17 Sep 2006

Sep 17, 2006

We’ve been in Hannover now for over a week, long enough to have several of the pieces of advice about Germany and Germans—given to us by Maitry, our short-term German teacher back in Atlanta—confirmed or denied. While she spent most of MY lesson time teaching me about how to say the German words for different fruits, vegetables and meats (while also managing to encourage me to jump on the raw-food bandwagon when preparing food for Leo), she let Fernando in on more of the Ways of The Germans. The weather, Maitry said, was an obsession with the German. Sure, everyone, everywhere, talks about the weather-- as an icebreaker or when planning what to wear or where to go, but apparently the Germans talk about it more than others and tend to worry about it, too, always expecting the worst. Well, the weather has been pretty amazing so far. After a couple of chilly days that were kind of a shock coming from Hotlanta in early September, it got about ten degrees warmer and the sun has been shining consistently with a high probably in the high seventies. Fernando’s new colleagues warned him that the weather would turn bad on Wednesday. When Wednesday passed with nary a cloud, he was told to consider an umbrella for Thursday’s showers. Thursday was even more beautiful, and so then Fernando learned that in reality, the bad weather had happened in Holland. So, Maitry was right about the weather obsession.

While this beautiful streak of German Indian summer might be anxiety provoking for the natives, it has been wonderful for us and has really shaped how we have spent our first nine days or so. Basically, my role has been to facilitate Leo’s life without toys. We are still waiting for our ship, well, plane, to come in, with the air shipment that was supposed to take less than a week to arrive. In that shipment are all of Leo’s toys, his jogger stroller, his high chairs, and a couple of odds and ends in the remaining space for Mom and Dad, like deodorant, books to help orient us in this country we decided to move to, and pants. But entertaining Leo has been easy because of the above described weather. Each day we go out twice, once before nap and once after nap, and go to a play ground, to a meadow that’s just a ten minute walk from the house heading away from the city, or in the backyard, where there’s some grass and a patio adorned with a table and chairs and several potted plants that Leo is slowly thinning by touching them with too much enthusiasm, even though his Dad has taught him about soft touches. Needless to say, Leo needs to be reminded. We also went to the zoo, which is supposedly the biggest or best in Europe (not sure exactly what the sign said).

http://www.zoo-hannover.de/zoo-hannover/en/zoo_v3/home.php

On the weekends, more sunny weather activities have been the rule. While we really just slept a lot and scurried around looking for provisions last Saturday (since everything, I mean everything, in Hannover closes on Saturday afternoons and doesn’t open up again until Monday morning), the first Sunday we went to the Machsee Lake, which is an artificial lake built by Hitler’s people back in his hey day. There were crew races with mostly adolescents, and tons and tons of families walking around and eating ice cream. Most shocking to me were the enormous carps that would swim by the shore of the lake, looking for handouts. Those carps were big enough to capsize one of the shells, but that didn’t happen. The lake was also momentous for another reason. One moment it was just a pretty fake lake for all the Hannoverian families to stand in line for ice cream and people watch. The next minute it was the historic site of Leo Venegas’ first REAL temper tantrum. Like the kind that will not be deterred by anything a parent does. There were steps going down to the water and Leo insisted on going down, down, down, and into that dirty water. We didn’t want him to get wet feet or some disease, yet he wanted to keep going down, down, down into said sludge. You see the conflict. We cleared out of there without saying good bye to the carp.

Luckily, we saw more fish the following Sunday, today, fish perhaps related to the big greasy carp at the public lake, but much more streamlined and elegant, swimming around in one of the pools decorating the several gardens of Herrenhausen Garden. It’s a beautiful garden in the middle of the city built by Princess Sophie in the 1600’s ? (This is all speculative because our books about Germany haven’t arrived yet). In any case, it’s one of those Versailles Frenchy-type places, with beautiful flowers, immaculate lawns, and even palm trees of all sorts and a maze of shrubbery that Leo got a real kick out of. It was THE place for the German grand parents (Opa and Oma to the locals) to take their well behaved 15 month old babies. We saw lots of Leo’s contemporaries strapped into their buggies, lying pretty much flat on their backs, while Leo ran around and touched everything in his reach, with a special fondness for the pebbles covering the walkways, the water, the fish, and some young sleeping German girls. Leo talked with several groups of garden visitors, and they all seemed to find his chatter interesting, but then I started to worry that maybe they thought he was a savage, running around at top speed. But he was having so much fun. We were too, but a little edgy that he might jump in the water or trample an exotic shrub.

http://www.hannover.de/herrenhausen/index.html

Maitry was wrong about one thing. She had warned Fernando that children are not made to feel as welcome in Germany. Not just because the country had a negative birth rate, but because, according to her, in apartment buildings older tenants will often complain about having to live close to families with young children, and children are supposedly not welcome in restaurants. Well, we haven’t actually taken Leo to a restaurant yet, but on the train alone it’s been a love-fest. I’ve lost track of how many flirtations he has had while sitting in his stroller or on my lap on the train with strangers… how many ladies he has had waving contests with, how many business men have waved goodbye to him as they get off at their stop, how many smiles he has exchanged with hoodlums leaning over their bikes, how many arms he has rubbed and not been slapped… I’m exaggerating, but the general sense is that Germans like kids. What a relief! It may be true that they expect them to follow a certain code of behavior (like, no trampling the baroque garden) that’s eluding us at the moment, but at least they smile in Leo’s general direction. And when someone smiles at your kid, it’s like their smiling at you, and that has been very welcome. Having Leo with us as newcomers has been a huge help in making us feel OK. We just really need to sit back, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble, and wait while he charms people for us… Well, it’s not that easy, but he is an icebreaker.

But, we can’t rely on Leo. Soon he’ll be going away to college. We both need to learn German, and fast! That’s the plan for the next few days, get some lessons set up. It will be nice for me to have a little human, adult contact, and learn how to communicate with everyone around me, and nice for Fernando (though when I hear him talking to people in the stores I could swear he already understands and speaks this language). We need to learn our own ice breakers soon.

Julia