In a few minutes, I am embarking on my first real German roadtrip.  Markus is taking me home with him for the weekend.  Karen and Schnubbel are coming too, and we’re swinging through Frankfurt on the way to pick up their other friend and give her a ride as well.  Markus is from a small town called Zwönitz in the Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains.  It is near the larger town of Chemnitz, formerly known as Karl-Marx-Stadt, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Dresden very near the Czech border.  On Saturday we’re going up to see Dresden, and then take in the local Zwönitz parade of miners and angels celebrating the beginning of Advent.  On Sunday Markus’ mom is making goose with all the trimings (whatever they may be).  As you can see from the map, we’re going almost all the way across Germany, which, including the Frankfurt detour, is 600+ kilometers.  How long it takes depends on the traffic (notoriously bad) and how fast Markus wants to drive.  When you don’t have speed limits on your highways, distances can be covered surprisingly fast.  We will be back late Sunday night, but I promise to take lots of pictures and get them posted next week.   Eastward ho!

It’s just a normal work day here, but my thoughts are drifting to turkey and stuffing and pecan pie, and to all my friends and family members who are enjoying a four-day weekend.  I don’t want to give up all the extra German holidays, but why can’t I have the American ones too?

I had my Thanksgiving meal on Sunday at our American church in Bonn.  I brought sweet potatoes a la Mom, which joined offerings from around the world and 100 pounds of turkey to feed, as always, the absolute maximum number of people who could be joyously crammed into the downstairs social hall.

Even without celebrations today, I am thankful.  For being able to live and work in Germany.  For my friends here.  For the freedom to travel.  For plane tickets home at Christmas.  For my friends and family back in America who are waiting for me.  For the chance to celebrate Thanksgiving with them next year, and the year after, and the year after that.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  Enjoy the turkey, and the holiday, and the company.  Save me some cranberry sauce!

I have curtains!  One day after work last week, Markus came over with his drill, and after an hour and a half of attempting to get holes in my concrete walls, I had curtain rods in my living room and my bedroom.  Don’t they look nice?  As Markus said, it makes the whole place look friendlier.  Now I think I need a nice pink rug next to the bed…

The city of Stockholm is built on fourteen islands connected by 53 bridges.  In the 2 1/2 days I was there, I managed to hit eight islands and nine bridges, which I think is quite respectable.

After a two hour flight, I arrived at the airport in Stockholm about 9 am Friday morning (and yes, that did mean that I had to get up painfully early).  I took the train into the city and just managed to catch the 10 am guided tour of City Hall.  The City Hall was finished in 1923, and is really surprisingly beautiful.  It is the location of the Nobel Prize awards dinner every December, so watch for Obama there in a few weeks.  It was one of the most interesting tours I’ve ever been on, with tons of great tidbits about the building and the things it is used for.  But it’s already taken me too long to get this post up, so I will not relay any of them now.

After City Hall, I headed across a bridge to Gamla Stan, the oldest part of the city.  I stopped in at the cathedral to see George slaying the Dragon (look closely… the dragon is made out of antlers… created in 1489 in Lübeck, Germany – I’ve been there!) before going on to the Royal Palace complex which, inexplicably, is open only from 12-3.  I stood around in the cold long enough to watch the changing of the guard at 12:15 and then went inside.  The changing of the guard was billed as a fun and exciting sight, but on this particular Friday there were no horses or music or anything except some extremely young looking Swedes from the infantry division of a pilot training school (?) hopping around in the courtyard with some flags and guns.  The highlight for me was actually about 10 minutes before the ceremony started, when two of the guys in their uniform came out of the palaces carrying trash bags the dumpster.  Even royal guard duty isn’t such glamourous work.

The Royal Palace has a number of things to see, all with separate entrance fees of course.  I started downstairs in the Tre Kroner Museum.  The current palace (an enormous, squarish monstrosity built in the Italian style which just doesn’t work very well in Scandinavia) was built on the smoking ruins of Stockholm’s medieval castle (called Tre Kroner, or Three Crowns), which burned to the ground in 1697.  The cellars of the old castle have been excavated and turned into a museum.  My favorite part of the museum was the shards of Siegburg pottery.  I knew Siegburg was famous for its pottery, but I had no idea it traveled all the way to Stockholm.

Next I hit the Royal apartments.  The palace is the official residence of the Swedish Royal Family, but they actually live in a somewhat more private palace about an hour west of the city by boat.  Also, this may be a good time to mention that Sweden has possibly the world’s best looking prince, His Royal Highness Prince Carl Philip, who is about a year older than I am.  He was Crown Prince Carl for the first seven months of his life until they changed the succession rules and his older sister became first in line for the throne.  He recently broke up with his very long term girlfriend, according to rumors possibly because he’s gay, so he may be available, depending on your gender and preferences.

Anyway.  I looked through the incredibly lavish state rooms in the palace (where, of course, you aren’t allowed to take photos) and then joined the tour at 2pm.  I learned a lot about the royal history of Sweden, which is far tawdrier than you’d think, including an assassination at a masked ball.  The current royal family is from the House of Bernadotte.  If you’re thinking that sounds more French than Swedish, you’re right.  After the war where Sweden lost the eastern half of their country (aka Finland) to the Russians, tensions were running high and the old king got himself deposed.  Napoleon volunteered one of his French generals as the new king of Sweden and because he was Napoleon, the Swedish parliament said, “Hey, why not?”  So the original Bernadotte moved to Sweden and became king.  Apparently he never actually learned to speak Swedish.

The most useful thing I learned from my tour guide in the palace was that it happened to be the 377th anniversary of the death of Gustavus Adolphus, Sweden’s greatest king, who I’d only known previously from his namesake college in Minnesota, where I very nearly attended.  But in honor of his death, the Royal Armory, in the basement of the castle, was open free to the public for just that one day.  I hadn’t planned to visit the armory, but I’m sure glad I did.  It was one of the highlights of the trip.  Besides armor, there was also a lot of clothes and royal costumes, right up through the little sailor suit worn by the current king when he was a little boy (the collection of children’s clothes and toys was particularly interesting).  Swedes seem to love to save stuff, and a lot of very weird stuff is on display in the armory.  There were the outfits worn by at least three different kings when they were killed, complete with bullet holes and 300-year-old blood stains.  Gustavus Adolphus (or just Gustav II Adolph in the Swedish form) does not have the outfit from his death there, because he got kind of lost in a battle and when they recovered his body the next morning, it was stripped of everything except the three linen undershirts he was wearing and a pair of socks.  But oh, the undershirts and the socks are there, as is the cloth in which they wrapped his heart when he was embalmed.  They do have some of his other outfits though, and he was either very pear-shaped or pear-shaped garments were all the rage back then.  But it really was a good display.  And there was a fabulous royal carriage collection in the basement of the basement to round off the visit.

By the time I was finished with the armory, it was dark and I was ready to find my hotel (although it got dark at 4 pm so that’s not saying much).  The hotel was in Södermalm, the large residential island just south of Gamla Stan.  The huge neon sign on top made it conveniently easy to find.  I was staying at Hotel Anno 1647, and yes, the building is really more than 360 years old.  I stayed in one of the “economy” rooms with a bathroom on the hall, which made it reasonably priced, and the breakfast was delicious, so I recommend it.  For dinner, I got herring from a snack cart near the waterfront.  It was two pieces of fried, battered fish on top of a piece of Wasa cracker, topped with pickles and red onions and parsley (see photo below).  It was delicious, although not really a good night for eating outside at a picnic table.  It never rained or snowed while I was there, but the temperatures were only marginally above freezing.

On Saturday, I very nearly took a lunch cruise out through the Stockholm Archipelago (30,000 islands east of the city in the Baltic Sea) but the weather was so cold and foggy that I opted for indoor activities instead.  My first stop was the Museum of Modern Art, which had a great special exhibit on Salvador Dali.  Next I hit up more traditional art in the National Museum, after taking a stroll around another small island, just for fun.  The collection was good, but the most stunning thing was the building itself, which has an incredible interior staircase made out of marble with pillars and statues and a fancy ceiling.  Again, sadly no photos.  You’re just going to have to go to Stockholm and see if for yourself.

I left the museum with just enough time to get to the Food Hall, a big open building that used to house meat and produce sellers, and now houses meat and produce sellers next to twee coffee stands and souvenir cheeses.  I love food markets, and am very sad that they are so uncommon in America.  I admired the bounty of seafood before sitting down with a hot chocolate and a piece of carrot cake.

My next stop was Centralbadet, a public bath house in Stockholm from 1904.  It’s a really pretty Art Nouveau building, with a big pool (cold), a small “thermal pool” (lukewarm) and a jacuzzi, plus a variety of saunas.  I figured, what better way to spend a dark, cold Swedish night than in a sauna, and based on the hour wait to get in, a lot of other people felt the same way.  Luckily, I was also treating myself to a genuine Swedish massage from a real live Swedish masseur, so I didn’t have to wait.  The only other public bath complex I’ve been to like this was the on in Budapest.  The trouble with going to the best public baths in Europe first is that it kind of spoils you for everything else.  But I still had a nice time, and the saunas were wonderful.  The massage wasn’t bad either.  I learned from the guy giving it to me that smorgasbord is a Swedish word.

On Sunday, I took the ferry to the big park island of Djurgården which houses, among other amusements, Skansen, the world’s first open air museum, consisting of historical buildings carted in from around the country.  It also has a small zoo which is home to Nordic species like reindeer and brown bears, as well as traditional domesticated breeds from the area (I especially like the cold weather chickens… extra fluffy).  It’s a nice place to walk around, and the buildings are very interesting. It would have been nicer in summer, when the buildings were actually open but what can you do.  I got there shortly after it opened at 10 am, and by the time I left at 1 pm a few of the buildings had been opened by costumed interpreters, but most were shut for the season.  A real highlight was the old bakery, where you could see, smell and purchase the wares.

I was running short on time, and really wanted to get to the royal treasury before I left since I had already paid for it with my palace combo ticket.  Luckily, just as I left Skansen, one of the old-fashioned trolleys came trundling by towards the city.  I hoped on.  I think I read somewhere that Stockholm was the first city after San Francisco to have an electric street car system.  They recently reopened one of the original lines with beautiful original cars (all shiny wood inside) and operate them as a sort of moving museum.  Street cars don’t go very fast, but it was enough faster than walking that I had plenty of time to see the crown jewels of Stockholm.  It was only three rooms worth, but I have to give the Swedes credit for having the most beautiful crowns I had yet seen.  Pity they don’t actually wear them anymore.

After I’d had my fill of sparkle, I picked up a few more post cards and headed back to the airport.  The tourist write-ups about Stockholm call it one of the most beautiful capitals in the world, and it is surprisingly lovely, even in November.  Plus people kept telling me that I needed to come back and see it in spring or summer.  And there is plenty more to see there.  I would love to get in a boat trip out through the archipelago, or west across Lake Mälaren to Drottningholm Palace, the actual home of the royal family.  I didn’t get to visit the Vasa Museum, dedicated to a magnificent 17th century ship that sunk in the Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage and was just recently dredged up, or Junibacken, an interactive museum of Astrid Lindgren characters, or get inside Riddarholmen Church, a medieval abbey where the great royalty of the country are buried.  I also was left with almost 35 Euros worth of Swedish currency and didn’t bring home a single stuffed moose.  I guess I have to go back to Stockholm too.

Today’s blog brings you two recent entries from the “It’s a Small World” division here at Car Talk Plaza.

1.  As most of you know, my dad has taken up substitute teaching at my old high school.  Every year the school has a handful of foreign exchange students, and one of them this year is a girl from Germany.  Of course, my dad got talking to her and told her that I live in Cologne.  She is also from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and her family lives about an hour and a half from Cologne in a town/city which my dad can’t remember the name of.  But then he mentioned that before I moved to Cologne, I was living in Menden.  Remember, Menden is a tiny and completely nondescript village that is not even an independent town any more and a lot of locals can’t place.  But wouldn’t you know it… of all the foreign exchange students in the world, and all the countries they come from, and all the possible high schools in America they could end up at, there is one at Grand Rapids High School who grew up in Menden.

2.  I met my friend Karianne last winter through church.  She is finishing her PhD in astronomy at the University of Bonn.  I met my friend Markus when he joined our research group last winter to begin his PhD in materials science.  Karianne and Markus have never met, but know about each other because they have both started reading my blog (hi guys!).  Last month, Markus’ girlfriend Karen, who like Markus has an undergrad degree in physics, moved to Cologne and started a PhD.  At the University of Bonn.  In astronomy.  And through the three degrees of Amber separation, they got together for coffee last week.

Nothing can top APC Bonn’s youth pastor being the brother-in-law of the granddaughter of the people whose house my family moved into when I was 10, but on the scale of grand coincidence, I’d still rank these as utterly respectable.  It’s a craaaaaazy world, man.

On Saturday I went into Cologne with my Chinese friends to stock up on kimchi and bok choy (and get ingredients for yummy white fungus dessert soup… I feel so multi-cultural).  After the groceries, I mentioned that I wanted to go clothes shopping.  Zhenglei really like shopping for clothes, but at seven months pregnant she can’t really buy clothes for herself.  I gave her the perfect excuse to go into the stores, and ever-patient Peidong tagged along.  It worked out well for me too, because I have always been completely intimidated by all German clothing stores except H&M.  Let’s face it, I’m a little intimidated by shopping in America too.  The only time I’ve ever attempted to shop in Cologne city was pretty shortly after moving here last year, and it was too much.  It’s taken me this long to work up the courage to try it again.  This time, I could just follow Zhenglei into her favorite stores and it worked out beautifully.  German sales people mostly leave you alone unless you ask for help, which I appreciate.

I was driven to the arms of commerce by the rapid and alarming deterioration of my blue jean collection.  They’re all getting faded and ratty and really loose.  That last is partly due to the lack of driers here to shrink them back into shape and partly due to having no one at home to make me dinner any more.  And Germans just generally wear their pants cut tighter than Americans.

So I went searching for jeans.  Women’s pants here are sized like men’s pants in America, with waist and length measurements, and like America, the measurements are given in inches, for reasons I cannot begin to guess.  Not that I knew my pant size in inches, but I could at least measure.  Despite the enlightened sizing, it turns out 36″ inseams are just as hard to find as they are in America.  I was about to give up and go home when I went in to S. Oliver.  This is a German brand that I first became aware of last year when I realized that the new watch I’d just purchased was made by them.  I discovered that they have lots of nice stuff, including really long pants.  And sales people who will help you find them.  Once the initial sales girl who approached me had passed me off to a different sales girl who spoke better English, I pretty shortly had 5 or 6 pairs to try on.  And they were TIGHT.  I was dubious.  I insisted on trying a larger size.  They were clearly too big.  I tried the smaller ones again.  Sales girl promised that they would get half a size bigger with washing and wearing (maybe that’s why all my old ones are too big?  I should have been buying them smaller all along?).  I was convinced.

So now I own my first part of German pants.  I wore them to work yesterday.  My thighs did start out feeling a bit like cased meat, but the material relaxed by afternoon, and it was only the first wearing.  I reminded myself of what Sue Erickson once said to me, that you have to suffer to be beautiful.  Or fashionable, it turns out.  But I did feel oh so very European, and they really do look better than my old pairs.  Just don’t ask me to give up my tennis shoes.

Just before I booked my surprise plane tickets, I downloaded ABBA’s greatest hits album from iTunes, so maybe it was fate that I was going to Stockholm.  Whatever it was, I had a really nice weekend and of course took a ton of pictures despite the uniformly gray weather.  Here are a few of my favorites.  I will get more up with some stories about what I did and saw while I was there this weekend.  I’m going into Cologne to do some shopping at the Asian markets with Peidong and Zhenglei tomorrow, and they’re coming over for dinner on Sunday, but otherwise I have no plans for the weekend.  I’m kind of excited to have some time at home to relax, clean the apartment, do something with all the apples I bought a couple weeks ago, and blog about Stockholm.  Maybe I’ll even find time to study German and practice my yoga.  One can dream.

This is a busy season for special days in Germany.  Today is Martinstag, the feast day remembering St. Martin.  Germans are having goose for dinner before the kids head out to parade through the neighborhoods with their homemade paper lanterns.  My new neighborhood has apparently been without a mounted St. Martin in recent years, but I read in the paper that a local store organized a special fall festival in their parking lot last month, and enough funds were raised that our local St. Martin will again have a real live horse this year.

November 11th is also, of course, Armistice Day, commemorating the treaty between the Allies and the Germans that ended World War I.  The armistice went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and many countries around the world mark that time with a moment of silence to remember fallen veterans.  Angela Merkel was in Paris this morning laying a wreath under the Arc de Triomphe with  Nicolas Sarkozy.

In this part of Germany, though, the eleventh day of the eleventh month is the official start of Karneval, known as the “fifth season.”  Ceremonies at 11:11 am kicked off the festivities, which will continue with parties tonight.  One of my friends in Germany mentioned on Facebook this morning that he was surprised by the man in the bunny costume that he passed on his way to work, until he remembered the date.

The German equivalent of Veterans Day is actually coming up this Sunday.  Volkstrauertag (lit. People’s Day of Sadness, or not quite so literally, National Day of Mourning) was started as a way to commemorate the German soldiers who died in WWI, but it has never been on November 11 (I will give the Germans the benefit of the doubt and assume this has nothing to do with Karneval… probably just less painful not to commemorate the day you lost a war).  It is currently held on the Sunday closest to Nov. 16, and includes all those who died under oppressive governments, not just during war.

And if all that weren’t enough death and dying for you, the following week is Totensonntag (lit. Sunday of the Dead), which is a unique-to-Germany, Protestant version of All Saints Day, as Allerseelen (the first Sunday in November) is observed here only by Catholics.  Oy.  Luckily, you can take time to contemplate it all next Wednesday, on Buß- und Bettag (Day of Repentance and Prayer), although you will only get the day off work if you live in the state of Saxony.

I had forgotten about this when I wrote yesterday’s post, and was only reminded of it this morning while watching some of the news coverage of the events in Berlin.  Fifty one years before it became the night that the Wall fell, November 9 was the Night of Broken Glass.  A 17-year-old Jewish boy living in Paris had walked into the German embassy and shot the official there in protest of his family back in Germany being expelled to Poland with no possessions and no money.  Within two hours of the official’s death reaching Germany, members of the German secret police, in civilian clothing, carrying pickaxes and sledgehammers, went out into the night and acting on very specific orders, destroyed nearly every synagogue in Germany, along with Jewish cemeteries, schools, shops and houses.  Dozens of people were killed and thousands rounded up to be sent to concentration camps.  Although Jewish persecution had been escalating under the Third Reich for some time, Kristallnacht is often cited as the beginning of the Holocaust.  In 1988, historian Max Rein wrote, “Kristallnacht came… and everything was changed.”

In 1989, it became a night when everything was changed again.  It is a night to celebrate, but also to remember that which cannot be replaced.

Twenty years ago tonight, the world watched as the Berlin Wall, both literally and figuratively, began to fall.  On our televisions, we saw the now-iconic images of East Germans dancing on top of the wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, of people attacking the concrete with sledgehammers and pickaxes, of the masses of people streaming through the open gates and celebrating together in the streets.  I was nine years old, and this event marked the beginning of my awareness of the greater world.  Over the next two years, I watched the Iron Curtain come down, the Cold War end, Germany reunite, the Soviet Union dissolve, and my country go to war in the Persian Gulf.  I remember thinking that maybe there were always such momentous things going on in the world but I had been too young to notice.

To celebrate the anniversary, I’m spending the evening tonight with my two favorite East Germans.  I’m having dinner at Markus and Karen’s place and we’re going to watch Good Bye Lenin!, a poignant and very funny movie about a guy whose State-supporting mother went into a coma just before the Wall came down, and the lengths he goes to to keep her from discovering the truth once she wakes up.

For some non-fiction video, below are a couple clips from YouTube.  The first is a really nice six minute documentary about what actually happened to open the German borders.  The second is the segment from ABC Nightline that aired November 10, 1989.  Near the end of the clip, Ted Koppel asks the reporter in Berlin, “Are we getting carried away with all the champagne bottles, or is this one of those pivotal moments in history that people will still be writing about fifty years from now?”  Looking back, it’s hard to believe that could have been a serious question.

The “Change” as they call it here happened peacefully, but the last twenty years have not been easy.  I know, now, about the struggles Germany is still having to reunite itself, and they are serious ones, but I had no idea of them before I moved here.  I don’t think most foreigners do, and I think the Germans are proud of that.  They present the strong and united front of a prosperous and successful country, whatever the family squabbles may be behind the scenes.  And that is a truly remarkable achievement.  Congratulations, Germany.  Happy Anniversary.