Unter die Haube

This afternoon, at around 3 o'clock, I heard loud music being played on the street a couple of houses down from ours. The music was with drums and bagpipes and obviously oriental, so I wondered what the heck was going on. Something perhaps to do with Ramadan? I went outside with a somewhat sick Miss Mia and we soon saw that it was a Turkish wedding.
Everyone was so happy and colorfully dressed that even the local Halbstaerker (bad boys) paused from making mischief for a few minutes to take a look. It was amazing to see the bride in a big white dress after she ist unter die Haube gegangen, an idiom for getting married in German (literally it means "she went under the big, old-fashioned hair salon hair dryer.")
Normally Miss Mia would have been fascinated; we often pass by this shop that sells these ornate, often gaudy dresses for Turkish weddings and celebrations and she always says we should buy some of those beautiful princess dresses; but her cold made her too cranky. After two minutes she said she just wanted to go home.
If it weren't for etsy, I probably would have forgotten what a huge industry there is around weddings in the U.S. You can't be on the site for very long without running into something wedding related; wedding cake toppers, wedding place setting, bridesmaid's dresses, a gift for the best man. Everything you could imagine to make her special day all that much more magical oh yeah, and quickly empty out your wallet.
The first time I got married it was an elopement in Portland, Oregon. We went to the courthouse two days before and they didn't even ask to see my husband-to-be's passport which I found incredible. He could have been some crazed European axe-murderer, wanted in ten states, but they didn't care. Just as they asked if we would prefer to be married in the courthouse or in the privacy of our own home, they led a young hippie guy out of the courtroom in leg shackles. "It wasn't me, man. It wasn't me," he protested. "Uh," we said. "We'll pay the extra 50 bucks and get married at home." The judge came over on March 11th with a cast on his right arm and married us in my sister's living room with only her and her then-boyfriend as a witness. In Oregon they are obsessed with there pioneering history. They will slap a wagon train on anything if they given even half the chance. Our wedding certificate had (you guessed it) a wagon train down on the bottom next to our names.
Though my second wedding was planned and more thought out in many ways, it still was held in a courthouse (though the gorgeous one in San Francisco instead). Only my family was there, we went out to dinner instead of having a reception and I wore black instead of white. But your average (German) Berliner can definitely relate much more to either of my weddings than they can a Turkish one. Most people don't get married here anyway, not even after they have kids. If they do, it would almost always be a no-frills version at the courthouse (you have to pay church taxes in order to get married in a church and they are pretty high.) I've tried to provoke some of my German students in classes before. "But weddings are about romance. They are about tall cakes and one hundred guests and big dresses." In every case they looked at me like I was crazy. If they ever were going to get married (and that was a big "if") it would only be for the lower taxes. Though I am most definitely not a wedding person, this has always made me almost a little sad.

When I walked out of the apartment today, the groom had just set free a dozen white doves. Ooos and Ahhs went through the crowd as they flew to freedom. I'm glad I saw it.

Germ-Infested Fan Causes Circulation Problems!

So this week and next week I'm teaching an intensive English course at the Technical University here in Berlin. To be honest, I was really dreading it. There was a time when I really loved teaching EFL, especially at the TU because mostly we have college students and we have no boss and can design the courses any old way we want. But I got burned out a couple of years ago and was definitely sick of students. Since the German government pays you to stay home with your baby the first year and I had two babies pretty much back to back I really haven't taught much at all in three years. I've been enjoying it a lot more than I thought it would though. The students seem so young that I have a fondness for them as if they were my own children. And it can be interesting: In class, earlier this week, I was reminded, even after ten years in Berlin, how impossible it is for me NOT to tip.
In Berlin tipping is pretty much optional and usually something people do based on the quality of the service (not that there is usually such a thing here....) The most common thing is to just round up the bill: say your bill is 7.20 Euro, then you just leave 7.50 and it's perfectly ok. (If you gave a waitress in the U.S. a thirty cent tip she would probably come out and personally kick you in the ass!) On Tuesday we did an activity on cultural differences where they had to guess certain things. One was "It is customary to tip 10% in the U.S." Pretty much everyone thought this probably was true, but when I told them it's actually more 15% to 20% they were pretty shocked. "And if you don't tip, it's pretty much like giving the waitress a slap in the face," I told them. No matter how bad the service might be in Berlin, no matter how long it takes to get my cappuccino or how surly the hipster waiter might be, I just can't not tip at least a little bit. If I don't I always end up feeling guilty. We are simply trained that way.
Although everyone seemed to accept my advice and now (hopefully) will not have any waitresses cursing under their breaths about those cheap-ass Germans if they ever visit the U.S., they found the answer to the following statement hard to take: "If you feel dizzy or light-headed you tell people you have circulation problems." All of them immediately shook their heads yes. "Of course. Everybody knows that." Ah, the old German Kreislaufprobleme. (I already wrote a post about it here.) Anytime you feel a little bit tired, run down or burnt out it is clear you are suffering from circulation problems. Duh. Everybody knows that. When I told them that no, not everybody knows that and as far as I know Germany is the only place where people of (literally) all ages are constantly complaining about this, they got that look students get when they just can't believe something, a look like they are sucking very hard on a lemon. "If you tell this to people in the U.S. they will probably at first thing you have a disease or serious health condition and later think you are strange because only an 80 year old woman would continually complain about circulation problems." Lemon-sucking faces all across the room.
I always find it funny when an entire culture more or less agrees on something that is kind of kooky (there are Germans who don't constantly say they have circulation problems of course, but they wouldn't find it weird if someone else did.) For example, the typical American fear of germs. I remember seeing girls in high school who wouldn't even touch a doorknob or towel dispenser. Even toilet seat covers (something they don't even have in Germany) weren't good enough protection for them. They always squated over the toilet, too afraid to put their butts on that germ infested plastic, which usually meant they peed all over the seat (and of course never cleaned up afterward....Thanks ladies.)
When I was in college I worked for a couple of years at the children shoes department of Nordstrom in very suburban Pleasanton, California (with a name like Pleasanton what else could it be?) Most of the other girls working there were girly suburbanite frosted hair types. All of them had a bottle of hand sanitizer in their purse which they obsessively squirted on themselves. "Geez, people. Chill out. A couple of thousand germs ain't gonna hurt you," I always wanted to say. Mostly I just rolled my eyes. I'm not even sure if you can get that hand sanitizer stuff in Berlin, but if you can, people would probably think you were a germ-phobic freak if you were constantly using it because, well uh, you kind of are. Sorry folks, but it's true. Over-the-top disinfecting is what has led to that super bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics anyway. People, please, knock it off! (Yes, I'm well aware there might be a few people who stumbled onto this post, hoping for some tips on how to sterilize their laptop, who are now making that lemon-sucking face.)
I read recently that, in South Korea, people believe it is extremely dangerous to sleep in a closed room with a fan. Any number of life threatening things can happen such as fire, asphyxiation or hypothermia. As with circulation problems in Germany and germ phobia in the U.S., if you go to a local doctor he or she will be filled with all sorts of useful advice, i.e. won't tell you you're off your rocker because they are off theirs too.
If I ever were to teach English in South Korea and were to tell my students that I've slept in a closed room with a fan running hundreds of times without suffocating, freezing to death or being burnt to a cinder, I'm sure I'd get lemon-sucking faces from there to Mars. Well, what can you do? People are strange. ;)

Let the Party Begin....

So we wanted to have a little birthday bash for Miss Mia, one more heavy on adults with only a couple of the kids of close friends invited (we will have plenty of future birthdays full of a dozen kids hyped up on sugar or, as Jasper calls it, Baby Cocaine...) Since her actual birthday was on Wednesday we could have had the party on either the Saturday before or after....that is, if we lived in the U.S. If you want to really spook out a German, wish them a Happy Birthday anytime before the actual date. This will be like cursing them forever with very bad luck. A couple of years ago, when my birthday was on a Monday, I decided to celebrate on the Sunday before. "No one can really that rule all that seriously," I thought. "Besides I'm an American, so it doesn't count for me." Needless to say, most of the German guests flipped out. One woman ran over to me, wide-eyed, and apologized profusely for having wished me Happy Birthday because she didn't know my birthday was actually tomorrow. Another friend gave me my birthday present but flat out refused to give me any birthday well wishes "I just can't do it," he said. And as for the other Germans, several of them called me the next year to say Happy Birthday on the 15th instead of the 16th. To them, that I had actually celebrated a day earlier just didn't seem possible....

Anyway, I didn't dare leave Mia to the mercy of the bad-luck birthday fairy, so her little birthday soiree was yesterday at 3 o'clock. Here are some behind the scenes photographs before the little party started:


Of course, we cleaned the apartment. Here's my desk looking waaaayyyy less messy than usual, believe you me.


The carrot cake I made for her. The recipe was from the U.S. so I used half the amount of sugar they said to use. Basically no German can handle "American sweet" and, frankly, after living her for ten years, neither can I.


Chopping tomatoes for a most delicious homemade salsa fresca.


But we didn't want to slave away for hours in the kitchen so we also offered delicious spreads from Knofi, a Turkish specialty shop in Berlin (the one on Bergmannstrasse).


...as well as some of their tasty dolmas and olives.


Thank goodness I got all that new silverware at Sage Patch and the Alameda Point Flea Market when I was in California. We're going to need them today.


As usual, there were some vintage finds floating around, waiting to be photographed and posted, like this Arzberg tea cup and cake plate set, hand-painted and signed in 1952, which I will soon be offering for sale in Schaufenster....


...and, hiding shyly behind the door, this truly amazing 80s prom dress which will soon make its grand debut in Curious Knopf


This necklace is also the first in a new series of jewelry I am making from vintage 1940s Bakelite which will soon also be for sale in Curious Knopf. But sorry folks, this first one is mine-all-mine. ;)


Since all of our guests were fashionably late, I caught Jasper pigging out on the salsa before they arrived. After I had given him a good scolding he said "Hey, I know what....


....why don't we take macro photographs of each others eyes."


Have I ever mentioned how much I love this man?


The cake's on the table, the salsa's half eaten, the balloons are all over the apartment. Let the party begin. That is, whenever the guests decide to arrive! (and of course they eventually did and boy did we ever have fun. :) )

Feiertag Blues

So Easter, like Christmas, is a heck of a lot longer in terms of official holiday days (in German, Feiertage) than it is in the U.S. You don't have to show up for the office on Good Friday and there is not only an Easter Sunday but an Easter Monday as well (I suppose this is the day Jesus ate some Kaffee und Kuchen before ascending back up to our heavenly father...) If I had a full time job I didn't particularly like I would probably love these marathon stretches of Feiertage. But I don't and, inevitably both Jasper and I come down with a case of the Feiertag blues.

Why? Because everything is freaking closed! Ok, cafes and restaurants are mostly still open (thank god...) but if, say you run out of milk or are suddenly itching to buy some shoes you are screwed. Or if you need new diapers, like we do. I've always been good about having enough around for two diaper-wearing bottoms but wouldn't you know the one time I would forget would be when all stores are closed for days on end....

I suppose the whole thought behind everything is that this is a great time to spend outdoors, going on walks and then coming home for an nice afternoon spot of Kaffee und Kuchen. But I don't know, I find it kind of spooky....I mean, one of the main reasons I live in a big city is because I can do anything and go anywhere at anytime. Never mind that I spend a lot of my time at home, say, sitting in front of my computer and writing in my blog. What matters is, if I wanted to, I could take off at any second and do any number of things. But not on any of these darn Feiertage....

Thank god Easter Monday is almost over. Hey Germany, guess what? I don't want to go for another walk, I don't want no freaking Kaffee und Kuchen. I just want to go out and shop like a good American. ;)

Oh, You Better Watch Out, You Better Clean Your Shoes....What The?!?

So I wrote in an earlier post on this blog that Germans don't have stockings on Christmas Eve but what I failed to mention was they DO get presents in something they normally wear on their feet namely, their shoes. On the night of December 5th Niklaus comes and, if the children have properly cleaned their shoes, he delivers them small presents and chocolate to a shoe that has been placed in front of their bedroom door.

Since this is the first Christmas where Mia is old enough to know what's going on, she's been learning a lot about all the different holiday figures: She knows Santa, she knows Frosty, she's at least heard of Rudolph. But this Niklaus guy, how could I explain him to her without overwhelming her two and a half year old senses?

"Niklaus is Santa's brother," I told her, trying to connect them together.
"No, they're not!" Jasper said, somewhat entsetzt.

I thought about it later and realized how do we know they aren't brothers? I mean, what do we even really know about this Santa Claus guy? That he's old and doesn't shave much and likes to eat? That he lives in a cold and dark place but apparently does not suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder because he laughs like a bowl full of jelly and, once a year, travels around the world in one night delivering presents to all the good little boys and girls? How do we know his brother Niklaus doesn't live in a cottage on an ice floe down the road? One is into shoes, one into stockings; hey, it's a family thing....

All I can say is, thank god for Wikipedia. I read this article on Santa Claus and learned a lot of interesting things. Some of them were predictable; namely, that Santa Claus, Niklaus and Sinterklaas (as my Dutch ex-boyfriend called him) are all the same guy, St. Nicholas, whose feast day is, yep you guessed it, on December 6th. Some of the information was more unusal, like there have been parellels drawn between St. Nick and Odin as well as a mention of the untrue legend that Coca Cola invented Santa Claus (something that I've heard many times from smug, arrogant German college students I've taught, who claimed it was just another example of how American pop culture has ruined the high culture of Europe. Granted, you can be critical of certain more obnoxious parts of American culture, but please at least get your facts straight. In my experience, snobbery is often largely based on ignorance....)

The good news is, even if you're more into Niklaus, there is still a slutty Santa outfit to be had for the ladies. Here's the example I found when I googled Niklaus images (under the heading, Niklaus Kostüme, Gr. S):


Happy (belated) Niklaus everyone and keep those shoes nice and polished!

Christmas Between Two Cultures

So, I've never really been much of a "Christmas person", but I have to say it's a lot more fun when you have kids. Mia is so excited. She talks about Santa Claus constantly, has watched the Frosty the Snowman song at least a dozen times on YouTube and today got her first piece of chocolate from the Advents Calendar (this is going to be a hit for a sweet tooth like her!) We also made a (wonderfully crooked) advent's wreath together last night and then wrote Christmas cards while listening to Bing Crosby sing White Christmas. Seriously, the only thing that was missing was hot chocolate with marshmallows and a candy cane or two....

Still, there are of course differences between how Germans and Americans celebrate Christmas. Some of the differences I've known for a long time: Germans open their presents on Christmas Eve and don't have stockings. They have Christmas Eve (Heiligabend), Christmas Day and Christmas Day 2 (apparently to recover from the Christmas Goose and all the mulled wine they drank on Christmas Day number one...) But now that I'm actually celebrating Christmas here I've realized there are other even more subtle differences. I discovered these when I went out shopping with Mia for Christmas ornaments since I didn't have any (told you I'm not a Christmas person.) Here is more or less what I came back with:


When I showed them to Jasper he said: "Oh no, not those! Those are SO spiessig!" Spiessig is a hard word to translate, but I would say the closest definition would be by combining dorky, uptight and bourgeoise into one word.

"Wie bitte? Christmas balls are spiessig?" Garish maybe, especially since Mia picked them out and so they were purple and gold paired together with red tin foil. But spiessig? I tried to get him to explain to me why, because in my mind they are pretty much standard, but the best he could come up with was "They just are." I had also bought some of these straw ornaments which are typical in Germany.


"What about these?" I asked him. "Are they also spiessig?"
"No, those are ok," he told me.

We talked about it again today and how funny it is that when you're from a different culture you sometimes don't make the same assumptions. Jasper is even less of a Christmas person than I am, yet he has certain opinions about things that I found surpring, for example, that ornaments should always be wooden.


"The worst and most spiessig of all is when people have electric candles on their tree."

Wie bitte? "Do you seriously mean that people should have real lit candles on their tree? Isn't that a pretty hardcore fire hazard?"

"Oh sure," my non-Christmas loving husband answered. "There are lots of fires every year."


So I've learned a few things so far this jolly holiday season:

Number one: there is little chance of talking my husband into getting these electric candles with a convenient remote control.


Number two: we are still not putting real lit candles on our tree because I think I'd rather not burn the house down, thank you very much.

Number three: we are most definitely hanging stockings with care in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon will be there.


What can I say? Christmas traditions are truly diehard, even for two Scrooges like us!

Paper or Plastic?

A week or so ago I was, for some reason, talking to my husband about credit cards in America.

"You know, they don't come out of your bank account." I told him. "You can charge and charge and then just pay a small monthly payment."

"What??", he said. I had to explain it to him several times before he could even believe what I was saying....

Yes, it is true that people in Germany have less debts, but one of the main reasons is because it is just not as easy to get them. It's not that easy to get a credit card and, if you do get one, the money comes out of your bank account every month. Only certain shops accept credit cards and you can basically never use them in a restaurant, let alone at the movies, etc. Living extremely above your means just isn't really possible, or at least you'd have to work very, very hard at it.

There are two reasons that people sometimes might assume my husband and I have money, these reasons being a) he is a count and b) he is a lawyer. But having the title of count might sometimes get my husband better reservations in restaurants and there are also always a few military history geeks who recognize that he is related to Alfred Graf von Schlieffen (a fact that my husband finds more irritating than interesting...), but his family never really had much money; after the war, his grandfather (who never got his arbitur=high school diploma) worked as a school janitor. As for his job, he is a free-lance criminal defense lawyer which is not nearly as well paid- but far more interesting- than business law (where the firm expects you to work like a dog. He has friends who work 14 hour days and also often on the weekend. Yes, they may earn a lot, but that's no life....) Right now I'm not working but when I do all I can offer is my artsy/writing stuff (which makes little to no money) and my teaching job at the technical university (which pays enough money for a modest, single person lifestyle in Berlin, but certainly not for a family...) Anyway, to make a long story short (opps....too late!) we may not be rolling in the dough, we may not really be saving enough, but we do have one thing that I consider very important: absolutely NO debts.

I listen to NPR everyday on the little radio in my kitchen. Since the financial crisis, they've, of course, been talking about consumers and there habits. Everyone seems to be feeling guilty and/or pointing the finger at people who took out all these loans they couldn't afford. Newsflash everyone! People in the U.S. were living above their means! Well, duh. Not only has it been easy to do so in the states, it has also been actively encouraged. People get their first credit card at 18 and, if they don't default, are then offered another and another and another (and it's basically impossible not to get one because if you don't, you have no credit history which means you probably can't rent an apartment, get a loan, buy a car, etc....) For a while there, it seems people could even send their unemployed chimpanzee with a criminal record to get a loan for a new house at the bank. People are also taught to always be blindly optimistic: "I just know I'm so going to get that big promotion, that big deal is just around the corner, it's all going to work out great. Let's go buy a new plasma t.v. and just not think about it." I heard a man being interviewed on NPR a couple of days ago and you could tell he was just racked with guilt about his former spending habits. But in some ways this makes me angry: yes, the consumers have been stupid and yes, it's good that some of that might be changing, but there should also be protection. These big companies and banks just should have never even been allowed to pray off of people's weaknesses, especially ones they have been encouraged to have.

I wouldn't say that I'm a person who is especially "good" with money, but luckily I seem to have been born with an inner voice that told me "don't get into debt!" (not a voice that has necessarily been shared within my family....) I've never had more than one (American) credit card at a time. I went to an expensive private college, but I got some scholarship money and then lived at home and worked full time so I could take out the minimum amount of loans. Yes, it was a sacrifice and yes, I did miss out on "college life" (what with working and studying full time and then spending the rest of my time in the practice room, I didn't really have much time left over for anything social...) but in the end, it was definitely worth it.

Granted, universities in Germany are basically free (they wanted to start charging some money- a thousand Euros a semester I think, or may 500- but people freaked out about it...), but they are also somewhat of a pain in the ass. I studied a few years at Humboldt Universität here in Berlin and I didn't like it at all. The classes were overfilled with students (though they become less and less as the semester progresses.) There were two types of courses you can take: a) a Vorlesung, which basically means a professor reads some boring text in front of you and you just listen and take notes or (prefereably) get your friends to sign you in so you don't even have to go, and b) a Seminar where you either write a paper or give a presentation. Always the same dull model every time, with some exams in the middle of your studies and at the end. But if you don't finish and finally get your Magister or Diplom (master's) (which probably takes about 7 years) you have nothing to show for it because there is no bachelor's degree (this they are also maybe going to change, though people are resistant to the idea.) The idea that a professor should make a subject interesting and accessible and/or be in anyway "there" for you is also a foreign concept: Professors usually have an office hour every two weeks for forty-five minutes and, when you get there, 15 desperate students are lined up at their door.

Anyway, the unversity system may be a bummer here sometimes, but hey- it's free. Not what you can say about the U.S. I've often toyed with the idea of getting an MFA in creative writing. You can do a low-residency program where you go there only a month to six weeks out of the year (two blocks) and the rest of the time is spent writing. I recently looked at the program at Bennington and guess what? It costs $15,000 a year!! There are undoubtedly programs that are not quite that expensive but still; what would I get out of an MFA? A chance to concentrate even more fully on my writing, a chance to hone my skills, a chance to meet fellow serious writers. But is that worth over $30,000? No. I'd rather just stay on my own. And besides I couldn't do it even if I wanted because that would mean seriously living above my means which is something I never want to do.

Award-Winning American Smile

Feel free to prove me wrong, but I swear if you ever see someone in a picture with a smile like this you can pretty much guarantee they are American.


I'm not saying that every American smiles this way (the smile also seems to be much more common in women than men), but it does seem to be very typical. I was inspired to write this post by what I've seen on Facebook. I browsed through the photographs of old friends and acquaintances and over and over, I saw this smile.


The question is, why do we smile that way? Are we trying to prove to the world we have never, ever been sad, not even once? Are we putting on an upbeat mask so no one can see who we really are inside? Then again, maybe I'm just getting too philosophical. Maybe Vanna White was popular just a bit too long. Maybe we've been overly conditioned by "Say Cheese". Maybe Barbie is to blame. Who knows? What I can say for certain is that no German person could ever smile like that, probably not even if they tried. The following two photographs I got after googling "German Smile". They are what you would most often see here (one was even labelled "Shy German Smile", undoubtedly by an American...)


When I first moved abroad I guess you could say I was a disgruntled American. I was pretty angry about the politics and the hypocrisy and the social injustice. I also didn't consider myself a "stereotypical" American. And yet, when I look at pictures the first few years that I lived here, I still had that smile. "Look at you," my husband always says. "You look like such an American girl." (The following picture is from a Russian denistry website called "American Smile".)


Though the smile may have faded over the years, so has my anger. The fire in my belly has long been reduced to ash and coal and, in its place, I now wear a very thick pair of rose-colored glasses. When I think of the U.S. now, the word that often comes to mind is "Awww..." People are so friendly there. You get ice in your drinks. Everything is not a big freaking deal all the time like it is here. Though my German is completely fluent, I've purposely never tried to reduce my accent. Why should I? I'm proud of my heritage.

Of course, it's not possible for everyone but if you can, live at least a few years in another country. You will see your own culture in a different light. Certain ideas you take for granted or see as being "truths" and "normal behavior" will be tested. You will learn to both appreciate and be critical of aspects you had never really even thought about before. And yes, if you are American, you just might loose "that smile", but in its place you will gain a new found wisdom. ;)