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Partying with Germans!

Last night, the neighbor two doors down from us held a party for the neighborhood.  They planned this gathering several weeks ago.  I found an invite in German with a handwritten note in English asking us to join them.  We were asked to bring something to grill and a salad.  Bill cooked ribs on the grill at home and made a minted cucumber salad, which was really good.  He also brought a few of his homebrews.

Quite a few of our neighbors speak English, so we weren’t without people to talk to.  Bill speaks some German and I understand more and more every day, although I still don’t speak it.  It was nice to hang out with these people we’ve been living among for the past three years.

Bill bonded with the host when he shared his latest homemade beer, a red ale.  The host liked it, although his daughter tried it and I don’t think she was all that impressed.  I have a feeling Bill will be teaching him how to brew beer.  We learned that the host and his wife and kids lived in Boston for a few years, so they are quite familiar with us Yanks.

Unfortunately, Bill got to talking beer with the host while we were heating up the ribs, so they got a bit overdone.  Next time, we’ll bring wurst or something.

It was actually kind of interesting talking to the neighbors, especially the lady who lives next door to us.  I learned that she was a nurse for years.  She doesn’t speak much English, though she speaks more English than I do German.  I learned that she was athletic as a youngster and likes to sing, as I do.  And another neighbor is an opera singer.  I’ve been known to sing a few arias myself.

Having great neighbors is a huge plus.  I haven’t gotten to know the people in our neighborhood, but they’ve been tolerant and respectful of us.  And now that we’ve partied with them, I think the mood will be even better.  It will certainly be better than it was in Texas.  Every day in July, when I look at Facebook’s “On this day” feature, I am reminded of the hell that was July 2014, as we were planning to move to Germany and I was recovering from my dad’s death.  I must admit that it was absolutely worth it to move back here.

This was one of the beers our hosts offered us.  It was an excellent dark beer.  We’ll have to find it sometime.

Bill starts a new job today… well, it’s not a new job in that he’s working in the same office with the same people.  It’s just a new company.  So this week, he and his other colleagues who are joining the new company will be doing all of the administrative stuff that comes with starting a new job.  I will need a new ID card, which is always a pleasure…  NOT.  But at least I’ll get to see Bill during the day sometime this week.

As we were socializing last night, I was reminded of how glad I am we didn’t have to move this year. Germany is really feeling more and more like home, which is sad, since I know I will someday have to leave.  Oh well… for now, we will enjoy our good fortune.

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I think the neighbors are getting used to us…

Santa brought us nice neighbors for Christmas!

Two nights in a row, our German neighbors have lent us a helping hand.  On the night of the 23rd, our landlord/landlady dropped by with a bottle of wine for us as a Christmas present.  Normally, when someone rings our doorbell, I put the dogs in the downstairs half of our house.  Our house was intended to be two apartments, so it’s easy to keep one part closed off.  I answer the door and the dogs are kept out of the way.  Unfortunately, Bill neglected to secure our hounds, Zane and Arran, before he opened the door and they both got out.

I had already dressed for bed because I had taken a shower and figured I wasn’t going anywhere, nor was I expecting anyone.  But when Bill yelled at me that the dogs were on the loose, I got dressed again and went out to help catch Zane.  Arran, thank heavens, is very easy to corral.  Zane never goes far when he gets loose.  He always stays within our sight.  Getting loose is a game for him and he has a great time making us chase him.  Like most hounds, he has selective hearing and a mind of his own.  Sadly, he doesn’t realize that getting out of the house on his own could result in his death.

Zane ended up running to a neighbor’s yard, which has sort of a natural fence around it made of low shrubs. As we were trying to catch Zane, a different neighbor pulled up and helped us corral him.  She was a huge help!  Instead of us having to chase Zane for 45 minutes in the dark, it only took about 20 minutes to get him, thanks to our kind neighbor.  She introduced herself and pointed to where she lives.

Then last night, as we were eating dinner, the doorbell rang again.  This time, Bill closed the door to the downstairs so our dogs couldn’t escape.  It was another neighbor– this time, a man who lives down the street.  He introduced himself and alerted Bill to the inside light of our SUV.  It was still lit and he didn’t want us to have a dead battery!

Now… this may seem like common courtesy to a lot of people, but I’m here to tell you that when we lived in Texas, our neighbors weren’t nearly as nice to us.  When Zane got out of our yard on my birthday, I asked a neighbor who happened to be within reaching distance of Zane’s collar if he wouldn’t mind grabbing him so we could take him home.  That guy totally ignored me.  Fortunately, we were able to corral Zane because there was a tall fence there.  Zane got out because the pool guy came early that morning and forgot to shut the gate behind him.  It was lucky that I got suspicious so soon after I let him into the yard.  He might have easily been killed or gotten lost.

Another time in Texas, a neighbor came over to tell me that the garage door was up.  I was glad she did that, since I was alone in the house and it turned out that neighborhood wasn’t very safe (as evidenced by the blood spatter on our driveway by the lockbox while the house was being advertised for rent).  But that was the one time anyone showed much consideration.  Most of the time, they rang the bell to try to sell us something or proselytize.  Oh, and one guy tried to butter up Bill so we’d let his kid use the pool in the backyard.

When we lived in Germany last time, it took a lot longer before our neighbors got used to us.  We lived in a town near Tuebingen, so very few Americans were in that area.  I think we were the only ones who had ever lived in that village and, according to my former German neighbor, it wasn’t a particularly friendly neighborhood to start with, although I did very much enjoy living there.  It was months before anyone spoke to us, though they did watch us a lot through their windows.  We also got ding dong ditched quite often by local hoodlums.  We finally had to disconnect the doorbell.

Anyway, while I know we’ll always be Auslanders in these parts, it’s good to know we have nice neighbors.  I much prefer where we live now to where we were living a year ago.  And the couple that owns our home is so nice.  I never had an American landlord who brought me wine!

An added bonus… insane sunsets and sunrises easily viewed from our upstairs windows…

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rants

I can’t help being American…

A couple of days ago, I got into an interesting conversation with a couple of German women who married soldiers.  One of the women is 24 years old and very opinionated.  She was complaining about America and Americans.  Frankly, given where she lives, I’d probably complain too…   The area around Fort Bragg is not exactly the most picturesque place in the country.

Anyway, she and this other lady, who must live near Fort Carson out in Colorado, were bitching about our country.  They went on and on about how so many Americans never travel, are uneducated, uncultured, and generally inferior.  I interjected that many Americans don’t travel for any number of reasons.  It takes a lot of time, money, and frankly, effort, for Americans to travel.  A lot of Americans don’t own a passport because they take time, money, and effort to get.  And America is such a vast country that just about any climate or scenery you could ever want, you can find it without going abroad.

I am the last person to say that people shouldn’t travel.  I love to travel and will do it as long as I can afford airfare and fit in the airplane seat.  But… I can see why so many Americans don’t travel.  It’s a big hassle.  Just getting through security at the airport is a grueling and potentially humiliating exercise.  It’s expensive, uncomfortable, and then once you get to where you’re going, you run the risk of being treated badly by the locals, who may have anti-American attitudes.  Who wants to pay thousands of dollars for that?

The two women backpedaled when I wrote that I hoped they didn’t think all Americans were the way they were painting us.  They quickly excepted me from their generalizing!  I reminded them that if they really thought Americans ought to travel more, they should do their part by being welcoming and kind.  Yes, I understand that there are a lot of “ugly Americans” who make no effort to understand the local mores or be culturally sensitive.  But assuming that all Americans are like that is not the answer.

Honestly, I think a lot of people like to insult America and its citizens, but few of them ever take the time to look at things from the other perspective.  I know that every time I’ve gone abroad, except for when we moved to England (because I was a toddler at the time), it was beaten in my head to be culturally sensitive.  “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”, right?  But rarely do I see that same attitude being practiced among people who come to the United States from abroad.

My German friends were complaining about how in America, they have fewer personal freedoms than they do in Germany.  I thought that was an interesting comment, since when I was in Germany, I noticed a lot of rules and regulations.  They were reasonable rules, but there were a lot of them.  For example, it’s forbidden to own Nazi era paraphernalia, especially if you mean to promote war or hatred.  My neighbor wanted to add on to her parents’ house, but the local government denied her and her husband the right to do so.  If you get pulled over by a police officer who suspects you of driving drunk, your blood will be tested.  You can’t opt out, like you could in America.  If you are found guilty of driving drunk, you will lose your license and you will have a hell of a hard time getting it back.  For more on this, check out this article.

If you do something unorthodox, on the whole, Germans are quick to speak up about it.  Yes, America has its share of freedom erosion, but I don’t know that it’s any worse or better than other places.  And I don’t know that Germany is “free-er” than the USA is.  I think we have freedoms the Germans don’t have… and Germans have freedoms that we don’t have.  Whether one is more free than the other is depends on your perspective.

I think what may be going on with these women is what happens to a lot of people when they move far away from home.  After the cultural high, there’s sort of a depression, which happens when you start to miss home and being with people who are like you are.  It happened to me in Armenia and Germany.  It didn’t happen when I was in England because I was too young to know the difference.  For all I knew, England was home… and frankly, it could have been had my ancestors not moved to the USA.

I refuse to apologize for being American.  I am American because I was born here and my parents were born here… and their parents were born here.  People in our ancestry made the decision to come to America for whatever reason.  Otherwise, I’d be European like they are.

Anyway… those are my thoughts.  I can’t help being an American.  It doesn’t make me an inferior or bad person.  Moreover, we’re not all assholes.  Pass it on!

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