Scuba school

It's hard for me to think of the word scuba without thinking of scuba instructor Claude from the movie Along Came Polly (if you don't know what I'm talking about, click on the link - it's just a 30 second clip).

As Claude would say, we were for scuba.
I had chosen our hotel because it had a dive center next door. But on Monday morning, a man with a scuba sign picked us up and started driving, and driving and driving. It's a funny feeling not knowing where you are headed, in a vehicle driven by someone who does not speak any language you do, in a country where you don't feel entirely safe. We were also about to try an activity where we could get attacked by sharks, drown, or at least explode our lungs.

On that first day of scuba, we just watched DVDs. It was very secure. The scuba place near us was short-staffed, so they had taken us to another location. We saw movies of happy people blowing bubbles, confidently checking their air levels and making the ok hand signal while watching fishies.

Brian and I took our quizzes and figured this thing would be a breeze. We barely studied the text books. The next day we realized that learning to scuba dive is hard.

Our instructor, Saef, is half Egyptian and half Finnish. He recently served a couple of years in the Finnish military. True to his training, Saef had us assembling our equipment, safety checking it, re-assembling it, repeat. He had us connecting hoses and fastening weight belts like a Finn would clean his rifle before skiing away to fight the Russians.

As soon as we put on our wetsuits, I realized that those happy people blowing bubbles were lying. Day 2 was cold, cloudy and stressful. How do I get all the water out of my mask? How do I keep from floating up? What is that hand signal for lunch break (there isn't one, drill seargeant).

It didn't help that Brian and I were the dumbest people in our group. There was Tim, a 14 year old German boy who had watched all the DVDs at home, twice, and had been studying for weeks. There was Ron, a Dutch physical therapist, who handled it all with the composure of a man who speaks five languages and would not be rattled by sharks, terrorists, or salt water up his nose.

On the morning of day 3, I woke thinking of regulators and emergency ascents and taking my mask off underwater. We were supposed to do our first real dive off the boat. I had butterflies (or guppies?).

But when we arrived it all fell apart. It was too windy to take the boat out and Saef was home sick. (We learned from the DVD that if you are congested, the pressure underwater can blow out your ear drums). Instead we had Mahmoud. If Saef ran our lessons with military precision, Mahmoud ran them like a middle school gym teacher - content to roll out a few balls and let you run with them. While gym teachers use a whistle, Mahmoud had a bell. When he wanted our attention, he rang the bell. When we did something wrong, he rang the bell. When we rose too high or sank too low, he rang the bell. We swam out from the shore to a reef for our first two dives. I was remembering to breath, stay with the group, stay at the right depth and avoid getting the bell rung at me... I forgot to look at the fish.

Each time we dove (there were four), it got a little easier, I floated a little better, and the bell rang a little less often. By the end of day four, I had cuts on my feet, a bruise on my nose (from the mask, not from shark attack) and wetsuit chafing on my wrists. I was salty and cold, but I was the humble owner of an open-water dive certification card. It had been a lot more difficult than grabbing a tank and jumping in to blow bubbles.

Claude wasn't there on the beach to task "are you for scuba?".
But if I ever find him, now I can say yes.

The bucket list, the desert, the Russians

This latest trip resulted from a bucket list discussion.
I am generally opposed to the term 'bucket list'. It comes from the phrase 'kick the bucket', which comes from Middle Age suicide and/or pig slaughter. Yikes. But that's not the point. Here we are talking about the list of those things you would like to do, see, or try some day, before you kick the bucket. Several months ago, Brian added "learn to scuba dive" to his list.

Several internet searches later, we booked a trip to Hurghada, Egypt. This, we decided, was the ideal budget destination for a four day diving course, because there is nothing else to do. We wouldn't be missing out on anything except maybe getting lost in the desert and/or abducted by terrorists. And we were right.

Remember those movies where you see a group of nomads riding camels through the desert, with nothing on the horizon but more rocks and sand? And finally, they see an oasis in the distance. Instead of a mirage, it turns out to be a swim-up bar full of sunburned Russians.
Hurghada is just like that. Except our hotel did not have a swim-up bar.

Normally, Brian and I are not all-inclusive resort tourists. We are more like nothing-at-all-included tourists, so we felt a little out of place. But the price was right and the reef was waiting. Our low-rent resort had around 70% Russians, 29.5% Germans, and us. I had never seen so many Russians before. They are like American or British people who go to cheap resorts, except they drink more vodka. The Russians at our place were a little loud, a little fat, and a lot sunburned. A few had Putin t-shirts, and one couple even brought their own Russian flag to hang from the balcony.

In a political sense, it's funny to have Russians and Germans mingling together at the lunch buffet. Their governments are not exactly getting along. For the most part the Russians and Germans seemed to stay out of each others' way. But Brian told the bartender he should wear a light blue UN helmet, since he was keeping the peace while mixing mai tais.

We were just lucky that other people were staying in our hotel. We passed a lot of resorts that were half-built and abandoned, and visited a few that seemed to have more staff than guests. Tourism is down in Egypt these days, and even the camels are out of work.

BYO flag

The "animation team" (summer camp counselors) leading water aerobics

There were lots of hotels that never got finished...

Snowflakes and Hollywood

The snow was falling in Berlin last week. It didn't stick much but reminded me how a real winter feels.

For a couple of days in February each year, I get a glimpse of the movie business. I was visiting my Hollywood friend, who had just flown in from LA. to be a part of the film market that happens during the Berlinale film festival. She sells movies (and she will, to protect the innocent, remain nameless).

They are all very friendly, these film sales people. All very smiling and hand-shaking and 'have I met you yet?'. Of course they hadn't, and didn't need to. I was just an intruder. These same people see each other, in various countries, several times a year. This time, I had barged in on their traveling club of selling, buying, negotiating, wining and dining and incessant talking.

Hollywood Friend and I had almost forgotten about the movie business on a snowy evening, as we got lost taking the bus across town. The snowflakes drifted down while we walked past chunks of the Berlin Wall, speculating which streets were most full of history. The streets now seemed full of expats and hipsters and families wrapped tightly in puffy coats. There are so many languages spoken, in Berlin sometimes you almost forget you're in Germany.

The next day, after smiling handshaking cocktail hour, my Hollywood Friend and her movie coworker told me they were perplexed. They just couldn't figure out the German film buyers. While most meetings with buyers from most countries are filled with pleasantries and catch phrases and light laughter, with Germans the conversations often reached a dead end. She was worried about this, like she was missing a cue, and couldn't see why the Germans wouldn't (like everyone else) want to find out that you liked to ski too, and how are your kids, and wasn't that a great hotel breakfast.

I told her not to worry. This sounds like something a German, upon meeting you in a work situation, might do. They are not your friends and don't plan to be. They are usually nice people, but they are not going to ask where you bought your shoes or rave about a film they have not yet seen. I haven't done business with Germans, but I would imagine that even movie people in Germany do not gush. Gushy is not a word that describes Germans.

Do they realize that this scares people from LA? My Hollywood Friend understands that she can't close deals with buyers from certain countries because she is a woman, she slips easily into French and Italian, she can tell which clients need to be left alone. But she is rattled when the Germans seem so disinterested in buying what they came to buy, and even less so in building a relationship with the person selling it. Of course, I wonder what they think of the movie sellers...

As the snow fell on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, I watched tourists take photos beside a painted chunk of concrete that used to divide the city in two. I remembered that it is not quite like any other city I know.  It's a little disjointed and stitched back together, making it a place full of edges and interesting little corners, where something might happen as soon as you turn around.

At the Ritz-Carlton, there were a lot of deals being made. I have no explanation for why the Germans would seem so chilly in these business meetings. Except that they just are that way sometimes.
I left the club of film sellers and buyers, zipped up my coat and enjoyed the last few snowflakes in Berlin.

The anti-Barbie, or why you can't buy a tankini in Germany

Lammily

A couple of weeks ago at my international school job, another counselor showed me a doll she had just bought for her "future granddaughter". There's no baby on the way, but that hasn't stopped her from putting the pressure on her daughter-in-law and stocking up on politically correct toys and baby clothes that are not pink. This doll was no Barbie. It was a Lammily doll, sort of an anti-Barbie. She was modeled on the average proportions of an average teenage girl. She has small breasts and big feet. She's slim but not small-waisted. She comes with stick-on tattoos.

I honestly hadn't thought about body-image issues for a long time. But then I met with the German mother of an anorexic student. It wasn't about getting her treatment or anything - I am not that kind of counselor. She wanted to find out more about how her daughter could apply to U.S. universities. But then this attractive 50-ish woman told me how much she has learned from her daughter's illness. She said that now she can recognize how it looks - the control, the lack of confidence, the new reality the girl builds for herself - she sees it all over town.

And I thought body image issues were just an American problem. I guess I assume that unhealthy complexes and pop culture pandemics all come from Barbie and Coca-Cola and Hollywood.

I confess: I have never been on a diet. I realize that this is not normal. I do exercise an unusual amount, getting antsy and short-tempered if I can't move around enough. And, due to a permanent bulge in my middle, I have been asked three times whether I was pregnant. That was awkward. If it happens a fourth time I'll tell you all about it.

In my old job, I used to go into the jail and the hospital drug treatment unit, making sure not to expose any unnecessary skin and gaining a new appreciation for the full coverage of scrubs and head scarves. It was a nurse in scrubs who once looked me up and down as she buzzed me on to the chemical dependency floor who greeted me with "I hate skinny people." I thought about responding with "I hate fat people." But it would not have been true, and that would have been politically incorrect. I think me and my skinny legs just kept walking.

Working around teenagers does make me rethink my outfits. While I don't wish for scrubs any more, I do sometimes wonder if anyone will notice that my pants are from 2008. There are few creatures on Earth more fashionable than teenage girls with money. There are few people more observant, and more honest, than kids.

German Barbie in dirndl

Compared to what women wear in Germany, American clothing in not only causal, it's conservative and sometimes even frumpy. Germans wear tighter pants and shorter skirts and nicer boots.  Germans aren't as stylish as the French or as feminine as the Poles or as provocative as the Russians. But there are no tankinis in Germany. There are no yoga pants at the grocery store and no running shoes on the airplane.

I guess Barbie has her niche here in the land of blue eyes, long blonde hair and lower rates of obesity. It's not so crazy to think that some German girls want to look like her.
Barbie also has a dirndl in her closet.

Will Lamilly and her normal-sized thighs beat out Barbie in hair-pulling cat fight to become the doll of the future? I know one grandmother-in-waiting who sure hopes so.

Hannover's peace camp

Shortly after writing about my first protest and the campus peace camp of my college years, I noticed that Hannover has a peace camp of its own. On Weißkreuzplatz, at the end of the swanky Lister Meile shopping street, several big tents are standing in the mud. I saw some banners flying and the sign "Refugee Protest Hannover". Did Hannover have its own refugee camp? Right in the nice part of town?

So I decided to go back, take my camera, and talk with the people at the camp to find out why they were there.

This is a good example of why you should not hire me as an investigative journalist.
As bold as I may try to sound in my blog posts, I'm a little shy when it comes to knocking on a tent flap. I walked around the camp and took some photos, but I didn't see anybody. No one was making food, or walking to the portable toilet, or talking in the makeshift meeting room tent. It was cold outside so people were probably in their tents. Maybe they were sleeping. I didn't know and I was hesitant to invade whatever privacy they might have, camping outside along a busy street.
Ok, I guess I was a little shy.

Paragraph 23 (on the signs) is the regulation the protesters want to change

But when I got home, with nothing to show for my trip but a few photos, I found the Refugee Protest Camp Hannover website. They may have no legal status and no solid walls, but they have a website and a blog and a bank account.

The people in the camp are from Sudan, but they are not refugees. The state of Niedersachsen (Hannover is its capital), decides which countries are unstable enough that their people cannot safely  return. Sudan is not on that list, so Niedersachsen does not grant refugee status to the Sudanese. The camp is meant to draw attention to that issue, and get Niedersachsen to amend its laws. That would give the Sudanese in Hannover legal status and a right to work.

Not everyone who shows up at the protest camp just wants to say hello. One night in December, two tents were burned to the ground. I'm sure the city is not happy that the camp is there either, but it has been allowed to remain, ever since May 2014.

As I did a little more internet research, I saw an announcement that the Refugee Protest Camp Hannover was giving a presentation today in Berlin. Maybe nobody was home in those tents after all.  I do plan to go back, maybe with some snacks for the protesters. I have more questions, like are Sudanese considered refugees in other states in Germany? Has anyone been granted asylum? How come they are allowed to protest and is anyone going to be deported? And who do they think started the fire?

I'll be sure to let you know what I find out, once I get up my nerve to knock on the tent flap and ask.