The attic

Our apartment is on the top floor of the building. Or, at least, it was the top floor. Now there are men building an apartment into the attic above us. This makes it harder to pretend that I live in a penthouse.

There are not a lot of people who want to move into a fourth-floor walk up. And when you consider that the European fourth floor is actually the American fifth floor (the ground floor is 0 not 1), there are even fewer interested. Which is probably why this apartment was available in the first place.

 It only takes a week or so to build of those buns of steel and not be out of breath when you reach the front door. And the view from our balcony over the rooftops of the city is pretty fantastic. I can also look down into the windows of the apartments across the street without other people seeing up into ours (at least I think so, but I should probably be careful).  The other thing that's great about the top floor is that there is no one above us. No chairs scraping, feet pounding, vacuums buzzing, feet tap dancing (hey, it's possible), etc. It's just an empty room, and we can pile some of our extra junk in front of the door. That's all about to change.

Now, starting at 7:30 every morning, workers are hammering, sawing, possibly sledge hammering away at our peace and quiet. The attic needs some work and that work is happening right above my head. All this construction is needed since there's no electricity up there, only a few walls and no plumbing. Maybe someone lived in the attic before but now it's just the bats and the ghosts. I know because I went up and looked. The bats were polite enough to hide when I came in.

It makes me wonder about the story of our building, if those walls could talk, as the saying goes. The place was originally built in 1919 and rebuilt in 1953. I don't know how much was destroyed by bombs in World War II, but I would imagine those walls were hurting. And then, what? Maybe an occasional post-war attic squatter and then decades of quiet, interrupted only by the flutter of bat wings. Until now, when floors are being laid and plumbing installed. If those walls could talk I imagine they'd be pretty angry about losing their quiet, and possibly their bats.

So if you are looking for an apartment in Hannover in a few months, remember that it's a real pain to live on the fifth floor with no elevator. Remember that there could possibly be ghosts. Remember that nobody wants to live above weird American neighbors who sometimes play loud music. Remember that there are plenty of other places to live. You can't blame me for trying. The building can have only one penthouse, after all.

A black eye and a missing tooth

It's been two days since the terrorist attacks in Brussels. Two days since the bombs exploded. And as people are wiping away tears and pointing fingers, I am thinking about what to think of it all.

I used to live near Brussels. In that first expat experience I was in high school and too absorbed in my own teenage issues to think too deeply about current events or Europe's place in the world. My family and I flew in and out of Zaventem airport and occasionally rode the metro. I remember being told to stay away from the sketchy neighborhoods at the north end of town, the ones that are now known as hotbeds for jihad activity.

So I have a very minor attachment to the small city in a small and divided country. Little Brussels is the capital of Europe, headquarters of the EU and NATO. It's the place where the biggest meetings are held and the longest documents are signed. This week's attack is sad, really sad, and scary... but does it mean something bigger than another point for the bad guys?

When I'm not sure what to think, I like to read what other people are writing. One opinion that struck me from this Washington Post article is that Europe as a concept, as a unit, might have been sucker punched too many times. It's reeling now and could be knocked out entirely by the troubled economies of the south, terrorist attacks in the west and refugees pushing to get in at all sides. I don't claim to understand current events well enough to know Europe will pick itself up or not. Daily life in the daily town where I live seems unchanged, with its social supports, safe streets and tuition-free colleges. But even Hannover was rattled by a bomb scare last November. Even though it seems like Europe has that quality-of-life thing figured out, the bad guys are here among us.

It's easy to find people pledging their 'thoughts and prayers' for victims and their families in Belgium. What else can you really do? I liked this column with the headline "It's not enough to tweet your grief." The writer's point is that, with social media, it's easy to move from the natural impulse toward sympathy to become self-indulgent. It's easy to post a flag on your Facebook page so everyone can see how you feel, and then you move on. And these expressions of solidarity only come from those sudden disasters, tragic events, events that make you want to do something. Nobody posts 'thoughts and prayers' for people suffering from chronic hunger or poverty or disease.

I actually don't really agree with either opinion. I am a little too optimistic for that. I have a little too much faith that Europe can get back up again, albeit with a black eye and maybe a missing tooth. And I believe some of that sympathy is sincere, that many of us are actually thinking and praying for victims. I feel like people often post on social media because they feel helpless and don't know what else to do. It's like making a big cardboard sign and hanging it out your window.

As I get ready for our trip to Armenia and Georgia next week, it's funny to think that I might be safer there than in Brussels or Paris. Who would have said that 10 or 15 years ago? (Not me. I am pretty sure I didn't know what the Caucasus region was 10 years ago, and I still can't spell the word without looking it up). That's the funny thing about terrorism, though. We're all the enemy and we aren't safe anywhere, unless you want to live in a cave. Though that cave probably isn't safe either.

I don't know who can beat the bad guys or how they can be beaten. I know that a lot of smart and capable people are trying to keep up, trying to block those punches before they fall. As for the rest of us, we can only hope and get used to feeling a little bit helpless.

Greasy fingers

Recently I've been going back and forth to the bike mechanic. For those of you think mechanics are only for cars, let me explain. Like car mechanics, bike mechanics often have tattoos. Like car mechanics, they could be called gear heads. They are usually skinny guys who may or may not have black rimmed glasses. They are more likely to be listening to indie rock or public radio than heavy metal. Like car mechanics, they have greasy fingers.

These things hold true whether your mechanic is in Hannover or in St. Paul (and likely other places where i have never lived). But in St. Paul, I had the best mechanics ever. Several of them may or may not have had crushes on me (as I've mentioned before, I do well with nerds). And if they didn't, I got a discount anyway. I rolled into The Bicycle Chain and they did whatever I asked. Once a year I took our road bikes in for spa treatment. My mechanic boyfriends took all the components apart, gave then a bath, lubricant, exfoliation and probably a massage and put them all back together shining like new.

In Germany, I have found no bike spa. There is no bath, no massage and no discount. It's more like taking your bike to the dentist's office. When you take your bike to the shop in Germany you've gotta make an appointment. Would you go to the dentist without one? Depending on the time of the year, your appointment might be 2 or 3 weeks out. If you want to go to the one bike shop in town with a mechanic who's a native English speaker, be ready to stand in line for over a month. None of this is cool when your bike is making noises or not shifting gears right now. When you have your appointment, the mechanic's German precision will find things wrong with your bike that you never even noticed. I once had a mechanic tell me that a scrape on my frame might compromise the structural integrity of the bike over time. At least I think he said something like that. It was all in German, He could have been giving me directions to the dry cleaners.

The other issue is of course that I don't always know what the bike mechanics are saying. I don't know all the words for bike parts in English, much less in German. And it's way harder over the phone. So when they call me up and start saying that they need to replace the umwerfschalterbremsekabelpedalenwerk in order for the bike to work properly, even though you could, probably, still ride it without replacing the umwerfschalterbremsekabelpedalenwerk (thats all the bike words I know in German squished into one, but it sounds believable, doesn't it?), I don't know what to do. Am I being upsold? No, not exactly. These guys are less interested in profits than in making your bike technically, mechanically precise to the last millimeter. They want to slap a Made in Germany label on it and send you to the Tour de France.

That's not a race I'm likely to enter because a) it's only for men, b) I'm not very fast, and c) my husband wouldn't come with me because he won't go to France (too many French people there). So in that case, it's probably okay not to replace the whatever it's called, slap some oil on the chain, rub it down with a rag and get on the road. Sorry, sweetheart, your spa days are over.

What Germany has in common with TV jail

My latest guilty pleasure is watching Orange is the New Black when Brian is not at home. It reminds me of when I used to go to the county correctional facility (i.e. jail) every month for my job. It did sort of look like the jail on the TV show. There is almost nothing about living in Germany that is remotely like going to prison, except for one thing - the type of contraband.

In the episode I just watched, the Russian cook hides her bottles of vanilla extract in the paper towel dispenser. I just got a small bottle of Target brand vanilla smuggled on from the States. It's now tucked away in my spice rack.

You see, I can do without the bagels and the Wheat Thins and the root beer and the Reese's cups and those other American things. I've learned to make tortillas and salsa and my own Bisquick substitute. I can bake a pie without Crisco, but I have nothing to replace vanilla extract. I once tried a recipe for making it at home... ingredients included vanilla beans, vodka, a glass jar and a dark room. A couple of months later, mine just smelled like bad vodka and tasted boozy enough to give you a buzz from your chocolate chip cookie. It reminded me of when our friend Luke tried to make bacon-infused vodka and ended up with a gray, greasy mess. Brian and I both tried it because we care about Luke. Afterward, we realized we don't care about him that much.

As a kid, I used to love smelling the vanilla extract when my mom baked brownies. She told me never to taste it out of the bottle because it would make me sick. I thought vanilla must have some mysterious poison that goes away when it is cooked. Now, 25 years later, I realize I was right; that poison is called alcohol.

So without the knack to make my own vanilla and without the will to use German recipes for dry cakes that require a kitchen scale, I have become a smuggler. I prefer the term 'importer'. Much like the women inmates in the TV show, I horde vanilla extract and would probably trade my shampoo, my deodorant and my one free phone call to get another bottle.

**An aside (like you need another one) German baked goods that are bread-related are fantastic. The breads and pastries here are delicious. My award for cakes and cookies, however, goes to the Americans.**

The other contraband I have recently been promised is a 2 pound bag of chocolate chips. It was offered by our nerdy chemistry teacher (is there another kind?) who bought the chips on a trip to the US. Brian speculates that bringing me chocolate chips is the chemistry teacher's way of hitting on me. I think it's just a ploy to get me to bake cookies for him, or as he says, to be his "cookie bitch".

I can't speak to whether Orange is the New Black is accurate, since I only ever met with the male inmates at the Ramsey County Correctional Facility. The main character in the show seems familiar, though. I'm pretty sure if I went to prison, I would also be the skinny white girl with a fancy college degree. Wouldn't that make an interesting blog? I'd have to scribble my posts on paper and hide them under my mattress or something... maybe even eat them if I got caught. I'm not sure whether I could handle being an inmate, but I don't need to worry. I haven't stolen any cars or done any drug deals. And I am pretty sure that importing baking ingredients is not enough to land me in jail. If it were and I had to work in the inmates' kitchen, though, at least I'd remember to hide the vanilla.