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.

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.

Do you remember O. Henry’s short story of young love, “The Gift of the Magi?” In it a poor couple barely in their twenties and madly in love secretly sell their most prized possessions for the money to buy the other a Christmas gift. The man, played by John Ritter, sells his watch to buy a set of combs for his wife’s gorgeous hair, and his wife, played by Suzanne Somers, sells her hair to buy a chain for his watch. Just add Mr. Furly and oh, what a mess we have here!

In washingtonpost.com this morning I read an article about the US Olympic Committee’s mandatory cultural etiquette course for all of its Olympic athletes in preparation for their trip to China. This time around the Americans want to avoid any national embarrassments like Bode Miller in 2006. By teaching them how to use chopsticks (hint: one hand holds both), learn basic vocabulary (”xie xie” means “thank you”) and show tolerance of foreign customs, such as a culinary preference for dog, the Committee hopes their athletes will become stellar ambassadors of their country for the next two weeks. After all, have you ever tried dog before?

Meanwhile, Saxony’s own award-lacking Sächsische Zeitung (yes, I still glance at it now and again) ran a piece entitled “Dog meat and nose picking forbidden: Rules of etiquette” focusing on the Chinese authorities’ lengthy efforts to purge their citizens of habits and customs considered rude or vulgar by many international visitors. In a classic example of political correctness gone mad, the Chinese government has spent nearly 2 years training its 1.3 billion people how to speak about approved topics in English, how to stand in lines, how to dress, not to spit, pick one’s nose or dig in one’s ear in public, and, finally, to remove chopsticks and canine cuisine from all restaurants. Infractions of many of these rules come with a fine.

Enter the athletes, armed with cultural sensitivity, chopsticks and a newly cultivated yen for chow chow.

This would be the part of the show where Chrissy’s looking for her poodle while Janet praises an ‘exotic’ meal prepared by Jack, who is rolling his eyes and smirking like a rascal.

Now Chrissy, don’t be angry.

I thought you said wok the dog!

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.

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.

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