Treasure hunting

Way back during our Christmas vacation, we visited old Hamburg friends Judith and Til and their daughter Lupine in the beautiful city of Munich in southern Germany. We packed a lot of sightseeing into two very cold sub-zero days:

Anna and Lupine navigating
the crowded downtown pedestrian mall

. . . ice skating on the frozen moat of a castle built in 1385, eating at an ur-typical Bavarian restaurant (massive slabs of meat with canned peas and powdered potatoes), and admiring the famous Rathaus (the city hall) and the cathedral that were completely destroyed along with most of downtown Munich during the war and then rebuilt down to the last detail.

The Rathaus

The kids were especially impressed with our visit to the Schatzkammer, the treasury created in the 16^th century to house the jewels and treasures of the Bavarian royal families. Lara was our photographer during the tour of crowns, necklaces, scepters and balls, and jewel-encrusted toiletry cases.

A delicate queen's crown

Jost was so impressed by the visible weight and majesty of this king's crown.
These heavy things must have caused headaches!

And neck-aches!

Anna was so impressed with the jewels in Munich that she went back to Berlin and got her ears pierced!

Now she carries around her own treasury in those beautiful little ears!

The Wild Boar Hunt

Yesterday we went wild boar hunting.

Well, we need to be truthful here: Yesterday we went for a walk in the Grunewald, a huge coniferous forest that begins in our general neighborhood and stretches eleven square miles to the south and west. Like everything in Berlin, it’s filled with history: It contains the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain), one of the highest points in Berlin, built out of the rubble of 400,000 buildings carried out of the city after World War II. Under the Teufelsberg lies a Nazi military-technical college designed by Albert Speer. The Allies tried using explosives to demolish the school, but it was so sturdy that covering it with debris turned out to be easier.

What made it especially interesting for the Zetzsche family yesterday, however, was the possibility of a wild boar sighting. Berlin is known as the one of the world’s greenest capitals, and as such has recently also become the resurgent wild boar’s playground. Apparently there are about 8,000 wild boars that make their home within the Berlin city limits year-round, and another 2,000 move in during the spring to have their litters in the many green pockets throughout the city.

Hmmm. This isn’t actually reassuring when you hear these beasts described by hunters as being among “the most dangerous of quarry,” “the size of a motorbike and with much the same acceleration,” and “able to rip up and kill dogs with no effort.” Maybe that’s why all dogs have to be leashed in the springtime when they walk with their owners through the Grunewald.

The Grunewald itself is an eerie place in the late winter. For those Pacific Northwesters familiar with the wet deep green of a forest of firs, you have to think brown: brown bare trees, a brown thick carpet of decaying leaves, brown paths of churned-up dirt. Not a green shoot in sight. To me it seemed, well, very brown. But Jost soaked it up, showing us the birch bark that could be burned even when everything else is wet, and Hannes speculated on the best den possibilities for the female boars (sows?). Anna stayed close to me and held my hand.

We didn’t see any, of course. And I left the camera in the car, of course. Leaving you to imagine those brown beasts lurking in the brown forest among the brown leaves.

The Berlin International Film Festival

Star Gazing

Living here in the capital of a cultural mecca, we get a little blasé about the stream of celebrities that hang out in Berlin. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were here with little whatshername for most of August, Robert Redford pops up now and again, Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood sightings are common, Will Smith was here last month for his movie premiere, and local favorites Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie just bought a loft apartment for their family in the heart of the city. Media are calling Berlin the “new New York,” with an exploding cultural life and a grittiness and lack of paparazzi that’s appealing to artists and the Hollywood crowd.

This week it’s getting a little crazy again during the Berlinale, Berlin’s international film festival. The Rolling Stones kicked off the week with Martin Scorsese to plug their new documentary, and today Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Natalie Portman, and Madonna were busy kissing cheeks, giving interviews, and walking the red carpet.

For Jost and me it’s intensified a problem that we’ve had since we arrived—we just can’t leave the house without being mistaken for Brad and Angelina.

Yes, here it is again—ambushed by the paparazzi.

Brad's--I mean Jost’s patience is wearing thin.

Please don’t hate us for being beautiful!

Hannes learns to ski

Just Call Me Hannes Zetzsch-ski

This is me on my first time down the slopes (LOL)

I just got back from the Czech Republic where my class spent almost a week learning to ski. We went to a ski resort called Spindleruv, near the borders of Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland, in the Karkonosze mountain range, called the Giant Mountains in English. It was a little more than seven hours by bus from Berlin, through most of eastern Germany.

The Giant Mountains

Most of the kids already knew how to ski because the class went skiing together last year also. Some of them are already unnaturally good because they’ve been skiing since they were two years old. Not me! When we started skiing we were divided into two groups: the know-hows and the losers (I’m a loser!). Our teacher had hired two ski instructors, a Czech man and woman who spoke no German, and the woman stayed with the beginners. She taught us in English, so I was the interpreter for our group.

I quickly learned that the hardest thing about skiing is getting on the ski lift! I’m not sure whether they have this kind of lift in America, but you sit on a disc hanging from a tow line above and your skis stay on the ground the whole time. On the first two days I had some really amazingly grand splats trying to get on the lift, but by the third day I looked like a pro (I think). The skiing itself was a lot of fun. I decided that keeping your balance is not that hard, but keeping control of the speed can cause problems.

This wasn't actually our ski lift, but it's the same kind

Altogether we skied three days. On the first and third days we skied at a small slope, but on the second day we skied at a large resort with a lot more slopes. While I was there I went on a slope that was classified red, the second hardest type of European piste. I spent a bit of time on my rear, but I made it down—and quickly! On the morning of the third and final day of skiing, we rented some sleds and went down a four-kilometer luge run. That was really fun, but it was also the activity that caused the most injuries—a broken thumb and various running-into-tree accidents. Fortunately I remained more or less unscathed.

Here's the pool

We stayed at a four-star hotel, and we had a great time hanging out in the evenings, swimming in the pool, sweating in the sauna, harassing the waiters at mealtime, and watching movies until the wee morning hours. I didn’t get much sleep this week, but it was sure fun anyway.

Our four- (well, actually three-and-a-half-) star hotel

Now I’ve started trying to persuade my family that a ski vacation in Switzerland would be a perfect activity for Easter vacation!

Report cards

Neue Kantstraße 3:
"Where the women are strong,
the men are good-looking,
and the children are all above average!"
--borrowed from A Prairie Home Companion

The anticipation was great—after five months of school, the semester was finally coming to an end and report cards were being issued!

The third graders in Anna’s class were excited to be receiving real grades for the first time. This grading period was especially important for Lara’s classmates in the sixth grade, who would also be told which secondary school the teachers were recommending for them: college prep, a trade school, or a school for “laborers.” And Hannes’s classmates at his comprehensive school were nervous about receiving bad grades that would make them go down a level in their courses and prevent them from getting a college prep diploma.

We had made it clear from the beginning that we weren’t too interested in the kids’ grades as long as we could tell that they were working hard, so the report cards were not anxiety-producing for our family. On Friday the kids had a period or two of classes and then the homeroom teachers ceremoniously passed out the Zeugnisse, the diploma-like report cards that the children carefully put into Zeugnis folders containing all their previous report cards.

Anna's expurgated report card
(grades were removed to protect the innocent)

On the German grading scale of 1 to 6, a grade of 3 is probably equivalent to a C+ and a 4 to a C-. Germany doesn’t seem to have been affected by America’s grade inflation, and the teachers didn’t take the language barrier into consideration in their grading of our kids, so we knew we wouldn't have to worry about straight A's. Not surprisingly, they ruined the curve in their English classes, but they had some other nice surprises as well. And Lara came home happily proclaiming, “I’m a college-prep student!”

We took the report cards as evidence that they’d really applied themselves, and we’re tickled pink with the results!

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.

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!