home here and there

Lost in translation

I still do a double take when I hear the phrase “Talk to you soon”. It really confused me quite a bit when I first moved to the US because sometimes, I would not talk to that person again for a week or even longer! It took me not too long to realize that it is just a way to end a conversation and does not necessarily implicate the plan to actually talk soon – it may happen, or it may not. Also confusing was the friendly “Hello, how are you?” when entering a store. I never knew how to reply to that and always felt awkward. Now I know that in those cases it’s just a form of greeting and it’s completely ok to just reply “Good” (even if that is not really the case).

I knew English from taking it in school for eight years before moving to the US. Coming here though took my understanding (or not understanding) to a whole new level. And I did not understand quite a bit – everyone was talking so fast and not everyone learned the same English I learned in school (I was convinced of that). The absolute highlight was when I was finally able to turn the subtitles on the TV off. Now I can hardly believe that was ever necessary. But it did prove the point that you need to use a language to become good at it. Maybe some people don’t need that but I certainly do.

Sometimes I still feel like some things are lost in translation and there may be certain nuances that I don’t catch. I am afraid that happens in both languages these days. After 17 years in the US my German is still ok (and I am happy to report my friends in Germany are still surprised when I talk without an American accent) but using it almost the whole day (except at home) sometimes the English word comes faster than the German one. This still happens the other way around, too. My husband is German as well and we speak it at home with each other and the kids, but we developed our own little Germanglish vocabulary what is kind of fun (even though I sometimes forget that it’s a made-up word and my German and/or American friends look at me confused).

Explaining something at work comes more natural in English for sure. From every once in a while we will have a German student in the lab but when I try to explain an experiment to them I always switch to English.

I am sorry to report I still have my German accent and mispronounce a word here and there to the amusement of my kids. I think I am one of those people who always will. But that’s ok. Living in the Bay Area and working at a university it does not really stick out that much as it is a very international crowd in general.

I was a little worried when the kids started school that they would have a hard time with English since we were speaking German at home and at least my daughter did not know much English at first since her preschool was in Japanese. I am happy to report they are doing just fine. It actually requires way more effort to keep up their German over time.

Have you learned another language in school, and did you get to use it at some point? Maybe on vacation or an extended stay in another country?

Where I am from

Since I have not written in long time, I thought I start from the beginning. You probably already know that I am originally from Germany. I grew up in a very small town (when I was born it just had shy of 2300 inhabitants) called Wietzen in Lower Saxony.

It has:

a church that goes back to the 12^th century
a preschool (I think by now it has two) where I went to for one year from ~9am till lunchtime
an elementary school I went to
a small museum that looks at life how it used to be run by volunteers (my dad being one of them)
a cemetery that I visit each time I am there to say hi to my mom and my grandparents
a swimming pool where I used to spend my summers
a gym that is part of the school where also different clubs run programs (when I was little there was gymnastics, soccer, handball, judo, table tennis and jui-jutsu if I remember correctly)
a soccer field and tennis courts (the tennis courts came later though)
a fire station that is also run by volunteers
a grocery store
it used to have a bakery separate from the grocery store where we could get rolls fresh from the oven before getting on the bus to the upper schools, but that is closed now

When I finished school, I moved to Hanover for my education but still came back almost every weekend to spend time with my family and friends. I even moved to the next small town over for a brief time but just could not stomach the commute (taking the train to Hanover at 6am in the morning was something I never got used to). The visits became less frequent but every holiday and birthday I would be back. Since we moved to California I still visit every year because I love my family and dearly miss them and because I want my kids to know their relatives. It’s always going to be part of me no matter what. Would I move back? Likely not. Most of my friends moved to other parts of the country including my siblings so when we go back we spend some time in Wietzen but also elsewhere. It really bugs me that you need a car living there (well, I do need a car where we live now for certain things but if I tried hard, I could manage without). I like the idea of country life more then the reality of it. Also, I would always need to go to work in the next bigger city what would be Hanover or Bremen there and it would involve at least an hour of commute each way – too long for my taste and I tried that before. I work in research and I love that kind of work. That also means either biotech companies or a University. Not that we have currently any plans to move back.

It does have a couple of other things, too, but it’s a pretty small town and mostly everyone knows everyone. I spend a lot of time with the youth program from the church growing up (I am not part of any church anymore now, but that is a different story) and I had a lot of fun during that time. My grandparents from my dad’s side lived with us and we had a big garden with apple and plum trees. I still remember harvesting potatoes, strawberries, currants, beans, peas and all kinds of other veggies and fruits and watching (and sometimes helping) my grandma and mom making jams and canning. There are two huge oak trees in front of the house. The leaves in the fall are still driving my dad crazy but we loved collecting the acorns and doing craft projects with them. When I was little there were two houses in our street and the street was still paved with bricks instead of smooth. It made for a painful experience learning how to bike and roller skate, but we did it anyway with pleasure. We spend our early years roaming the town and the garden with the neighborhood kids. Sounds idyllic, right? And looking back it really was. I still sometimes get asked by friends of my dad’s, when we are moving back. We likely never will.

Fun fact: the distance from my hometown in a straight line is 5530.14 miles or 8899.90 kilometers.

What about you? Do you live close to where you grew up or would you move back given the chance?

NaBloPoMo here we go

November is here and its National Block Posting Month (short: NaBloPoMo). This means 30 posts and 30 days and I have been going back and forth if I should give it a try. I came across it again through San and her blog ‘the in between is mine‘. She wrote about the history behind it on her blog post today so go check it out if you want to know more. Or even give it a try yourself?

To be honest, I am a little scared. I love the idea of writing a blog. When it comes to pulling through though and posting with consistency I fail. Same is true for writing letters these days or longer e-mails or keeping a diary. There never seems to be enough time in the day and if you are putting it out there in the world, I feel the pressure of making it meaningful.

When I was in school (so many years ago now – sigh), I really loved writing. I spend hours writing long letters to my friends. I even had a book with my best friend that we passed back and forth writing down what happened in our day when we started going to different schools. Was that interesting to anyone other than ourselves? Likely not, but at least I had a lot of fun doing it and it gave me some peace of mind putting words down on paper. Maybe this trying to post something every day will not give me peace of mind again but hopefully give me back a little of the joy of putting things down on paper (or the screen in this case).

If you are joining in what is your motivation? What does it mean to you writing a blog?

New year, new plans

This blog has been dormant for the last years. There was a lot going on and there were to many words in my head and I just did not get them organized. I don’t really want to explain right now and just start over (nothing bad, just busy life).

One thing I want to do more this year is read. I started out posting the books I read on my Instagram account but thought it would be nice to write up a short summary here. Just to be clear: no New Year’s resolution but just trying. No pressure please. Especially not right now, right?

One book I just finished is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It was one of the books I turned over at the book store a couple of times and then got it as a Christmas present from a friend. I am glad I did!
At the beginning the actor Arthur Leander suffers a heart attack onstage and dies. From there it moves quickly into the beginning of a flu pandemic that wipes out most of the population and ends civilization as we know it. This sounds way more dramatic than it really is in the book. 20 years later Kirsten Raymonde, who played in Leander’s last production as a little girl, travels with a group of actors and musicians from settlements to settlement and performs Shakespeare and music to its inhabitants. The book jumps back and forth in time between the after and the life of Arthur Leander and the people in it. Throughout the story it becomes clear that the characters are interconnected, sometimes in surprising ways. Reading about the end of the life as we know it in normal times can be a little disturbing and it made me uneasy in stretches because of our own ongoing pandemic. In the end though the pandemic in the book is not the main storyline but just the backdrop to some of the people we come across in. Yes, it talks about how life changed through the pandemic but also about how people cope (or not) and it felt oddly “normal” if that makes any sense. I really enjoyed it. Maybe you will, too? If you already read it, what did you think?

When to visit Germany?

Northsea — A North Sea beach at Cuxhaven (nice in summer and winter)

Friends of mine were asking me the other day, when would be the best time to visit Germany. I have not written anything for almost two years now but I thought it might come in handy if I wrote something about it down.

So, when is it a good time to visit Germany? I would say it depends what you want to do and if you have to stick to the school schedule.

We usually go in the summer since the kids are free for longer than two weeks (and we would have to organize camp otherwise), the cousins are off school, too, the days are longer and you can actually go outside without getting wet or cold (at least if you are lucky enough to catch a summery summer). We also went last winter for the holidays because we did not go in some time. Certainly long enough to make me forget how miserable winters can be. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with the family especially during the holidays (that’s why we went after all) and the Christmas markets and winter as an idea (curling up on the couch with a good book, candles and a hot tea, a fire in the oven – what else is there to do if it gets dark at ~4pm), but the weather usually really sucks. In our three weeks the sun came out on three days! Since the days are so short the jet lag seems even more painful. We are also not talking snow either but wet and cloudy. It sure reminded me how spoiled we are in the Bay Area where the weather almost always is good enough to go for a bike ride, hike or just out to play. I guess you can already tell I prefer going in the summer. But since we almost always go to hang out with family our situation is a little different. So, I am trying to be a little more objective:

Go in the spring or fall:

if you you want cheaper airfare (especially June – August and mid December- early January airfare can get steep)
good weather with less crowds (April, May, September and October) – attractions can get busy during the summer month when schools are out in Germany and booking might be easier as well since Germans tend to plan far in advance

For families with kids in school this might not be an option.

If you go in the summer:

weather is mostly nice
days are long
you can go to the pool and relax (no shouting at your kids because they are running, no serious checking on height restrictions on slides – just be responsible yourself)
go to the beach
enjoy nature, go for a hike or a walk or a bike ride
go to the beer garden
get an ice cream in a cafe
take a boat tour
walk the streets in old towns
everything is green

If you go in the winter:

days are short
go to museums
go for the food
go for the Christmas markets – some markets, especially in bigger cities, now stay open until after Christmas or even until New Year but some smaller ones (which can be really nice) happen before the school break starts
go for the snow (if you are lucky, more likely in southern Germany)
keep in mind that some attractions might close around the holidays (Christmas and New Year)

I am not saying that winters are always rainy but it is colder. I am also not saying summers are always great – we had some quite rainy summer vacations, but then you still can do all the things you can do during winter (except the Christmas markets). You might want to visit for Oktoberfest in Munich or the Carnival (about Carnival on Wikipedia). In the end you have to decide what works best for you.

I am curious: what would you want to see when visiting Germany?

Countdown to Halloween

pumpkins

Since September the kids keep asking me how much longer it takes until it is Halloween. But now pumpkin patch season is definitely here and the countdown is going. The visit to the pumpkin patch by now belongs to our getting-ready-for-Halloween tradition I would say. The last two years we went to a really nice one in Suisun City, California. A train from the Western Railway Museum will take you out to a pumpkin patch organized by the local Rotary Club. They have a hay stack with labyrinth, hay rides, games, pumpkin catapults, face painting, music and food among other things. The kids love it and we were planning to go again this weekend but now it looks like rain. It’s a real bummer but maybe the weather forecast will be wrong after all?

pumpkinpatch

We already went to one pumpkin patch two weeks ago, so we won’t go without this year even if the rain keeps going. The Petaluma pumpkin patch has a corn maze and everyone was excited to make it through. They also had a big pumpkin field where you can pick your own pumpkins and a corn box for the kids to play with (they liked that part the best). It definitely was a lot of fun. I took so many pictures of sunflowers that day and feel like fall season is upon us.

maze I am not really sure how it is now but when we left Germany Halloween was not a very big deal there. Sure there were pumpkins and fall stuff but not related to Halloween but more to the harvest celebrations. By the way, how is that now? I seem to pick up more and more Jack-o-lantern pictures in my social media feed over the last couple of years. I am still not sure about the whole Halloween dressing up thing. Dressing up always makes me uncomfortable but I prefer Halloween to carnival (coming from someone who only wore black for a while in her youth). We still have two weeks left to decide what to do on the day and how to dress up. How about you? Do you carve a pumpkin or dress up for the day?

sunflowers

Save

Weekend escape – something blue

indigo

I think it is an excellent idea to have a weekend escape from every ones in a while it may it be oh so small. It helps me see what a great place the world around me is and makes me appreciate the possibilities that are out there in our neighborhood close and far.

Last weekend me and my daughter went to do an Indigo dye class at the Handcraft Studio School. It was such a treat to have some one on one time with her and make something beautiful along the way. I was thinking about trying it out for a while but was glad to not have the clean up at home. I might give it another go though. Maybe make some holiday gifts with the kids? We will see if that happens.

Commute decisions

This picture pretty much is one of the reasons why I decided at the beginning of the year to commute by public transport and bike instead of taking the car. This construction site used to be the parking lot I frequented most but UC Berkeley decided to build yet another new building (and of course did not provide additional parking options that were in a reasonable distance). If I need to walk 20 minutes to get from parking to work after driving to work for 20 minutes I might as well take the bike (or BART) for 30 minutes. And I am doing something good for me and the environment along the way! The University actually has some incentives for people who want to switch to public transport like discounted ticket prices for BART and the bus system (AC transit). You can also sign up for a program that guaranties you a free ride home in an emergency by taxi or rental car (Guaranteed Ride Home). Since I have school aged kids that sometimes need to be picked up short notice I thought this was pretty clever. Luckily I did not have to use it yet.
It has all been really good actually. I already rode a little over 1000 miles by bike this year. One of the stereotypes that always comes up when talking about the US is certainly not true in the Bay Area: Everyone takes the car everywhere and nobody walks or takes their bikes. So not true! If you drive somewhere on the weekends in the hills around here you always have to watch out for bikes and the cities are pretty walk-able. Public transport might not quite compare with German standards but you can’t have everything. A couple of years ago there were so many people using the BART system that they actually were discussing to raise the ticket prices so less people were going to use it. What a ridiculous idea to maybe have more trains running.
How do you get to work or around in the US, Europe or other places?

Listen to this

Hoerspiele

When our kids go to bed they get to pick one CD from their extensive German radio play collection to listen to while falling asleep I actually had to look up what they would be called and I am not sure I picked the right word. Is it radio play or audio drama or..? Maybe someone can help me out on this one?

I have not come across them in the US really. Sure, there are very good recordings of audio books for kids (and they do like them) but my personal opinion is that it is so much more fun to listen to the story when the different characters are spoken by different actors and you get sound effects and background noises.

Audio dramas were very popular in Germany when I was growing up and as far as I can tell they still are. They were in fact so popular that the actors of one specific recording (“Die drei ???” or “Three Investigators” as is the original American title) toured theaters around the country to read life performances. It puzzles me why the audio plays are more and especially popular in Germany. If anyone has an idea I would be more than happy to hear.

In the meantime I am happy that my kids like to listen to them and I sometimes find them quietly sitting in their room relaxing or playing while doing so.

Back again

Countryside It really was wishful thinking that I would have more time during the summer. We are already back in the US for three weeks now and the kids both started school on Monday. The four weeks in Germany flew by. We spend good times with family and old friends. After being disappointed at the time I made piece with the fact that I could not see everyone I wanted to see but am glad for the people in my life I got to visit. Germany still and probably always will feel like coming home. Life in general seems to be quieter and simpler, but that might only be because we are usually on vacation there.

There was a lot of driving back and forth – from the North to the middle, to the South, to Switzerland, to the middle and then back to the North. We saw a lot, enjoyed good food and great company and packed up memories that will last for a while.

But I also have to say that after four weeks I was starting to look forward to coming back. Not having to pack up suitcases for three all the time and having my own bed and a day to day routine seemed very appealing and it is in some way.