December Update

It has been a busy month!

I traveled for nine days earlier in the month. I left in the dark on a 5:45am train with snow falling and wind blowing thick drifts to head for the airport in Hamburg. The local train in Hamburg did not go all the way to the airport that morning so it stopped and I had to walk through the snow to a bus stop a few blocks away to connect to the airport. The snow was thick on the ground, in the road and in the air and of course is was still dark. The sunlight started coming when I got to the airport which they were plowing to keep the runway clear. I caught an early flight to a connection in Paris and spent several hours in a layover there. There was snow on the ground in France also, which seems strange to me as I always picture it as warm. The flight was delayed an additional hour (which is not bad as air travel usually goes), and we were back in the air as it started getting dark again. We flew directly over Palma, Mallorca Island in the Mediterranean, then flew over Algeria. I could see the lights from cities near the coast but as we went over the Sahara I also saw clusters of lights out in the desert that seemed to shimmer. I sat next to a woman on the plane that worked with UNESCO to try to preserve a mosque in Djenne (the largest mud/brick structure in the world). Finally close to midnight we landed at the airport near Bamako, the capital of Mali. I showed them my visa for Mali (which was down to the last minute to get in Germany being a non-EU citizen ... paperwork). There were people playing scams at the luggage pickup ("I saw your friend waiting for you outside." What is your name?" "I will go tell them." If you say your name they will say yes, it is them... and you end up being pressured to take a taxi with their "friend" ... all stuff I am used to traveling in Africa before. It is easier to not get started in conversations with these guys and they move on to the next one.) Outside there was a swarm of crowded people trying to get your attention and you have to be very careful about pickpockets. I got through them. Got in a taxi to the hotel. Then we're off to downtown Bamako. The night guard at the hotel lets me in through the gate, but before I leave I get the taxi drivers phone number for a trip back to the airport at the end of the journey. Then I get to my room with a mosquito net covered bed after midnight, wash up, and try to sleep. It is warm! and I traveled here with a coat and heavy clothes on, the winter coat I had to carry folded under my arm from the airport. I can't sleep of course so I wash my clothes in the sink and hang them to dry on a clothes line on the balcony. I listen to cars and motorcycles go by and people walking and taking at night.

The next day my contact is not there but does appear later in the day (she missed a flight and was delayed getting back to Bamako). We make a plan for the week and I am off in a taxi again to get money changed, and to pick up a sim card for the new phone. Back at the hotel I try out the sim card. It connects but for a long time I am not able to contact V, so I call my brother in the US and ask him to tell V I made it and everything is fine. Almost as soon as I do that I try one last time and get through to V and talk to her and the kids on the phone. We made arrangements to ride with a missionary family in their truck to Mopti-Sevare, leaving 7am (the father/husband can't go because he needs to see a dentist the next day so I get his space in the truck). I get some street food, on the corner you can get bread and spicy meat kebabs with some greens together in a sandwich. Walk around for a bit to take the place in. Repack for the trip tomorrow. Go get some supper at a nearby restaurant (capitan fish, from the Niger, and rice). After dark back at the hotel a small gecko sneaks into the room and I manage to get a picture of it on the ceiling. There are geckos everywhere, once you start looking for them, darting up walls and behind objects.

The next morning I have my bag ready and at the truck before sunrise. We tie everything in the bed in the back. Then four adults and two small girls, the missionaries daughters, get into the extended cab and we are off. We drive northeast all morning, with a short stop for gas, dodging herds of goats, sheep and cattle that are crossing the road and passing donkey carts. We stop at the house of a friend of the missionary family for lunch. When we go in you have to be careful to take your shoes off at the door. We sit around a big bowl filled with rice and with cooked chicken and sauce on top. You eat with your hand out of the bowl. You have to be careful to only eat with your right hand. Touching the bowl with your left hand is insulting. You also eat out of your sector of the bowl, an imaginary pie slice that corresponds to your position. There is an imaginary circle in the center that is shared by all and has most of the meat piled up. You can take food out of this section and add it to your own, but don't take food out of another section. It is insulting to turn anything down and you are expected to eat as much as possible. Here travelers have a "sacred" quality and people are eager to provide for travelers because "they are close to God." It is the opposite of the idea in the US of apologizing to the host for "putting them out." Towards the end of the meal they bring in a huge pile of sliced watermelons for dessert and several older men come in to greet us. You also have to be careful to only shake hands with your right hand and your left hand can be placed to your right elbow (optional, but makes sure you don't touch anyone with your left hand) while shaking hands.

After lunch is finished we move on, it is very hot (which is a welcome change from N. Europe). We put scarves in the windows on the sunward side to provide some shade. We stop at one point to check the radiator. It has a slow leak but has plenty of fluid. One person almost open the cap and I stop them because the engine is hot, and show them the overflow container on the side to check. One funny thing is the air intake hose is long gone and has been replaced locally by a sewn leather tube. I wish I had a picture of it. The landscape is flat and getting drier the father we go. There are baobab trees and termite mounds scattered around. I walk up to one large termite mound that has a tree growing out of it and a bees nest, for collecting honey, is placed in the tree.

I send messages to V a few times with my phone but the gaps between connections are growing. We stop near Djenne and buy some snacks (I get some oranges, peanuts, and small muffins). Then I get a message from V that someone has used our bank card to buy airplane tickets a few days before (before I even left for the trip) in Frankfurt so the card has been suspended. The bank won't talk to her because the account is in my name and insists on talking to me or having a signed form faxed to them, which is impossible. V explains to them I am traveling in Africa and can not be in constant contact but will return next week to take care of everything... Anyway, we have to keep moving, it is getting late and it is dangerous to travel on the roads after dark. We get to Mopti just as the sun is setting. First we stop at the missionaries house and have supper with them and meet the rest of the family. Then there is a shared house my contact has nearby, we walk over and I am given a room. It is sort of a small compound with a locked gate and wall around the place. A small side house and a larger main house. A well and outhouse. The main house has a central room and individual rooms branch off of that with curtains hanging over the doors. There are steps that lead up to a flat roof that I thought of sleeping on because it was much cooler, but I was too tired to set up my tent. There are several Dogon living there and I greet them and have tea with them. We are sitting outside under a mango tree that has green mangos hanging off of it. The tea is fixed in a small silver pot on top of a raised container with coals in it. It is green tea and is brewed very strong, you drink it out of a tiny glass. It is brewed three times from the same leaves and they talk to each other while we wait for it to brew. They are very friendly and one person invites me to the place by saying "You left from your fathers house and came to your fathers house." Later I bring out an orange to eat and they ask if they should get someone to peel it for me, I say no it is fine, this is the way we eat it in the US/Germany, which they seem mildly surprised about. I offer them slices of the orange. They ask many questions about where my parents are living, how many kids I have, how old they are, ... which is an indirect way to ask my age. Age is very important here because it dictates a lot of interactions, such as who can be asked to do things for others. After a while I excuse myself and get some sleep.

The next day we met up with a missionary from Denmark that was visiting and all headed over to Mopti (we are actually staying in the next town, Sevare). It is a bit far to walk so we use local transportation. There is a pickup truck a few blocks away with a driver yelling to people he is going to Mopti. We get in the back and sit on wooden boards that are placed around the sides, and the back of the truck is covered by arched poles that have sticks and small pieces of boards fastened over the top. We are crammed in tight, when the sides fill up some people sat on sacks in the middle, one person across from me is holding some chickens by their legs. We fit eleven people in the back of the small truck. Finally, the driver is satisfied that no one else can possibly fit and, collects money from us and we start toward Mopti. The sides were open so a breeze came through and honestly, having a cool breeze made it more comfortable, despite being crowded, than riding in the closed bus, another option for getting to Mopti. Half way the truck slows down and pulls off to the side. The left front tire has worked its way loose, so they take out a tire iron and start tightening up the lug nuts. Then we roll forward a few feet and they tighten it up some more, all the while other trucks, buses and motorcycles are flying by. Then we get going again and pull into the bus station area in Mopti. We take a taxi through a maze of streets and end up in front of a butcher shop with a bunch of guys hanging around and chunks of meat hanging up and knives laying around. We wind our way past and behind the shop and into the house of a friend of my contact. They invite us inside (remember to take your shoes off at the front door), lay a mat and blanket on the floor for us to sit on, then bring us a large cup (/ small bowl) of water followed by a huge bowel of rice and sauce with cooked fish on top for us to eat out of for lunch. I make a mistake with the water; in Kenya and Ethiopia we often washed our hands with water that was kept outside restaurants in pitchers or brought to us before eating. I thought this might be the same so I washed my hands in the water (including the forbidden left hand) then my contact told me it was for us to drink out of. They were all easy about it however and just laughed and got a fresh bowl of water. While we eat everyone talks to each other in a mix of Fulani and French, when we finish they bring in some peanuts for us to snack on. And the host brings out some jewelry and clothes he sells in the market in town for us to look at. I take the opportunity to get some gifts to take back to my family. Afterward we walk around Mopti a bit. There are a lot of stalls selling things along the banks of the Niger where boats come in to dock. It is very crowded and people are selling all kinds of things, but one thing that catches my eye is slabs of salt that are being cut and sold. The salt is traded from the Timbuktu region to the north. I ask if I can take a picture but am told no. Then back to Sevare in a covered truck, and I make a stop in the local postoffice to pick up some stamps for postcards. Back at the house we get some dinner from town, a huge bowl of rice with meat and sauce on top, I wait for the other people to start eating and no one eats for a while, then my contact tells me that they are waiting for me to start since I am the oldest one present, which completely surprised me. So I sheepishly take the first handful then everyone starts eating. That night I pack minimally for going out to the village over the next few days and plan to leave behind as much as possible at this house (winter coat, gifts, changes of clothes, ...).

The next morning we are off again toward the village I came to visit. One of the people staying at our shared house went off to school early that morning. Before we left he was already back saying the teachers were on strike that day. We walked down to the bus area to get a ride to another small town first, and meet up with some people from the village there (they travel there on market days to sell things from the village). On our way to the bus stop we see a commotion up ahead. A huge crowd is coming and people are getting out of the road. We step off in front of a shop and watch, the crowd is yelling and marching by and I am told it is people that work at the school. They are on strike and protesting. We go on to the bus/van and pay for our spot. We pack into the back again, this time it is much hotter because it is closed on three sides (except for the back entrance). One guy that works for the driver and tied packages to the top of the bus is hanging onto the back. Part way one of the bags comes off the top, we stop and he runs back to get it, brings it back, there is some arguing and inspecting from the owner, and then he ties it back on top. We meet up with contacts from the village and walk around the market for a while. I take the opportunity to ask how to greet people and to thank people in the villages language. There is also lots of dried fish for sale, clothes, fruit and so on. We stop and get lunch, then make some tea, then load up into an old truck the village uses to travel to market, with bags and sheep tied on top, and head out to the village. We stop along the way at several smaller villages and people get on and off with their bags. Finally, just before nightfall we get to the village. It is built of mud bricks up on a cliff on the edge of the valley. There is no electricity and no cell phone reception. I am greeted and welcomed by lots of people. We walk up part of the cliff to get into town, by then it is dark. I set up my tent on a flat area between two houses (to keep mosquitoes away while I'm sleeping). Then the chief comes to visit and we all eat supper together. He seems very nice and via translation tells me I am welcome to the village. I respond by saying thank you in his language, which is a big surprise and big hit as forigners never are able to say anything in their language. We talk for a while then turn in.

The next morning just before sunrise a man brings us a rooster, held upside down by the legs, as a gift and says that he wants to be our friend. In the morning the women walk down to a pool of water in the valley below and fill up huge gourds full of water to carry on their heads back up to the houses in the village. Many of them do this with babies tied to their back and many are also wearing bright color prints. There is a long (by our standards) greeting exchange as they meet each other for the first time each day. In the houses the water is stored in a clay bowl that is covered and water is dipped out to use during the day. Many of the men head out to their fields in the valley carrying tools or working with animals. There are a lot of goat like sheep. There are two wheeled donkey carts for carrying heavy loads around. Everywhere I go the people are very friendly. Fodder for the sheep and goats is kept on the roof of open structures that also provides shade and the younger men sit on mats in the shade and talk and brew tea. I hang out with them for a while. In the middle of the day it is very hot and everyone sort of takes it easy. There are groups of kids running around and they find me fascinating and watch everything I do. If I walk toward them however some of the younger ones are terrified and run away. I search for three small rocks of the right size, and their curiosity grows, then I turn to them and start juggling the rocks, and they chat quickly with each other about it. Then I put the rocks down and later I see them picking them up and trying to juggle them. In the afternoon we walk to the next village and visit there, walking is the only way to get to it, there is no road and the trail is rocky and twists in some points so even a motorcycle would be slowed down. There was a little kid that saw us as we came around a corner and was terrified, I never saw such a small child run so fast. We greet some people in this village that my contact knows and everyone seems to be very nice and friendly. Before we leave to return a man says some kind of blessing for us. On the way back a woman gives us some huge ripe mangoes that she has just collected as a gift. When we return it is getting dark again, we have the rooster for supper over a bed of rice and talk with the chief some more.

The next morning I have to pack to get ready to start the journey back. We have some coffee and I eat a mango (by the way the day before I had the best guava fruit I have ever tasted). I brought some small gifts, one is a hand cranked flashlight that I give directly to the man that gave us the rooster. The rest I give to the chief for him to distribute. Another guy gives me a bag of small hard candy as a gift.

To get back I ride on the back of a motorcycle down the trail and past several other villages until we get to the road. There I wait in the shade on a mat with several other people next to the road. They are curious about me but we can not communicate very well because of language barriers. So I draw in the sand to explain where I am from. I draw an outline of Mali with points for Bamako, Mopti and a point for our present position. Then around that I draw an outline of Africa. Then Europe with France and Germany. I put a point for Paris. This all seems to be understood very well, since Mali was a French colony there is a lot of familiarity with France and Paris. Then I put a dot for Hamburg in Germany and explain with "Allemand." Then I point to myself and connect the dots. Of course they think I am from Germany so I draw the US "Amerique" and connect a line from Hamburg to the US. Then I talk/draw about some other countries I have visited, how cold or hot they are, and so on. While doing this trucks pass by or stop and people get on or off. At the rest stop they are also selling gas with is in glass bottles in a wooden rack by the road. Eventually I meet up with my contact and the chief and we all get in the back of a truck and ride to Mopti. There we go out for dinner with the chief and make arrangements for me to travel back to Bamako.

Early the next morning, before 6, I have my bags packed and am waiting for a motorcycle ride to the bus stop with a guy that is also going to Bamako. The guy oversleeps, I call him at 6:30 and he comes rushing, picks me up and we ride across town to the bus stop. There bags are tied on the top, including a motorcycle toed on top of the bus, and we get in and soon are on the road. There is a cardboard box full of chickens that get loose at some point and provides some entertainment as they are caught and put back in. The bus stops briefly in several towns for people to get on and off. Then we stop for lunch and I buy some sheep stew for me and my travel companion at a roadside diner. Then get a bag of peanuts from a kid selling them next to the road and we load up and are off again. This time there are two men that are arguing about the situation in the Ivory Coast (the former president refuses to step down after the election and there is a standoff, also between two militaries support and could erupt into civil war). The argument ebbs and flows with other people on the bus interjecting comments from time to time. My travel companion seems agitated but doesn't say anything until a certain point then starts yelling and goes on for a long time. Other people on the bus seem to agree with him and make comments, then he seems to get the whole bus going against this one other guy and is making one comment after another that the rest of the bus shouts their agreement with. Then the conversation is over and the original man is quiet and looks out the window. In the late afternoon we suddenly pass another bus that is turned on its side in the road and the bags that were tied on top are spilled all over the side of the bank. The bus stops and everyone gets off to go look at the accident. Then everyone gets back on the bus and we start moving again. After about 20 minutes a truck with sirens goes by heading for the accident. Closer into Bamako there are large fires burning on the hillsides in the distance to clear land for agriculture. Then finally as it is getting dark we wind our way into Bamako and get to the bus stop. Then I get my bags and a taxi and we split up on the way into town. I am staying at the original hotel and he is staying with a friend of his.

The next morning I run some errands and travel around Bamako a bit. I take several taxis between points but I have plenty of time and walk back across the bridge over the Niger on foot. I get some street food and repack everything and then call the taxi of the man that brought me from the airport. He picks me up to take me back to the airport. I check in, get through security and passport checks then as it gets dark I am waiting for the overnight plane back to Paris then a connection on to Hamburg.

It is cold when I get back with snow on the ground...

Also, in Decemebr we had Christmas, which M had a lot of fun decorating for, and T's 12th birthday. He decided to wear his pajamas the entire day and had a lot of fun with silly string, opening presents and a cake.

(I will add pictures next)

Playing with the phones camera

It snows some more Thursday night and here are some pictures from walking around Friday morning.


Just outside of town.


Cold swimming hole!


Park bench.


Cars getting buried.


Here comes the sun.


Town on the lake.


You can sit outside at the bakery.


Market day.

Still Snowing

It has stayed cold and continued to snow on and off (and is snowing at the moment out of the window). We drove by Eutin this morning and some sizable drifts had formed on the side of the road. Winter is a month early!

V and the kids gave me my Christmas present early this year. I am traveling in Africa next week and they bought me a quad-band phone that should work with sim cards there. This is my first cell phone and I have no idea how to use it. (I made it all these years without a cell phone/mobile/das handy.)

A photo from my new phone (bakery in Bad Malente).

Also, I don't think I have mentioned this on the blog yet. V is expecting in March, a baby girl!

Winterwetter

It has snowed even more until yesterday and then the sky cleared off last night. This morning everything was frozen and it was -5 C. The roads were not safely drivable in our opinion (the roads are full of frozen slush with ice underneath) so the kids are getting a day off--I have no idea if the schools are actually closed or not. V and I walked to town to get breakfast at the bakery and the wind was driving snow dust off of roofs and blowing around on the ground. Everything is white. It is supposed to snow some more tomorrow and the longer forecast is below freezing the rest of the week. This is a very early start to winter for N. Germany and everyone is talking about how unusual it is. For one of my newer coworkers, this is the first snow he has ever seen and I think he is starting to get concerned--we had some fun teasing him that this is nothing, wait until it really starts snowing and gets cold...

Also, the kids got their long awaited advent calendars today (Dec. 1st)! They are a big deal here in Germany.

A White, Black Friday

It started snowing last night and hasn't stopped yet!

Thanksgiving

I completely missed Thanksgiving (although the real Thanksgiving is not until Dec. 5th this year so there is still time)--I guess I am getting used to being in Germany. Dec 5th is also a German holiday (shoes get put outside the door and filled with candy in the morning) that M is looking forward to.

We are still waiting to hear back from the new school so they can meet with our kids and see about a transfer.

Big news! V is pregnant and due in ~March! The kids are very excited and debating how they will raise the new baby. The obvious question that comes up is citizenship, as far as we understand it at this point, since I do not have a permanent work visa, the baby will not get dual citizenship at birth. However, this seems to be a moot point anyway as Germany does not allow dual citizenship in general, and she will loose German citizenship as an adult if she decided to keep US citizenship (I suspect this is all related to the idea that people should visit Germany to work but not to live).

The weather has turned dark, and cool and rainy now. The sun has come out a few times over the last few weeks but in general it has been very shy. In a way I like this kind of weather, but it would also be nice to get a break for a few days. One of the people at work brought in a crate of fresh smoked herring the other day. He catches them out on the Baltic, soaks them for a day in salt water, then smokes them and we ate them right away. I am used to smoked fish being hard and dried out but when it is fresh it is very good. From the smell of smoked fish, people appeared out of nowhere and started chatting and soon the whole table was surrounded by people eating the fish (I suspect we all also have a vitamin deficiency from the lack of sunlight and this makes the fish more appetizing as well).

PS - There is some snow falling now mixed in with the rain. The first of the season!

PPS - OK, two people from the US said it is on the 25th (today) this year; just goes to show how out of touch I am. And, St. Nicholas Day is actually on the 6th here in Germany.

Schools, again...

Once again there is a problem with the school situation. I mentioned that there was a takeover of control of the school council last school year. All the current teachers were fired and there are all new teachers this year. We didn't want to move the kids again, but it looks like this is not going to work out. We met with the teachers before school a month ago to ask what was going on. It seems the the school has been split into two groups, older students that are receiving regular classroom instruction and younger students that are doing some projects but are largely unsupervised during most of the school day. Our kids are not being taught (which echos the situation we had in the public schools before). We pointed out to the teachers that our son is in the age group that is receiving classroom instructions and they said that he was not included for nonsense reasons (he didn't request it and thus was not selected in the placement decision). I asked if we had any choices about our kids education (as apparently the other parents have) and we were told no. I also asked again for a username and password for the school website so we can communicate and stay on top of events and the volunteer schedule. All of the other (German) parents are able to access the website but we have been excluded and continue to be excluded and kept in the dark. So, we are looking for another school to transfer the kids to. There is another private school that we just learned about. It is farther away, but has regular classroom structure available for all of the kids, and many of the kids from this school transfered there during the takeover, so our kids will know other kids there. We have contacted the school and have a meeting with them in a few weeks, but if there is a transfer it might not be until the end of the year until it can happen.

Name change

I've fallen behind again in blog entries. A lot has happened and I will try to catch up again. Also, I've changed the title so that it is less specific and more general to northern Germany. Because of our commuting and the kids school location and so on, we really live in a region in Schleswig-Holstein, so I have renamed the blog "Norden."

In Oslo

Once again I am back outside of the EU. I just arrived in Oslo, Norway this afternoon and will be here a couple days on business. After checking in to the hotel I walked down to the harbor to have a look around. The central city seems very busy/crowded compared to a lot of cities in Germany. People were fishing in the harbor. Also, on the flight up here we passed directly over the Skagen peninsula. I got a good look at it from the air. The countryside around Oslo is already hilly in contrast to N. Germany, but I am not near the big mountains yet.

V has her driver's license!!!

At last! After many months of paperwork and waiting, V's test was scheduled by the driving authority for this afternoon in a nearby town (after phone calls to see what the hold up was--they were waiting for her driving school to contact them, but we don't have a driving school...). I dropped her off and waited for the results. She did great and we were both a bit shocked she passed on the first try (reminder, some of the answers to the questions are very strange to non-Germans). After the test they handed her a stamped piece of paper, she asked to clarify to make sure she passed and half the class responded "yes." I took her straight to the Kreishaus and after some waiting she was handed her new license after handing over her US one. Then I had some fun making her drive me around the county for a while. It is the first time she has driven in Germany. This is in the nick of time too. School starts back up on Monday and finally I don't have to commute the kids back and forth all day!

In Reykjavik

...

In Helsinki

Actually T and I are in Vantaa, Finland, a town just outside of Helsinki where the airport is located. We are on our way to meet uncle D in Reykjavik, Iceland for a much needed vacation. It is bright and sunny here in Finland. We spent the night at a hotel because we had a 24 hour layover. There is an entertainment center nearby "Flamingo" that we walked to last night, got supper and walked around. It has an indoor pool, bowling alley (that we walked over and looked into with a glass panel floor/ceiling), spa, movie theater, restaurants and attached hotel. We ate in one of the restaurants that overlooked the pool, and people on the other side of a glass wall were in the pool area ordering from the same restaurant. T wanted to see the new Shrek movie but it was only available in Finnish so we did some window shopping instead.

Back from Vienna

I was in Vienna, Austria since last Wednesday on a business trip. I just got back at almost midnight last night. It was very warm there (and very warm here in N. Germany) all last week. Vienna is a nice city. Most of the time I was busy and due to fly back Sunday morning, but I ended up just missing my flight in a string of bad luck (despite leaving early in the morning in plenty of time). My new flight was scheduled for late on Sunday and the whole time I regretted not having time to see more of Vienna so I turned the situation around and went back to the city for the day, walked around some parks, ate lunch at a sidewalk restaurant, and visited the Belvedere palace/museum. The most famous painting at the art museum is probably "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt.

The night before I could tell again that Germany had won a soccer match. At one point people were running around wearing German flags and flying them from cars etc. (This was in Austria!!!)

Germany vs. England

Just a brief note about the game over the weekend. It seemed to be a big deal. You could tell each time Germany scored a goal without a radio or tv on. People would cheer off into the distance over the town. We figured it would be a good time to get groceries and sure enough, hardly anyone was driving and the store was a ghost town. I did see one woman that ran into the store from apartments across the street talking on a cell phone, then minutes later came running back out talking in the phone. A little while later we could tell Germany won because everyone except for us was yelling, fireworks were set off and cars were driving around beeping and playing music loudly. They all seemed to have a good time with the game.

World Cup

There is a once every four years international sports competition going on right now that is not the Olympics. We hardly know it exists in the US but the rest of the world prepares for and follows it closely. It is the soccer World Cup (which Germans often translate into English as "foot ball.") I was in East Africa during the last World Cup and it was playing on radios, people were talking about it, and at night they gathered into restaurants/bars or whatever public structure had a TV playing to watch the games. Normally there is almost a cultural phobia about appearing nationalistic in Germany. As a general rule Germans do not fly the German flag and here opt for the regional Scheswig-Holstein flag instead. But that has all changed with the World Cup. Now cars are driving around sporting the two "patriot" German flags sticking up from each window. German flags and stickers are hanging up in random places, windows, balconies, car doors, rear windows. All kinds of German flag colored toys and wrappers are at the grocery store. At work there is a pool going following the games. Last weekend there were spontaneous car horns and yells from the town as a goal was scored by the German team. Apparently, Germany is doing well this year.

I am learning something about how it is structured. There are four groups of four teams. The US is with England (why not UK? or EU as a whole?, each US state doesn't get its own team), Slovenia, and Algeria. From each of these four groups one team will go on to a tournament for the final world cup game. Last time it was won by Italy.

The US is also doing OK. We tied England 1-1 this time around, down from beating them 1-0 the last time we played England in the the world cup (link).

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Update, it is eight groups of four teams and two from each go on to the playoffs...I guess. I am still confused.

2 cents

Here is my suggestion for the Gulf oil leak (everyone is making one, and yes, it is in the news here as well). What about a freeze lock? It would need a sleeve around the pipe before the break. Pump the sleeve with liquid nitrogen surrounding the pipe, the oil in the pipe cools down and starts to become solid, once it solidifies completely, then the end of the pipe can be cut and refitted. In a pipe the fluid moves fastest in the center and slower near the edges and at almost no speed at all microscopically near the edge because of viscosity. Immobilizing a small layer near the edge effectively shrinks the inside diameter, slowing everything down a bit more and so on. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and they have underwater robots...? Of course it would need to be over a long enough section to hold back the pressure behind it, but if they could just slow it down enough ...

Busy and behind schedule

I haven't posted in almost a month. Sorry about that. I have been very very busy and have fallen behind with a lot of things. I'll briefly go over some highlights of the last month.

The next weekend after coming back from Denmark I went back with T for a day trip just over the border at Flensburg. We parked, walked over a bridge that straddled the border and were then in Denmark and could fish. We cast for a few hours but didn't catch anything, so we packed up and headed back. Still it was nice to get out.

Now that I have both my US and EU driving licenses, V has started the process of getting her German license. The person I saw was away on vacation when we went to the office and the alternative threw the book at her (driving lessons, eye exam, first aid class, driving test, ...). The woman was very condescending and asked if V had ever driven before (miming steering a wheel while asking). V has been driving for over 20 years! In Hamburg they have a direct exchange with US driving licenses (no extra testing or anything) that V checked into but you have to be employed in Hamburg. There is also another angle, if you are working for a US company in S-H you can automatically get a drivers license, so if V were self employed, ... ? At any rate something has to be done soon because if you do not convert your license within three years of moving to Germany you have to start from the very beginning as if you have never had one before. V got the eye exam done and is planning to take a two day first aid class in Kiel next week to get those parts done.

The weather has warmed and "sunnied" up dramatically. I've taken the kids on a few mini-outings in the area the last few weekends. One of these is a tree that is a local tourist attraction (more about that later), a maze in a field out of stones, and a tower on a hill where there are nice views. Also last week we drove around Ploen to look at the Rapeseed fields which are bright yellow and at their peak. Mid-May is the best time to visit northern Germany.

And, last of all, I found out that kids under 12 can fish in Germany if they are with someone that has a German fishing license (and has a permit for that particular pond/stream, ...). So T went fishing with A and I tagged along. T caught a pike (finally we caught a fish!!!)! We brought it home and he was very proud of it. V fixed big pike steak fillets out of it.

Denmark Fishing Trip

Last weekend we drove up to the Denmark island of Fyn to go fishing. It is complicated and practically impossible for us to get a fishing license here in Germany because we are residents (tourists can get one however), but in Denmark you just have to buy a fishing license and kids under 18 can fish without one. We stayed in a little cottage on a vacation campground. We didn't catch anything (except that Molly snagged some seaweed that put up quite a fight in the current and seemed just like a fish at first), but it was nice to be able to fish openly and legally. We tried fishing for needlefish (which Europeans call garfish, but they are completely different from gars in America), sea trout (ocean going brown trout which can get very large), and fished some in the harbor with a flouder rig baited with herring. We were a bit too early for the needlefish. The saying around here is that when the rapeseed field bloom, the needlefish are biting, and we were just before that but couldn't go this weekend because of my job. Also, the kids got to watch a movie in English! (Movies are usually dubbed in German in Germany but are in their original language in Denmark.) And, a big highlight for me, because we were outside of Germany, V was able to drive the car for the first time and I got to ride in the passenger seat for a change!

School Volunteering

The school is operating with a skeleton crew now (with the headmaster barred from entering the school). The week before last there were only two teachers Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. On those days V volunteered by staying at the school during the day with the kids and helped out where she could. I did some extra driving after school to help shuttle some kids around between activities. (I tried practicing German with them, and having them practice some English while driving, which in general resulting in a lot of giggling.) This last week some other parents came forward and volunteered. The remaining teachers have a lot of pressure on them and I really appreciate how hard they are working to keep things going. The kids split into two groups, one group worked with horses for a few days while the other group made a film at the school. Most of the film was funny and light hearted but it did contain some "angst" sections with one of the teachers "fighting evil" and with WWII bombing references, which my son told me was because the kids were worried about what would happen with the school change.

Also, V saw/heard about some advertisements to hire new teachers that the occupation adults put out. Apparently they do not have anyone in place to take over teaching, and from what the headmaster said it can be difficult to find people to hire. So this transition may continue for a long time.

Iceland Volcano

The giant cloud of ash moving over Europe from the eruption in Iceland has made news headlines from all the flight cancellations, but as far as we can tell that is all. The sky looks normal here and the sunsets are not any redder than normal. There is a lack of contrails in the sky like the days after 9/11 in the US. If there is any ash that has fallen, it is yellow, on my car windshield, and looks suspiciously like the pollen that fell last spring.

Update, there was some disruption at work from the volcano. Several people were traveling and were trapped when their flights were canceled. One person spent an extra week in Spain and someone else took ground transportation back from Italy. Now however, things are back to normal.

Mars by 2035 or bust

I was very disappointed by the cancellation of a US return to the moon. No one has been to the moon in my lifetime and I am approaching 40! Today Obama announced a budget increase for NASA with a plan for a manned mission to an asteroid, followed by orbiting mars and returning, then a manned mission to land on mars in 25 years! I hope very much this plan works and I will be able to see humans land on another planet in my lifetime.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8623691.stm

Paris

It is April and we are in Europe so where else would I take my eight year old daughter on a trip. We went to Paris this week, left early on Monday and came back on Thursday. I planned ahead and actually bought the tickets and booked the hotel last year, then back in February I reserved boat and Eiffel tower tickets. M was very excited about the trip, was constantly looking forward to it and looked up all kinds of things about Paris that we could see while there. She had her bag packed days ahead of when we were leaving and kept reminding me of when we needed to go. I had never been to France before so it was new for me as well. Also, M was studying some French words with V, oui, non, bonjour, merci, ... to help prepare. So on Monday morning we walked to the train station, took the train to the airport in Hamburg, then flew to Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris (which I had transited through once before), found the train stop in the airport, got tickets to Paris (they had instructions in English for buying tickets from the machines) found the platform and train and hopped on. To get into the platform area they had turn styles that you fed the ticket into and grabbed again like the metro system in DC. Paris is a big city, we traveled into it for quite a while. We made two transfers onto different lines, following the metro map, and then emerged almost in front of our hotel with the Eiffel tower in view just across the river.





In many ways Paris "felt" more like a city in the US compared to Germany (people jaywalked, there were more minorities around, cars went over pedestrian crossings between pedestrians, streets were messier). It was almost like being in Washington DC with the tourist sights and museums along the National Mall and Potomac (here Champs-Elysees and Seine) with large marble buildings around.

After seeing the Seine and the way the walkways, steps and roads were arranged around it I recognized scenes in movies I had seen that were along it (and thus in Paris) but I had not realized before how characteristic it was. M also said, it was just like in Ratatouille.

We checked in and dropped our stuff of at the hotel and then a little later went for supper at a French restaurant with a view of the Eiffel tower. Then it was getting dark and walking back we saw them light up the tower like a Christmas tree, with blinking lights and search lights on top.

The next morning (Tuesday) all the museums were closed so we walked up to the Arc de Triomphe, then got a croissant breakfast at a cafe, and headed to the Eiffel tower. I had tickets to go up in the tower at noon. (Also, a friend of M's in the US sent her a cutout drawing of herself to take pictures of in Europe and send back. It's part of a school project [see the Flat Stanley Project]. M is planning to surprise her with pictures of Paris.)





... will add more ...

School/Spring Updates

Several things have happened over the last couple weeks and as usual I have been swamped, so I will go over some updates on the highlights.

First of all the weather, right on cue, on the first day of spring it was warm(er) and sunny, the day before large cracks in the ice on the lake started to appear, on the equinox the cracks widened considerably throughout the day, every few hours they seemed to have doubled. M was excited about all the non-frozen water on the lake. By the end of the day the ice was drifting with only the edges of the lake still immobile and 99% of the snow was melted. Today the ice and snow seem like a distant memory. This far north it is like a switch is flipped, spring comes so suddenly. Now the sun is up for a long time, fields are turning green, and crocuses and Schneeglockchen (little snow bells) are up everywhere. The Winterlinger are already fading. (And I learned the German word for pansy flowers from a neighbor that was planting them earlier this week, Stiefmuetterchen, literally "little step mother") The trees are still sticks however.

OK, now about the school. We went to the emergency parents meeting. Actually the headmaster, who has barely spoke to us much at all before, suggested that we attend and pointed it out to V. In true form (for us) we went to the school, waited, and no one was there. Then V made some calls and found out the meeting was in a different town completely, so we drove there as quickly as we could but of course we were late. It was at one of the parents house and the adults were crowded around a dining room table while the kids all played together in apparent chaos. We learned along the way that this was a subset of parents that wanted to keep the current teachers (and our families made up half the kids in the school), it was a "by invitation only" meeting and were meeting to see what to do. Apparently, people had joined the school "club" that did not even have kids in the school and were now trying to shut it down. Out of respect for their privacy, because what is said here could get back to the people involved, I will not go into many details about what they discussed. However, I suspect they were suspicious of us at first (being Americans and all the stereotypes that entails, individualistic unilateral corporate military authority ...) and asked if we wanted to say anything. I told them that what was important to us was our kids, and having this school available was one of the main reasons we were able to stay and live and work in Germany; we had a horrible experience with the public school before, and that the headmaster and teachers have done a wonderful job helping our kids adjust to living here and couldn't be thanked enough for their work, and that we were very concerned about what our options would be now that they are trying to take over the school and convert it to more like a German public school. The group really brightened up when I said this and they saw that we were on their side.

A relevant observation that many Germans themselves agree with me on, one central point I see in German culture is an insistence on "the one right way" to do things, and anything else is wrong by default and has to be corrected. Also, in the US we are taught while growing up not to turn other people in for breaking minor rules, i.e. not to tattle-tale or snitch to the teacher, police or whoever is in authority. In Germany it is quite the reverse, people are encouraged to point out rule breaking from an early age and to "correct" others. Rather than being embarrassed they are proud to do this, even as adults and other adults encourage this behavior. It seems childish to us, but many things seem childish across cultures--because one part of cultural differences are the very things that children do spontaneously and adults are trained not to do (the other part is the things we are trained to do additionally that do not come spontaneously). To be fair, while to Americans it seems like Germans worship authority, to Germans it seems like Americans behave childishly in their distrust of authority. Also, Americans are more likely to trust the actions of private corporations but distrust the government while it is the opposite with Germans (trust the government, distrust private organizations).

So, to get back to the school, there is a compulsion from other people in the community to fix the school, because it is wrong, private and does not teach things like the public German schools do, even if their own kids do not attend. Identifying and removing dissidents is a part of any culture, but in this respect it is especially strong here and we are up against a central issue in German culture. Anyway, we are now part of the "resistance" parents. Some of them are very upset, after all they created this school for their children and went through the long struggle of getting it officially recognized and all the financial and legal battles over the last five years, only to have it taken away from them now. Several of them also had babies that they wanted to eventually attend (the headmaster has a one month old just born, before he was fired). At least one of them said they wished they could leave the country to raise their kids, actually one parent did move to Ireland a few weeks before (and these are German parents, not foreigners like us).

Aside from the obvious negative aspects and our concern over what will happen with our kids and school, there was a bright side. While driving home I felt good about something and realized, this is the first time we have really been a part of a group in the local community. For the first time it wasn't just us alone against the world, we were part of a group that shared our concerns that is against the system.

So the next day we took our kids to drop them off at the school. There was a huge work truck double parked in the drop off area and sure enough, "the gardener" was sitting in the truck, smoking a cigarette, and watching the school ominously. The "occupation" had arrived. I took our "resistance" kids into the school, later when picking them up the gardener was standing outside the building watching the place. Sometimes it almost feels like I am in a movie.

The mid-week V flew back to the US for a week and I had the kids on my own. Easter break is coming up and the last night of school there is an overnight sleepover at the school that the kids are looking forward to. The kids are still sad the teachers are all leaving but we are just trying to keep everything going as is until something becomes resolved. Things are going OK. One afternoon I have a nice chat with the headmaster and we worry about what will happen to the kids that attend the school. He points out a pile of cardboard boxes that was dumped on one of the walkways around the school rather than being cleaned up (the parents have rotating responsibility to clean the school) and said it was symptomatic of the problems occurring. Over the weekend I take the kids to a park and they play for a long time and do really well. It feels good to get outside for so long and let them run around. Then on Monday I go to drop them off at the school and something is wrong. There are hardly any cars there and some strange people are standing around staring at us as we walk in. Most of all, "goatee," who appeared to be a ringleader of the opposition during the school meeting where the teachers were fired (and does not have kids that attend), was standing in the road talking to the headmaster. I went in and talked to F. It turns out the opposition took some kind of additional action, and rather than the headmaster and current teachers finishing out this school year until replacements can be hired, the headmaster is now barred from entering the school, school is closed for the rest of the week, and the overnight before Easter is canceled. They are sending the kids back home with their parents. I am stuck in a bad situation because I have a job and the kids on my own until V gets back. Legally the kids can not go to work with me and we have an absolutely required, once yearly safety briefing the next day. Plus we have a neighbor that can create problems and it is not legal for the kids to be home alone... F said not to worry about it, he would volunteer and watch the kids at the school unofficially for me and a couple other parents. It is too bad that he is being fired.

V returned from the US on Wednesday and we drove to the Hamburg airport to pick her up (no more spending all day on the trains to get back and forth to the airport!). She brought back some food that we can't get here: black beans, collard greens, black-eyed peas, okra (which unfortunately was canned, you can't transport fresh vegetables), canned sweet corn!!! I stared at the labels on the cans for a while. It looked really strange to see everything, down to the tiny writing on the ingredients, written in English (and Spanish in some cases). I have been here for over two years, with only a few days back in the US at a meeting over a year ago, and now not seeing German on labels looks very strange to me.

OK, so now Easter break has started. It is not clear what will happen when school is supposed to start back up, or if it will be closed for some time. Anyway, T and I have a trip together later in the summer (part of my promise last fall to do more traveling with the kids while we lived here), but first I have a trip with M this break, we leave on Monday, she is very excited, and I will write more about that next.

Insurrection!

On Monday the kids had their turn at the school drama. Many of the kids were very upset that the teachers are leaving. These teachers really are wonderful people that are great with kids. As far as I can tell it started with a kid that wrote some slogans on the bathroom wall with a marker protesting the vote. M copied one of them down and xeroxed the paper, then put a copy in each of the kids mailboxes by the front door. While T made some protest signs and taped them up on the walls and one on a stick as a sign to carry around. Other kids also made signs and wrote on the walls and overall they had a big protest at the school. The teachers allowed them to protest in various ways and said the kids were working out their frustration. When I went to pick them up M had a stick and was looking for tape for her sign to carry around. I think it is great (you can't get an education like this at a public school). The parents are having an emergency meeting Tuesday night and we are told that a parent needs to be present at the school each day until the end of the year (not sure why, perhaps to keep the kids from trashing the school).

School meeting

On Friday I asked B if the kids could stay at their place Saturday afternoon while we went to the meeting and he said it was no problem (they have kids the same age to play with). We dropped the kids off and drove up to the school. In the note we got we understood that the meeting was supposed to start at 3pm but when we got there it was already underway (I later found that it started at 2pm) so we had to walk in while they were discussing something and all eyes were on us as we found a place to sit down and then people asked us to sit in several different places. We finally ended up sitting next to F who helped translate for us. We filled out some paperwork for joining the group (it is legally organized as some kind of "club") and handed in the paperwork, then they announced that we were joining and held a vote to see if we could join. We passed so that meant that we could then vote. The first part of the meeting after we arrived discussed that they had just achieved some kind of status with the government and could start receiving money from the province now, and there was an audit of their finances. The next point was to vote to release the council from legal responsibility for their decisions for a year and that all members would share responsibility, at which the headmaster objected and it did not pass. They took a break and then we got on to the big issue. Six of the parents had written a letter to the province government that their kids were not learning enough in school and there was a point on the agenda to vote on that the headmaster was not doing his job correctly and a call to look for a replacement. Then there were separate points for each of the teachers. The teachers said that they agreed with the headmasters philosophy and if the first vote passed they would quit with him because they did not want to work in a school that the parents of the children were against. Then the long drawn out part of the discussion began. Essentially it was a public humiliation of the headmaster and teachers. There was a call for parents to say what they didn't like and a few volunteered, one said that he worked in a garden and if he built something and it didn't work he took it apart and rebuilt it (this would seem like a reference to the school staff but he was referring to the children) then another guy said he ran a business building/repairing ships and a team either worked well and built things quickly or were slow and need to be fired. Then a couple of parents talked about how their kids handwriting was not good enough (what is this obsession in Europe with handwriting?), and they have been worried about it for years. My opinion on this is kids are not machines to be taken apart and rebuilt, nor to be taught as quickly as possible, and it is our job as parents to also teach our kids, especially if we are concerned about something (and especially since in Germany the kids are only at school for half a school day compared to many other western countries). I have worked hard at home teaching my kids after I get home from work, why can't these other parents also do this. Furthermore, I really like the self directed teaching style the school has. Most of what I really learned I learned on my own, not at public school. If we force kids to learn a list of subjects on a given schedule then they will learn to be told what to do and not think for themselves. If we encourage pursuit of their own interests, they will learn to learn on their own. Of course their is a balance between extremes, but the public schools (in Germany and the US), in my opinion, are not anywhere near this balance. Also, as parents we all have different skills, backgrounds and training, why can't we volunteer teaching the kids at the school to help out the teachers and give more topics to be available. Anyway, they went on and on about this and then a lengthy session devoted to changing the wording in the resolution so that it was stated and restated in front of everyone how bad a job the teachers were doing (which is also a political trick done in the US media, something is repeated many times until the majority of people believe it), then there was a call for each of the parents in turn to say what they didn't like about the teachers, which fortunately did not pass. (There are plenty of German public schools around, if they want their kids trained in that manner why not send them to the public school instead of destroying this one by making it more like the public schools and removing the option for everyone. This school was a/the major factor in us being able to stay and live and work in Germany.) Finally we got to the vote, which was called to be by secret ballot then there was a big drama as they wrote the results out on a presentation board then covered them to be unveiled officially the next minute. Both V and I voted but we were in the minority and the resolution passed 38 to 14, with some abstainers. At that point the headmaster and teachers left the meeting (there was no point in their staying) and V and I walked out with them.

The kids were very sad when we told them the outcome. Two of them have been wonderful with T helping him adjust to living here, after the first year with the public school and M is very fond of one of the teachers. They will stay to work until the end of the year but then all new teachers and a headmaster will have to be hired for the next school year.

More school developments

We had a parent-teacher meeting last Thursday. I was a bit apprehensive after our experience with the public school before, but it went really well. They told us how the kids were doing at school, and areas that they needed to work on. We told them areas we were working on at home (for example I have been spending a few hours each week with each of the kids to work on math, and V has been working on reading and writing). They told us their concerns (for example, T made an embarrassing WWII reference during a fight he had with another kid) and we told them ours. I mentioned that is was very frustrating to not have communication about special activities and days the school was closed and asked if there could be an email list to announce these kinds of things. One of the teachers left and came back with a list of special holidays that are not in the official regional schedule and said they would discuss setting up a notification system. I felt like the meeting was very productive. However, the bad news came at the very end. They told us that on Saturday (two days later) there was going to be a vote from the parents about how the school should be run and it was possible that they might vote to hire new teachers. Two of the teachers get along very well with T and M is fond of one of them. After our tumultuous first year with the school system, and despite our continuing frustrations, I was very concerned to hear this. The last thing I wanted to do at this point is upset the system we have worked out for our kids with a brand new one. Furthermore, they said that some of the parents wanted the school to be set up more like a standard German school--the very thing we were trying to get away from. I asked if we could come and vote at the meeting to keep the current teachers and he said it was possible and that he would send a letter home with the kids the next day to give us more information.

melting... ?

The day after the last post, we got the kids ready, drove to school, and guess what, no one was there. The schools weren't canceled due to the weather, and it was not a regional holiday in the official list of school holidays. No, the school has its own set of additional holidays that we have not been told about. We asked the next day when we went to the school again to see if it might be open and guess what, it was. So now we have a list of these additional holidays the school decided on but didn't communicate to us, and I can't help feeling it is only a matter of time until the next surprise ("what, you didn't know we had a required school trip on Saturday..."). (This is only really a problem for us, the other parents are part of a community and talk to each other all the time so they know what is going on without even trying; it doesn't occur to them to tell us and that we wouldn't know something that is so obvious to them.)

The weather, the days have really gotten longer and it feels very nice to have sunlight around again. It warmed up a lot this last week and melted 90% of the snow away. In some places the sidewalks became long trenches of ice full of melted water and people were walking in the road while some others were out chipping away at the ice to let the water drain out of the walkways. I'm sure the animals are relieved, there are places along the drive to school where the bark has been newly stripped off of the trees (from before the snowmelt). The spring flowers (yellow Winterlinger) were blooming under the snow and revealed as it melted around them. It even rained a couple times (premelted snow was falling), which is something we haven't seen in a while. The skate-sail people have packed up and left because the ice on the lake is too thin now from the melting (V saw them packing and the license plates on their vehicles were from places like Estonia and Russia). Last weekend we drove up to the beach to see the snow and ice next to the ocean, which is still an odd sight to me that I am not used to. There were roundish blocks of greenish ice that I think is frozen seawater. The snow was blown into large ridges right up the the edge of the water in some places. In one place there was a huge, deep pile of mussel shells the gulls were picking over. I told the kids we were looking for amber because no one has been looking for a while with everything covered in snow and ice, so we walked along the narrow edge of sand looking through the shells, driftwood and seaweed. In some places the sand was washed over snow so if you stepped on what looked like a normal sandy beach your foot would sink into the snow underneath. It looked odd to scrape away brown sand and see bright white snow underneath. The fjord in Kiel was frozen over and I drove as far as the island of Fehmarn where the Baltic was frozen for a ways extending out into the sea. People were out on skis with parasails pulling them along in some of the large fields.

But, the last couple of days it has been snowing off and on again.

Still snowing...

After the last post "melting" the weather changed its mind and turned back around again. The lake didn't quite melt and is now frozen solid again. People were walking around on it yesterday and the sail-skaters were out. It has snowed every day for many days (it is snowing lightly now) and now everything is bright white again with an overcast sky. On the way back from dropping the kids off at school there is a point where I drive up a hill with two fields on either side. At the beginning of the hill the horizon (black tree outlines in the distance) is blocked and the gray-white fields blend into the gray-white overcast sky. It looks as if the road extends into a whiteboard of nothingness and it is an odd feeling to drive into it.

We didn't even attempt to drive to school earlier in the week but on Thursday we didn't get the call in the phone-tree that school was canceled and the roads looked passable, at least here in town so we headed toward school. The roads got worse and about half way I decided it was too dangerous and turned around and came back. Later at work I found out schools were canceled anyway from coworkers. This is a frustrating thing that keeps happening with the school, there is a lack of communication, we asked to be informed and to be on the list to be called when school is canceled but for some reason we keep getting skipped over. Next case in point, on Friday M was under the weather but I took T to school. At the school other parents were carrying in trays of baked snacks, the kids were dressed up, ... something was going on. It turns out that there was a costume party at the school for Karnival (kind of like Mardi Gras in the US). All of the other parents "just knew" there was a party and yet again, despite our asking to be informed, no one bothered to tell us. This kind of thing also extends to work. A couple weeks ago there was some excitement from the secretary asking for my tax card (Lohnsteuerkarte), I told her I had already given it to the office when I got it in the mail almost two years ago, 2008. She said no she needed the one for this year, 2010. Is there a different one now? Finally she told me that a new one comes each year to some address (I'm still not clear if it is work or home) and it needs to be turned in to her office. So I went to the Rathaus (courthouse) and got a "replacement" one for 5 euros. It is a mystery to me how last years 2009 tax card got turned in unless is was sent to where I work and just skipped over me. At any rate, time and time again I have asked at work if there is anything I need to do that I wouldn't know about as an American, and even now, two years later, I am finding out things each day that I should have done or are important to know and people are very surprised that I didn't know about them despite admitting that they never told me about it. I hear about similar things happening to foreigners living in the US. Somehow, things that people grew up knowing, or have known for years, don't come to mind when foreigners ask about what they need to do; and we are surprised. Once again, the stereotype that Europeans are more aware of the dynamics of people coming from different cultures than Americans doesn't seem to hold up in my experience. I still find myself explaining to Germans that we don't do things the same way in the US and that's why I don't know about it.

Sorry to be negative about this, but it is a reoccurring theme that just won't go away. In addition to the Lohnsteuerkarte I just found out the rules about a "Sozialversicherungsausweis" card that apparently for the last two years I was supposed to have with me at all times in case the authorities checked--and again surprise from the Germans that I wasn't born knowing this. This will keep happening with each new foreigner working here if someone doesn't do something about it, and no one will do anything but me, so I am putting together a guide of things people should know but that no one will tell them when they come to live and work here.

To change to a brighter note, the snow has made the animals much easier to see. Near the school there are deer and boar tracks everywhere. Last week, on the way back from school a huge herd of deer was right next to the road with a pheasant looking for food on the very edge of the road where the snow was pushed back, I turned around and went by them again slowly so the kids could get a good look. A white deer was standing right in the front (they are bad luck, "pech," to kill according to the local hunters).

Also a side note before I forget, the hunters have a specialized hunting vocabulary that is mixed with Plattdeutsche, deer are something like Rotwild (red-wild) and boar are Schwarzwild (black-wild).

Melting

It is finally warming up and the sun is out. The temperature on the digital thermometer in our car this morning didn't have a negative sign on it (and didn't appear to be broken). School is back from weather cancellations (it is the first time in decades that school has been canceled for the weather according to the locals). I've been driving the kids to school again in the mornings and have a fun time getting the car over the ice into and out of the parking space (lots of wheels spinning and rocking the car, reverse-1st-reverse-1st... to get out). The roads a pretty clear now and the snow is compacting into hard, dirty, ice everywhere else; it really reminds me of upstate New York this time of year. Pools of water are appearing out on the lake. The coots will be happy for the lake ice to melt. When it froze completely over there was no way for them to dive to escape the hawks. They huddled together in a bunch out on the ice and hawks were taking turns dive bombing them. At one point a week ago in desperation they left the lake completely and went over the snow into town in a group and hung out in front of the grocery store, where people were going in and out, to escape the hawks (normally coots are very shy of people). There are a lot of dead coots and feathers in the parking lot between the lake and the grocery store now from the hawks. V and M took some bread to the ducks a few times over the last week. They were desperate and climbing all over each other to get to the food.

Two years!

Today it has been two years that I have been living and working in Germany.

Ice fishing

A lake near town had ice thick enough to drive a car on, so some guys took some axes and fishing rods and tried out ice fishing Wednesday afternoon. Only a few perch were caught.

German school refugees

Here is an article V pointed out to me about a German family that wanted to homeschool and had to get political asylum in the US to do it.

http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/201001260.asp

Some quotes from the article:
"rather than being concerned about the welfare of the children, the government was trying to stamp out parallel societies" -- I see this kind of sentiment a lot here in mainstream Germany. This also applies to unpopular religious organizations (not Catholic or Lutheran but "cults" like Jehovah's Witnesses who, in contrast, are not allowed to talk about their religion at work). Germany seems to want to force people to believe the same thing, and not have any dissenters, and is perusing this on the religious and education ends.

“This is simply about the German state trying to coerce ideological uniformity in a way that is frighteningly reminiscent of past history. Homeschooling is a growing social movement all over the world, and the Germans want to stamp it out based on a fabricated notion that homeschoolers are a ‘parallel society.’" -- ...

Also, there is the discriminatory side of this against non-Germans (not in this linked article). Turkish children suffer from lower expectations and marginalization, and we have heard first hand that teachers have "their own" kids to teach (German) and don't have time to teach "our" children (not German) even though they are in the same classroom.

Also, someone I know from Poland has privately told me that the only reason they will have to leave Germany in the next few years is because their children are getting close to school age and they don't want them in the German schools.

There are lots of things I like about living in Germany, but ignoring the problems won't help them go away. The public school system has been our biggest problem in living here and the " coerc[ion of] ideological uniformity" is frankly scary.

Even colder

It was an unusual (for winter here) clear sky last night so it got very cold. It was -18.5 C at the Luebeck airport this morning and -19 C in Selent. The coldest I've seen it here. The big lake froze over as far as the eye can see. People were way out skating on it and police were going around yelling at them to get off. It was sunny and clear and cold all day today!

Brrrr

It is cold this morning. The offcial temp at the Luebeck airport is only -8 C but it feels much colder. The snow is still hanging around and not melting, we've had snow on the ground all month long. The lake is chirping this morning like demented crickets. Ice is trying to form but it gets broken up and pushed to the shore by the wind and waves and is making the sounds.

Licenses

I finally got my US drivers license replaced! (The German drivers license office here took it before they would give me my German license.) It has taken several months and I had to request it more than once but finally, after having it sent to my brothers address and him remailing it, I have valid US ID. We had some trouble with bank accounts a few months ago because they would not take only passport ID and wanted to see a US drivers license for US citizens. Now that I have my US ID back there nothing stopping V from getting here German license now and helping with the kids commuting back and forth from school.

And

My Christmas present for myself; it is nearly impossible for me to get a fishing license in Germany because I am a resident now and would have to take extensive classes and tests in German (rather than a tourist license). Plus all lakes and streams, even if they are public, are controlled by private local fishing organizations and even if you have a fishing license you have to arrange for site specific temporary permits from them. On the other hand, Denmark is right up the road. So I was able to get a year-long non-resident Danish fishing license online (link) for only about 18 euros. It is good for any public fishing areas in Denmark and the kids can fish as well as long as they are with me.

PS - I stopped by the apartment in the afternoon and while T and I were there there was a loud, deep sliding and thumping noise and a lot of snow had slid off the roof with some getting caught by our balcony.

Haiti Relief Fund

https://donate.mercycorps.org/donation.htm?DonorIntent=Haiti+Earthquake

Above is a link to donate with Mercy Corps for the earthquake relief effort in Haiti.

Drifts

There are some deep drifts by the road on the way to the kids school.

Stopped Snowing

It seems like it has been snowing each day since New Years, but it has also been melting a bit each day so there is only 6-7-8 inches or so of accumulation. Today it has been overcast but there hasn't been any additional snow. A week ago the large lake started freezing over in spots, which is a rare event, but now the ice is gone and only the smaller lakes are frozen over. This week it has been hovering around freezing and not getting lower than the negative single digits (Celsius). School has been closed since last week so the kids have had an extended winter vacation, but we are expecting them to be open tomorrow now that most of the roads are clear. The snow and cold in Europe has made it into a lot of news reports (NY Times). V and I took the car out to the grocery store today to check the roads and get out of town for a bit.

Merry Old Christmas

Grandma and J are back off to the US today. They came on New Christmas and left on Old Christmas. I dropped them off at the train station this morning with V for the 5:15 to Hamburg.

Back from Palma

It was warm and sunny, just what we needed for a break from N. Germany. There was snow on the ground when we got back, and it is snowing today. I will upload some pictures soon.