race, like most sporting events in Germany, was dominated by clubs, or Vereins. Germans like to belong - there are 87,000 official sports clubs in Germany. Each club offers a variety of sports for different ages, from tiny kid swimming up to professional soccer. Each club offers several programs - for yoga and horseback riding and rowing and fencing. There's even a club for American football.  Instead of playing sports on a school team, kids join a club. And they can stay in that club their entire lives.

Club sports are the main reason why the international school doesn't have any great sports teams. Any remotely athletic kid joins a club, and might also show up at school team's once-a-week practice for social reasons. If the international school's sports teams want to survive, their only hope is to work around club practices and/or attract the kids who don't speak enough German to want to join a club. This is something I'll be dealing with next school year, since a good friend of ours is now the after-school activities guru. I'll be coaching a sort of year-round cross country and track program. I did that during our first year here, too. Then I had some issues with working for the previous guru. That's another story, though. Back to sport vereins...

Some clubs offer triathlon teams too. I've thought about joining. I even went to a swim practice once. But for whatever reason I haven't brought myself to sign up. I have many excuses - good ones, even. It could be because I don't want to have a racing outfit with my name printed across the butt. It could be that I don't want to go to swim practice at 9:30pm on a Tuesday, and pay a fee to do it. Or maybe it's that I find triathlon men generally nerdy and annoying. I know I could benefit from some coaching, but maybe I'm not serious enough about it to be coached. Maybe it's silly to be so serious about a sport that is just a hobby, a way to stay in shape and have a competitive outlet.


In Limmer on Saturday, there were plenty of competitors - in all sorts of shapes - with names printed across the butts of their lycra outfits. My no-name butt got kicked by a few of them, but it blew past a lot of them too.