The Kinderwagen

For all the grief the German language gives me, there are aspects of it that I find fantastic. In particular, I love the hilariously literal names Germans often give things. Gloves are called "Handschuhe", literally "hand shoes". Lullabies are called "Schlaflieder", literally "sleep songs". Santa Claus is the "Weihnachtsmann", literally the "Christmas Man". The ceiling is called the "Zimmerdecke", literally the "room blanket". The refridgerator is the "Kuhlschrank", literally the "cool closet". The hospital is the "Krankenhaus", literally the "sick house".

But easily one of my favorite German words is "Kinderwagen", literally "child vehicle", referring, of course, to a stroller. It's fitting that the stroller has such a tough, utilitarian name in German because German strollers are just that. You really can't even call them "strollers". It's like calling a Ford F-350 a "car".

Here's our Kinderwagen, and I ask you to keep in mind that this was one of the cheapest and most rudimentary models we found in our extensive search of Dresden's baby stores.

You'll notice the removable baby gym bag. That's not really what it's called, but that's what I call it because that's basically what it is. Anyway, when you take out the baby gym bag, you can convert the whole thing into a sitting-up-for-a-bigger-kid Kinderwagen.

It also has pretty sweet shocks and these:


Yeah. Actual tires. That you inflate.

See? They even have the air pressure printed on the side.

Even if you wanted one of those lame-o American strollers with tiny, swiveling, shopping cart wheels, you wouldn't be able to find them here. I'm not sure if it's got something to do with how much Germans love going for walks, the prevalence here of cobblestone, or if it's just another manifestation of general German OCD, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a country that takes its pedestrian Kinder transportation more seriously.



And I'm already trying to work out how we're going to get this sucker back the States.



JEM

Hey! I'm an American!

Yeah, OK. I'll bite. But not too hard.

Although I'm not currently working as a journalist, I still consider myself one and try to hold myself to the standards I like to think good journalists hold themselves to, namely keeping my personal political opinions private. I'm not opposed to sharing them in private, but I try to avoid broadcasting them to the universe.

That's why I wasn't going to bring this up at all.

But for the last couple of days I've had the almost irresistible urge to elbow strangers in public and, beaming, say, "Hey! I'm an American! Did you hear what we did?" And I just realized that this feeling has nothing to do with my personal political opinions — but, rather, everything to do with my homeland proving, yet again, that anything is possible on its soil.


And I'm proud of us.



JEM

P.S. Here's a great (and short) piece about how, all of a sudden, being an American in Europe is OK.

A Sensible German Coat

Ben Affleck, I just forgave you for "Jersey Girl". Congratulations.



JEM

Nesting, Etc.

Junior and I wait for the tram.

Oh, hi! It's me, your friendly neighborhood blimp, here. How are you? I'm huge. And so afraid of popping that I now rarely wander farther than the grocery store down the street.

Boredom, anxiety and excitement regularly combine to form an interesting cocktail I call "madness".

Lately, I've been combating this by knitting. Here are some things I recently made:



I started this blanket a couple of weeks after I found out I was pregnant and finished it just a few weeks ago. It's the most substantial thing I've ever knitted — my first ever blanket — and I'm pretty stoked about it.

I've also been cooking a lot. I attempted cinnamon rolls for Jake's birthday and experienced something I've almost never experienced in the kitchen before: success.

Considering this attempt three years ago at snickerdoodles ...

I have to say I think I'm really progressing.

Even Jake's caught the domestication bug. A few weeks ago he put the finishing touches on the homemade beanbag chair he's been sewing.

It's a marvelous work. It's become my favorite chair — as long as there's someone else around to help me get out of it.

Sidenote: The beanbag stuffing Jake ordered to fill the chair up with came with this complimentary gift:

Because nothing says "Thanks for buying your gigantic bag of Styrofoam filling from us" like a personalized hand towel. That's spelled wrong.

Oh yeah, and we voted.

The verdict? Absentee voting is grrrreat!



JEM

All Work and No Play ...

Jake got it in his head that he wanted to watch "The Shining" on Halloween. Me and scary movies don't traditionally get along too well. (I like to think it has something to do with an overactive imagination, but it's really because I'm a coward.) So anyway, I'd heard rumors that "The Shining" was, like, the most terrifying movie ever made of all time, or something along those lines, so I was a little hesitant. But after watching this trailer on YouTube, I felt a lot better about it and decided to give it a go:



Turns out that trailer is a little misleading.

But in a related story, there's no way I'm letting Jake talk me into watching this one:





JEM

Lifeform

So, maybe 37 weeks into a 40-week gestation period wasn't the ideal time to watch the movie "Alien" for the first time.



But we couldn't resist.

Just for the record, though, that can't really happen, right? I mean, for a little guy Junior can get to kicking at the walls pretty hard, but he couldn't actually, you know, make my torso explode, right? Right?

Hello?



JEM

P.S. Thanks, Andreas, for letting us borrow your copy of this fine film.

Nazism Not Good, Claim Protesters

We stumbled upon an anti-Nazi demonstration a couple of weeks ago.

We were headed to Dresden’s main train station at the heart of the city to buy me a new public transit month pass, when we noticed a number of law enforcement vans and SWAT teams decked out in body armor searching people. After getting off the tram, we had to pass through a row of police officers, who stopped us and asked if we were there for the rally. Turns out we’d arrived just in time for a major anti-Nazi march, which was convening at, and would shortly be embarking from, the train station.

These happen pretty frequently in Germany. Dresden’s last big anti-Nazi rally was about 8 months ago. They tend to draw out lots of liberal young adults, many of them punks with Kool-Aid hair, most of them dressed in black, a lot of them likely socialists. More or less the same people you’d see at a vegan march or an Iraq War protest. Rally kids.

As a foreigner, I find these anti-Nazi rallies particularly interesting. Considering that people generally rally to bring awareness to issues that the public is split on or undecided over, could there really be a need for a rally informing us that Nazism is bad? Haven’t we all pretty much been in agreement on that since — y’know — 1945?

For an American, sure, it’s that simple. Of course, for an American, Nazis have been considered enemies of the State from Day 1, or darn close to it. In Germany, it’s a little more complicated. For Germans, the Nazis of World War II aren’t simply the sadistic Aryan caricatures that they are to most Americans. For Germans, the connections are often personal, and the reasons are visible. The Nazis were the ones who temporarily brought Germany out of a devastating economic tailspin, creating jobs and slashing Germany’s whopping post-WWI unemployment rate. They’re the ones who built the Autobahn, for crying out loud.

Obviously Germans today are aware of the atrocities the Nazi party wreaked during WWII. They’re painfully aware. It’s a burden every German — whether they were alive during WWII or not — carries. (This fantastic piece from the German news magazine Der Spiegel goes into it more deeply than I could ever attempt to as a non-German — and it’s in English.)

But the point is, Germany’s relationship with Nazism is a complicated one, and nowhere in Germany is this complex relationship more apparent than it is in the former East Germany, particularly here in the state of Saxony. Thanks largely to high unemployment and a general sense of disappointment in Democracy’s promises of prosperity, a rising number of young East Germans are finding a sympathetic ear in thinly-veiled neo-fascism.

Germany’s far right political party, the Nationaldemokratische Partei or NPD, never overtly associates itself with neo-Nazism, but openly touts ideas such as making German citizenship impossible for any “African, Asian or Oriental”. By and large in Germany, the NPD is considered racist and extremist and not taken very seriously since it’s never gained the minimum 5 percent of votes required for the party to be able to send delegates to the German Parliament. But in the 2004 state election in Saxony, the NPD won 9.2 percent of the overall vote. The next state election will be next year, and the NPD is expected to retain its seats. They’re doing it with the help, primarily, of young, single, male, blue collar Saxons who feel the NPD is the only party that will listen to them. (You can read a little more about their history and recruitment methods, which focus on milking public fear and anger at vulnerable moments, here.)

So that’s why the left-wing rally kids feel the need to remind everyone that Nazism is a bad thing.

Though I suspect this fight won't be as simple as saving the sea otters.

JEM