Friday morning after dropping Lloyd off at the childcare center, I made my usual visit to the bakery to get an Apfeltasche (apple turnover). I was informed by the young lady behind the counter that I could get three Apfeltaschen for the price of two as well as an Amerikaner for free. What is an Amerikaner? I now present to you…

Sweet and round - just like us.

It’s a soft, iced cookie that leaves a chemical aftertaste. I stopped buying them soon after I first came to Germany, when the novelty of ordering an “American” wore off. But here I stood in the bakery now, not only being offered one for free, but a discount on three apple turnovers to boot. Such deals rarely exist in Germany; if a German wants to buy only one of something, they usually want to buy only one of something. I wanted to buy only one apple turnover, but if I bought three of them, I’d only pay for two and get another pastry I don’t even like absolutely free. The decision was a no-brainer, i.e. a decision that can be made only by someone with no brain. The young lady packed everything up and sent me on my way with a full bag of empty satisfaction.

Barack Obama was in Dresden last Thursday and Friday for 16 hours on an unofficial visit. “Unofficial” means barricading the entire Old Town for two days at an overall cost of around €40 million. His stop here was more of a layover between two important visits to Cairo and Paris. Nevertheless, the president’s visit has been media-buzz fodder in these parts since it was announced earlier this spring. Katrin and I lived in Berlin and then Mainz when Bush visited those cities. Both times severe restrictions of movement and at times violent protests of tens of thousands of angry Europeans made the experience annoying. On this, the first visit of any American president to Dresden, the security was just as tight, but the atmosphere was one of excitement.

Best thing to happen to this town since the “Dime a brat” night of ‘83

Walking home from the bakery, I saw a tram heading toward me. A sticker reading “Welcome Mr. President” spanned its windshield.

Punctual and hospitable

Odd, I thought, considering Obama’s not only not going to see the stickers, but probably not even any trams during his sojourn. But the locals weren’t going to let a little detail like the absence of the guest ruin their party in his honor. Beginning the day of his arrival and running long after he’d departed, the welcome festivities were more for the hosts anyway, a consolation for not getting to see the American president in person. Activities included such catoonishly “American” pastimes as cheerleading, mechanical bull riding and, what else, Elvis impersonators. I can’t imagine a festival at home without them.

All of the press and some of the public were busy chasing reports of Obama sightings here or there like children on a celebrity snipe hunt. One local paper featured a so-called online “Obama-Ticker,” which wasn’t a ticker at all but merely a pop-up window that provided the latest rumors on the prez’s whereabouts when you refreshed it. Meanwhile, the politicians were busy politicing. From Chancellor Merkel all the way down to local bottom-feeders like Saxony’s Minister President and Dresden’s mayor, everyone positioned and posed in this election year to be seen next to the man of the (16) hour(s). Even the pizza guy got in on it:

Free Bring with Buy of €20 or more!

After Obama’s cavalcade moved on, and his bed sheets either were submitted to the city’s museum or auctioned off on eBay, after the mechanical bulls, Elvises, cheerleaders and other American stereotypes were sent back to the Zirkus, after the last Denglish-riddled advertisement disappeared and the barricades were taken down, allowing the city to breathe again, it was up to the papers to make sense of what just happened. Always a bad idea.

Bigtalk about nothing

Most papers large and small, smoking a cigarette in post-presidential bliss, reflected that the “eyes of the world” were upon their city and thus, by logical extension, on them. The mayor, ready for her jump to Broadway from the high school auditorium stage, declared that global politics itself was coming to her jurisdiction, no doubt for a what-would-you-do-Helma tête-à-tête.

The Sächsische Zeitung, Saxony’s largest populist rag, made a rare break from its policy of featuring spring flowers, seasonal vegetables or children enjoying ice cream on its front page to dedicate four full pages to Obama’s sixteen-hour visit. Considering roughly eight of those were spent sleeping in a five-star hotel - and I assume local photographers weren’t permitted pajama exclusives - that frees up one page for every two hours of his stay, not even counting the refresh-clicking “Online-Ticker” coverage. And what came from the long-winded, incisive analysis of Saxony’s crack journalists? Nothing that faithful subscribers didn’t already know: Obama was here; the public didn’t see him. The headline of one article even teased the president about his pronunciation of Merkel as “Mörkel.” Ha ha. The irony in this is that the name Barack contains the phonetic bane of every German: the American “r.” Since the beginning of Obama’s presidential campaign, German radio and television media types have been flexing and arching their tongues like yoga pros to say “Barack” like Barack says “Barack.” Inevitably, the results either miss the mark entirely or are exaggerated like Ed Sullivan saying “really good show” in slow motion. Ha ha.

Ultimately, what the press and politicians seemed to miss but the citizens mostly understood was that nothing happened. A world figure came to admire their beautiful city; people used the occasion to enjoy themselves; then it was over. Maybe this or that political party will get a few more votes, maybe Dresden will see a boost in tourism. But in trying to make something bigger out of what this visit really was, you’re only going to get a full bag of empty satisfaction for €40 million.

And an Amerikaner for free.

Peruse the front pages of your local newspaper from the month of April in any year, and I’ll wager at least one issue was sacrificed for that evergreen ritual of informing readers that after roughly three months of winter, spring is now here, as if the editors themselves had discovered it or at least were instrumental in negotiating its release. The word ‘finally’ is usually stuck in there for good measure, suggesting the annual season’s fortuitous arrival was no sure thing this time round, and we should be thankful. And just in case you’d forgotten what spring looks like, or how one is expected to behave during its roughly three-month reign, the article is accompanied by a picture of people eating ice cream, pale employees in short-sleeve shirts taking their lunch breaks near a fountain, or a young, athletic man throwing a frisbee to his dog. Seven times out of ten the picture’s subject will be framed by a foreground of colorful blossoms shooting out of the ground. This is headline news. Its purveyors are called journalists.

But what these intrepid story-breakers don’t want you to know is that spring has a dark side. After Katrin and I had read in the paper a few weeks ago that spring was finally here, we unboarded the windows and ventured into the out-of-doors to learn for ourselves just what all the fuss was about. With Lloyd in the stroller we headed for a neighborhood park in search of spring. And, in fact, along our route we saw indisputable evidence of a seasonal shift. There was a long line at the ice cream shop. People were taking their lunch breaks near fountains. Off in the distance, a young man was playing frisbee with his dog. So, it was true. And just when I was starting to think the papers were on to something, we got to the park and saw this:

This would be a lot more attractive…

…if flowers were in the foreground.

Apparently we weren’t the only ones who’d read the headline. Not only were we not the only ones to have got the news, the news was by now so old that people were already on to something else. The only sign that this park was recently teeming with humans was that it was now teeming with enough of their paper waste to start your own daily rag - so you could print the second half of this story. Such complete lack of consideration for others is hardly limited to the Neustadt, the neighborhood where we live, but it is far more widespread and one of the reasons our springs here are numbered. From April until September local public recreation areas will regularly be trashed, spoiling the fun for those who don’t want their toddlers picking up sticky paper plates or walking through broken beer bottles. Is it so hard to find a garbage can? Is it that tempting to smash your bottle against a tree trunk? Is it too challenging to remember others want to relax outside as well?

Is it autumn yet?

On an evening not long ago Katrin and I, regularly bound to our apartment beginning at Lloyd’s bedtime, received a rare visit from two friends who have no children of their own*. Over wine and guacamole they raved about a practice they’d recently discovered while on vacation called ear candling (aka auricular candling or coning). As I scooped some of the green, viscous dip onto a tortilla chip, they explained in detail how the process works. Ear candling, they’d learned, is a method of cleansing not only the ear, but the nasal passages and brain, of accumulated impurities. To do this you insert a wax cone into your outer ear canal, light it on fire, and allow the supposed low vacuum and heat to rid your head of all that ails it. “You can hear it working!” one friend said while the other nodded in enthusiastic confirmation. There’s a hissing sound that let’s you know it’s doing its job and, just as the candle removes residue dirt from your mind, the amorphous mass of extruded dross left behind removes any lingering doubt from your mind that it’s just another hoax. As I listened I continued stuffing goo-laden chips into my mouth, worried that if something weren’t going in, something might come out to end our precious social evening prematurely. Had they forgotten to pack their bullshit detectors before going on their trip? We let the infomercial play in its entirety, then changed channels by asking them how the snorkeling was in Mallorca and whether the water isn’t still too cold this time of year.

Normally a fairly skeptical bunch, many Germans seem to have a weakness for flim-flam panaceas and talismans, especially for those treatments associated with practically any and all aboriginal peoples. The rule seems to be: the more oppressed, abused and remote a people is, the more superior their healing arts vis-à-vis Western medicine. Wellness-Shops hawking miracle herbs, crystals, fêng shui accessories and dream catchers (of various sizes and plumage designed to entangle even the feistiest dreams) can be found in any neighborhood of the universally attuned and worldly-wise. This unguarded receptiveness to exotic remedies is extended to alternative medicines in general. In January an acquaintance hired me to coach him on his English pronunciation as he recorded his reading of local celeb Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon of Homoeopathic Medicine, the homeopath’s bible and some of the driest reading this side of the Congressional Record. My employer’s plan was to convert his recordings to a book-on-CD series, which, together with a dramatized documentary of Hahnemann’s life on DVD already in the editing stage, he would sell to an international market. “The German market has long been saturated with this stuff,” he said. “I want to spread the word!” Our regular meetings came to an abrupt end after only a few weeks, however, when the alternative entrepreneur, himself a strict practitioner of homeopathy, fell ill for a prolonged period. He hasn’t called since.

Whether manufactured in a pharma lab or concocted in a shaman’s fire pit, medicine is something I’ve always held back with a ten-foot pole. It’s not that I don’t get sick, though the occasions are rare, nor that I enjoy physical discomfort - I’m a bigger pantywaist than masculine dignity allows me to admit. My aversion to medicine stems from observing Americans’ childlike faith in cleverly marketed drugs and from an awareness of the notoriously symbiotic relationship between the pharmaceutical and medical industries (Ask your doctor about the blue pill a billboard in Atlanta once encouraged me to do). If a medication merely masks symptoms but doesn’t cure the illness, I’m usually not interested. If a sports car and trendy clothes don’t relieve me of my shallow personality, I’m still a jerk.

This week my head has been hosting a vindictive sinus infection. Now, I don’t say ’sinus infection’ when I really mean a cold in the way many people say ‘migraine’ to mean ‘headache’, ‘miracle’ to mean ’statistically improbable’ or ‘tragedy’ to mean ‘just dumb luck.’ What I mean with ’sinus infection’ is that a steady stream of thin, toxic-green snot has been leaking from my nostrils for the last seven days while my eyes have felt like they’ve tripled in size and are being squeezed from their sockets by my orbital bones. I get them every few years when a seemingly harmless head cold decides to make itself comfortable and overstay its welcome. My approach in dealing with sinus infections is similar to how I cope with politicians, fashions or door-to-door soul savers: I wait until they go away. In some cases, as with politicians and soul savers - and some exceptionally persistent fashions like this and this - waiting doesn’t help, and the condition worsens. When I woke up Thursday morning with what felt like a pregnant whale wedged between my palate and brain, I realized this might take longer than I could stand. That evening when Katrin came home from work to find me slumped in a dining room chair, conscious but unresponsive, while Lloyd investigated the contents of the cutlery drawer, she suggested I try a Nasendusche - a “nose shower.” She explained the simple concept: you squirt warm salt water up your nose with a special syringe, and the water washes your sinuses, taking the impurities with it as it runs back out. It’s a very old technique, she said, and you can buy the contraption at any pharmacy. As she was telling me this, her head morphed from Chuck Norris to George Foreman before my half-shut eyes. “Couldn’t I just use one of the spare ear cones we’ve got lying around?” I asked, but she was already in the bathroom looking for the syringe. She came back out holding a designer turkey baster. “Here,” she handed me the object.

You know where to stick it. (Don’t you?)

When I squeezed the rubber bulb a hiss of air swept my face. “How long have we had this thing?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Katrin answered. “A while. I’ve used it a few times.” “Did it work?” I asked her, eying the device askance. “Pretty well, I think,” she said. “So I just shoot water up my nose with this thing, and it’ll clean me out, huh?” “Generally speaking, yes. Saltwater, though.” “How much salt?” “I don’t know.” I went to the Internet. Technically, Nasendusche is the same principle using different equipment, so I had to find the English word. After typing in “clean infected nose with rubber bulb,” I came upon the term “nasal lavage” as well as an instructional video from the Mayo Clinic. My suspicions faded; suddenly the process took on a more respectable air. This wasn’t only endorsed by a German Apotheke, which will give refuge to homeopathic potions right next to the medicine, this was the Mayo Clinic. After watching the video I was ready. I added a small amount of salt to a liter of water, sucked it up into the rubber syringe, hung my head over the sink, stuck it in and squeeeeezed….

At first nothing seemed to be happening. Water was going into my nostril, but I couldn’t feel it going beyond the front door before it ran back out into the sink. I nudged the rubber tip in a bit deeper, adjusted the angle and…my skull was filling with isotonic solution! Like some capsized vessel pounded by a tidal wave a powerful surge of warm water caromed off a sinus wall splashing the roof and the far wall before resting in a pool on the cavity floor and then slipping back out to sea, taking the green, infected muck with it. I could feel it working. After just one shot things started to unclog. I repeated the process three more times. Finally, I could breathe through my nose! I went to bed thrilled that I’d be able to sleep with my mouth closed. The effects didn’t last, however, and when I woke up the next morning I was gasping for air through a parched throat once more with sinuses swollen like genetically manipulated tomatoes. That evening before bed I gave my nose another good squirt-down, but the relief was temporary. That was it. I gave up. This was the first sinus infection to defeat my tried-and-true wait-and-see method. And not even the nasal lavage - the closest I’ve ever come to witchcraft - was able to exorcise my nose demons. If I hope to get another good night’s sleep, if I want to end the senseless slaughter of so many boxes of tissues, it’s time I lay down my skepticism and admit to someone I have a problem.

Tomorrow I’m seeing the doctor.

*And never will as they have since broken up due to an extra-relationship dalliance. Because they were our only childless friend-couple in the city, their separation separated us permanently from the outside world after 7 pm.

It was perhaps understandable that, when I clicked on the link to watch a live stream of the presidential inauguration last night, I thought I’d been redirected to the Superbowl halftime show preview. Only when the cameras broke their doting gaze from various celebrities, VIPs and other swollen opportunists to give us a brief glimpse of George W. Bush - looking ever the awkward pubescent at a grown-up party - did I realize I’d come to the right place. I planned to watch CNN International’s broadcast, but they opted to forgo the event, choosing instead to provide in-depth analysis of Michelle Obama’s clothing interspersed with infomercials for Dubai, Rolex and … CNN. I switched to euronews.

At some point among all the posing and praying that was going on, a young, handsome, well-spoken man interrupted the carnival to offer a few thoughtful words about sacrifice and personal responsibility. The revelers were momentarily still while we watched public role model P. Diddy puff with civic pride, and everycitizen Oprah was caught in a vulnerable moment of duly spontaneous tear-shedding. The partying then resumed, and just like that, the Oaf of Office had been supplanted by an oath of office. And while I couldn’t help but get caught up in the inspiriting words of Obama (made easier since I live in a country whose own politicians couldn’t arouse passion on a Hawaiian honeymoon), I was surprised to sense also a twinge of sadness at the departing of one of the most misguided, incompetent individuals ever to be given his own Boeing jet at taxpayer expense. There stood that affable ninny at the door of Marine One, turning one more time to face the public with his stock smirk and vacant sparkle - I half expected him to wave finger ‘Vs’ above his head before retreating from view forever.

He became president of the United States of Amnesia when I first arrived in Germany, and so I felt we were kindred spirits embarking upon similar struggles: I with adapting to a foreign culture and he with adapting to reality. Now, as I watched him board the helicopter, I felt as if I were losing a partner in my adventure; I remain here in Germany, still trying to understand some of the most basic aspects of its culture. But George has already returned to his faraway land, where simplicity reigns: black is black, white is white, and no one takes none too kindly to no grey. Where I’ve at least learned not to attempt striking up a conversation with someone in an elevator, George doesn’t seem to have learned anything. Here he is in his farewell speech, 15 January 2009:

On the absence of attacks in the US since 11 September 2001 thanks to his policies:

“There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results.”

Spoken like a true silver-spoon brat used to getting his way. “Gosh, professor. I got an A on the exam. Does it really matter how?”

And here again in the same speech:

America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict.

In all fairness, he did once admit to not reading newspapers. I just thought he was kidding. “Hey-hey, we’re just the most powerful country in the world minding our own business. What’s the problem?”

Well George, you’ve left me to figure out the world on my own. I should have been paying more attention while you were still here. You made everything seem so simple.

***Update: Here is a recording of his last weekly radio address.

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!

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.

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.