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.