Blythe Spirit

We Were on a Break

This missive comes to you from my upstairs bathroom, where I’ve holed up with my giant duffle bag while the movers swaddle my belongings in bubble wrap. Last time I peeked down at them they were building a cardboard box around my grandmother’s rocking chair. It looked very much like a Trojan horse.

I’ll probably be offline for the next week or so. Don’t worry, I’m just trying to keep my toddler quiet for twelve hours in a row while we hurtle through the sky in a huge metal cigar case. Or I guess you could worry.

Either way, I’ll be blogging again soon, no longer an expat but not quite an American resident yet.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Sweating it Out

When I was seven or eight years old the prime attraction of a hotel stay was the possibility of an indoor swimming pool. I’ve never been a water lover, but when my best friend and I were lucky enough to unfold ourselves from the back seat of her family’s Suburban after six or eight hours on the road, we flung on our bathing suits and sprinted toward the pool because the pool meant we were on vacation. And next to the pool at the Holiday Inn there was always a teeny tiny wood-lined sauna where we played around throwing water on the fake lava rocks and climbing up and down the cramped benches until a hotel employee sent us back to our room to eat Domino’s pizza.

So I’ve always known what a sauna is, though I didn’t realize until recently how popular they are in some parts of the world, and even then I shrugged off the practice as one more quirky European habit I’ll never understand. Sitting and sweating naked, feeling my lips chap and trying to stand the heat for one more second, hoping the stranger on my left doesn’t remove his towel before I gasp toward the door and the fresh air outside? Nope. Didn’t get it. But lately my head has been miserably clogged with allergies and tense with the anxieties of the move. My sinuses are overflowing and my neck is clenched, and yesterday when a friend suggested we spend the afternoon swimming and sweating, I decided it might be a perfect antidote for my ailments.

That’s how I found myself inhaling eucalyptus aroma in a hazy roomful of nude men and women (yes, I was naked too), as we gazed at an aquarium of exotic fish installed in the wall. Nemo flitted among the coral and I sat there in my altogether, trying to liken this spa-like experience to the cramped stinky quarters at the Holiday Inns I’ve known and really, there was just no comparison. I wandered between a steam room with flickering starlights in the ceiling to an outdoor hut larger than my own living room, complete with roaring fireplace. I felt my nose clear and my shoulders fall. I breathed lemon-scented heat, then plunged into a peaceful pool with a view of…well, with a view of a bunch of naked people.

I lay there in the water, watching fifty unclothed bodies stroll from sauna hut to bar to lounge chair. I worried about the etiquette of the situation (Should I look? If not, why is everyone else looking? If so, isn’t that weird?) and then I finally got distracted by all the fascinating people I saw. The last time I saw so many nude bodies in one place was either onscreen in “Eyes Wide Shut,” or backstage at a ballet performance in college, and those were just flashes of skin. But here I saw beer-sipping, laughing, lounging, negotiating, strolling, pretzel-eating. Old people, kids, long hair, pink hair, a guy with just one hand, and what looked like a business meeting in one corner of the bar. All without clothes, or towels, or bathrobes. Though one lady was wearing Crocs.

I don’t spend much time thinking about my body. I inherited genes that keep my weight issues to a minimum, and I’ve never had the kind of curves that make anyone sit up and take notice, so really I’m just grateful that it does what I need it to do – walk, house my brain, digest almost anything, grow a cute kid. But I realized as I lay there watching some lady scold her kid for running near the pool (yes, they were both naked) I’ve had a seed of an idea in the back of my brain that Normal People have bodies like Victoria’s Secret models. And that’s because the only time I see naked or nearly-naked women, it’s in a lingerie ad or on a skin poster. And the last time I saw a bunch of people like me without their clothes on was in the locker room in high school PE when we were all 20 pounds lighter and firmer in every way.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to advocate handing out towels and collecting clothing at the door of your next corporate event (BlogHer 2009: The Year We All Went Naked!), or even promoting nudie posters of big beautiful ladies (though that sounds good too). But what if, at the gym, I didn’t hide behind the locker door and instead allowed the group of giggling tween girls changing into their swimsuits to see what a grown-up lady looks like? What if I had seen my squishy grandma’s body, including her mastectomy scar, without clothes when I was forming ideas about strong women? What if we were allowed to see what even those Dove ads don’t tell us: that women’s nipples are different sizes, and people have hair in different amounts and different places, and even that girl you think of as skinny and gorgeous has cellulite on her hips?

What then?

Getting the Hang of It

This is a video clip from Ira Glass’s storytelling series. You should watch it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE&hl=en]

Did you watch? Most of you probably did not. That’s OK, but really, you should go back and watch it because he tells his story much better than I do.

If you still haven’t watched it, the gist is that it’s OK to keep doing something (specifically television but let’s just stretch Ira’s description a bit and extend it to, you know, whatever you want to do) you’re not sure you are good at, and you shouldn’t give up hope that you’ll get better. Sometimes it just takes a really long time.

Three years ago, I quit my job and we sold our house in a lovely neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest. We had a huge garage sale and lived in a hotel for a couple of days while we watched New Orleans drown on CNN. Our families wished us well and we flew to Germany. I cried in the middle of the night because I was jetlagged and bored and Jeff started a new job. We finally found an apartment after searching for far too long, and then I baked cookies.

Even years later, after hours of German lessons and the World Cup and trying to make my own Mexican food and surviving childbirth and making some friends, I had resigned myself to feeling like a fish trying to ride a bicycle most of the time, just waiting until I had the opportunity to jump back into a familiar pond.

Now, it’s time to jump. We’re headed back to America later this summer. Jeff has a new job, our residency permits are expiring, and we’re shopping for houses and cars and dreaming of cheeseburgers. The decision to move wasn’t terribly difficult, but our reactions once we’d made it surprised both of us. While we are glad to be headed back to the familiar and especially back to our families and friends, we’re still working on getting excited. It’s going to be exactly the same as we remember and completely different too.

I’m sure it’s no accident that I’ve suddenly looked around and realized that although I never thought it would happen, I’ve finally gotten the hang of living here.

Beautiful Game

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the most popular sport in the world, I feel it is my duty to inform you that I’m living at Ground Zero for the coming apocalypse. Germany plays Turkey in the semifinal of the European Cup soccer tournament on Wednesday night, and I live in a predominantly Turkish neighborhood in the middle of the most German part of Germany (Bavaria). A giant TV screen has been erected a half-block from my front door, and the beer tents are lying in wait. Probably the only more exciting place to be during the two hours of the match will be some expat-owned beer hall in the middle of Istanbul, but only because they’re probably a little less strict with their anti-riot tactics than we are around here. (Last time I tried to wheel Theo in his stroller through our town square during a Germany match, I was frisked and they almost took his sippy cup away due to the gametime bottle ban.)

The tournament is being held in Austria and Switzerland, so just a few hours from here. Although it’s thrilling to cheer from the stands during these international matches, it will be just as exciting to see my Turkish neighbors and my German neighbors shouting and toasting and groaning and celebrating side by side. Somebody is going to be happy, and somebody isn’t, and a whole lot of those somebodies will be down the street from us. I’m not worried about violence (see: careful police presence described above) but if I seem haggard on Thursday morning, it’s because there’s a 100% chance that the horn-honking and fireworks outside my window will keep me up until the wee hours. I’m thinking about staying away from the TV, ignoring the results pages online, and just imagining that everyone is a winner.

HOTT

Is reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder a thing? As in, someone gets depressed when the weather becomes lovely and the sun shines and everyone else is outside frolicking and licking ice cream cones.

I promise this isn’t going to become another rant about the Germans and their wacky body thermostats. It’s just going to be a poor me, I’m sweaty all the livelong day and all the livelong night and that makes me tired and cranky WAH post. I found myself saying to Jeff this morning, “…and ugh, it’s SUMMERtime and I’m going to have to psych myself up to get through it.”

Who says stuff like that? People with RSAD(tm), that’s who. Come on, pharmaceutical companies, work with me on this one.

It’s Miller Time

When you’re trying to catch a train, you might just miss it. Or you might arrive exactly on time and congratulate yourself for walking calmly from station to platform to seat. Or you might have to sit around entertaining yourself for a frustrating while.

That’s the post I started this afternoon, and then I realized it was just a bad explanation of the time/space continuum, something my readers inherently understand already, though you might not be able to say just exactly what it is without a train/arrival/departure reference. Which is exactly how I feel about it.

So let’s start this story again.

Last night, I went to Bavaria’s second-largest beer festival. Though it is not as big as Oktoberfest, it’s miles more charming, set on the side of a hill with tall trees above and cool beer cellars carved into the earth. Also, they serve delicious Hungarian fried bread with garlic sauce and cheese, along with a million kinds of sausage and pretzels that are so big you can wrap them around your waist like Alice’s caterpillar and his hookah. I drank some beer, though not as much as everyone else apparently, because when I returned my half-full stein (you can only buy beer a liter at a time), the lederhosen-clad Herr who returned my five-euro(!) mug deposit frowned at me for not cleaning my plate…er, mug. I’ll admit that there was some singing along to a German oompah band playing Bon Jovi covers, a bit of standing on my chair and dancing (no, it wasn’t a table dance situation, it’s just what people do at these festivals – those crazy Germans), and a few dirty looks pointed toward the drunk guy at the table behind us who would not stop leering at our table of happy, dancing women.

Then, as you’ve probably already guessed, I missed my homebound train by two minutes and spent forty minutes sitting around waiting for the next one.

Were you expecting a moral to the story, about everything in life turning out OK even when what missed the opportunity you wanted?

Nope, just a story about beer and sitting around on a train platform. Enjoy.

Deal or No Deal

After our first year’s adventures in Deutschland including the peak of my life accomplishments thus far, passing the German driving test, I have avoided most government bureaucracy. That’s a tall order in a country where one must pass a state test to get a fishing license, but with a few exceptions (a blurry visit to the city hall when Theo was five days old to pick up his birth certificate being one), I’ve remained under the radar.

My rapidly approaching passport expiration date necessitated another round of visits to the pencil-pushers, so last week I was back in the saddle. I began with a visit to the US consulate in Munich, where the very friendly guard approached me when I was a half block away, asking how he could help me. Apparently there’s not a lot of guarding to do when the whole place is surrounded by barbed wire already. After I made it through airport security, my interaction with the cheery consular employee lasted roughly eight minutes, and that included some chitchat wherein he spontaneously recalled meeting me a year ago when we applied for Theo’s birth certificate. Hmmm…not a lot of business in Munchen? Or else he just thinks mothers of newborns who are frantically trying not to leak breast milk on their outfits are sex-ay. I had my new passport in hand in less than a week. Anyone want to go to Thailand? (sob)

Today, Theo and I rode the bus to the city hall so that I could straighten out my residency permit. We entered a waiting room full of chairs, surrounded by closed doors, each bearing a number. It felt a little like those waiting rooms in old Candid Camera episodes, except there was no statue of David sporting a fig leaf that would shoot water at me when I lifted it. Or else I missed it while attempting to prevent Theo from licking the chair legs.

I will not bore you (further!) with the details (they are sordid but what’s a young alien to do?). However, after spending some time behind door #2, I am proud to announce that I will be allowed to stay in Deutschland for a little while longer.

Who needs American Idol when my life is just one big game show?

Festive

I can’t come up with a way to capture the sheer Christmasiness (add that to Urban Dictionary stat) of Nurnberg this time of year. The Christkindlesmarkt is big and smells like spiced wine and grilled sausages and gingerbread, and choirs are singing and people are walking around the red-and-white striped awnings wearing cozy mittens and scarves. There are so many people, in fact, that taking a decent picture is impossible for an amateur like me.

The big market with stalls selling pottery and ornaments and toys and even strange dolls made out of prunes is the big attraction where all the tour buses spill their passengers. The children’s market, around the corner and down the street is just as charming and crowded, but many of the people are shorter so it’s easier to take photos. These ones still don’t capture the magic, but maybe they give you a glimpse. Just imagine eating a hot cone of fries smothered in garlic sauce and listening to children exclaiming over the Eisbahn (model winter railroad) while you look at them.

Skin

Jeff took Thanksgiving off work. After my book group lunch when our new Thursday afternoon babysitter arrived, the two of us headed out for an afternoon of relaxation at a new nearby indoor water park. We decided to splash (ha!) out for access to the SaunaLand in addition to the water slides and current pool and jet pools that we’d tried before with Theo in tow.

This explains how I found myself on Thanksgiving day wrapped in a towel, eating a soft pretzel, sitting in a bar with a two-story view of naked Germans walking around in the freezing weather between outdoor sauna buildings. The facility is beautiful and houses a bunch of small indoor sauna rooms including one in which aroma is pumped on a changing hourly schedule, plus a series of sauna huts in an adjoining yard. After an hour riding the waterslides (strobe lights! inntertubes!), floating in the whirlpools, and paddling around in the steamy outdoor pool, we both could have used a half hour of pineapple-flavored warmth. Instead, we sat around on the benches outside the sauna rooms with our towels cinched tightly around us, soaking our feet in little basins and trying not to make eye contact with anyone, especially each other, as people dropped their robes and strolled around the room. Finally we realized we would never get over our ingrained American giggle reflex and we’d better get out of there. So we went upstairs, ordered pretzels, and realized when we looked out the window that we could not escape the skin display.

I have no problem with public nudity in theory, in fact the whole experience led me to realize how much more realistic American body image would be if we were used to seeing regular people’s naked bodies more often. We grow up seeing movie stars and models and other teenagers in gym class naked, but I can tell you with great certainty that those bodies bear no resemblance to the average fifty-year-old. And I admire the idea that the human body is just normal and everybody has one and blah blah blah.

However, there was no way anyone was going to talk me into peeling off my bathing suit and entering a sauna room with three old, nude strangers. It didn’t matter how nice it smelled in there.

THEO’S BREAKFAST SOUNDTRACK: Slave4U : Britney Spears

Amendment

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Did I imply earlier that Germans don’t enjoy shopping as recreation?

Scratch that.

Here in Bavaria, the “most German part of Germany,” we spend our Sundays walking in the park and frolicking with our families. We never ever spend the day grocery shopping or picking up a spare lightbulb or, heaven forbid, shoe shopping. It’s against the law for stores to open their doors on this most holy day of rest. I’m not bitter about that or anything.

I’ve learned to appreciate some of the quirks of German culture that used to irritate me. I no longer have the impulse to turn right on red, and I even drink half beer/half Sprite by choice. But when someone inevitably tries to convince me how relaxing and healthy it is to have a day off from running errands, I smile tightly and struggle not to tell them my theory that this just creates complete mayhem in the stores on Saturdays as every working person in the country tries to cram his shopping into one day each week. Still, I get a condescending smile, reminding me that Sundays are for resting, just take your American craving to spend spend spend and walk it off. Preferably while sporting some of those Nordic ski poles.

But two or three times per year, each town gets a reprieve from the retail therapy ban and is allowed to open on Sunday afternoon. If my local acquaintances are to be believed, the stores should be deserted, since who wants to spend another day slogging through the terrible chore of buying some new clothes?

Or some new boots, perhaps?

Judging by the tangled mass of humanity at my local shopping area yesterday, everyone does. Don’t try to tell me they weren’t having a good time shoving one another out of the way to get to that rack of discounted sandals.

Because I had a good time buying new boots. I’ve been searching for these boots for a while, and it just took a Sunday afternoon of shopping to find them.

Alas, when I’m looking for some fun next Sunday, I guess I’ll have to locate some ski poles instead.

THEO’S BREAKFAST SOUNDTRACK: Hang On Little Tomato : Pink Martini