It's turkey time

Thanksgiving is here again.
Need a refresher on how to celebrate a classic American holiday in the heart of northern Germany? Check out this post from last year: How to celebrate Thanksgiving in Hannover.

There a few changes from last year. Brian can't take a personal day, since he already took a personal week when went to the U.S. in October. And the four Lithuanian folk dancers will not be in town to play in the football game, also known as Puten Bowl III. There is a big addition, though: NFL football. Brian has signed us up for a free trial on nfl.com so that we can stream the Bears vs. Lions game on Thanksgiving day (night for us). It'll be perfect. Like men all over America, Brian, Dizzy, baby Ivo and Sankey the Englishman can sit on our sofa and watch football while the women do... everything else. 

It's our fourth Hannover Thanksgiving, and I feel like a pro. I know where to buy cranberries and cornmeal, and what's a good price on sweet potatoes. I know how to roast my own pumpkins. And I know where to get the turkey. It comes from this happy lady at Hedda's Bauernladen.

Photo credit goes to Kaska

I am not sure if this is Hedda or not, but she was pretty excited about selling me this turkey. She asked me in two different languages if I would like to have the heart, liver and guts. Maybe she didn't believe me when I told her "nein", so she asked again in English to be sure. I was wary of getting a Giganturkey like I had last year, but this one is just big. I was able to carry it home in my backpack without any back injuries.

After dinner for eleven on Thursday, Brian will host the Puten Bowl flag football on Saturday (Pute is turkey in German) and we have a party Saturday night for just about everyone we know.

Thanksgiving is a harvest celebration. This year in Hannover, Brian and I celebrate the beer harvest. Sure, we have pumpkins and corn and all that. But carrying five cases of beer up the five flights to our apartment has really been hard work. This weekend we enjoy the fruits of our labors. But then we will do what the pilgrims never had to - carry all the empties back to the store and collect our deposits.

It's the night before Thanksgiving. All over the U.S., people are traveling. It's the biggest travel day of the year and, like I did for many years, Americans are trekking hundreds of miles to be with their families. I can't get to mine this year, but Brian and I have made this our special, weekend-long holiday in Hannover.  We live far from home and so do most of our expat friends, so Thanksgiving makes us like one big family. Just like at a real family party, there are those people you really enjoy seeing and look forward to talking to. There are those people who are always mildly offensive, and yet you are stuck with them. There are men on the couch and ladies in the kitchen and a few little kids running around. Something gets spilled, maybe a glass is broken, everyone eats too much and this year there will be football playing in the living room. It sounds like a perfect turkey day to me. For that, I am thankful.

Books

This post is not about our U.S. trip, but I started writing it after visiting the Midway Book Store. I never went there when we lived in Saint Paul. I have no idea why. I guess for the same reason I never went to the Korean barbecue restaurant or the Mill City Museum. I just didn't. And it's a shame, because Midway is a paradise of used, well-loved books. As I stood there, holding one book in each hand and trying to feel which was lighter (I was only allowing myself to get only one),  I started thinking about my history with books.

It used to be simple - pick one that looks interesting and take it home. In our house we had several shelves of books, which all had to be sold when we moved to Germany. It seemed cruel to leave them like that, but there was only so much room on the container ship. We gave a few away and put the rest out at our moving sale. At least I got to meet the people who would take them home. What was left ended up on the counter at a used book store. The pile of them - textbooks, novels, non-fiction - sold for next to nothing.  I felt like I'd thrown them out in the gutter.

Now, buying books is a complex emotional experience. It's not just deciding if I can take the weight and shape of one in my suitcase, it's the knowing that I will have to part with it someday.

 I love libraries and the pleasure of checking out more books than I'll have time to read. At some set date they are due back and our relationship has a natural end point. There is no long-term commitment there, no expectation of underlining or shelf space or messages inside the front cover. 

In Hannover, I can get some books in English at the public library, and Spanish books too. By now. I think I have read most of the titles on the Spanish shelf. Books here are passed around between our expat friends. Most often we get them from those who have been here long enough to build a shelf of books they bought abroad, or ordered online, or borrowed from someone and never returned.

Now I have this e-reader thing. It was a re-gift from my dad who had one already. When I was a kid, I'd come along on a Saturday when he would buy a stack of spy novels and westerns from the used paperback shop. Then he'd sell them all back a few weeks later. Now he can do the same thing electronically.

The e-reader is incredibly practical and it feels like cheating. I don't see the cover staring at me from the night stand when I wake up. There is no smell of old pages, no bookmark that someone forgot to take out, no need to write your name on it. In school, I always chose the inside cover or the title page top right. Brian wrote MCCARTHY in big black Sharpie letters along the edge of all the pages, so that the letters split open as he read. No new owner could ever deny who'd had that book first.


Used books and library books have a mysterious past. Someone took them on vacation. Someone stayed up late to finish reading them. Someone smeared chocolate on page 32. I wonder what shelves my books are sitting on these days, and who their readers are.

I ended up buying two books at Midway that day. I know, I know, I broke my own rule. But the second one was really light.

The tour ends

That's all I am going to write about our U.S. trip. There are many people we enjoyed seeing along the way. There are many people who fed us, housed us, made time for us, and made us feel loved. You know who you are and I can't name all of you or my readers would get bored. Thank you.

Blue October

My posts about our trip would not be complete without mentioning the Royals.

A lot of things have happened since I was in kindergarten. The Berlin Wall came down, the internet was invented, the Twin Towers were attacked... But since I was in kindergarten, the Kansas City Royals baseball team has not made it to the post-season. At all.

I know this so well because my husband is very faithful - to me and to the Royals. In fact, he has been in love with the Royals longer than he's been in love with me, and almost every year they break his heart. At one point I tried convincing him to cheer for another team that would make him happy, at least some of the time.

This year, the Royals got all the way to the World Series and made Brian very, very happy. They made all of Kansas City happy, and all of the Midwest even. Everybody likes an underdog. In KC, it seemed like everyone wore Royals shirts and waved Royals flags from their doorways or their cars. The water in the public fountains was dyed bright blue and the skyscrapers lit up a big blue KC through their windows at night. It was Blue October. I like that name because it sounds poetic. There's also a band called Blue October, but I'm sure they have fewer fans than the Royals do.

And no, they didn't win the World Series. But for the first time in 29 years, everyone who cares at all about baseball was impressed by the Royals. And those who have loved the Royals faithfully for so long finally got the season they deserved.

McCarthy Midwest Tours, to Kansas

Then our tour traveled south, to Kansas City. It's amazing to think about how far you can go in the U.S. without turning. There is one highway, I-35, that goes from Duluth, Minnesota to Laredo, Texas. So you can drive from almost-Canada to the Mexico border on the same road. Brian and I have done the Saint Paul to Kansas City stretch over and over. But the familiar stretches of I-35 led us to an unfamiliar place this time. As part of our Midwest tour, we visited the site where the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed in 1959. It's near Clear Lake, Iowa. But really it's in somebody's corn field.

The glasses are the only thing that marks the way to the crash site

This is when I make a side comment about traveling without a smart phone, GPS, or even a map. My husband wrote down very good directions. There are some moments, though, when having one of these devices (the kind that beeps, or the kind that folds) would have helped.

We got a little lost on the gravel roads and made a nervous Sankey, our foreign celebrity, get out and ask a real Iowa farmer for directions. We were headed to the only place that an out-of-towner would try to find on the outskirts of Clear Lake. That farmer already knew the question before he heard that English accent.

In Kansas City we moved fast. We juggled visits with Brian's mom, dad, stepmom and with barbecue-eating and sightseeing. Friends made a huge effort to see us (or to see Brian, really). Joe flew his whole family in from Baltimore, while Nick somehow managed a long weekend trip from Orlando, and then there were all the people nearby to see... the hardest part was not having quite enough time.

This was the suburban part of the Midwestern tour. The Kansas City area never ceases to confuse me with its tangle of highways, streets that are numbered to the triple digits, and the uneasy sense of never quite knowing which state I am in.

Beyond the reach of the strip malls, my father-in-law took us to breakfast at Wanda's, the quintessential small town greasy spoon. Wanda herself was in the kitchen, dishing up portions that I can only describe as American-sized.

This is not Wanda's but an equally cool small-town bar

We also had a great night out in the city, starting with the World War I museum, then to a bar with live jazz, then to a steakhouse (which had been a speakeasy in the 30s) with live jazz.  The Kansas City leg of the trip was challenging for John, a vegetarian who dabbles in veganism. He ate a lot of french fries.

Downtown Kansas City

Me out with the fellas

To top it all off, we went to the Kansas State football game in Manhattan, Kansas. I never claimed to be a football fan, but this was my first big college game and it was a blast. We got in courtesy of chef Mike, a high school friend of Brian's who is now the head chef for K State athletics. We followed the game up by tail-gaiting in a parking lot that backed up to a farm with some goats. It was enough to make me proud to wear purple.

At Bill Snyder stadium

Sankey looks very American, with football, Budweiser, grill and pickup truck

John never eats meat, but now that he's seen this 'eat beef' license plate, he's thinking about it

Buddies of all sizes: Pete, Joe, Brian and chef Mike

While in Manhattan, we slept at a Motel 6. Then we ate breakfast at Denny's. And while we lamented the lack of small-town diners like Wanda's and the fact that Denny was not actually back in the kitchen, we really enjoyed the food. Sankey ordered 'moons over my hammy,' just because he got a kick out of saying it. And as we were packing up to leave the Motel 6, I noticed him talking with a man in a pickup truck. He had struck up a conversation and made a new American friend. After just a week in the U.S., Sankey had come a long way.

MSP part 2

I know I sounded very affectionate about the Twin Cities in my last post. I would like you to know that it's currently snowing there in early November.
The would have been much less affection if I had not gotten out just in time!

Back to the McCarthy Midwest Tour:
 Throughout the vacation, we got to see and do more than we would on a usual visit. The excuse was these two guys:

Sankey (without hair) and John (with lots of hair) at Como Lake, Saint Paul.

John and (Matt) Sankey came from Hannover to join in for two weeks of our travels. The whole idea started when we went with a group of friends to see the movie 'Nebraska' last winter. It involves a lot of stark but beautiful landscapes, Main Street scenes, and tight-lipped Midwesterners. The film got the guys talking about how it would be cool to see "the real America", as in not Miami or New York or San Francisco. Brian and I happen to be pretty real ourselves, and invited them along on our trip. Of the group, only these two guys came along. And John is from Illinois so he almost doesn't count. But we set out for the 'real America' anyway - the rural, urban, and suburban parts - and Brian and I got to see it too.

While in the Twin Cities, 'real' sightseeing included both downtowns, sports bars, trivia bars, two museums, second hand stores, record shops, Mexican restaurants and the mall (Not THE mall as in the Mall Of America. That's where I draw the line on true Americanness).

Brian and John at the Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis

Our old and new worlds collided a little as we showed John and Sankey around, but it felt just fine. Even the ugly highways, the public housing, the flabby arms and big box stores seemed to fit into comfortable corners of my brain. It hasn't been that long, after all. I remembered which buses run down which streets, how to get from East 7th to Payne and how you can see the sun set over the Minneapolis skyline while driving down East Hennepin.

Sankey, who is English, was a little shocked at the aggressive friendliness of the Minnesotans. Minnesota nice is not just a catch phrase. And he wondered at the lack of corner stores. The Cities, while very liveable and bike-friendly by American standards, draw a clear line between where you go to live and where you go to work, shop and eat.  Most people travel from one area to the other by car.

Having him along also confirmed my impression that Americans are wowed by English accents.
Sankey is from Birmingham. His accent is as rough and redneck as they come in England. Yet he could recite instructions for how to operate your blender and, to most Americans, he'd sound cultured and refined. Sankey was our own celebrity, and the excuse for all of us to go to interesting places.

McCarthy Midwest tours - MSP part 1

We just spent three weeks in the U.S. My trips back home are harder to write about than trips to  somewhere completely new. Maybe it's too emotional. You guys aren't reading my diary, after all. Or maybe it seems to normal to be blog-worthy (ha, like that has stopped me before). Or maybe I am just too distracted by Target and massive soft drinks to write.

This trip had it all. We were guests and hosts and tourists and homecomers. It was busy and exciting and a lot of fun. The whole reason we came to town was for Luke and Jackie's wedding. They met around a fire on the patio at our house. Now they were getting married in Saint Paul in October. 

The happy couple

Slightly jet lagged but also happy

Minnesota in October is a smell. It's a way that you breathe in the red leaves and the branches that start green and grow to gold and crimson as they reach out. It's dry, crisp sunshine and cool frosty nights. Minnesota in October is how we got married. It's when Brian decided it was time to start raking the lawn and I reasoned that the leaves would only keep coming down so we might as well wait. October was fires on the patio and Halloween parties.

We have fall in Germany too, but it's not quite the same. And there was one year I didn't have any fall. I was 20 and living a semester Chile, it was a year with two springs. Brian picked colorful leaves for me that October, laminated them while student teaching and sent them in the mail. I taped the laminated leaves to my bedroom wall.

Being back in the Twin Cities in the fall felt good. It had been a while and there is a new way to get around town. The Green Line train cruises its long slow trail through both cities, from sedate downtown Saint Paul, past University Avenue's Vietnamese restaurants, Hmong mechanics, Somali groceries and warehouse condos to the U of M's white columns and fresh faces, into downtown Minneapolis past its stadium construction and bar district.

Of course you could travel this route before, in the city bus or your own car. But maybe I am excited for the light rail because it's more... European. There's a funny switch. I spend enough time in Hannover wishing for friendlier strangers and better restaurants. Now I go back to Minnesota longing for faster trains, more bike lanes and fresher bread.

a tangent along those lines:

Whenever we try to check in for flights from the U.S. to Europe, the airport kiosks tell us no. They send us to wait in line at the check-in counter, because it doesn't compute that we are returning to Europe. Our tickets have no return date. We are Americans without tickets back to America and that makes us suspicious.
It also makes our trips to the U.S. not so normal... and worth writing about.

Bremen, or eating goat in the dark

I'm hopping off the tour bus for a bit to tell you about Bremen. October 3rd is the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, the celebration of East and West Germany getting back together in 1990. There's only one official German celebration, and it was in Hannover this year. With streets blocked and tourists flooding in, we went to Bremen for the weekend instead.

Bremen was the first German city I had ever heard of, before I knew what Germany was. You might remember the Bremen Town Musicians, a crew of misfit animals who leave life on the farm to seek their fortunes as musicians in Bremen. Only they never get there. The animals catch some robbers in their hideout, scare them away and live in the house happily ever after. So Bremen is famous for these animals who never arrived.

When you ask someone in Hannover about Bremen, they sort of shrug and say, "it's close by". I think there's a bit of an inferiority complex going on. It would be logical if Bremen were part of Niedersachsen, the same state that Hannover is the capital of. But Bremen, Luebeck and Hamburg are city-states. Bremen is, therefore, the tiniest state in Germany. It was one of those Hanseatic Cities for a few hundred years, and powerful enough that it didn't need to be part of the Kingdom of Hannover, or any other kingdom, thank you very much. This city, which is about the same size as Hannover, has a few things to be proud of (besides the animal musicians). It is Germany's second largest port and, despite heavy bombings in World War II, its old city is largely intact, and beautiful.

Bremen Rathaus

This is a giant statue of Roland, Charlemagne's nephew and legendary warrior

I was on a quest to find this statue of the Bremen Town Musicians

The word for pug in German is Mops. Even though this one is a statue, I decided to pet him.

In the winding alleys of the Schnoor quarter

Our favorite part of Bremen, however, had nothing to do with churches or ports or singing animals. After wandering past larger and fancier spots along the river front, we ended up at Christy's West African Restaurant for dinner. We had never been to a West African restaurant, or to West Africa at all, but immediately felt at home. As soon as we arrived, the hostess said, "sit anywhere you like," in English. There was no attempt at German, because she didn't speak it. Three guys sitting by the bar were laughing. A TV was on and music was playing, at least for a while. Soon after we ordered, the power went out. So we drank Nigerian beers in the dark while the hostess fussed with lighting candles. The lights went back on, then off again. I ordered jollof rice with fish and plantains, Brian ordered goat with yams. The lights went on, but only in the front of the building. The three guys at the bar got up and started debating, as men in any culture would, which fuses must have blown, how to fix them and how to plug in the TV so that it might work. They didn't know what they were doing. Then we heard Christy up in the kitchen calling the landlord and yelling at him in loud but broken German. I am pretty sure no one has ever yelled at him like that before. As our food arrived, we realized this was the most fun we'd had at a restaurant in months.

In Germany, everything works almost perfectly, all of the time. The trains run on time, the streets are clean, pedestrians wait for green lights, no one yells. It was comforting to be in a place where things were a little unpredictable and a little bit broken. It was fun to chat with the hostess and not think through how to say the right thing in German. And the food was delicious.

Bremen can be proud of being a port city, or an independent state, or home of the singing cat and donkey. Its old town is pretty special too. But the best part of our visit there was eating at Christy's, where somehow eating goat in the dark made us feel right at home.

I'm back

I'm back - and in an attempt to not let you miss a single thrilling moment I am going to post chronologically-ish about what happened in the past month or so. Current thrills include me sitting in my Hannover living room in sweatpants and wondering if the rain will stop, so it's best if we go back in time a little bit.