Although Lloyd is almost two, in many ways I consider this his first summer. The days of him sitting fixed in a sandbox and sticking foreign objects in his mouth are gone; he’s a full-fledged explorer now. Before and in spite of my eyes, our baby son has transformed into a little boy. He is fascinated by trucks (equally of the digging, emergency and hauling varieties), bugs, balls and roughhousing. But he also loves to cook, to vacuum clean, to play guitar and harmonica, to draw, to dance and sing, to read, to walk or just focus on some distant object for minutes at a time.

And now he loves bikes.

Bike-in-a-box

Bike-out-of-a-box

Bike ready for action

This month Lloyd tried out his new Laufrad (run bike) in our backyard. Inspired by the Flintstones, a Laufrad has no pedals and is instead propelled by pushing your feet directly off the ground. Once Lloyd hopped on it, he never looked back…or ahead…or in whatever direction he happened to be heading. Which is why we added this bell:

Ding-ding…or else!

The more American of you might recognize this mounted alarm device as a “baseball”. I found it at a local shop which displayed a rack of bicycle bells on the sidewalk. Tennis balls, soccer balls, golf balls, basketballs, bowling balls etc. I went into the store and asked for the baseball. The man behind the counter, in his late thirties perhaps, walked out to the rack to get the bell while I waited inside. A minute later he returned with the ball. A golf ball. I looked at the golf ball. “That’s a golf ball,” I said. He looked closely at the golf ball. “It is a golf ball,” he said. He continued looking at the golf ball for a few seconds, then said “Which one is the baseball?”

This brings me to the second reason I got him this particular bell: the bike we bought for Lloyd has to be the most common model on the German market. Three out of every five toddlers seem to be scooting themselves down the street on the very same bike of the same make, size and color. Such a thing can quickly disappear at the playground. To help those of you at home understand this better, imagine trying to find your SUV at a Wal*Mart parking lot or locate your khaki trousers again after coming out of the gym shower. Take your pick. How do you distinguish yourself in Germany amid a sea of uniformity? Easy: slap a baseball somewhere on you. Voilà! Instant sore thumb.

Godspeed, boy. I’m trying to keep up with you.

Lloyd on the loose

March, April and May in Germany seem to offer an endless stream of public holidays. No sooner is Good Friday over than we take a big Easter Break. And before you’ve even made a dent in your Easter basket, the ironically named Labor Day gives us yet another well deserved breather. Clearly never having heard the phrase “too much of a good thing,” the Germans rise once again to the occasion with Ascension Thursday. And just when you’re beginning seriously to wonder if even the kitchen sink gets it’s own holiday in this country, there comes Pentecost Sunday, which, despite its name and for the sake of keeping spring entirely work-free, is also celebrated on a Monday.

Normally on such three-day weekends, families pack up the Skoda or Audi and head for remote (in cozy Europe any destination beyond 20 km) destinations: lakes, forests, grandparents etc. The forecast called for rain from Friday through Monday, however, dousing our own Pentecostal plans of grilling and chilling at the grandfolks, so we had to come up with ways to keep Lloyd entertained.

On Saturday we went to the Dresden Airport:

Off to the airport!

First we took the train.

We weren’t the only parents with this idea.

Our plan’s working!

I’d like this size, please.

Today, Sunday, we took our first trip to the Dresden Zoo.

Giraffe and zebras

Are you sure we’re safe?

Father and son

Zooming through the zoo

Let’s call it a morning.

How can we top that tomorrow?

***Update*** Thanks to Ann in the comments section for confirming that I was never cut out for the Catholic business. Whit Monday is an honest-to-goodness holiday. This only leads me to the question: Is there an inverse correlation between the religiosity of a country and the number of religious bank holidays? And if so, isn’t that a form of freeloading?

As poor a raconteur as I’ve been on this site, I feel obliged to provide those of you who still visit The Typing Chimps from time to time - and she knows who she is - with some hint of how I’ve been spending this winter. There is a short summary and a long summary of this. I’ll begin with the short:

Wiping Lloyd’s nose.

Fountain of youth

Still curious? Here’s the long version.

After finishing the six-week translation project in mid-November, I was happy to begin focusing on the teaching job I’d recently got at a local college. Working as a freelancer the last eight years had suited my disliking of nine-to-five jobs quite well. Ironically I often work longer hours for less pay, but the illusion of autonomy has always seemed a fair exchange. Even during Lloyd’s first year, when I was perhaps too eager to accept any paying reason to get me out of diaper duty, and our son’s highest demand was to have something colorful rattled above him, I never considered seeking - and here I have to suppress a shudder - permanent employment.

Amid all the baby-related advice I’ve received, I don’t recall anyone ever telling me that Lloyd would become a sentient being as early as his first birthday. Up until then I’d begun to feel my role as father largely consisted of operating the toys: shaking, sliding, swinging, pushing, pulling, spinning, tossing and rolling them. This sounds easy enough, but the challenge comes in finding the precise combination of these actions to elicit maximum smileage. And there are risks: one false move in the sequence can send an infant into a screaming-fit tailspin. But something happened around his 365th day that made him suddenly seem more … human - the way he looked at us, the way he acted, reacted and interacted. It’s difficult to explain, but these pictures might help illustrate:

Lloyd at 11 months 2 days: So lifelike.	Lloyd at just over 1 year - and fully sentient!

Now, playing with Lloyd means playing with Lloyd. When I show him things, I see he is interested. He’s developing distinct habits. And he tests us - oh, how he tests us! He is learning and changing faster than we can perceive - and I don’t want to miss too much.

When I started teaching English at the college this fall, I secretly hoped it would lead to full-time employment afterward, giving me the family time I’m looking for. I hate hope. Hope is the flirt at the bar that gets you to buy her another drink even when your brain is wildly waving the ‘No Chance’ flag. Hope is the good cop who’s just softening you up for the bad cop. If hope ever comes knocking at your door, turn off the porch light and draw the shades; maybe it’ll go away. Just before the Christmas break I got an e-mail from the head of the language department informing me that since the woman I wasn’t aware I had been replacing during her maternity leave was returning, they had no classes for me to teach in the spring. Thank you. You see? There’s Hope with me in the interrogation room, offering me cigarettes and coffee while his bruiser partner, Harsh Reality, is behind the two-way mirror, prepping the water board. So my search for stability and predictability continue.

I wasn’t going to let this misfortune sour my Christmas mood; that’s what in-laws are for. But I jest. Christmas with Katrin’s parents is the highlight of my year. Gabi, my mother-in-law, is the hardest working woman in Christmasland. Not only does she manage to prepare enough food to feed 9 people over 3 days, keep the house clean and still grace us with her presence, but you don’t even know she’s doing it. There are some people out there - me, for example - who perform a task and then make sure the world knows of their accomplishment:

Me: [Heavy sigh.]

Katrin: [Nothing].

Me: [Even heavier sigh.]

Katrin: [eyes rolling] Okay, what is it, Chris?

Me: Hm? Oh, nothing. Just…

Katrin: Yes?

Me: Well, it’s no big deal, really. But I just took out the trash, that’s all.

Katrin: Okay.

Me: Yeah, and it’s cold out. And raining, too.

Katrin: Yes, I can see that.

Me: And you didn’t even ask me to do it. And look! I’ve even put in a new garbage bag.

Katrin: Wow, all by yourself.

Me: [blushing] Aw, shucks. T’weren’t nothin’.

The big excitement this Christmas was Lloyd’s first haircut:

Hippie Lloyd	Bright-future Lloyd

Opa (grandpa) performed the ceremony in his basement workshop with clippers and a comb. To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t protest a bit - Lloyd, not Opa; nevertheless, he still made things difficult for Opa by trying to follow the movement of the comb. When the last locks had fallen to the floor, we were surprised by the change; he looked older, more mature. Then the air filled with a telltale stench: someone needed a new diaper - again, Lloyd.

After a break last year, I resumed my role as Santa:

Eat, Santa. Eat!

I want to like playing Santa in Germany, but I don’t. Aside from lacking the required, uh, corpulence, my cultural understanding of the traditional German Weihnachtsmann is sorely wanting. I don’t know the translation for ho-ho-ho, or the right way to ask a child if he or she’s been good. The Weihnachtsmann doesn’t have elves or reindeer to make small talk about, and he doesn’t come down chimneys (most people don’t even live in houses). I’m not even sure if there’s a Mrs. Weihnachtsmann or if Santa’s just living with his girlfriend, as is more common over here in ol’ librul Europe.

And, like too many other things in this country, Christmas in Germany is undergoing an antic transformation heavily influenced by American pop culture, misconceptions and stereotypes. Not even the Weihnachtsmann could escape this context-free ‘modernization’. Now he too appears more frequently as the fat, red-clad St. Nick (and if I hear one more native try to lecture me on Santa’s Coke origins, I’m gonna…) while the traditional German version disappears to Squaresville. Fortunately for me, Lloyd was the only toddler to witness my butchery of this holiday custom, and not even he looked too amused:

Just put the present down and back away slowly, weirdo.

To add to her already impressive résumé of atmosphere-enhancing skills, Gabi also entertained us with several Christmas carols on the piano:

I’m convinced she has a couple of body doubles cooking the goose, making coffee, telling stories, washing dishes, playing with grandkids and replacing candle stubs; otherwise, I’d have offered to help her out on occasion.

Next up was New Year’s Eve. With the exception of an unforgettable trip to Sweden for the new millennium, Katrin and I normally find ourselves in more subdued party environments on December 31^st, sometimes even intentionally. This year we rented an apartment with friends and friends of friends in nearby Bad Schandau on the Czech border.

Not bad, Schandau.

The final count was 12 adults and six children - a mere two-to-one ratio. We were hardly any match against our puerile adversaries, who had us fetching their toys, reading them books, singing them songs, dancing for them, spoon feeding them and wiping their asses at their beck and call. It’s not easy celebrating New Year’s Eve with children, but Katrin and I shared the burden:

He’s not heavy …	… He’s our son!

While Lloyd sat back and enjoyed the ride.

After a long-fought battle on the evening of December 31^st, the children retreated to their rooms and sought cover in their warm beds. Many of the parents were worn from the day’s skirmishes, barely able to stay up until midnight. Some didn’t make it at all. But Katrin, I and a few other hearty souls danced into the New Year, though things looked dubious at first; our self-appointed DJ never developed his musical taste past his second year in college and so subjected us to one &%$!@*# reggae tune after another. If there’s one thing I hate more than hope, it’s reggae; both crush your spirit with their relentless monotony until you either submit and stop thinking or resist and dig up that mix CD you stuffed in the diaper bag at the last minute.

Saved.

I hope wish you all a prosperous, peaceful, reggae-free New Year.

Boo!

A number of things have been haunting me this month.

• Suck it up. I hurt my knee mighty fine last month while working at this year’s grape harvest. But [heroic look toward the horizon] they needed me, so I pushed on. Now my knee isn’t hurting me anymore - it’s freakin’ killin’ me! I’ve called a doctor, but the appointment is still a way off. The worst part is I didn’t even get a lousy medal or nothing for ‘bravery in the face of adversity.’ I mean, sheesh!
• Child-care centers are simply over-sized petri dishes for developing the latest in childhood sicknesses. Since Lloyd started going full-time on October first, he has spent more days at home than with his co-toddlers. Some boys collect rocks. Others collect bugs. Ours collects viruses.
• So-called ‘childhood’ illnesses are nothing more than illnesses you’ve never had because you haven’t hung out with 16 other babies lately. Now that Lloyd shares pre-slobbered toys at the childhood-disease-petri-dish-care-center on a daily basis and then comes home and sneezes on us, Katrin and I have become unwilling participants in his immune-system-strengthening regimen. Colds, ear infections, fevers, 24-hour flus, frazzled nerves - our doctor has written so many sick notes for our family, his wife is beginning to suspect an affair. Why am I getting all these childhood sicknesses over again anyway? Didn’t I learn anything the first time?
• Friend-discounts are bad business. A year ago a German friend of ours asked me to translate his published book into English. I made him a decent offer, but he replied his independent publisher couldn’t possibly afford that. Aw, shucks, what’s several thousand euros between friends, right? The original plan was to do the job over the three winter months - at a time when I had few other jobs and was desperate to escape a screaming newborn. His publisher hemmed. His publisher hawed. By July I was writing e-mails warning that if they procrastinated much more, I’d have to bail. September is my most lucrative month, and this project was cramping my style. They called my bluff, and I flinched. Heck, I couldn’t say no to a friend. Now here comes the part where you toss up your hands and walk out of the cinema because that would never happen in real life: When they finally sent me the file to translate just recently, it was accompanied by an e-mail informing me they were on a very tight schedule and needed it next month. Tell ‘em to bite it! you implore me? Make ‘em squirm! Say it’s too late! Look out, the monster’s behind you! I signed the contract. I should have my provides-goods-and-services-in-exchange-for-money license permanently revoked.
• Every silver lining has its cloud. A month ago I applied for an English teaching position at a local college that I really wanted. I got the job. Whoopee. Now, on top of having to translate a 200-page book in less time than it would take me to read it, I have to prepare for, teach and grade about 20 teaching hours a week. Maybe I can plan lessons while laid up in bed with one of Lloyd’s take-home biohazards.
• Democracy. While it hasn’t kept me out of finer restaurants or relegated me to the backs of buses, the burden of sharing our current president’s surname these eight long years has certainly made me an easy and frequent target of the handful of witless wisecracks one would expect to find in any hobby comedian’s uninspired repertoire. And just when I thought I - not to mention the Office of President - couldn’t suffer any more insulting a humiliation than to be associated with that ignoramus, McCain chooses as his Number 2 (and she does stink) the most anti-intellectual blather-bag this side of, well … Bush. And those two could actually win! Why? ‘Socialism.’ Suddenly, people who could sooner tell you how many Cheesecake Factories are in the tri-state area than how many members make up the US Senate are experts on the inherent evils of a staggeringly complex economic and social theory.

Boo!

You don’t need a calendar in Germany to know when fall begins. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call any doctor, business, house of worship or government office, and if someone answers, then that holiest of German holidays, summer, must be over. This year Katrin and I have another sign that autumn has fallen upon us: Lloyd will begin daycare full-time tomorrow.

It’s all over; Katrin’s one-year maternity leave WITH 67% pay comes to an end today and with it the ability to see our one-year old son anytime she wants. To prepare Lloyd - and us - for the day when he’d be spending more of his waking time among other diaper soilers than with his parents, we began “acclimatizing” him to his new surroundings last month. The first week we stayed in the room with him for half an hour. The next week we left the room. The week after we went and got coffee. And by the fourth week we were taking last-minute jaunts to Prague and Paris. Lloyd seemed comfortable there from the first day as did we after meeting the caregivers - three middle-age women whose down-to-earth attitude and relaxed demeanor amid so much toddler-induced chaos made me feel I was leaving our son with three trusted aunts. During my brief career as a child rearer, I’ve learned that, as in politics and religion, parenting is strongly influenced by special interests and idealism. Finding a daycare center without a rigorous agenda based on organic food, anthroposophy, spiritual development, a germ-free life or learning Cantonese was somewhat trickier than I imagined. Before we started looking, my criteria for acceptable accommodations for Lloyd included qualified personnel who provided him three square a day and made sure he played nicely with others. Try finding that without a requisite hour of Yoga for Youngsters! When we finally did, we were both relieved and downhearted. Lloyd’s world just got a little bit bigger. And we won’t always be in it.

This past weekend, the fourth weekend in a row in which Katrin, Lloyd and I did not spend Saturday night in our own bed/crib, we traveled half an hour north to the small, small town of Großthiemig in Brandenburg near the Saxon border. ‘Groß‘ (or gross) is German for ‘big’. There are many examples in this country of neighboring villages sharing a root name, but discerning themselves by the size-matters prefix Groß- or Klein- (= little). I assume the prefixes are decided based on population. If so, Kleinthiemig, on the Saxon side of the same border, must have zero unemployment, as it would otherwise be difficult to imagine how a village with even fewer residents than Großthiemig (I counted seven as we drove through) could manage to keep even the most basic amenities functioning, like sewage, police, post or local watering hole.

Our friend Sven P. (we know about 17 Svens) held a belated birthday party at his parents’ house. Birthdays are a big deal in Germany, especially the ’round’ ones - those ending in zero. In polite society, responsibility for the success of a birthday celebration lies almost exclusively with the birthday boy or girl. If you spend the evening in a bar, friends and family drink on your dime. If the festivities are held at home, expect to spend the majority of the day shopping, cooking and preparing for the long evening. Younger people have discovered the budget-friendly joys of potluck, but BYOB has not yet become acceptable etiquette - and the guests come thirsty. The cheap and the apathetic can instead opt to sit home alone with a solitary candle planted obliquely in a limp cupcake on their special day, but even they are compelled to provide a good time for all on their ’round’ birthdays if they hope ever to see their friends again.

Sven and his parents thought of everything, even the good weather, and we enjoyed ourselves very much. Here is the proof:

There were plenty of kids

And plenty for them to do

Anyone for tennis?

We hid Sven’s gifts - 30 in all - in a tree.

We just needed to figure out how to get back up there.

One for the money…	Two for the show…	Three to get ready…

And away we go!

We grilled by day ... sort of,

And roasted marshmallows by night.

And in general just roughed it in the wild.

Here’s a milestone I wasn’t expecting so soon: Lloyd got his second bloody nose ever today. Of course it’s the first bloody nose that would be the most significant, but I didn’t have a camera on hand to document that one - kids mutilate themselves in the most inconvenient places. I wasn’t present for this time either, but when Katrin brought him home from a day of playing with other kids at a café while the moms chatted, I saw the fleck of crusted blood at the base of his nostril, like a stray remnant of lunch. To his credit it was the only sign that he’d been roughed up just moments earlier, sucker punched by a fast approaching floor. Seeing the little guy with any ailment more serious than diaper rash is still new to me, however, and he’ll probably have to suffer a few more wounds before I no longer instinctively think emergency room.

Mom reported that in his shock, Lloyd had a good cry, but I’m sure he’d like to get his hands on that floor right about now, which, for someone who can’t walk yet, shouldn’t be a problem.

When I get my hands on that floor…

Not long ago Katrin, Lloyd and I went for a hike through the Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland) near Rathen. It was Lloyd’s first venture into one of Germany’s most beautiful natural environments, only half an hour from Dresden. For the occasion we bought a baby backpack to replace the lighter baby harness which had served us so dependably during our two months in Cincy. Lloyd is bigger now, and though his increased weight wouldn’t prevent me from lugging him around in the front-loading harness, his longer, stronger legs do. Even toward the end of our time in the US, my infant son’s legs had reached the unfortunate length at which any random backwards kick could ensure his status as an only child. I’d rather risk his feet bruising a kidney or displacing a vertebrae behind me than have a playful though precise strike to the front leave me a permanently cross-eyed alto.

Despite our half-hearted effort to get an early start that Sunday morning, we didn’t arrive at the small town of Rathen on the Elbe River until shortly after one. Rathen is a popular destination for regional tourists, and it’s no wonder; the composition of rustic country houses against the backdrop of tree-covered hills and Dr. Seuss-like sandstone spires is the Old World archetype, so authentic you expect it to be fake. With Lloyd sitting harmlessly in his backpack perch, we wove our way through the masses of Germans, Czechs and Poles clogging the streets, past the gingerbread houses and on to higher ground.

The route we’d selected from a trail guide seemed simple enough: a relatively circular track leading us through a diverse landscape of mixed forest, fields and cartoonish rock pillars. The inclines weren’t too steep, and the trail guide estimated the entire tour at 14 kilometers, 4.5 hours - longer than we wanted but still leaving just enough time to get Lloyd home, fed and in bed on schedule. And besides, those guides always grossly overestimate hiking times, factoring in old people, families with dawdling children and those for whom flip-flops are a lifestyle choice. Our first highlight along the way was the Bastei, a concentration of particularly impressive sandstone outcrops high above the Elbe River and one of the most popular areas of the entire national park. We reached it only an hour into our hike and stopped to feed Lloyd, who seemed to be enjoying his new vantage point. Katrin and I weren’t as fortunate; sightseers of both the bipedal and bus-delivered variety were blocking the best views so that I often resorted to holding my camera high in the air and then bringing it down to show me what it had seen. This soon grew old, and it seemed best to move beyond the reach of buses and primitive thong sandals.

Just down the road a small old man was entertaining tourists with his street organ. I wanted to get a short video of this. As I directed the camcorder at him, he stopped, folded his arms across his chest and frowned like a little boy refusing to play ball unless he gets to be shortstop. “No video!” he huffed. I didn’t understand. He was performing publicly in the middle of a scenic national park, standing before one of the most photographed landscapes in the country, and pictures weren’t allowed? “Why not?” I asked. “Yeah, why not?” he replied, hands out to his side as if I already knew the answer, if I just listened to my heart. “Yeah, why not?” I said again. “Yeah, why not?” he said. You get the idea. This monkey-see-monkey-do exchange led me to suspect the real organ grinder was on break, and I was dealing with his stroppy Capuchin assistant. Not wanting to further embarrass myself talking to the wildlife, I stashed the camera and walked past the diminutive creature. “I would have paid you for it,” I said, pointing to his upturned hat lying in the dirt. “You can keep it!” he said, refusing to budge until I was safely out of sight. “Good, I will,” I snapped back. And now I hate organ grinders; I never saw that one coming.

After another hour, we came to the Steinerner Tisch (stone table), a small, square, stone table framed by four stone benches. It was built at the beginning of the 18^th century for a hunting feast and apparently has remained in situ since. Katrin and I sat down at the ancient table and spread out a small feast of our own: turkey and cheese sandwiches with a side of carrots and apples; we’d forgotten the mead. Lloyd, exhausted from all the climbing, dozed next to us in his pack as we ate and relaxed. While gnawing on a carrot I heard footsteps close behind me. An elderly couple was standing there looking past us at the table, which was hidden from view beneath crumpled tin foil, napkins and daypacks. “Guten Tag,” I offered them. “Guten Tag,” they replied, the man holding his dejected gaze on the table. “Well, at least it’s still being used,” the woman commented. Then I saw a camera hanging from the old man’s neck. I imagined them hiking uphill all this distance at 0.27 miles per hour just to get one clean picture of something even older than them. What was the significance of the table to them? I wondered. Did they meet here so long ago? Was it the site of their first picnic together? Or maybe they were unwrapping more than just sandwiches on its rough surface, her bare apple bottom where my Granny Smith now sat.

Ew.

Quickly we cleared away the clutter so they could get a few shots. They thanked us and left.

A look at the map told me we were running a bit behind schedule. Lloyd was still sleeping though, so we debated whether or not to cut a few kilometers out of the trip. Katrin thought it a good idea, but my inner Braveheart said we should press on; Murron would have wanted it that way. When Lloyd woke up I hoisted him heroically onto my back and we continued uphill.

My years of military and backpacking experience have taught me this: No matter how detailed your map, there will always come that crucial moment when this power line or that dry riverbed does not coincide with what you’re reading, and your most seasoned educated guess leaves you with the sinking feeling that you should have turned left at Albuquerque several miles back.

Katrin and I stood in a parking lot that I swear didn’t exist on the map. That is until a kindly bus driver made it materialize, with God as my witness. Somehow I’d managed to confuse an interstate road for a bike trail and led the three of us in the only direction one will go when relying on chance and instinct to guide him: the other way. Time was running out on us, and if we were even within five-kilometers of my best guess, we were still hours away from our starting point and wouldn’t get Lloyd back home before he rightfully experienced a meltdown. Luckily for us I am not a proud man, not even mildly self-respecting. With the map waving at the end of my flailing arm I chased down the first human I spotted, the bus driver who drove the route between where we were and - true story - where we wanted to be. After conjuring up our location on the map before my disbelieving eyes, he offered to drive us back on his magic carpet bus. Yes, for free.

As we bounced along down the road with the good fairy bus driver, I felt a little embarrassed at having to be rescued from what amounted to nothing more than a routine Sunday stroll through the woods. Still, we’d had a good time, especially Lloyd, who didn’t complain once or panic when things started getting sketchy; a natural outdoorsman he’ll turn out to be. The bus door opened, and we got out where we’d started so many hours ago, wiser for the experience. Take trail length estimates seriously. Never trust a tourist map.

And never tip the organ grinder.

Our adventure told in song and pictures

Today my son became an Amurikin.

His passport/passeport/pasaporte arrived in the mail this morning, completing what has to have been the easiest bureaucratic transaction I’ve experienced since hanging my hat in this country. Of course, we had to drive to the American Consulate in Berlin to do it. There probably aren’t enough rocket scientists in the world to understand why the local German immigration office couldn’t provide me with a residence permit in under a month and without killing an acre of rain forest in the process while Lloyd and I can get our US passports in just a week and a half. And they sent our paperwork to the US first!

On the other hand, I don’t recall being interrogated and strip searched before entering the German immigration office, whereas gaining safe passage into the American fortress required negotiating a labyrinth that was part JFK Airport, part opening theme to Get Smart. Katrin and I wanted to photograph the moment, but the US government doesn’t want images of consulate waiting rooms to fall into the hands of evil-doin’ turrurists. To be fair, I was relieved of my cell phone and camera at the gate by a very friendly though mammoth guard. And no camera was necessary to permanently capture the image of this bulk-o-hulk goo-gooing at Lloyd, who wisely decided to giggle. Equally friendly personnel sped us through streamlined paperwork, and before you can say Bitte füllen Sie diese Formulare in dreifacher Ausfertigung aus, we were swearing with raised right hands that Lloyd was good people.

Once we were reunited with our phones and camera on our way out, I wanted to commemorate Lloyd’s Americanization with a picture in front of the consulate building, you know, in case he ever wonders why he just got a draft notice from Uncle Sam. Well, son, way back in 2008 your mother and I thought it would be a good idea to…. As I posed with our newly christened son at the top of the steps, a German cop loafed into action, telling Katrin that photographing the American Consulate was strengstens verboten. We both expected this, but I still protested on principle. It’s a public building, I argued. It’s outside; I could be a mere diversion for ten turrurists with cameras across the street, behind the bushes, peeking out of manholes. Delete zee fotos or zair vill be trahble his look told me. Very well.

Foto Cop pooped on my parade. But he’s not to blame. It’s not his decision to defend a large building in a large city from the prying eyes of the public. No, that order came from my country, the United States of Hysteria. Exaggerating? How else do you explain charging a few policemen with making an entire building invisible when we can’t even provide our citizens at home adequate safety? Have the Bad Guys never heard of Google Earth? Close your eyes…

I guess the cop wasn’t able to shoot the satellite out of the sky.

And our car was also too fast:

Gotcha.

---

*Achtung!*

Even Mexico and Canada are now off-limits to non-passport-holding Americans who want to see what life is like outside the Kane compound. Apply for yours today!