Blythe Spirit

God Bless America, Part 5

Ann Taylor Loft T-shirts for fifty cents at the neighborhood garage sale. Also, Hershey’s Kisses.

God Bless America, Part 4

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Putting the kids to bed and drinking Cosmos with my ladyfriends. Has it really been 18 years since we met?

God bless anywhere I get to hang out with these guys.

God Bless America, Part 3

While eating food court Chinese, I notice a preponderance of grown men wearing fluorescent Crocs.

God Bless America, Part 2

Theo has already received two pairs of cowboy boots and a three-foot crocheted clown doll that scares Jeff.

God Bless America, Part 1

I am in an air-conditioned Target, shopping for cheap cotton socks. I might buy some nacho chips and fake cheese before I leave.

Polar

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I wish I had a real post for you today, but since we spent the past five days exploring Berlin, hanging out with bloggers, and entertaining family members, all I’ve got is a picture of the famous Knut. You probably saw this polar bear cub’s appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair, next to Leonardo diCaprio a couple of months ago. Knut is bigger now and seems to be surviving just fine, despite the temperatures that reduced me to a little puddle of sweat and breast milk as I stood in the shade while Jeff took this photo.

Berlin was beautiful, houseguests were fun, and now I’m off to turn up the fan and throw another load of laundry in the wash.

Movie Stars

Forgive me if this is the current equivalent of dragging out the slide carousel and inviting you to sit through my photos of Yellowstone Park, but I know you’ll indulge me. My clever sister-in-law has assembled an entertaining video from our trip to Tuscany last month. It stars Theo and his two French cousins, Chloe and Clement, with a supporting cast of family members.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi26niYxpg4]

London town

I got my first impression of London as a seventeen-year-old tourist. I’d never visited a giant, cosmopolitan city before, but I felt immediately at home there, alongside the international population, the gritty urban streets, the miraculous public transportation, the graceful monuments, and the drizzly spring weather. I dragged my friends around behind me for the two days we had to see the city, absorbing everything from St. Paul’s to the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park.

A few years later, Jeff and I spent four months there in college, ostensibly studying art and architecture and politics. He watched a lot of English Premier League on his host family’s TV, and I sampled the culinary delights of half the entries in Let’s Go London’s dining section. I saw at least two plays a week. I wanted to stay forever.

Since then, I’ve traveled all over the United States and Europe. I’ve gotten older and fussier when it comes to where I sleep and what I eat and what I think is beautiful and what I judge as kitsch. Last year, we concentrated on seeing European cities that were new to both of us, and I’ll admit I was a little concerned as we planned our most recent long weekend in my favorite city on earth; the last time we visited, it was 1998. Both London and I have changed since then.

But I’ve never fallen for a city the way I fell for London almost twenty years ago, and I’m happy to report that the adoration stuck. The sun shone every day and we didn’t see a drop of rain. Though there were plenty of other (mostly American) tourists everywhere, we never felt like we were fighting crowds. We visited some old favorite haunts, saw a couple of shows, and ate our way through a litany of delicious cuisine – fabulous Indian vegetarian buffet lunch, late-night modern Middle Eastern, coffee shops, fast bites, classic fish and chips, French frites, and even the maligned steak pie. I devoured it all. Security measures are more prominent now, but after living with US travel restrictions, I hardly noticed them. The red buses and black taxis are more modern, the city’s cultural institutions have spilled across the river, and the Queen is letting people visit her houses now. I shopped at Marks & Spencer, and brought back my favoritie British treats.

It was a perfect London weekend. You really can go home again.

No, I haven’t fallen off the Internet

I’ve spent the past three weeks in the USA, drinking Slurpees (apparently my pregnancy craving of choice), eating tacos, and absorbing all the social interaction that I can. I’m still unsaturated.

It is telling that, upon Jeff’s return to our Furth apartment yesterday, we had zero voice mail messages and just a couple of bank statements in our mailbox. I’ve received no email from anyone in Deutschland since I’ve been away. Do we really live there at all?

I will be in my homeland for a while longer. I hope I remember all of the German driving regulations by the time I return.

If you’re reading this, you are either here because you are trying to research your Noel Coward paper (sorry, try the library) or because you are part of my huge internet fanclub. To the fans: I’m going to try to post a bit more often – shout out to all three of you.

Hasta la vista, Baby

For the past few weeks, I’ve been the Cranky Expatriate.

I’ve whined about everything from the language (who really cares about grammar anyway? oh wait, I do) to the weather (the heat, my god, the heat) to the food (don’t even get me started). In the middle of a country full of Germans celebrating their native land, I’ve been wallowing in homesickness. I’m tired of everything from paprika-flavored potato chips to the low customer service standard at my local grocery store. I’m tired of being barked at when someone doesn’t understand my German (really, man, I’m trying hard) and sick of being expected to keep a separate garbage can full of rotting food (don’t tell the Hausmeister, but I think we may start a boycott).

I realized yesterday that it’s been seven months since my last decent taco. Enough is enough. So I’m headed back to the USA for a few weeks. During my official Bratwurst Hiatus, this blog will take a hiatus too. I might post every now and then, but I might not. Since most of you, dear readers, will actually see me in person soon, you’ll just have to prepare yourselves for the real me. And the rest of you will, I hope, bear with me. You’ll be rewarded with a refreshed and salsa-filled virtual Blythe.