Family Matter

This week the husband installed the new card for the satellite receiver, to enable us to continue receiving the subscription channels with the English-language programming. Of course, in an effort to hook us on more expensive services, the company gave us 2 weeks of all their programming, free.

S. was exploring the new offerings and the packages available - just as American cable companies bundle certain channels together. One caught his attention - the 'family package'.

Now, in the U.S., a family package usually refers to programming which is suitable and attractive to the whole family - a mix of movies, kid's programming, and sports, usually. In Germany, however, or at least for this particular company, 'family' apparently means that there are channels for everyone in the family, even that creepy uncle around whom no one is really comfortable. For part of this package is the 'Beate-Uhse' channel, inspired by a famous chain of sex-toy shops.

Yes, the family package includes a porn channel.

Of course, the broadcasts don't begin until after the small kids are in bed, and therr is apparently a 4-digit security code you can invoke, so it's obviously meant just for the adults. Maybe it's just considered a part of a normal adult lifestyle here.

Or maybe it's all part of an effort to increase the birth rate in this country - as this 'Germany Needs More Babies' commercial seems to suggest.




Ok, there will be a comment accusing me of watching the porn channel. I wasn't impressed. It involved a chimney sweep and his encounters with the ladies on his route. Lots of bad jokes about how he was a 'bringer of good luck', nudge-nudge, wink-wink, and a lot of shots of him, literally, cleaning chimneys. Maybe the hard core stuff is on after 10 pm.

Environment Zones

The new trend among local municipalities is to institute "Environment Zones".

You have to understand that here in Moers we live just about adjacent to the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. Along the Rhine are large cities like Düsseldorf and Kologne; alone the Ruhr is the famous (in Europe) Ruhr Region, Germany's own Rust Belt. As a result, our state, North-Rhein Westphalia, has not only the largest and most dense population in Germany, but also some of the worst traffic in Europe.

Diesel cars are far more popular here in Germany than in the U.S. Diesels, however, put out a lot more particulates, than gasoline powered autos. (I have read that particulate output is actually more closely controlled in the U.S. than in Germany; the required filter to take care of the fine particulates is one reason diesel cars are more expensive in America).

So now cities are delineating areas into which only the cleanest cars can go. Luckily both our cars earned a green 4; my in-laws, with a diesel red 2, can no longer drive into the downtowns of several cities in the area. To do so (and to be caught) would mean a fine as well as points on the license.

I find this trend interesting because it's one of the few areas I've noticed where local levels of government are moving to regulate something like this. Usually, it seems to me, most of these directives come from the federal level.

I suffer, you suffer

This is what was in front of my house the other day. Yes, I did get out a ruler and measure it for all of you; no one believed me when I said they were 4 inches long. Enjoy.



The blue-green pellets are the "slug corn" I put out to kill the beast. It ignored them disdainfully. So I eventually had to get a stick from the woodpile and flick it (they scrunch up rather painfully appearing when they are poked) several times until I could push it down the hole in the manhole cover in front of the neighbors' house. I couldn't let it just go about ravaging the neighborhood, could I?

Then the (brave?) slug slayer celebrated with a cup of coffee, extra cream. Livin' large!

German woes

I'm taking an intermediate German class. After we were a third through the first term, our first teacher disappeared to a full-time job, and our new teacher came. Let me describe her: she is about 6 feet tall, size 6, obviously a runner, and sweet as a summer's day. She is also made of steel and carries an invisible whip made of smiles. You can't decide if you should fear her or take her out for coffee.

I come home from this evening completely exhausted. The exhaustion comes from having had some concepts of grammar I've had in my head for 30 years completely turned on its side, taking my head with it.

Turns out that what I've always fondly called an adjective in English isn't always in German - sometimes it's an adverb. And it wasn't even the subject of the exercise, this dismantling of my understanding; the point was a review of German declinations. Take this example:

The beautiful woman (die schöne Frau)
The woman is beautiful (Die Frau ist schön).

Now, we always learned in school that in sentences where the verb is essentially, "to be", the verb is essentially an equals sign and there's no real predicate - what comes after the verb is equivalent to the subject. And you can't really modify "is" in English. We also learned that anything that describes a noun is an adjective. So in English, both "beautifuls" are adjectives. Turns out that "beautiful" in the second sentence is, in German, an adverb. I'm told this should be clear to be because it's not declined (the "e" missing from "schön" in the second example). But I'm really still trying to get my mind around the concept that, in German, you can modify "to be".

This is made the more earth-moving to me by the fact that I took my first German course in 1991, and you'd think that maybe, just maybe, I'd have gotten this concept down 17 years ago.

I am not well tonight. Wait, I just modified "to be", didn't I? Now I'm really not well.

On top of that she inflicted upon us a particular kind of German academic torture called a "diktat". Not like Dictator, but like dictation. The teacher reads a text, perhaps slowly (yes, this time), perhaps repeating phrases (no, this time), which the students have to write out. German kids start this in first grade; it's actually a subject appearing on their report cards. Being the person I am, I had to ask, WHY? Supposedly, she explained (indirect speech is one place German has English beaten), it trains the children (and childlike foreigners) to write things down automatically, without stopping to agonize over punctuation and spelling.

We wrote the short paragraph and self graded this mini exam (my 10 errors put me far from the leaders in the class, but I suspect some fellow students of undercounting). She announced that she was giving this to us because, when she asked if we had understood every word in the text, everyone nodded immediately. Once again, being the person I am, I had to point out that I had understood the paragraph and all the words in it; my problem is simply atrocious spelling and lack of any sense of German punctuation rules. So sadly, I learned something, but not apparently what my teacher was trying to show me.

Why here and not there?

I've been wondering why, given my last post, in Germany we have a female Chancellor (Bundeskanzlerin) - Angela Merkel - and it wasn't that big a deal (although a historic first) while it's a gut wrenching ordeal with allegations of sexism and female inadequacy in the U.S.

I think a big part of it is that she comes from the East, which had, during the communist era, more of a tradition of working mothers. But I think perhaps a bigger factor comes from the way the German system elects its politicians.

When Germans go to the polls, they vote for an individual (who has a party affiliation) to represent their district, just like in the U.S. However, at the end of the day, officials determine not only the winner of each individual race, but also the overall proportion of votes cast for each party in the election. Each party (as represented by the candidates) that receives at least 5% of the vote, receives seats in the assembly so that the overall proportion of the seated reps is brought into line with the vote. If a party has more elected representatives than would be indicated by the overall vote proportions, those representatives are still seated (the "overhang"). If fewer representatives are directly elected than the proportional vote calls for, the parties appoint representatives from a previously publicized list. The executives, such as Merkel, are usually then elected by the assemblies (although in the national elections, the parties usually publicize who they'll put forward for the executive spot if they win).

So, coupled with the fact that the parties put forth directly elected candidates, plus their opportunity later to fine-tune the representation, means that the parties, if it's a goal of theirs, can further the role of women in their party. Now, when I look at lists of Moers representatives, I see some women in there who list their profession as "Hausfrau". So I believe the parties are working to bring some parity to the representation.

Well, now, once you have the women in the pipeline, it's inevitable that one will eventually rise to the top.

Contrast that with the U.S. system - because every representative is directly elected by the populace, each race is again a struggle to overcome whatever societal prejudices exist - whether gender, race, religion, orientation, or one I haven't heard of yet. Yes, direct representation is a near-holy tenant of the American system, but here you can see how it can actually hinder the promotion of underrepresented groups. Of course, this process in Germany means that the parties have a lot more control over who actually gets seated - which could be a disadvantage.

What do you think?

-the d.h.

Raven Mothers

Interesting article today in the NY Times about the German working woman's dilemma - whether a mother or not. It confirms earlier posts of my own debunking the widely held belief among American women that German women are better off, family-balance-wise. A SciAm article I read recently found a statistical link between the level of support for working mothers in Europe and the country's overall fertility rate.

Wage Gaps for Women Frustrating Germany

One hears occasionally of private daycares opening up, but folks and the government don't seem quite to know what to make of that trend yet...

But it's one example of official government policies (maternity leave, equal rights, prohibiting the question about being pregnant) being ahead of societal (and business) norms. I've heard numerous comments from German friends that confirm a lot of the trends mentioned here, and I personally know just one mother working full time - even the occasional single mother seems only to work part time. And that one mother has told me a) she couldn't do it without the extensive support of her own parents, b) her in-laws only accept her working because her husband is partially disabled, and c) she chose not to have more than 1 child so she could continue working...

Granted, we live in a relatively well-off area; but that just means that most women here, if they absolutely don't have to, don't make the effort. Because they don't want to, or feel they can't ? - that's the question.

A bit of history

Life in Germany was hellish immediately after the war, improving to merely miserable in the following few years.

A friend of my dad's asked for some help with some old German documents she had from her own parents. One of the documents was an old postcard sent to her father in Boston from post-war Germany. With the aid of my mother-in-law, who had to learn the now-archaic script in school, I present the translation. Thought you might be interested.

The postcard comes from the Rheinish-Prussian British Zone, and is stamped as having gone through the military censor for civilian mail.

Honored Herr Cöhnen!
I received your card some time ago, must unfortunately share, that Father didn't survive the war's end, he died already in June 1940, and Mother in March 1945. A brother the youngest fell, my sister-in-law is living in (her) parents' house. 2 brothers-in-law are still in Russian prisions. I myself was released in August as malnourished. I can tell you, Herr Cönen, that was a war. Is good that Vater didn't experience all that, what there is today, such has Germany never experienced. You must see our city and the misery/squalor. When you want to know more about our hometown village I am happily ready with information. In closing once again greetings to your wife and children from beautiful Wanlo.


The original German... is full of misspellings, reproduced here (I didn't include them in the English). Or maybe it was dialect at the time, but he does spell Coenen several different way. He must have been a neighbor; the families obviously knew each other well, but not well enough to use first names (i.e. not intimate friends)

Wehrter Herr Cöhnen!
Habe vor einige Zeit ihre Karte erhalten, muß ihnen leider mitteilen, das Vater das Kriegsende nicht erlebt hat, er is schon im Juni 1940 gestorben, und Mutter im März 1945. Ein Bruder der jüngsten ist gefallen, meine Schwegerin wohnt im Elterlichen Haus. 2 Schwäger sind noch in russicher Gefangschaft. Ich selbst bin im August als Unteränert entlassen worden. Ich kann Ihnen sagen, Herr Cönen das war ein Kreig. Ist gut daß Vater das nicht alles miterlebt hat, und was ist heute, so was hat Deutschland noch nicht mitgemacht. Ihr müßt nur unsere Städt mal sehen und das Elend. Wenn Sie noch mal näheres über Ihr Heimat Dörfchen erfahren wollen, bin ich gerne für Auskunft bereit. Zum Schluß nochmals herzliche Grüße an Ihre Frau und Kinder aus dem schönen Wanlo.
Grüß,
Herr Göbels
(Aus Wieksrath - Niers)

Not the only clueless one

Every so often, amidst the general clueless feeling you get living in a foreign culture, you see someone else slogging through the same morass of novelty and confusion*, and you think "Ok, so I'm not a complete idiot".

Last year, on P.'s first day, I intrepidly led my kids and in-laws through the village to the "Protestant church behind the school" as it was described to me. Now, in all your German classes, you learn that there's a Catholic church, a Protestant church, and the Islamic church representing German culture. It's usually impressed on Americans that there's just one Protestant church, instead of the innumerable variety we have in the states. Imagine my surprise to discover the church deserted. A bit of reconnaissance led to the discovery that they meant a Protestant church 1/4 mile down the street. We hot-footed it over and made it in before the first blessing. All the Germans seemed surprised at my mistake - they had said, after all, the Protestant church, not the FREE Protestant church. When I asked how a foreigner would know that "Free" wasn't just some name like "Sacred Heart", they admitted it would be confusing.

Last week, helping to set up the coffee and cake for the new parents attending the 1st graders' welcoming ceremony, a family, from appearance, dress and accent probably African, approached the principal to ask where the chapel ceremony was being held. Apparently they'd made the same mistake I had. I sidled over and assured them I'd make the same mistake. The principal, showing her lack of understanding, looked at me like she couldn't understand anyone else making such a boneheaded mistake.

Amazing how sometimes I can feel more solidarity with people from a half a world away than with the Germans I've lived with for years, just because we're both outsiders, in that moment, together.

- the d.h.


* Look what happens when I try to get literary - it gets messy.

Back to school, Part II

Hello again, dear Reader (and I do realize there is just one of you... Hello, Aunt Anne).

Fall must really be here, despite what the calendar says. It's dark now by 9 pm! Oh, the joys of living so far north...

P. has adjusted to being back in school relatively smoothly. He does have more periods this week - a total of 21 45-minute periods a week, with as many as 3 help periods. The 3 help periods are for Math, German, and Reading & Writing. I don't yet know how those last two differ; we're to learn at a parents' evening next week. P's presence has been requested in German help this week.

Do I like the primary school system here better than in the US? Hard to say; there are pros and cons. As said before, the practice of keeping the same teacher for 4 years can be either a pro or a con. At least the teacher knows the children very well when, at the end of primary school, they make the potentially life-altering decision of which school the children are suited for - Gymnasium (roughly equivalent to a U.S. high school); Realschule (a high school with the goal of getting the students out into apprenticeships) and Hauptschule (very basic schooling; ends at 10th grade).

Ok, so I'm not really thrilled at the idea of a fate determining decision for my kids at the age of 10. But we'll work with it when the time comes.

I also have a hard time with the variable length of the school day. It should be pointed out though, that all the Germans I know find this completely normal, so it just might be me. On some days, school starts at 8:10; others, 8:55, and lasts from 3 - 5 periods for P. If it weren't for the after-school program, which I use partly to smooth out the days, I'd be in trouble (I admit it - I might forget my child one day because I mixed up days!). There also seems to be a lot of changes in schedule - adding a period here, subtracting there, based largely, it seems, on the availability of teachers and funding. I may have that wrong however; there might be deep and profound reasons P.'s schedule changed 6 times last year.

However, I really like the fact that they have started off putting these extra help periods into the school day from the start, and that there seems to be no stigma among the kids that anyone is in one of these sessions. The teacher changes that part of the schedule often - a child might be in Math Help for 3 weeks, overlapping 2 with Reading/Writing, etc.

I also have to give kudos to the after-school program. Really, it starts before school, as they are there from 7:30 for any kids who have later class-start. Then it goes to 4 pm, which really is a bit short for full-time working parents, but it's a start. In between they have homework help, games and crafts with their "teachers" (in quotes only because the Germans don't call them teachers; the term they use, Erzieher/in*, is more like "educator"). Soon they will be offering special interest programs in the afternoon - from exploring the woods to puppet theater to kid yoga - they are constantly on the lookout for new ideas and leaders. At some point I'd like to work with the older kids on English, maybe starting them on Dr. Suess or something like that.

Meanwhile, A. has enthusiastically reentered Kindergarten (a combination of Kindergarden and Preschool in the US). After some real program problems last year, it would seem that the Kindergarten is getting its act together. I, however, never satisfied, am picking a fight with them about how they are structuring the lunch program. More on that later.

the d.h.


* Off subject, but: German professions almost always have a masculine/feminine form - like teacher / teacheress.

Back to School

Back after a vacation....

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Peter is entering 2nd grade. He's not so sure he's looking forward to it yet, so we'll see what he says Monday afternoon.

Now, I know all you parents in the U.S. have noticed how different primary school is these days, with all the new standards and testing the methodologies. Here the whole kit and caboodle is different - with pro's and con's.

Peter will have the same teacher as last year. Frau P. will remain his teacher until the end of fourth grade. We're very lucky - she's a wonderful teacher so far. But the downside of this system is obvious - what if you get a lousy teacher?

I feel like there is a lack of a new beginning with this system - remember the feeling of the first day of school? To Peter this seems like it's just a return to routine - although, because of school renovations, they are getting a new classroom.

Tuesday the first graders will come for their first day, and all the older classes will be there to welcome them - literally greeting the kids and their families as they approach the school after the ecumenical service at the church near the school (NOT the 'Free Protestant church, but that's another story). The little kids, carrying their 'school cones' (Schultuete) full of goodies, will then be treated to a show.

After that, school really starts up. Another difference between my American schooling and here is that the school days often have different lengths. Last year's first grade class had 19 periods (Germans call them hours) per week - and that obviously doesn't divide by 5 days evenly! Also, as Peter progresses through the grades, more periods will be added.

I have to note that traditionally, it is not the custom to eat lunch at school. It's expected that the children will be met at home by their own Desperate Hausfrau with a hot lunch. Most schools don't have any kind of cafeteria (although the renovation added one to our school). It's not yet clear to me if they'll be offering lunch to all children whose schedules keep them past, say, 1pm, or just to the kids in the after-school program.

It will be interesting to see what happens if we have an August heat wave !