Archive for the 'Deutschland' Category
November 7th, 2007 by Blythe
On our first day in Germany, someone asked me if I pictured German women as muscular, gruff, and ugly. I deferred to my usual response in an uncomfortable situation, which was to make fun of Jeff. I think I made some comment about his hope that Heidi Klum is the intersection of all tributaries to the German gene pool. But I will admit to having made a few Helga jokes and having heard about a thousand of them from Americans who have never been here.
On the other side of the coin, I’d never thought a lot about the stereotype of American physical appearance before I moved away. I knew we’d get a few questions about George W. and the war, and I knew that American tourists could usually be spotted by identifying their white tennis shoes and loud voices. But I didn’t realize that so many people picture the typical American as being fat.
The expectation that we’re all bursting at the seams has caused some of the only really prejudicial comments I’ve heard from Germans in the past few years. Most Americans here who aren’t very obviously on the thin side have heard from their doctors, even before a height and weight check, that they need to watch the scale and probably lose a few pounds. When I said I was hankering for American food during my pregnancy, my OB acted surprised and said, “You don’t look like you eat like an American.” It’s come up several times in a friend’s German class, and even the teacher argued that most Americans are sedentary and overweight.
Like most stereotypes this one stems from the truth. Many Americans are unhappy with their weight, and our country is, for good or ill, the birthplace of Fast Food (as in the Golden Arches, not fast food as in fresh street food which can be found all over the world. Have I been watching too much Tony Bourdain?). But when I look around at the expats I know, or the tourists I see, I don’t notice any more overweight people than I see at my local German grocery store every Saturday. Do Germans think this way because of our exported reality TV? Or because we just can’t shut up about it, from celebrity Jenny Craig ads to a million and one diet ideas in our magazines and newspapers?
It has made me consider why Americans imagine German women as Nurse Ratched with an accent, even though most German women – including many, many famous ones (Claudia Schiffer, Marlene Dietrich, Steffi Graf, and our Project Runway Host included) – don’t fit that stereotype. Burgundy hair – yes. But burly and frightening? Not in my experience.
THEO’S BREAKFAST SOUNDTRACK: Guero : Beck
November 4th, 2007 by Blythe
Yesterday we checked out Furth’s new swimming pool. It opened last weekend and we were as clueless as usual about it. We saw a sign somewhere announcing the grand opening, figuring they had re-painted the bottom of the kiddie area at the old swimming pool or put up a new diving board or something.
When we arrived we once again realized the benefits of the German penchant for doing everything the right way. Sometimes it’s annoying (especially when you are unwittingly doing everything the wrong way, and getting shouted at) but yesterday it was awesome. Because the new swimming pool is basically an aquatic wonderland right in our back yard. I can’t even begin to do it justice with a description, so I’ll just tell you that there is a two-story pirate ship, three 3-story waterslides, a mini wave pool and an entire wing with five or six hot pools. And we didn’t even go into the building housing the multiple sauna and wellness rooms.
You would think we might have noticed this kind of construction project less than a mile from our home. But you would be wrong. And that tells you so very, very much about how we live. Absolutely uninformed, but happy to enjoy the spoils when we finally get a clue.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f67KfdO03do&rel=1]
THEO’S BREAKFAST SOUNDTRACK: Duran Duran Decade
His name is Theo and he dances on the sand.
November 3rd, 2007 by Blythe
About this time last year, I met a Scottish woman named Marion. She ran the Christmas market stand where I volunteered to sell festive holiday items and sneer silently at the American throngs who arrived on tour buses and wore nametags pinned to their matching overcoats. Marion was very busy and we didn’t have much time to get to know each other, but she was always kind to me and tolerant of my need for extra space for my pregnant self in the tiny market stall. She wished me Merry Christmas on December 23rd and I figured I had seen the last of her, at least until she needed help at the next market.
Mid-February, Theo had just turned one month old and my mother was winding up her three-week visit. I was still sore and unable to predict what might make Theo happy and what would cause him to shriek. When the phone rang and the caller said her name was Marion, it took me a few minutes to put the face with the Scottish accent. Marion was calling to invite Theo and me to lunch at her house the following week. I was simultaneously touched and terrified as I had premonitions of trying to make polite conversation while my baby screamed bloody murder in my arms and I looked wildly around the room for a soft cushion to place under my, um, Self before sitting down. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to talk about besides reliving my holiday altercation with a group of Gluhwein-soaked revelers who fled from the market stand when I mixed up their change.
My mom left town and Jeff went back to work and I loaded Theo into his carseat and made my way to Marion’s house. When I arrived, she gave me a big hug. She’d baked lasagna and wrapped up a sweet gift for Theo, and she asked me all the right questions about how he was doing, and whether I’d been happy with my hospital, and she avoided all the gory details that I didn’t really want to re-live, and didn’t ask me how he many hours he was sleeping at night. My seat at the table was soft and comfortable and Theo slept like an angel for almost two hours. It was such a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
Marion and I still e-mail occasionally and though I won’t be able to help at the Christmas market this year I will stop in and say hello to her. She may never know just how much her invitation meant to me. I had just begun to wallow (again) in the knowledge that, if I were living near my old friends, we could easily have gone out for an hour or two to friendly houses with fresh air and friendly faces, but since we lived in Germany we didn’t have as many options. And Marion provided the friendliness, and the fresh air, and a warm meal too. It’s one of those things I’ve saved in my memory for the next time I know a new mom who could use a friend and some lasagna.
THEO’S BREAKFAST SOUNDTRACK: ABBA Gold
(Daddy chose the music this morning. Theo’s favorite track is “Fernando.”)
October 23rd, 2007 by Blythe
October 2nd, 2007 by Blythe
Screaming arguments just aren’t my style. I am more likely to fume and scowl and walk out of the room and recount the injustice later along with all the reasons I was right. But I’m not sure how I will react the first time there’s a hint of harm toward my child.
Our supermarket has an attached multistory parking garage and friendly signs designating parking spaces for families near the store entrance. We’re used to seeing moms and dads and kids loading and unloading their cars, hauling plastic bottles to the recycling center and climbing in and out of strollers. When we returned to our car after shopping on Saturday evening, we could hear the shouting even before we saw the fight. Two couples, two children, one stroller, and a barrage of screams had taken residence in the family parking area. A thin mother in a yellow trench coat held her infant under one arm and shook her finger in the face of a scowling mom in a black sweatshirt. A tall husband yelled in the ear of a burly dad whose school-age daughter hid behind a car. There were accusations and there was anger. Someone had driven too fast in the parking garage, almost hit someone else’s stroller. Someone shouldn’t have had their stroller in the middle of the garage. Someone’s child could have been killed – Killed! No one had a cool head. All of them, except the kids, were red-faced and seemed on the verge of physical violence.
Our station wagon was parked next to the fight and I scurried to pull Theo out of the shopping cart, sliding into the backseat and strapping him safely into his carseat. Jeff and I didn’t make eye contact, we just hauled grocery bags and jackets and bottles of water swiftly into the back of the car, paying no attention to whether the eggs were safely stowed. The woman in the yellow coat retreated then returned, then ran back to her car, then surged back again toward the scowling family across the garage, and we could hear her high-pitched shouts even with the car doors closed; her face was wild with fright and anger. We waited for the clutch of people to move out of our way so Jeff could back the car out of our parking space. The burly dad stepped between the two women. The tall man carried the baby away from the shouting. The young girl looked up at her mother, who glowered angrily and silently.
We sat in our car and waited, hoping that everyone would climb into their cars and drive safely away. I wished hard for the little girl to crawl into the back seat and shut the door, wished her parents would follow her lead. Finally, one car pulled away from the other, its windows rolled down, shouts flying toward the angry gestures behind it.
If a careless driver almost hit our stroller, would I scream and shake my fist and yell out the car window? I think I might just cry and hold Theo tight and write down the license plate number. But maybe that’s what the parents in parking garage thought, if you’d asked them last Friday, if someone almost hit their stroller, what would they do?
September 23rd, 2007 by Blythe
Click on the thumbnails at the bottom to see a larger version of the image in the box above.
September 16th, 2007 by Blythe
I have three or four posts swimming around in my brain whose points are blurring as the days go by. It is clear that most of them will never see the light of day unless I condense them for you here:
-I’m not sure what it is about this photo that so mesmerizes me. Yeah, the guy’s a hottie, but a little grungy for my taste (especially after seeing him with his band, all very Black Crowes (Note to Sandi, you might want to investigate this)). But every time I see it in a magazine, it causes me to pause and contemplate his brand of attractiveness.
-The two-year anniversary of our arrival in Germany was last week. It’s the week of 9/11 which is a good reminder, when I start getting philosophical about the passage of time and hardship and transition and anniversaries, to get some perspective and feel grateful.
-It’s a good thing I have no time to focus on such things, or Jessica Simpson would have a letter in her mailbox (or on this blog, at least) addressing her father’s disturbing morph into, well, Jessica herself. He used the royal “We” when addressing a question about a porn-star movie role offered to his little girl:
“We were promised we would win an Oscar with that,” says [Joe]Simpson, 49. “I was like, ‘Eh, we’ll just buy a [statue of a] little man and keep our clothes on.’ “
Jess, he already broke up one marriage and “managed” your sister into a lip-synch hoedown on SNL. Maybe it’s time to grow up and get far, far away from your dad who seems much too focused on his daughter’s sex appeal (eeew), despite the fact that They turned down the naked role. Which is fortunate for all of us, because, well, Joe Simpson, naked? (Are you following my train of thought? Me neither.)
-We watched a lot of golf this weekend, especially the Solheim Cup (women’s version of the Ryder Cup for those of you who know what that means). Why do American women, even highly skilled, professional, competitive women, revert to tattooing little flags on their cheeks and wearing matching red, white and blue scrunchies in their hair when they join other women in a cause? I can ridicule this because I was in a sorority and I used to spend my Sunday afternoons puffy painting Greek letters on plastic tumblers instead of completing my Philosophy papers. I know, at least they behave themselves on the course, unlike the men who get all testosterone-y (the San Francisco? treat)and lose all decorum. But good grief, apparently estrogen + team pride = friendship bracelets. Unless you are European, where you don’t have friendship bracelets, or scrunchies, just Annika Sorenstam.
-Emmy Awards tonight. I will not be staying up until the wee hours to watch them live, but I plan to view the replay tomorrow evening. I haven’t seen any of the nominated shows, of course (except, good gravy, is ER still on the air?), but isn’t it all about the fashion anyway?
-Someone just found my blog by searching “shaun cassidy in leather pants” and really, that’s why I started this thing in the first place.
July 11th, 2007 by Blythe
It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks Yoda was speaking German in translation.
The following link is especially for anyone who has ever tried to learn German. You should not go there if you are offended by salty language or sentences like this:
It is important to note zat zere is only one korrekt vay to phrase a sentence.
Uncyclopeida entry on German grammar (via Gin and Teutonic)
Am I the last person on the internet to discover Uncyclopedia? Because I think it’s my new favorite site.
July 3rd, 2007 by Blythe
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As we approach the most American holidays (Sorry, Pilgrim, Thanksgiving is #2), I have the urge to bake chocolate chip cookies. And if the weather stays cool, I’ll probably give in and whip up a batch. But lately I’ve concluded that (GASP) America really isn’t the cookie capitol of the world. Sure, we have the Toll House, but we just can’t compete with the Europeans. They’ve allowed us our pride as we parade around saying Cookies! We are the only place in the world to find decent Cookies! as we gnaw on stale Chips Ahoy. And then they slyly break out the packet of biscuits and brew a cup of tea.
Besides the health care system, I will one day be very sorry to also say goodbye to the biscuit section of my local German supermarket, and the biscuits I’ve collected on my travels through Europe. Some people buy postcards and t-shirts, I make a trip through Tesco and cram tubes of milk chocolate digestives into my shopping bag in London, and make one last stop before crossing the Italian border to pick up some Grancereale. And when I discovered the Karamellgeback, I decided I’d better start paying closer attention in German class because I might decide to stay a while.
I’m so sorry I can’t have a nice cup of tea and a sit down with each of you to share my discoveries. But next time you’re looking for a way to feel at home in a place where it seems like you don’t belong, I highly recommend a visit to the biscuit aisle at the nearest grocery store. Let me know what you find.
June 25th, 2007 by Blythe
Here’s a sign that maybe it’s time to start fleeing the neighborhood:
Bird Flu Cases Confirmed in Southern Germany
Yes, that’s right, the plague has crossed the Czech Republic border and landed in our back yard. We shouldn’t be shocked, since Nurnberg is only 120km from the border, but still. I plan to ditch the Deutsches Hanchen (that’s German chicken) in my freezer and use this as an excuse to eat steak for the foreseeable future. Also, an excuse to remain inside and re-watch all my Aaron Sorkin DVDs.
