Our family crest

Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen

(Old German saying meaning
"Peace, Joy, and Pancakes")

This year has given us the opportunity to spend a lot of time together as a family, which is a wonderful gift in today’s busy world . . . except when it isn’t! Bickering, sarcasm, put-downs--do any of these sound familiar to other parents of adolescents? In one of those downward cycles, we decided to adopt a short Bible passage as our family crest. Okay, I admit, I’m using the royal “we” here—I assigned the kids to memorize Colossians 3:12-15.

I love the way the New International Reader’s Version puts it out there plain and pithy:

You are holy and dearly loved. So put on tender mercy and kindness as if they were your clothes. Don’t be proud. Be gentle and patient.
Put up with each other.

Forgive the things you are holding against one another.
Forgive, just as the Lord forgave you.
And over all those good things put on love.
Love holds them all together perfectly as if they were one.

Let the peace that Christ gives rule in your hearts.
As parts of one body, you were appointed to live in peace.
And be thankful.

Aren't those excellent words to live by? We're not there yet. But we're working on it!

Another Top 10 at Halftime

It’s hard to believe that we’ve actually reached the halfway mark of our time here in Berlin. These months have been so full of new impressions and experiences and adventures that it doesn’t seem possible they’ve passed this quickly. We’ve purchased our return tickets for the 15^th of July, leaving us with five months and three weeks of German time left to enjoy.

As we were thinking about our time here, the kids were musing about what they miss from America. You may guess that not all of us agree on all these items, but here’s a combined list of . . .

Top Ten Things We Miss

10. rain (ha! just kidding)

9. watching the Blazers' incredible season (Go, Brandon Roy!)

8. comfortable furniture

7. root beer

6. American pizza

5. drinking fountains

4. a house with a back yard

3. Oreo and Jasper (our cats)

2. speaking English

1. friends and family

Thoughts on home

Home is . . . relative

We just returned from a trip to visit friends Esther and Reinhardt at their home in Eckernförde on the Baltic Sea. Late last night, after the kids were in bed and the bags were unpacked, Jost said, "It's strange, but when we come back to this apartment, it actually feels like home."

It's true: this is also home now, one week short of mid-way through our year here. Perhaps we realize it more after traveling so much during this three-week Christmas break—staying with friends in Munich and the Ostsee and in hotels in the Black Forest and Bavaria. Maybe "home" comes from knowing that the floorboards creak in the hallway and either not noticing or intuitively remembering the path of least creakiness. Or from sensing just where the shower faucet will shift from scalding hot to tepid. Or from sinking down onto a familiar mattress and sleeping through the night with the comforting sounds of traffic five stories below. Time and experience have made them familiar, dependable . . . homey.

The big city of Berlin itself doesn't welcome us back, but we're glad to return. The sun is shining brightly, there's a thin sheen of ice over the Lietzensee, and we haven't been rained on in weeks. School began again today, and the kids returned with mixed feelings—eager to see friends, but loath to pick up the fountain pens and dive into textbooks—again, normal!

These are the threads that make up daily life at . . . home.

The big black dots on this map of Germany
represent the different corners of the country
we've explored so far.
(Click on the map to enlarge it if you'd like.)

Happy New Year!

Prost Neujahr!

If it had been my choice, I’d probably have stayed home wrapped in a blanket with a cup of hot cocoa and a good old black-and-white movie to roll in the new year. But, after all, we are here to take advantage of opportunities, and we’d agreed to meet friends Henni and Hans and their daughter Maria downtown for Silvester, the German New Year’s Eve celebration.

So we bundled up in layers and layers of clothing (why didn’t we pack those long underwear?!) and rode the elevated train the 15 minutes downtown along with crowds of people swigging out of bottles and lighting firecrackers and in various stages of inebriation. I was continuing to have my doubts about the wisdom of our field trip.

Still, we drank hot mulled cider and cocoa at heated outdoor tables at a pub at Hackescher Markt while Hans and Jost and Hannes ran back and forth to put on a firework display from the little park across the street. Firecrackers are only legal on this one day of the year, but the ones they sell are the “real” old-fashioned U.S.-outlawed M-80 type—lots of bang for the euro!

Then we walked with the streaming crowds toward the Brandenburger Tor, the center of the German universe, where the official fireworks display would take place. We decided to take up position on a bridge over the Spree River beside the Reichstag, the German Parliament, and when the fireworks began we popped the corks on the champagne bottles and sparkling cider, sipped out of fluted plastic glasses, and toasted the cold, sparkling new year of 2008.

It turned out that the Reichstag was directly between us and the official fireworks display, which had to be shot low because of the fog, but everywhere we turned amateur pyrotechniacs were blasting off their own celebrations of fireworks so that we felt we were right in the middle of the display.

My camera was in my pocket the whole time,
but it was all too big to capture.
These photos are from the professionals.

Later we wandered through the city center, watching the amazing buildings of downtown Berlin illuminated and transformed by the flashing fireworks and the glowing fog and shadows. It was one of those long continuing moments in time when it all seems not quite real but of penetrating and beautiful intensity.

Anna fell asleep on the train on the way home and walked to the apartment between us with her eyes closed, stumbling over the piles of fireworks detritus and empty bottles on the sidewalks. Perhaps she made the better choice: dreams of glorious fireworks in the sky rather than glass shards and charred Chinese paper on the ground.