Why I Love Berlin - Part 1

The past few days have had their toll on me. Gastroenteritis paid our home a visit just as hubby’s two week break ended. Our laundry loads doubled and we lived off of electrolyte solutions and crackers as the kids and I quarantined ourselves from the outside world and waited for our guest to leave.

Today, with the smell of fresh laundry and orange-poppyseed cake wafting through our home and the satisfaction that there were no remaining traces of the stomach bug having visited us, I took the kids to Tiergarten for an afternoon stroll. (Tiergarten is to Berlin what Central Park is to New York City.) It was our first time outside for half a week and the kids were thrilled. So was I.

I mentioned earlier that my love of Berlin warranted a blog post of its own. I was wrong.

There is so much that I adore that a single blog post would be misrepresentative. Funnily enough, however, I can categorise most of what I love about Berlin in one word: choice. This post is centered on the choices I had today, literally, just outside my doorstep – public transport.

Berlin has an intricately dense web of buses, streetcars, U-Bahn lines (subways) and S-Bahn lines (light rail). I can get almost anywhere in the city within an hour, the few exceptions being the most desolate and obscure corners of Berlin that I would visit once a year, if at all. Just outside my doorstep, I have the choice between an U-Bahn line and two bus lines (four if you count the overnight routes). Within a two-minute walk from my doorstep I have an additional U-Bahn line and four more bus lines at my disposal. Within a fifteen-minute walk from my doorstep I have access to yet another subway line, at least five more bus lines, three S-Bahn lines and a number of Regional Express lines which take me outside of the city for a tiny surcharge.

Many people are hesitant to depend on public transport for their daily commute. I can confidently say, from six years experience, that the BVG (Berliner Verkehrs-AG, responsible for buses, streetcars, and the U-Bahn) and DB (Deutsche Bahn, responsible for the S-Bahn) are extremely reliable. An advantage to having two different companies running the different methods of transport is that the city rarely has a complete shutdown. When busses, streetcars and the U-Bahn ceased to operate due to striking workers last spring, the S-Bahn, run by DB, continued to operate and even increased their service to pick up the slack.

I have no need for a car. The opportunity cost is much too high to justify my owning one. Between the monthly car loan payment, gas, and insurance, my wallet would be around 550 EUR lighter every month – more than FIVE TIMES what hubby and I spend monthly on public transportation.

As odd as it may sound, I find travelling in the city with my kids on public transport easier than in the car. I never have to struggle getting impatient kids/babies buckled in or repeatedly fold and unfold my stroller. Hubby and I can freely interact with our children without having to concentrate on the traffic. Our oldest son is completely infatuated with anything train-like, so rides on the U-Bahn, S-Bahn, and streetcar are always a welcome novelty to him.

I have said it before and I will say it again – if you live in this city, own a car, and use said car daily, you are either lazy or crazy, or both. Berlin is a city in which you can live car-free. Sadly, I cannot say the same about the city of Mississauga, where I grew up.

English-English: Hash, Gash, and Stone

As every Bridget Jones fan (such as me) would attest, North American-English differs quite a bit from English-English. You know; washroom vs. loo, trunk vs. boot, and so on. Knowing this, I was still mollified by the sheer diversity when I moved to Germany, where the English of choice is of the British variety.

I received my awakening shortly after the move, when I needed to leave a message on hubby’s cell/mobile phone. I got the usual spiel: “You have just reached the O2 voice mailbox of (…) After the tone, record your message. To end, press hash, or hang up.”

What hubby would later hear is my short message, followed by some cursing whilst I pressed several random buttons. The problem was that I did not know what the hash key was. Was I supposed to look for a button on the telephone with a hemp plant on it? Or perhaps a button with a hash brown on it? Turns out that what I knew as the pound key is called the hash key by the Brits. Am I the only person in world that calls it the number sign key?
NB – I realise that the pound key would have been the logical choice. My mind, however, was at the time fried from the information overload familiar to amateur expats everywhere.

My next lesson on English-English came from hubby, who told me you do not call garbage garbage in the UK. You call it gash. Is that not a large, bleeding, cut wound? Not in the UK!

Then there is the measurement of weight in stone. Do bathroom scales in the UK tell weight loss in brimstone or granite? I was always tickled by this. We are living in the digital age, yet the Brits give the impression that they still hang out with Fred Flintstone. In fact, I purposely did not learn how that system works, so as to not lose the image of Wilma standing on a digital scale...
Fred: Honey you look great!
Wilma: Thanks, but I didn’t lose 4 stone like I hoped… I only lost 2 stone and 2 pebbles…

Weekend Summary

I survived my first single-mom-marathon after the arrival of baby #4! Needless to say, I am very tired; hence I am tapping my inner list-freak to summarise my weekend.

What put a smile on my face this weekend:

• Pleasantly surprised concierges - I always make a point of saying thank you. I suppose that does not occur often to a hotel concierege.
• A shortened single-mom-marathon - Hubby surprised me by catching an earlier flight home!
• As is tradition, he brought me home some yummy cheese and foie gras from Pa-ree.
• Baby said "mama" - I know he still does not associate the word with me, but it still makes my heart melt.
• Hubby's mom and step-dad - Always good for a nice kaffeetrinken.
• We went out visiting museums and random exhibits in the city. Upon seeing a case filled with crowns and tiaras, our younger daughter proclaimed to anyone who would listen that they belonged to mommy and papa because they are a king and queen.
• At no point did the children become uninterested or impatient in the museums and exhibits.
• Hearing that Bush claimed his favourite childhood book to be Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". (The book was first published when Bush was in his twenties.)
  

What did NOT put a smile on my face this weekend:

• The Eurozone officially entered recession.
• My stores of Tim Hortons coffee are now completely depleted.
• Hubby's horrible hotel experience - First the hotel left him waiting outside the airport for the shuttle which was going to arrive "in ten minutes". It took over an hour for the shuttle to arrive. Secondly, he was first placed in a smoking room - despite his request for a non-smoking room. This mistake was very reluctantly rectified. Thirdly, there was patch of mould, about 75cm in diameter, right next to his bed. (All this at a four star hotel!)
• Dishonest people who cannot read - Upon hearing that he might be able to catch a delayed flight back home a day early, he spent between five and ten minutes away from his hotel room, at the front desk, to negotiate a free cancellation of his second night in person. He made sure he hung the do not disturb sign on the doorknob before leaving. When he returned, his bed was made up, and a 50 Euro note that he left on his bedside table was missing. The housekeeper was no where to be seen. Unfortunately, hubby could only place a formal complaint by risking losing the courtesy late check-in window that the airline offered him as an exception, so he left it as such.
  
• I forgot to recharge my batteries and had to leave my camera at home.
• The weather - I do not mind cold weather, but I do despise strong gusts of wind with spitting rain.
• An arrogant waitress - I do not care if you are having a bad day; you NEVER let it show to a customer!
• Hubby's aunt - She is completely oblivious and/or condescending to everything that does not interest her or conflicts with her priorities.
  
• CNNI - Enough with Tomb 33 already! It was interesting the first two times it aired, but that was weeks ago and it now seems to be aired with increasing frequency. Wait another six months and I will happily watch it again.
  
• Our planned road trip to the Harz Mountains - We had to postpone it for mid-December.

(Photo from AP)

Missing Hubby

Hubby is often away on business, and even though we’ve been married a while, we still have a hard time falling asleep alone. Yes, we are a cheesy couple.

Today, for the first time since our youngest was born in May, our home is Papa-free for more than his usual working hours. I have been feeling a little down all day, which is silly because he is flying back in two days.

Even when he is not out of the country, he still spends a lot of time at work. He, however, usually manages to be here for either breakfast or dinner, and he helps out around at home as much as he can. Now that our little army of rugrats has increased by one, there is so much more housework to do. I have not properly appreciated that fact until today, when hubby is not here to give his helping hand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and makes our home seem bigger.

I suppose another reason that I feel crummy, other than the gloomy weather we had today, is that I wish I was in Paris with him. It appears I have adopted the need to travel several times each year – a trait integral to the collective German mentality.

I probably will not have the time to do much more than read a few blog posts and the news headlines as this single-mom-marathon continues. What is keeping me sane is our family road trip to the Harz Mountains on the 22nd. That and the cute little number I picked up for hubby’s visual pleasure; my way of saying thank you for all the help and support he has given me this past turbulent year.

The love-hate affair between Germans and their rules

When I made the decision to move to Germany, someone “warned” me that Germans are, among other things, inflexible and in love with rules (or something similar to that – it was almost six years ago, so I paraphrased it). The warning was only partially correct. It is more accurate to say that Germans are inflexible and in love with rules, as long as those rules do not interfere with their comfort levels.

For example, two Deutsche Bahn conductors, in two separate occasions, essentially left two young teenagers stranded in rural areas far from home because they forgot their tickets at home. I understand that there will always be those who free-ride and ruin it for the rest of us. On these two occasions, however, an exception should have been made. The conductor could have taken note of the teenager’s address and DB could have clarified the situation afterwards – similar to the procedure when charged with a speeding ticket. I, myself, would also be infuriated if my 13-year-old was left stranded almost 50 kilometers away from home by an inflexible, rule-hardy conductor. At least one of the conductors have since been suspended, in addition to an apology from DB.


On the flip-side, you have the one rule that many Germans love to break: the non-smoking rule. It does not matter where you are – a subway station, restaurant, etc. – there will be someone smoking. What’s worse is that those people will argue the life out of you if you decide to point out that they are in a non-smoking area, which I often do. My favourite stand-off occurred inside an elevator on the way up to the train platform. Just as the doors closed, some nutcase lights up a cigarette and breathes out smoke into the faces of two of my children, both of whom were sitting in their STROLLER coughing! I pointed to the big non-smoking sticker on the wall beside him, and asked him if he really needed to blow cigarette smoke into the faces of my then one- and two-year-old children. He shrugged and said that it doesn’t matter because we were going to be in open air in a matter of seconds. I reminded him that the smoking ban also applied on the train platform. That was when I crossed the line. “Why do you people always try to take away our right to smoke!” he bellowed, before he huffed and he puffed all the way to the other end of the platform. Funnily enough, he continued smoking beside another non-smoking sign.

NB – Smoking is a passionate subject for Germans. They used their veto power in the EU to prevent a smoking ban from coming through. The non-smoking ban has been reversed for traditional Kneipen (corner pubs).

Yes, Germans can be very inflexible. I want to make it clear, though, that it is a stereotype, and that not all Germans are that bad – thank goodness!

Cooking Lessons from a Convict

This past Saturday we finally had our belated Thanksgiving dinner (or, for the American readers, rather early). Growing up in a Filipino household, we did not observe this holiday as such - for my siblings and me it was like any other P.A. day. We either took our time doing our homework or spent all day playing with our Atari, Nintendo or Super Nintendo (God I am so OLD!).

When I met my husband, I was introduced to the wonderful smells of Thanksgiving. Turkey and potatoes and other "white people food" (I was a naïve child who grew up in a passively, mildly racist home) were such a wonderful change from the usual rice with ulam, and we have stayed faithful to the holiday ever since.

Having discovered the inner-housewife in me, I love to feed people until they need to roll all the way home. So, naturally, I invited our friends who knew what Thanksgiving was along with hubby's family. So far, so good. Then the pressure started - hubby's family and our German friends despised pumpkin. A couple other friends are vegetarian. Our American friend expressed that he was very excited to experience his first true Thanksgiving dinner in a long time. Yikes.

Hubby already knew how to make an awesome turkey with stuffing and gravy. The potatoes, corn, broccoli, etc. were simple enough. I turned to my trusty collection of Donna Hay cookbooks, where I found wonderful recipes for pumpkin and apple pie; easy to follow for a pie-novice such as myself. We adapted certain dishes to create a second that was vegetarian-friendly. All that was missing was an appropriate starter. I searched one of my favourite websites - recipezaar.com - and thus began my "cooking lessons from a convict", as an honourary uncle so graciously described it.

End result? Everyone loved everything! Hubby's turkey was amazing (as always), the pies were delicious (you can never go wrong with Donna Hay), and the convict delivered. Our American friend said it tasted as a true Thanksgiving dinner should. My biggest triumph, however, was that hubby's family and our German friends loved the pumpkin dishes, including hubby's carnivore step-dad who is allergic to most fruits and vegetables (too many vitamins!) and hubby's aunt who hates parsley. (I know hate is a strong word, but that is how she truly feels.)

I have been receiving lovely remarks on the pumpkin soup from friends. Here is the recipe (if you still are clueless as to who the convict is, you will find out now). I replaced the chicken stock with vegetable stock and used five cloves of garlic, and it still tasted heavenly.

"No, I am not an American!"...

...is something I am sure every Canadian in Germany has had to explain. I realise that with Canada being in North America, Canadians are, in a sense, American. Following that thought, however, would lead to the assumption that one can call everyone in North, Central and South America an American, which we all know nobody does. I am referring to the seemingly widespread interchangeability of Canadian with American.

I can see where this might stem from. The US has played a big role in recent German history. From the installment of the Marshall Plan up until the departure of the Clinton administration, the US was seen as a shining beacon and as THE ideal to be emulated. With all that PR, I am not surprised that Canada was viewed as not much more than 'the neighbour to the north'. I already foresee disagreements with my children's future world history teachers over things like the War of 1812 (if I am not mistaken, it is also known to non-Canadians as the American-Indian War).

Bottom line? Stating that a Canadian is practically an American is something you do not want to do, just as you would not call the Scottish practically English, or the Austrians practically German. For a crash course on what Canadians are proud of, please watch this brilliant commercial:



(Photo from freefoto.com)

Welcome to the Twilight Zone!

All the household chores are done. I've been to the doctor, went shopping, had lunch and now the kids are letting their imaginations loose on legos whilst baby naps happily. I managed to do everything but WATCH THE DEBATE RERUN!!! I was so surprised when my cell-phone calendar started ringing, reminding me of my doctor's appointment. I hope I don't forget about the next rerun at 6pm.


Today is such a beautiful autumn day, and I think it's lifting everyone's spirits. Perhaps it was just coincidence, but every person I encountered for more than a few seconds jovially chatted me up - very odd in a country that is so often characterised by its inwardly-oriented population. And just when you think I've hit the peak of obscurity - wait for it - nobody asked me where I'm from! **cue theme music from The Twilight Zone**

This experience of being treated as a fellow German as opposed to an immigrant has yet to happen to me in the former East. The former West is much more in tune with a culturally diversifying Germany. I always knew this, but it really struck home for me today.

(photo from stern.de)

World's Largest Expat Survey / Weltgrößte Expat-Umfrage

“Mom, if we have to move again, can we move to a country where I can at least get a good hamburger?”

If you are a parent who moves around the world frequently, you’ve probably heard this question before. Thanks to HSBC, you can check if your destination will meet your children’s expectations.

HSBC Bank International recently published what they claim to be the largest expat survey. It covers three areas:
Expat Existence – Focus on living standards, ability to learn and save, country popularity and level of luxury experienced
Offshore Offspring – Explores the challenges of raising a family abroad
Integration

The Offshore Offspring Summary includes an overall ranking of fourteen countries in regards to sport activity, junk food eaten, computer games and television watching. It doesn’t surprise me that more that 50% of the children who relocated to the US eat more junk food. It does surprise me, however, that in the UK, a country that is experiencing a similar boom in childhood obesity, the percentage lies much lower at just over 20%.

On the upside, it is nice to see that Germany is the third and Canada the fourth best country to raise children in.

(Chart courtesy of economist.com.)