A few more days.

I’ve got just  a few more days here.  I’ll spare you the long reflection, and just make a few random posts this week to say goodbye to Germany.

Today, I’m thinking about what I’ll miss, and what I definitely will NOT miss.  

I will miss the beer, the bread, the schnitzel galore, the 8,000 ways Germans can make potatoes, the scores of sausages, and the chocolate.  

I’ll miss the friends we’ve made here, both German and otherwise, and hope we’ll keep in touch.  

I’ll miss easy recycling and how Germans are relaxed about so many things that Americans are uptight about.  

I’ll miss living in a country where homophobia, creationism, doubting global warming,  and anti-intellectualism are generally not taken seriously.  

I’ll miss this nation which takes its history seriously and talks about it honestly (sometimes tripping over itself to do so) and demands transparency over a narrowly-defined patriotism.   

I’ll miss the general sense that what’s good for everyone should be the goal, instead of the short-sighted selfishness of stalwart individualism.  

I will not miss Deutsche Telekom.  

I will not miss customer service — and this isn’t just DT — that hangs up on you when they decide they’re done with you.  I will not miss incompetence accepted with a shrug.  I wll not miss expecting a bureaucratic screwup as the rule, not the exception.

I will not miss German teenage boys with spiked hair, mullets, tails, mushroom-cuts, mohawks, or faux-hawks.  I will not miss acid-wash jeans and fanny packs on said teenagers as they try to look tough.  I’m generally of the opinion that teens are not to be feared and that we should try to let them express themselves.  But c’mon, German teenagers, you look silly.

I will not miss the Pog People.

I will not miss the euro-snobbery I sometimes encounter with regards to the U.S.  We are not all cowboys.  There are wonderful things about living there.  You cannot mock us for Sarah Palin while Europeans still have their own problems with wack-job politicians.  Yes, Americans can be hugely hypocritical — I agree.  But spare me the lecture on race and immigration until Germany starts treating its Turkish residents better.  

Okay, okay, enough ranting.  More thoughts to come as Saturday approaches.

 

Several recent things, in numbered form

1. I had to take the bus to work yesterday, and just outside the front gate, where the road splits to go left around the back of the air force base toward the airport or right toward DLR, there was a family of swans, just sitting in the grass. Two adults and a bunch of fluffy, gray, half-grown babies.

2. Because I had to take the bus, I had to walk through the front gate and actually show my ID, which had been in my other bag all week (oops, I usually don’t do that). I managed to say to the guard that I’d forgotten my Ausweis, and then answer his question about where I worked, and then thank him for letting me go, all in German.

3. On Wednesday evening, an Australian family we know from church invited us over for a barbie. Among other delicious grilled meats, they served us something that translates from German as Bacon Torches: very thick, fatty strips of pork belly wrapped around skewers. My institute had a BBQ yesterday and also served them, so they must be pretty common. They are very delicious, as long as you don’t think too much about them.

4. I am typing this on the high-speed train from Siegburg to Frankfurt, where Joe and I are going to meet my aunt Jane and my younger cousins Sarah and Neal. For the next week, we’re going to show them around Germany in a whirlwind tour that hits several places in Bavaria (Rothenburg, Dachau, Füssen, Munich), Berlin, and the Rhine area. We brought the laptop, and since our internet stick works anywhere in the country, we can keep you apprised of the action as it happens. Or maybe we’ll be having so much fun/be so exhausted that we won’t bother. Either way, wish me luck as tour guide.

Los!

 

Pictures from Miniatur Wunderland

These are just a handful of the pictures we took at Miniatur Wunderland, the world’s biggest model train exhibit in Hamburg.  The lights cycle from day to dusk to night to dawn every 15 minutes.  There were so many charming details that you almost have to take eight million pictures.  A few of my favorites that aren’t here: the flying fairies, the dinosaurs in the zoo, the Sumo wrestling match in Scandinavia, the herd of cows including one purple spotted one a la Milka chocolate, the Sasquach, the snowman in the outhouse…

Gold mining camp

One of my favorites

See me on the other side of the tunnel?

Scandinavia

Several of the buildings burn down occasionally

Nope, this isn’t real either

Hard to believe this isn’t real, isn’t it?

Me in front of the control center, where they monitor all the trains

A labor strike

A dinosaur excavation

Outdoor concert

Las Vegas at night

The outside of the building