Traveling in Germany

We are traveling again. I took the girls for a short visit to Germany. C stayed home and is fighting hard with our landlord to get the house clear for us to move in next weekend.  Which won’t happen because after all, this is Spain.

But back to Germany. It is nice to see family again, and for them to meet S for the first time. Overall, we are having a good time. L is very happy to be with her grandparents. She speaks German all the time now, and is understandable most of the time. It’s fascinating how easy that works after only 3 weeks, for someone who can’t even read and write yet. After a week of being almost exclusively with adults she is getting a little bored but she is still having fun. There are bad days too, when I feel overwhelmed. I try to focus on the good things in life. I am so thankful that I can be here with the girls. That these little girls are my beautiful girls. That L speaks German again and, most important, is not ashamed of her German mom anymore. That we are all healthy. I am happy for a good friend of mine from the old days who opened her store where she sells her designer clothes and seems to be very happy with it.

It is interesting to be back again. I try to observe without judgment. I spoke about bad customer service in an earlier post and I clearly jinxed it. My mom had the brilliant idea to take our family for lunch to the little restaurant close to our house on Easter Sunday.  She did everything right. She called in advance, weeks in advance I believe. She made a reservation since we were a party of six with two small children. She gave my aunt the wrong time, told her to be there half an hour before our reservation since my aunt and uncle are always late, and this way they would arrive on time. (They were late to my wedding, so imagine how little importance an Easter lunch must have.) What my mom could not foresee was the tons of people that would fill that tiny little restaurant for Easter lunch. It was crowded! And the chef was overwhelmed. I think they physically didn’t have enough space in their kitchen to prepare all the food that people were ordering. We ended up waiting for our lunch for TWO hours! Yes, two hours. I have never spent so much time in a restaurant without consuming anything. How silly is that?  I guess it could happen that too many people ordered at once. The owners are new and they are still learning. You would think though, that they could bring out some snacks and beverages to entertain their hungry customers. Or maybe at least some snacks for the kids? Big disappointment. At least the bottle of wine we got drunk on (while waiting for our food) was on the house.

Being back to Germany feels weird. It feels all so real. We won’t be going back to the land of the freedom, to feel free again. We are stuck here in Europe. Not in Germany, but pretty close to it. I remember coming here for visits and feeling that I couldn’t breathe, that this was too tight and too little for me, and feeling homesick for Seattle. I am confused, there is no real home for me right now. This trip puts it in perspective though. If I ever complained about how things work in Spain, I have to say I much prefer living in Spain over living in Eastern Germany. People here seem to complain all the time. People in Spain complain as well, at least the ones I know, but they also enjoy life and being with family or friends, they enjoy good food and little things. People here don’t seem to have a lot to enjoy, at least that’s what it seems like when you talk to them. I haven’t talked to lots of people, traveling alone with two little kids confines me to the house a lot, and makes me dependent on my parents’ help. So my first assessment is probably not very objective. My parents also make me feel as if we were a burden, so that doesn’t help a lot. On top of it, the area where my parents live is very poor and there is a high rate of unemployment. Not a good place to be happy. I just found this fun website listing 20 things to keep in mind when visiting Germany. They nailed it with those words: “It’s not pessimism when you know that everything is bad.”

Little details here feel weird, like going for walks all the time and spending days without taking the car. (Too bad our stroller broke before coming here and I have to carry S in the carrier all the time.) Or seeing so many people on the street. Or waiting in a restaurant for two hours. Or being stuck in traffic on the Autobahn, without moving at all for ½ hour. And then moving again and seeing cars flying by on the outer left lane. Or not seeing smiles on people’s faces, not even if they are trying to sell me something. (Same website: Wal-Mart spent billions to become a big shot in Germany’s retail market in the 90s. The started the whole thing – greeting customers, smiling, being friendly. In 2006 they sold their stores and left. Germans are not good at smiling for no reason.) Or being in my grandma’s garden plot and seeing all neighbors working on their plots or sitting in front of their little houses in the sun.

But some things feel really good. I spent some time with good friends yesterday and even managed to not have my mom present. She normally can’t let go when we are here. And today we went to see my uncle in Weimar. I insisted on having a Döner. My mom once got sick from eating Döner and now hates them, which means no one else is allowed to want them. It was delicious. And I started feeling a little bit homesick for Barcelona, which feels good. Can’t wait to go back and settle down for our new life!

Customer service?

Imagine you moved to a new country and needed to open a bank account where to send your paycheck and where to do all your financials. You wanted to play it smart and called the bank in advance to make sure it was going to be open. Since you move around with two little kids in tow you really don’t want to waste a trip to the bank. Also, finding parking and eventually parking your car in a tiny spot wasn’t that easy either. Well, imagine you walked into the bank 45 minutes before closing and the teller looked at you as if you were really bothering her. Imagine she opened her mouth and confirmed that feeling, telling you that everybody was in meetings right now and that she really didn’t know how to open an account. Imagine she just told you to come back another day. Imagine how unfair that would feel, and how you would start telling her how you had called in advance and that the bank was supposed to be open. Imagine she then told you, well, yes the bank was open but no one was here to attend clients, and that yes, maybe wait but that it could be a really long wait. It could be that the bank would close before that meeting was over. Imagine she wasn’t even feeling sorry at all, and that you started apologizing for the inconvenience you were causing her. Imagine you knew already that you wouldn’t win that battle, that you would leave that bank without opening a bank account. Don’t you think you would still want to argue with her? So that she just says she was sorry?

I have a feeling this is not going to be the last time that I will have to leave a bank or store and tell them that I wasn’t interested in their business anymore. I know most people here couldn’t care less, but it really helps me blow some steam and save my face. Really. And I really had a hard time to not lose it! What is wrong with people here, have they never heard those magic two words? And how can they not care if they get our business or not?

Spanish schedule

I have a hard time getting used to Spanish schedules. I don’t even know if there is such a thing, if there is a “typical time schedule” in a Spanish household. We go to the park on a Saturday morning around 11am and there are lots of other parents, running errands and spending some time with their kids at the playground. We do that same thing on a Sunday morning at 11am and there is nobody on the streets. However, two hours later they are all out, strolling around and having coffee and some snacks at the bar, at 1pm. We get invited to my in-laws house for Sunday lunch for 2:30pm. We call for a doctor’s appointment for our 5 year old daughter and get one for Friday night at 6pm. Who takes their kids to the doctor’s at 6pm? That tantrum we got did not surprise me at all.

I am confused. And I am tired. Since the German school starts at 8:45am and we have quite a long commute these days, we need to get up early. That means we need to go to bed early. Which means that we are following the American schedule we are used to. At least for the first half of the day. We fail on most days when it comes to early bedtime, though.

Weekdays are different from weekends. Weekdays are a bit easier since we won’t do that much after school. But we still have to run errands. Most places close over lunch time so afternoon errands don’t start before 4pm.  Streets are busy and noisy until late. Days getting longer really doesn’t help either.  L keeps asking me (usually around 8pm) if it was still morning and if she could still play, and why did we not go to the beach but had dinner instead? 

Weekends are even harder when it comes to planning. We usually have breakfast at some point between 8 and 9am. That means that we are hungry again around 1pm. So when we are invited to my mother-in-law for lunch, we eat around 1pm because we are starving. Then we go to her house and have another lunch between 3:30 and 5:30pm. That feels more like dinner for me, but of course, we are not that hungry at that point since it is kind of early for dinner. After lunch, we relax and are never able to leave her house before 7pm. That means we get to have dinner around 9pm and L goes to bed around 9:30pm. If that falls on a Sunday, getting up next day for school at 6:30am is hard.

It all gets easier if we have snack mid morning, which would be around noon. We meet with friends at the park at 11am and then go to the bar at noon, to have “tapas,” little tasty snacks. In that case we might survive till lunch time, but it still doesn’t fix that long afternoon.

But even during the week, people seem to have very long days. We wanted to visit some friends and they are not home until 5:30pm.  So we went to their house at 6pm and left again at 7:30pm. Got home at 8pm and still had not had dinner. That feels too weird. And to think that most people here are not even home from work that early feels weird too. Most people work until 7 or even 8pm. But children don’t seem to follow that schedule. They still go to bed between 8 and 9pm, so most working dads don’t even see their kids during weekdays. And I don't know how working mom is supposed to manage it.

I kind of hope we will be able to follow our American schedule for a long time.

Still house hunting

We went back to look at the house. Walking through the rooms in the upper floor, I opened a little balcony and stepped outside. I looked at the street and the adjacent properties. They all seemed quite deserted, but that was on a Thursday morning, so people could have just been at work. The property right in front was clearly empty, though. There was an old house, and a guy was walking with clutches from the house to the gate. Three pit bulls were running around him. The guy disappeared and didn’t come out again, but the pit bulls and that weird feeling stayed. We also realized that the noise from the freeway was too loud. What freaked us out most was how fast the landlord had accepted our offer and was offering to fix anything in the house that we didn’t like. They were clearly desperate.

So we backed off and asked for time to think this through. We came back next day to walk around the neighborhood and look at other houses. The pit bulls were still running around. There was a glass on the property’s wall, one of those where they serve drinks in Spanish bars which probably means there are bars close by. Nothing against bars but people in Spain do know how to party and most bars here close at hours when we are almost getting up again, so that could mean very noisy nights for us. Well, and next to the freeway, there was a hooker waiting for clients. I have a feeling we should not move into that house!

We saw three other houses on Friday. We are slowly getting more comfortable with the thought of being in a townhouse, surrounded by neighbors. One of the houses we really like was one street away from the beach, and at that corner with the beach, there was a bar called “Kauai” like the Hawaiian island. That’s gotta be a sign, right?

German lessons

L was playing hide and seek with one of her stuffed animals this morning, and was calling it “Doggy, where are du?” When she realized she was mixing up languages, she corrected herself: “Doggy, where bist du?”
L had her first day at the German school on Friday and she loved it. Of course, there were some tears when I dropped her off in the morning, but her teacher is one sweet German lady that just picked her up and hugged her. When I went to pick her up at 1pm, L had a huge smile on her face; she was so proud and happy. Her teacher was walking her to the door, looking out for me and showing her around. Apparently, she had made friends already on her first day. Well, and one of the kids in her class has a mom from Jamaica and is fluent in English. What are the odds? And what a relief it is! Who would have thought that we plan our life so much around our kids? This morning she got up and asked if we would go to school. When I answered that we wouldn’t she was disappointed. That’s good.

Unfortunately, since we haven’t followed conventional vaccination schedules, we needed a doctor’s certificate saying L is in good health. The only appointment we could get was on Friday, her first school day, on 6pm! Really, who makes doctor’s appointments with kids at 6pm? Spanish schedules throw me off balance, I am completely lost at times, but that is a whole other post…

Needless to say that L freaked out when we told her. But none of us was prepared for what was really coming. I have to mention that for L, this was the second time in her whole life to see a conventional doctor. We have always worked with naturopaths, and they clearly follow other guidelines. Let’s just say that doctor will never forgot our visit with L. She screamed so much that I thought he would throw us out. And I have to say she was right in getting so upset, there was not much dignity in the way he was treating her. But I have no point of reference since we never saw a conventional doctor in the US. I’m glad we got the paper we needed. L is perfectly healthy and strong willed, and that we knew already. I regret not having done my homework because we now know there are naturopaths here in Barcelona, and other doctors in alternative medicine. I guess we didn't think it would be that extreme.

On another note, S was sitting on the bed this morning while we were both trying to wake up. L was jumping around us. The baby was getting tired of being there, so started to lean forward and tried to reach a toy, when she fell on her face and was not able to get up. She started complaining and said “mama.”

C said it was accidental. Of course, it wasn’t. She just said her first word.

School? Check. House? Check. Now, could someone in the US please send me some yummy Thai food?

L got admitted to German school.  We went for a personal meeting with the kindergarden principal and I think she liked us. There was no space available in L's age group, so it would have been easy for her to reject L. But she moved things around and made it possible.  It definitely took her some time to relax. She would at first insist that L would come for some days, to see how her German was. While we were discussing pros and cons of that approach, L told me, in German, that she wanted to draw something. So the principal gave her some colors and relaxed.

We both loved the school. It felt like being in Germany. And I think L liked it because there were lots of other kids that looked like her. We also love the concept. I don't know a lot about Spanish schools, but C seems to be a bit traumatized. The schedule alone seems dramatic to me, Spanish kids go to school from 9am to 5pm which just seems so long.  Especially since they all start school at 3 years. It is too long at least for L right now. German school is different, she will have class from 8.45 to 1pm, and after that lunch.  And we will pick her up around 2pm. Also, it seems less academic but more about free play and learning while playing.  We like that, it could be a good alternative to Waldorf school.

School starts in two days. We are so ready! Poor L is so bored! We need to buy a backpack and then survive those first days...

It seems we also found a house to stay. We will be in Castelldefels, very close to the beach but also close to the freeway which is convenient for taking L to school. After looking at pretty much every house on the market right now, we were both quite disappointed and frustrated.  Most houses are very small compared to our standards from the US. This one is old, so quite spacious, and with new bath rooms and new kitchen. We both liked the energy. Old houses have so much more character anyways! We will have our own swimming pool, so I know for sure L will love it. Even though she fell in love with that pink house we saw last week...

I have bad cravings for Thai food. Who would have thought. I even made some summer rolls last week and they turned out quite yummy. I will need to get faster at it, can't really spend 1 1/2 hours for cooking my special food these days!  Also, the peanut sauce needed some perfection. Asian restaurants are definitely a no-no here. We went to a Japanese place in Castelldefels, and it was not good! But I guess that when they offer dessert and coffee at a Japanese place, it can't be that authentic. We went to a place called "Nou Wok" in Mataró and it was interesting. They fry fresh seafood, a la catalana, with salt and oil only. C was in heaven but I realized I enjoy cooked seafood more. Also, their Pad Thai wasn't vegetarian. Well, and sushi with tortilla or bananas or ham in it is just not good for me! I will have to get used to certain things. I guess if I wasn't trying to eat vegan, it would be much easier. I miss having some sophisticated options at restaurant. Not that lots of US restaurants would have vegan meals for me but there were lots of Asian restaurants with vegan options.Thai Gardens in Barcelona is supposed to be really good, I will have to try it out, it's just not convenient to have to go to downtown Barcelona to get some quick Thai fix!

L discovered that we have peanut butter and that was all she was eating today, all day long, peanut butter on rice cakes. I guess we all have our comfort food.

Carrefour Experience

I still don't like meat but found this picture quite impressive.

We went shopping at Carrefour. We used to shop there before moving to the states and back then, people would say “how American, the way you shop.” It sounds silly now. People here don’t shop at the mall, but they go to tiny stores and the farmers’ market in their neighborhood.

We parked in front of the mall. Parking lots here are tiny. Lucky for us we have a tiny car! I am still amazed at people’s parking skills. Hoping I will get there soon.

We walked into the store and looked in amazement at a wall full of scanner pistols. Called Scan & Go. We applied for a membership card and then were eligible for a scanner pistol. L loved it! With that pistol, you scan all the products while putting them into the bags in your cart. And that was what she was doing, I am convinced we ended up buying much more than we needed or at least paying for more than we had in our cart just because L had so much fun pointing and shooting at all the products. She was in charge! After our shopping was done, we just passed through a special cashier’s stand without having to unload our whole cart again. One of the employees came to scan some random items in our cart to confirm we didn’t forget anything, and then we paid and were good to go.

Of course, we did not have bags with us, like everybody else, but were expecting people to bag our stuff at the check-out. It will take some adjustment….  But, no, there are no free bags, but you can buy reusable bags. Which is usually a good thing, but of course, we will have to get used to that too and not forgot our bags home every time we go to the store!

We definitely had fun pushing around those carts that go into all directions. After we found someone with coins to give us change to pay for it in the parking lot!  Unfortunately not all of the carts here have child seats on it, ours didn’t so we didn’t have much time for shopping.  Another fun thing was to see how employees here react when you ask them for a certain product. I know, we are spoiled, at Whole Foods they would take your hand and take you to the right aisle.  Not so here. Most employees would answer that they didn’t know since the store was building a new section and moving things around constantly.  Still, employees were nice.  They could not help out but would start asking around and help you search.

Another amazing thing is the amount of MSG or other stabilizer or taste enhancer they put into food here. You really have to read all ingredients. It felt like shopping at Safeway in Hilo for the first time, before finding out about their organic products. 

We ended up buying way too much food, but of course, we really need to try it all! Lots of emotional and compulsive buying.  Overall, shopping during the week is quite relaxing.  Of course, when we came back on Saturday afternoon, the place was crowded! We had forgotten about stores being closed here in Sundays, and since people work a lot during the week, they have to go on Saturdays. 
How lovely that they have Cannabis beer, and it was even organic.  Found some tropical fruit, slightly overpriced. I got one Cherimoya for 3 Euros and a mango for about the same price. Then we got the second mango for free because we made the employee smile!  That is, in small format, how things here in Spain work. Once you develop personal relationships, it all becomes so much easier and convenient!