Coming up on four years

On March 8th I will have lived 4 years in Germany. If that's not an opportunity to put my two Heimats on the scales, starting with...Things I miss about the US:
 
1) Cultural differences are flaunted, and it shows up best in the diversity of restaurants and ethnic grocery stores. I especially miss tacos and burritos. 

2) Americans are open toward strangers. In fact, Americans even like to confide in strangers. (Once a woman asked me at a craft fair: "Do you think this sweater is too baggy? Recently my daughter said I look like a hobo.") Germans, by contrast, need to down a few beers before they can make eye contact with strangers.

3) Small food co-ops, consumer-owned, where you can buy beans, grains, honey, olive oil, and peanut butter (ground from fresh peanuts) in bulk quantities. Here, a rare sighting of a want-to-be co-op in Germany:


4) The Unitarian Universalist faith. (UUism is a "religion" that draws its values and members from diverse religious traditions, and focuses on social justice here and now.) It has no equivalent in Germany that I know of. (For Germans, UUism is another example of America's love affair with à la carte: take what you like, ignore the rest.) 

5) The US is smoke-free almost everywhere but in private homes. Even there, smokers don't light up around non-smokers. In Germany, smoking in public is still a widespread phenomenon, and you (i.e., kids) can even purchase cigarettes from vending machines on the street. On the other hand, here is something else you can buy on the street: bike inner tubes. That also says something about differing cultural values, leading me to...



...what lures me to stay in Germany (aside from livable/bikable/railable cities):


1) Hearty, whole grain rye bread with pumpkin seeds. (Did you notice that food tops both of the lists? For all our philosophizing, what drives us humans is really quite simple.)

2) Ubiquity of shared flats (Wohngemeinschaften). A not insignificant number of Germans live with housemates/roommates into their forties and beyond, and not just for the sake of convenience.


3) Craftsmanship. In Germany you can still apprentice in bread baking, boat building, and shoe making. In Bonn, there is even a school for organ construction. The long-held tradition of systematically passing know-how from one generation to the next leads to an appreciation for things seasoned and of high quality.


4) Sperrmüll (large item garbage pick-up). Four times a year (to specified dates) people put their old furniture, etc. on the streets - so it is up for grabs until the next morning, when the small portion of it that remains is transported to the dump.


5) Finally, I don't mean to flaunt it, but it is true: five weeks of vacation and 80% of full-time with full benefits is hard to beat.

Going to the sauna

Today my friend Silvi invited me to go to the sauna with her and a co-worker, who was so pregnant, her baby could have decided to be born in the changing room. It generated a lot of pondering in me.

For starters, I think it is fascinating that the sauna is a whole day event in Germany, not an afterthought at the end of a workout or a swim at ACAC. There are in any given area numerous elaborately landscaped wellness centers with half a dozen varieties of saunas, and - surprisingly - the clientèle is middle class. Something that I associate with absolute luxury and self-indulgence is something a lot of Germans would sooner equate with getting a car inspected: going to the sauna is prudent and, like everything in Germany, features prescribed routines.

After the 90 degree sauna (that's Celsius), for example, you must hose yourself down with ice water, jump in a cold swimming pool/lake, soak your feet, drink water, recline and read, have a warm shower, and then you can repeat the process. Regular sauna visitors - and there are many - regale the benefits of subjecting your body to temperature extremes, including everything from fighting minor infections before they flare up into flus and colds to keeping the skin shiny and fresh. And according to general wisdom, nothing speaks against a pregnant woman enjoying the sauna with her belly at the bursting point. You can't start early enough introducing your child to life's fundamental pleasures (of which the sauna is decidedly one), and if you are really attuned to prenatal health, sauna is part of the plan. So it is said.

Luckily pregnant women in the sauna means a visual treat for the rest of us. And that brings us to the next point: for me the most exciting thing about the sauna is nakedness.

First of all, I secretly love studying naked people. Not the sexy ones with varnished bodies and Chippendale muscles; I see enough of their nakedness in advertising. The ones I like to see are the ones who wouldn't volunteer to be nude models for an art class: the ones with stodgy, square, wrinkly, hairy, or weathered bodies. The ones that look human.

But even more than being invited to glimpse the nakedness of others in an environment of trust, I love being naked. The first time I went to a public sauna palace six years ago, I was terribly reluctant to part with my clothes. But I was even more reluctant to put them on again. Oh, how cumbersome they felt after a day of being dressed in nothing but water, unprotected, exposed, and free. On top of that I remember being acutely aware of their musty smell. They weren’t dirty, just worldly, and my senses had been awakened by all the deep breathing. That day I wrote in an email to a friend, “I think I could get addicted to public nakedness.” I did.

Why don’t Americans like going to the sauna to the same degree as Germans? They embrace lots of other indulgent things in the name of health and well-being. Are they too prudish to be seen in public naked? Do they lack free time? Do they find it too primitive and prefer hobbies that are technologically advanced, like jet skiing or playing virtual reality video games? Do they find sitting in other peoples’ sweat unsanitary? Some combination of factors is probably at work, but which is the most important? Please weigh in with your ideas.

Hitting a Nerve

There are many signs that my stay in Germany is more substantial than a post-college flirtation with Europe. For example, I know the word for that plastic thing that you hammer into a wall to anchor a screw - only in German. And in a weak moment I thought the word friend might actually be spelled more like its German cousin, as in freind (Freund auf Deutsch). But the most obvious sign that I am really making a nest here is that I went to see a German dentist.

A dentist is something that everyone choses carefully. But in my family there is an almost religious (bordering fanatical) faithfulness to the honorable Dr. R. Only once did I venture into an unknown practice, though I haven't lived in my hometown for eight years. The price of that sole instance of infidelity is a sensitive tooth, its yowling response to hot, cold, and pressure as deep as my regret.

Before I left for Germany the first time, my attentive mother made sure to help me squeeze in an appointment with Him. The second time around, however, I had started dumping a large sum of money into German health insurance each month, and somehow, with a sunken heart, I couldn't justify going without US insurance coverage to visit the family doctor.

So I bit the bullet (don't tell Dr. R.) and asked around in Bonn for a reputable teeth caregiver. I came away from my first set of visits with contradictory feelings. On the one hand, I was relieved to find that treatment results were similar - no complaints. On the other hand, I was bemused to see German/American cultural differences reflected in dental care, and the lasting psychological impact of my visit couldn't be less familiar.

The emphasis of my appointment with Dr. S. was a performance review: how I am doing in the guardianship of my teeth. She took my jaw under the microscope and gave me feedback: fear-inducing feedback. She told me that my gums were on a forward march to pulp-dom (as a result of haphazard flossing) and did a demonstration. A delicate, pin-shaped object sunk in beside a rear molar like a rake into a pile of tender leaves. She smeared my teeth with blue dye and used a small camera to project every patch of plaque thus revealed onto a computer screen. She pointed out where small pieces of tooth enamel were worn away, leaving cold, frightened nerve endings to fend for themselves.

With Dr. R. the sober, clinical analysis must have taken place in his head. He certainly found faults - I've had my share of fillings. But with a sunny grin he preferred to talk about his trips to Haiti and Lithuania and ask if that heart-breaking brother of mine had settled down. During the standard professional cleaning of the teeth - itself rather a rarity this side of the pond - his assistant always asked which flavor toothpaste I preferred, offering bubble gum until I was well into my twenties. And I never left the office without a sparkling new tooth brush, a stash of floss - travel size and regular - and a foamy sticker or an eraser shaped like a tooth.

Dr. S.'s goal was to offer objective, relevant, practical advice. But because she bypassed all of the small talk avenues and failed to make any encouraging remark, I found her approach cold-hearted - and very German. But I also see that the chatty optimism of my family dentist, just as stereotypically American, can also leave something to be desired. Because, while one result of Doctor S.'s frank language is that I have had nightmares of smiling into the mirror, only to see gaping, black holes, I also can't remember a time in which I took better care of my teeth.