I've Moved!

New blog: www.fromthedeskofkatejones.blogspot.com 

Hope to see you there! 

Withdrawal

You know you're going through Kandern withdrawal when...

...you find yourself perusing the Facebook Flomärkte, just for fun.

...you are beyond overwhelmed by the grocery store's massive size and amount of options, and are appalled at the high price of fancy cheeses.

...whenever you get in the car, you put your left foot on the brake, and you feel insecure if your hand isn't on the gear shifter.

The day I learned to drive stick shift

...you perk up whenever you hear someone speaking in English nearby, resulting in awkward interactions when they catch you eavesdropping.

...the foods you missed in America don't taste as good as you remembered, and you find yourself longing for some fresh, crusty German bread.

Chipotle wasn't quite as good as I remembered

...you can't remember small cultural rules like if you're supposed to smile and say hi to people on the streets or not.

...you find it hard to concentrate in stores because the music is so loud.

...and speaking of music, you seem to have missed all the recent hits that everyone is singing and dancing to at weddings.

...you scoff when someone tries to tell you about an "old" building...from the 1800s.

...you feel an intense moral dilemma when you throw away a piece of trash, and a deep sense of shame seems to follow tossing a teeny bit of plastic in the trash, instead of recycling.

Our monthly trash allotment in Germany

On the other hand...

...you are stunned by how easy it is to go to the store and leave with the product you are looking for.

...a phone call with a customer service representative becomes delightful without the frequent pauses due to typing into Google translate.

...life generally seems to take less energy than it did oversees.

...you find yourself enjoying all the SPACE -- wide roads, big yards, space between houses.

Even some of the doors were tiny in Germany!

...you don't miss having to calculate the time difference between you and your loved ones every time you try to call.

...the long wait to see family and friends makes reconnecting all the sweeter.

If you've ever spent time oversees, can you relate? Fellow BFAers, tell me I'm not the only one in the states going through withdrawal! What's missing from my list?

Bittner's Bakery

It was a simple request. "A box of Triscuits for Nannie." But what an upheaval of emotions it created inside of me. Even before I moved to Germany, I wasn't good at finding crackers. You'd think they'd be near the chips, or perhaps cereal, but they always seem to be hidden, in an obscure middle aisle, expiration dates slipping by since no one can ever find them. But how could I refuse, on my grandparent's 60th wedding anniverary, to buy them a box of crackers?

I started making my way through the store that felt bigger than King Ludvig's castle. I nearly teared up when I spotted school-boy cookies that were a favorite of mine in Germany. The card aisle was a bright spot because the world of greeting cards was opened for me once again, in a language I could read. But I don't even like greeting cards. The despair settled in as I found myself in the "bakery." I say bakery, only because that's what they called it. A case full of doughnuts and some rubbery looking croissants doesn't really cut it. I perused the bread options with dismay- pre-sliced loaves nearly suffocating in their plastic wrappings. I discovered my mother in the deli and in my dismay I told her I couldn't find the crackers. She sent me to the car to recover while she and my cousins finished the shopping.

It felt kind of like that Garth Brooks song, "Wish I didn't know now (what I didn't know then)." For a moment, I wished I'd never sunk my teeth into a warm, buttery croissant, never tasted the delights of a sandwich made with a salty pretzel roll, and never known the smell of fresh rosemary bread, drizzled in melty butter. Was it worth the pain, the withdrawal, knowing I might never taste them again?! My cousins soon joined me in the car, pulling me back to reality and out of my misery. Unbelievably, they'd found the requested Triscuits.

We had one more stop to make before returning to the lake house where the rest of the family was gathered to celebrate Nannie and Granddad's anniversary. We needed to pick up the cake. I was too depressed to recognize that this errand might be the redemption of my first trying trip to the American grocery store. We pulled up to Bittner's Bakery and were immediately greeted by a heavenly smell. The smell of hope. My spirits rose as the little bell clanged with the opening of the door and we were greeted by rosie-faced Ruby who welcomed us to Bittner's. At once, I felt at ease, amongst the glass cases displaying braided breads and fruit-filled tarts. The smiley faced cookies seemed to share my joy and relief that there was a bakery out there that could live up to the name bakery. A place that would sanction an afternoon meal of 'Kaffee und Kuchen' with honor and respect.

Mom picked up the cake, and perhaps sensing my dampened spirits, offered to treat each of us to a pastry. My brave cousin, Kiley, ordered a maple bacon doughnut. Though I'm sure it wouldn't be approved of in a German bakery, it clearly needed to be investigated. I happily ordered a croissant, drizzled in chocolate. My old standby. The moment of truth came in the car, with the anniversary cake balancing precariously on my lap. I carefully removed the croissant from the bag, and breathed in deeply. The chocolate smelled promising. But when I bit into it, instead of delicate, buttery flakes, I found crunchy dough. There was too much chocolate, and it had been tragically overcooked. Bittner's, too, had disappointed me. I saved the rest of the croissant for Jordan, mostly so he could commiserate.

Pre-taste 

Later, after I'd had some time to recover, I asked Kiley about the maple bacon doughnut. Her eyes widened as she shared with me the surprising discovery that, "It was actually really good!" And that's when I realized that maybe it was okay that Bittner's Bakery could only make a mediocre croissant. Because apparently they made amazing maple bacon doughnuts. Truth be told, Germany's chocolate croissants are rather unimpressive compared to the ones in France. Once, we drove twenty minutes to France, just to buy a chocolate croissant because they were so superior there. Well, France is no longer twenty minutes away. But Bittner's Bakery is. Perhaps this is a season for letting go of chocolate croissants, and embracing maple bacon doughnuts. And someday, when I return to Kandern, I'll drive twenty minutes to France for a chocolate croissant...and I'll probably be wishing they made maple bacon doughnuts.

This picture was stolen from google images...I didn't have the foresight to photograph the maple bacon doughnut in the moment. 

Our First Night in Germany

I can hardly believe that our time in Germany is over. I think back to our first starry-eyed night when, after a meal of cheese, apples, orange juice, and of course, bread, we eagerly set off on foot to explore our new town. I was delighted to find tiny garden paths spilling over with pink geraniums and red roses, and crumbling barns behind pastel blue and yellow half-timbered houses. An hour later, the evening light was starting to fade as we unlatched the gate and strolled back up the brick driveway leading to our refurbished barn apartment. It wasn't until we reached our front steps that we realized that in our jet-lagged state, neither of us had grabbed the key to the automatically locking door. We were locked out.

We didn't have a cell phone, much less anyone's phone number. Not that it would have helped, since we knew that our landlord, who had the extra key, was out of town for the week. We didn't know where our host, Rachel, lived. It was after 9 pm and we had no idea what to do.

We didn't know, at the time, that most of our immediate neighbors spoke English and that we could have knocked on any one of their doors for help. We also didn't know that our soon-to-be best friends lived right across the river, and we could see their apartment from our front porch. We didn't know that we could have walked to the Italian Eis Cafe down the street, and most likely would have run into someone connected with BFA there. We'd never lived in such an intimate community and didn't know that people were no longer separated into work, neighborhood, or church categories. Instead of working to integrate our lives, it would soon require effort to separate it. We didn't know how immediately known that would make us feel, and how much we would enjoy small town life. But we would learn.

We also didn't know that any one of the people in this wonderful, tight-knit community would have bent over backwards to help us out. We'd never lived in a community quite like it before. After-all, Dayla hadn't yet given us her precious bottle of wrinkle spray from the states, after learning how much I hated to iron; Marcy hadn't given us her electric water kettle so that I could drink the comforts of my tea from home; and Kari and Mike hadn't yet offered to pick us up from the airport on Christmas Eve. We didn't yet know what it was like to receive such bountiful generosity from people who hardly knew us. But we would learn.

We didn't know that had we actually knocked on a German neighbor's door, the fact that we didn't speak German might not have prevented us from communicating. In all likelihood, they probably would have said they spoke, "a little" English, which really means that they spoke English quite proficiently, and if they didn't, charades worked really well, too. But we hadn't yet had to act out bread crumbs at the grocery store, or jump starting a car for the policeman. Like a chocolate-vanilla twist ice cream cone, our interactions with Germans would soon alternate between funny and frustrating many times in the same conversation. We didn't yet know the fun, and the terror of living in a country where we didn't speak the language.  But we would learn.

We also didn't know that despite how great everyone claims German windows are, if they are cracked open at the top, it actually only takes about fifteen minutes of panicky jiggling and wiggling, after you've tied your curtain to the handle and pulled the window shut as far as possible, until the lock pops open and you no longer have to plan on sleeping on your neighbor's trampoline in the rain. But that night, we learned.

An Ode to my GPS

We've been on many driving adventures this year, and have rarely gotten lost, thanks to our beloved GPS. The roads here are narrow, and twisty, following rivers, and going through forests, making it difficult to hold on to one's sense of direction. But because of our GPS, we always know what direction we're going, and how many minutes till we arrive at our destination. Though it usually directs us to toll-ways, and has horrible German street-name pronunciation, we owe it quite a debt of gratitude, and even more so, after my recent drive to the Basel airport.

 A few weeks ago, I was home alone while Jordan visited a friend in Africa. His trip would probably be a much more interesting post, but I'm afraid you're stuck with me. I'm a big wimp when it comes to staying home alone at night. I'm so thankful that in the three years we've been married, Jordan has only had to travel a handful of times; I realize that for many couples, that isn't the case. On the rare occasion that he is gone, I have to fight against my tendency to imagine all sorts of terrible things happening-burglaries and break-ins, fires and freak accidents. And each time he leaves, I seem to be tormented by some sort of creature that has decided to move-in with me, in Jordan's absence. Once it was a huge, fleshy centipede in the bathroom, and another time it was a (probably) rabid squirrel in the loft.

Well, I am happy to report that despite a recent influx of giant, black spiders into our apartment, stifling heat that could have been abated had I been brave enough to leave the windows open at night, and an elevator in our building that apparently moves between floors at random hours of the night and sounds very much like bad guys breaking in, resulting in a desperate midnight email to the landlord, who kindly came to check out the situation, as there had been some recent break-ins, I wasn't kidnapped, the house didn't burn down, and I didn't see one spider the whole time Jordan was gone!

And while those events would normally made me nervous, it wasn't staying here by myself that scared me the most this time. Surprisingly, what I was most afraid of was driving to the airport. My friend, Johanna, came with me to drop Jordan off, and on the way home we enjoyed the most delicious afternoon floating down the Rhine River with hundreds of other Swiss swimmers during the hottest week this part of Europe has probably seen in thousands of years. Johanna generously offered to ride with me to pick Jordan up at the end of the week, but I decided to be brave and conquer the drive on my own.

The Basel Airport is actually in both France and Switzerland. (You can literally stand in both countries at one time, as I am pictured doing above.) I'd planned to pick Jordan up on the French side, but I hadn't quite made it to France when my day took a turn for the worst. I was sitting at a light in the right turn lane, somewhere in Germany, or maybe Switzerland, obediently following my GPS, when the light turned green. And unfortunately, even after ten months of stick shift driving, sometimes I still stall. And that's what happened. I could blame it on the slight incline, the heat, the distracting blasts of AC that made it difficult to "feel the engine", as Jordan puts it, but whatever it was, I found myself stopped on the exit ramp, holding up traffic.

Cue self talk: "It's okay, no big deal. Just take a deep breath, get back into neutral, and start the car. It's okay that those people are angry and annoyed with you. You'll never see them again. Just start the car." And I did. Or at least, I tried. Three times. But my car utterly refused to start. The self talk began to sound more desperate, " This cannot be happening. Why didn't I ask Johanna to come? Okay....um....okay. What do I do?!?" My thoughts flitted from action plans that involved whipping out the orange safety triangle and matching vest that all German cars are required to carry, to fantasies about pretending I was in America, and that I still had a AAA card in my wallet.

I managed to turn on the flashers; meanwhile, cars were getting backed up on the exit ramp because of me, and angry drivers were staring me down as they waited at the red light. It was then that I noticed a road sign: "Polizei, 2 km". I decided my only option was to walk to the police station and ask for help. That plan was quickly abandoned, though, after exiting the car and realizing that there was no sidewalk, no shoulder, and no cross walk to get me over the four lane intersection.

Thank goodness for our GPS, who is, as you know, the real hero of the story. It showed me the police station phone number. I am never sure if my phone will work in this country. Sometimes I can send and receive texts, sometimes I can't. Up until that point, I'd never made a call but America kept texting me saying, "Welcome abroad! To call back to the U.S., dial: +1 followed by 10-digit number. Please note international rates apply." So I thought I probably could use the phone, it might just be the most expensive call of my life. I haven't yet seen the phone bill, but I'm sure the call was worth it. I dialed, nervously, and pushed send: The sound of ringing was music to my ears!

"Hallo?"
"Hallo! Sprechen Sie English?"
"Ahh, a little bit."
"Great! Well, my car broke down, and I need a jump start, I'm just off the highway, on 69 As Weil Am Rhein/Huningen, I think? Does that sound right? Is that even a place?"
"Ahh, moment."
Long pause...heat rises, more angry stares from fellow drivers.
"Okay. Someone will come. Stay there."
"Okay. Thank you! Vielen Dank!"

Back inside the car, which was feeling more and more like a sauna every minute, I texted Jordan.

Ten minutes later, I had a brilliant idea. I remembered that when our car didn't start this winter, Jordan showed me how to push start it on a hill, so I could get home from the middle school. Well, I was on a hill, I was just going backwards, but I was pretty sure it would still work. And it would have. If I could have remembered to take my foot off the clutch. Unfortunately, all my gear changing and break pumping only got me closer to the highway. I decided to make a video while I waited.

Twenty minutes later, I was ready to give up on the police. The only problem was, I didn't have another plan. And that's when I saw them: two police officers, a man with a gray beard and a really buff-looking woman were running toward me, across the four lane road, right in the center of the intersection. I was so happy to see them, I didn't even care that we didn't speak the same language. They asked me, in German, if I owned the car, where I lived, and what the problem was. We were able to understand each other until I told them the battery died. The looked at each other, puzzled. "Um...the battery...it, it died...car...it stalled...the battery..." I mumbled. For some reason, when speaking to people who don't understand English, my grammar and sentence structure fall apart.

If you look closely, you can see the police officers running across the road.

"Ahh!" The man suddenly cried. "Batteria? Kaputz?"
"Yes! Yes! Batteria Kaputz! Totally kaputz."
The officers then began furiously typing something into a phone. They showed me a screen that said, "English: tow."
"Ohhh, no, no I don't want it towed, I want a jump start."
Puzzled looks.
"Um, I want to jump the car...." I followed this with a charade-like demonstration of someone hooking up jumper cables, and then making exploding sounds and a really happy face. It seemed to work and without even discussing it, they simultaneously trotted to the back of my car and began to push. I guess they figured that telling me the plan would be pointless since I wouldn't be able to understand them. Not knowing where we were headed, and having the unfortunate job of steering the car through this busy, four lane intersection, I distracted myself by taking pictures...

                                   
                         

We eventually crossed the road, and miraculously, the other cars ignored the stoplight and obeyed the hand signals of these two crazy police officers who were pushing my car. It was only once we got to the other side, that I realized we were not headed to their car where jumper cables awaited us. "Nein! Nein! Nein!" the policeman shouted at me when I began to steer toward his car. He signaled me straight on, down the hill, and then opened the passenger door and jumped into the front seat. All at once I was trying to move my purse and water bottle, and save my sunglasses from being squished under his weight, but only one thought came clearly to my mind: "How did I get here? I don't even know what country I'm in, or who this man is, or how I'm going to start this thing." The police officer didn't count on the girl who asked for a jump start to not know how to push start her car. The situation struck me as so funny, I had to suppress my laughter. And it was a good thing that my spirits were high because he then began yelling commands in German, to which I continually responded with, "Mein Deutsch ist nicht gut!"

My stress levels were so high, that I think I blocked out how the next part happened, but somehow, the police officer and I ended up switching seats. We didn't need to speak the same language to understand that our current strategy was not working. Almost as soon as the police officer got into my car, he got it rolling, removed his foot from the clutch, and Voila!-the car started! There was an awkward minute or two as we continued down the road, the German police officer driving me, I wasn't sure where. To the police station? Did I owe him money? Or maybe it was awkward because I was trying to sneakily take his picture.

At the roundabout, he pulled over, and proceeded to give me directions to the airport, that I did not understand. But I wasn't concerned, knowing my trusty GPS would direct me there. I shook the police officer's hand and said 'thank you' as many ways as I knew how, in both German and English.

Never was I so happy to see Jordan, when I finally arrived at the airport. His flight has been delayed, so the timing worked out perfectly. I forgot to leave the car running, so we had to push start it out of the airport parking lot, but we plugged in the address to the park next to the Rhine River in Basel, and our GPS took us there straightaway, where we ate sandwiches, and I relished in the sympathy I received while telling Jordan my tale.

Tomorrow, I will pass on our GPS to Johanna.  Johanna, I hope it guides you to new and exciting places. I hope it recalculates quickly when you make a wrong turn. And I hope your car never breaks down, but if it does, I know you're in good hands.

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

I've been getting your letters nearly every week for the past ten months now. The familiar, off-white envelopes with your handwriting are bright spots in my week, waiting for me in my mailbox amidst the German newspapers, junk mail, and bills I cannot read. Since August, nearly everything in my life has been new - country, apartment, job, language, car, groceries, friends, church, systems of measurements, culture, etc....Yet each week, you have given me the gift of news and love from home, wrapped in a cream colored envelope with a global stamp in the corner - Something tangible that comes from a place that I know and understand and love.

Not only that, but your letters speak to my heart that you love me. I've always thought "words" were my love language, but perhaps it is more specifically "mail." :) I've felt cared for and ministered to by your letters, whether you are telling me how proud you are of what we are doing, encouraging me to make the most of my time here, or just filling me in on the goings-on at home.

Several times, I've attempted to write back, but with with each try, I find myself moved to tears by how much I miss you...

I missed you every Monday when I played Risk with my middle school students. I was so much better than them, thanks to your coaching. 

I missed you at the eis cafe in town, where I always ordered kokos (coconut) ice cream, just like I know you would.

I missed you as we attempted to hold our breath through Europe's many tunnels, and when they were too long to do so, we timed them to the millisecond, knowing you would appreciate our precision.

I missed you in Italy, remembering our trip 13 years ago, when we ate Pringles at the top of Saint Peter's, did flips at the toga party, and played catch on the lawn. Pronto!

I missed you during Christmas when I saw a tree made of skis in France, and we skyped with you and Mom and Cody on Christmas morning. 

I missed you at every castle, knowing how you would have loved exploring the ruins...remembering the crumbling estate we used to explore in Lake Forest. 

I missed you in Fuerteventura when Jordan went windsurfing and I wished you were there to cheer him on and make sure he didn't die. 

I missed you when I ordered chocolate croissants at the bakery and saw the smiley face cookies we used to get from Claude the baker's bakery on our dates.

I missed you when Jordan drove me through the apple blossom fields with my head out the sunroof and I remembered when you let Cody and me ride on the roof in Gecawa. 

I missed you when I ate a crepe in Paris...but it wasn't as good as the ones we always get in Breckenridge. Plus there was no first customer discount in Paris. 

I missed you in Switzerland when we skied through the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen...but it felt a little empty without you making parallel turns alongside me. 

  

This has been an amazing year of adventures, but I'm excited to adventure with you again soon.

It's been 314 days since we said goodbye, and only 17 until I see you again. I can't wait!

I love you, Dad.

-Kate