One of my favorite people in Germany

Today I paid a visit to one of my favorite Germans: our pediatrician.

Yesterday, Becca began running a fever and by noon today, it was climbing rather than cooling down. I thought I should take her to the doctor, but the timing was all off. The office was closed for lunch and by the time they reopened and I called to make an appointment and got there, I could be late picking up the older kids from school.

Keeping in mind that this was the fellow who gives out his home phone number and encourages his patients to call him anytime, I simply bundled Rebecca into the car and we arrived soon after the staff opened the office after lunch. I approached the receptionist and said (in German I might add), "Hello. My name is Nylund. We don't have an appointment, but my daughter is running a fever." Even with other people in the waiting room and milling around, we were put straight away into an exam room. The doctor saw us within 5 minutes, ran a test for strept throat (negative), printed out a prescription for ibuprofen (you can also get it over the counter) and sent us on our way. I stopped by the nearby Apotheke to pick up the prescription. I've written before about how efficient the pharmacies are here.

We were back in the car with our prescription within 20 minutes of entering the pediatrician's office with no appointment. I wish I could bring our doctor and the Apotheke home with us to the U.S.!

Advent Calendars

It's the first of December which means just one thing -- Advent calendars! Gone are the days when my brothers and I opened tiny windows on an Advent calendar, like the one above, to be rewarded with a little drawing of a candle or an angel. It was always a fight (even up through high school) to see what the order would be for opening windows, because we figured out early that whoever opened December 3rd would also be the lucky one to open the large doors on the 24th to find the Baby Jesus in his manger.

Germans love their Advent calendars and, as you also see in the U.S., they have gotten more and more elaborate. You find inexpensive calendars here with little chocolates and expensive calendars with gourmet chocolates. It seems that every popular character and toy has its own Advent calendar, including Spongebob Schwammkopf, Legos, and Polly Pocket.

I'm a sucker for Playmobil, so this year our kids are taking turns opening the little boxes of a Playmobil wildlife calendar and also a Kinderschokolade calendar.

Who knew you would need an instruction booklet for an Advent calendar?

Setting the scene.

A Thanksgiving Dinner

This past Thursday (Thanksgiving back home) was just another day for us -- work, school and German class. Today was our Thanksgiving Day.

My good friend Kathy invited us over to her house for dinner and we had a lovely time. It felt quite homey to be with another American family and see familiar American things around the house.

For the first time, we got to see a Slingbox system -- where you are able to watch your local TV from the States on a computer screen here in Germany. With the time difference, you use a DVR to record your shows. This is the first time the kids have seen Cartoon Network in a year and half.

I told Kathy all about my car accident from the day before. As I was leaving the mall area, a woman ran a stop sign and we collided. And Kathy told us about her car accident from the day before. She hit two wild boars that ran into the street. My story paled in comparison.

Ein Schneemann

We barely got any snow last year, so the kids were thrilled when it started snowing this afternoon and by this evening, there was enough snow on the ground to make a snowman. They insisted on doing it all on their own, and we were pretty impressed with how he turned out. My mom had given us a snowman kit a few years ago, complete with wooden buttons, a pipe and a carrot nose, and the kids added the skateboard and a baseball cap instead of the felt top hat. We just hope he'll stick around for a while.

We've been naughty

A few months ago, our church welcomed its new priest, an English fellow named Father John. He has been getting settled and has now begun to make some changes.

Today, right before the distribution of Holy Communion, he turned to the congregation and said, "When you receive Holy Communion, take the host and consume it immediately. Then, if you choose, you may drink the Holy Blood from the chalice. Now, I know that it has been the tradition in this Church to dip the host in the wine, but that practice is forbidden by the Vatican."

Oops. We've been doing it all wrong. Many of us were pretty sure of that, but we've kept our mouths shut.

I've checked around on the internet and if everyone handles drinking the wine correctly (wiping and turning the chalice after each use, using a high proof wine that kills germs quickly, using a gold or silver chalice that is inhospitable to germs), the chances of catching something when taking the wine is very small. You have a much greater chance of catching something shaking hands during the sign of peace. However, I still feel squeamish about drinking from the chalice, so I was happy to dip, but no more.

Row by row, people began getting in line to receive Communion. When my kids and I stood up and before the choir began singing again, I was overcome by a strong urge to sneeze. And so, there in front of the majority of congregants of a mostly silent church, I sneezed a loud, satisfying sneeze. And I felt dozens and dozens of sets of eyes alight on me and I could almost read the thoughts going through people's minds, "Oh, God. Please don't let her drink from the chalice. Please don't let her drink from the chalice."

No worries. I don't have any plans to take the wine, whether I'm sick or not.

Last day of German Class

Today was the last day of my German course. It has been a very interesting 5 weeks. The first few days were very difficult for me, as the class already had its cliques set and someone was very mean to me the first day. But, within a week, several other new students and I had found our places.

My fellow students come from all over the world: Russia, Morocco, Cuba, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, Poland, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Iran, Brazil, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kosovo and Turkey, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few others. I was the lone American or native-English speaker.

We have all gotten along quite well, but I did have a few of those uncomfortable moments due to my nationality, which I expected. One day, we needed to write a quick paragraph about what we would show a visitor to our hometown. Hmmm, what to show someone in Atlanta, what in Atlanta was unique... Every city has a zoo, and an aquarium isn't that unique... After hearing some other people's paragraphs, with their centuries-old sites and famous places to see, I read my tongue-in-cheek paragraph about taking people to see those famous Atlanta landmarks: the Coca-Cola Museum, the CNN Center and I threw in Stone Mountain for good measure.

Then, a Cuban women read hers and it started with "I come from Guantanamo..." and I thought, "Oh, no." She talked about what there was to see and the teacher added, "But there is also a large prison there, isn't there? That would not be a very pretty place to go." I quickly found something interesting to stare in my book, but not before I saw about 5 heads swivel around to check out my reaction to that statement.

My Afghan friend was next to read his paragraph. It consisted of 2 sentences. "Ich komme aus Kandahar, Afghanistan. Alle is kaputt in Afghanistan." (Everything is "broken" in Afghanistan.) I again dropped my head as I saw several pairs of eyes look to me.

In spite of the potential for conflict, I have never been made to feel intentionally uncomfortable and no one has ever challenged me on U.S. policy. No one has ever snubbed me either. Everyone follows the unwritten rule that we are here to learn German, not play the blame game and there is no need to use this time to have disagreements about the horrible things going on in the world.

In fact, one of my classmates out of the blue told me during one of our break times that she loves, just loves America. I thought, "Why? Brad Pitt movies? Levi jeans? Fast food?" Here was her explanation: "I come from Kosovo and America saved my country. My uncle was killed during the war and everyday I had to hide in the basement during bombings. I love America." (For the record, there were more countries involved than the U.S., but I'll take the positives whenever I can).

There have been a lot of laughs during class and we even had a day when we pushed the tables back and one of the guys in class who works as a Latin dance instructor taught us the basics of the Cha-cha-cha.

On this our last day, we had class, took the final test and then had our "bring a dish from your homeland" feast. David and I had joked that I could always go through the McDonald's drive-through window for a bunch of Big Macs and Cokes, except the closest McDonald's doesn't have a drive-thru.

What to bring? I figured chili was pretty American and I could whip up yummy pumpkin whoopie pies with pumpkin puree I had bought at the commissary and froze. So, there it was. My classmates dug into my chili, kept piping hot in the crockpot, that holy grail from last fall. My whoopie pies were less of a success. "Gut, aber sehr süß!" "Good, but very sweet!" By European standards, they were much too sweet. Baked goods here are barely sweet at all.

The food was fantastic, even the dried fish pieces I tried from China were tasty, and we all went home with full stomachs.

St. Martin's Day

November 11th is St. Martin's Day and all I really knew about it was that in the evening children walk through neighborhoods singing songs and carrying lanterns. I didn't have time to do any research and in order for you to truly appreciate how this day went for me, I will only provide you with the information that I had at the time.

Rebecca's Kindergarten was to be having their St. Martin's Day procession at 5:00pm and when I picked her up from school at 2:00pm, she had a lantern she had made at school and we were to bring that back at 5:00. The lantern was a painted paper cylinder with a wire handle. In addition, the previous week, a mom had talked me into helping out after the procession selling glühwein (hot spiced wine), but when I reminded her that I don't speak good German, she said, "Oh, you just say 'Ein Euro, bitte.' How hard is that?" Hmm, how hard indeed. I doubted that the only thing I would need to say would be "One Euro, please."

My neighbor Anne and her daughter Jonna came to pick us up a little before 5:00 and when I opened the door, there was Jonna with her lantern all beautifully lit with a little light contraption that looked like a fishing pole. Uh,oh. Apparently, I needed a light, but no one had told me that and it just hadn't occurred to me. I asked Anne where she got the light and she answered, "You can get them at any toy store. Don't you have one?" When I said no, she followed up with, "Oh. Well, what do you normally use to light your children's lanterns?" I explained that we don't really do lanterns in the U.S. Anne was very surprised by that, shocked that we don't celebrate St. Martin's Day and told me that children carry lanterns at other time of year in Germany or even when just going for a walk in the evening during the winter. Lucky for us she had an extra light Becca could use.

At the school the kids were excited to show off their lanterns which were in all shapes and sizes: dragons, suns, stars, etc., or just plain ones like Becca's. The sun set and we sang a song about St. Martin and lanterns. Then, we began walking through the neighborhood.

Becca and Jonna hand in hand.

We stopped at a path and lo and behold, there was a fellow with a long red cape on horseback. We stopped and sang another song. Ah ha. That must be St. Martin. But what's the deal with the cape? Must research. So, we walked along with St. Martin at the head of the procession on his rather skittish horse. We paused in a field, sang another song and then headed back to school.

Here's Becca with her class assistant. So, back at the school, a small bonfire was lit (who knew?), there was more singing and, oh, yeah, I was supposed to sell glühwein. Gulp. I approached the table and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to be of any help. There were plenty of women already there, ladling piping hot glühwein from a huge pot into cups. I couldn't have Becca around that hot pot and I couldn't let her wander around alone in the dark either. So, I stood there a moment, not sure of what to do. "I should walk over there and tell the women that I was supposed to help, but that I really can't, " I said to myself. But, I didn't think I could express that clearly enough in German and just didn't feel like embarrassing myself in front of a bunch of people. So, I never said a word and prayed that that mom, who said she really needed the help, wouldn't confront me the next day at school.

I just sort of stood there for a few minutes in the cold, not really knowing what to do when I noticed people eating something, something that looked like bread or a pastry that they were getting from a table. I walked over to the table and a mom working there said, "Your child is an Igel, right?" "Yes, an Igel (a hedgehog). Her name is Rebecca Nylund," I answered. She looked through the bags in the Igel box and said, "Hmm, I don't see her name." She looked again and then said, "Did you order a some German word I didn't know? Order something? I was supposed to have ordered something? Nobody told me that. There was probably a sign up to order that whatever it was, but I didn't notice one and probably would not have understood it anyway.

Once again, we were in luck. They had a few extra whatever they were for sale and we bought one. I sat Rebecca down, reached into the paper back and pulled out, of all things, a piece of bread in the shape of a goose.

It must have been the whole feeling of having no idea what was going on the whole evening that made me want to burst out laughing. Of course, a goose bread! Why shouldn't there be a goose bread in the bag? I knew so little about St. Martin's Day, it could have been in the shape of a can of Spam and I wouldn't have known the difference. I definitely needed to do some research.

Rebecca biting the head off the goose. I hope we weren't breaking some unwritten rule about the proper way to eat a goose-shaped bread on St. Martin's Day.

Becca is not sure what she thinks of its raisin eye.

OK. So, the internet to the resue! St. Martin's Day is the feast day of 4th century Martin of Tours, who started out as a Roman soldier. He was baptized as an adult and became a monk. It is understood that he was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold. That night he dreamed that Jesus was wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. Martin heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clothed me."

The day is celebrated in the evening of November 11 in many parts of Europe. Here is Germany, children go to houses with paper lanterns and candles, and sing songs about St. Martin in return for treats (we didn't go to individual houses) Often, a man dressed as St. Martin rides on a horse in front of the procession.

To this day, the origin of the much-loved procession of lanterns is still unclear. To some, however, it is a substitute for the St. Martin bonfire, which is still lit in a few cities and villages throughout Europe. It formerly symbolized the light that holiness brings to the darkness, just as St. Martin brought a flicker of hope to the lives of the poor through his good deeds.

In some areas, there is a traditional goose meal. According to legend, Martin was very modest and reluctant to become bishop as the Church wanted, which is why he hid in a stable filled with geese. The noise made by the geese betrayed his location to the people who were looking for him. I guess that explains the goose bread.

Alles klar.