We have rules for a reason

And it's not because they are meant to be broken. Consider me rule-breaker-number-one. David and I self-imposed a three gluehwein limit (see earlier post) in order to protect ourselves from ourselves. Boy did we blow it. Actually, we didn't just blow it. We shattered it. I blame a lot of it on our friend, Marta. Although, to be honest, David is also partly to blame. And maybe me a little bit, too.

We decided last week that it would be fun to go to the Weihnachtsmarkts on Friday and drink a few gluehweins, absorb the festive atmosphere, and smell whatever was roasting on the open grills. So, as scheduled we arrived at the first markt where feuerzangenbowle is available (see earlier post). The crowd around the feuerzangenbowle (boy, is that hard to spell) stand was obnoxious and it is hard to manage four cups of feuerzangenbowle without spilling or burning bystanders. But, we perservered and for our troubles, we were heartily rewarded. A few times.

David decided we should move to different pastures and give gluehwein mit schuss (with a shot) a try. Everyone agreed and so we did. A few times. At a few markts. The train ride home is pretty foggy and David tells me that the conversation was pretty entertaining. I'm not sure about that. I do know that Saturday thoroughly sucked, at least until 3pm when I got out of bed.

It seems like every few years I have to remind myself why I NEVER drink any quantity of hard liquor. Somehow in between I forget. Gluehwein and feuerzangenbowle brought it all back in vivid, painful technicolor. Bleh. I should be good for a few years, anyway.

And now, modest readership, I am going to take a short winter break. The blog will be offline for two weeks. I know. I know. The horror. What will you do with yourself? I imagine you'll manage and I'll try to stay away from the gluehwein.

In the new year, we'll have tales of family visits, trips to the east of Germany and others. So stay tuned.

Of course, I still love Hamburg. But seven gluehweins mit schuss, I definitely do not love.

Damn Handy

Each night when I get home from work, I take Stella out to a little park right next to our house so she can do her business and snarf around. Depending on whether Inge has taken her on their 3-times weekly 2-hour afternoon walk, Stella's eagerness to get outdoors can vary substantially. Yesterday she had obviously been out on the town with her new best friend and was sort of leisurely making her way to the park (leisurely is a relative term with this dog, but anyway). As I followed Stella onto the sidewalk I noticed something shiny and bent down to retrieve a lost cell phone. It was a little bit wet since it is December and it is Hamburg and it has been raining on and off for the past two weeks (hint, hint Christmas visitors - bring a rain jacket). I tucked it in my pocket and headed to the park so Stella could be accosted by a giant, unwieldy, yellow lab. Not that I was sending her to be accosted, that's just how it went last night. This dog (the lab, not Stella) is a behemoth. I would guess he's well over 100 lbs and he drags his walker where ever it is he wants to go, which happened to be on or near Stella and her pee spot.

After the lab meet and greet, we headed back to make dinner and wait for the phone to ring. I sort of wondered what I would say or even how I would know if it was the owner. Or, what if the phone owner's spouse calls and some strange lady (me) answers the phone and "pretends" not to speak GErman so as to avoid an undesireable line of questioning regarding how it is that the strange lady (me) came to be answering the spouse's private line. I wasn't too worried since anyone calling didn't know who or where they were calling. I clearly had the upper hand in the matter, sucky language skills and all.

Within the hour the phone rang. I tried my best German "Hallo." The caller said a few words and I replied cheerily "Ich spreche kein Deutsch aber ich habe dein Handy." More words on his end, some I understood, others not. I managed to convey that I found his phone, I live in Eimsbuttel, work in City Nord and a few other, possibly unecessary pieces of information. I think he told me that he too lived in Eimsbuttel, worked at the Flughafen (airport) and asked where I found the phone. As I gave him my last name and address, I realized what a perfect scam it would be to drop cheapy cell phones around town and then wait for kindly folks to pick them up. The unscrupulous criminal could then arrange a quiet place to meet and WHAMO! I imagined a threw a wrench in his plans by not speaking the language.

I think I managed to arrange for him to call again tomorrow when I could pass the phone to one of my German co-workers and to arrange a time to make the exchange. God, my German is bad.

Today he called and I passed the phone and a German colleague arranged a time to make the exchange. The phone owner's sister called tonight and said "you have my brother's handy." I agreed. I think that might have been all the English she knew and since my German was no better we spent a few more minutes working out the details. When the phone rang again a few minutes later I walked out to give the phone to him half ready to bust out some sweet Thai boxing moves, if necessary. As I handed him the phone, he handed me a little box of chocolate and thanked me, visibly relieved. I imagine when your phone goes missing, you don't ever really expect to get it back. Anyway, I scored some chocolate. I think it has nuts.

What else? About 10 days until the family arrives for the holidays. I'm not really sure why I am telling you this since most of my modest readership will be here for the holidays. Or at least I hope they are among my modest readership.

Also, we are signed up for round two of Deutsch course starting in January. This time a teacher is coming to our office once a week for two hours to impart German skills. Very nice. I feel pretty ready and David is really trying at work to learn some phrases - "Wie var dein Wochenende?" I hope it helps - I am really getting tired of saying "Ich spreche kein Deutsche."

Of course, I still love Hamburg and I love free chocolate, too!

Why not Weihnachts

It has become something of a pass time for David and I to attend the Weihnachtsmarkts in and around Hamburg. Some have been very cool, particularly those downtown. And some have been awfully lame (Alsterdorfer Adventsmarkt). But in all cases, this country has pretty much cornered the market on Christmas. You could just about bottle the atmosphere here. While there is a similar (although I think not as crazy) tendency to shop till you drop for Christmas in Germany, there is an old-fashioned traditional feeling that I've never seen in the U.S. I suppose all the Gluehwein is helping with the holiday cheer, but never mind that. The air smells like sugary treats, wood smoke and pine trees. In the few days since the markets opened, we've been to a total of seven. The big ones have really special baked goods, candy, mustard, nuts, etc and lots of handi-crafts for gifts and decorating. I feel like a total sap, but I love it.

As I mentioned, Gluehwein is the drink of choice at these Weihnachtsmarkts and boy does it flow liberally. You can always find the Gluehwein stand - it's usually surrounded 4 people deep and smells like spiced wine. It is spiced wine, so go figure. Actually, Gluehwein is cheap red wine mixed with this stuff called Kinder Punch and a bunch of spices and then heated up. You can also get your Gluewein mit schuss (a shot of rum) or ohne schuss (without the shot). The schuss takes it to a whole new level and is worth a try and also worth implementing a self-imposed limit. We've decided that unchecked quantities of cheap red wine, lot's of sugar and rum just can't be a good combination. Our limit is three. So far, so good.

There is also a drink called feuerzangbowle that I am positively mad about. The word, feuerzangbowle, literally translates to "fire tongs punch." While I believe the base of the drink is the same as Gluehwein (cheap red mixed with cheaper punch), an extra step in the process makes the drink pretty damn special. A huge cone of sugar is placed in large tongs over a giant copper pot of simmering wine. The cone is then dowsed with high-alcohol rum and lit on fire. A ladel is used to continue adding rum to the sugar cone until the cone is made very small. The resulting firey, sugary mess drips into the wein and makes an ultra-sweet, highly intoxicating hot drink. So dangerously delicious. We tried a cup (or was it two?) on Friday. On Saturday my hands still smelled like carmelized sugar.

The other treat we tried was from a stand making fresh candy canes. The candy makers rolled out a huge, warm glob of striped candy, yelling all the while like carnival barkers. Then with some sort of quick hand magic, one guy lopped off a chunk of the candy, made into perfectly uniform pillow-looking squares and passed a bowl filled with the candy through the crowd. Wow, fresh, warm candy cane. I have no words.

We have two more Weihnachtsmarkts on the agenda this weekend - an ecological market and the big market in Bremen (about 110km from Hamburg). In the spirit of the season, I also bought an Advents Kalendar. I got one as a kid every year from a family friend and it has been really fun & nostalgic to pop open each day and pull out a little bit of chocolate during the countdown to Christmas.

That's pretty much it. David is encouraging me to focus a blog entry on German ways. I think I've been here long enough that I have stopped noticing! I have to pay attention again, because I know there is lot's of good sociological stuff going on. I just haven't been tuned into the transmissions lately.

Of course, I still love Hamburg and I really love feuerzangbowle, fresh candy and Weihnachts!!!

Weihnachts Zeit - Woohoo!

The holiday (also referred to in Germany as "Weihnachts" - not so PC, but whatever) season is upon us. In Germany, this means Weihnachts Markts (Christmas Markets), which can also be roughly translated as an outdoor festival operating under the guise of celebrating the Christmas season, when in fact it is one more excuse to drink yourself stupid and eat massive quantities of sausage, schmalkuchen and crepes. The Weihnachts Markts are really getting underway this week with the month long markets running until just before New Year's and the smaller neighborhood markts scattered throughout December weekends. Poor David has his work cutout for him. I have all but laid out the day-planner and a map. The general plan is to visit as many of these celebrations as humanly possible in a three week (4 weekend) period. This weekend it is the Rathaus (City Hall) market followed by St. Michaelis Markt and the Alsterdorfer Markt. Next weekend we are again headed south to Lueneburg for a medeval Weihnachts Markt, complete with candle-only lighting.

While I have no firsthand experience, I understand that each markt is uniquely different with a unifying theme of Gluehwein (a hot spiced wine pronounced "glue-vine") and lebkuchen (my new favorite Christmas-time treat) to bind the whole mess together. There is also the opportunity to buy handicrafts and decorations - hooey. I am all about soaking up the aroma of fresh pine and Gluewein and eating lebkuchen and stollen. There is a tiny little Weihnachts Markt in our neighborhood that David and I checked out tonight - it has precisely 5 stands and a little-bitty carousel. The plaza it is on is gaudily decorated with pine boughs (real, not plastic - high German standards), a Weihnachtsbaum (Christmas tree), lots of lights and the concrete is covered with woodchips. I'm not really sure what authenticity is provided by the woodchips, but ok. We tried our luck with a hot cup of gluehwein - delicious. Funny too is that they ask if you would like a shot of rum with your hot wine. Because apparently a big cup of wine just isn't enough to numb the pain of the Christmas season.

Ok, I am keeping this short tonight because David and I share a computer and he has legitimate work to do - duty calls. I'll provide regular updates on the status of the Weihnachts Markts. Although, even at this early stage, one thing is perfectly clear: you do not want to experience the day after a gluehwein night. And I am going to do my earthly best not to be an example.

Of course, I still love Hamburg. And I really love Weihnacht's Zeit!

DJ for hire...

There is a bar in the Karolinenviertel (Caroline Quarter) of Hamburg that has no name. Friends refer to it as the Igeil bar (at least that's how it sounds. I can't confirm it, because the bar has no name). Anyway, at this bar there is a little date book for people who want to DJ. You just find a free date, put your name in the book and show up that day with the media of your choice to rock the house. A few weeks ago David and I were there with our friend, Michael, who brought the book to our table to find a free date. I thought it might be fun, so I added my name, too.

Last night was my debut as a DJ. Since all of our music is on my laptop (in the interest of traveling light when we moved) I showed up to this grungy, beat up old bar that normally employs two well worn turntables for musik machen with a spiffy Lenovo laptop. I felt sort of inadequate without big milk crates full of old vinyl and the constant tinkering on the turntables that goes along. Oh well. I parked my notebook on a stool and cued up the playlist I'd been working on all week. My theme was American rock and roots: Johnny Cash, Primus, John Prine, Bruce Springstein, Wilco, etc. As I was plugging my 'system' in and letting Windows boot up (how very uncool), the bartender, Vera, told me that DJs drink for free. Nice. But it was Tuesday and I had to work today. Far less nice. I weighed my options and ultimately I felt obligated to at least make a reasonable hourly wage. So, I threw caution to the wind with a .33L Astra (and then some).

The music I had in mind wasn't such a hit, unfortunately. Most of it anyway. I tried some Old Crow Medicine Show and slow Johnny Cash. People were sort of staring at the floor. I could take a hint and I (in my vast experience as a volunteer DJ) wanted to be at least a little responsive to the clientele. I've been at this bar when the person controlling the music has made it their personal quest to thoroughly familiarize you with their own very obscure, very important genre of music (or die trying). Not I, modest readership. I went instead with uptempo and/or a little weird. Germans like their music/books/culture a little weird & complex - think Nietzche. I still subjected them to Wilco, however. Love me, love my moody, drug addled band who pretends to be from Chicago.

What else? We took a day trip this weekend to a little town 30 minutes south of here called Lueneburg. The town was at one time one of the wealthiest in Germany thanks to salt. It is a very nice little town with lot's of historic Hanseatic architecture and stills seems pretty well-off. The most notable thing about Lueneburg is the condition of many of the buildings. Also thanks to salt. Due to the extraction methods used, the ground under the town shifted enough to make many of the buildings bulge, buckle, bend and, in many cases, look pretty comic-bookish. I guess it's all structurally sound and it certainly adds to the charm. A must see for Hamburg visitors, I'd say.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is no Thanksgiving in Germany. These characters are tight with the holidays, I am here to attest. I mean Thanksgiving aside. I understand that. But there just aren't many other federal holidays on the calendar. Except in Bavaria. Apparently those Bavarians like time off. I vote we move our operation to Bavaria in the interest of more holidays. That's not really the point I am getting at. The point of the Thanksgiving tangent is that we are going to celebrate on Saturday with some other Americans we know. So don't worry, we'll eat until we bust, too. Just not tomorrow.

Happy THanksgiving, by the way. And, I still love Hamburg, but I don't like their holiday schedule.

'Bad Things Done to Good Movies' or 'Ruling Hamburg by Housecoat'

David and I were invited to a Big Lebowski night at one of the bars in the Schanzen neighborhood. We received clear instructions that housecoats were recommended and there would be white Russian specials along with a showing of the classic Coen brother's movie. This spurred a trip to the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (German Red Cross) store to look for a good, used bathrobe for David. We were in luck as we scored a nice, heavy bathrobe that David is lounging around in as I write this - for the bargain price of 10euro (about $15). I know it's high for second hand, but that's how Germany rolls. I also picked up a pair of jeans (used, mind you) for the low low price of 20euro (about 30 bucks). I normally don't pay that much for new jeans. But then again, I didn't take the warnings of outrageously priced denim seriously before we came here and figured 1 pair of jeans for work would be fine. They are nice jeans anyway.

But that's not the point of this story. On Saturday either David asked me (or vice versa) how high we thought the odds were that the Big Lebowski would be shown in German. You see, Germans dub everything - from movies to TV shows. It's such an epidemic, I'm a bit surprised that they don't dub music while they are at it. We agreed that the chances were pretty high and both grumbled about watching such a great movie overdubbed with strange voices - it would be like old Godzilla movies, I imagined.

But, we tried to be good sports and so David put on some tan scrubs (too cold for shorts), a white v-neck t-shirt and the 10euro housecoat and away we went. As we walked into the train station, we noticed that people were looking at David. This is to be expected, right? I mean some guy walking around in his bathrobe looking for all the world like Arthur Dent is bound to attract a few glances in any city. But this was pretty over the top. One theme we noticed almost immediately is in addition to the stares, there were lots of approving smiles, thumbs up and (I swear) dropped jaws (this one from a girl on the train as it pulled away from us on the platform). I'm not sure why an innocuous blue housecoat had such an effect, but David was digging it. Some guy actually said (in English) 'good night' to David as we got off the train, I assume implying that David was heading off for beddy-bye time.

It turns out that the white Russians were at least of high quality. A necessity given the liberties taken with the Dude's voice. I wasn't sure whether laughing or crying was the order of the day, so I drank another white lady to numb the pain. Funny too, were the three stylized German characters in the movie. We asked our friend if he knew that the directors were sort of making fun of Germans. He knew. But I don't think the translated version was nearly as funny. The outlandish German accents meant to emphasize the joke were replaced with, well, oh never mind. One thing we learned in all this is that Germans are just mad for the Dude - our friends and everyone in the bar loved the movie and had seen it about 100 times a piece.

The bar we were in started getting awfully crowded with decidely un-Dude-like people, so we decided to head somewhere else. Walking down the sidewalk, David got more wide-eyed stares and approving grins. It was like he had hit a happy nerve with the folks of Hamburg. The very best part was at the last bar of the night. We walked in and in looking for a seat we walked by a table of people, who our friend Melanie overheard saying (while pointing at David) 'He must be an artist.' As you might imagine, David was growing pretty keen on the whole bathrobe idea and seemed amenable when I begged him to do this on a regular basis (maybe like once a month or something). It's so much fun watching people react positively and I swear, David could just about run for office. Or at least ward councilman in St. Pauli. As long as he did it in his housecoat. With a white Russian.

We had a few flurries tonight - winter is settling in and the weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Markets) are just around the corner. It's very festive, although we'll have no Thanksgiving next week - boohoo. But we are going to get a Christmas tree and string it with popcorn and any other brick-a-brack we can find laying around.

Of course, I still love Hamburg and David loves his housecoat!

Funny little contradictions

I've been noticing some contradictions here in Deutschland that I thought I might air out. Partly because they are funny and partly for therapy. The biggest incongruence that I and the few other Americans that I know in Hamuburg all agree on is this weird greeting ritual. If you've read a sampling of earlier blog entries, it won't come as news that the folks in northern Germany are reserved to say the very least. The average person will most likely absolutely ignore you on the streets of Hamburg. They might even go so far as to give you a dirty look if you try to appear friendly. A German friend of ours was shocked when we told him that David and I will often smile at people on the street. Our friend's response was an emphatic 'Don't do that! They probably think you are making fun of them.' So it was with a fair degree of confusion that I received my first greeting from a stranger. And my second. And third.

Mind you, the stranger greeting is only in certain very well defined situations (how very German). In the doctors office and the gym locker room are guaranteed 'greeting' places. I went to the doctor's office a couple of months ago for lower back pain (too many years hunched at a computer, it turns out) and as I sat in the waiting room, I noticed that every single person who entered or left the room ritualistically greeted the patients-in-waiting: 'Hallo' on the way in and 'Tschuss' (sounds like 'shoes') on the way out. Every person, every time. Weird. A few weeks later I joined the gym and it happened again while I was changing. An aerobics class was letting out and as all the ladies filtered into the locker room, I was unwaveringly greeted by them all. Funnier still was that the last few ladies to enter the locker room were IN the same class with the majority of the people they were greeting. Hmmm. Of course on the way out, every single person gave a hearty 'Tschuss!' I just looked around, totally confused.

Side note - this departing greeting 'Tschuss' sounds a little like 'Cheers' and 'Shoes' had a baby and is typically stretched into two syllables and nearly sung by women. It sounds like 'Choo-oos!'

I am quietly protesting the entry greeting and have only recently begun to sing 'Tschuss!' when I leave the room - mostly because it is fun to say.

Another oddity (in my opinion) is that you can't buy a damn thing on Sunday that doesn't come from gas station (only open until 6pm), but you can get a beer whenever you want. When ever you want. The party district of Hamburg doesn't meaningfully close on the weekends but the grocery stores close at 8pm (7 on Saturday). What gives there? I mean, I am in nearly full support of everyone having Sunday off. Although, I secretly think that the reason everything is closed on Sunday is because about 80% of the adult population is nursing a woozy of a hangover come Sunday morning. I am occasionally living proof.

There is also sort of a disconnect between how liberal Germans are on one hand (beer drinking allowed anywhere, nudity is ok, dogs are almost always welcome) and how closely everyone follows the rules (waiting interminably at a 'don't walk' sign even though there is absolutely no traffic as far as you can see - just in case).

But for all of the German idiosyncrasies, I really do like a lot about this country. It's like a higher social order - work/life balance, good social programs, lots of organic food, low crime, generous vacation. So, what they heck. I'll enjoy my beer at 5am on Sunday morning and curse Sunday afternoon that I can't buy flour.

As always, I still love Hamburg!