Sunday, December 20, 2015

Home for the Holidays

I've been back in the U.S. for a week now. Although I'm a bit sad to miss the full impact of the holidays in Hamburg, nothing beats spending time with my family.

I came back early to participate in Wreaths Across America at Arlington National Cemetery, then spent the week with my sister before heading south to stay with my parents in southern Virginia.

I'm looking forward to another week or so of rest and relaxation (and a birthday!) before heading back to Hamburg for more adventures.

Happy Holidays!








Earlier this week Angela and I went to the National Harbor.
We saw ICE!--an incredible ice sculpture extravaganza
that told the story of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
We were given these blue parkas to wear because the
temperature inside was 9 degrees Fahrenheit
In addition to amazing ice sculpture displays
like these, there were ice slides.
(Yes, we played on the slides).


After the journey through ICE we warmed up back inside with the Gingerbread Man!


A visit to my parents always includes
a breakfast at the Waffle House

It took Angela and me some time
to decorate the family tree.
Merry Christmas to you and your family!

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Around Town: Christmas in Hamburg

I am crazy about Christmas. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. (As a Christmas Eve baby I feel can say corny things like that without being judged too harshly.)

Christmastime is also one of my favorite memories of living in Germany as a kid, because it was so magical. There were—and still are, judging by displays at some local convenience stores—people who decorate their trees with real candles (something that is on my list to try with a second, smaller tree. Don’t tell Larry!).

Weihnachtsmarkt at the Rathaus
A lot of our Christmas customs in the U.S. come from Germany, so of course I was super excited to be at the source when the holiday season hit. And yes, there is an official holiday season here. 

Although stores had Christmas stuff out on display starting in late October, Weihnachtsmärkte (Christmas markets) aren’t allowed to operate before the week preceding Advent.

I had to give up the dream of traveling to other cities all over Germany for their famed markets--too costly on our current budget. Thankfully I found a website for Hamburg’s many local Christmas markets. I counted 18 markets on the list and made a plan to visit them all.

Larger-than-life Weihnachtspyramid
at a downtown market
The markets officially opened on Monday, November 23. I hit six markets that first day; five of them before my German class in the afternoon. I hit an equal number of markets over the next couple of days but noticed two things: 1) as I visited markets I’d sometimes stumble across smaller markets not on the list and 2) with the exception of a few larger sites, most of the markets on the list were clearly social spots for their particular neighborhoods, concentrating solely on food, drink, and a carousel for the kids.

Stalls at the larger markets included fresh food,
jewelry, clothing, Christmas decorations...
I finally hit the wall on a dreary Sunday morning after traveling 35 minutes by bus to get to a market on the fringes of town. I spent only 30 seconds walking through the market itself, then crossed the street to hop on an approaching train back into town.

The remaining targets on my list were equally far out if not further. I had visited 19 markets at this point and, since I already had the gifts I wanted and did not look forward to more long trips for disappointing cold and rainy tours of still more wurstschmalzkuchen (similar to beignets) or glühwein (warm mulled wine) stalls, I decided to call it a done deal.
...and novelty items, like tools
made out of chocolate

 But I did check out the parade downtown (see video and photos below). And my goal for next year will be to hit the out-of-town markets on my wish list to see how folks in the east and south do the holidays.



The parade started with a xylophone band playing Wham's "Last Christmas." 
(They played more traditional fare as the parade went on.





Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Hamburg: Around Town

A picture is worth a thousand words, so periodically I’ll share images of things I see on my excursions around Hamburg. I’ve included some rooftop photos here, but you can check out more of my rooftop obsession on Pinterest.

Celebrating German Unification Day on the beach of the Elbe!


A view of the Speicherstadt--the historic center of Hamburg's
800+-year-old trade economy
The Elbphilarmonie building, promising a
state-of-the-art performance hall and luxury hotel.
Not yet open and already 100x over budget
(yes, not 100% over, 100 times over budget).
There are constant parades of children out getting  fresh air and exercise. My favorites are these two-tier carts for the little ones.
Hamburg version of up on blocks?

Hamburg Rathaus (city hall)




The backside of the street where the Great Fire of 1842 began. Apparently the canal was just as low then.
Yes, that is a statue of Popeye and Olive Oyl

Street art is everywhere, ranging from the truly expressionistic...
...to the simply expressed.


Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (main train station). Those hundreds of people on the overpass were part of a pro-refugee rally.




It's like this house popped out of one of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales
A lot of the buildings around town
(business as well as residential)
have some impressive statues
In November we attended the Winter Dom (carnival) which, as you can see, sits in the shadow of a
massive WW2 bunker. The bunker goes by the name Uebel und Gefaehrlich (evil and dangerous)
and is home to a nightclub and periodic shows and concerts.

A view out over the Hamburg port

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Giving Thanks for Life Lessons

Today is Thanksgiving and, coincidentally, the last day of my German language course. For the past four weeks I’ve been learning German three hours a day, four days a week at the DeutschAkademie. Well, learning and rediscovering. Rediscovering things I knew but had forgotten, and learning new rules, new tricks, and new vocabulary.

The most educational part of the class, however, was learning with my fellow students. Four of us come from the U.S., one from France, one from Italy, one from Brazil, and one from Armenia. With each theme in our textbook our teacher surveyed us to find out how food or holidays or media or free time compared to that in Germany. It was great to hear firsthand about these different cultures and see, as we all struggled to make ourselves understood in German, how much we were progressing each week.

The Monday after the attacks in Paris the hallways of the academy were buzzing during the class break with stories about acquaintances in France and uncertainty over making weekend jaunts abroad. Inside our classroom the atmosphere was unusually somber as one of my fellow Americans asked our French compatriot about her family. 

They were safely away from the violence, and her friends in Paris were safe, but she had multiple worries, because the other half of her family was in Lebanon. With attacks in France and air strikes in nearby Syria it was as if her entire world was under siege.

She conveyed all of this to us in English, the emotion and politics being too difficult for any of us to express yet in German. But as our teacher joined us and talked about her conversations with friends over the weekend, I realized that all of our anecdotes over the past few weeks weren’t just about noting the differences in our cultures, they were about sharing and bringing an understanding to each of us.

In our American viewpoint events like Paris are truly foreign unless they impact someone we know. Until 9/11 we didn’t worry much about non-domestic violence; we were invulnerable. Even now this type of violence is mostly background buzz—something that happens primarily elsewhere.

Now that I’m living in Europe, I realize how much these acts impact the world community. Because these attacks were seemingly random, they are particularly terrifying. And France is not someplace “over there” now for me, it’s right next door.

So today, as I prepare food to bring to class to share a part of our Thanksgiving tradition, I am giving thanks for my life and every aspect of it—my family, my friends, my health, my education, my experiences, my freedom and, with that, my ability to write and share my smallest thoughts or my biggest fears with anyone willing to read them.

Be safe, and give thanks for today.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Let It Snow!

I am not a cold weather person. I get cold easily and stay cold for a long time. The only exception to my aversion to winter weather is snow. So I was happy to learn that winters in Hamburg don't get much colder than Bay Area winters, especially since it reportedly rarely snows here and what snow does fall is wet and quickly gone.

None of which bears out this week.

It's been chilly here; that wet, bone-drilling cold San Franciscans know all too well. Then the temperature started dropping, and I feared the start to a pointless, unpleasant season of rainy, freezing miserable weather.

And then it snowed this morning.

At first it was a light snow that didn't stick and stopped after an hour. Then it started again in earnest, snowing an inch within the first half hour and continuing for another hour and a half till it tapered to a light dusting.

The everyday landscape outside my window is transformed, and even the church bells I hear every Sunday at noon seemed a bit more magical today.

My biggest hope is that "they" continue to be wrong, and that the snow is a regular visitor this winter. (Or at a minimum, sticks around for the opening of the Christmas markets tomorrow...)

Monday, November 2, 2015

Meet Betty

Most cities have a strong bike contingent, and Hamburg is no exception. Up until now I've been a dedicated pedestrian, trying to negotiate the balance between bikers and walkers depending on where I live. 

Here in Hamburg that means staying heads-up to ensure I’m not walking in the bike lane on the sidewalk or in danger of being run down in spots where there’s no designated sidewalk lane and no safe street-riding opportunity for the cyclists. Now I’ll have to look at things from the other side. 

I realized that expanding my scope of exploration and even running some regular errands requires wheels. That means relying on the schedules of buses or enjoying the relative freedom of a bike. 

Except that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ridden a bike as an adult. So Larry—an unequivocal bike enthusiast—and I went shopping a few weeks ago at a couple of bike stores to figure out what appealed to me, what would work for me, and what it might cost. 

With so many folks commenting on bike theft it seemed unwise to jump right into that kind of investment. So we went to the Flohmarkt to see if we could find something that might be salvageable with a bit of elbow grease and spare parts. 

There were sad specimens aplenty and a couple of contenders, but then we found Betty—my fantastic new used bike, complete with rear basket, shocks, working front light and no rust. 

photo of two young girls sitting on the concrete slab of a statue
No childhood photos of me on a bike, but here's a gem
from 40 years ago here in Germany.
That's me on the left, thinking whatever 
deep thoughts four-year-olds have...
We got her home, pumped up the tires and I took her on a few wobbly spins on the road around our building. I’m sure Larry is secretly harboring fantasies about us taking long rides through the city, but I’m not there yet. In fact, I’m barely anywhere, so it will be one short trip at a time for me for a while. 

But what better place to get back in the saddle than the country where I learned to ride a bike in the first place?

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Creature Comforts

Our stuff arrived two weeks ago. At the risk of sounding like the spoiled American I am, I was overjoyed. As familiar shapes were carried through the door and unwrapped to reveal the furniture underneath, I was like an ecstatic apartment-traffic controller, directing a five-man crew to each item’s precise location and orientation.

In my defense, it had been 7 weeks and 3 days since I’d left San Francisco, where I’d already gone 6 days with no furniture or familiar fixings with 2 freaked-out cats on my hands. The clothing I brought with me was appropriate for our first 10 days in Hamburg, then I had to do some creative layering to keep up with the dropping temperature.

Now I had shoes, sweaters, books, more than one pan to cook food in—every new/old thing unpacked was a forgotten luxury. And, as things go, there were the little irritants of settling; certain walls unable to hold artwork, no clothing rods in the closet, repeated no-shows for our Internet installation, etc.

Truly first-world problems.

Because just days after I was happily putting away spare towels and my favorite brand of lotion, Larry left his office and saw more than a dozen police cars converging on a building in his complex that was being converted from office space to refugee housing.

Vandalism? Arson? Bomb threat? It could have been any of those. But suddenly the complaints of my world were meaningless.

There have been reports of more than 200 attempted or successful attacks on refugee centers in just the past two weeks around Germany. During our early days in Hamburg there was a demonstration downtown, near where we happened to be wandering. I suspected it was related to the increased influx of refugees, but didn’t want to stick my little brown face around the corner to confirm.

The police activity just down the road last week was a little shake, a little reminder that under the pampering and padding, life can always be reduced to its essence: survival.

I’m grateful for the privileges that make my survival not such a struggle, and weeks ago might have argued that hardship is a relative thing. But finding the courage to leave everything you’ve ever known and truly start over with nothing for the hope of survival--there's nothing relative about that.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

This Is Not a Kaffee Klatsch

Part of the incredible assistance Larry’s company provides in getting employees settled is a free language class for spouses. Given their professionalism in every other aspect of what they’ve done so far, I’m not sure why I thought this class was going to be a casual affair.

Maybe because the class is only offered every other week. Maybe because they call it the language class for Good Game Studios spouses. Anyway, I went to my first session as a way to meet other spouses and “prime the pump” for when I found the right intensive language course for me.

In my head:
  • A group of ladies is sitting, talking about funny situations they’ve found themselves in and saying, “I wish I had known how to say…” or “What I really need to know how to say is…” 
  • The instructor pipes in with the requisite phrases and similar ones for similar situations. Some laughter, some work on common vocabulary, time’s up till next time.

In reality:
  • I am speed-walking to the Berlitz offices because the bus I’ve taken ended its route about a kilometer away. After finding the reception floor then going to the classroom floor then finding the class, I am late and anxious.
  • I enter a stark classroom consisting of a long rectangular table, whiteboard and teacher at the end to my left, and two students--one male and one female--sitting across one end of the table from each other.

That’s it. No circle of ladies sharing tales and tidbits. No coffee or tea and biscuits. No as-you-need-it adaptable lesson plan.

There was a roll book and handouts and eventually four of us students and the teacher. We spent our two hours studying a map of a fictitious city and practicing getting and giving directions for various streets and institutions on the map, and using the correct form of the dative case with prepositions.

The last arrival to class was a woman who’s been taking an intensive class in the afternoons, five days a week for the past three months. I had originally thought I would take an all-day intensive class for two weeks, but re-thought that strategy after talking to her during a brief lesson break.

So I did not get my social club, but I did get some good information and thinking on next steps for me and how best to meet my goals.

(And a reminder that I need to start studying those noun articles again—so many words!)

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Five Weeks, Five Moments

I wanted to share a few small moments from my first five weeks here in Hamburg. A mixture of “duh” and “don’t-be-so-smug” lessons about what happens when you’re hyperfocused on what’s in your own small orbit. J

Waiting on PINs and needles.  Our first week in Hamburg we learned that cash is king. Nearly everywhere you go it’s money or what I heard as “Euro” card (it’s actually girocard). So when we got our bank account and finally our own girocards, I was thrilled. I used my card in a couple of stores right away. The clerk ran it through, I signed a receipt, and was done. At one store they’d just gotten new readers, and I was able to insert the card myself. I stood waiting to get the receipt to sign. The clerk looked at me, looked at the screen, and looked back at me. I looked at the screen and wondered if I was supposed to sign somewhere electronically, but saw all text and no signature line. The clerk again looked at me and the screen, then had a flash of understanding. “PIN,” he said, looking at me and pointing at the screen. I sheepishly entered my code.

Can’t see the forest for the trees. Last Saturday we spent a productive morning having Larry’s iPhone repaired and getting our German SIM cards for our phones. As fate would have it our bank had a branch a few stores down, so we decided to get some cash. The sign on the door confirmed the bank was closed but gave directions to the geldautomat around the corner. At that entrance I zeroed in on a sign on the door, absorbed in trying to translate it to figure out how to get inside. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a hand reach past me and hit a large button on the wall, and the door swung wide open. I smiled at the woman, who was probably equally happy she didn’t have to wait for me to translate a sign that in all likelihood had nothing to do with entry into the ATM lobby.

“Two” hungry. I used to do my grocery shopping early on Sunday mornings, when stores were quiet and uncrowded. But stores in Hamburg are closed on Sundays, forcing me to alter my habit of many years. One Sunday morning, before this readjustment took hold, we found ourselves rather hungry but with very little food. For just this reason, many restaurants are open on Sundays, so we ventured to a nearby bakery. We scanned the many options and agreed on what we wanted. I originally thought I would ask what the different types of bread were for future reference, but instead, in my over-hungry state, whenever the baker hovered near one of our choices I just kept saying zwei (two) to which he just nodded and repeated zwei like he was placating a child. In my mind, I saw that moment in Total Recall when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s avatar head misfunctions and keeps repeating “two weeks!” until it finally melts down. Now I make sure to get food on Fridays.

“No” means “no idea what you’re saying.” Our complex has a “wash center” which is really just a laundry room with (depending on the week) 1-2 washing machines and 1 dryer. The machines operate on tokens you buy from the security office. Most of the time the office is manned by Herr Nagel, an extraordinarily friendly man who loves his job and dreams of backpacking across the U.S. On this particular day the office was manned by a stonefaced guard I hadn’t seen before. Larry asked him if we could get some laundry tokens. “Kein,” he quickly replied. “Kein?” Larry and I both repeated. He nodded, and as I was about to ask when they expected to get more, he continued, “Kein Englisch.” Aha. I asked for the tokens in German. He brightened and nodded we got our tokens with kein problem.

To the left, to the left. So back to that laundry room. I’d survived a messy struggle early on with one of the washers, which then disappeared and was replaced by a washer that had its own issues. I was pleased to get in early one Sunday morning and get the “good” washer, particularly when I came back to move my clothes and found a man punching buttons on the other machine, which just kept beeping at him. Poor guy, I thought to myself as I tugged on the door to my machine. If only he had known to use this washer instead. Although, after a few more tugs, I still couldn’t get the door open on my machine. No worries, I thought. Now I’ll wow him with my knowledge of the emergency door release (knowledge I gained through frantic translations of the manual for that now-departed washer). As I gave one final tug on the door and reached down toward the release lever, he leaned over and said, “Door opens on this side.”

Friday, October 2, 2015

...and through the Woods

A favorite feature of a local park down the street--
the tree that looks like a waterfall


Sixteen percent of Hamburg is made up of parks, rec areas, and woodlands. That’s an area approximately the size of the city of San Francisco(!).

In my wanderings I’d been through several small local parks but finally decided to check out the Altonaer Volkspark, the largest park in Hamburg (507 acres) and only a 10-minute walk from me.

Larry and I had unwittingly discovered one gem of the park a couple of weeks ago, the Dahliengarten, a beautiful flower oasis created in the 1920s with more than 100,000 flowers representing 800 different varieties of Dahlias.
Entrance to the Dahliengarten





The anemones were my favorite variety
The wooded pathway marking
my entry into the Volkspark
It turns out there really is something for everyone in the rest of the “people’s park”—racing track, arena, large playing fields, more gardens, children’s outdoor education, an amphitheater, and a mini golf course. 

One of the park's many gardens
After consulting the maps and trail signs I wandered a bit before climbing the stairs to the Birkenhöhe, the highest point in the park. Aside from the occasional jogger coming up one set of stairs and heading down the other, it was me alone with the birds and my thoughts.

The outdoor amphitheatre


It was heartening for me, having lived so close at one time to Golden Gate Park, to find a similarly rejuvenating retreat here. Considering its immense comparable area (although its percentage of park and open space doesn’t come close to San Francisco) and 1,000-year head start as a city, Hamburg could have easily been built up so that it took over its natural green spaces.





Thankfully there were people about a century ago, around the same time as planning for the Elbe tunnel, who wanted to maintain the beauty of simple pleasures. 

To them, I say, Danke schön.



Under the River...

A few weeks ago I decided to spend the afternoon walking along the Elbe River. I was at the main train station, having just lunched with a longtime family friend who happened to be passing through Hamburg, and I was unfamiliar with the immediate area. My phone data plan was dead, so I’d gone old school and had a paper map of the city with me.

Normally my sense of direction is ok, but the buildings on this particular map were not oriented to how they sit in real life, so after about 20 minutes I gave up and just followed the street signs to areas I knew were in the right general direction.

Entrance to the Old Elbe Tunnel on the central city side
I passed some of the attractions that are on my Hamburg bucket list and wandered through the Landungsbrücken (pier) area, which was in a high frenzy getting ready for Hamburg Cruise Days. Apparently that was set to start in just a few hours, so I hightailed it over to my end goal: the Old Elbe Tunnel.

The tunnel was built in the early 1900s to connect the central city with docks and shipyards across the river. It’s just wide enough for one car and a pedestrian lane in each direction and is still used today, although obviously not as a main means of getting across the Elbe.

If you're feeling adventurous you can take the stairs


After a quick elevator ride 80 feet down I stepped out to the cool air underneath the Elbe River.







The tunnel is decorated with river-themed tiles that I admired while trying to stay in the pedestrian lane and out of the way of bikes and the occasional car.


An example of one of the terra cotta tiles
Not a lot of room to spare












View of Hamburg from the south side
After a quick pop up to the surface to see the city from the other side of the Elbe, I went back through the tunnel and marveled at what they achieved a century ago, how far we’ve come since then, but how little people themselves change.

All around me were others enjoying the novelty and simple pleasure of a stroll under the river on a warm fall day.

I’m looking forward to discovering similar enjoyable moments in the future.




Saturday, September 19, 2015

Go with the Floh

I have been remiss. In many things, it turns out. First, in wishing my good friend Beth a happy birthday, which was on August 26, my first full day in Hamburg. Second, in thanking you for your notes about the blog--it's nice to have friends along for the journey! Third, in letting you know that my Internet connection is still unresolved, which is why I haven’t been posting. And finally, about those posts...

To assuage my mother’s fears that my experience to date has turned me into some sort of harpy in danger of becoming a hermit, I promise I will be sharing the lighter side of things as well: my ongoing Hamburg adventures—complete with pictures—once the appropriate devices are consistently back online.

In the meantime, to assure you that my life has been more than sitting on the floor staring at the bare walls and the occasional trip to the grocery store and Bauhaus (the Home Depot-esque store, not the band), I did want to briefly share one of our experiences from last weekend.

creepy doll with unattached legs at a Hamburg flea market
On Saturday Larry and I stopped by a flea market (Flohmarkt) just up the road. It was massive—somehow managing to be orderly and chaotic at the same time--with everything from bras to bikes to beds to creepy baby dolls.

It was also like an incredible international marketplace. I “bargained” in German with a young Middle Eastern man for some lanterns, Larry bought an umbrella (with a flashlight in the handle!) from a taciturn Russian, and I watched an African family take a food break at a Turkish food truck. Fantastic people-watching and it turned into a great way to practice and understand simple German, and eavesdrop on phrases that will probably be useful in the future.

As for the future, I haven’t forgotten that despite the many trials in getting here and getting settled, a large part of the purpose in doing this was to jump in and have fun. So until next time, when I talk about Hamburg history and green space and gardens and walking under the river Elbe…