Regime Change Begins at Home

Yours truly will be vacating to Holland for a few days on an impromptu trip with the in-laws and children. As such I won't be able to indulge in my second favorite Independence Day activity, after roasting marshmallows to a crisp: hearing (via internet radio) NPR's traditional recitation of the Declaration of Independence. It's worth a read, despite the 18th century prose - and worth thinking about especially in this election year:

(From the National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html)

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Medicine in Germany

A few (English) tidbits lately about some aspects of medical care in Germany:

End of life: A healthy but elderly woman with no family, fearing ending her days in a nursing home, commits suicide with assistance. (NY Times)

Underpaid doctors: NPR reports that one way health care costs are kept down is buy strictly budgeting doctors' pay. (National Public Radio)

Mary's favorite employer, Frontline, does a piece on how various countries care for their sick, including Germany. (Frontline)

My (limited) experience?
Expect waits. Usually the wait is about 1/2 for a pre-arranged appointment. Calls on the day, to deal with an urgent sickness, result in a request to come in at a certain time, but don't be fooled - it's not really an appointment, just an attempt by the office staff to manage the stream of walk-ins, and you can expect to wait a LONG time - I've personally had 2 hour waits (with sick kids!). I'm told that if we had "private" insurance, we'd get quicker service.

Doctors do everything. This was one of the first things I noticed - the doctor performs all the elements of the exam - blood pressure, temperature taking, weighing, shot administration, etc. Only a few things, such as blood taking, are performed by specialists in the practice. I see little evidence of any equivalent of Nurse Practitioner or Doctor's Assistants here so far. That being said, there is also very little of the preliminary "checkup" that occurs at every US doctor's office I've ever been in - weighing, blood pressure taking, temperature measurement, recent medical history update. There seems to be the assumption that if you have some concerns, you'll speak up.

Computers - A lot more is computerized here. The doctors are mildly surprised when I hand over American doctors' records, which are handwritten, if you can call it "writing" at all. I don't know if the push toward computerizing the records came as a result of any push from health insurance ("sickness accounts"), but at each visit we do hand over an insurance card with a little chip on it with all our insurance information on it.

Pass Books - for a lot of things, such as children's exams or immunizations (adult too) there are pass books every doctor expects you to have. Not a big deal not to have it, I've found, although the pediatrician did go to a lot of trouble to translate the kids' immunizations into German.

Doctor's hours - are much shorter here. I imagine some of that is because of the house calls mentioned in the NPR account, but I do know most doctors also have hospital obligations, and as such need time to be off with those patients too.

Drugs - very small co-payments, usually, and no co-pay for children under 12, but over-the-counter meds are more expensive. That's partly because they are literally over-the-counter - you go to the pharmacy, describe your problem to the pharmacist, and he or she then suggests a remedy. Consumer help shows advice you to ask for a cheaper alternative to what's suggested; the pharmacist, also a salesperson, is under some pressure to sell you the more profitable items. I recently did this with my allergy meds and saved 40%. Prescription drugs are somewhat subject to "formularies" like in the States; that is, the insurance companies dictate certain brands for certain conditions.

Insurance - I've heard of doctors who won't accept the public insurance any more as they can obtain better payments for the (more expensive) private insurance which ~10% of the populations buys. I have also read that the private insurance gains you access to better specialists

My Overall Conclusion - the system is efficient but overtaxed, with far more need than available physicians (at least judging by the waiting rooms). Germany's population is rapidly aging (NY Times again) so I don't see that changing soon.

Get a job...

I am taking a German course. Why? Because I speak German about as well as Latke from "Taxi" spoke English. Ok, a bit better, but I definitely miss feeling like an adult when I talk to the neighbors. Interestingly, one of the items we read recently in class claimed that without any formal study of the language, your language abilities become "fossilized" after about 2 years of use. That is, you'll continue to add vocabulary, but your grammar and such won't improve further. Perhaps a bit of self promotion on the part of the textbook publisher, but I felt myself that I'd reached some plateau after 1 1/2 years here; that's why I signed up for the class.

But that's just background. I'm really trying to avoid doing this weekend's assignment, which is writing a cover letter for the class. I've decided to "apply" for a job as an English teacher. I've already prepared a resume, with substantial help from the husband, for another, ill-fated application, and I've noticed in these two exercises some differences to the U.S. system that I thought you might find interesting:

• German employers expect to see a picture of you on the resume. Online advice tells me they take this very seriously; a professional portrait is advised. My teacher says they look at this to get a feel for the person behind the resume, as well as to check out age, fitness, professionalism, etc. Considering how at one U.S. employer we were instructed NEVER to indicate age, race, gender etc. on our interviewing notes, it seems odd to me that these are things the employers here want to know right up front. However, I can see why it would be to the business's advantage to know about these things, though it raises hackles on my sensitized "Equal Opportunity" self.
  
• The German resume wants to know every detail of your life. It's not called a Lebenslauf ("life's course") for nothing. This includes all schooling, including elementary school, and marital and family status.
  
• It should be noted that they still want all the above information on 1-2 pages at most (and only more than 1 page if you're really special). So great creativity is required to get past the trivia and fit in the interesting bits of the resume.
  
• Addenda to the application usually include transcripts for high school, college, etc., as well as copies of any certificates that you've hyped in your resume. German companies don't waste time calling around to see if you're telling the truth - they want the proof upfront.
  
• German companies provide departing employees with a sort of report card of their performance to show later employers. The husband tells me they have certain stock phrases to indicate how beloved you were. Unexplained gaps in this record of employment would be very poorly viewed by potential employers who might believe that you were trying to cover up a bad review.
  

The cover letter contains more or less the same kind of information and themes you would find in an American example. There are actually business letter standards defined to which you really need to conform for an application cover letter. Non-conformance to them would be akin to misspelling the name of the company in the letter; it's considered a basic test of competence.

OK, I'm out of comments on this theme now. Back to the homework. Desperately yours,

Da Slugs

Anke discovered a slug in the bathroom this morning. It caused quite the uproar at breakfast. I had to send Stefan into take care of it. Now, I don't worry about spiders, worms, the icky green things infesting the roses, etc. But with slugs, especially before coffee, especially within the house - well, it's a no-go.

How something quite as slow as a slug managed to get in to the house is a mystery. Did it climb up the wall, into the window, back down the tile to the floor, taking all night? Did it hop a ride in on the grocery box? We'll never know; that one's history. But there are plenty more outside, waiting, I imagine, to get in and experience wall-to-wall carpeting.

Slugs are called Nacktschnecke in German, which means 'naked snail', but that's the last cute thing about then. Peter says, his teacher says, they eat dandelions, but if that's the case they aren't doing their job in my yard.

To attend to the slugs I bought several slug traps. I've always read that they like beer; according to the locals they are especially fond of the Duesseldorf specialty Alt (old) beer. So these traps we bought are placed in an indentation, filled with beer, and then apparently lure the slugs to a beery end. And they work - when you pick the traps out of the earth to empty the frothy remains, you are sure the find 8-10 juicy specimens nestled beneath. Peter and Anke earn bounties disposing of them for me down the sewer.

Which maybe is how that one got into my bathroom, now that I think of it... Well, I won't be sleeping tonight.

Kirsch Krümmeltorte

Great recipe for you all -

I figure that as a desperate hausfrau that I should feature the occasional distaff item in this blog. I've discovered here that when I have to bake something, anything I pull out of an American cookbook is greeted with rave reviews. I was flattered by this until I realized that mundane items like apple pies and brownies are pretty unknown here - at least in any form you'd recognize*. So I now I know not to kill myself - simple but authentic muffins or chocolate chip cookies will still get me, well, brownie points.

So here is a recipe from my mother-in-law for German Crumb Cake. Keep in mind - use jarred cherries; dark, morello or sour if possible. They are in the canned fruit section. Don't use cherry pie filling! If you can't get exact units, don't worry - this recipe is pretty robust and will survive estimation. If you don't have a springform pan, experiment with well greased Pyrex forms of approximately the same size, removing the cake from the pan by first loosening the sides, then inverting it onto a plate and then re-inverting it.

14 Tbs. Butter (7 oz)
1 cup (7 oz) Sugar
1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
1 egg
Pinch of salt
3 1/3 cups flour
1 Tbs. baking powder

1 ~25 oz. jar dark cherries.
1 1.3 oz (37 g) packet cook-and-serve vanilla pudding mix

• Whip the butter with a hand-mixer until whipped and creamy (very pale yellow). Mix in the egg.
• Mix all the dry ingredients together.
• Mix dry ingredients into wet until a crumby dough forms. Chill until needed.
• Put the cherries into a pot, reserving some of the juice. Bring the cherries to a simmer. Meanwhile dissolve pudding in the reserved juice, and add mixture to the pot. Cook until juice thickens.
• Press a bit more than 1/2 the dough into a greased Springform (30cm or 11.8"), forming a thin crust up the sides of the pan. Press the dough well into the corners - don't let it remain too thick.
• Pour the cherry mixture into the shell.
• Sprinkle the remaining dough as a streusel over the top of the cherries.
• Bake at 175 degrees, checking starting at 40 minutes. Cook until the top is golden brown - 45-55 minutes.
• Let cool until the pan is touchable, then remove from Springform to wire rack to fully cool.
• Serve warm or cold, unaccompanied or with whipped cream or ice cream. Great with coffee!

The original ingredients, in case you're metric:
200 grams butter
200 grams sugar
1 packet vanilla sugar
1 egg
pinch of salt
500 grams flour
1 packet baking powder (15 g)

1 jar dark cherries
1 packet vanilla pudding (cook and serve)



* If you've ever had real Blackforest ham or apple streudel, you'd know that American versions of German items are just as bad!

More traffic woes

German traffic rules have one big difference compared to the U.S.: in most cases, cars coming in from a side street that the right of way. That means, as you drive along what in the U.S. would be a relatively main street, you have to check at every cross street for oncoming traffic (on your side of the road). It's called Right before Left. There are exceptions to this where posted, but by and large it accomplishes the goal of keeping traffic speed down within the town.

Sometimes it works too well. Here's the scenario:
Car 1 (me) wants to make a left turn.
Car 2 approaches from the opposite direction. Of course Car 1 yields to oncoming traffic.
Car 3 enters the intersection from the side street opposite me. Car 2 yields to Car 3 - it's Right before Left, after all.
Car 2, however, wants to cross the intersection - and so has to yield to Car 1, the oncoming traffic.

So now we have a loop - Car 1 yields to Car 2, who yields to Car 3, who yields to Car 1...

There is a moment of shared discomfort between the drivers until someone waves another through and the deadlock is ended.

I would think this is just me, but I've seen it happen twice in the past week and I was in a different position each time. Melanie may remember how in 1998 this rule, then unknown to her, almost caused a low-speed accident but did cause a minor heart attack in my new husband.

Educating Peter

Peter has adjusted to being in school, and has the whole homework thing pretty much down. While he does all right with the reading, it's far from his favorite subject, probably because he actually has to learn something to do it. The teacher (Mrs. Peters) used a phonetic learning program to introduce the kids to reading letter by letter. In fact, if you ask Peter to spell something, he doesn't say the letter names (ay, bee, cee, dee...) but instead just the letter sound (ah, beh, keh, deh...). In this way he seems to be able to read just about any word he comes across, given enough time (German words can be rather long...)

Since German reading isn't his favorite subject, you can imagine how he feels about English reading. But I want to make sure discovers English reading, and not wait until the 3rd grade when they'll start in the school here. After all, while I don't have an plans to move (the last transatlantic move cured me of any wanderlust), who knows where we'll be in 3 years?

I hit upon an idea a few weeks ago - shameless appealing to his mercenary nature. For every page he read outside of homework, a star. Three stars for every English page. The stars could be redeemed for small prizes. The prize list so far is:

• 10 stars: 10 minutes of me reading aloud to him, with no co-reading required on his part
• 50 stars: on ice cream cone at the ice cream shop of his choice
• 250 stars: a trip to the zoo.

I have to admit is did not have the effect I desired: Peter still showed no interest in books.

Peter's teacher was out sick this (short) school week, so there was no homework. I announced Monday afternoon a one-day bonus program: 5 stars per page of English. Now, Peter can do the math, and quickly realized that 10 pages would earn him an ice cream cone. Quicker than you can imagine, the boy had devoured 10 pages in his 'Dinosaur Day' book, and I had to start calcutating what a trip to the Krefeld Zoo was going to run me.

But luckily he couldn't hold on to them. Asterix the Gaul books beckoned, and he quickly spent 10 stars. Now his goal is 100 stars, at which point he wants to invite his little sister for ice cream. Now we're working on the slight differences in the letters - his first instinct is to read 'very' as 'fery' and 'cow' as 'cov'.

Time to start him on the Electric Company!

Memetic Tagging

Warning to the unwary reader: the following entry contains nothing about Germany; it is instead my attempt to keep up with the new thang....

I have apparently be tagged in a 'meme' but esteemed but twisted Middento (who has some of the best kid-raising stories I've ever read...). This is a new thing to me, but you're talking to a relative luddite when it comes to anything more sophisticated than email. These are apparently the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Locate the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

Naturally, as always when encountering a new cultural trend or fact, I turned to Wikipedia to find out what the heck this is. To quote the entry:

'A meme ... consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus.'

So back to this new viral cultural infection, which reminds me of concepts developed in Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash. With dismay I noted the only books in view were a book of fairy tales and an Asterix adventure comic. Then I remembered a few reference books under the coffee table behind me, among which I found the Amy Sedaris gem 'I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence' (Yes, this does pass as a reference book in my house. Please don't ask for what). Sadly, excepting bullet points, there are 4 sentences on this page, so I'm taking the liberty of moving on to pages 124-5:

'Everyone should have a living will. You can pick one up at the post office for peanuts and it's good because all your belongings will go to someone specific instead of going to a holding area for a few years. If you are grieving, have someone stay at your house while you are at the funeral parlor because crooks will comb the obituaries to see who has died and break into your home to steal things.'

Words for us all to live by.

Now here's the problem: Besides Middento, I only know one blogger: the inlaw over at My Extended Musings. So I guess I'm one the hook for 4 more as they come along. Check back for updates.

Zu Hause, süßer zu Hause (Home, sweet home) - from the outside

German houses have taken some getting used to. Keep in mind I grew up in New England, where the houses which aren't 200 year old clapboard sided gems are all trying to look like they are. Now come to Germany, where the first thing that strikes you about the homes is that all are brick, stone, slate, or stucco-faced. Not a bit of shingling to be found, unless you count the slate shingles on the old houses. Then you notice that all the windows are single panes of glass, not usually broken up into real or faux small panes (as they are at least in the northeast U.S.). If it is nighttime or many people are on vacation, you'll see metal-looking or wooden blinds completely enclosing the exterior of the windows and rendering the house snug as a turtle.

Entering the house, you might notice how thick the wall is around the door. Just how thick are these walls? In the spirit of inquiry I have just measured the wall at the kitchen window to be approx. 15 1/4 inches. Having watched several houses go up in our neighborhood I can tell you why - the house is assembled, lego-like, from large cement bricks (roughly 4 feet high). Then insulation, which is made of either large felt-like or styrofoam-like bricks, around 6-inches thick, is attached to the exterior of the house. Then the final facing (brick or brick-face or stucco) is put on. Older houses might be a bit different in components, but the idea would be the same. I'm told that German houses actually have efficiency standards - the walls much achieve a certain R value (if I remember my thermo correctly) to show that they are not allowing heat to escape. But as a consequence of the building materials, it's easy to spot where new houses are going up in the area, by spotting the cranes poised over them to lift the stones!

Houses are smaller here, but also more compact - our house, although approximately 1800 sq. feet, has a footprint of about (my estimate) 550-600 sq. feet. Our old American house would feel sprawling in comparison, although it wasn't really that much bigger, living area-wise. The lot on which the house sits is about 550 sq. meters, or around 5900 sq. feet (about 1/8 acre). The first thing visitors say when they come to visit - 'What a big garden you have!'. This is because, since we're the last house in our row, we have a double-wide lot. Most people's yards around here are exactly as wide as their building - meaning maybe 20 feet wide!

Germans must believe that 'good fences make good neighbors', because the first thing that goes into any new construction is something to delineate the yard, either living (hedge) or not (fence, dead hedge). This is a great thing, really, because a) Germans like to sunbathe b) Germans aren't that far behind America in the obesity race and c) many Germans like very, very brief bathing suits*.


* S. has been Americanized enough to wear a modest pair of trunks.

In the merry, merry, merry month of May

May is the month of neverending holidays in Germany.

Germans have something like 14 official holidays, which makes the average American green with envy. There are two catches, however - if a holiday falls on a weekend, it's gone. There's no "Independence Day, observed" kind of save to preserve the day off. The other catch is, that it feels like half of these holidays fall within May, leaving the rest of the year rather thinly populated.

What's in May? Well, May Day, which is celebrated as Labor Day is in the States. Even without the rather modern overlaying of the labor holiday on it, May 1st would still probably be celebrated here as a rite of spring. There are still Maypole observances here, but perhaps more popular are the Dance into May parties (actually happening April 30th) in tents, sports clubs and bars around the region. Then comes Christ's Ascension, which unfortunately fell on May 1st this year (see the weekend rule above). This is also Germany's unofficial Father's Day, which is celebrated (according to my father-in-law) by father's removing themselves to beer tents set up on the carnival fields on the edge of town.

Next comes Pfingsten, or Pentacost. This turns out to be something of a unofficial start to summer type holiday. It is followed by Pentacost Monday, which is then often followed by a gratuitous day off from school on Tuesday for the kids. Therefore, this weekend is often called "Pentacost Vacation", and 50% of the country tries to get away for the weekend starting at 2pm on the previous Friday. Last weekend, when it occurred, the radio broadcasters weren't even bothering to warn people about backups of less than 10 km (~6 miles).

Finally to round out the month comes Corpus Christi. We haven't reached this one yet, but it's another Thursday holiday, and so Friday is also a school holiday.

Interspersed with all these real holidays are various celebrations - for example, Schutzenfest, celebrating local militias and their deeds in prior centuries; or Kirmes (what American's would call a carnival). Sometimes the local kids get more holidays for these (but not for the poor kids in Moers - they only have 6 days off in May!).