Christmas

Frohe Weihnachten!

Christmas impressions from Germany . . .

A fairytale white Germany,
from Berlin to the Black Forest,
every branch and twig and blade of grass
covered with lacy crystals of ice

Our own tree in Berlin,
decorated with seashells from the Oregon coast
that were collected by my dad and crafted by my mom

Delicious meat fondue on Christmas Eve
with Jost’s father and stepmother,
followed by candle lighting, gift giving,
and a midnight mass in the old stone Catholic church in Bühl
(yes, those are real candles on the tree!)

Sledding on Christmas Day in the snow above the Black Forest

Christmas Day feast:
a delectable roasted goose, Thüringer Kartoffelklöße,
red cabbage, and chestnut stuffing

The Weihnachtsmann marzipan Christmas tort!

Back home in Berlin:
our beautiful 2-euro flea market candelabra gives us
Christmas candlelight throughout the year!

May God richly bless you with his light in this new year!

"In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness,
but the darkness has not understood it."
John 1:4

"Hair" Zetzsche

Introducing . . . Jost . . . with hair!

Many of you may not know that Jost actually does have a full head of hair trying to grow under that bald pate. Against his will, he's now been nudged into displaying that hair to the world after several people—among them one of Hannes's basketball teammates from Ghana—asked with concern whether Jost was a skinhead.

Apparently, Jost has been wearing a significant part of the neo-Nazi skinhead "uniform" with his bald head and black leather jacket, and in contemporary Germany this is confusing enough to make people wonder about his intentions and political orientation. After asking around among people who are more familiar with the skinhead scene, he decided that this probably isn't an uncommon assumption based on his appearance. So, strongly against his own personal preferences, Jost decided to let his hair grow again.

His family thinks he looks great with all that dark brown hair. What do you all think?

Addendum:

After I’d written this entry, Jost decided he couldn’t stand all that hairy dark brown stuff on his head and shaved it all off again. Sigh! With a bright red scarf, clogs, and a cabby cap he’s hoping to allay any worries about his skinhead status.

A visit to Hamburg

The Hamburgers' Homecoming

Last weekend we made a quick trip back to Hamburg, the birthplace of three-fifths of our family. Anna and I tried to be patient as Jost, Hannes, and Lara got all teary-eyed at being back in their old stomping ground.

We visited the tiny apartment where we lived when Lara was born, and stood under the gnarled old tree that dropped an apple on her forehead as we carried her inside for the first time. We pointed at the balcony where fat little Hannes used to play in his sand box and call out strange German-American greetings to passersby. Oh, am I happy not to be living in that cramped space anymore with a baby and a toddler!

A gray winter scene outside our last apartment in Hamburg

We played tourist down at the immense harbor with its huge container ships, and ate lunch at an old harbor pub that looked as if Captain Ahab should have been sitting around smoking his pipe with the other whalers in some dark smoky corner.

A view of the harbor

At the Hamburger Dom, a sprawling amusement park that comes to Hamburg twice a year, we rode the Riesenrad (ferris wheel) with Jost’s mother and tried to ignore our frozen noses as we admired the view of the city at night.

Amo Heidi, Anna, and Hannes in his burka on the Riesenrad

And to top it all off, we had a lovely Advent coffee with Jost’s mother, brother, 87-year-old great aunt Tante Ilse, and her daughter Gela, a full family reunion of Jost's maternal side of the family. It was fun to see the children be able to communicate freely with their German relatives for the first time in their lives.

Shopping

To Market, to Market

Ja, I am a German hausfrau: I market, therefore I am.

Now that the leaves are gone from the trees I can look down from the window beside my desk and see the market across the street where I buy our groceries. Kaiser's is a small store that makes our crowded Safeway in Reedsport look positively cavernous, but there's a wonderful selection of hundreds of cheeses and wursts and a bakery with scrumptious breads and rolls.


I carry a clip on my key chain with a metal, euro-sized ring to activate the shopping cart lock—without it I'm always unsuccessfully rummaging in my pockets for that elusive euro coin. I buy our mayonnaise in tubes, milk in tiny liter cartons, and eggs in cartons of ten (why not a dozen?).

Milk, eggs, and mayo

To buy cheese or wurst or fresh meat I stand in line to order from the ladies behind the gleaming display counters—500 grams of mixed ground pork and beef (the cheapest ground meat) and five pork chops, bitte! I was thrilled to discover relatively cheap boneless frozen chicken breasts here, also, a new addition since my German shopping of ten years ago.

Long lines at the cash register are par for the course, especially on Saturdays because all stores are closed on Sundays. I put my items on the conveyer belt and then lay out my cloth shopping bags in my cart, ready for the race to bag the items and get my wallet ready by the time the cashier is finished. I'm getting better now at recognizing all those little euro coins and cents, but it's taken me awhile. I can't imagine what the transition has been like for old-timers who have handled deutschmarks all their lives.

Now I retrieve my little pseudo-euro from the shopping cart and manhandle my heavy cloth bags back to the apartment. I'm grateful to live so near to the market, but my shopping trips are still limited to what I can carry, and I tend to be at the store every day. It's a daily ritual that I engage in with nearly every other German hausfrau.

Thanksgiving

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was,

"thank you,"
that would suffice.
~Meister Eckhart

Our American holiday of Thanksgiving doesn't really fit into the German landscape, and today we are very far away from Thanksgiving-celebrating friends and family, but the attitude of thanksgiving is fully independent of cultures.

We are very grateful . . .

• for our family, here around this table and scattered around the world
• for our friends, who keep us close even while we're far away
  
• for this home, which allows us to live in shabby chic old-European comfort
  
• for this city that never sleeps and opens our eyes to a world we've never experienced
• for this amazing opportunity to dive into another life for a year
  
• for all these and many more blessings from our great God!

Danke!

Winter is here

Snow in the City!

The view from our balcony

It's mid-November and the first early snowflakes are floating by my fifth-floor window, lilting and dancing and wafting upward again as they meet the heat from the street below. Winter has definitely come to Berlin, earlier than usual but convincingly. The kids have been hoping for snow; now that it's here, Hannes is complaining about the cold: "Can't it snow and be just a little bit warmer?" Those early morning bike rides to school are brutally cold on exposed flesh.Here on the 52^nd parallel, it's already beginning to look like twilight at 3:30 in the afternoon, and by shortly after 4:30 it's deep night, pulling us in on ourselves for long evenings of Phase-10 and Rummy and Taboo games.

But while we were in Bonn last weekend to celebrate Hannah's 18^th birthday, the kids discovered a new antidote for this dark season—ice skating—that turns the biting cold into an excuse for gliding (and falling) on sparkling ice.

Kids on skates

Lara's class trip

Die Klassenfahrt
by Lara

About a month ago I went on a class trip that lasted for five days. In Germany, classes stay together for several years with the same teacher. One way that they form class togetherness is by going on class trips each year. This year we went to a camp called Werbellinsee, which was right near a large lake. The bus trip there was supposed to take an hour and a half, but the bus driver got lost so it ended up taking over four hours! [So much for those speedy German drivers and autobahns! -Ed.] When we finally got there it was really hot so we all went swimming in the ice-cold lake.

Here's the beach with the icy water

The rooms we stayed in had three bunk beds, a table, and a big wardrobe for our clothes. My roommates were Verena, Nora, Sophie, and Saskia. They’re also my best friends here. We had a lot of fun giving each other chocolate facials and eating lots of candy. [Wait a second--did you eat the facials? -Ed.] We also won the award for the neatest room!

Here I am with Sophie, Saskia, and Verena
(this was actually taken at our house after they had raided
all of Hannes's Reedsport/Blazers stuff!)

During the days we usually went down to the beach and played beach volleyball with all our other classmates. We also went on long hikes, sometimes in the rain. One day we even went on a boat trip on the lake. The only work we had to do was writing about each day in our journals. [And writing letters home! -Ed.]

Beach volleyball!

Fortunately on the trip back we had a different bus driver who knew the way so we got home exactly on time! We had a great time, and I think it would be fun to do this with our class back in Reedsport some time! [Lara will be available for professional tour guiding and class trip planning as early as next summer! -Ed.]

Anna learns a poem

Der Herbst steht auf der Leiter

We're often asked how the kids are progressing with their German. And the answer is . . . well, it depends on which day we're asked.

Hannes, who had a big head start on the girls, is becoming more and more fluent by the day. After a slower start, Lara is also increasingly beginning to try out her spoken language, and she understands much of what she hears in school. But Anna, who came to Germany speaking and understanding absolutely no German, has spent nearly two long months in school during which she's still understood . . . practically nothing!

However, last week all the children in her class were assigned a poem about fall to memorize. She worked and worked on it, and on Monday she recited it proudly for the class and for her teacher--and got an A+! Oddly, it seems to have been a breakthrough for her general language, as well: she suddenly seems to understand much more and I hear her babbling to herself and trying out new phrases with us in German, too. Success is so sweet!

If you crane your neck to the left and press on the play button below, you might be able to see and hear the maestro recite her poem in person. (She's asleep as I'm posting this, but maybe by tomorrow I'll have filmed her horizontally so you won't get a neck ache as you watch! Who knew?)

Hannes's subway adventure

Brawl in the U-Bahn
by Hannes

One of the more exciting points so far of my time in Germany was what happened in the subway three weeks ago . . . . Drum roll, please . . . .

I had just gotten out of school at about 2:00 and was waiting in the subway station right next to our school with my friend Niko. I had my bag with all my basketball stuff, and some Turkish guy just bumped right into my bag. At the time I thought it was an accident, so I kind of looked at him and—as usual—I was smiling. He didn’t like this, so he came over to me and asked me: “Hast du Probleme mit mir?” That means: “Do you have a problem with me?” Then he took out a knife and held it out threateningly. I was scared to death, so I just said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” and started backing away from him. He kept advancing on me, and punched me with a right hook just below my left eye. I’ve never been so scared in my life.

The right hook!

My friend Niko was almost as shocked and terrified as I was, so we went to the other side of the station and hid behind a pole (making sure that we didn’t look at him). Then when the train came we let him get on without us, and we waited five minutes for the next train. A bunch of other friends who had seen what had happened but had not seen that we didn’t get on the train waited for us at the next station and then got on with us. We were all talking about what had happened and none of them had ever seen anything like it.

First-aid at home

I had a huge bruise and bump on my left cheekbone, but it could have been much worse. We didn’t go to the police because we didn’t really have any hope that they would find him again in a city as big as Berlin. But the next day, on the little television that’s always running in the subway train, they had a new video about knives being prohibited on the subway. I’m guessing that maybe they saw what had happened on the surveillance cameras in the subway station.

At first I was very worried about meeting up with that guy again, but as I said, in a city this big, what’s the chance of seeing him again? Now I enjoy riding the subways again, and life is good!

A week in Switzerland

Sprechen Sie deutschli?

We’ve just returned from a week of vacation in amazing, awesome, spectacular, beautiful, scenic Switzerland. (Was that enough adjectives to make my point?) We stayed in my parents’ apartment in Brienz, the little woodcarving village nestled by the lake of Brienz in a valley in the Berner Oberland region of the Alps.

Looking down on the Brienzersee

We had gorgeous weather except for one afternoon of rain that put a light dusting of snow on the peaks around the lake. Words truly fail to describe how beautiful the scenery is—the soaring snow-capped peaks against the brilliant blue sky, the clear aqua green of the lake, the dark-stained chalets with geraniums tumbling out of window boxes, and fat cows grazing on the steep mountain meadows.

A view from the village of Mürren

For the children this was an exciting exploration of their family roots, because this is the village where my great grandfather Peter Schneiter was born and where Schneiter cousins still live. Hannes was amazed to find the Schneiter family coat of arms carved on the side of a chalet with the other original families of Brienz.

The Schneiter family crest

Mountain village life was a great change of pace from life in the big city, and we were all grateful for the break. Now we're back in Berlin and ready for school and work to start again tomorrow.

Tschüsli!

We've had company!

Hotel Zetzsche

Aack! Two weeks have passed without a blog posting from the Zetzsches. Surely you’re about to send out a search party?! Jost tells me that the problem with blogs is that people begin to take themselves too seriously, so let me reassure you that I know you’re probably okay with not hearing from us for awhile!

We’re doing well, and today’s post is to tell you that we’ve just come through a nice time of playing host to many people we love! Beginning back in August, just a week after we arrived, we’ve been happily welcoming family and friends in our home here in Berlin.

Jost’s brother Holger visited us for several hot days in August. He was the first to try out the “guest futon” and navigate the adventurous bathroom—and survive! We went on a wonderful boat cruise from Spandau to Potsdam, played in the park near our house, and did lots of fun, touristy things.

Anna and Onkel Holger

Jost’s father Hans-Georg and his wife Annerose were here in early September for a week. Wonderful things happened in our kitchen (Annerose’s a great cook!) and to our apartment (Opa knows his way around a toolbox!) while they were here.

The kids with Annerose

Near the end of September we had double company when Jost’s mother Heidi and my parents Donna and Jerome came to visit at the same time. We celebrated Hannes’s birthday, checked out the Berlin shopping, visited Queen Nefertiti in the Egyptian museum, made Mom's signature Swiss Chäsbrattel, and had a great time together.

Here's a picture Dad took of the beautiful Nefertiti.

Then, to top it all off, our cousin Hannah from Bonn came for five days at the end of September. It felt like the family was complete with our “fourth child” back at the table again. She visited school with Hannes, poked around Berlin with us, cheered on the world-record-setting Berlin Marathon, and went to a contemporary art exhibit and a professional Alba-Berlin basketball game. [Hannah, where are those photos?]

After Jost’s quick trip to a conference in Warsaw, Poland, life has now returned to normal again, though friends from Eckernförde have just called to say they’re coming next week. If you’re thinking of coming, too, do book early—rooms are going fast!

Hannes celebrates a birthday

Herzlichen Glückwunsch
zum Geburtstag,
Hannes!

Today is Hannes's 14^th birthday, almost back where it all began 14 years ago. He celebrated with candles and his favorite Brötchen early this morning before school and then with German pancakes for lunch after school.

Two sets of grandparents are here to help him celebrate—Jost's mother, Heidi, is here for a visit from Hamburg, and my parents are on their way home from Switzerland via Berlin.

This afternoon we had applesauce cake and presents, and tonight we plan to enjoy the last of the late-summer weather at a sidewalk table at a neighborhood restaurant. What a great way to turn 14!

Hannes reports on school

Intenseness
by Hannes

My first week of school was intense. The school I'm going to is supposed to be an "elite" sports school. The goal for pretty much everyone is to be training for the Olympics or professional sports. Starting last year, everyone new who's accepted into the school has to specialize in one sport. They have crew (rowing), ice hockey, tennis, table tennis, track, water polo, swimming, basketball, and mostly soccer. No one knows much about basketball here because they're all soccer freaks. When I played soccer in America I was decent, but if I were to play against my classmates here who specialize in soccer it wouldn't even be fair. They'd school me!

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I have two periods each day of basketball practice during the school day. It's really fun and I'm learning a lot. I'm really getting into shape! We've been having professional coaches come in to train us from Alba Berlin, the professional basketball team here in the city. They're very good and work us hard. I'm also going to start going to a club basketball team with some of my teammates from school.

Oh, yeah, there's also my other subjects: math, physics, chemistry, biology, German, English, geography, art, electronics, ethics, and history. It's very hard because everything's happening in a completely different language (duh!), but it's great because school doesn't last as long here. I have between five and seven hours of school each day. Our schedule is different every day. On Mondays and Fridays we actually get out at 1:30. We also don't have very much homework (so far). The students and the teachers rotate classrooms in our school, and there's a different teacher for almost every subject.

(This is a picture of my classmates from last year.
I'm obviously not with them!)

In Germany the high school system is completely different from America. There is the Gymnasium for people who are going to go on to college, and it goes to 13^th grade. The Realschule is for people who are going on for vocational training, and it ends with 10^th grade. And the Hauptschule, the "unemployment track," ends after 9^th grade. Usually these schools are completely separate, but my school is a comprehensive school that combines them all. Every student gets to choose which level of each subject they want to take. Grading is also completely different here. A "1" here is like an "A" in America, and a "6" is the worst you can get and means you automatically have to redo that year.

I could ride my bike all the way to school, but that would take almost 40 minutes, so instead I ride about 5 minutes to a subway station (Bismarckstraße) and then take the subway to my school. I have a "Monatskarte" which costs almost 30 Euro (about $45) and is an unlimited public transportation ticket. It lasts for one month so I can ride anywhere in the city with any kind of public transportation. It takes me a little less than 20 minutes to get to school.

On the 8^th grade basketball team we only have five people training right now. There's Dominique, the best player, Nico, who has a broken finger, and Julius. We also have one girl on the team who's also pretty good but I can't remember her name right now. Then there are seven 7^th graders who we train with. It seems like most of them are little midget point guards. One of my other best friends, Jonathan, is half Romanian and speaks Romanian fluently. He plays tennis. And my other good friend is Max. He plays table tennis.

(Here are some of my teammates in a photo from last year.
Nico is in the middle, Julius is on the far right, and Dominique is in between.)

It's really cool because when I meet a new person, they always ask, "So you're new here, aren't you?" I say, "Yeah, I'm from America," and all of a sudden they're really interested. They connect Americans with pop stars and other super cool people. (They're right, of course!)

Lara and Anna report on school

My First Week of School

by Anna

My first week of school was fun and not fun at the same time. It was not fun because I didn't know what to do at all and all the other kids knew exactly what they were doing. I was just kind of sitting there because I didn't understand what the teacher was saying.

It was fun because I made four new friends. Their names are Dana, Ara, Jessica (pronounced Yessica), and Nina. My teacher's name is Frau Drechsler. "Frau" means "Mrs." or "Miss" so her last name is Drechsler. She's very kind, but sometimes she gets frustrated with the rowdy boys in our class. I don't know one boy in my class who's not rowdy!

School in Germany is a lot different from America because all the teachers come into the classroom instead of the kids going into their rooms. The only things we go out of the classroom for are music, P.E. (called "Sport"), and swimming. For swimming we ride a really fancy bus with an upper deck to a swimming pool away from the school.

The name of my school is Lietzensee Schule. It's called Lietzensee Schule because there's a lake right nearby that's called the Lietzensee ("See" means "lake"). We usually walk to school through a churchyard behind our house and it takes about two minutes to get there.

The school building is a big reddish brick building. There are four stories and I’m on the very top floor so I have to walk up four flights of stairs every morning. During the morning we have a snack that we can eat anytime we want. There's a big recess courtyard and all the kids go to recess at the same time, from 1^st grade through 6^th grade. We have recess twice a day. At recess I usually play with Jessica. There's a big soccer field that the boys play soccer on. There are also two places for hopscotch.

We finish school at 1:30 and eat lunch at home. Mommy comes to pick me up. Then I do my homework. I'm working on learning cursive because all of my other classmates learned last year, so if I don't have other homework I practice in my cursive book. We also write with fountain pens, so I'm practicing that, too. Papa says that my handwriting has gotten much better from practicing.

And that's my first week of school!

Tschüs!

Die erste Schulwoche

von Lara

I just finished my first week of school yesterday. It was really hard to keep up with everyone else in my class because I had no idea where to go and what to do. Luckily, a few of the girls from the class helped me and showed me around the school. My main teacher is called Frau Otto, but I only have her for a few classes each day because each period a different teacher comes into the classroom to teach a different subject. Each day I get out of school at a different time, most days at 1:30, but depending on the day it sometimes goes later then that.

The only classes that I understand so far are math and English, so now I have a student teacher who translates everything that I do not understand into English. She will continue to help me until I feel more comfortable in the classroom and have learned more German. My other subjects are natural science, German, religion, music, art, P.E., and history/geography. It seems weird that a public school would teach religion but I really like the teacher so it’s a lot of fun for me.

Half the school was originally made for boys and half for girls. There are two front doors with stone carvings that say "GIRLS" over one and "BOYS" over the other. The school is really different than all our schools in Reedsport because it's over 100 hundred years old but on the inside it has been remodeled and looks really nice.

In all, the first week of school was hard but not too hard that I don't want to go back. The kids are nice and the teachers are helpful which helps a lot!!!

Editor's note: Hannes starts his new school this Monday. Stay tuned next week for his first impressions!