how do you dance to...

... ROCK? Really, like, Queens of the Stone Age, Ramstein, System of a Down, Nickelback... well let me tell you, slowly and very awkwardly. So this was the first dance club (disco) that I have been to here. Yes, I know, shocking that it took me 5 months to get out there, but there you have it. A couple of my friends had birthdays last week, so we went out on Saturday night to this club. I thought it was going to be normal pop-ish music to dance to, but I was wrong. I guess the place used to be a country western type place appealing to the American Soldiers in the area, but it developed into what it is now, to keep up with the changing tastes of the customers. Anyhow, it was pretty funny being there actually because while I like rock music on occasion, i would never really try to dance to it. But alas, I made it onto the dance floor with the birthday girl because she loved the song, so we made it work. The thing is that there´s no real fast beat to work with, so you are forced to sort of sway with the crowd as they sing along, air guitar, and really get into the music. There is a second floor with pool tables, and while on the stairs or from up there, watching the crowd was a little scary (ok, not really, jut interesting). Just these people moving to this really angry music, slowly... I don´t know if i have fully conveyed this appropraitely, but i am sure you get the idea. I did have a really fun time out though. I stayed with a friend in the city, so i could stay out later and didn´t have to schlep myself back out to the middle of no where, which is my home. All in all well worth is, and quite an experience :-)

Also, last weekend I saw the Pursuit of Happyness which was amazing. I took my au pair friends from Stuttgart and we all loved it. It is a great story of determination, struggle and love, that is totally worth your $10 at home, haha. Aside from the story, I loved that it took place in SF. I had no idea that´s where it was going to be, so it was a great surprise to 'watch' home for an hour and a half. I was able to tell my friends that I lived right on the other side of the bridge, when the last scene is shot from SF looking past the Bay Bridge. So great!

SNOW

I had a nice little treat last weekend – a visit from my dad. It’s so funny how he hasn’t traveled for business in ages, let alone to Europe, and now he’s come to Germany twice in the past five months while I have been here. I have been truly grateful to have had him here during my transition periods, there is no one like your parents to make everything ok again. His meeting was near Munich, and since we had already been in Stuttgart together, we decided to spend the weekend together in Munich. We spent the days touring around the city, seeing some things that we had both seen before and some new sights as well, and washing it all down with a couple good ol’ German beers. All in all a great weekend, now if I can just get my mom and sister out here… While my dad was here there was a terrible wind storm, but luckily things were worst on Thursday and Friday and were more bareable over the weekend. He left on Monday while things remained calm, which was good for him because Tuesday (which also happened to me my official 5 months of being here) it started to snow! I officially can say that I live somewhere where it snows. I went to my language class in the morning, came home for lunch, and by the time I went to get the kids from kindy at 2pm it was snowing. It continued to go through the night and next day, and didn’t stop until Wednesday night. Sabine stayed home from work on Wednesday and took Ines to ballet, so I stayed at the house with Tim. We went sledding a bit and played in the snow, all the while I was kept dry and warm by dressing like a The North Face spokes model, haha. It was a fun day, but I don’t know how long my tolerance for it (or late buses) will last. But it sure is amazing what 24 hours of snow will do!

America the Beautiful

So I hate to admit this, but after spending time away from home, it is easy to develop a negative view of the U.S. Mostly in the sense that if you have spent anytime in a foreign country it is easy to see how others view the United States because, as sad as it is, there is some validity to it; America is viewed as ignorant, over consuming, violent, lazy, unnecessary in starting the war in Iraq… Granted these are gross generalizations, and while you readers as my friends and most of the other people we know don’t really fit this bill, but face it we do kind of, there are many others out there who do fulfill this image.

But recently, I have had a change of heart. Aside from the negative imaging of the U.S., we have a great diversity that you can´t really find anywhere else. All these thoughts started running through my head when I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my family over here. I tried to explain that that is really the only one holiday in the U.S. where basically all the foods are the same, being that there are tons to twists and variations to some core things: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry… I then followed this up with the fact that at Christmas everyone does something different. I couldn’t really explain it at the time other than that there were no ‘rules’ for Christmas food. Then I came home for Christmas and was watching the Food Network (shocking I know, haha) special on an Italian Christmas, and it struck me that the difference at Christmas time is culture. There are so many different people celebrating it the way their families did back in a country of origin, that there is no way to generalize the foods at Christmas. Thanksgiving being a strictly American holiday doesn’t have any other cultures to draw from for the menu.

So this whole idea I was having about culture in America was reinforced when I was reading my Lonely Planet ‘Germany’ book the other day. I had finished the history and moved on to the culture chapter, and began to realize that all the things I was reading were true. It’s one thing to read these details before you come, when you have no idea how things really are; but to have lived here for a bit and then go back to it, it is astonishing how they have summed up one culture in these pages, and it is pretty much what everyone here does. They eat the same things for breakfast, they all have hot lunches and cold dinners, people are very punctual, they religiously recycle and separate their trash, they have special shoes to wear in the house (stores actually sell ‘house shoes’ that’s just what they are called), they eat strictly three meals a day which they sit down for and eat formally, they bring their own bags/baskets to the grocery store, the list goes on. It wasn’t just reading the book that made me realize these German customs, but also going to other people’s houses and seeing that their families do the same things as mine were quite shocking. I feel like in the states we are blessed with variety and that you could walk into anybody’s home and there is a very strong chance that they will do things differently than how you do them. These strict German rituals have made it hard for me to do things as I like them, which is a bit challenging. The kids question why I ate a salad for lunch and not dinner, the dad tells me that I need to put the small cake forks out to eat cake with, they told me I can’t just throw away or recycle the coke bottle, I have to take it back for the pfand (deposit for the bottle)…

All in all it is a very enlightening experience being here, not only to learn about German culture, but also to reflect on American culture. I think for the first time I am truly seeing how great America is in the sense that there is so much cultural diversity; there is no one way of doing things. People are open to just about anything, and everyone is welcome. Now maybe I feel most of this applies because I come from good ol’ liberal California, and the S.F. Bay Area at that, but even if you don’t get the warm fuzzy feeling of all cultures living in harmony with one another, there is no denying that we have a great diversity in the U.S., and I think this is a great thing. There is also something to be said for having a strong cultural identity as people do here, but to be open to experiencing many, I feel is much better, and something maybe these countries are lacking. I am sure I am overlooking some things and oversimplifying a bit; I would think there are some general cultural generalizations one can make about America, and there are immigrants in Germany, Italy, France, Spain with their own customs and identities, but there is no doubt that America probably has the greatest diversity of them all.