Old Spice Commercials

I laugh harder with each successive one...!


"Who's laughing now? Heh. ...Me."




The Man Your Man Could Smell Like:




"Hyaaah."




"Just kidding. I'm not a woman."




"I used to be a doctor for pretend."

Happy Birthday, Katie!!!

My youngest sister turns 8 today. I hope you have a great day, Katydid!!!

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

What's the next best thing to drinking wine?

Reading about drinking wine!

More from Eric Asimov, the approachable wine writer:

Mr. Know-It-All

Pork Roast and Riesling

This one praises a Washington wine from Chateau Ste. Michelle! Not the Anti-Chardonnay Anymore

Pinot Noir with an Umlaut

Hey! Someone from overseas has finally noticed a German grape other than the tasty but ubiquitous Riesling. Check out this article from Eric Asimov's drinkin' blog, "The Pour."

I myself was pleasantly startled to discover that the legendary Land of Beer is also swimming in jewel-colored rivers of gorgeous, award-winning, accessibly-priced wine -- none of which anyone outside of central Europe has ever heard of. A lot of them are simply well-known varieties with German names: Spätburgunder = German Pinot Noir, Weißburgunder is Pinot Blanc and Grauburgunder is Pinot Grigio/Pinot Gris, etc. But Dornfelder? St. Laurent? Huxelrebe, Scheurebe? What are these?

Damn delicious, is what they are! Yet Eric nails it, I think, when he points out that "among the barriers to finding Spätburgunder in the United States, I forgot to mention one: It’s so popular in Germany, they drink most of it up." I can corroborate this. German wine producers (excepting those in the Mosel valley, with its long history of selling overseas) aren't interested in the nuisance of exporting -- not when they can sell as much as they want right here in Europe, and get the prices they're asking, without the hassle of tariffs and exchange rates. The wine growers here are small; no one is producing thousands of extra cases to ship overseas. Why risk trying to break into a new market?

I've also heard some people suggest that non-Europeans could be daunted by all the Umlauts and long names. But I dunno, that's never stopped anyone trying to pronounce -- or simply buy -- "Château Beau- Séjour-Bécot Bordeaux Cuvée." And when off-Continentals come here and try the wine, they jump right in. Look at my parents!

I think the main hurdle is simply lack of familiarity and precedent. People go for foreign-looking French bottles because they know about French wine (or at least know that others know it). Yet I have almost never found a German wine in the States -- anywhere! -- beyond the Riesling. Okay, there was once, in a huge warehouse-sized store in Phoenix called Total Wine that bragged a selection of 4,000 wines, where I found a single example: a "Dornfelder," which I put in quotes because this was the wimpiest, palest, syrupiest looking bit of flower-painted confection I had ever seen, hardly 9% alcohol by volume. Help! Slander! Fraud! This froot drink was not Dornfelder -- Dornfelder is a powerful, dark, deeply berry-noted purplish wine that can taste like cinnamon or leather, licorice or toasted vanilla; its body is so mighty that it is one of the few varieties (in my opinion) that really belongs in oak barrels, because it can not only hold its own against the wood (rather than being overwhelmed by it) but also carry it beautifully. Yet this sad little dribble was from somewhere in Germany. I could only surmise that some grower thought he could off his unsellable junk onto an unsuspecting American public. "They eat McDonald's," I could hear him scoffing. "They'll buy this crap." I was outraged for wine drinkers on both sides of the pond! O, the injustice! O, the criminal tragedy of it all!

Wait, there is one more "German wine" that I used to see on the shelf at Trader Joe's. But don't get me started on that cough syrup, which starts with "L" and ends with "iebfraumilch." No one in Germany has ever heard of it, either.

All of which would explain why, outside of central Europe, no one associates Germany with great wine. And which American importer is going to risk stocking his shelves full of Umlauts -- Domina Spätlese, Acolon, Frühburgunder -- when he can just refill the Bordeaux instead? I think this is certainly reasonable business sense.

And maybe it's to some extent a good thing, that Germany's wine villages are a quasi-secret. Maybe in a world of increasing monochromism and the availability of everything, it's nice to preserve a few traditions that you must visit to find. Who knows, would turning the focus to export mean the end of the small grower? In what ways would it change the wonderfully democratic nature of German wine culture? I'm not sure I want to see sprawling industrial vineyards here, like some of those giants in Australia or Sonoma Valley.

One benefit I think would result from increasing recognition of German wine has simply to do with national image. When much of the world thinks of France, they think of style and pleasure. When they think of Germany, they think of coarser (or even downright brutal) cultural artifacts. Thus a little more exposure for Germany's delightful, even refined, aspects would not be such a bad thing, I think.

In any case, I definitely think my Gentle Readers should get their booties over here to sample some deliriously fine cultural artifacts. :)

By the way, what is your experience with German wine overseas? What treasures -- or unpleasant surprises! -- have you discovered?

Männer und Frauen

One other thing that I've kinda had to come to terms with is a seemingly stronger tendency to define and and separate gender expectations. Not that we don't do this in the States, too, but it does seem comparatively overt over here.

Thankfully, I'm not nearly so rabidly sensitive to gender stereotyping as I was even a few years ago; indeed, as a taekwondo-obsessed teenager, God help the person who tried to tell me what girls do and don't do. In fact I feel more comfortable in my skin these days than ever before (a delightful aspect of increasing age). But it's still weird to be shopping for sleeping bags and be directed to the "ladies'" section. Ladies need separate sleeping bags? Why yes, I am enlightened: they are narrower and a bit shorter, and the foot area is better insulated. Okay, I reply, I suppose that makes some sense. Hey, says Bert, how come my feet don't get to be better insulated? Because women tend to have colder feet, explains the salesman.

I know sleeping bags are an odd place to start digging out evidence for gender attitudes. Yet I think this reflects a marked overall tendency to separate Women's Things from Men's Things. Of course in this case, we were also simply observing clever marketing strategy at work: the female versions are indisputably cuter, with flower patterns and cheerful colors. Marketers clearly believe that, if given an option, women will prefer women-specific things. And they're right, someone's buying it. Indeed, I found the cute sleeping bags quite appealing.

So why does this still make me feel somehow uneasy? Maybe I can illustrate it with a much more extreme example: imagine if there were explicitly black-people and white-people sleeping bags. One can argue that this is indeed the case, that marketers certainly aim for specific target groups. But imagine if you walked into a sport shop and the salesclerk suggested that you might like to see the outdoor equipment for blacks. You could justify it with all kinds of physical and social evidence: these deeper jewel colors look nice with darker skin, for example. Here are the sleeping bags for Asians, with elegant bamboo-screen patterns. Wouldn't that just be... weird? I guess I just wonder if it's vaguely dangerous to create artificial segregation where it's not overtly necessary.

Yet no one here seems to share my discomfort. A nice lady once showed me her shiny pink cell phone and proclaimed that it's perfect for Frauen, with its unthreatening technology and a calorie counter when you go walking. I smiled and complimented it. Hey, if you're pleased, you're pleased, right? But then I remembered the radio DJ who scoffed that if a woman could figure out Microsoft's new operating system then anyone could, and his female colleague just chuckling politely instead of picking him up by the throat (which is what I would have attempted to do). Then again, maybe she wasn't sure how she was supposed to react on the radio. In any case, it does seem that although the law certainly insists on surface equality, such men-do-this-and-women-do-this attitudes are apparently more tolerated -- even often accepted -- here.

Of course not all separation is equally irrelevant. There are women's parking spaces, for example, which sit in better-lit areas closer to the door. This is of course a commendable idea, considering the higher chance for women to be targeted by criminal activity in parking garages than men. I'd happily make use of this, and hope that others would, too. But the signs advertising these parking spaces bug me: you see a cartoon female selecting her parking space not according to safety, but based on its being "too dark, too ugly, too dirty... ah, perfect" -- which seems to shift the focus from practicality to pure (and even ridiculous: I mean, too ugly?) perceived female persnicketiness. An important difference. Yet no one I have ever prodded about this finds it weird.

Maybe my Feminist Kevlar is not entirely as stashed away as I thought; or maybe Germans are generally just more comfortable in their assigned male-female roles than some of us twitchy Americans.

Cultural Observations, Round Brazillion

I guess the newness of living abroad still hasn't worn off, if I'm still tickled by -- or at least, still logging -- the quirks and differences. I think that's a good sign. Maybe it means those pinch-myself, oh-boy-I-really-get-to-live-here moments are here to stay!

So bum da da dum, here is the latest roundup of Gee, How Swell It is to Live in Germany...

- I love how much Germans love their country. Not in a political or national sense (that's complicated enough!), but a natural one. The whole land is covered by a well-tended and well-marked network of walking/biking/hiking paths, dotted with cozy huts in which to park and rustle up a warm spicy Glühwein in the winter or sparklingly refreshing Schorle in the summer. And what's more, people use it. It's like Sunday is national Let's Go Outside Day, and everyone dons their gear (sleek and perfectly engineered to the purpose, of course ;) ) and joins each other for fresh air and sunshine. Bert and I have gotten out a couple times in the last week for nice long day-hikes through the snowy Odenwald, and our countrymen were out in droves -- families shrieking with glee on a sledding hill out in the middle of nowhere, jolly hiking clubs sharing their pear schnapps with us at one of the ubiquitous natural Points of Interest... to be sure, we Americans like our national parks, too, but there's a wildness and inaccessibility to them that I think can somewhat prohibit a spontaneous Sunday stroll through Yellowstone. The compacter forests of Western Europe seem somehow more manageable (and significantly freer of bears).

- This has become so second-nature to me that it feels odd to comment on it until I remember that we don't do this in America: that is, when you walk into a room for a meeting, you shake hands with everyone there. Every time. Even if you've been meeting for years. In my job, which consists almost solely of small meetings, I must shake over a dozen hands a day. It's somehow nice: I like making that physical and eye contact with each person you're about to work with (although it also means I've become a hand-washing freak! Back, ye colds and virii!). I need to remember to instruct my students that, in the States, this is only done when you are first introduced.

- The Pfalz has a noticeably French touch, which is not surprising, since this area has belonged alternately to both countries over the years. So although there's a lot of hand-shaking at work, you greet friends and friendlike colleagues with cheek-kissing. Left then right: squeek-swak. I find this pleasingly Continental and elegant (although am still American enough to let the other person initiate it).

- Frenchisms also abound in the dialect -- I even hear people exclaim "Mon Dieu!"

- I also like the Pfälzisch dialect itself. To be honest, I haven't always; in the beginning, it made me feel frustrated and excluded. Now, I still can't use it (although Pfälzer laugh when they hear me go "Ajoh" or "alla hopp") but I find it adorable. I love buying "näier Woi" in the autumn and hearing BASF employees say they start work at "sivve." (For you linguaphiles, here's an interesting overview of de Pälzsch.)

- Speaking of dialects, people have started asking me where I come from in the East! I guess that's what I get for living with a Saxon...

- Germans have often complained to me that their countrymen complain too much. It took a long time for me to gather enough input to verify this, but I think now I can agree that yes, they do. Not everyone does, and not all the time, but enough to make me notice and laugh. I mean, if Being Outdoors is the national pastime, Griping must come in a close second. You have a comprehensive national health care program, but have to pay -- gasp! -- ten whole Euros at each doctor's visit? Mon Dieu! The Deutsche Bahn will take you anywhere for even cheaper and faster and more comfortable than it is to drive by car, but it's five minutes late today? Ach, du lieber Himmel! I'm not sure where this comes from, this insistence on being (or at least appearing) easily unsatisfied. I wonder if it has to do with a cultural tendency to demand perfection and Ordnung, and displaying outrage at the slightest infraction would prove your own commitment to excellence. I dunno. Any other ideas?

Anyway, speaking of Germans, there is a lovely sleepy one waiting to have his breakfast with me. Time for some coffee!

Winter

******************

The dark came down on All Hallows' Eve. We went to sleep to the sound of howling wind and pelting rain, and woke on the Feast of All Saints to whiteness and large soft flakes falling down and down in absolute silence. There is no more perfect stillness than the solitude in the heart of a snowstorm.

This is the thin time, when the beloved dead draw near. The world turns inward, and the chilling air grows thick with dreams and mystery. The sky goes from a sharp clear cold, where a million stars burn bright and close, to the grey-pink cloud that enfolds the earth with the promise of snow.

I took one of Bree's matches from its box and lit it, thrilling to the tiny leap of instant flame, and bent to put it to the kindling. Snow was falling, and winter had come; the season of fire. Candles and hearth fire, that lovely, leaping paradox, that destruction contained but never tamed, held at a safe distance to warm and enchant, but always, still, with that small sense of danger.

The smell of roasting pumpkins was thick and sweet in the air. Having ruled the night with fire, the jack-o'-lanterns went now to a more peaceful fate as pies and compost, to join the gentle rest of the earth before renewal. I had turned the earth in my garden the day before, planting the winter seeds to sleep and swell, to dream their buried birth.

Now is the time when we reenter the womb of the world, dreaming the dreams of snow and silence. Waking to the shock of frozen lakes under waning moonlight and the cold sun burning low and blue in the branches of the ice-cased trees, returning from our brief and necessary labors to food and story, to the warmth of firelight in the dark.

Around a fire, in the dark, all truths can be told, and heard, in safety.

I pulled on my woolen stockings, thick petticoats, my warmest shawl, and went down to poke up the kitchen fire. I stood watching wisps of steam rise from the fragrant cauldron, and felt myself turn inward. The world could go away, and we would heal.

******************

From: A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Diana Gabaldon

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHLOE!

It's a year of great birthdays. Today, Chloe turns 10!!!

Alles alles Gute zum Geburtstag. Love you! And miss you all!!

(Here is another celebratory dance...)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL!

My brother turned 30 yesterday!!!

Now he can drink and vote and rent a car.

Congratulations, Bro, and I hope you had a fantastic day. Love you!

(Here is a little celebratory dance...)

Pirate Google!

Arrr, but we be feelin' lucky!

Speaking of blogs...

I think I'm going to clean up the link list on the right, and remove the links to blogs that haven't been updated in a year or more. It's just too sad to keep clicking and hoping -- in vain, in vain!

Home cookin'

Check out our new family recipe blog, Scrambled Eggers! Thanks to Shauna for the lovely surprise (and the cute name, haha!). It's like hanging out with everyone in the kitchen.

Miss you guys!

Happy Wall Fall Day, everyone!

Twenty years ago today, determined masses of citizens took to the streets to declare that they'd had enough of the Berlin Wall.

Aside from the fact that the thing desperately needed tearing down and the GDR badly needed to let its people go -- without this day, I wouldn't have found a Berti. (Or his lovely family. Or many of my lovely friends.)

My heartfelt thanks to all you brave folks!

Nicht in Ordnung

So I bought some flowers today, and waited in line while the folks ahead of me had their plants elaborately wrapped in cellophane, tied closed with floofy bunches of ribbon, and held together with various stickers.

When it was my turn, I gave the lady exact change for the bouquet and tried to leave. "Wait," she said, reaching for my flowers. Thinking there must have been a bar code on the sleeve or something, I handed them over. But she didn't scan them; she started to roll them up in paper. "Oh, it's okay," I said quickly, trying to take the flowers back. "I don't need them all wrapped up."

She stopped dead and stared at me as if I had just addressed her in Spanish. After a moment's perplexed, slightly miffed staring, she demanded, "Why not?"

Huh? What did she mean, why not? "Because I'm just going to take them home and put them in a vase," I replied, attempting to sound reasonable, rather than surprised and annoyed. "I don't need it gift-wrapped, it'd be a waste of paper."

Her firm, brilliantly-reasoned explanation (as she continued to roll and wrap): "But you must."

Me: "I must? The thing is already in a plastic sleeve, does everything have to be double- and triple-wrapped in this world? We're creating garbage by the ton every day, why must we make even more?"

She didn't respond, she simply added tape to close the top of the huge paper cone that had now enveloped my "fair-trade" flowers (irony, anyone?) and shoved it unceremoniously back at me. I shoved my Euros unceremoniously back at her and left the shop, tearing off the paper as I went.

Okay, so to be fair, she probably wasn't prepared for the question and didn't have the presence of mind to explain to me whatever Official Flower Shop Code dictates that all flowers be smothered in a non-permeable wrapping before leaving the premises. Maybe it's to avoid aggravating other people's allergies or something. But if that's the case, then how come the bouquet I bought was selected from a huge display of plants erupting several square meters over the street in front of the shop? I just can't think why I "must" accept my flowers rolled up in paper and taped closed -- over both sides, mind you, including the top -- before I can leave with them. They already had a plastic sleeve and rubber bands to keep them together and from any potential shedding.

All I can think is that this is one of those employees who is obsessed with "the way things are done" for the sheer sake of "the way things are done." I can understand Ordnung and all that, but when people become automatons instead of thinking, rational creatures, it frustrates me a little.

When I told all this to Bert after he got home, he sighed, exasperated. "You mean like the lady at our post office?"

Haha! Yeah, I guess we know a few of these. :)

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a great time. (We did!)

Graaaaah!

The best part of any Halloween gathering. Doesn't Andreas' pirate ship look cool?? The bat was Na; the aquarium, Katrin; the tree, me; the "boo" face, Anja; the spider, Bert; the classic jack, me

Check out Nadja's pumpkin cake!

My nose had sort of rubbed off by this point... I was supposed to be "Bert's Kater"!

Jobbin in Jermany

Okay, so there are times when my work certainly has its disadvantages. "Selbstständig" is the word for "freelance," which literally means "self-standing." However, "ständig" can also mean "constant(ly)" -- so if you are selbstständig, then you work both selbst and ständig! Ho ho! And true!

But what other job can leave you so completely jazzed? I just had one of those classes today: the kind that turn out constructive, fun, and textbook-perfect. Not only were the material and lesson plan all logically organized and relevant -- wrapping up into a neat conclusion at the end of the hour -- but it was also just the right balance of structure vs. organic flow. Even more importantly, all the students were engaged and learning and enjoying themselves; they practically interrupted each other to be able to apply the vocabulary and express themselves in English, making jokes and really getting into the topic. Afterward, everyone expressed how much they enjoy their English group and how empowering it feels to be able to communicate in a foreign language.

Other times, when I have asked students (during a discussion of workplace culture or something) what they like most about their jobs, they've beamed at me and answered: "English class!"

Add to that the fact that it's not only gratifying for me, it's healthy, too: professionally (boy, have I learned a lot!) but also personally, in that I get to know and like and care about all these lovely people. So many different kinds of people -- everyone from a completely different background, different ages, stages in life, different education, gender, personality, even different countries, and yet all of them equally valuable. It's just a priceless lesson to be able to internalize. Of course we all are told in school, "everyone is special," but reconciling that with our innate, animal-survival tendency to view groups of "others" as "others" unless they belong to our clan is not so easily reprogrammed. To therefore be granted the opportunity to reinforce the truth, every day I work with these unique and utterly special individuals, is a blessing.

And I get paid for this? Jeez, I'd do it for free!

Let's see, where was I?

Right, wine and language and all that!

I think I pretty much covered the wine part, at least up through the fest on Saturday night in Bernkastel-Kues. (They even set off eye-boggling fireworks, from both the riverside and the castle above. Fireworks! Did I mention the coolness of this festival?)

It was the next day that I also got to experience the Best Parade Ever, which earns that title because it's entirely made up of free wine. That is, each of the different wine villages along the Mosel sends their own delegation, in which "wine princesses" wave from grape-covered floats while their minions run around distributing free wine. Everyone goes, "Oh look, here comes Piesport!" and some Dionysius-clad gentleman -- or maybe he's one of the folks in tricorne hat and breeches, or dressed as a Roman centurion, I never did figure out what the various costumes are meant to represent -- pours golden Piesporter Riesling into our outstretched glasses. Then he gets impatient filling all the proffered cups and just leaves us with the bottle, while we call, "Hail, Caesar!" or however you thank a centurion who just granted you your third free bottle of Goldtröpfchen.

Anyway, so all this was fabulous, until a lady standing next to me at the parade heard my non-Mosellaner-accented speech and discovered I was not only a foreigner, but -- gasp! -- an American! Thus, in accordance with proper Miss Manners etiquette to finding out that your conversational partner is from another country, she proceeded to ask me, point-blank, why Americans "all talk so f***ing ugly." That's exactly how she said it: one moment, she was asking me in calm German where I was from and I was answering in German, and the next, she was suddenly shrieking in grotesquely-caricatured English that "Americans talk so f***ing ugly!"

Wha---

How do you respond to such improbable behavior?

In fact, I didn't. I stared at her for a moment, then demonstrably turned on my heel and pushed away through the crowd.

First, a note about the f-word. It wasn't (only) the fact that this lady was cussing at a perfect stranger that appalled me, since I'm aware of how many Germans seem to misunderstand the intensity of the f-word: they see it in movies all the time and think, huh, it must be like Scheisse, which literally means "shit" but is really about as strong as "damn." So if a German ever drops the f-bomb on you, be aware that he possibly doesn't mean it quite as invectively as it sounds. (Although it's still pretty shocking to hear your local morning show hosts use it in clueless imitation of English-speaking political figures -- I just about dropped my toothbrush!)

That said, it still startled me, more so because of this woman's apparent eagerness to demonstrate the intensity of her dislike than because of the word itself. The whole exchange was a bit like being slapped. I know she was probably drunk or crazy or both; but at that moment, I was already a bit sensitive about my outsidership, anyway, what with having met a whole bunch of new people in a new place with a new dialect. Plus, I had just been watching the colorful parade roll by through a golden, sunshiney wine haze, thinking how much I like it here in Germany and how lucky I am to get to be included in all these wonderful traditions. It was like a little demon had suddenly leapt up in the middle of my contented musings to shriek at me: "That's what you think! Intruder! False! She doesn't actually belong here!" And he was right -- these weren't my people, my traditions; it was especially not my language. The woman had been crass and unjustified, but it still hit a nerve. I went and leaned on the bridge, staring gloomily into the water. I felt suddenly disoriented. Was I just kidding myself, really? Is this whole "oh-I-finally-feel-at-home-in-a-foreign-country" game just wishful thinking because I'm growing sick of being rootless?

Which is a ridiculous reaction, because of course the other 99% of the population is so accepting and kind, and would be shocked themselves by this woman's behavior. But sometimes all it takes is just that one jerk, because I am occasionally insecure about being an immigrant. It frustrates me when I can't find the right word, and people stand there looking at me expectantly and I am sure they're exasperated that I've been living in Germany for three years now, and how long do I expect them to keep patiently smiling and going along with my "I'm just the clueless foreigner" schtick? Which of course is not what they're thinking (I hope) but it certainly is what I'm thinking. So it particularly hurts when someone seems to expose me for the fraud I sometimes feel like. Yet I chose this life -- how am I entitled to pity when I chose to come here?

Or maybe all this angsty overreaction is just me being melodramatic, and everyone feels unanchored at some point in their lives. Or it's just the obvious starting point for when you feel like questioning every choice you've ever made. In any case, I felt better as soon as Martin came looking for me and responded to my complaint with a "Pfft! We'll just have to teach you some more dialect."

I'm not quite kidding about the language part, though. I feel more and more like I'm just floating sometimes, suspended between two languages. The fault lies entirely with my job (or so I like to think) in that I teach English: in other words, I spend my whole workday not really immersed in German, but not speaking natural, nuanced English, either. This means that my German has sort of plateaued out at a perfectly competent but certainly not native-speaker-like proficiency, while my English is going stale with the same International Fundamental Vocabulary for Dry Technology and Boring Business. "Context" is a word I get to use a lot. "Vile" or "ignominious" or "titillating," not so much.

So there you have it. I suppose the elusive Home and the impossible Language parts will just have to settle themselves into a sort of limbo-truce someday. In the meantime, thank heavens there are good friends and tasty Wine to help lubricate the process.

Oh, the Onion...

Cat Congress Mired in Sunbeam

Sorry that last post hasn't been finished yet, September's been rather eventful (and by that read: splendid). Stay tuned!

Wine, Language, Home

Or alternately: the Tasty, the Impossible, and the Elusive: Thoughts Invoked by The Best Parade Ever.

It started when I spent last weekend drinking wine with my friend Martin, who comes from Lösnich on the Mosel.

Funny how I wasn't a wine-drinker at all in the States. But maybe that's just it: everyone knows that wine culture in Europe is "different" from wine culture in the States; however, that difference is not simply a matter of quantity. Leaving aside all discussion of American attitudes toward alcohol, buying wine in Arizona was not only expensive, but impenetrable -- bottles crowding each other on the shelf, competing for attention with their cutesy names and dizzying array of various origins. Australia? California? South America? Europe? Africa? Where do you even begin? There seemed to be something more than slightly elitist about all the prerequisite foreknowledge I imagined you had to have to identify whatever was supposed to be "good" (I personally couldn't even taste the difference) and so I just stuck with beer.

I knew lots of Americans liked wine. But suffice to say that, at least in non-wine-growing Arizona, there seemed to be such thick barriers of entry for the newcomer that I just never got into it.

Here, however, wine isn't nearly so inapproachable. It's life. It's a culture, an economy, a heritage, and a series of festivals that crown the "Wine Queen" every year. And yet it's also, paradoxically, not that big a deal. It's loved, but knowable. In the Pfalz, in fact, wine is almost preferred over beer, because wine is local and much beer is not (although living with someone who grew up within walking distance of the Czech border means our household still maintains a goodly supply of beer). Plus it's very unusual to find the giant wine producers here the way you might in California or Australia, because vintners aren't interested in bottling enormous quantities to mass-market abroad. Not to say there isn't competition, of course there is -- with each other, with France. So it is nevertheless some damn fine stuff, and I've had the inestimable luck to find myself standing in a river of it.

Now, I learned to love it in the Pfalz, where they drink it dry, dark, powerful, and by the 1/4-liter glass. (You ever want to stain your teeth blue, sip on a Dornfelder.)

But I knew nothing about the Mosel. I'd driven by the valley a time or two, and been intrigued by that glassy river, winding sleepily like a jigsaw puzzle through the glowing, vineyard-covered hills. It's also the wine-growing area of Germany that happens to be slightly known outside of Germany; so when your Mosellaner friend extends an invitation to show it to you, you take it.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my excellent host for an marvelous and enlightening time, and all his excellent friends for their warm welcome. It was beautiful. And different. The vineyards are different -- so... steep! -- the dialect is different, the wine is different, even the way of drinking it is different. Instead of buying a half-liter Schoppen and passing it around the group, the way they do in the Pfalz, on the Mosel, you buy a whole bottle and then distribute it into everyone's individual, tiny (0.1-liter, or 3.4-ounce) glass. The bottle is finished, the next person buys the new one. In this way, you can annihilate quite a few bottles and still be standing when the last bus goes at 4:00am.

I also made the barbaric mistake of allowing my fingers to touch the bowl of my glass, and was immediately corrected: "Hier," I was assured, with a demonstration, "trinken wir mit Stiel." (A nice little pun on Stiel, the glass-stem, and Stil: class, style.)

In addition, the wine is very sweet. Not syrupy and cloying -- in fact it was delicious -- but certainly not the dry reds that I'm used to at home.

Not to mention that it seems like all of Martin's friends are vintners. Or at least in a family of vintners. One moment, we'd be standing around sharing a bottle, and another, one of our group would appear behind the counter of the stand we'd been patronizing, wrapping an apron around his waist and opening another bottle for other customers.

All of this culminated in the completely normal sight of a bunch of young men standing around, being manly and talking man-things, while holding their tiny glasses of sweet white wine carefully by the stem and interrupting each other once in a while to swirl it, sniff, and ask, "Say, do you think this one's too acidic?"

It was awesome.

But this brings me to another, somewhat less awesome (I'll explain in a minute) feature of the wine festival, which was the quantity of American soldiers who suddenly appeared: quickly recognizable by their military haircuts, baggy American clothes, and loud honking voices.

Again, let me explain. I grew up a military brat in Germany, to parents who loved the country in which they found themselves and took every opportunity to explore and learn and discover. So when Martin told me to expect to see a lot of people from the bases, I rather looked forward to meeting and talking to some countrymen and expected I'd be able to relate. Besides, I've been here long enough to discover that plenty of American servicemen are not like my parents were, and so am proud of anyone who decides to brave what could be a scarily foreign country to get out to mingle with the folks and experience some local culture.

But once I saw -- or rather, first heard -- them, I was startled to discover I didn't want to approach them at all. Why not? There they were, being American and talking American; and instead of walking up to them, I wanted to run and hide. What was wrong with me??

Well, one factor was probably just shock, in that we'd been floating in a sea of soft, rolling German, and suddenly these noisy haircuts come swaggering in, projecting their nasal vowels across the crowd as if they were on a college campus, and it was... okay, it was embarrassing.

Another factor was probably just age: their average couldn't have topped 20 or 21, and they were simply acting like it. Poor guys, they were just being the kids that they were. But they were still a far cry from the Air Force officers I'd been picturing. They were... well, have soldiers always looked so sketchy? And the girlfriends so, well, trashy? What was with the g-strings sticking out the backs of their jeans?

Although I'm always very slightly aware of my outsidership here, most of the time, it's easy to ignore as I get settled into my adopted home. After all, it's the one I've got, now (I hardly even know anyone in Arizona anymore!), and it's been a constant process of effort and development to get used to the Immigrant Experience.

And yet now it was like, Martin had shown me where he was from, his culture and people and place; and then supposedly representing my side, a group of MTV caricatures bursts in to demonstrate where I'm supposed to be from.

Maybe that's why I relate so much to my friend Linda. She's Canadian, and has lived in Neustadt since 2005. For a long time, she was ambivalent about staying; but now she's marrying Clemens, her adorable Pfälzer, and has really landed firmly on the side of remaining an immigrant. Even Chrissie from Chicago, who knows she'll be leaving at the end of her third year (next summer, boo hoo!) tries as much as she can to engage with the culture and learn the language. So maybe the reason I can't make friends with the Americans I occasionally run into from the military bases are that they aren't of this little dual-natured world. While many (my parents included) seized the opportunity to live abroad and wore it out, for far too many others, there is this very clear separation of Us and Them that I don't -- can't -- identify with.

Wow, I didn't realize how long this post was going to get! It's time to go to bed, I'll try to get to the rest of it tomorrow... nighty night!

Happy Birthday Stiiiiiiiiiiv!

One of my favorite people, my gorgeous motivated adventurous hilarious girlfriend's-honor-defending brother-in-law, turns 30 today! A great date to do so, too, 09/09/09.

Berti is there to celebrate with him in Seattle. I wish I were, too!

Love you, Stevie!

Prost!