They Came Bearing Gifts

I promise I'll stop rambling about my parents' visit in just a second. I just wanted to share one final photo from the cutting room floor.

Go get 'em, Dad.

On a related note, as soon as my body is no longer the home of a developing alien life form, I'm totally picking me up one of those outfits.

But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about today was this:

The agony and the ecstacy.

When they visited, my sweet parents, not unlike conquering Spaniards trying to make good with the natives, brought with them gifts from faraway lands. It was like Christmas. After a whole year of no Christmases.

Here are some of the American-bought goods they brought for us:

— Brown sugar. Whenever I mention that I miss brown sugar, Germans always say, "We have brown sugar here." To which I obnoxiously roll my eyes, snort and say, "THAT is not brown sugar." Basically, what they have is brown-colored granulated sugar. It's worthless. Not that Germans would know what to do with real brown sugar if they were swimming in it: Germans who have never been to America don't even know what chocolate chip cookies are. I know. Can they even be considered human?

— Measuring cups and spoons. The metric system rules all here. They do everything with it. They tell time in the metric system. They write poetry in the metric system. They're actually on the metric calendar, which has 10 months, 100 10-day weeks and 1,000 days total. But the most baffling thing they do with the metric system is cook with it. OK, it does make a lot of sense when measuring liquid to do it in milliliters. I'll concede that. But 5 grams of baking powder? For real? They expect me to WEIGH it? Germans swear it's the most logical way to do it, but I will never believe it. And now that I have my own measuring cups and spoons, I can stop pretending like I do.

— Gigantic bottles of ibuprofen. Hands down, one of the most obnoxious aspects of German life is that you can't get medicine — any medicine, whatsoever — at the grocery store. You have to go to a pharmacy that sells nothing but medicine and that conveniently keeps hours worse than an American bank. So there you are, with your brain exploding, and you realize you're out of ibuprofen, so you drag yourself to the pharmacy, and miraculously you manage to catch one that's open. Now you have to ask a pharmacist to retrieve the ibuprofen, which comes in itty-bitty boxes of 20 tablets, for you from behind the counter. The pharmacist is then required by law to read you your rights, telling you how exactly to ingest ibuprofen without killing yourself, which is, at this point, exactly what you're considering doing with it. It all seems terribly cautious for a country where the legal age to purchase alcohol is 16. Thankfully, we now have over 7 million ibuprofen capsules and will not be requiring the pharmacist's services any time soon. (Expectant mother note: I've read that ibuprofen can make developing aliens feral, so I'm not personally benefiting from this one quite yet.)

— Eye drops. Jake's eyes are always red and dry. I suspect it has something to do with working at a computer for 8 hours every day and then coming home and working at a computer until he falls asleep or until I'm able to lure him away with food or ... other tempting incentives. Like a friendly game of badmitton or chess. Anyway, he uses eyedrops a lot. And his luck with German eyedrops (which must also be acquired at the dreaded pharmacy) has been not good. Even the strong stuff, he says, is like tap water. Fortunately, my mom works for eye surgeons and she hooked Jake up with the good stuff. Fo reeels.

— A metric ton of buttery microwave popcorn.

The only popcorn Germans eat, and by many accounts, even know about, is sweet, like kettlecorn. I'm not opposed to this. What I am opposed to is that I can't get salty, buttery, artery-clogging popcorn at the movie theater or toss some in the microwave when I want to watch a movie at home. How am I possibly expected to enjoy great cinema without it? Inconceivable!

— Vanilla and almond extract.

What's weird is they do have extracts here, like orange and lemon. But not vanilla or almond, my two all-time favorites. Everything I make now will taste like sugar cookies.

And finally ...

— Jif peanut butter.

Mother's milk.

I call this photo "Jif Jugs", and I apologize if you find its unintentional obscenity offensive. But it's an insincere apology because I think this is one of the funniest pictures I've ever starred in.

Here's the thing, I love peanut butter. A lot. It was basically all I ate for my first two years of college. Without it, it's entirely possible I could have starved to death. I owe it my life. And I owe it a large portion of my happiness, as well, for being so deliciously crunchy and for pairing so nicely with honey and raspberry jam and milk. Germans don't share my sentiments. They hate peanut butter. They do have it here. Technically. But it's gray and it tastes like glue. Frankly, if it was the only peanut butter I'd ever been exposed to, I'd hate peanut butter, too. But I'm convinced their animosity arises primarily from the fact that they don't have access to Jif, which is the finest peanut butter in existence. Even among American peanut butters like Skippy and Peter Pan, which are light years ahead of German peanut butter, Jif shines more brilliantly than the sun itself. I don't know if it's how they roast the peanuts or if they work some kind of voodoo at the Jif factory involving virgin sacrifices and chicken bones, and I don't even care. It's amazing stuff. My dad feels the same way. He was concerned that since I have not been eating any peanut butter during my pregnancy, I might produce a child with a life-threatening allergy to peanuts, which would inevitably result in my father's having to disown the child. Dad's request when he bestowed the Jif twinpack upon me was that I eat as much of it as I can throughout the pregnancy so that my unborn child will grow accustomed to the substance and hopefully somehow be able to get a sense of its true heritage. It's a mission I humbly accepted. And after being reunited with my Jif after nearly a year apart, I can tell you that my heart has only grown fonder.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for taking such good care of us. Our eyeballs are lubed, our arteries are clogged and your grandbaby is properly peanut butter-innoculated thanks to your endless generosity.



JEM

JEM's Folks Pay a Visit

No, I didn't die. I've just been partying like a rock star with my parents! OK, not really like a rock star. More like an elderly German tourist. But partying, nevertheless. And now that I've sent my beloved folks back into the wild blue yonder, you get to watch the obligatory "Fun Stuff We Did Don't You Wish You Could Do What We Did" slideshow. Enjoy.

Berlin
First we picked up Mom and Dad in the airport in Berlin. They're in this picture.


Can't find them? Let me help you.


After a joyous reunion (we hadn't seen each other in person in 10 months), we got crushed in train doors, returned to the hotel and slept. Then we woke up and had until noon to see as much as we could of Berlin and be back at the hotel before they charged us for another day. Here's what we saw in under four hours.

The Reichstag


The Brandenburg Gate


The Holocaust Memorial


Checkpoint Charlie


Assorted remnants of the Berlin Wall


... and other stuff. Debated leaving a flaming bag of dog poo on the Russian embassy's doorstep. Decided against it. Mused about how the U.S. embassy was the only one surrounded by barbed wire and multiple police officers. Go U.S.A.!

Dresden
Then we took the train back to the ranch.

We did many thrilling things in Dresden, like hang around our apartment.

But wait! That's not all! We also visited many cool places, like the Lutheran cathedral, the Frauenkirche ...


... Dresden's glorious opera house, the Semper Oper ...

... Dresden's very old and prestigious art academy (lovingly nicknamed the lemon juicer) ...

... Dresden's Catholic Cathedral, the Hofkirche (while eating delicious ice cream cones) ...
... the pleasure palace in the Great Garden (Dresden's equivalent of Central Park) ...

... the Volkswagen factory ...

... and the palace-turned-museum, the Zwinger ...

... wherein we absorbed many fine works of medieval and Renaissance art. Like this one by Raffael.

And this one by Vermeer.


The Zwinger also houses a rockin' armor museum. Check these out ...

Those little suits of armor are KID'S ARMOR!!! AWESOME!!!

We also took a Trabi Safari. For the uninitiated, Trabis (formally Trabants) are these iconic, microscopic, East German cars made out of cardboard with engines that sound like squirrels fighting in a trash can. They were the Cadillacs of communism. People would apply to buy a Trabi and patiently wait for 15 years or more for their order to be filled. So, naturally, it was a thrill to cruise in one. We couldn't hear our tourguide through the radio for jacksquat for about three-quarters of the tour, and one of the Trabis in our safari actually died in an intersection and had to be abandoned. But I'd still recommend the tour just to get up close and personal with this fine automobile.








We also dined on fine German cuisine, like schnitzel (below), bratwurst, chocolate (Mom, I'm looking in direction) and Big Macs (looking in my own direction).


And we communed with nature. (You can't really tell, but in this picture, there's a medieval fortress on a hill behind us. Which is why we aren't plundering villages.)


Exploring the garden houses (post pending on this fantastic East German tradition) near our apartment.


Dad communicates with a sheep.


Using Dresden as our base of operations, we made a couple of daytrips outside the city. The first was ...

Moritzburg
Moritzburg is a big compound outside Dresden that the royals used to use as their manly, rustic hunting retreat. Dresdners like to come here and wander the woods and the wildlife preserve.


That's probably a good idea. We focused our efforts on the pretty yellow palace, which, from a distance, is rather impressive.

But the closer you get ...

... the ghettoer it looks.


A large portion of the front of the palace was under construction, which vexed me greatly.

Though there were certainly things to delight in. Like some of the interior rooms of the palace (Dad spat in the face of authority by taking this photo — the only one we were able to sneak inside).


The palace is also home to a pretty impressive trophy room (not our picture).


And the 11-year-old in us all found this statue of a snake biting this baby's peepee to be pure hilarity.

And the view from the terrace wasn't half-bad.


And there was a plentitude of pretty, fragrant flowers.


Weimar
Our next daytrip was to Weimar, picturesque village home of great German thinkers Goethe and Schiller. We took the train there.




And then we took the bus to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which is just outside the city.

Visiting a concentration camp is a very raw and upsetting but strangely purifying experience, and something that really warrants its own post. We'll discuss it more later.

When we returned to the city, we only had an hour or so left before we had to catch our train. So we played in the park.


And posed with dignitaries.

And got caught in the rain.

And were stalked by a gang of young men in powdered wigs.


And then we took the train home and we were really pooped.

And we tried to sleep.
But some jerk kept taking pictures of us and waking us up.


And that's it. Well, the highlights, anyway. And then we packed the folks up and shipped them back to America Town. Now, don't you wish you could do what fun things we did? Yeah, that's what I thought, suckahs.

But seriously, my parents are awesome. They were total troopers and absolute joys to have around. I think I forgot how hilarious they are. We love them so much and are so glad they came to see us.

Now, who's next?



JEM