The last Thanksgiving

Don't let the title of this post scare you. Thanksgiving is not going to end. There are a lot of scary things Donald Trump has threatened to do, but outlawing turkey dinner is not one of them.

We had a great party on Thursday - 8 kilos (17+lbs) of fresh turkey from the farmers' market and probably the largest quantity of food I've ever produced from our sparsely-equipped kitchen. There were 15 adults, a toddler and and an infant at this year' friendsgiving. There were a couple of last-minute guests and four languages spoken during our meal. Every plate, fork and pan we own was in use. We didn't have enough chairs, so some of us sat Central Asian-style on the floor. I got to explain what goes into stuffing and what those tart red berries are called. I made my own gravy for the first time. And with only two other Americans present (one is a vegetarian and the other is married to me), nobody was comparing the gravy or sweet potatoes to their grandma's. As I put everything together following my recipes for a Hannover Thanksgiving from years past (sorry, no Lithuanian folk dancers this time), I wondered what we''ll be doing for Thanksgiving next year.

This Hannover Thanksgiving, number six, was our last. Brian and I are moving back to Saint Paul next summer. Like any important decision it's mostly exciting, a little bit scary, somehow liberating, and full of unknowns. Fresh starts only happen when something else comes to a close, and so it will be with our years in Hannover. I suppose it will be the same with this blog. With over five years of posts behind me, I think I can hang in there and keep writing until summer time. I'm sure you'll all be fascinated to read about how they move all the stuff down five flights of stairs and about who gets to keep my Ikea coffee table.

Some people have asked why we decided to leave Germany, and some haven't. Maybe those who didn't ask just thought it was always coming, or maybe they don't care. But since you didn't ask, I will tell you anyway. There wasn't only one reason - it was about having meaningful work and being part of a neighborhood and being able to visit family and coaching and yes, a little bit about the backyard. It was getting weary of feeling foreign. It was the need to be involved in the place we are from, and not just watch from the outside.

I've just been reading posts from Hannover Thanksgivings past and I'm a bit nostalgic. One of the things we will give up when we leave here is making Thanksgiving our very own holiday, something unique that we can offer to our international group of friends. After a few years, it has become a tradition for them too, though I don't know if anybody will attempt cooking a 8 kilo turkey after we're gone. Next year, I won't need to explain to anyone why I'm not going to work on the fourth Thursday in November, or why I am buying huge amounts of potatoes. Everybody will know because they will be celebrating too. And I will be thankful, to be with family and to know how far I have come in the last six years.  I will, however, have to make sure that my gravy is up to snuff. There will be way more competition.

Morning after

It's the morning when Americans are waking up to check the news shows, the internet, the newspaper. Some are hopeful, some horrified. This is the third time I have been living abroad during a presidential election. I confess that in 2000 I did not vote absentee. It was my junior year in college and I didn't have my act together. In 2012, I cast my ballot and everything seemed to go okay.

Today is another story. I have a feeling that this was a very different election, in a very uncomfortable way.

Today, the Brits and Germans I work with are asking for my opinion, my sound-bite. Whether I will never move back or whether I can really believe it. And as the American down the hall, I have to tell them something.

I don't know what to say. I am in disbelief, though maybe I should have known this was coming. I am uneasy. I'm worried that a culture of fear and isolationism will take over. I'm worried that bigotry will become socially acceptable. I'm worried that people will believe in a fictional story about the America-that-once-was and the America-that-we-all-want... Except we don't that America if we are people of color or college-educated people. We don't want it if we are urbanites or intellectuals or single moms or immigrants. But democracy is funny that way. The people who speak the loudest often win. In this case Trump not only spoke loudest, he found the people who felt like no one had been speaking to them.

I don't know a ton about politics, but I know that few presidents accomplish all that they promise in their campaigns. I hope that as all this dies down, people worry less about the White House and go work on crafting their own stories of America in their own neighborhoods. Make change where you can, and hope the rest goes okay. That's a lot to tell my coworkers, and I don't know whether they would even understand. I am hoping you will.

This is a very different election because it could, and I really hope it does, change the political game in the future. I hope that next time around, someone with integrity can stand up and ask for our votes. I hope the feeling of discontent that mobilized people to support Trump doesn't go away. I hope that, instead, it can bring in a leader that unites people. But there are four years to go before I vote for a president again, and a lot to do before then.

So call me an idealist, but I ran across this quote from writer Suzy Kassem which validates how I'm feeling today:

“Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”


That kind of a leader would win my vote.

Not for sissies

Brian and I had our eleventh wedding anniversary on the day we flew back to Germany. There wasn't much chance to celebrate. By that I mean no candlelight, wine, tablecloths that sort of thing.

But if you call sitting at a brightly lit airport bar, watching playoff baseball, and waiting for a delayed flight celebrating, then we had a great time. Actually, it was sort of romantic. I even got a public display of affection out of it. Sitting together in the middle row on an eight hour flight wasn't so bad either. There's something entirely sentimental about flipping up the arm rest.

I am not an expert on anyone else's love story but my own, and eleven years (or seventeen to be exact) isn't that long in the scheme of your whole life.

What I can tell you for sure is that love is not for sissies. Don't forget that your bloody beating heart is the hardest working muscle in the body. No wonder that's the symbol we use for love. If it were all about roses and cherubs, then the symbol would be... an earlobe or something.

Maybe on our anniversary next year, we will go out to a nice dinner like normal people. We can have candlelight and tablecloths and all that crap. Maybe we will go on a three hour bike ride, or stay home and watch movies. We will certainly not be on a transatlantic flight... but more on that later.

What you do the very day isn't what matters. It's every day that does. So happy anniversary, Brian, whatever day you read this.

Mega

In Kansas City we saw a couple of mega churches.
My first reaction is that the mega church seems like a marketing scheme - go bigger, get more for your money, if all these other people believe, then you should too! Two salvations for the price of one! Americans drive big cars, drink big sodas, wear big belt buckles. Why wouldn't they want to pray to a super-sized Jesus?

But then when you think of it, mega churches are not just an American thing. And they aren't new either. What about the great cathedrals of Europe? The mosques in Egypt and those ones in Uzbekistan my husband wants me to visit? I haven;t been there, but I know there are huge, elaborate temples in India and China. And the mega Jesus statue is in Rio de Janeiro, not on the Rio Grande.
The mega church isn't really so American or so modern after all.

But will these evangelical temples will stand for centuries? Will their drywall crumble and their roofs get mossy? Or are they built to last? It will depend on whether super-sized Jesus will continue to draw bigger crowds than a high school football game. Or if not, whether the church becomes more of a museum than anything. Will people want to preserve the mega church? Only the great Big Guy upstairs knows for sure.

Strange breed

I had heard about them. I had seen them on TV.  I knew a little about their behaviors and their habitats. But I had never encountered this species in the wild.

When we arrived in the U.S., I met my first Trump supporters.

I've had Germans ask me - bewildered - about what is going on in my country. Why would people actually support this clown and could he really win? I don't quite know what to say. North America has a very diverse ecosystem and a lot of wild critters. There is a strange breed out there, armed with yard signs and ready to build walls. They are united by their positions on... I am not sure exactly. Wall-building?

I got to come home to Hannover and say I had seen them. Trump supporters. Individually and in herds. A rare breed, but surprisingly strong. I'm not sure how they reproduce since most of them are male.

Going native

Okay readers, I am back and it and have lots of things to tell you.
Brian and I just returned from two weeks in the U.S.

I've lived in Germany long enough that when I return to the States, some things seem to pop out (not just beer bellies).

I can appreciate the water towers, the yellow school buses, the front porches, the colorful license plates and the diners. These are the bits of "Americana" that Europeans think is so cool. Just as we would go to Germany looking for Lederhosen and castles, they'd get just as excited about a truck stop and a picket fence. For a little while, I get excited about those things too.

But it only takes a few days before I am no longer surprised when a stranger calls me 'hon.' And, pretty quickly, a 24 oz soda really doesn't look that big. It doesn't seem odd to drive six blocks rather than walk, or to say thank-you to the driver as I get off the bus. On the day we flew back, I dressed for the flight in a sweatshirt, stretchy leggings and running shoes. I had gone native.

Hannover synagogue

A while back, I went on a hunt for a place that is no longer there.
Hannover's main synagogue stood in Calenberger-Neustadt. The site is just a block from the basilica where we sometimes go to Spanish-language Mass. Catholics and Jews were neighbors in this part of the city for a long time. In 1588, in the midst of the Reformation, both Catholics and Jews were forced to live outside the city walls. This is the neighborhood they formed. And here is the synagogue:

It was burned by the Nazis and their supporters in 1938.

I had heard the story and seen the photos, but had never actually seen the place. Here is what I found:

No wonder I'd missed it before. On the site where the temple once stood is a small stone wall, locked up behind a metal gate. An outline of the synagogue is engraved on the wall with text written in Hebrew. And that's it.

Which brings me back to the question of, how do you memorialize shameful and tragic events? What's the right way to honor a dark past? Unlike the stumbling stones, which are powerful because they are so unavoidable, the site of the synagogue is removed and locked away.

Today there are about 6,000 Jews in Hannover, over a thousand more than in the 1930s. So next I went to find the current synagogue, tucked away in a residential area near the veterinary school.

It looks pretty normal except for the locked metal gates in front. The Jewish school and synagogue I saw in Hamburg had not only gates, but also armed guards standing outside. 
Maybe the Hannover memorial is understated and locked up so that it doesn't attract vandalism.

It's amazing to think that Jewish landmarks still need that kind of protection. It seems like bad guys have different targets these days...

Garden-sitting

I spent Sunday afternoon in the backyard. Except it wasn't my backyard. In fact, there is no house attached to it at all. I was at Andrew and Katja's Kleingarten. A Kleingarten is a bit of green space for city-dwellers, and has been a feature of German cities since the 19th century. I posted about Kleingartens a while back.

In early episodes of Scrubs, (which was not a profoundly meaningful TV show, but there is a place in my heart for a good sitcom) JD buys a half-acre of land, but doesn't have enough money to build a house on it. He only has a front porch. I feel a little bit like this when I go out to the garden:

Andrew, Katja and 3 year old Juno have moved to the south of Germany, where the sun shines more and the mountains are closer. But the garden still belongs to them. Brian and I are garden-sitting until they sell the place. Sure, we are cutting the grass and picking the tomatoes, but the most important part of garden-sitting is the sitting. We need to make the place look occupied. The garden Kolonie, which sounds like a condo association, has a lot of rules, because it is made up of Germans. One of these rules is that all garden owners must live in Hannover. No vacant lots and no absentee landlords. We need the garden to look lived-in (or sat in) for the next couple of months.

When Andrew and Katja are ready to sell the garden, they will have no trouble finding a buyer. The couple across the path is drooling over it already. They have a garden of their own, but ours (I'll just call it ours for now) is bigger, or better situated, or something like that. So they have been sort of loitering around, awkwardly. They are from East Germany, which automatically makes them a little weird. People from the West consider the Osties to be anything from quirky to socially inept to rednecks or stuck in the 90s.

The day we came to say goodbye to our friends, another couple was checking out the garden. They are both dentists, with one kid and one on the way. Probably the Kolonie would approve of them. Except they are jerks. The day that Andrew and Katja moved, the dentists contacted the Kolonie and started making arrangements to take over the garden. I imagine it will be all the talk at the next board meeting.

I can only hope that the garden neighbors are on that board. Our garden shares a fence with the perfectly manicured lawn of Olli and Susanne. They are in the garden every day - Olli shirtless and trimming the grass with scissors, Susanne in her bikini tending to the flowers. I'd put them in their early 60s and they have become Juno's adopted grandparents. They are very sad to see her go. We made a trade on Sunday - I gave them tomatoes and grapes in exchange for miniature plums called Zwetschgen (Just look at all the consonants in that word and tell me that German is not a hard language). I have not yet asked what they think of the dentists.

Of course, this is not the garden's first brush with drama. Andrew and Katja bought it in partnership with two friends, in a socialist arrangement that Karl Marx would be proud of. But as the East Germans across the way could probably tell you, socialism is a great idea that falls apart eventually. Apparently one of the former comrades, now living in Australia, wants to remove a tree he planted years ago. Who is going to dig it up, and where will they put it?  Don't ask me. My job is just to sit there.

Think about it again

In my newest job at the international school, I am the full-time college counselor. Three weeks in, I have much to figure out. I started meeting with each of the 12th grade students to discuss their plans after graduation. The ideas range from studying business at a nearby university to working on a sheep farm in New Zealand for a year. Earlier this week, I met with a student from Ukraine, who made this comment:

 "I used to want to go to university in the United States, but not any more."
Why not? I ask.
"It's because of the political situation, especially the current presidential election. And because of the gun laws there."

So a kid from a country caught in a tug-of-war between Europe and Russia, a place where thousands have died in two years of war, does not want to study in our country because it's not safe.

At first this sounds absurd. Everybody wants to come to America, right? That's what we usually think. But think about it again. Anybody who's following the Trump vs. Hillary vs. All-the-people-who-don't-know-what-to-do could say that our political situation is volatile. Those volatile people involved can legally carry handguns in public, and they aren't even the crazy ones. Throw in a little anti-immigrant sentiment and sky-high tuition costs, and you can see why a smart 17 year-old might be turned off.

And I admire that decision. There are plenty of 17 year-olds from anywhere who are choosing schools based on where their friends are going, or how good their parties or football teams are.

So if my Ukrainian student is not interested, then I can't argue. And I didn't. Instead we talked about universities in Canada, the UK and Germany. They all have different application standards and deadlines. I have my work cut out for me. Maybe he'd like to work on a sheep farm instead.

Rubber necking

In mid-August, I returned from the land where every day, Donald Trump does something so awful that you can help but pay attention. It's like the whole country is rubber-necking to see just what kind of train wreck he caused this time. We know we shouldn't look but it's just hard not to.

And as so many Americans are excited for/worried about/fascinated by/tired of the drama that is Trump vs. Hilary, the people where I live are pondering whether to vote for this guy.

It's time for the city and regional council elections. Now Frank, who's running to represent my neighborhood, looks like a guy you could vote for. He looks like a guy with no skeletons in his closet and a lot of schnitzel in his fridge.

German election posters like Frank's lack a certain sense of flair. Or maybe they have a certain sense of sincerity. They look like the head shots that Germans are expected to place on top of their resumes (right next to their age and marital status... but don't get me started). After all, Frank is running for office, not for prom king or reality show TV star.

I've written about German elections before, but the contrast with the U.S. presidential election this year is too hard to pass up. With the gawking that Americans deal with, Frank and his straightforward posters are refreshing.

I was getting my teeth cleaned last week when my dental hygenist, who is an immigrant from Kazakhstan, asked me what's going on with our election. What do I think of it all, and will Donald Trump win? She's not the first one who's asked me that question. It puts me in an uncomfortable place, and not just because I was trying to answer while she scraped my teeth. How do you explain (in German, with your mouth open) how somebody like that gets so close to the top? How do you describe the voters he appeals to?

I have tried to do that in other conversations, to explain what I think is happening. It's a tough role to take on, to explain our political situation as the only American in the room. I think more Americans should have to do it. But at the dentist's office I just gave a few vague answers and spit.

Stay tuned

If you have noticed that I shut down (or shut up) for a little while over the summer, you are right. I had a week in northern Spain followed by 2 days at home and then 3 weeks in the US of A. I slept in seven different beds on my Midwestern visit, spent a lot of time with family, a few great days with friends and as much time as possible out on the lake. Everything was wonderful and familiar, except that  Brian was not with me. He was pursuing every boy's dream of being alone on the frontier. Except that his frontier was in Central Asia and his cowboy days were filled with pre-teens playing baseball. More on that later.

Now that my tan is fading, and my husband and our domestic bliss will soon return, I am back to the blog. And I'll be back to work on Monday but, as I promised my fans back home, I won't forget about you, dear readers. Stay tuned.

Play Global has a video

I know I said I'd sign off for a while, but I have one important thing to mention.

A few years ago, Tom Gillespie and I founded a nonprofit organization called Play Global. We use baseball as a way to bring people together. Here's our website: www.play-global.org
and our facebook page: www.facebook/playglobal

I've written a lot about our work on those sites, and occasionally mentioned it in this blog.  But now I'm actually able to show you what Play Global is all about.
We are excited to have our very own video. Click on this link to watch:

We need your support! Play Global's work is entirely funded by grants and donations. We are currently raising money to send a coach to South Africa this winter.
Visit our website for more information about Play Global or click here to donate online.
If you like what we are doing, please share the video and web link with your contacts.

Thank you!

Food!

Enough about social issues and world events.  Let's talk about food.
Brian and I came up with a list of the best, or at least the most memorable, foods we have eaten in most every place we traveled in the last several years. Here they are, in no particular order:

Riga, Latvia - Pelmeni in the market building

Cyprus - Oranges. Never thought they could taste so good. And octopus, cut up in meaty little chunks and grilled.

Georgia - anything that Ketino made at her house

Armenia - they make a good shawarma, which is similar to Döner or gyros but with an Armenian twist.

Krakow, Poland - Zapiekenka (see below)



Egypt - nothing.

Ireland - Brian votes for the full Irish breakfast. I do not. I think we had some good beef stew and crocodile in an Australian restaurant in Galway.

Birmingham, England - Indian food.

Lakes district, England - home made sticky toffee pudding.

Israel - (just me) fresh hummus, artisan ice cream, tabbouleh

Cuba - ham & cheese sandwiches, and ropa vieja, which is a slow cooked beef with rice and beans.

Istanbul, Turkey - Fresh falafel in the street. Bringing the humble chickpea to new levels.

Girona, Spain - ham. Brian ate a whole plate of it for dinner and claimed it was the greatest pork product ever, after JD Hoyt's pork chops in Minneapolis.

Finland - reindeer salami

Germany:
Regensburg - sausages from the Wurst Kuch'l
Templin - Schnitzel and Flammkuchen
Eisenach - Schnitzel
Erfurt - mustard
Bamberg - pork Haxe (knuckle)
Everywhere - bread


This is all making me hungry, so I'll sign off, for a few days in fact.
I am going to watch Tom and Brian coach the German junior national baseball team to glory in the Under 18 European Championships in Gijon, Spain.
You can follow along here:
http://baseballstats.eu/2016/gijon/schedule.php

I'll try to come back with a few stories about the food.

The ostrich principle

With terrorist attacks every few days, Brexit, refugee crises, global warming, Donald Trump praising dictators, it feels so heavy to know anything about the world. Throw in police violence, income inequality and war in Syria and it feels like more than enough.

It's certainly enough to make an American head to Canada, a Brit to apply for an Irish passport, or anyone else to burrow under the covers and not go outside. I understand now what the proverbial ostrich is thinking when it sticks its head in the sand.

I don't consider myself to be very political person and I don't write about politics here very often, at least in an obvious way. I do, however, try to know something of what's going on in the world and think about it a little. That's becoming tougher lately, but here's why I've decided not to hide under the covers all day.

I'm reading a book called The Radical King, which is a compilation of essays and excerpts from Martin Luther King compiled and edited by Cornel West (who I once met in an Indian restaurant in Hannover). West argues that King was a lot more revolutionary, a lot more socialist, a lot more radical than history has made him out to be.

What has struck me, however, is staying power of King's words. Most of what King writes is just as true today as it was during the civil rights movement. Whether that means he was a great thinker, or whether that means nothing has really changed, I'm not sure. Maybe both.

So in this time when people throughout the world, both loud ones and quiet ones, are calling for walls, divisions and 'sovereignty', this passage caught my attention:

"Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally 'in the red'. We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom and reach for a sponge which is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a European. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea or cocoa by a West African. 

Before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to half of the world.

In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

So before the word 'globalization' was in the common vocabulary, King was talking about it. Not in terms of a supply chain or manufacturing but in terms of people being linked to each other.

You can vote against immigration, but you can't avoid being dependent on the rest of the world. You can try ignoring what's happening around the world but even if you surround yourself with walls there will be a time when you get hungry and want to order in a pizza. You'll do that through your smart phone which was built in Asia with a number of African conflict minerals. Then someone driving a Japanese car fueled by gas from Middle East oil will deliver your pizza, which was cooked by immigrants using vegetables picked by different immigrants and meat that was processed by other immigrants in a small town that would have disappeared by now if not for the processing plant.
And it will be hot and cheesy and delicious.

Though sea levels are rising, you can still find a place in the sand in which to bury your head.
But the reality is that a German tourist will be lying in a Speedo nearby, on a towel made in Vietnam.

We are stuck with each other. Not just economically but practically, and morally as well.

Sad news

Something sad and scary and significant happened last night.
It was on Larpenteur Avenue, just a couple of miles from my St. Paul home. It happened in a place that was notorious for speed traps, getting pulled over for the littlest thing, for cops on the lookout.

In that spot a black man was pulled over for a broken taillight, and then shot and killed by a police officer as he reached for his license. There was a four year old in the back seat. His name was Philando Castile, he was 32 years old and worked in an elementary school cafeteria.

The victim's girlfriend, sitting next to him as he died, filmed it all. And posted it on Facebook. A few hours later, protesters showed up at the governor's mansion to wake him up.

I keep up on the Twin Cities news from time to time, and for a while today I almost wished I hadn't. Maybe I could have not learned about Castile and the officer who killed him. It wouldn't have worked though, because the story and the video (which I have yet to watch) have made international news.

These things are not supposed to happen in Minnesota. It's supposed to be the land of 10,000 lakes, a few million liberals, and a pretty great standard of living. We are supposed to be somehow above the problems that vex the rest of the country. If a German asked me how these kinds of things happen, I don't know what I'd say. I could only say how sad it all is.

I know this is my space to comment. But this time, I have no more commentary.

The blue Danube

Brian and I went down to Regensburg for the weekend. Around this time last year, this ancient town in Bavaria was our destination for hot weather, lightning strikes, massive beer mugs and the infamous crystal ship. This trip was a little more tame. We were heading to Regensburg so that Brian could be at a baseball tournament scout his own players and come up with plans for the big tournament.

That's right - after a few years of semi-retirement, Brian is a baseball coach again. He and our good friend and partner-in-crime Tom Gillespie will be leading the German Junior National Team to baseball glory at the European championships in Spain next week.

One thing we did repeat from last year was a stop at the Wurstkuchl - a little hut along the Danube that claims to be the oldest continuously open restaurant in the world.  From a start selling boiled meat to 12th century sailors, to dishing up grilled sausages and kraut to 21st century tourists today, I would imagine the place hasn't changed much. And the beer has probably changed even less. The Wurstkuchl has survived countless river floods which still have not washed the scent of pork smoke out of the walls.

While most of Brian's time was spent at the ballpark, I had big plans to take big bike rides along the blue Danube (cue the music). The Donau Radweg (Danube bike trail) is part of the Euro Velo 6, a trail that runs from the Atlantic coast in France to the Black Sea in Romania. It runs across 10 countries and follows the Loire, Rhine and Danube straight across Europe. I imagined myself a few thousand kilometers away by Tuesday.

But we only had two days. And all the trains that allowed bike transport were sold out. And it rained. So instead, I took the rental bike that was getting me between the ball field and the hotel, and I took it out for a three-hour spin on Sunday. Here's what I saw:

How they roll in Bavaria: One piece spandex lederhose.

Town of Bad Abbach

My first frog-crossing sign

We may never re-create last year's trip to Regensburg with St Paul-ites Luke and Jackie. But I'd be happy to keep trying. I don't think they'll run out of sausages for at least a few hundred years.

Travel agents and mullets

I want to tell you about an institution in Germany that has held on since the early 90's.  It's not the fanny pack, and it's not in-line skates, though those are both good guesses. And no, it's not the mullet either.

Tangent: Mullets also not too hard to find here, especially as you head further to the east. In German it's called a Vokuhila, which is short for Vorne kurz Hinten lang (short front, long back). German language is nothing if not practical.

The business I'm talking about is the travel agency. Shortly after moving here, I discovered that just past every bakery and hair salon, there seems to be a travel agent's office. I can think of four within a 5 minute walk from my apartment. I figured that travel agents went out of business shortly after Al Gore invented the internet.

Then I learned about Germans' affection for the package holiday. Go to any all-inclusive resort in Spain or Italy or Egypt or the Turkish coast and you'll find towels covering all the beach chairs at impossible hours of the morning, but no people on the sand. Ambitious German guests have gotten up at 6, claimed a chair for the day, and then gone back to bed.

I've gathered that Germans often have an ongoing relationship with a  travel agent, like they have with a cleaning lady or a dentist or a hair stylist to trim that Vokuhila. Sink is clogged? Call your plumber. Dreaming of Mallorca? Call your travel agent. You won't have trouble finding one. There are about 10,000 travel agents in Germany, which is like one for every 8,500 people. The only country in Europe with more travel agents (and fewer people) is Italy.

In junior high, my class went on a field trip to some kind of job training center. One of the jobs that I chose to look at was travel agent. It actually was the early 90s, and there were lots of travel agencies in places other than Germany. I liked the idea of planning trips, and loved the glossy catalogs with pictures of palm tress.  I did not like the idea of staring at a small black monitor with orange letters all day, but did think it was cool to wear a headset and talk on the phone. Looking back, I probably would have made a good travel agent.  I probably would have made a good hotel concierge too, and a decent bike taxi driver. Maybe that whole liberal arts college degree thing wasn't so important.

But since my bike taxi career was over before it began, I guess I won't plunge into the travel agent market either. I'd get too jealous of my customers for taking cool trips that I'd planned for them, while I sat in the office with a headset, an Apple computer and some floppy disks.

Ghost of Jesse Owens (or maybe Tom Joad)

 There are moments that are timeless, and then there are people that are timeless. Last Sunday, Brian and I got to have a little bit of both.

We went to see Bruce Springsteen at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. As I knew he would be, Bruce was awesome. He played for three hours and seemed to feed off the energy in the crowd. He played songs that made us sing and songs that sent us a message.

The other reason I was excited for this concert was the venue. This was the stadium built for the 1936 Olympics, with a special viewing box for Adolf Hitler. These were the games meant to show off the success of Nazi Germany and the prowess of the Aryan race. But in track & field, a Black American stole the show. Jesse Owens took four gold medals in a performance that no one could top for the next 48 years.

The legend is that Hitler, furious at Owens' victories, Hitler stormed out of the stadium. That may not actually be true.


It's possible that Owens actually did shake the Führer's hand, and apparently carried a photo of the moment in his wallet for years to come. He claimed that it was his own president, FDR, who snubbed Owens by not acknowledging his achievement.

The story, whether it's true or not, is timeless. Even to people who are not track nerds like me.

Several of the songs that Bruce chose to play were about immigration, about inclusion and hope and though he didn't say it outright, probably about accepting refugees. Timely and fitting to play at Berlin's Olympic Stadium. I think Jesse Owens would have approved.

Bruce may be timeless, but I certainly am not. I felt pretty old when we finally got home at 4am. As Brian reminded me a few times, Bruce was definitely in bed by then.

Foreigners' office, again

I just re-read a post I wrote in 2011 about going to the foreigners' office, the Auslanderamt. And though it has been nearly five years, not much has changed. Brian and I had to go again yesterday to get our visas renewed.

As the time for the appointment comes and goes, and the stuffy corridor smells increasingly like body odor, we knock on the office door. Then a grumpy bureaucrat in stretchy pants tells me to go back to the hallway and wait until I am called. I obey.

Eventually, a woman in leopard-print pants emerges to call us in. She wears a t-shirt with some metal studs on it. The dress code at the Auslanderamt is beyond business casual. It's more like roll-out-of-bed casual. As we sit down I notice she has a big tattoo of a bear face on her forearm.  I would love to know the story of that tattoo; maybe the bear is her spirit animal.

I hand over the paperwork, sign on the line and turn in my mug shot. It's called a biometric photo but it really just looks like a mug shot. This one especially does, since I had just gotten over pink eye and looked like I'd taken a punch or two. I am thinking this over as I get fingerprinted.
Welcome to Germany.

If I sound a little bitter, it's probably just because I am about due to get out of Germany for the summer. Even after living here for years, my tolerance for feeling foreign has its limits. When I get fed up with Germany, or with Germans, I rebel in public by crossing the street while the little red 'don't walk' man is still lit. Old women scold me under their breath, or sometimes out loud. Young men shake their heads. Everyone else pretends not to notice but I know they are astonished.
Take that, you law-abiding people.

My visits to the Auslanderamt are not over yet. I will have to go back in July to pick up the ID cards. Another appointment in another corridor, with different paperwork. And, if I'm lucky, maybe a different spirit animal tattoo.

Hiatus

No, I haven't forgotten about you, my readers.
I'll get back to posting again soon, I promise!

Welcome to Hannover, Mr. President

It has never been cooler to be an American in Hannover. Or, actually, to be one particular American in Hannover.
No, sorry, it's not me.
President Obama has come to visit our humble city for two days, and he is all the rage.
He's here for the opening of the trade fair for industrial technology. Every year there's a partner country, and it's customary for that country's leader to open the fair along with Angela Merkel. Previous famous guests for this expo have been Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin (occasion of the famous topless protest). This year, the partner country is the USA and O-bams came to town.

Hannover is all abuzz about the visit. News blogs have up to the minute coverage of what Obama is eating, where he is sleeping, what his shoes look like. Police are everywhere, blocking off streets. Sections of the city were closed off so that the motorcade could drive through, with Obama's special armored limo shipped from the USA called 'The Beast'. Anyone who wanted to come or go from the neighborhood surrounding Hannover's conference center had to pre-register with the police. If you were planning to stand at your window give The Beast a wave, forget it. Waving through windows is prohibited. Keep your hands to yourself.

The Beast

Side note:

It's not the first time that I've hung around in the same obscure town as Obama.  Air Force One was parked (is that the word? do planes park?) in Hilo, Hawaii when Brian and I were there in 2009. We drove out to the airport to see, and guards waved us on when we tried to stop. Obama flew out on the same night we did. All the air space surrounding Honolulu was closed and we almost missed our plane to Minneapolis due to the delay. It was the only time I have run full speed through a near-empty airport just like in the movies, to find the wonderful flight attendants holding the plane for us. Thank you, Hawaiian Airlines.

Our international school was not to be left out of the excitement. The fourth graders wrote letters asking Obama to visit (he didn't, sorry kids), and we hired two security guards to stand by the school gate and protect us against those crazy America-haters that would surely be attacking. I saw the guards on Monday afternoon, looking chilly and watching over a handful of German and Japanese kids on the playground. Rumor has it there were several policemen in the male teachers' bathroom as well. Maybe they were scoping it out in case The Beast had to pull over somewhere so the president could pee.

Obama left Hannover last night, and our town's star-struck brush with the world's most powerful man is over. After all the security in Hannover, I can see how Europeans might think of the USA as a violent police state. They must imagine Washington DC as a city in a state of permanent lock-down. I hope they know that one of our freedoms, as Americans, is to wave whenever we like.

Up to the church

The main attraction in Kazbegi is the 14th century Holy Trinity church. Perched on a mountain in the shadow of Mount Kazbegi (which is 5,000m or 16,000 ft high), getting up to the church is the highlight. Some take four wheel drive vehicles up the muddy, snowy track and others, like us, walk. The hiking trail is not as clear as you'd think. But thanks to an old woman in a black headscarf, who pointed us in the right direction as she sat on her front steps in the sun, we found our way. The church itself is small and stout to withstand centuries of mountain winters. It was a tourist destination in Soviet times as well, as you can see from the abandoned Intourist hotel. Intourist was the USSR's state-run travel company.

the Intourist hotel, Kazbegi

Even though all religious services were prohibited, Soviet-era tourists still visited Holy Trinity and the government built a cable car up to the church in 1988. The locals, protective of their sacred place and angry at the Russians, promptly destroyed it.

Holy Trinity is still a working church. We saw a couple of long-bearded priests up there - one reading the Bible inside the church and another sitting outside, gazing at the mountains. To enter this or any other Georgian church, women have to wear long skirts and head scarves. Not planning to hike up a mountain in an ankle-length skirt? No problem. They have loaners, which wrap around and look great with hiking boots.

This was the last highlight of our Caucasus trip and the rest of our time in Kazbegi/Stepantsminda/Gergeti was spent hanging around with Wendy and Ketino and eating too much of Ketino's food ("what? you no eat eggs?" "No, I already had some, really.") She sent us off with a few recipes, a bottle of wine and a hug.

To the mountains, Kazbegi

After another day in Tbilisi, we headed toward the Russian border. Our destination was a mountain town with two names. Its original name is Stepantsminda, after the first monk who settled there. It's also called Kazbegi, for its first Russian ruler and his grandson, a famous writer. After independence, the town officially shed the name Kazbegi, but somehow it sticks around.

We were headed toward Kazbegi, also known as Stepantsminda, also known as you're almost in Russia now. Georgians do not like Russia. The man driving us to Kazbegi (I was getting used to having a private driver) did not speak much English, but he pointed out a pipeline near the highway and said, "Gazprom". He explained that the gas goes through to Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Georgia doesn't buy any gas from the Russians. "They are not good people," he said. He also pointed out some Middle Eastern tourists who had pulled over to take pictures of the river and to dip their toes in it. "Arab people," he said, "ooh water, ooh snow, wow!" Ten minutes later, we saw another group doing the same thing. It's funny what we find exotic - just as I would get excited for a camel in the desert, they were overjoyed with bodies of water. Our driver also pointed toward Chechnya, South Ossetia, Daghestan... all the small and disputed regions that make this a very complicated part of the world. There are so many identities, ethnicities, allies, enemies. Humans have lived in the Caucasus for thousands of years.  Do the divisions between people multiply the older their civilization becomes?

Ananuri fortress

Mountain pass on the way to Kazbegi

Kazbegi (altitude 1,740m or a little over a mile)

We arrived to find out that we were not actually staying in Kazbegi but in the village of Gergeti, on the other side of the river. As one of Georgia's top tourist destinations, Kazbegi has two hotels and several guest houses. A guest house is sort of a bed and breakfast, a room for rent in a private house. I had chosen Ketino's guest house mostly at random and as we arrived I thanked the internet for bringing her to us. Ketino was like my Georgian mom. She's not old enough to actually be my mom, but she kept calling me 'my lovely', telling me to eat more, and it didn't take long for her to ask when I'm having babies.  Ketino offered to show me how to cook Georgian food. An hour later I was sitting at a big kitchen table in a house in a Georgian mountain village and slicing tomatoes according to Ketino's specifications while her elderly mother sat across from me, squeezing spices into ground meat with her thick fingers. It was one of my happiest moments of the trip.

The other guests were Julia and Lisa from Moscow and an American named Wendy. Wendy works for the U.S. government and had just finished two months of interviewing Syrian refugees in Jordan. Over dinner, which included Ketino's home made cheese, home made wine, and home made everything else, she imparted some Ketino wisdom to all of us in her heavily accented English.

Ketino summed up her attitude toward Russia by saying, "I don't like Vladimir Putin, but I like these girls," she gestured toward the sweet and sunburned Julia and Lisa. "Have all the Georgians treated you good here?" she asked them. Julia nodded enthusiastically. Ketino talked about how she makes her wine, and about how each family has its own cherished recipe. "Wine makes relax. It's like part of your soul. When I drink my wine (this part she had to say in Russian because she couldn't quite find the words in English. Julia helped to translate.) it's like I am not even drinking, because it's already a part of me."

Dinner at Ketino's (there are more dishes coming)

Ketino's house

Cave men

From Gori we took a taxi to the ancient city of Uplistshike.
Here's how we got there:
We left the Stalin museum and a guy with a Barcelona soccer hat and brown teeth approached us. He had a sign hanging around his neck. The sign had a picture of a cave and said Uplisthshike. I still cannot pronounce this word, so luckily we could just point to his little sign instead. With the universal gesture of fingers rubbing against a thumb, which I guess represents rubbing your imaginary coins together, we asked him how much. He took out his cell phone and typed in 25. "Hmmm", I said, "twenty?" Despite our language barrier, he knew exactly what I was saying. He flashed his brown teeth in a smile and shook his head. "Oh no no", he said and pointed to the 25 on his phone again. "Twenty," Brian said, decisively. He smiled again and said "Okay," then led us to his car with threadbare upholstery and multiple air fresheners hanging from the rear view mirror.

The haggling is almost required, or at least expected. With a little bargaining, the tourist/customer shows that he/she is savvy and not to be swindled. The taxi driver/street vendor laughs to himself about how easy it is to swindle foreign tourists by letting them talk you down to a still-inflated price. In the end we pay eight bucks for two hours of the taxi driver's time and everyone feels very happy with themelves.

Uplistshike was one of Georgia's first cities. It was founded around 500 BC and thrived for the next 1500 years. It was all built into, on top of, and around a cluster of caves in the hillside. What you can visit today is just half of the city, and it has all been excavated in the last fifty years.

What will people in another thousand years uncover from our cities? What will last from our civilization? And what will the Earth even look like? This were my thoughts as we found our taxi driver. He stood patiently beside his car, waiting to take us back to the bus station.

Gori, Stalin, and the minibus

Heading to Gori meant figuring out how to get there, exactly. We didn't want to take a group tour, and we didn't want to get scammed. The idea of booking an all-day taxi like we did in Armenia didn't really work; the driver just took us to the bus station. So we took a bus.

The main bus station in Hannover is a very orderly and sanitary affair, with numbered gates where well-marked buses leave right on schedule. In Tbilisi, minibuses and taxis cram in as drivers shout out their destinations and passengers haggle for better prices. The minibuses sometimes have signs to state their destinations, but,of course, those signs are written in Georgian. Somehow we got pointed toward the bus to Gori. No, there were no chickens on board. And nobody smelled bad, either. It was crowded and Brian's knees jammed up against the seat in front of him, but otherwise the minibus worked fine. It took us directly to the Stalin museum for less than $1.50 per person.

Gori is the hometown of Joszef Stalin, and its main claim to fame. It's strange to go to a museum that honors an evil dictator responsible for the deaths of millions. It sounded so strange and awful that we had to go see how it's all done. The museum itself was a little ragged, kind of dark and cold with worn carpets and accumulated dust. The exhibits are overwhelmingly positive... let's just say that there is some information missing. The strangest items in the place are Stalin's death mask and the cottage where he was born, which stands outside the museum under a stained glass roof decorated with the hammer and sickle. You can read more about Gori and the museum in this article.

Inside the museum

Stalin's childhood home

Why do the Georgians have a museum for Stalin, but the Germans wouldn't dream of building one to honor Hitler? Maybe because Stalin's government succeeded.

There was actually a movement led by the national culture minister to transform the institution into a museum of Russian aggression. For a while, a banner hung outside the museum saying "This museum is a falsification of history. It is a typical example of Soviet propaganda and it attempts to legitimize the bloodiest regime in history." But the locals took it down and voted down the idea of changing the museum's purpose.

Thoroughly creeped out by it all, we left the museum and found a taxi driver to take us to the cave city.

Tbilisi

We pulled into Tbilisi on a Friday night. Roy and Mikhail, two other tourists on our bus, were staying the same hotel that Brian and I had booked. We weren't sure how to get there, and didn't have any Georgian money (Laris) yet. The plan was to get off the bus, find an ATM and take a taxi.  Roy and Mikhail seemed very relaxed and confident about it all.

We got off the bus in downtown Tbilisi (in front of Dunkin' Donuts) and they froze. They fumbled. They pulled out a Lonely Planet guide book to look for a map. The four of us had just gotten off a tour bus, standing with suitcases on a busy street and thumbing through a guide book. International tourism 101: this means we were fresh meat. Taxi drivers circled like sharks while we debated what to do (cue the Jaws music). I found and ATM and came back to find one shark loading my suitcase into the trunk of his car. He wanted to charge 20 Laris to take us to the hotel. Granted, 20 Laris is like 8 euros, but I felt like we were getting scammed and the driver had a crazy look in his eye. So I said no, 20 Laris was too much. I grabbed the suitcase and found another guy to take us for 10. We might have still overpaid, but it was my best bargaining moment of the trip.

I kind of like bargaining cultures. Prices are never negotiable in Germany, so I find it a little exotic to haggle. But after a few days, the challenge lost its luster. By our last day of the trip, I basically gave up and ended up buying some dried fruit for double what I probably should have paid. With my wits about me, I could have saved like 75 cents.

After peaceful, dusty Yerevan, Tbilisi was all bright lights, big city. It is bigger, busier, noisier. Tbilisi is long and steep, hemmed in by the hills on its edges with the wide muddy Kura river in the middle. Its streets meander, twist and climb. While Yerevan is still struggling to get up from its past, Tbilisi seems to stand on its own two feet. There is a charmingly decaying old town (which I like), and plenty of massive glass and concrete Soviet buildings (which Brian likes) and even more modern areas. There are beautiful parks to rival those of any German city. There are restaurant streets for tourists and well-to-do Georgians, and construction projects in Tbilisi seem to actually get finished, most of the time.

Tbilisi feels like a city with many layers. Like Yerevan, Tbilisi has been beaten, occupied, ransacked and colonized through out much of its history. But it was always an important trade city and a main stop on the Great Silk Road linking east and west. That legacy seems to keep Tbilisi moving forward. After nearly 200 years under the Russians, Tbilisi seems to be alive, growing, moving ahead. Unlike Yerevan, it's ready to take in tourists from many different places. Speaking of tourists, we never ran into Roy and Mikhail again at the hotel. Hopefully they weren't eaten by sharks.

Leaving Yerevan

There is no McDonald's in Yerevan, no Ikea, no H & M, no Burger King.
There is a KFC and Pizza Hut on the fanciest, busiest street corner in town. But other than that. the tentacles of globalization have not reached their sticky selves into Armenia. In this place that's not exactly Europe but maybe not quite Asia, I felt like we were just on the edge of everything.

Getting to Tbilisi, Georgia from Yerevan is not as easy as it should be. The cities are 300km apart (180 miles). There are almost no flights. There is an overnight train (literally a midnight train to Georgia) which is slow and expensive. You can take a five hour taxi ride (no meter, thank goodness) or a minibus that leaves as soon as it's full. We make the trip as tourists are meant to - with a bus tour. On our ride north, we stopped at three ruined monasteries from the tenth century. We saw beautiful natural scenery from the snowy mountain passes outside Yerevan to the rocky Debed river, which flowed alongside us most of the way. We also saw old Soviet factories, mostly abandoned or working at a fraction of their capacity. We stopped for lunch at a family's home which was made from two shipping containers with no indoor plumbing. The food was delicious but I couldn't help thinking of that novel about the boxcar children.

The huge monasteries we visited have stood solid for centuries, and you can still see their delicate carvings and paint on the walls. But all around them, years of colonization took their toll. People are living in apartments with broken windows, or sagging houses patched with scrap wood. At least, our guide pointed out, under the Soviets everyone had a job and a free education.

There is no McDonald's in Armenia. Is that a good or a bad thing? I'm not sure.