In case you didn't know...

you need plenty of gas for a "gute Fahrt." 'Nuff said.

Musings on a wayward son

M.'s first grade teacher leaned over to me during our last staff meeting. "We need to talk," she whispered. Hmm, I thought, nothing good can be in the offing. There are three possibilities that occur to a parent at times like this. Possibly something embarassing happened, like a big spill, or wet pants, and she wants to let me know that his feelings were hurt. Or, door #2, someone did something bad to him, like knocking him down at recess (though here that happens to kids all the time with no one paying any attention at all). Or possibly, worst case scenario, he did something bad enough to be worthy of notification from the teacher. It's not quite like getting a phone call home, but this little whisper, "we need to talk," has that odor to it. (I'm reminded of the occasional phone calls I've made to parents where before I say anything parents are asking "what did he/she do?")

So after the meeting we step aside, and his teacher doesn't pull any punches. "He started a food fight in the cafeteria." Somehow I'm not as shocked as I would have expected myself to be. Maybe because I can't quite picture a bunch of first graders winging noodles and sauce about and dumping potatoes on each others' heads, so it can't really have been that bad, but maybe also because perhaps I've seen something like this coming. M has been a bit edgy lately, and struggling to do what he really knows is the right thing. Not being bad, just having a hard time making the right choices.

So of course I'm apologetic, and his teacher is very kind and not at all blaming (though maybe she was more than a little annoyed, she seems to be thoroughly over it by now--a nice characteristic in a first grade teacher). And I promise to be firm with the boy, and to let him know that it isn't OK, and that I expect him to make some action of apology to make up for it, etc.

But lurking in the back of my brain...high five! You started a food fight?! You are SO much cooler than I ever was! Way to go, little buddy!

Don't tell him I said that.

Trick or Treating in Berlin

On Hallowe’en, we still had not gotten candy so we went out and bought some but not very much. There wouldn’t be so many kids. We all got ready to meet Malcolm’s friend for Trick-or-treating after we decided what to be. I was a prisoner with a shirt that said “PRISONER,” black and white striped tights, black and gray striped socks, navy blue shorts and a pillowcase. The pillowcase was two things: a bag of stolen money (not really) and a candy bag!

Seanna was a witch with my witch cape, purple and black striped tights, and a black shirt. Malcolm was “Karate Man” with his karate uniform. He didn’t have a belt with him so we tied a pair of long purple socks together and used that. We didn’t go to very many houses but we went to a lot of stores. There were a few funny things:

At one house, they gave us cough drops.

At one restaurant they gave us sugar packets.

We went to an art gallery where the man said “Sorry, I only have two pieces of cake and I can’t give each of you a piece.”

Somebody else said “I can give you wine…”

At one store they tried to give us lemons.

And then we got back home and our friend had just got back from France so we shared our candy with him. It was really fun!

Acrostic Alps

Adventurous

Long walk in the hills

Perfect view from the top

Sounds of trees swaying and water rushing

Life As A One-School Family

We all go—all five of us—to the same school every day. At home we have been at as many as 4 different schools—a preschool, two elementary schools (one for teaching and one for learning) and a middle school. We’ll have that again when we go back, only with two middle schools and two elementary schools.

But right now, we all walk three blocks to ONE school. This takes about ten minutes, or 15 when the boys (we’ve picked up a friend along the way) walk slow. Which is most days. Getting out of the house is its own issue with Mommy and Daddy invariably FRUSTRATED!! because we need to be there before our students and one or another of the kids dawdling along. Once we arrive, drop-off consists of a 10-yard detour to one child’s locker, a hug and a kiss in the stairwell for another, and with the third there IS no drop-off, as we share a classroom. We all see each other throughout the day at recess, lunch, in the teachers’ room, passing in the hallway…we’ve never been so together for so long. It’s like camp, but we get to go home together every day for whatever dinner we can summon the energy to cook.

Even more interesting is the effect on our dinner conversation. There’s no opportunity for the usual “What did you do today at school?” “Nothing, I don’t know,” interchange—because we’ve seen all the teachers at least once and we know all their friends and we’ve even been in class with them. So we TALK. There has never been so much conversation about what they’ve been doing. We talk about funny things that happened in class, injuries on the playground (see my previous posting on playgrounds for thoughts about that), what we learned…it’s great to know that we can as a family have conversation about what we like and what interests us and what’s frustrating. It’s possible (likely, even) that we won’t ever have an extended time like this again. What a blessing that we get to take advantage of this experience together for this year!

Klassenfahrt II

Be sure to read "Class Trip" first, so you know what in the heck I'm talking about here.

Essentially, on this trip we were up against the flip side of the fabled German bureaucracy—while some things are efficient, no one will do anything that isn’t part of the job description. So some pretty amazing things were left to chance because nobody bothered to think through whether it was actually a good idea. What follows is hard for anyone who has done this kind of thing in the US to imagine, but it’s all true:

On Wednesday, we had scheduled a bike tour …as we (3 adults, 30 nine- and ten-year olds) arrived at the equipment area I looked over at the wind whipping down the river and commented bleakly on the prospects for Thursday’s canoe journey. (This may seem like a non-sequitur, but it will come up again!) Anyway, we found waiting for us a row of 19 adult sized bikes. And nobody to direct us. Hello? Eventually a guy from the adjacent water sports group wandered over and said “there are some more bikes over there,” pointing to a row of 10 somewhat smaller bikes on the other side of a field. We headed over there to see what we could do, but things went rapidly downhill. Not enough bikes, wrong sizes, helmet didn’t fit, kids riding and running all over the place. By now there were two guys helping out but they didn’t seem to have a plan either and I got more and more aggravated. After an HOUR and a couple good rounds of “You are happy! Now you’re happy! You are happy! Hooray!” we had almost everyone on a bike and in a helmet. Which basically meant that we couldn’t all ride. At which point we said, “SCREW THIS!” And as soon as we had cast aside the pitiful and pathetic plan provided by the place we were staying, we discovered how ridiculous it really was.

It turned out that the guys helping us actually only worked for the sports training site next door. They had been alerted FIVE MINUTES before our arrival that we were coming and were only helping out the camp to be nice. As they fitted our kids with bikes they kept getting calls from the woman in charge at our place wondering where we were. How is it that she had never wondered how our group was going to fit on the bikes that she owned? Not her problem, apparently. Our new bike friends hadn’t wanted to steal customers, but they were pretty pissed at being left holding the bag on a bike trip that they hadn't planned. So once we had ditched the bike trip they immediately offered an afternoon of archery and rock climbing! Cool! The kids cheered loudly. So half the kids went off to shoot bows and arrows while we took a smaller group biking. Needless to say we didn’t have a clue where we were going and discovered some terrain that was, well, OK for a hike but not so much for bikes—a hill that seemed to go straight up and a windy, slippery, steep trail down the other side. But we only made two kids cry. And then they got to go climbing!

I tell you, I was really happy to sit back with a beer after the campfire that night. Ah yes, by now you’ve forgotten the fact that the kids were in cabins on their own! Which meant that we were free (encouraged, even—nay, commanded, I kid you not) to supply ourselves with beer and wine for our evening use after the kids went to bed. Nothing too surprising at camp, maybe, but on a school trip???

Anyway, the next day we were scheduled to go canoeing. After the biking fiasco I was a little worried (a little?) about this plan. One of our rescuers from the day before came by to clue us in—our uninterested and incompetent host had one giant war canoe for about half the kids, the rest in small boats twos and threes--with no instruction but with a motorboat to accompany us and pull the kids out when they flipped. Which, given the winds I’d seen the day before, they certainly would. Only the motorboat guy had called to say he wasn’t coming. By now I was having visions of the fabled Waramaug trip spread across half of Lake Champlain.

Thankfully our helpful friends from next door stepped up again and produced a second war canoe to take the other half of the kids—and thankfully I know a little about paddling and was able to guide it. So we piled 15 kids in one and 15 in the other (a bit squeezy, but OK) and off we went. Nobody knew the first thing about paddling and for much of the way it was complete chaos. Eventually I remembered to be along for the ride and just sat back ruddering while the kids fought with each other about who was paddling harder. Eventually they more or less got it together and we made a good learning experience out of it.

That night after dinner the kids threw a party in the “house” they had built in the woods, complete with a paved floor and benches. They pooled their money and bought refreshments at the snack bar. No planned activities could ever produce this kind of teamwork and initiative from 30 kids. When we did our final positive sharings on Friday morning, sang “Aroostasha” one more time, and did a rousing “Grade 5” cheer, it was—at it was meant to be—a TEAM. What fun!

The Class Trip

We’ve been back for a week and I’ve had time to reflect on the Klassenfahrt (what? A class fart? Are you paying attention now?), which is German for Class Trip. Over the years I’ve been involved in a lot of these adventures in US middle schools, and while this one was similar in its basic structure, in many ways it was an entirely different experience. Remember that these are 5th graders and that we took them for 4 days and 5 nights, which in itself is somewhat remarkable. But I think I need to tell more of the story…

The week began like many other class trip Mondays—whether it be Nature’s Classroom, KEEC, Sargent Camp, whatever—the kids gather at school with their various bags, parents mill about looking alternately proud of their grown-up kid, worried they’ve forgotten to pack Teddy, thrilled they have a week with one fewer kid to think about, and panicked that something might happen without them there to fix it. But as always, we managed to collect the various forms we still needed, get medications gathered, make a pile of the pocket knives (?see? I told you it was different) and, when the bus FINALLY arrived (OK, not so different from home) we herded everyone on.

The bus wound its way through the city streets for a remarkably long time—Berlin is amazing in how far it goes at a fairly high density—until we finally headed out into the Brandenburg countryside. Brandenburg, the German state to the west of Berlin, was part of the DDR (East Germany) and while Berlin is quite modern and cosmopolitan it remains quite conservative and has a reputation for harboring a significant neo-Nazi population. We didn’t experience any of this, but I suppose it’s sort of like driving an hour out of Boston and being in, say, Idaho. (PS I have since been reminded that while Brandenburg IS in fact to the west of Berlin, it is also to the East, North, and South. So I have revealed myself as painfully ignorant regarding German geography. Ouch!)

Anyway we arrived easily enough climbed off the bus to the first main difference. Those of you who have done some work in environmental education know that usually the staff greets the arriving campers immediately to begin establishing the expectations and showing kids where things were. In contrast, we milled about while one of the teachers (the ONE of us who speaks German) went to collect the room keys. Someone came by and dropped off a big wagon to carry our gear. We went off (on our own, mind you) to find our cabins. We gave the kids their cabin groups amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth, passed out the sheets and pillowcases (another big difference—no sleeping bags!) and retreated to the adult cabin.

This bears repeating. We retreated to the adult cabin. That is to say, there were no adults in the kids’ cabins. You heard right. Each group of 5 kids had their own “bungalow” with two rooms and a bathroom. We three teachers had our own bungalow, separate from any kids at all. Whoa. You’ll see why that is REALLY different later on.

OK, back to our adventures. Lunch was pretty uneventful; essentially it was like a little cafeteria, but it was gradually becoming clear that we the teachers were really on our own. This theme really carried through the week—while some of the activities planned were “guided” (in a manner of speaking) we pretty much had to run things ourselves, as there wasn’t in fact any staff there. A few examples:

• An art activity in which kids made small animals from toilet paper tubes or painted pre-cast plaster molds. Um. This taught them what?
• A “grill night” which meant that we had to cook dinner. OK, granted that they provided the meats, but it was pretty much like Thursday night BBQ at camp with me slaving over a hot grill.
• A campfire (which, by the way, we paid for) for which we had to collect our own wood, build the fire, and provide the entertainment. Good thing I’ve done a few of these over the years…Keewaydin folks would have recognized most of it.
• A “fox hunt” in which one group went out and left a trail of little paper foxes so the other group could track them, then hid in the woods. This filled (if you can believe it) a whole hour! And (imagine my voice dripping with sarcasm) it took SO much planning!

I was really worried about the disco night but that turned out to be a blast—obviously the woman in charge had spent the whole week playing with her song list instead of taking care of activities. And in the end, the kids had a great time, learned a bunch of crazy new songs from yours truly, and came together as a team. Which is what the whole thing was for, anyway. What curriculum did we cover? None. What standards were we addressing? Only the ones that have to do with behavior towards peers and learning to get along. Are those important?

Komputeren

One issue that has taken some getting used to is that the computers here speak German, and I don’t. An interesting point in the translation of English and German is that there are many words which have analogues; for example, the word for shoe is schuh and the word for hand is hand and the word for glove is…handschuh. Which isn’t exactly an analogue, but if you’re paying attention at least you can figure it out.

Computer terminology, on the other hand, is NOT the same and appears to have few overlaps. One exception is kopieren, which means (not surprisingly to those of you still reading) copy. But drucken for print and speichern for save are not immediately obvious, and I won’t begin to try to recall words for “move file” or “log out.” Thank goodness for universal icons like a little disk or a little picture of a printer. And really all of this would be fine if everything were in the same place—you know, there’s a drop-down menu called “file,” and that’s where one finds commands like print and save. Next to that is one called “edit,” and while I can’t name those commands off the top of my head past cut, copy, and paste, I pretty much know how to find what I need without worrying about what it says. I figure it could be in Russian and if the commands were in the same spot, I would find them OK.

Here is where we’ve been thrown the proverbial curveball. Our school has nothing but the best, of course, which (naturally) includes updated software like (again, natch) Windows and Word two thousand-whatever which are new and improved and totally different. Everything’s all like spiffy and streamlined and fancified and looks nothing like it used to. Which, (and now you’re starting to see my point) would be fine IF IT WAS IN ENGLISH. Which it’s not. It wouldn’t even help to have one of those Dummies books, because not only am I a dummy I’m a dummy who’s functionally illiterate. Thus rendering the book functionally useless, except maybe as a doorstop or perhaps on the kitchen table to hold a hot bowl.

Even typing a simple line of text requires mastery of something new. The keyboard is in German, too, and to make room for all the different letters with umlauts, and the fact that German hardly ever uses a “y,” things have been moved around. “Today is Monday” suddenly becomes “Todaz is Mondaz;” the apostrophe and colon turn into umlauted a’s and o’s. I spend minutes looking for a question mark or a slash. Not to mention the @ sign, which turns out to be on the Q but you have to use the “Alt Gr” key, whatever that is.

SO…tasks which used to be simple become time-eating missions on the starship Impossible. “Can anyone tell me how to insert a page break?” I say, and immediately a crowd gathers around my computer with people suggesting various combinations of left and right mouse clicks, pointing to German words in unfamiliar spots, and asking each other what that icon means. “What do you want to put a break in for anyway?” someone asks, and three other people recommend that I just find some other way to do it while everyone else wanders off muttering. Eventually someone who speaks German (but not computer) happens by and, after mulling it over for about ten seconds, says “try that one,” and of course it works. At home this would have taken all of 6 seconds for me to do; here, it’s taken about 6 of us 10 minutes which accounts for one human-hour of work time. Gads.

Needless to say, when a variety of things that look like error messages (“Achtung!) pop up as I’m trying to Abmelden, I generally click “ja” or “nein” or “OK” as quickly as possible in the hope that I can get away before the computer begins to smoke and I get blamed. So far my strategy has worked and nothing has broken for which I can be held responsible. I do most of my email and type these posts at home where I can happily sit in front of my own laptop, which listens to me when I tell it what to do.

Which brings me to the other problem, which is that my own computer apparently doesn’t speak German either. In this day and age internet use and email seem essential for communication, and we thought it would be fairly easy to link up somehow. When we arrived, our upstairs neighbor offered to help us get connected, and when after a couple of days we were still struggling, we took him up on his suggestion. He told us there was a wireless network in the building (in fact we could see a number of them, but all were security protected…darn) and he’d get us the password. Only this particular network wasn’t available. We searched. We tried again. We went up and got his key to the other guys apartment and went in while they weren’t there and sat next to the stupid wireless router with the computer and…nothing. Meanwhile his iPhone is happily talking to it. ???? Apparently our computer doesn’t speak enough German to communicate with the router. Do you suppose it gets frustrated, too?

Einschulung

Einschulung always has a “Zuckertute.” I don’t think you know about it. A Zuckertute is like something where you get a lot of candy and things for school. You can choose whatever you want to be on your Zuckertute. Mine had Hot Wheels on it. It’s like a giant ice cream cone but it’s cardboard. Some have pictures of things or the name on it and they all have chocolate and candy and gummy bears inside.

I went to a theater and I stood on stage and got a sunflower on Einschulung Day. There were a lot of people there. Some people wear nice ironed jeans and a fancy shirt. Other people wear fancy clothes like fancy new pants, new shoes, dresses, fancy shirts… Afterward you go to school and meet your teachers and play for a while. You also get to read books and have cookies and juice for snack. The day before you meet your classmates. It’s really fun and afterwards you might be able to get some balloons. Then you go home and you’re able to open your Zuckertute and you eat the candy!

PS The boys don’t wear dresses. And that’s all!

I just want to make sure that I keep adding things, even when I don't have much to say. We start school tomorrow and everyone's pretty keyed up. The kids are excited, especially the girls, who get to start for real. Malcolm doesn't get to begin until next week, after he has his Einschulung, which, for those who don't know, is a big German celebration for kids starting first grade. We'll be sure to write more after that happens.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to learn how to use computers here (all commands and keyboards are in German, so I can't really tell what I'm doing...more on that later, too) but overall feeling pretty good about getting started finally.

We're just back from a weekend in Hamburg and Elmshorn (a big town in NW Germany, Schleswig-Holstein) which was lovely and we had great weather. Hamburg has a part that was the basis for the design of the Charles River basin, but overall it's really a BIG port city. We also saw a good museum about Hamburg's role as the port of exit for a huge number of emigres to the US and elsewhere.

Con-FOOD-shun

Most of the time when we’re buying things we can figure out more or less what it is. Almost everything we see in the grocery store has a comparable or even identical item at home in the US. Granted, some of the packaging is a little different to accommodate smaller German refrigerators (i.e. square 1-liter cartons of milk instead of our big gallon jugs) but mostly it’s the same stuff.

There are a few notable exceptions. For one thing, there are different sizes (have you seen sausage by the meter—or even the yard—in the US? Me neither) or varieties (many, MANY different kinds of deli ham products, almost all of them some form of ham sausage—chopped, pressed, formed—and noone I know is enthusiastic about pressed ham). For the most part I can tell what it is, even if I don’t want it. On the other hand, it can get confusing when confronted with an entire dairy case filled with Frischkäse as to which one I want. Incidentally, I chose incorrectly and came home with the cottage cheese instead of the cream cheese. Sigh. Now I know to look for the cremig stuff.

Some things, however, have no identifiable corollary. Quark, for instance. I don’t really know what it is. It’s a dairy product, sort of a cross between yogurt and sour cream?—I can tell you that much and no more. It comes in many varieties. I’ve seen herb flavor, chili flavor, garlic, speise quark (which seems to mean quark for eating—why else would you buy it?), and vanilla quark which is a really yummy sweetened thing. But what’s actually in it? I have no idea. I bet it’s good with Rote Grutze on it…another one that doesn’t carry over. More like berry pie filling than anything else, but go ahead and put it on your yogurt, or your breakfast cereal, or your waffle, or, well, your quark. Why not.

And then there are the times when we’re just completely at a loss. We stopped for Kaffee and Kuchen the other day after going to a ceramic studio to decorate some items for our kitchen. The hostess was getting a little grumpy with our indecisiveness (not to mention our lack of German) and was pushing for orders. The kids kept picking up the cover over the muffins to see what kind they were (apparently quite the faux pas here) and then we couldn’t get a straight answer about what made hot chocolate different from kid’s hot chocolate (“there’s dark, and Italian, and this kind, and that kind, and kinder chocolate”) so by the time we finished ordering everyone was impatient. We sat and waited for a while and played with the ubiquitous bees in the sugar shakers, and eventually our food came. I got a lovely Mice-plate (a variety of cheeses), the kids got their muffins, Katy got strudel with both ice cream AND vanilla sauce (grrr). Mary (the one German-speaker among us, mind you) got a lovely bowl of ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream. Well, we assumed there was ice cream under there, because it was invisible under the mountain of sahne. We nibbled our way along like good little mice, and gradually plates emptied out and the ice cream became evident…and it became clearer why there had been so much cream. The Eis was…well…green. Not your mint-chip green, or your garden-variety pistachio green, no. This was GREEN. “What flavor is it, Mary?” we all asked. “Actually,” she said, “I can’t tell.” Seanna tried it. Malcolm tasted some. Annika too. Nobody could put a name to it. But, well, Eis is Eis, so she ate it all up. Eventually our hostess came and cleared the plates, and Mary asked what kind it was. “Elk-land,” she said. What? “ALGIN Eis,” (nice clear enunciation that time). “Did you like it?” Mary mumbled some non-committal answer, being unclear as to what she had just eaten. Keep in mind she’s the German speaker. “What was it?” we all asked. “I still can’t tell,” she had to admit. We all agreed on the word, especially after Annika confirmed having seen it on the board, next to vanilla, but none of us had an inkling what it could be. It seemed, oddly, to resemble algae. But who the heck makes ice cream with algae in it? And why? Is this some weird health-food thing where you to eat something bad for you and good for you at the same time? Or is it just a vengeful booby-trap for unsuspecting and annoying Americans? After looking it up in the dictionary, we’re fairly certain that it was in fact algae ice cream. Mary spent the evening convincing her stomach that now that it was down, better that it should stay there even if it was pretty gross.

Never let your guard down. Not for a second.

Fairs and Flea-Markets

I realize that after all that discussion about GETTING to the fair, I didn't really say much about it. In point of fact there wasn't really all that much to say, at least from my perspective. It was just like an American fair, really--you shell out a lot of cash for the privilege of eating food that makes you feel sick, going on rides that make you feel sick, and hanging around a big crowd of people who, well, you get the idea. But actually we had a good time. Everything was half price for kids' day, and we didn't go on the really crazy rides or eat the really greasy food items, so while we got tired out and stayed too long at the fair (as we McGraws always seem to do!) it was a good experience.

Today we had a different but similar sort of adventure. We went flea-marketing, looking to try to find some furniture for our as-yet sparsely furnished abode. How we thought we would get it home (remember, we have no car) remains uncertain. Yesterday Katy brought an armchair home on her head via the S-bahn, so I guess we would have figured something out, but as it turns out we didn't find what we wanted at a good price.

But I must say, whatever you needed you could find there. There were two that we went to, one the big one at Mauerpark in the northern part of the city, and one small one on the way. For the most part these are like an absolutely gigantic yard sale. It appears that people have cleaned out the garage and put everything in there on sale. Bikes, tables, clothes, what-nots, records (a vinyl shopper's paradise!), kitchen gadgets galore! Then there are people selling new items, a vast array of small household goods like rolls of tape, sewing kits, spatulas (bought one of those), plants, t-shirts...very difficult to go through and not see SOMETHING that you just have to have.

Most interesting to me was the crowd. Maybe it's just Germany, I don't know, but there was definitely more of an edge here than you'd find at a similar event in Boston. It was like the whole alternative-college-punk-GenX-coffeehouse-grunge population had come out to furnish their apartments, only they weren't buying stuff, they were just there for the scene. Tattoos, piercings, weird hair--all of which you see all the time here and which make the city fun to roam around--but the concentration of it at this spot today was more than I expected. It certainly wasn't Grandma and Grandpa Jones...though out back there were some decidedly aging hippy types who kind of looked as though they had spent a WEE too much time in Amsterdam...

Playground

We found another new playground, and this one has been quite a hit. The play structures they have here...even I think they're cool. Look at this crazy space-age climber thing. While many of the devices are really fun, this one is just three poles to climb up. Annika is like a monkey on it and zips up and down with no effort; Seanna fought her way up it after MANY tries and was incredibly proud. Daddy made it up once but that was enough.

At the top it has this a green button that goes "ding!" when you whack it. But you have to get to the top to hear it.







And check out THIS crazy alien ship! It's like a pyramid made of ropes strung really tight so you can stand on them and climb through them. We have one like this nearer our house, too, but it's not as big and with no slide.








Here we see your garden-variety sea of blue padded mountains to run up and down with a mini trampoline in the middle. Unreal. This place is SO much fun...and we're only showing a tiny bit of it. Not including the soccer court, mini soccer court, mini climbers, endless spinny things to make you throw up that ice cream you had before you came, ping-pong tables (sorry, tisch-tennis)...awesome.





This is what it looks like on a Sunday afternoon. It's like the beach--everyone has their shoes off (to play in the sand, of course--none of that mulch stuff here), picnics, newspapers, kids EVERYwhere. Make a day of it!

Getting Lost

For Cleo…

Yesterday we decided to go get a little taste of home by going to the fair. Yup, a good old-fashioned American fair with spinning rides, cheesy games of chance, thumping music, and cotton candy. This one was the “Deutsch-Americanisch Volksfestival” (German-American People’s Fair) and their featured place from the US this year was Massachusetts. There are posters all around the city showing Sam Adams, the Red Sox, and a Cape Cod bathing beauty. We had to go see what this was about and get a taste of home. Besides, it was half price.

So full of confidence about our mastery of the subway system, we headed off to Dahlem where this event was being held. First we had to stop off at school to drop off some forms, then to the photo place to have Annika’s biometric pictures taken (remember the adventure at AAA getting passport photos? They’re no good here. Apparently the German authorities are a little bit picky about things like the precise placement of the nose in the photo.

OK, onto the U-bahn, which we haven’t really done yet—but how different can it be? We’re good with the map now, so we know that we take the U6 a few stops down to Hallesches Tor, then get onto the U1, then over to Wittgenstein Platz for the U3 to Dahlem. So, we hop off the U6 and…umm…the U1. Do you see the signs for it? Me neither. How about over here? No, that appears to be an escalator to nowhere. Back this way, I’m sure that we’ll find…our way out. Suddenly we’re outside. But wait! There! A sign that says something about the U1! I can’t really read it, but I think it says that the U1 is under construction and those buses—the ones lined up over there—are a shuttle to replace it. Excellent! This happens in Boston all the time, I know just what we’re doing now. On the bus (kind of a squeeze, but OK). Phew! Off on our way again.

Except…something doesn’t seem quite right. (Actually, I claim no credit for this. I am blissfully ignorant at this point.) Katy’s whiskers are quivering or something; anyway she heads off to ask the driver if we’re on the right bus. A few long moments later she comes back—yes! we ARE going the wrong way! SO! Off at the next stop, cross the street, into the U-bahn station here. Are there trains here? No! More signs that we can’t read! Grr. Back outside. Over here, this looks like it might work—another bus. Back the way we came, back to Hallesches Tor. Which, by the way, STILL has no U1 trains even though it’s at least 20 minutes since we were there last. At this point I’m mostly inclined to find a local Imbiss (food shack) and bury myself in a currywurst and a large beer, but there’s the kids to think of. And the fair!

So, another quick look at some signs we can’t really understand, then off to the escalator to nowhere—which turns out to go up to an upstairs track which just isn’t well labeled. Katy’s cornered some poor driver who may or may not speak English but who confirms that his train (labeled U3—but I thought the U3 didn’t come here?) is actually ALSO taking the U1 route while it’s under construction. So on we get, finally back on our way, our confidence only partially shaken…knees only shaking a little bit…

Postscript: on our way home after the fair, riding the U3. This is good, because now we only have to make one change (remember there isn’t a U1 to switch to). It’s a little crowded, so we have to squeeze to make room for the Italian teenage girls and their mother. They seem to know what they’re doing, full of confidence. Only a few glances at their map. We roll into Wittgenstein Platz, and they bounce up and off the train, heading out to switch to…the U1.

If I had enough Italian, I would have warned them. Or maybe not.

A new playground

So...we went in a metal plane that wasn't actually a real plane it was just like a statue thing. It was in the middle of a hidden playground. There was also a big slide that we really didn't like but you might like it. There are ropes you can walk on. We showed Mommy and Daddy where it was. We went there from summer program.

Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping in Germany is almost exactly like grocery shopping in the United States except for a few things. Here’s a list of what they are:

1. They have this system where you put a certain coin into a slot on the shopping cart and push it in to unlock it from the line of carts. Then when you’re done with the cart you put it back in the line and your coin pops back out.

2. They have tanks like you would see with lobsters in the US but here they have fish in them.

3. They have 7 different kinds of ketchup. Here are a few: regular ketchup, ketchup with onion, Heinz kids’ ketchup, McDonald’s ketchup, curry ketchup, and spicy ketchup.

4. They have purple beans that look like green beans but they’re purple.

5. The plastic bags cost 50 euro cents, so you have to bring a backpack or your own bags.

6. Frosted Flakes are called Frosties in Europe. I also saw Special K and Shredded Wheat.

7. Ice Cream comes in a rectangular plastic container.

8. They have a gigantic frozen pizza section. They have pizza with tuna and onions, with salmon, with artichokes…practically anything you could imagine.

9. They have this one kind of drink called Spezi that is Coca Cola with orange juice. It sounds very bad but it is very good.

10. They have very many different kinds of cheese. The first one we opened was very stinky.

These are some interesting facts that I found out about Grocery Shopping in Berlin.

The Zoo

1. There was a monkey that was swinging and climbing and going in a tropical house and he was so funny and my Mom could talk to him. It was so fun.

2. There was two baby jaguars and they loved to play together and wrestle. There was a rope that they swung on when they grabbed it with their claws. They didn’t look the same. One was black and one looked like a regular jaguar (with spots). It was really cool cuz I could basically see the black one’s skin under.

Red Bear packing

Here are pictures of Red Bear as he helped Mommy and Daddy pack.

First Day at BMS-Hort

Today we went to HORT. (That's the BMS summer program). We had breakfast, then we went to the playground, then we had lunch which was this noodlish stuff and it was really really good. After that we drew animals and we played with hula hoops and jumpropes and then we drew again and then we went home.

It was all in German, but everybody spoke English also. There was a story time and first we started listening to Pippi Longstocking in German (Daddy says "Pippi Langstrumpf"! and also "good choice for your first German story, ANNIKA") but then one of the teachers brought us to a separate room and read us a story in English called The Three Questions.

Summer School Program is about to Begin

So tomorrow morning the children begin their Summer Program. This will be their first introduction not only to German Schooling but to their fellow classmates. The program is run by the afterschool teachers at the school we will be at but is optional so many but not all their classmates will be there.

We need to supply breakfast, snack, sunscreen and a water bottle. Not so different than camp programs we are used to. However, the Germans have the nifty little boxes called "pausenbrot" for carrying their snacks. I checked out the contents of the little boxes at the Zoo today to see what people put in them. I saw sandwiches in one, carrots in another, and pastries in a third. I think my children will have yogurt, fruit and bread with jam for breakfast and then a sweet crunchy item and a juice box for snack. We'll see how they compare to their peers and then we'll reevaluate.

So what to pack in their back packs is my curiosity. Annika wonders what language will be spoken. Seanna wonders where they will play outdoors and what they will do. Malcolm wonders how the children will be split. Will they play as one big group or will they be divided by grade level. We'll let you know what we find out.

Our First Day

Finding Our Way...and some other stuff

We’re definitely getting better at moving around the city, at least our part of it. We’ve been on the train (S-Bahn) a few times, now, and it seems as though our local station (the Nordbahnhof, for those of you keeping score at home) has several of the major cross-city lines going through it. We can take any of the trains here and go directly to Friedrichstrasse (museum island, though it’s easier to walk), Unter den Linden (Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Holocaust Memorial), Potsdamer Platz (Sony Center, Arkaden shopping mall)…even on to Julius-Leber-Brucke which is in Schoneberg where Jan and Verena and Sonja live. And by the way, that is a MUCH more, shall we say, complete part of town. Here it feels like you have to walk around and kind of search for things to find what you need (like, say, a bank that has people in it?) but there you can find everything—or at least it seems that way.

Yesterday we took a little sight-seeing trip to the center of the city. We still have to do things in small doses; we started at the Sony Center (really not so exciting) and the big shopping mall (ice cream in the shape of a hamburger or spaghetti is really still ice cream for lunch) and then decided to head for more serious environs. We walked along the route of the Wall, between the Tiergarten and the Holocaust memorial, looked at the Brandenburg gate, and strolled over to the Reichstag. Before you assume that we’d had a big day, remember that we didn’t go IN any of these places. As I said, small doses. We’ll have to go back for a more thorough look when we have some visitors to take there.

Throughout this walk the sky was off and on cloudy, wet, sunny, and windy. It dumped once or twice for a minute or two but then the sun was out. As we headed back to go get on the S-Bahn again, we passed the “statue men” who were doing their best to raise money from the tourists. There had been some sort of confusion during the rainshowers over various cups of money and while the clown was no longer shouting at the bronzed guy, he was now a VERY grumpy looking clown statue and the bronze guy had given up and was chatting with the silver guy over in a doorway. Kind of surreal, to say the least.

Anyway from there we went back to our most helpful cousins house, were treated to a lovely lunch, piled a whole bunch of stuff in a taxi van, and came home in time to meet our messenger guy delivering our passports. Now at least we’re registered with the city as living here. By now it was time to eat dinner so we headed off to a small (almost local) pub/restaurant. I’m sorry to say that the beer was disappointing but the food and atmosphere were outstanding and made me look forward to getting more familiar with life in Berlin.

We did get the TV that was loaned to us set up in time to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. The kids discovered today that not only do they show entire events (a LONG bike race, every heat in the swimming races, etc.) but they show them more than once. Why doesn’t American TV understand that it’s more fun this way?

Arrival

We traveled more or less uneventfully via London Heathrow—which, from the inside, seems to take up about half the country of England. Within the new Terminal 5 there are warnings not to go to the “B” gates because it can take 40 minutes to get back—and that’s in ONE TERMINAL. What if you go to, say, Terminal 3? Is it in Wales? “Don’t go to Terminal 3 unless you’re really sure your plane goes from there. Be sure you’re equipped with sleeping bag and flashlight. The woods are as cold and dark today as they were 200 years ago.”

Well. We survived that adventure and a very thorough frisking (woo!) and the fact that Malcolm seemed to have realized that it was now about two in the morning our time. He became what I can only describe as comatose and was unable to be woken for any reason until well into the afternoon. The rest of us just got spacy and grouchy.

The general mood was not helped by arrival in Berlin with 6 of our bags. Remember, we had made sure to fill our allotment of 10, so that leaves…right, four more. Ahh, our friend Heathrow again. After we cleared customs (did we clear customs? I must have missed that bit) and were met by Katy’s cousin Jan, we found our way into the depths of the Berlin airport to the “Lost and Found” desk. Surprisingly, they were quite helpful and told us that they knew where our bags were (London), what flight they were coming on (the next one, due in an hour) and that they would send them over to us once they got here. There was a brief moment of consternation over the spelling of Schroederstrasse and whether it should have that “e” in the middle or not, finally settled by deciding that in fact it was supposed to have an umlaut (Schröderstrasse), which her 1960’s era computer couldn’t do, so YES, it needed the e, and a short panic while we located our new phone number, but overall it went relatively smoothly.

Throughout all this, I sat at the desk, looking helpful, and smiling encouragingly at the woman behind the desk (who, I’m sorry to say, did not return the favor until after I had accidentally walked away with her pen and she yelled at me to give it back). I offered my expert opinion in the discussion over the necessity of the “e.” I wrote down my email address and watched her enter it into her computer using /u/ for and underscore and /a/ for @. I’m not kidding when I say it was old-school. As it turned out, the email was useless anyway as we couldn’t get on the internet for a couple days. The kids went to sleep in the hall outside, supervised by Jan. Katy dashed back and forth, “watching the children” but not really as she just couldn’t stand not being in on the action of organizing and of identifying the color and shape of the bags. Presumably in my semi-conscious state I would have done it incorrectly and we would have received the lost bags from the gaggle of Chinese tourists right behind us in line. Perhaps it would have been smarter for ME to go sit with the kids while she dealt with finding the bags, as that’s what happened anyway, but I probably would have just gone to sleep like Malcolm and then I would have been lost for the day—and I never would have gotten to discuss that mysterious “e.”

Jan helped us find a van taxi that could hold all six of us plus our remaining luggage (complete with car seat for Malcolm! Great!) and off we went. I’m a little bleary on the ride but I can say that Berlin does seem to uphold its reputation for being constantly under construction. The only real surprise was what appeared to be a collection of 20 or so beach volleyball courts, apparently ignored and left to their own devices, which mostly seemed to include growing weeds. In any case, we arrived at Schröderstrasse (note my use of the umlaut to avoid any confusion over the spelling) to find that Jan’s wife Verena was there waiting for us with baby Sonja and had stocked our fridge with essentials including homemade bread and homegrown flowers (is she great or what?). We managed to haul all the bags upstairs, remain social for a couple hours while the kids hung on the monkey net and eventually most of us napped. We’re here.

Leaving

It was exciting (which is never good when trying to catch a plane) but it all worked out in the end. Phew. We managed to get everything into the bags and into the car only one hour later than we intended, then back to Roslindale to take care of the last minute details (like printing a list of boxes for the shipping guy…did I mention that we didn’t do that before we left? Oops.) We had, surprisingly, only eight full bags instead of our allotted 10, so we decided to repack one of the big boxes into bags to take with us. Rather, we decided to have Uncle Sam (who just happened to stop by to say goodbye—thank goodness, and thanks Sam!) do it, as we were occupied with…ummm…I can’t remember. Whatever it was it was important. He was always better at getting that last item in the car than me anyway.

I would like to know who ordered that tremendous rainstorm that we had to drive through; as much as I appreciated the spectacular view of the two Hancock towers framed by dense rainshowers, and another of a huge bolt of lightning hitting the airport, I can’t say it reduced my anxiety about getting there on time at all. Anyway we did finally make it to the airport with our full entourage despite a couple brief and unintended detours. We were grateful for help with getting carts, loading luggage, moving baggage, stress reduction…No major problems with security, found some snacks and bathrooms, got on the plane for preboard, and with only a short runway delay we took off into the sunset.

Getting Ready to Go

‘Everyone should move every 5 years or so.’ I heard this once a few years back and thought to myself, “nice idea I guess, but how on Earth would I pack all the stuff?” Which kind of turns out to be the point—because in fact one CAN’T pack all the stuff, so you have to throw at least some things away (in some cases, finally). If we had moved twice in the last twelve years—even if we’d moved once!—perhaps we would have had a somewhat smaller ordeal in terms of getting ready to leave. I’m not going to say we really whittled our belongings right back to the bare minimum, but it was certainly refreshing to go through some of the junk that’s been piling up and think about how badly we needed it (if at all). So now we only have two houses worth of stuff (one going to Berlin, one staying at home) plus all the extra stuff that we gave up and shoved into boxes.

On the other hand…this process was NOT helpful or relaxing in terms of getting a family of 5 ready to leave home for a year. It just takes too much time, which frankly, we didn’t have. Nor was it helpful that our children didn’t seem able to conceptualize that a) yes, we were really going, b) it was happening soon, c) they couldn’t just take everything they owned, or d) it wasn’t going to get packed by magic no matter how cool it is when Hermione packs Harry Potter’s stuff with a wave of her wand. So I suppose you could say we had kind of a tense week—but I did ultimately resist the urge to throw a large weight through the TV screen, so that worked out OK. I suppose staying up all night packing wasn’t the best plan in either but, well, we didn’t do it earlier and time, she goes. So there we were.

There also remains some question about the wisdom of moving ourselves to Grandma’s house during the packing week. It was good in that we had our own stuff out of the way (not to mention that in some rooms we didn’t see the floor until Saturday), but we kept having to drive back and forth, we were constantly leaving things at one house that we needed at the other, and we ended up with TWO refrigerators to clean out. Like THAT was going to happen. So next time we’d have to think it through (again).

Here’s the other thing—there’s just way more stuff to do when you’re leaving for a year than you can possibly anticipate. All sorts of little things kept cropping up that absolutely had to be done before we left—except each of them seemed to require several OTHER steps. That trip to the doctor for an annual physical, for example, led to a question about vaccines, which led to a lengthy wait while the NP tried to find out if I really needed that vaccine (their internet was down, so they never did find out—but they decided to give it to me anyway) just at the time that I was supposed to be going to a dentist appointment. Then TWO more follow-up appointments to finish the vaccination cycle. How can one possibly have time for this when trying to pack??!!? Not to mention selling the car, changing insurance, getting copies of every piece of paper you can think of…I’m glad we’re finally here so we can do all that stuff on THIS side of the ocean (opening bank accounts, registering to live here, buying as little furniture as possible).

Papers please?

Today was documentation day. We went through all our important papers to decide what is important enough to carry across the ocean.
I realized how much we take for granted living our daily lives in our home country. We have had that marriage certificate now for 12 years and have never once used it. But apparently we need to have it, and a copy, with us at all times now.
The fabulous part about this process is that we are going to be so much more organized and streamlined. We are headed for a more simple life, in terms of the amount of stuff we deal with anyway, and I am really looking forward to that.

Home from vacation; packing begins in earnest

So now we're back from our little hiatus in which we pretended we weren't busy packing our house to leave for a year. We had a nice time in Maine and New Hampshire despite some torrential summer downpours and got some good extended family time. We visited with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends, performed our annual wedding re-enactment on our anniversary, swam in the pond, and generally had a good ol' time.

Now, however, it's down to brass tacks (now there's an expression to consider...how would that translate into German?). The kids are off to day camp for the next two weeks and we parents have to get to business. There are plenty of jobs that need doing in addition to going room by room to sort things out so we'll be plenty busy. Too bad we don't have a dumpster into which we can just fling all the stuff we no longer need.

School's out...for now

One chapter to a close...school is out (I can't decide if it feels like a finally or a how can it be so soon?) and we hope to shift our attention more fully to our impending departure. Somehow we have to try to pack (and ship) things to our new apartment, prepare our house for someone else to live in, visit all those people we're supposed to see before we go, and not wear ourselves down to the bone. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

Meanwhile, we've ALMOST got all the documentation ready for work permits. The latest bureaucratic issue is that they need a translation of Katy's diploma--apparently they want to actually be able to READ it and Latin isn't good enough. Who ever heard of someone reading a diploma? And why do they need it anyway? But there it is, we can't work without it, so we have to get a translation sent to us so we can send it to the relocation people. Unbelievable.

We're also working with our tutor on the last (and most important) lessons in German--how to order food in a restaurant. We'll be looking at all the food names to try to learn what they are so we'll be able to get something we want (and not things we don't want!). The funniest one so far is a dish that comes mit Musik. Apparently the story is that after you eat it, YOU supply the music! Those crazy Germans.

Can't say I have anything particularly new to add except that Oscar made me realize today that there are under two months to departure date...starting to get the "Ohmygoodness--toomuchtodo--cantgetitalldone--aaagghhh!" feeling more and more often. Extra passport photos, shipping companies, paperwork, doctor's visits, more paperwork...this is hard!

Meanwhile, we ARE having fun learning some German together. Today we started in on the things used in schule. Bleistifte, Filzstifte, Waxmalstifte...let me tell you, there are a lot of Stiften out there. But the kids are doing great and whatever we do now can only help later.

Here it is May 24th and I can't quite believe we're really going to go to Germany for a year. Things are falling into place--albeit gradually--and little by little the things that we need are coming together. We've got a place to live, a place to work, a place for the kids to go to school...we don't really speak any German yet, but we'll figure it out, right? If we all work together--all 5 of us--this ought to be a fun way to share our experiences with our friends. Tchuss!