Altmarktgalerie shopping mall, Dresden, mid-December at 9:15 am. I’ve arrived too early to return a telephone on my way to work, so I order a coffee at a nearby Segafredo. A security guard switches on the escalators. Most shops are still closed; still, people wander up and down the length of the mall, loitering before display windows like stray cats hoping for a bowl of milk, hoping to be let in. Finally the doors open, and the growing stream of early shoppers now breaks off into the stores in dozens of eddies, relieving pressure from the main current. A tinny female voice interrupts the piped-in Christmas music – mostly American holiday classics. The voice wishes everyone an exciting shopping experience and reminds the shoppers to visit the basement level to satisfy the growing hunger they are told they have. An old man balanced on a cane walks with care through the crush. Two young men behind him grow impatient. They pass him on the right with an epithet, upsetting his delicate poise. Teenagers in teenager uniform gather in secure numbers before shop windows to study the latest fashions on this Tuesday morning – a school day. Music from inside the stores competes with the mall’s P.A. offering. The stores choose to play modern Christmas music, which is the same American classics, only harassed into a generic R&B format, dripping with requisite sleigh- and church-bell sound effects. A couple sitting next to me at the mall café order slices of Rosinenstollen – a traditional Christmas bread with raisins. After several minutes the waitress returns and asks if they might not want their bread with almonds instead, giving no further explanation. “Don’t you have Rosinenstollen?” asks the man. “Of course,” – the waitress – “but it’s new and I’d have to cut into it for only a couple of slices.” “Well then we’ll just have to take the almonds,” the woman says. “Not me,” says the man. “I’ll pass.” The waitress brings them their Stollen then takes my empty coffee cup. She is wearing a droopy Santa Claus hat and looks bored. I pay, put on my coat and hat and slip into line.

I never believed I’d see the day when the voices of secular, multicultural, inquisitive urbanites would again prevail over religious, white, frightened ruralists in the US, but I’m sure that’s somehow connected to my lack of faith in general. Because of the at least six-hour time difference between my home country and Germany, bad news in America usually doesn’t get to me until the next day. Most of the time this is limited to trivial matters, like sports: the Reds lose again, Ohio State is embarrassed in the national championship, Ohio State is embarrassed in the national championship, Ohio State is embarrassed on national TV etc. Thus I was fully prepared to wake up this morning, as I have the last two elections while living here, to yet another baffling victory for brutishness (McCain) and incompetence (Palin … in spades). So imagine me spitting out my coffee when I read the headlines. And imagine my relief when I realized I wouldn’t have to do this:

…if I lived in the US, that is.

I admit, it’s difficult not to get caught up in the hopefulness and expectation in the wake of Obama’s victory, especially after watching this:

But I find it disconcerting that it took two terms of a man not even qualified to manage a local Pottery Barn before many of us saw he shouldn’t have been our president even once. Bush has lowered our standard for a ‘good’ politician to such depths that we get goose bumps and teary eyes when we’re confronted with one who possesses what should be the basic qualities of any holder of high office: superior intelligence and rhetorical skills, a preference for diplomacy, a willingness to seek counsel, an abhorrence of black-and-white simplifications, the wisdom to make sound decisions. These qualities should form the gate through which any presidential candidate must pass before the serious vetting begins. As it is, they are entirely absent in most election cycles and fawned over on their rare appearances. Why so many Americans vote for people who remind them of their reg’lar-guy neighbor or favorite action-movie hero, I’ll never understand. What does mowing down Vietnamese in a war or wolves from a helicopter have to do with wise and just governing?

And so while I am glad Obama won, I am no fan of him or any politician – political ‘groupies’ only further cheapen an already tawdry democratic process. I expect no miracles from him. In my mind he has merely passed the entry requirements for presidency: He thinks.

Color me elitist.

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.

I stopped subscribing to Dresden’s main daily rag, the imaginatively named Sächsische Zeitung, or Saxon Newspaper, when I read the front-page headline one morning at the breakfast table: “O du Spargelzeit!” (Oh, you asparagus season – a reverend nod to Johannes Daniel Falk’s “O du fröliche” (O Thou Joyful Day), a song celebrating those other blessed seasons: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost). The article gushed with parochial glee about the beginning of the asparagus season in Saxony. This vegetable, detested by every right-thinking American child, enjoys regal status in Germany; its nickname (it has a nickname!) is “das königliche Gemüse” – the royal vegetable. I will be the first to admit unashamedly that the thick white asparagus on this side of the Atlantic is far superior to the thready green variety in my native country (though I am constitutionally obliged not to recognize its monarchial claim). But to announce the annual harvest of a common vegetable, regardless how enamored the journalist is of its blue bloodline, on the front page of the biggest paper in the state – as the top headline – was more than I could handle before my second cup of coffee. This was hardly the first time the front page of the SZ had been abused with local fluff, but it was certainly one of the most blatant and, as far as I was concerned, the last; I canceled on the spot.

So revered it has a nickname

I started turning to the Internet for all things news, something I should have done a long time ago. Once I’d located a few choice sites, reading the news became an enjoyable experience again, and I soon forgot that the word ‘newspaper’ suggested paper was ever involved at all. My transition to electronic media seemed all but seamless save one snag: the weather report.

Now, I’m not so naïve as to expect accurate weather predictions. Foretelling atmospheric phenomena is still more closely related to black magic than modern science. Despite, or perhaps because of, its roots in superstition, however, weather forecasting appeals to me in a way that cannot be explained rationally. Leaving the apartment in the morning without checking a weather website gives me the same feeling as leaving without my wallet: naked. I feel unprepared, incomplete, vulnerable. None of the sites I’d checked could offer even ballpark-reliable predictions. The problem was they weren’t truly local sites. They were affiliates of larger distant broadcasting companies or fly-by-night operations testing out some new technology. I had to try closer to home. I had to try the SZ-online.

I recalled the weather forecast being one of the few items in the paper I respected. Clean color illustrations of basic meteorological developments gave me at a brief glance the information I wanted: temperature and precipitation. If nothing else, the chawbacons at the Sächsische Zeitung seemed to grasp the power of a cartoon cloud or a smiling sun next to a couple of numbers. Not only that, they frequently guessed right. I couldn’t ask for anything more, especially from them. When I got to the weather report for the current day on their website, this is what I found:

Saxon Weather

Weather conditions: Cool and moist ocean air is moving to central Germany on a western current.

On Friday it shall be heavily cloudy and can bring regular showers and scattered thunder storms. The air shall warm to between 20 and 22 degrees °C, in the highland from 15 to 20 °C. A weak to moderate wind shall blow from a westerly direction. In the night to Saturday it shall be, excepting some dispersal, heavily cloudy, and showers are especially likely at the beginning. The air shall cool to between 14 and 22 °C, in the highland between 12 and 8 °C. A weak southwesterly wind shall blow.

Oh, it blows all right. From all directions. What was this? Does the poetry critic double up as the weather guy? Where were my cartoons? My smiling suns? My menacing clouds? I don’t want to develop a sophisticated appreciation for today’s weather, I just want to understand it. If they went about journalism with the same attention to substance as they do forecasts, the paper’s average readership might dip below pensioner age one day. Never again. From now on I’m looking out my window.

über-patriotic

This past Saturday we went up to Katrin’s parents’ place in Weißig to have a 4th-of-July cookout – albeit on the 5th. At the grocery store we saw a section of products called “McEnnedy – American Way”. Napkins, hot dog and hamburger buns, popcorn, muffins and many other items typically associated with the US were all packaged in various themes of the American flag and American icons, for that authentically American touch. Who, for example, would buy napkins not printed in red, white and blue? Do hamburger buns taste the same without baseball players on the wrapper? How do I know the muffins are truly free unless the Statue of Liberty stands proudly on the label? And so what if the fellas in the Cultural Research Department mistakenly translated Wienerbrötchen as Hot Dog Rolls? This is a free country.

If the beer weren’t so good here in Germany, The Typing Chimps would be packing their suitcase right now and heading for Spain.

That’s where a non-human hominid like ourselves can live in peace among all hominids without fear of prejudice based on religion, fur color or tendency to maul rivals. Thanks to a recent decision by the Spanish parliament, chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos should be entitled to the same human rights that many humans currently enjoy most of the time in select parts of the developed world. The resolution goes on to extend to them the rights to life, freedom and a submissive harem. Upon hearing the news, the greater ape community was reported to be speechless. A human spokesperson for the primates emphasized the good this would do for the morale of a group which up until now has only ever been “thrown peanuts” in a half-hearted gesture of appeasement. “Finally chimpanzees and gorillas can stand up and walk tall,” he announced. Then quickly added, “metaphorically, of course.”

I’m really tired right now and would like to go to sleep, but darned if those Germans aren’t whoopin’ it up big-time outside my window once again after their soccer team came back and eked out yet another nail-biter against yet another sub-par team. This episode’s disposable crew member was Turkey, who watched their long shot of a European Cup title get gobbled by their less-than-impressive opponents. What’s that, person who actually knows something about Fußball? Turkey does have a good team? Well, until nine of their players were sidelined with injuries or penalties before this game, yes, I’d heard they did. But tonight there was talk of having to use the second-string goalie as a striker, which I think is like using a catcher to start the game on the mound – while still wearing his gear. Despite my best efforts to soundproof the apartment with duct tape and plastic sheets (what to do with all this code-orange gear?), I could still easily follow tonight’s titanic struggle by counting the number of whiny groans versus jubilant macho grunts emanating from the bars and apartments. In the end the grunts won. No sooner had the final whistle put the football world out of its misery than the mobs took to the streets to spread this misery to the innocent and uninterested, smashing beer bottles, blocking traffic and singing unintelligible soccer songs with as little rhythm and harmony as their team displayed on the field. Dichter und Denker to a man.

Oh, look! Someone’s brought fireworks to the celebration!

I sound like the bitter captain of the chess team, whose dream of checkmating in front of thousands of screaming fans never materialized. But I grew up playing baseball, (American) football and basketball well into high school. I had season football tickets as a student at Ohio State. I still follow the Reds though I can’t watch a single game. I even brought my baseball and glove with me to this country knowing I’d never find a counterpart. And it’s this experience which makes me wonder, deeply, about a land whose uninspired, deficient soccer team, having got more breaks this tournament than a Hawaiian surfer, has brought its people beyond the brink of ecstasy. Well, most of them, anyway. There are two kinds of sports in Germany: soccer and whatever sport a German is dominating at the time (F1/Schumacher, tennis/Becker-Graf) – sports provincialism at a national level. If Tiger Woods had been a German, every Tilo, Dieter and Helmut in this country would call in sick whenever “our Tiger” took the green. An entire generation of German youth would be the burdened namesake of this golf Wunderkind. “Tiger, stop bothering your sister!” “Tiger, do your homework!” “Tiger, be quiet. Daddy’s watching the soccer game!”

In all fairness Germany’s not the only country which succumbs to collective hysteria every time its soccer team plays in some tournament, which seems like every other week. My informants tell me it’s just about every other country on earth as well. I guess with a healthy diet of three major sports in the US, most people are able to detox sufficiently enough before their team allegiance steals their vision and warps their common sense, leaving them so vulnerable they’ll worship their club, even when it’s far from divine. One sport the whole year round – this model of inbred fandom leads to hangers-on with developmental problems or a third nipple. If you don’t mix the gene pool, you get people who can’t discern their team from a good team. You get people who celebrate lousy victories with all the broken bottles, obnoxious chanting and random vandalism of a victory that truly deserves such a distinguished honor. You get a German soccer fan.

And I get no rest.

If my favorite national sports team played an average game against a sub-average opponent, lost a game to an average opponent and squeaked out a ‘W’ against the worst team in the tournament thanks to a single technicality, the last thing I’d be doing after barely escaping such a spavined group in the preliminary round is cruising about the town square at midnight in my Mercedes while honking my horn and yelling at those with sense enough to be in bed that “my” team is number one.

Then again, my team isn’t in the euro2008.

This mockumentary may be satire, but its portrayal of Bavarians does not stray far from my own experience. *shudder* The flick lasts 35 minutes, so get some munchies and a Hefeweizen before you click play.