The language

 
The summer after I finished kindergarten, I read Little House in the Big Woods. That's my go-to reading anecdote, and it has been relevant in a surprising number of conversations in my life.

*Oliver and I discuss our childhood educations* - "You started school when you were 7? You didn't read until you were 8? I read Little House in the Big Woods the summer after kindergarten!"

*Discussing lifelong love of reading with friends* - "I can remember the first "real" book I read; Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods."

It's a tiny detail I look back on fairly often. Sitting in the family van on a long vacation road trip, nothing to do for hours and hours... I can picture the seat reclined back, and remember my mounting excitement as I realized "Yes! I am doing this!" A switch was flipping and a whole new world was opening up for me.

It's such a good feeling, that switch flipping.

I've got a bit of that going on right now, actually. I'm 150 pages into Eat, Pray, Love. It's an honest-to-goodness grownup book, and it's in German. I am reading a real book in German. I don't understand every word, but I am in it 100% and giddy at how much I can do. Yes! I am doing this! Is this what it was like back on that road trip? Did I miss words in every paragraph, but piece it all together and teach myself new things out of nothing but my own excitement?

I had this glorious moment somewhere around page 100. Liz and her boyfriend had been having problems, and the third paragraph on the page opened with her boyfriend proposing a "crazy idea." What? What was this crazy idea? I wanted to know, but only got half of it on the first pass. Okay, so read it again. And again. And again. What's this word, "miteinander?" Hm... Liz and her partner weren't sleeping "miteinander" anymore...

Wait.

mit = with
ein = one
ander = other / (another?)

With one another! With one another! They weren't sleeping with each other anymore! High five.

Wait. There are so many other words...

Ineinander (Intertwining one another)
Hintereinander (behind one another)
Voneinander (from one another)

I am a long way from fluent, but where I am right now is fun. I know enough to start making all sorts of connections, and that excitement can only inspire me to do more, right? Maybe soon a whole new world will open up? Feels like it's close.

And just like that, it was easier

      
We didn't do a lot of traveling last year. On the one hand: duh, of course. We had a three year old and a one year old, we had just moved overseas and had to assemble a household, we were brand new to Frankfurt and had to orient ourselves in many ways...

But on the other hand, what a shame. As I've said before, we're not here forever. (Another shame, but that's a whole other post) We'll probably never live here again (at least, not until the kids go to college?), and thus it will never again be this easy to travel around Europe. To "waste" a whole year of that time not traveling, then... shame.

A totally understandable, one might even say necessary, shame.

Still a shame.

Okay, we didn't do nothing. There was a long weekend in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Nuremberg:







There were a couple day trips to towns on the Rhine river:



We took visiting family down to Bavaria:



And we spent a week and a half in Italy at Lake Como.







That's pretty ambitious on its own, isn't it. Okay, when I look at all these photos it seems like a lot. Still, it was much less than we had imagined. Germany has so many long weekends! In addition, Oliver gets SIX WEEKS of vacation a year! We're not here forever...

When it came down to it though, I didn't want to travel last year. It had become too overwhelming. There were two kids, and two young kids required a lot of work. Bedtime was painful, our sightseeing options were limited, and the need to constantly keep an eye on the baby and comfort her when she inevitably started crying about something trivial... it wasn't fun.

Whatever. So we don't travel much while we're here. You can't have every experience, so let's just focus on what works for us (staying in Frankfurt) and make it fun. There's no shortage of German culture here, so no loss.

Then, in February, we went to Cologne for Karneval. It's Germany's Mardi Gras, and Oliver booked us a trip as my Christmas gift. Mardi Gras? With kids? I was skeptical and hopeful at the same time. Maybe it would be a craptastic weekend, and maybe it would be fun. I was fully prepared for either option.

Turns out it was the latter! Nils and Liv caught parade candy by the sackful, and Oliver and I put on "costumes" (we don't reeeally do costumes) and had a bona fide cultural experience. We kept it simple, and were grateful for whatever we got out of the weekend. Everyone was happy.







The memory of Cologne was still with me then, when in April Oliver had to go to Munich for work. Hey, do you guys want to come down a day later? We can spend the weekend there together. I thought about it, about rustling the kids onto a train and riding alone with them for 3 and a half hours, about navigating a city for a couple days... it sounded like something I could do. It appealed to me, even.

On the ride down, we shared the "family compartment" with another woman and her two sons. She was also traveling alone, and her boys were three and one. I watched her with them, watched her constantly holding / attending to her one year old. She pulled things out of his mouth, held his hands while he walked unsteadily on a moving train, rocked him back and forth when he got tired and fussy. I then looked at my own kids, coloring, playing with trains, and rolling around on the floor while howling like wolves (God bless the sliding, soundproof door on that family compartment!)

Thunderbolt from the sky: things are so much easier than they were last year, because we don't have a baby anymore! Liv doesn't eat dust off the floor anymore. Both kids go to bed like, well, kids now. Our options in any given place are still limited, but Liv's ever-increasing autonomy gives us so much extra space, it feels like someone has come into a room full of windows and flung each one open.

We had a great time in Munich. Like Cologne, we kept things simple. Just like in Cologne though, everyone got something out of the trip.

I think we might start doing a little more of this stuff. We're not here forever, you know.

Minimalish?

     
I had a couple Germans over some time back, and at some point in the visit mentioned my "really small kitchen." I got a couple weird looks. Small? What do you mean? This isn't a small kitchen.

Here's our kitchen:

Cute, right? See that tall cabinet at the far left of the photo? The top half is our fridge and the bottom half is our freezer. Well, to be totally accurate, one-third of the freezer portion is actually non-freezer shelving for our cookie sheets and the like. This, I am told, is a standard German fridge. Tiny, right? But you know what? I have never once felt inconvenienced.

When I think about it, what was my weird, mumbled, half apology for my "small" kitchen? This is my perfect sized kitchen. I cook in it every day, I bake on the weekends, and it all goes off without a hitch. Why did I ever think I needed more?

Would you also like to see our dryer? We have two, actually. Here is our spring-summer-fall dryer:

And here is our winter dryer:

We had to buy our own laundry appliances when we moved here, and it seemed silly to buy a dryer. We're not here forever, we reasoned. We'll just have to go through the hassle of selling it when we move. If we really need one we can buy it later... let's just see what happens without one. 

You know what? It's no problem! Shouldn't it be a problem with two kids and all their dirty-kneed pants? Hanging probably takes longer than tossing a pile into a machine, but we don't mind so far. Will there come a day when we mind? Do kids use even MORE laundry as they get older? I ask myself questions like these every day. How much do we need? What can we do without? What will we need in the future? Can we lean towards minimalism now and get bitten in the butt later?

Here are some things I would, ideally, never have in my possession:

A car
A house
A yard

I think about these three things every day, I kid you not. Not having any of them brings me so much joy, but at a certain point all three seem inevitable. (Woe is me, right?) Not to bore you with details, but we see ourselves living closer to family at some point, and "family" is in a place where cars are not optional. Houses too, it seems, if you want to live near other families / near good schools, etc. Tiny house in a nice neighborhood? One car and dedication to cycling? Tiny front yard full of ivy / perennials? It's a puzzle we could solve.

Something to think about, I guess.

Observations

We've been here for a year now. A year! I feel totally immersed in and simultaneously completely removed from the culture here. That's what happens when your German skills are at the intermediate level, I suppose. I've collected a few observations... mind if I share them?

1. Closed for Urlaub.

Okay, so it's a given that Sundays are a little painful here. The shops are all closed, most of the restaurants are closed... the country basically shuts down. I love this, because yes! Time off! Thank you Germany, for understanding the importance of slowing down! Yes yes, let us spend time with our friends and families! Hm... where should we go with our friends and families? To the park / playground, perhaps? Can't really go anywhere else, since EVERYTHING is closed.

How about the coffee shop, says the friend.
Yes, that's the ticket. Let's get a coffee. We can sit for a bit, maybe have a slice of cake while we're at it.

"We make vacation."

Crap.

Smaller businesses here regularly take time off - a week or two at a time seems to be the norm. This is sometimes super annoying - "What?! Our favorite bakery is closed for two weeks? What are we supposed to eat?!" - but I get it. The American in me is concerned about the loss of income, but good on ya, Cafe Coo Coo. Enjoy your time off.

2. Are you washing darks? Whites? Colors?

Please enjoy this snapshot of my neighbor's washing machine. This is pretty standard for my laundry room. There are separate bottles of detergent for colors, darks, whites, delicates, etc. Painting a nation with really broad strokes, I'd say that Germans like to be well equipped. Why use only one bottle of detergent when so many others have been engineered to meet all your laundry needs? Why just walk in the park when you can use 15% less energy with your nordic walking poles? German children seem to be dressed in a complicated system of layers - tights under pants, undershirts under regular shirts under sweaters, slippers over socks. Depending on where you are (home? kindergarten? outside?), they will wear all or a few of those layers. Maintaining optimal comfort, I suppose. Why wear one shirt when three can be used in combination to make things that much better for you.

3. They are just not into signage

This, below, is a really nice store. I bought a fancy pair of jeans here, and they seem to do a really brisk business. Look at that sign, though! What is that? The "E" in "Elite" has been missing for MONTHS. And look closer. Do you see the other letters held up by duct tape? Duct tape! 

Maybe this doesn't come across so dramatically in writing, but the signage / ambiance thing here is so strange to me. Don't you want to whisk me away to a fantasy world where your product makes my life so much better? How are we supposed to get there together when your sign is being held up by duct tape? Maybe I'm missing something here.

4. People say everything is so expensive in Europe

That might be true. Many things are very expensive here. You know what, though? I can think of three things off the top of my head that are very reasonably priced:

• Medicine
• Food
• Childcare

If you have a prescription for medicine for your child, the medicine is free. If you are a family on the lower end of the economic ladder, you child can go to a quality kindergarten (read: preschool) in Frankfurt for 40 Euro a month. I like that.

Also, did I mention that women get a year off after the birth of a child? That a job is held for them for up to three years? That men get paternity leave? I like the priorities here.

5. Someone engineered my muesli. Really.

I was pouring muesli into a bowl the other morning, and noticed that the cornflakes, dried strawberries and puffed rice came out in perfect proportion to the oats. Next day, same thing. Day after that, ditto. Don't certain ingredients always pour out first, and other sink to the bottom of the container? I truly believe that someone at Seitenbacher took the time to figure out how to get the perfect pour every time. So many items in our daily life have that same tinge to them, the "German engineering" feel. I should really start making a list.