How Americans think about Biking

I still have a suitcase in...

Today the flamboyant owner of a fabric store asked me, "What is your accent?" The funny thing is: I am in the US. If things continue the way they are going, I will soon be more likely to be taken for a foreigner on my native turf.

Luckily, it turned out the guy has a German-born mother, so I guess he was highly attuned to the sound of a light German inflection. We got to talking about the things I miss when I am here or there and what I look forward to, and he told me his mother's take on switching back and forth between the cultures. He said she is always complaining. When she arrives in the US, she says, "It is impossible to get anywhere here using public transportation," and when she arrives in Germany, she says, "People here are so rude!"

People pose the question on what I miss about the US/Germany (depending on where I currently am) to me all the time. One of my stock answers, handy for surprising my audience and keeping the conversation from getting too heavy, is drinking fountains. In Germany you rarely see a drinking fountain, whereas in the US, you can expect to find them indoors and out in almost every public place.

I think when you live between two cultures and have seen the best and worst sides that both have to offer, you will always see room for improvement where ever you are. Furthermore you will always be missing something, pining after something, feeling incomplete. The German way of expressing this is to say, "I still have a suitcase in Bonn," (or, in German, Ich habe noch einen Koffer in Bonn). That means, "I still have one foot in Bonn" or "I left my heart in Bonn."

But the more I travel back and forth, the more I will be leaving suitcases in Virginia and forgetting mein Herz in Heidelberg, because the idioms (after prepositions) are the first to go - or at least get spliced and blended.

3 tidbits from the past week

Food for thought: My friend S. is spending three months on an organic goat farm in the hills of Bavaria learning to make goat cheese. Her young co-farmer, who grew up in the area, confessed that as a girl she asked her sister, "Where do people without chickens get their eggs?"

Advice: If you are trying to convince a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore that vegetarians can also make good use of a barbecue grill, avoid the T-word.

Good for a chuckle: For the Bonn Marathon last weekend, participants had to register at a "Scheck-In" counter. Some Germans are really on the fence about the growing use of English in everyday life.

A free (for all) country, after all?

As a corollary to the entry on things that are smaller than life in the US, I have been wanting to talk about German exceptions to the Recht und Ordung rule, i.e., examples of poorly organized, slipshod, or just plain anarchistic.

This desire was inspired by my attempts to get in a bit of exercise at the public swimming pool around the corner from my apartment. The invigorating plunge into the water helps decrease the stress load of an office job, right? Wrong. Not if you don't have any lap lanes, nor any guidelines on sharing space, cuz at 6 pm the pool is filled with throngs of 9-5ers, and all of them carry on oblivious to the others. Zealous athletes end up next to the day dreamy dilly dalliers. Swimmers weave in and out of each others’ paths so often you'd think it was a contra dance. Try in vain to establish a system. Some say, imagine the lap lanes, swim in circles. But others insist on maintaining a straight line, never deviating right or left, even if another swimmer approaches head on.

The second lapse in orderliness lies in a particularly German use* of the comma, Germans might just call it versatility. If you are a native English speaker you noticed that I just let a comma stand in for a full stop, this is the "versatility" I was talking about. Didn't that drive the obsessive compulsive in you crazy? I don't know if it fits the leitmotiv of this blog, but for what it is worth, I think conjunctions contribute to Recht und Ordung.

True anarchy can be best observed, however, in retail establishments with multiple check out lanes. It starts like this: there aren’t enough employees at the register and the lines snake to the back of the store. Then, inconspicuously, the missing worker returns from his or her coffee break and opens up lane 3 or 4. What do the Germans do? Gallantly step back to let pregnant women and those with few items get through speedily? As a matter of course, notify those furthest ahead of the availability of a new check out counter? No. They stand on their tip toes, ready and waiting for the signal that a register could open. When the “Yes, I’m open!” light blinks on it’s like a shot-gun, and every last scoundrel darts to throw his pack of cigarettes on the fresh counter, leaving a few old ladies trampled in his path. It is worth coming for a visit just to witness the madness.


*a legitimate and accepted use

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.

Linguistic Pilferage

There are a number of German words that have made it into the English language because they are untranslatable, for example, Zeitgeist, Leitmotiv, and Schadenfreude. I have come across a few more that ought to be introduced.

• spießig (adj.) - used to describe anything that demonstrates tastelessness or an exaggerated sense of self-importance. For example, comb-overs, garden gnomes, and manicured lawns. Or, the Austrian Silent Night Society (mission: to be the world's authority on the song Silent Night).
  

• basteln (v.) - To basteln is to create like a kid in the largest sense, to make something impressive with modest inputs. So you can basteln a robot out of toilet paper rolls or you can basteln a dinner from what happens to be left in the refrigerator.

• Ausbildung (n.) is schooling or training in a general sense, could be practical, hands-on or theoretical. The word is useful and egalitarian because it can be applied so universally; whether mechanic or pilot or teacher or nurse -- just about everyone has some form of  Ausbildung.

• Liebeskummer (n.) - If you have a Liebeskummer, or a severe case of the love blues, you have been clinically diagnosed as heartbroken.

• Fingerspitzengefuehl - (n.) Though it literally only means the feeling (-gefuehl) in your fingertips (Fingerspitzen), this word refers to a particular flair, or an uncanny ability for something tricky. Intuition of the fingertips. 

And as a bonus bonus, here are some nifty words to incorporate from other languages.

The Circus' New Fans

Since my blog is named in honor of the three ring big top, I think it's about time to take the circus as a focal point here.

The direct inspiration for this post came from an event at my former school near Bonn, a circus perfor- mance that transformed kids who usually sit like zombies in a classroom into flying, twirling, juggling masters. They were the prodigies of a professional, traveling children's circus trainer who led them through a week of workshops culminating in a show.

A week sounds like a long time - and it is if you consider that no ordinary school lessons took place in those five days. But when you look at the fact that most kids don't have any experience with acrobatics, disappearing like Houdini, or playing a clown, a week is a preciously small amount of time to get anything polished enough for a stage - even a stage with only loving audience members.

Given those constraints, I was blown away by the level of professionalism and the overwhelming success of the acts during the performance, not to mention the energy that the kids brought onto the stage. Only once or twice did anyone fall from a unicycle or miss a ball flying in her direction. Furthermore, students from every clique and age group were enthusiastic participants. Cool, sullen 10th graders dazzled the audience with diablos, while 8th grade girls hung from trapeezes and their smaller schoolmates hung from them.

What is the price of this success, you might ask. Cut the population of the school down by two-thirds (the remaining students get busy work) and bring in loads of volunteer parents to cultivate a 1:2 teacher-student ratio. Then ask the school principal to leave so that lots of funding and more labor is donated in honor of his retirement.

But wouldn't it be great if P.E. were always so full of suspense and so cooperative? Wouldn't it be worth putting a bit more money into our school systems? Those kids came alive. Maybe they'll spend more time over the next couple of weeks dancing with streamers than sending text messages or collecting inappropriate videos on their cell phones. Because what do you need hardcore porno for if you've seen someone eating fire - live - and it was your buddy from algebra?