Halfway down the Danube

Turkish barber

God, I hate getting haircuts here in Germany. 

Every time -- without exception -- the barber or hairdresser or whoever cuts my hair all wrong.  Too short on the sides, too long in the front, and the cowlick ignored so that it produces a weird, this-man's-head-has-a-corner effect.  My hair is thick-ish and coarse, but not extraoardinarily so.  Why is this so hard?

Ah, but: last year I was staying overnight in Frankfurt (early morning flight, so I took the train down the night before) and was walking around the bahnhof / cheap hotel / red light district.  I've blogged about this before, yes?  It's an immigrant area, full of dollar stores and kebab places and call-Tunisia-for-five-cents-a-minute phone places.

And barber shops. There are a couple of blocks where every other storefront is a barber shop, all run by Turks and obviously serving an immigrant clientele. On a whim, I stepped into one and asked for a trim.

It.  Was.  Awesome.

Ten trains

Had to go to Bonn today, to get my visa for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An obvious first question is, why is the DRC's Embassy in Bonn when the capital moved to Berlin ten years ago?  Well, I don't know the answer to that, but here's a guess: there are significant Congolese diasporas in France and in Belgium, and maybe down in Switzerland.  The Bonn embassy can serve parts of those countries, which an embassy in Berlin could not.

Of course, it's also possible that Berlin is just too damn expensive.

The Tower of the Ape

Fladungen has an Ape Tower.

Okay, strictly speaking it's the "Maulaffenturm", the Tower of the Mouth-Ape.  And that's really a pun, because in German "Maulaffen" means "gawker".  And up on the side of the tower, sitting on a rain spout, there's a little gargoyle.  It's vaguely simian, with long arms and a mouth hanging open in indignation or glee.  It's hard to be sure, because 600 years of rain and wind have worn on him.  He's sort of an ape-ish shaped lump.  But his mouth is definitely open.

So, Gawker Tower, or Ape Tower.  Either way.

-- Wait, you ask.  Why does Fladungen have a tower at all, with an ape or without?  Isn't it a rather modest farming town of just 1,500 people or so.

Indeed.  But therein lies a story.

Sondheim

Went to get the car's tires changed today.

It should start snowing any day now, so it's time to put on the snow tires.  There's a little place a couple of towns over that will change your tires and, for just a few euros, store your summer tires until next year.

I say "little place" and, really, this is the sort of small garage that you don't find in cities and suburbs much any more.  It's a filling station with a single garage next to it, and a big pile of tires around the side.  There was just one guy there when I came, doing everything -- taking money for gas, answering the phone, and putting our car on the lift to change the tires.  So it took a little while.

So I went for a walk around the town of Sondheim.

A walk in the woods

Went for a walk in the woods this weekend.

I went with our neighbor Franz.  Franz is native to the region, so he's a trove of information.  This patch of woods, it used to be meadow! Here's the spring where the wild boar come to wallow.  These mushrooms, they are sehr giftig, very much poison.

Right.  About the mushrooms.

It's mushroom season here in central Germany.  They're everywhere.  There are at least four different kinds growing just in our back yard.  They appear out of nowhere, sometimes singly and sometimes in clumps or fairy rings.  The woods... the woods were just full of them.

Understand that I'm basically an urban, suburban kind of guy.  I spent some time in small-town Maine as a kid, but it didn't really take.  My psychological center of gravity is somewhere between the upper East Side of Manhattan and Fairfield County, Connecticut.  Food comes from supermarkets, wrapped in plastic.  Food safety consists of checking the sell-by date.

Eating fresh-picked mushrooms -- I mean, picked from the dirt, by non-experts -- creeps me out.  I mean, it seriously creeps me way the hell out.  Mushrooms can kill you in about eighteen different ways, all of them horrible.  There are mushroom toxins that cause violent convulsions, followed by death.  There are mushroom toxins that cause massive internal bleeding, followed by death.  There are mushroom toxins where you're totally fine for 24 hours, and then the toxin dissolves your liver into slime.  Followed by, you guessed it, death.

Angie and Guido

Sounds like an old Billy Joel song, doesn't it.  But no, it's just election night here in Germany.

So Germany's Grand Coalition is over.  The next government will be one of the Conservatives (led by Angela Merkel) and the Liberals (led by Guido Westerwelle). 

If you're not German, here's how it works: traditionally there were two big parties, the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, and two little ones, the Liberals and the Greens.  The Social Democrats would take the Greens as junior partners in government, while the Conservatives would team up with the Liberals.  (In Germany, "Liberals" are sort of the free market business-friendly party.  Their positive image is "hard-driving technocrats".  Their negative image is "smug, greedy nerds".)  

But in the last couple of elections a fifth party, the "Left", has thrown the old system out of whack.  After the last election, the only way to form a government was for the two big parties, Conservatives and Social Democrats, to form a "grand coalition" of the center-left and center-right. 

To everyone's surprise, this worked tolerably well.  But apparently Germany's voters were tired of it, because they've given the Conservatives and Liberals just enough votes to form a coalition of their own.

It's been a very quiet, restrained campaign.  Frankly, I hardly noticed it.  Claudia put on some nice clothes and walked downtown -- okay, "downtown" in Fladungen is three blocks away -- and the whole thing took five minutes.

Otherwise, a gorgeous autumn day.  Dinner at the in-laws, some outside time with the kids.  Early bedtime. 

The silence of the bells

I can't remember if I've mentioned the bells yet.

Well: we live about 200 meters from the local Catholic church.  Like a lot of churches in this part of Germany, it's oversized -- built in the 18th century to serve the whole district, not just one village.  It can hold several hundred people, the steeple is over 100 feet (30 meters) tall, and the bells... well, the bells are loud.  And they ring every quarter hour.

It's a good thing I like bells.  If I didn't, our life here would be... difficult.

So the bells are part of our life here, ringing quarters and hours all day and all night.  I hear them with one ear in the morning when getting the boys ready for school; I hear them in bed at night before sleep.  It's nice.

Except now there are no bells.  Good Friday and Holy Saturday they're shut off, and they stay off until Easter.  Mourning, yah?  It's a Catholic and traditional-minded town.

And it's nice in its own way.  For a couple of days, anyway.  I like the bells, but I like having a day or two without the bells.

One other interesting tradition: groups of children, aged maybe 10 to 14 or so, go around the town several times a day with noisemakers.  (Claudia tells me it's only the altar kids.  Huh.)  And when I say "noisemaker", I mean a very particular, strange sort of device that I'd never seen or heard before.  It's made of wood, it's bigger than a breadbox, it can be carried on straps, and it's "played" by turning a crank.  The noise it makes is distinctive -- a sort of roaring rushing bellow -- and really very loud.  They started before dawn on Good Friday, and they've been on and off since.  I'm guessing this is a pagan survival, maybe something to do with the "dead days" when Christ is away.  Anyone who knows more is welcome to comment.

Additional from Claudia: (1) there's an old, probably medieval legend that when Christ died, the tongues of the church bells all flew off to Rome.  (Why Rome?  Hey, it's medieval.)  Which is why they couldn't ring, I guess.  (2)  The noisemakers are in some part a replacement for the bells -- except they only go around four times per day, at 6 and 12 in the morning and evening.  Huh.

If you read German, here are a couple of pages about this.

Picture courtesy www.das-grabfeld.de

Otherwise, it's... quiet.  Beautiful spring weather, buds turning to leaves, lots of yard work.

Snoooooow

It snowed all day today.

I ended up shoveling the driveway and sidewalk five times, the first time at 7:00 am and the last at 4:30.  The driveway and sidewalk are now... covered with snow.  I actually like shoveling snow, in moderation -- it's not such a big driveway, nor a very long stretch of sidewalk -- but by day's end the romance was starting to wear thin. Also, the futility of the exercise was becoming apparent: I had our stretch of sidewalk clean, but none of the neighbors were doing theirs -- apparently shoveling snow is a guy thing, and I seem to be the only adult male who's home all day. 

It ended up being around 30 cm (1 foot).  Eventually the other daddies came home and shoveled, and now you can sort of walk on the sidewalk.

I suppose I should link to this Garrison Keillor essay, because once in a while he still connects with the ball.

Die dunkel Ecke; or, Fifty North

Fladungen sits at fifty degrees, thirty minutes north latitude. 

That's further north than I've ever lived before.  It's the latitude of Winnipeg, or Vancouver or Kiev.  And while central Germany has a milder climate than Manitoba or the middle Ukraine, it shares the same long summer days... and long winter nights.

We're coming now into the dark corner of the year.  Sunrise today was 7:53; by that time I've been up for an hour (Claudia may have been up for two or three), Alan is out the door to school, and we're getting the other two boys ready for kindergarten.  Sunset will be at 4:20, which is just around the time I bring David and Jacob home.  (Pick them up from kindergarten at 4:00, but we sometimes take a roundabout route home: looking at chickens, and such.)  The day is just eight and a half hours long, and every day is about two minutes shorter than the last.  The noon sun peaks around 20 degrees altitude -- less than a quarter of the way up the sky.

Garbage

It's a thing here.

We produce five streams of garbage: compost, paper, glass, metal/plastic, and general.  This is, I gather, standard for Germany.  Learning what goes where is no small thing.  (Milk cartons, for instance, are treated cardboard but go with plastic.) 

Tit dumplings

This sounds so much worse than it is.

Dedicated readers of this blog will remember the tits.  Well, they don't migrate.  Tits are tough little things, and will try to survive the winter.  People appreciate this, and lend a hand. 

Meiseknoedel -- literally, dumplings for tits -- are little balls of beef tallow rolled full of seeds and then hung in a little net bag.  You can make them yourself (people do) or buy them at any store.  They're hung from tree branches.  The mesh of the net keeps out the bigger birds, but the tits will cling to it (endearingly upside-down) and peck out a balanced meal of seeds and tallow.

I was a little dubious about these things, but by God they work a treat.  We hung four around the house yesterday, just outside the largest windows at eye level.  By midmorning today we were attracting a steady stream of tits.   Lots of people do this, so the tits know exactly what to look for. 

We also attracted some larger birds -- a starling, a magpie, the graceful little songbird that the Germans call Kleiber.  The Kleiber was able to get some food out through the mesh; the others just hung around hopefully for a while, then eventually flew off. 

It definitely added something to a snowy morning: life and motion against the silence and white.  So, tit dumplings FTW.

Can't wait to see what kind of google searches this attracts.

Let it snow

Got the yard finished last week -- leaves raked, apples picked up and sorted.

Wood-burning stove hooked up a couple of days later.  Several hundred pounds of wood unloaded and stacked over the weekend.

Winter tires on the car since Thursday.

And... right on time.  Two inches of snow yesterday, another inch today.

I'm not really a winter person.  Don't mind it if it doesn't drag on too long, with "too long" being more than 60 days.  (Don't laugh.  Armenia had brutal winters, windy and bitterly cold with plenty of snow, but they were 60 days exactly -- mid-December to mid-February.  I was fine with that.)  Fladungen is in a microclimate that has almost Scandinavian weather... it will continue snowy and cold for the next four months or more.  I'm not bubbling with anticipation.

But these first couple of days weren't bad.  Today I took the boys and the baby for a long wandering walk around Fladungen, out into the fields ("the Muir Expedition, to deepest Antarctica!"), down to the train station (if you climb up a siding and drop a big snowball onto the tracks, what happens?) and up the stream that runs through town (not frozen.  yet.).  Snowballs, snow angels.  We made a small, troll-like little snowman.  And Claudia had hot turkey breast waiting for us, and then there was a fire and naps.

Well: that's two days.  A hundred or so more to go.

Autumn cleaning

First frost this morning.  We had snow a couple of weeks ago, but not frost until today.

It was lovely.  Clear morning, very still.  White all over everything.  Alan goes to school before the sun is up, but by the time I walked David and Jacob to kindergarten (8:30 or a bit before) the sun was up and streaking it all with gold.

I mentioned the war memorial fountain down the street from us.  Well, one of the town workmen (I think there are three of them... whenever I see mowing, hedge trimming, or whatever, it seems to be the same three guys) was standing inside it, all wader boots and rake.  Cleaning all the dead leaves and muck before winter.

And we're off

Day 1 of 30!

So last night was Halloween.  Germans are still figuring this one out.  Apparently it's caught on in recent years, but it's not yet remotely as popular as in the US.  So, a few people do pumpkins, a few families get kids together for trick-or-treating, and that's about it. 

Also, some little details are off.  Like, German pumpkins aren't bred for carving yet, so their shells are all woody and hard as hell to work with.  And when the boys came home, someone had given them a couple of complete Milka candy bars -- the big ones that cost about $1.50 each.  Nice, but...

Still, it gave the boys a chance to go out -- which they missed last year; long story -- and they loved it.

November's first day was unexpectedly clear, warm and sunny.  By (recent) tradition, Saturday is the day the boys can (1) eat crappy sugary cereal, as much as they can stomach, and (2) watch lots of TV, with "lots" being a couple of hours in the morning and another hour or two after dinner.  So we did the TV thing in the morning, and then I chased them outside and did some more yard work.  (Still not finished.  I'll need at least one more clear, dry day next week.)  I also finished the last (I hope) revision of the Burundi report.  Hope they like it, fingers crossed...

Oh, and I spent way too much time compulsively checking the Internet for election stuff.

And that was day one.

Happy (chilly) Halloween

First snow yesterday. 

Don't know if I've mentioned this, but we live in one of the coldest corners of Germany.  Other than the actual, you know, Alps?  And some godforsaken places way up in the northeast by Poland, where the windswept marshes of Pomerania sink slowly down to the cold, grey Baltic?  After those, this is the coldest bit.  It's a funny little microclimate that's just, you know, cold.  The last snowfall was back in early April, so we're talking around five months of winter here.  I'm just saying.

So Carlos was here visiting us.  Now you know why he's been so quiet lately.  Part of the time he was here here, meaning he was very distracted by little boys.  Part of the time he was here in Europe but not with us -- he took a few days to look at art and architecture down in Italy.  It was wonderful having him here, and the boys loved him. They used to occasionally pine about "when's Carlos coming back"; I suspect we'll be hearing this again, more,  in months to come.

Fladungen

So we live in Fladungen.

Here's the wikipedia entry for Fladungen.  Go on, click.

Not much, right?  About the only thing that catches the eye is that map on the right.  Check it out: we're almost exactly in the middle of the country.  At the same time, we're right by the old East-West border: the scar from the old Grenze still runs across the hills, visible from our window.

So what's there to say about Fladungen?

Y-Chromosomes

  So, Jacob is sitting next to me on the couch, watching a video, all cuddled up and sweet.  Suddenly, he slams his head into my shoulder.
"Hey! What did you do that for?", I say, surprised.
"Sorry, Mommy", he answers, and kisses the spot to make it all better.
"You are such a boy." I can't help myself.
"Danke, Mama", he answers.

What can you say.

Oh, the video we were watching?  This one. It's the German song for the European Soccer Championship. Doug finds it very German. My boys really like it.  Hm.

Venemous insects, cont'd.

The hornet got into the house.

Claudia trapped it in a glass and we slipped a piece of cardboard under it.  It didn't care for this one bit. 

The phrase "mad as a hornet"?  This thing was pissed. It made a noise more snarl than buzz as it hurled itself against the glass, radiating waves of implacable insect anger. I looked into its little black eyes and saw nothing but top-predator rage: I will hunt you down and kill you.  It was impressive.

I went outside and put the glass on the table on the patio.  Then I called the boys downstairs to see it (they'd been in their nightshirts, brushing their teeth).  They stood at a respectful distance while the hornet slammed itself back and forth, making the glass "ding" audibly with its tiny wrath. 

Eventually it stopped banging, sat down a moment, and seemed to think.  Then it began to groom itself.  I know there's nothing sillier than anthropomorphizing an insect, but at that moment I thought of a warrior -- a samurai, say -- caught in a pit, pausing to polish his sword and comb his hair. 

You couldn't call it beautiful, but it was impressive.  Hornets have these huge jaws, half the size of their head: they're built like bolt-cutters, designed for biting prey into easy-to-handle pieces.  Their heads are large and reddish.  Their antenna, long and sturdy -- I guess they hunt by scent.  The black-and-yellow abdomen was heaving with exertion.  If a bee is a bobcat, and a paper wasp is a cougar or a panther, then a hornet is a tiger. 

I ordered the boys inside and then tipped the glass over and then took two long, very fast steps -- not running, honest -- to the back door and closed it very quickly.  The hornet rose into the air, hovered a little unsteadily for a few seconds, then flew off.

Okay, living with this guy isn't going to be easy.  But I'm sort of reluctant to kill him.  He's foul-tempered and dangerous, but...

And speaking of venomous insects

A hornet has taken up residence in a crack in our outside wall, just above the back door to our yard.

Hornets are rare in Germany, so they're protected by law.  If we kill it, we're subject to a fairly whopping fine.

The good news is that the only hornet in Germany is the European Hornet, Vespa crabro.  While not exactly a cuddly pet, V. crabro is much less aggressive than its American cousin the Bald-faced Hornet.

The less good news is that, starting with a single queen, a V. crabro nest can have a couple of hundred individuals by the end of summer.  This seems like a lot.  And while the websites agree that this species is not necessarily agressive, they're also full of admonitions like "don't get too close to the nest" (it's 30 cm from the top of the door) and "don't get between a hornet and its nest" (um).

Big Eddy

He's a rooster.

The town center is surrounded by a city wall -- built in the 14th century, renovated many times since.  (The Swedes aren't likely to attack any time soon, but why take chances?)  Just outside it is a garden strip... one of those German things where everyone has a little lot to plant flowers, raise vegetables or just relax.  No, wait, it's Germany.  Okay, flowers or vegetables. 

Or chickens!  There's one plot that's full of them -- six or eight dowdy hens, and one magnificent rooster.

The boys love Big Eddy.  Love him!  He's all orange and gold, with a flowing green tail, long dangling wattles and a great red comb.  He's twice the size of the hens, with a long yellow beak and great griping claws.  His eyes are red.  He struts among his dull brown wives like a... well, like a rooster among hens. 

We stop by his plot almost every day.  Coming back from school?  Picking up something from the post office?  Run to the bakery for rolls?  Everything is in the town center, inside the walls, and when we come out of the gate it's just a quick side trip to see Big Eddy.  If we have something to eat, we save a few crumbs for him.

A couple of days ago, we came by and one of the hens was outside the fence.  She'd somehow fluttered over it, and -- hens not being very bright at the best of times -- couldn't figure out how to get back in.  So she was pacing back and forth outside, clucking rather pathetically.  What to do?  What to do!?!

I opened the garden gate and went "shoo" at the chickens to keep them inside while the boys went after the hen.  Run run run!  The silly bird, cackling wildly, ran this way and then that way and then, finally, figured it out:  the gate!  Open somehow!

She ran inside and I slammed the gate shut.  The hens milled around excitedly: what just happened?  something just happened!   The boys said "all right" and we exchanged high fives all around.  Big Eddy looked down his beak at us disdainfully and ignored the whole thing.

High point of the day.

Homeowner: Shoveling

One in what I suspect will be an ongoing sequence of short posts on owning a home in Germany.

When you own a home in Germany?  And it snows?  You are obliged to sweep or shovel the walk in front of your house.  It's not clear to me whether this is a formal, legal obligation or just something that everyone does.  My wife thinks it's a law.  I have trouble seeing this.  I mean, what if you're out of the house on vacation?  Or elderly, or handicapped? 

Our house has a vacant lot on one side, and the house on the other usually stands empty -- it's a vacation home, or something.  So, if I shovel the sidewalk, it's a a bare strip surrounded by snow on either side.

It doesn't matter.  The sidewalk must be cleared.

And, you know what?  I was fine with it.  I took a broom out and whisked away vigorously. In a few minutes it was done: black, wet, gleaming.

I am at a loss to explain the satisfaction I derived from this.

Sunday afternoon (in Germany)

At least today, means sitting on the couch while the boys watch SpongeBob Squarepants and Claudia takes a nap.

April's first week has been rain and shine, sun and... snow.  Yah, it snowed a little this morning.  We're in northern Bavaria.  In Armenia, the cherry trees were blossoming a week ago; here, they haven't opened yet.  I'm still trying to figure out how a country with a climate like this can be a wine producer. 

Anyway.  I started to write something about German history, Bavaria, Protestants vs. Catholics, blah blah blah.  But there should be time for that, and I'm not really in the mood right now. 

Meanwhile: you know what's really good?  The Tarzan cartoon that came from the Disney movie.  It's clever and the animation is surprisingly good.  This is a pleasant comparison to most Disney movie spinoff cartoons.  They tend to suck.  Lilo and Stitch was an awesome movie; the Lilo and Stitch cartoon was a rather dull Pokemon ripoff.  But the Tarzan cartoon is probably better than the movie, which had some cool action sequences but was otherwise pretty lame.

Unsurprising family history

Doing a bit of genealogy lately. I haven't been able to find my great-grandfather's service records -- most likely they perished in an archival fire in St. Louis a few decades ago -- but coincidentally enough, he was at Camp Lee, Virginia, for the 1920 census. I'm guessing he was being demobilized. From the stories he used to tell, I think he was part of the American Expeditionary Force in north Russia after his time on the Western Front, probably part of the Transportation Corps. He was always good with cold weather vehicles.

Yeah, he lived to be 95. Hitting 90 is not uncommon on that side of the family. The two great-grandfathers of his I've been able to track down reached 90 and 89.

Digging around, his ancestors all appear to be "Old Lutherans", emigrants from the 1830s too stubborn for the King of Prussia's unified state church. This astonished contemporaries. Prussia, harshing Protestants? But Fred Bill 3 was not the sharpest knife in the drawer; and Fred Bill's son pulled the same crap on the Catholics and the Poles. (There's a poem.)

How we became Methodists I don't know, but the word "stubborn" probably appears in the explanation. It also explains why a conservative German-speaking Protestant household would still loathe the Kaiser, um, into my generation. World War One? not a surprise.

The little town that could

  Ostheim is special.

I'm not just saying that because it's my home town.  I'm saying this because Ostheim is special.

Doug has posted about the history of Ostheim  and for some reason, this peculiar history has produced a special kind of people.  Ostheimers have always been different from those around them - Protestants in a Catholic country, they were much more genial, open-minded, welcoming, ingenious. 

Ostheim only has a population of 3,500 but in the history of the city, we had a gun factory that sold high quality hunting weapons all over the world (until the day some stupid American shot himself in the foot or something and managed to sue the company to its near death from which it never really recovered).  We have two breweries, a shoe factory (no longer), an organ factory that produces and repairs organs in the entirety of Germany (and has a renowned museum in town), a hide factory that specializes in the curing of animal intestines and sells those all over the world (you wouldn't believe the uses for cured intestines!), we have/had artists and writers and, you know, people who make a difference.  Ostheim had outdoor cafés when everyone else thought it was declassé to sit and eat outside, it had one of the first movie theaters in the greater area, the first indoor swimming pool for the local school, and it had a discotheque that attracted young'uns from the entire county and beyond.

In the belly of the beast

Doug's away for a bit, leaving me with keys to the Yugo. Whee!

This is some sort of holy week -- but what week isn't? -- so let me continue with my occasional posts about the joy of sects. This time, the Baptists.

The first World Baptist Congress was held in London in 1905, leading to the formation of the World Baptist Alliance. Doctrinally, Baptists have traditionally been against hierarchy -- the current Southern Baptist Convention would be like a steel rasp on Roger Williams' teeth -- and so the Congress met in a spirit of egalitarian fellowship. The next convention was held in 1911, in Philadelphia; the third, in Stockholm in 1923; the fourth, in Toronto in 1928.

The fifth was held in Berlin. August 4th through August 10th, 1934. A vintage season. Two days after the death of President Hindenberg, two weeks after the assassination of Austrian chancellor Dollfuss, and a little over a month after the bloody purge of the SA, the Night of the Long Knives.

Needless to say, reactions to the new Germany were mixed among the American attendees. Former Southern Baptist Convention president George W. Truett, who conducted camp meetings for cowboys in west Texas every summer for nearly forty years, "introduced a hotly debated peace resolution which urged governments to surrender whatever national sovereignty necessary to establish an international authority for peace in the world." On the other hand, the Southern Baptist Convention's then-current president, pioneer radio preacher Monroe Elmon Dodd of Louisiana, had a different take:

In the belly of the beast

Doug's away for a bit, leaving me with keys to the Yugo. Whee! This is some sort of holy week -- but what week isn't? -- so let me continue with my occasional posts about the joy of sects. This time, the Baptists. The first World Baptist Congress was held in London in 1905, leading to the formation of the World Baptist Alliance. Doctrinally, Baptists have traditionally been against hierarchy -- the current Southern Baptist Convention would be like a steel rasp on Roger Williams' teeth -- and so the Congress met in a spirit of egalitarian fellowship. The next convention was held in 1911, in Philadelphia; the third, in Stockholm in 1923; the fourth, in Toronto in 1928. The fifth was held in Berlin. August 4th through August 10th, 1934. A vintage season. Two days after the death of President Hindenberg, two weeks after the assassination of Austrian chancellor Dollfuss, and a little over a month after the bloody purge of the SA, the Night of the Long Knives. Needless to say, reactions to the new Germany were mixed among the American attendees. Former Southern Baptist Convention president George W. Truett, who conducted camp meetings for cowboys in west Texas every summer for nearly forty years, "introduced a hotly debated peace resolution which urged governments to surrender whatever national sovereignty necessary to establish an international authority for peace in the world." On the other hand, the Southern Baptist Convention's then-current president, pioneer radio preacher Monroe Elmon Dodd of Louisiana, had a different take:

The Guardian. Comedy. Just, no. Please, no.

This article in the Guardian, on British versus German alleged senses of humor, reminds me of one of those furious non-fact discussions you used to hear in bars before the Internet became popular, where no side in the argument had any clue what the hell they were talking about. The author, some sort of British ha-ha guy, claims deep linguistic differences between the two languages cause a difference in national styles of humor -- the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as applied to comedy.

Of course the article reeks of bogosity.

There are six overt jokes in the article, two supposedly British, four supposedly German, all supposedly funny. Let's go through them.

Joke 1: The German Child, a British joke about Germans. Except it's not: it's a joke that can be successfully told without any ethnic identification at all -- and it is, in its American form. The tension in the joke comes from a recognition of parental anxieties about childhood linguistic development, not from stereotype.

Joke 2: A British joke, presented as an example of an English-language joke style, that ends "... and then I got off the bus." It's a type of joke that ends with an incongruous short kicker to an elaborate set-up. Lee calls it a "pull back and reveal," and the kicker the "failsafe," and claims it can't be performed in German because of German sentence structure.

The Guardian. Comedy. Just, no. Please, no.

This article in the Guardian, on British versus German alleged senses of humor, reminds me of one of those furious non-fact discussions you used to hear in bars before the Internet became popular, where no side in the argument had any clue what the hell they were talking about. The author, some sort of British ha-ha guy, claims deep linguistic differences between the two languages cause a difference in national styles of humor -- the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as applied to comedy. Of course the article reeks of bogosity. There are six overt jokes in the article, two supposedly British, four supposedly German, all supposedly funny. Let's go through them. Joke 1: The German Child, a British joke about Germans. Except it's not: it's a joke that can be successfully told without any ethnic identification at all -- and it is, in its American form. The tension in the joke comes from a recognition of parental anxieties about childhood linguistic development, not from stereotype. Joke 2: A British joke, presented as an example of an English-language joke style, that ends "... and then I got off the bus." It's a type of joke that ends with an incongruous short kicker to an elaborate set-up. Lee calls it a "pull back and reveal," and the kicker the "failsafe," and claims it can't be performed in German because of German sentence structure.

Bruder Johannes

Today, the flags in Germany are on half mast as former president Johannes Rau is taken to his last resting place in Berlin. Germany mourns a popular president who had constant approval ratings of over 80% during his entire presidency.

Have you seen my train tracks?

And here's something that all of Germany is laughing about: 5 (five!) kilometers of train tracks were stolen last week near Lohra in Northern Hesse. Yes, you read that one right. The thieves first sent letters to the neighbors, assuring them of their proper intentions. When the mayor of Lohra got suspicious, he called the Deutsche Bahn and promptly got lost in voice mail hell. The thieves worked on the tracks for some days, ripping them out of the beds with heavy machinery. They subsequently hired a local transport company to ferry the tracks to a scap dealer - the estimated worth about 200,000 Euros. The people living nearby even made photos of the whole operation:

Private picture, via Oberhessische Presse

No, the tracks weren't in use anymore. The Deutsche Bahn was about to sell the tracks to the city of Lohra. But now the tracks are gone and the sale is off. (Btw, and the thieves never did pay their bill from the transport company.) If you saw something like this in the movies, you'd say this could never happen in real life... Oh, mein Vaterland.

Kneipp, with two p's

I have to amend my husband's previous post a little. Being American, he has little knowledge of the power of cold water. Even my dear friend Natalie, who is a doctor, didn't come up with the magic word: Kneipp. (Yogis, my ass!) The German priest Sebastian Kneipp lived from 1821-1897. In 1849, he fell ill with tuberculosis and his doctor all but gave up on him. By chance, Kneipp discovered a little booklet called "Unterricht von der Heilkraft des frischen Wassers" (Instruction in the healing powers of fresh water) written by one Johann Sigmund Hahn. He started a self-treatment, which included daily baths in the Danube river (and doesn't that tie in nicely with our overall theme!). Within a year or so, he was completely recovered.

Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

Because you demanded it. Last post, I mentioned that the little town of Ostheim had an interesting history. Here, we'll briefly glance at the what and why. First, the map. (Warning: not for the faint of heart.)

So, I voted

I can't say I'm happy about it. The choices were really bad this time around. I don't like Schrder, I dislike Stoiber, I am really not sure about Merkel, I don't think the Greens have been doing such a swell job, and there is no way I'm voting for the FDP. However, I did vote for one of those. (I'm not telling but people who know me will have no problems guessing.) Because I believe that one ought to vote, even if the choices are quite limited, and I don't want to throw my vote away by giving it to a party that cannot possibly make the 5% cut. Now, all I can do is wait and see what tomorrow brings. It'll be interesting, to say the least.

How not to oust a top politician in one simple lesson

Joschka Fischer is Germany's foreign minister and if the opposition party CDU has anything to say, he won't be holding his job much longer. Fischer is under pressure in the so-called "visa affair". The New York Time sums it up:

The scandal came to light in February last year when a regional court in Germany found a Ukrainian-born man guilty of trafficking in people and of smuggling. The court found that laxness in issuing German visas in Ukraine - about 300,000 between 2000 and 2002 - had made it easier for the defendant, Anatoli Barg, to commit his offenses.

Over time, it came to light that not only the embassy in Kiev but also German embassies in other (mostly former GUS) countries had been advised to "rather err on the side of freedom of travel" than applying stricter criteria when issuing visas. Ex-Ambassadors claim to have informed the ministry of foreign affairs in Berlin about the apparent misuse of those visas by traffickers, criminals and drug dealers, but no action was taken. Fischer, as the head of the foreign office, is not only nominally responsible for any sloppiness that might have occured in his ministry, he also has to explain why he didn't react to any of the faxes and emails that diplomats said they have sent him.

Rumsfeld hates Germany, I'm sure

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lawyers acting for a U.S. advocacy group will today file war crimes charges in Germany against senior U.S. administration officials for their alleged role in torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "German law in this area is leading the world," Peter Weiss, Vice President of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a human rights group, was quoted as saying in Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper's Tuesday edition. According to the group, German law allows war criminals to be investigated wherever they may be living. Those to be named in the case to be filed at Germany's Federal Prosecutors Office include Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, former Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet and eight other officials. The group is due to present details of its case at several news conferences on Tuesday, according to invitations faxed to media organisations. © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

I just wished I could believe that something comes out of it.

Coercion

The comments thread on my post on baby sale/adoption has made me very happy -- our readers are able to politely disagree with each other, a rare feat on most blogs. Especially the comments by Raoul and Pouncer have given me food for thought and expanded my views - although I stick with my analysis of the Romanian adoption law as very stupid. Since I trust that I can write about controversial issues without flames shooting out of my laptop, let me tell you about a disturbing law suit in Germany which has been on my mind a lot. In September of 2002, the 11-year-old child of a wealthy Frankfurt banker is being abducted. The parents pay the one million Euro ransom but Jakob von Metzler is not freed. A suspect is quickly found but he says nothing. Four days after Jakob went missing, the situation escalates. The chief of Frankfurt police orders to threaten the suspect Magnus Gfgen with torture unless he reveals the location of the child. The threat works, Gfgen leads the police to the child. Jakob is dead. This week, the chief of police who ordered and the investigator who actually carried out the threat are standing trial for coercion, and Magnus Gfgen is the prime witness. His account of the threats is chilling. No matter the circumstance, people cannot be treated that way. Or can they?

Staatsangehrigkeitsbeibehaltungsantrag

Naw. It's not really a German word. It's actually a "Antrag auf Beibehaltung der deutschen Staatsbürgerschaft" -- a petition to keep your German citizenship. German law doesn't recognize dual citizenship as a rule. There are exceptions -- if you're born with two citizenships (like my boys), then it's mostly OK. But if you want to acquire the citizenship of another country any day later than your birth day, you have a problem. The reasoning is that if you go and apply for another citizenship, you obviously want to get the hell out of Germany and live somewhere else. So you might as well lock the door when you step out. It makes a certain amount of sense. I mean, can you please make up your mind who you want to be?