A Really Wrong Forecast

Faulty weather predictions for Winter 2010

Remember the long-range forecasts last fall? This winter in the Midwest was supposed to be warmer than usual, because of one of the Pacific currents. I've forgotten if it was supposed to be La Niña or El Niño.

In a blog poll this fall, Prairie Bluestem readers predicted a cold, snowy winter. Their instincts were more accurate than the predictions of meteorologists.

I read this today:

While predictions of a mild winter prevailed in the fall, meteorologist Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather is now predicting that the United States will have the worst winter in 25 years.

Bastardi reports that the last time severely low temperatures were seen all across the country was in January 1985, when below-zero temperatures struck the country from Chicago east to New York and south to Macon, Ga.

Source: "Midwest Sees Near-Record Lows, Snow By The Foot," an MMX/CBS report published January 5, 2010, by CBS2 of Chicago

I remember January of 1985. I had just found out that I was pregnant with Keely, and I was "morning sick" most of the time. My memories of my queasy stomach are much more vivid than my memories of the cold weather. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned: if I keep my mind busy with something else, the cold temperatures will be easier to endure.

Berlin in June, 1989

A letter home from West Berlin

I wrote this letter 6 days before our son Isaac was born. Keely was 3 years old. We were living in military housing (Duepple Housing area) in West Berlin, on the ground floor of an apartment building that was 6 or 7 stories high. Dennis was working for the PX system (AAFES).

Berlin
June 7, 1989

Dear Daddy, Mama, and all the family,

I'll write a few lines while Keely watches Sesame Street and Dennis snoozes.

Dennis was off work today, so we took Keely to the beach -- the shore of the Wannsee, which is a large lake just a few miles from us. Keely wore her swimsuit and waded a bit at the water's edge, but she wasn't at all adventurous about getting wet above her knees. Dennis and I parked ourselves in our lawn chairs, and Keely had a good time filling her sand bucket with various mixtures of sand and water.

The sky clouded over, and it looked rainy, so we left after an hour, just before it got seriously wet. Maybe it was the approaching rainstorm that made the swans so frisky today. All the time we were there, they were opening their wings and flapping across the water.

As you know, Willadene and Lewis (Dennis's sister and her husband) were here last week. We went to various places in the city with them that we hadn't visited before -- the stadium that was built for the 1936 Olympics, an interesting flea and antique market in some old subway cars at one of the stations, and St. Hedwig's Cathedral. The cathedral is in East Berlin, and the stadium and flea market are in West Berlin.

Also in East Berlin, we saw the weekly parade of East German soldiers in front of their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They goosestep new guards in and out every hour, but each Wednesday at 2:30, the whole company has a elaborate ceremony and parade on the street in front of the monument.

After being so warm in May, it's turned cool again. They've even turned on the heat again. It's been below 50° several nights.

I hope that by the time you actually receive this letter, maybe we'll have the baby. The day we went to East Berlin and walked for miles, I wondered if maybe we would need to rush to the hospital. (I didn't say a word to Dennis and the group about it, because I didn't want to get everyone excited!) But I'm still waiting. I have my suitcase partially packed.

Laveda Boggs, another AAFES wife who lives one floor above us, has offered repeatedly to watch Keely if we have to go to the hospital suddenly in the night. She works during the day, so we've made arrangements with another lady (Linda) to keep Keely while Dennis is at work. Linda is trustworthy and has three preschoolers of her own. Keely and I have visited at their house several times recently so Keely won't feel like a stranger.

Keely has been wanting to learn to "spreche Deutsch" lately. She has become aware that she and the little German kids speak two different languages. She's been asking me to teach her. When we finish a little lesson, she says, "NOW those kids will understand what I'm saying!"

We went today to see about enrolling Keely in preschool next fall at the John F. Kennedy School. It's a private school, and we will have to pay tuition. We will have to pay her tuition at any preschool, so why not try for one of the better ones? They teach preschool mainly in German. We couldn't find anyone at the school because they're all on a week's vacation, so we will have to try again. They have a waiting list, and I wouldn't want her to begin before next fall anyway. With the baby, that will be enough adjusting and stress for her at present.

Well, I don't have enough news to begin another page, so I'll sign off. All's well here, and we hope you are doing OK too! Love from each of us, and juicy Keely-kisses all around.

Gennie, Dennis, and Keely

Berlin Wall Remembered

We watched The Wall come down.

Dennis and I lived in West Berlin from 1988-1991. Dennis was working as a manager for the Army-Air Force Exchange System (PX system), and I was a busy mother of one, then two small children. Keely turned three shortly after we moved to Berlin in 1988, and Isaac was born there in June, 1989.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, this post and its photos will tell a little about Berlin from the viewpoint of an American who was there when the Wall was opened.

The Corner with the Pink Church

Landmark in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

This church of unusual hue was a landmark in our neighborhood when we lived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (1980-1982). In my mind's eye, it is a brighter pink than this image shows it.

We lived seven or eight blocks from this intersection, and directions to our house began with, "Go to the pink church and ..." I hope the building is still there because I remember it affectionately as a distinctive and useful landmark. And I hope it is still a church, as well.

We taught at an English-speaking school in Santa Cruz. When school was dismissed in the afternoon, we often rode a micro (red-and-white bus in the photo) to this corner and walked the rest of the way home.

An Indian lady with big skirts and a little bowler hat always had her pushcart on this corner, near where I stood to take this photo. Vendor pushcarts like hers were miniature convenience stores where passersby could get an aspirin, a handkerchief, a comb, a piece of candy or gum, a rubber band, a T-shirt, or whatever.

I smoked in those days, and one day, I stopped at the cart and asked for a pack of cigarettes. I didn't look carefully at the cigarette box before paying, and when I got down the street, I found that she had opened it and replaced all the cigarettes with rolled up pieces of paper.

A little note inside the box said (in Spanish), "Ha ha, stupid gringo." She knew that only gringos would buy a whole pack of cigarettes from a market cart. Any Bolivians who were shopping at a market cart would buy one cigarette at a time.

If I had taken it back to her, she'd have professed innocence or pretended not to understand my Spanish, so I accepted that I'd been taught a lesson. I never bought anything from her again, so in the long run, she was the loser. Or maybe she won, because I still remember the incident to this day.

Bolivian Mennonites

Glimpses of their lives

When Dennis and I taught school in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in the early 1980s, we were quite surprised to see Mennonites there. However, we soon became accustomed to seeing them around town in their horse-drawn farm wagons.

The Mennonite ladies always wore long sleeved dresses, and I always thought that they must be sweltering in the heat. I certainly was, and I didn't have long sleeves. They did make a few concessions to the tropical climate -- they wore broad-brimmed hats rather than bonnets and they didn't bother with black stockings.

Our main contact with the Mennonites was at the markets where we bought their cheese -- queso menonito. It was a white cheese that was a bit watery, salty, and squeaky. Our Wisconsin friend, Dan Sands, said it reminded him of "new cheese." It didn't melt well, but we used it in grilled cheese sandwiches anyway.

I didn't know anything about the history of the Bolivian Mennonites then, but I've learned from the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) that the first colony around Santa Cruz was established in the late 1950s, and other colonies were established in the Santa Cruz area during the 1960s.

I taught a little Mennonite boy from Kansas in my 6th grade class at the Santa Cruz Cooperative School. His family was in Bolivia as workers from the Mennonite Central Committee, the outreach of the North American Mennonites. His father's job was to teach improved farming methods to the Bolivian Mennonite men, and his mother's job was to teach the women various skills for the home.

Recently, I've read several articles about the Bolivian Mennonites and the land reforms in Bolivia. They're worried about losing their farms. They have cleared and created a lot of farmland, and while they hold title to some of it, they don't have papers for all of it. (This is not surprising in Bolivia.) My sympathies lie with them. They've worked hard for what they have.

Slide show about the Bolivian Mennonites (New York Times)
Jordi Busque's photo essays about the Bolivian Mennonites (scroll down)

Palm Sunday Stories

Palms and processionals

Palm Sunday was celebrated this morning across the Christian world. In my church, the little crosses above were given to the worshipers as part of the observance.

Each little cross is made from a folded palm leaflet. We carry them into the sanctuary in a procession that represents Jesus's arrival at Jerusalem. (As you probably remember, the people greeted him carrying palm branches and shouting "Hosanna!")

Woven palm fronds in La Paz

The palm crosses and the procession at our church always bring to mind a couple of Palm Sundays spent far from home, years ago.

In 1981, we were teaching school in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and we were traveling over our Easter vacation. We spent Palm Sunday in La Paz, Bolivia. That morning, in the oldest part of La Paz around la Iglesia de San Francisco (the St. Francis Church), Aymara vendors were selling palm leaves to the churchgoers.

The leaflets of each palm leaf were loosely woven into several square shapes, so each leaf looked like a stem that had sprouted a series of miniature mats. I bought several of those palm leaves, and I still have them. They're not green anymore, of course, but they're still interesting. (UPDATE: I had always imagined the woven palm fronds to be a South American custom, but I learned this morning that even Pope Benedict XVI carried a woven palm frond on Palm Sunday.)

Palm Sunday procession in Germany

I also remember the Palm Sunday of 1988 in West Germany. We were living in a little Bavarian village called Kleinwallstadt am Main. I read in the free German newspaper that everyone who was in the Palm Sunday parade should meet at a certain place.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I decided that little Keely and I should go and watch. The parade turned out to be a procession, led by the priest. A brass ensemble was next, and dozens of worshippers followed. They walked through the streets to the church, accompanied by stirring music.

I think Keely and I were the only observers. Everyone else was participating. I took Keely home, feeling rather lonely and left-out.

By the next Palm Sunday, we had been transferred to Berlin. There, I began taking Keely to an English-speaking Lutheran Sunday School, and to make a long story very short, that is how we came to be Lutherans (LCMS) today. God, in His wisdom and in His time, brought us to a Bible-teaching church that was right for us.

An Unforgettable Glimpse of Genuine Poverty

Many of America's "poor" are rich by world standards.

This is a true story about an experience I have never forgotten.

When my husband and I were first married, we taught school in Bolivia for two years.

Bolivia is a landlocked country in South America. It's tropical, and it lies south of the equator. Some of the Amazon lowlands lie in eastern Bolivia, but on the western side of the country, some of the peaks of the Andes Mountains are nearly 4 miles in elevation (over 21,000 feet.)

We were in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, which is a major city in the lowlands (but not in the Amazon basin.)

In the early 1980's when we were there, the socio-economic structure was much as it had been since early colonial days--

• a small wealthy upper class, mostly of European ancestry
• a large, extremely poor, and mostly illiterate lower class, mostly of Indian ancestry
• almost no middle class at all.

Many beggars lived on the streets. Many of them were people who were mentally retarded, insane, or physically handicapped. They coped as best they could, with the help of family if they were lucky.

And now, the little story I want to tell ...

We bought our fruits, vegetables, and many necessities of life in the open air markets because grocery stores simply did not exist. I was at the Siete Calles market one afternoon, and I had bought some cloth in a group of booths under a roof.

Coming out of that building, I saw a very short Indian man coming toward me. He would perhaps have come up to my waistline. As he caught my eye, I thought, "My goodness, that man is a 'little person'!" (I thought he was a dwarf.)

Then I looked closer and saw that he was "walking" on his knees, and I thought, "Oh dear Lord, he has somehow had his legs cut off!"

All this time, I was walking toward the man as he hobbled along. And as I met him, I saw how he really was: his poor, withered legs from the knees down were dragging along in the dirt behind him as he walked on his knees.

When I hear the saying, "I felt bad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet," I always think of that man in the market. To be so handicapped and to cope with it as he was doing is beyond my imagination.

I am so fortunate to have been born an American. Though I'm not rich by American standards, I'm wealthy by world standards. Many Americans do not comprehend what real poverty is.

Please be generous with your favorite world charity this Christmas. If you don't have a favorite charity, I suggest the Lutheran World Relief, an organization that uses 92.5¢ of every donated dollar to help people in need around the world.

"Back to School" in 1980

The first two weeks of teaching in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

In mid-July of 1980, Dennis and I arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We had accepted a two-year teaching contract at the Santa Cruz Cooperative School (SCCS).

Just a couple of days after we arrived, Bolivia had a military coup. We sat it out at the school director's house, with several other newly-arrived teachers who didn't have apartments yet.

In a couple more days, the markets and shops reopened, and everyone came out of their houses and went back to work. The new government established checkpoints on the main roads, military patrols of the streets, new papers for foreigners to carry, and a midnight curfew for one and all.

For us newcomers to the country, these restrictions were just part of the overall strangeness. We settled into our little apartment and got ready to teach school.

The seasons are reversed south of the equator, so it was winter when we arrived in July. The school year at SCCS ran from August through May. This put the seniors on the right schedule to go to college in the U.S., and also worked well for hiring teachers from the U.S. It also put us in school through the hottest months of tropical summer!

Instruction at SCCS was in English, but its students came from everywhere. Some were the children of rich Bolivians. Others were the children of foreigners working in Santa Cruz -- Americans, British, French, Israelis, Taiwanese, Koreans, Germans, Swedes, etc.

Many of the foreign families in SCCS were connected with sugar plantations and refineries or gas drilling and pipelines. Some families were in Santa Cruz with U.N. programs, as representatives of their home countries, missionaries, entrepreneurs, or expert advisors in some field.

When I look at the SCCS website, I am astonished at the growth and apparent prosperity of the school. When we taught there, the school didn't have as many buildings as it does today.

Here's an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my family on September 1, 1980:

School has started and it has kept us busy and mentally, if not physically, exhausted. We have two weeks under our belts now. We had a week of orientation and then students on Monday the 18th.

I think this has been the most difficult two weeks of school teaching I have ever done. The kids came in absolutely wild, and it has taken stern measures to keep them quiet and in their desks long enough to attempt to teach anything. Also, of my 18 kids, only one speaks English at home, so I explain and show, and re-explain and show again, endlessly. In Reading class, I teach not just the recognition of the word, but also the meaning. The language barrier makes everything about twice as hard as it would ordinarily be.

They are starting to shape up a bit as far as keeping quiet. We have very high ceilings and a brick tile floor, so any chair scraping or whispering echoes badly! If one other person is making noise, it is hard to hear whoever should be talking. So I'm sure my second graders think Mrs. Netz is really a grouch about being quiet.

However, I am learning the vocabulary that they can understand and adjusting to them somewhat--as they are to me. It is frustrating much of the time, but still it's rewarding when someone does understand.

I have 7 girls and 11 boys in my room. Dennis has 22 in his room. He has been having the same language problems as me, though to a lesser degree because his are 4th graders and have had more years of speaking English. With all this and the stress of being a first-year teacher, I'm sure he will always vividly remember these next months.

Related information:
Welcome to Santa Cruz
Free Wisdom about Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Michael Simon's photo blog about travel in South America

Technorati tags: Santa Cruz Bolivia, Santa Cruz Cooperative School, SCCS, 1980

Midnight Bus Ride in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Riding through dark streets in a collectivo

When we lived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in the early 80s, we didn't have a car. We went everywhere in buses or taxis.

Santa Cruz had two types of buses -- micros and collectivos. Micros were small, fast buses, used by residents who could pay a premium fare.

Collectivos were old, slow, full-size buses that transported the masses. Their fares were cheap. Often, the passengers carried huge bundles of their belongings, garden produce, or even live animals.

One night, Dennis and I found ourselves out late and too far from home to walk. We waited at a bus stop, knowing that we needed to take any transportation that came along because the 1:00 A.M. curfew was getting close.

Eventually, a lumbering old collectivo appeared, and it was headed in the direction that we needed to go. We climbed on board and were surprised at the darkness inside. The only light came through the windows. The bus lurched away with a great roar, and we groped for a handhold as we staggered in the aisle.

Even at that late hour, every seat was taken and many passengers were standing. No one was talking. The only sounds were the grinding and groaning of the bus's worn-out gears and engine.

It was summer and the night was warm. Inside the bus, the air had a peculiar, dank odor of unwashed bodies and dirty bundles. It was the smell of hardscrabble third-world poverty, steamed for years.

The bus roared through the shadows of the old, narrow streets, and we struggled to hold our balance when it pitched around corners. As passengers moved to and from the doors, their bodies and burdens bumped against us.

I realized that I was, at that moment, in the most foreign place I had ever been. I was as close to an experience of the life of Bolivia's urban poor as I might ever be. The cloak of darkness over my anglo appearance had made me just another needy, late-night traveler.

"Señora?" A woman offered me a seat. She pulled her billowing skirts closer to make room for me beside her. I gratefully accepted her offer, but I kept my purse tight under my arm on the side away from her. I had been in Bolivia long enough to know how quietly a razor blade could slash into a bag in a moment of jostling.

Soon enough, we recognized landmarks of our neighborhood. We called to the driver and the bus stopped. We got off and became gringos again, scurrying home before curfew. Our fellow passengers rode on into the night.

Technorati tags: Santa Cruz Bolivia, Bolivian bus ride, gringo in South America

Concerts -- Real and Fantasy

What concerts have you attended? What concerts would you like to attend?

We ate supper last night with Keely and Taurus (her boyfriend.) The conversation turned to concerts and music stars. Keely asked an interesting question:

If you could see anybody in concert,
whom would you choose?

She named some bands of the past that she wished she could see -- the Beatles, the Beach Boys in 1970, Guns N' Roses, and others.

I've been thinking about that. I don't follow popular music at all. But of the musicians and groups I like, who are still performing, I'd choose Asleep at the Wheel.

Some musicians of the past whom I'd like to see in concert are:

• I agree with Keely that it would be fun to see the Beatles, and I think 1966 or 1967 would be a good time.
• I would like to see Steve Goodman.
  
• I'd also like to see Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys during the 1930s or 1940s.
• And I'd enjoy seeing the Blackwood Brothers when Wally Varner was playing the piano and J.D. Sumner was singing bass -- maybe about 1960.

Here's a list of some people and bands whom I did see in concert (back in my younger days.)

• Mac Davis in 1970 or 1971, in Chadron, NE, when I was a college student in that town
  
• Henson Cargill, also at Chadron. Actually, he played at a dance, not a concert.
• the Beach Boys in the late 1970s at the Missouri State Fair, an unforgettable experience
• Neil Diamond, twice in Kansas City (1977? and 1983?) and once in West Berlin (1990?)
  
• Linda Ronstadt, in Kansas City (1980)
• Kris Kristofferson in Kansas City (1984)
  
• Arlo Guthrie, in Kansas City (1985)
  
• John Prine, also in Kansas City (1985). (Arlo Guthrie was his warm-up act.)

Of this group, Linda Ronstadt was the only one that I organized a trip to see. She has a great voice, and I really liked her music (up to that point.) But at the concert, Linda sang only a couple of her past hits. She was in the process of changing from country/rock style (Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits Volumes I and II) to punk rock.

I was a little disappointed by that concert, but it foreshadowed Linda Ronstadt's future style -- eclectic. Through the years since then, I've enjoyed only a small number of her recordings (most notably, those with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton). However, I suppose she has enjoyed her musical adventures, even without me.

My husband was the organizer of the trips to see Neal Diamond. I had a great time at the concerts even though I am only a lukewarm Neil Diamond fan. (I like his music OK, but I've never bought an album.) He is a dynamic performer. If anyone ever offers you a ticket to see him, you should take it.

What concerts have you attended? What musicians or groups (from any era) do you wish you could see?

Technorati tags: concerts, rock stars, country music stars, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond

Rich with Avocados

Avocado tree at our Bolivian home

The second year (1981) that we lived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, we rented an older stucco and adobe-brick house on a large lot. The house was built a long time before the gas boom brought a lot of new people and new construction to Santa Cruz. I suppose that area of town was the "historic district."

As is typical in Santa Cruz, the lot had a tall spiked fence along the front of it and tall masonry side walls that were topped with broken glass. The house sat at the back of the lot, and it was the fourth side of the long rectangle.

The space inside our walls was too nice to be called a yard. It was a tropical garden with fruit trees, grass, ground covers and many ornamental plants.

Enormous elephant ears (taller than my husband by a couple feet!) grew in a long strip between the driveway and one of the side walls. Various "houseplants" grew in beds along the sidewalks and patios, including a long hedge of "mother's-in-law tongue" in front of the house. "Wandering Jew" was one of the ground covers in the shade under the trees.

We had a pot-bellied toborochi tree and a mango tree and two banana trees and a funny little citrus tree that was neither lemon nor lime, but what I really want to tell about is the big avocado tree.

The avocado tree stood near the center of the garden, and during our year, it bore fruit. Its paltas (as avocados were called in Santa Cruz) were jumbo size -- as big as a large grapefruit, but pear shaped and heavy. They were bright green in color -- and there were a lot of them. I have read that some avocados (like oaks) bear heavily one year, then lighter the next year. Our tree must have had a heavy year.

We had all the avocados we could eat for weeks. We gave avocados to our friends and co-workers and to everyone who came to visit. Maria, the little Quechua woman who washed the clothes and swept the floor, and the man who cut the grass took avocados home with them every time they worked.

Dennis and I didn't fool around with making guacamole. We cut the avocados in half and ate the soft meat with a spoon right out of the skins. Sometimes we spread mashed avocado like butter on the fresh rolls that the bakery peddler sold out of the basket on the back of his bicycle.

We were rich with avocados in a way that we probably won't experience again.

I thought about our lovely Bolivian garden today when Dennis and I split a huge green avocado that I bought at the grocery store. I paid $2.56 for it, but it was worth it. Its meat was creamy, rich and very faintly sweet. It was delicious, just as I knew it would be when I saw it. We ate it out of the skin with our spoons.

Ghosts of Christmas Past (12)

Three Kings Day -- Heilege Drei Könige

Today was the 12th day of Christmas, tonight is "Twelfth Night" and this is my 12th and final "Christmas Ghosts" post. Tomorrow, the celebration of Christmas ends, and the celebration of Epiphany begins in many Christian churches of the West.

Epiphany commemorates (among other things) the Magi's visit to the young child, Jesus, and in Germany, the first Sunday in Epiphany is even called "Three Kings" -- Heilige Drei Könige.

There is an old German custom that costumed boys go from house to house on the eve of Epiphany, carrying water and incense blessed by the priest. They sing carols and solicit treats for themselves and donations for charities. They are the Star Singers -- Sternsänger.

Someone from the group may walk through the house with incense to rid it of evil, write the initials "CMB" (for the traditional names of the Wise Men: Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar) and the number for the new year over the front door ("20 CMB 07"), sprinkle some water, and say a little prayer asking for protection for the house.

I didn't know anything about this custom when the costumed children in the photo at right knocked on my door. It was January 5, 1988, and we were living in the little Bavarian village of Kleinwallstadt (literally translated "Small Barrier City") on the Main River near Frankfort, Germany.

It was easy to see that these boys were dressed as the Wise Men, and it seemed that I should offer them some cookies and leftover candy canes in exchange for the little song they sang to me. I did so, and they accepted. If they were collecting coins, I didn't realize that. They were pleased to pose for the snapshot. We exchanged a few sentences of German and English and then they went on their way, on down the street.

Curious about whether I had responded correctly by feeding my visitors, I later questioned my German neighbors and read more about the custom in my trusty guidebooks to Germany. I guess I may have missed my chance to have our house cleansed, marked, and blessed. I really don't know if they had incense and water with them or not.

These boys in their kingly costumes are probably in their early thirties now, but they're forever young in my memory and in my photo of them -- young and enjoying their costumed caroling adventure!

Merry Christmas!

Ghosts of Christmas Past (6)

Another Trip Down Memory Lane... Life In Germany...

Downtown Berlin at Christmas, about 1988

The largest city that I've ever lived in is Berlin, Germany. We went to West Berlin in 1988 with my husband's job in the Army-Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), and by the time we left in 1991, Germany and the city of Berlin had been reunified and most of the infamous Berlin wall had been torn down.

It's interesting to me that in 1990, just a year before we moved to Kentucky, Berlin's population was 3,433,695 (East and West Berlin combined) and the entire state of Kentucky's population was 3,685,296.

A band at the Zehlendorf Christmas market in Berlin

We lived in a part of Berlin called Zehlendorf. I'm sure it was once a little town that was gradually swallowed up by the metropolis. Zehlendorf had its own business district and they had a Christmas market (Weihnachtsmärkt) in December, much like those we had seen in the little villages of Bavaria.

For the Christmas market, streets were closed to traffic. Merchants set up tents and booths and sold all sorts of Christmas crafts, gifts, baking ingredients, and holiday decorations. Sausages and bratwursts, gingerbreads, and other holiday goodies were sold by vendors, most notably the spicy gluhwein (glowing wine,) served hot to warm cold fingers and toes. Children could ride a carousel or even a little pony.

Shepherd at the Christmas market animal exhibit

The Christmas market photos at left were taken near the Paulus Gemeindehaus, a community center owned by the Zehlendorf Lutheran church. We felt very much at home at the Gemeindehaus because our church, the American Church in Berlin, used the building on Sundays for Sunday School classes.

The shepherd was watching over a little pen of sheep. Keely was a preschooler, just the right size to be fascinated by the sight of real sheep. I remember we stood by the sheep pen for a very long time before she finally had seen enough of them. Before we went home, I bought a carved rolling pin for making springerle, a souvenir of the Zehlendorf Weihnachtsmärkt which I have to this day.

While I was writing this post, I looked for the website of the American Church in Berlin (ACB) and learned that it no longer meets at the historic Alte Dorfkirche, just down the street from the Paulus Gemeindehaus. They've moved to a much larger church that's closer to the center of Berlin, near the area where the church was located before World War II.

I'm happy for the American Church, both because it has grown and because it has better facilities, but I enjoy my memories of the old village church in Zehlendorf. Worshiping in that historic Christian meeting house and attending Sunday School in the Paulus Gemeindehaus helped me feel like Zehlendorf was my home too.

The last Christmas we spent in Berlin, I sewed a dozen angel costumes for the ACB Sunday School Christmas program. I tried to make them sturdy so they'd last a long time. I hope they're still in use at the new church this Christmas.

Technorati tags:

Zehlendorf
West Berlin
Christmas in Germany

Ghosts of Christmas Past (1)

Life In Germany...

Twenty years ago, Dennis, I, and little Keely (1 year old) had been in West Germany for a few weeks. We had been sent to the army post at Aschaffenburg by my husband's employer, the Army-Air Force Exchange Service, and we were staying in a hotel waiting for our apartment to become available and our shipment of household goods to arrive.

Dennis was working evenings so he got back to the hotel from work about 1 a.m. I tried to keep Keely on a similar schedule so we could all get some sleep. If she woke up before Dennis was awake in the morning, I hustled her out of the room and we went for a walk for a while.

The photo at left shows the view from our hotel window. Though you wouldn't guess from this photo, it was a nice gasthaus at the edge of a little Bavarian village, and there were sheep in a pasture just over the back fence.

Breakfast was provided. The first morning that we ate there, I thought the huge slabs of butter were slices of cheese. Dennis learned to properly crack open the top of an egg and eat it out of its shell as it stood in its little egg cup. I was too revolted by the extremely soft-cooked state of the yolks to eat them. However, I quickly learned to love German coffee laced with cream.

I kept some snacks for Keely in our room, and she and I usually went downstairs to the restaurant in the evening for a hot meal. People stared at the American woman and her toddler because they didn't usually bring their one-year-olds to restaurants. There weren't any high-chairs, but we managed.

One of my main pastimes besides entertaining Keely was learning a few words of German. I had a dictionary, so I made flashcards for myself and filled a notebook with lists of words that I might need. I also tried to translate the newspaper. I had much better luck understanding the advertisements than the news stories.

As soon as our apartment became available, we borrowed a few items from my husband's co-workers and a couple of beds from Military Housing and set up camp. We were very grateful to get out of the hotel room!

I bought some Christmas presents for Keely, but I don't think Dennis and I exchanged any gifts that year. Our Christmas gift was our shipment of household goods that arrived on December 23. Finally, we could make a home again.

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