Super Bowl Sunday….So What?!

Posted on February 7th, 2010 by Retired-Ed in History

I guess I am a heretic. As a red-blooded American male, I should be getting excited about the Super Bowl. I just can’t. Don’t get me wrong; I used to love NFL football. I remember sitting in the basement of my fraternity house watching Super Bowl I. Of course, it wasn’t called the “Super Bowl” back then. It was the NFL-AFL Championship Game. As a rabid Green Bay Packer fan, I delighted in watching the Pack down the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. The old, reliable quarterback Bart Starr broke the game open with a touchdown pass to Max McGee. Max, a bachelor and man about town, was rumored to be nursing a hangover at game time, but he came through in the clutch. I can remember some great games prior to that. About 8 or 9 years earlier, I remember sitting in my grandparents’ living room and watching the Baltimore Colts play the New York Giants in a championship game in the snow. I think that the Colts won that one under Johnny Unitas. Maybe the Colts will win today (or tomorrow for us here in Europe) under Peyton Manning.

But what happened to me? How come I don’t care any more? Well, I can’t seem to get this idea out of my head: It’s just a football game, not an event of apocalyptic proportion. That Super Bowl I was, believe it or not, played during the daytime! Oh heresy! Although, I can’t remember exactly, but I think that the pre-game show lasted about an hour. And there was no 2-week lead up to hype the game. Yeah, that’s what is my problem. There’s just too much hype. It’s all about money. The owners and the networks want to milk it for all it’s worth. As I recall, the cost of a 60-second commercial in the first game was $100,000 or thereabouts. What is it today? Several million for a 30-second spot? Yes, times have changed.

I can remember watching some memorable games. In 1968, I was watching a game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. NBC was covering the game (sorry, Drew) and they screwed up royally. With only 65 seconds left in the game, NBC (yes the same NBC that caused the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien situation) cut away to air the movie “Heidi”. When the show stopped, NY was ahead 32 to 29. But then Oakland scored 2 touchdowns in 9 seconds to win 43-32. To add insult to injury, NBC had a trailer scrawl across the screen with the final score. I think that the switchboard at NBC blew a fuse that night!

One day I watched a game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. One Lion player who was not really involved in the play ended up lying on the field. We watched in horror as the trainers came out on the field (as they frequently do) but then began to do CPR on the player. Obviously, something was very wrong. In the end, we all watched a football player die on national television. Ever since that game, the NFL has had paramedics and trauma equipment at the games.

I also remember Tom Dempsey, a player who was born with a deformed foot. He only had half of a foot, and that was the one that he kicked with. In 1970, he kicked a field goal of 63 yards, which at the time was an NFL record. For all I know, it may still be the record. Oh, you should have heard the complaints that he was “cheating” because he didn’t kick with a full foot.

So, you can see that I used to enjoy the games, but I have really lost interest. Maybe it’s because I have lived overseas for the past 36 years. The time difference makes it very difficult to watch games live. For example, the big game today will not start until 12:05 Monday morning for us. I will not stay up. But many of my fellow Yanks over here will. In fact, I will not be surprised if the Army has a late start tomorrow. They might schedule a “training holiday” for Monday morning. We’ll see. In the past, some of our schools had a late start or even had a day off for students while the teachers attended an “in service”. OMG! It isn’t a national holiday, is it?

Should I record the game? Maybe I should, just in case someone in The Who (halftime entertainment) has a heart attack. Those guys are older than I am, or at least they ought to be. They’ve been around since Peyton Manning’s daddy was a college quarterback at Ole Miss, but that’s another story.

So what’s the good news? Hey, it’s February, and spring training is just around the corner. Pitchers and catchers will report in just a few days. The rest of the teams will be right behind them. Opening Day is less than 2 months away. Can’t wait for baseball to start!

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Visits from Vermin

Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

OK folks, this one will be a little gross. I was prompted to write this after reading a post from a fellow blogger, Holly Burns. Holly does an absolutely magnificent job with her blog “Nothing but Bonfires”. She had a recent post about some stories that her mother had told her about some unfortunate happenings in their lives in various countries where they have lived. Check out her writing. I am impressed, but I digress. She told a story about a gigantic cockroach that attacked her mother in Hong Kong. That anecdote prompted my daughter Wendy, who is also a fine writer in her own right, but again I digress, to comment. Wendy wrote about when we lived in a high-rise apartment building in Seoul, Korea. Our apartment was much like a penthouse overlooking the Han River. As I recall, we had 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms for our family of 4, not including the 6-legged critters that shared our quarters. And there was an occasional 4-legged critter as well.

Wendy wrote of waking up with cockroaches crawling in her bed or on her body. It’s probably a true story, as those cockroaches were everywhere. However, they were smaller than what you’d find in the tropics or sub-tropical climates. But, boy, were they numerous. No matter what I did, we couldn’t get rid of them. When our landlord wanted to raise our rent (even though we had a two-year lease) after one year, I took matters into my own hands, literally.

I bought a bunch of “roach motels”. You remember them and also their commercials on tv, I am sure. “The roaches check in, but they don’t check out.” I placed them in strategic places in the apartment. Then I took just one of them from a bathroom and carried it to the landlord’s manager. I cut open the “motel” to show him the roaches that I had caught in just two days. I counted 72 of them if I remember correctly, and that was just from one room! Nasty place and a nasty landlord too. His comment upon seeing those squirmy insects on this desk was simply, “Ewww!”. I still had to engage an attorney to fight the rent increase. We finally settled out of court for $500. I had to pay him! The cool thing was that the Korea lawyer charged me nothing. I had located him through an American attorney that we knew from our church in Seoul. Because this attorney was a Korean Christian, he was aghast at what was being done to us (or so he said). He said that there would be no fee. My kind of guy! But the landlord was a cockroach with two legs.

Another cockroach story happened when Wendy was just a toddler, about 2 years old, so she wouldn’t have remembered this. We were living on Okinawa at the time, and we had two household pets of the four-legged variety. Two dogs named Bonnie and Clyde (mother and son). I fed them dry dog food normally, which I bought in 50 pound bags. I kept it in the utility room. I used an empty beef stew can to scoop out the food and put it in their dishes. One day, as I was scooping out the food, I felt something crawl up my arm. I thought it was a mouse. I dropped the can and spilled dog food all over the floor. Well, it wasn’t a mouse, but was a cockroach about 4-5 inches long. The damn thing flew at me like a dive bomber. Having studied entomology in school, I am well aware that most insects have wings, including cockroaches, but I really hadn’t seen one fly until then.

Finally, during one of our first years on Okinawa, back in the late 1970’s, we were undergoing one of our frequent spells of water rationing. If you aren’t familiar with island life, fresh water is often a much-needed commodity. You are surrounded by water, but you can’t drink it, cook with it, or bathe with it. Fresh water comes from the reservoirs which often run dry or nearly so. That precipitates (no pun intended) some form of rationing of fresh water. During this particular stage, our water went off at 8 pm and came back on at 6 am on a daily basis. One morning, the Queen woke up and needed to make a trip to the bathroom. It was about 5 am, and she made the short trek from the bedroom to the john. Then I heard her call me. The Queen wears contact lenses and didn’t have them in at that time; she was wearing her glasses, I suppose, and thought that maybe she wasn’t seeing correctly. When the water went off, you had one flush left in the toilet tank. After that, you had to rely on any water that you might have saved in your bathtub. If you had filled your tub (which totally defeated the purpose of the rationing) you could dip a bucket into the tub and pour the water down the toilet bowl to flush it. Hmm. She saw “something dark” in the bowl and thought that maybe I had left something there and didn’t use the bucket. Nope! After a closer examination, I discovered that the dark thing had four legs and a tail, and was one of the biggest rats I had seen since I worked in a steel mill for US Steel in Gary, Indiana. Those rats were so big, they waddled instead of scurrying.

But what to do? We had already used our one “free” flush. I took the dog in there with me in hopes that she could scare the life out of the rat. Didn’t happen. But wonder of wonders, for some reason the water got turned on early that morning. You’d hear the air being flushed out of the pipes as the water came on. Once the toilet tank filled up, I tried a flush. Bye-bye rat. Good riddance. Can you imagine what could have happened if the Queen hadn’t looked before she sat?

An odd sequel to that story is how far gossip can travel. Of course, we told that story to our friends. One Thanksgiving about 2 years later, we hosted two teachers from my school for Thanksgiving dinner. One of them was a young woman who later got a transfer to Germany. Several years after that, I had been promoted to principal of a small school in Korea, and I had a teacher at the school (a transferee from Germany) who had been friends with the young woman who had been our Thanksgiving guest. We were friends with our new teacher and her husband and socialized frequently. One evening as we were telling our usual lies to each other (teacher stories are like war stories, but not like fairy tales. Fairy tales start off with “Once upon a time”, whereas war stories and teacher stories start off with “This is no bullshit!”) We were treated to the story of how some woman in Okinawa almost sat on a rat who was swimming in her toilet. Imagine her surprise when the Queen said, “I was that woman!” Always good for a laugh.

That completes my vermin stories, and as I look out the window, I see that it has started to snow again. I am really getting tired of this. Could someone send a few hundred tons of road salt to my village, please?

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Hospital Hijinx

Posted on February 1st, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

Sometimes the language barrier can provide a few laughs. Such happened to me while a patient at the Leopoldina Krankenhaus in Schweinfurt, Germany. My German is pretty fair, but I speak and understand Hochdeutsch or “High German”, and it is the language that I learned in college. I took two years of German in order to satisfy the foreign language requirement of my BA degree. However, there are just some words and phrases that aren’t taught in school.

For example, on my second night in the hospital, two of the nurses came into my room. One was taking my vital signs. The other had a question for me. I was mystified when she asked me (in German) if I had made a chair. OK, you get it already, don’t you? After several attempts to make me understand, she gave an exasperated look to her colleague and finally said to me, “Shit?”

“Ja,” I responded. That word I definitely understand. I also was able to provide her with the information that she requested, which would be TMI for this blog. (too much information).

I also had a young American roommate. He was a 19-year old GI who had some stomach pains. He was scheduled for a colonoscopy, and I recall the floor doctor explaining to him that he would be sedated for the procedure. When he returned to our room, he was still pretty groggy. After he recovered, he related this story: The doctor performing the procedure explained to him exactly what would take place. In great detail! Now I, being a man just a little over the age of 19, know all about prostate examinations. But a lad of 19 probably hasn’t had the pleasure. Obviously, the doctor decided that since he was already in the area, he might as well check out all of the real estate there. So he told my roomy that after the colonoscopy was finished he would perform a digital examination. Roomy didn’t understand, even though the instructions were in English. Finally, the doctor said, “I’m going to stick my finger up your ass.” Ouch. Roomy did understand that one.

Sometimes I think that our German friends have learned their English by watching American TV. Bad choice. Perhaps the BBC would provide for a more genteel grasp of our mother tongue.

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Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 31st, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

I have spent the better part of the last week shoveling snow. Over and over again. As I write this, I have already shoveled six times since yesterday morning. I have pictures! But first things first.

Today, January 31st, is my younger daughter Allison’s 27th birthday. Happy Birthday, Allison! Your mom and I wish you health, happiness, and prosperity in the coming year. I vividly remember 27 years ago today, and your arrival took me away from a school assembly! Thank you for that! However, your arrival almost occurred while driving to the hospital. Thankfully, you waited, but not for long. It made for some excitement! Happy Birthday again.

So, back to the snow. We have lived in this house for fifteen years, and this is the most snow that we have ever had. I grew up in Midwestern United States and have seen my share of snowfalls, blizzards, and winter storms. What we have now cannot compare to some of those, but this is really unique for Unterfranken (our area of Bavaria). German law requires that your walkways are cleared of snow and ice by a certain time every day. You also have to shovel a path to your front door. In addition, prior to driving your car, the snow must be removed from every outer surface of your vehicle. All of those are good laws, aimed at safety, but it can be a pain. Fortunately, since I am retired, I don’t have to leave early for work. In the past, I would have to leave the house by 6:15 AM. Not so any more! I can shovel the driveway and sidewalk clear before the Queen leaves for work. It takes about 90 minutes to clear everything after a snowfall of more than an inch or so. In addition, I have to shovel several times during the day if the snow continues. I am getting my exercise, and that pleases my doctor! Anyway, here are some shots of our scenery. I would have like to show the pristine condition of the snow before the snowplow clears it off the street, but (bless him!) the Winterdienst (snowplow and salt truck operator) comes before dawn, so it is not light enough to take pictures then.

Here is a shot of our backyard from a balcony on the second floor of our house:

And another of the woods behind our house

Our front yard from a balcony:

And our yard from the driveway level:

The mounds of snow from our neighbor’s shoveling efforts:

And a view of our snowy village from atop our hill:

So, as you can see, we have some snow, and driving is complicated by the fact that there is a nation-wide shortage of “Streusalz” or road salt. Not all of the roads are being salted; sometimes it’s only the intersections. One of our American bases (Ramstein AB in southwest Germany) is advertising in other European countries that they will pay top dollar to anyone who can deliver 120 tons of road salt to them. It’s a mess all over. In addition, the local stores don’t have supplies of salt for consumer usage either. Actually, it really isn’t salt, as that is banned for de-icing here in Germany, but most people are familiar with the term, so I use it here.

Since I started this post with information about my younger daughter, I’ll close with a comment about Wendy, my older daughter. Many of my readers also read her blog, CityWendy. In addition to her personal blog, she also writes for another site, and that is her paying job. Quite some time back, she wrote a piece about how she was lamenting that she didn’t have any gay male friends in New York, and she had several friends in Chicago. Someone took offense at her post and wrote a scathing comment that got posted on another website. It seems that he (a gay man) felt that she was being “dehumanizing” in stating that she missed having gay friends. For the record, my daughter is a straight woman (married) but has many gay friends whose company she enjoys. Now just why it took so long for this guy to respond to her post, I can only imagine. I think it took him that long to read the words that had more than one syllable.

I seriously doubt if he reads this blog, but just in case he does, here is something for him. Sir, it’s great that you live in a country where free speech is the norm. If you want to trash Wendy’s posts, it’s your right. However, it’s always better to be nice. You’ll win more allies to your cause by being pleasant and not so vicious in your diatribe. That’s just friendly advice. Now here is a response from her dad. Listen, douche bag, write what you like, but at least give her (and me) the courtesy of spelling her name correctly. Since her byline is on every post, all you have to do is copy it letter by letter. It’s not that difficult, but I can see that it was for you. What is it about the internet that causes people to forget their manners? I can’t figure it out.

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He’s Ba-aaaaack!

Posted on January 22nd, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

Well, did you miss me? I think it has been more than a month since I posted to this blog, and much has happened in my life. I will try to go chronologically and not bore you too much.

Our family visited for Christmas. First, Allison arrived on a Sunday, but she was delayed for several hours because of weather. Evidently, the bad weather was on this end, and flights leaving the States for Frankfurt were delayed in taking off. The weather really was pretty bad. The normal trip of 1 hour and 45 minutes to the Frankfurt airport took me 3 hours and 35 minutes to drive. Driving in the dark in the middle of a driving snowstorm is not my idea of fun. At that time of year, in these northern latitudes, it gets dark early. And she arrived on the day before the winter solstice, so it got dark very early. We didn’t get home until 11:00 pm for a flight that was scheduled to land in early evening. I had hoped to be home by 6:00 pm, because I had to leave early the following morning to pick up Wendy and Drew.

But that was not to be. Wendy phoned and said that their flight was delayed from Newark. Later she emailed, and if I leave out the curse words, I think it said that even though they knew that their flight would be delayed by at least 4 hours, they had to go to the airport anyway so that their seats would not be given away. Have I mentioned that I think that all airlines suck? But I digress. All told, Wendy and Drew spent 9 hours in the Newark airport waiting for their flight to take off. Finally, they arrived in Frankfurt…..and I was not there to meet them. I had determined that I was going to take the train because of the traffic delays that I had faced the day before when picking up Allison. Well, guess what! The much-vaunted German high-speed train was delayed. I figure that if I had to fork over many Euros for one round-trip and two one-way tickets, the least I should expect would be for the train to be on time. Oh well! I got there about 15 minutes after they cleared customs. We raced back to the train station (located in the airport) and caught the next train back.

We had a really nice visit. We dined in,dined out, drank some champagne, opened presents, visited Christmas markets, played games, and just celebrated being together as a family. Drew is a new addition (and a welcome one) to the family, and it was his first visit to Germany, so I hope he enjoyed it. He’s visiting another “foreign” country now. He’s in Vancouver, B.C., helping his network cover the Olympics (assuming that that particular network hasn’t imploded by then). My plan was to post pictures of some of the Christmas markets that we visited, but it seems a little “after the fact” for that. I still have pictures of the Wuerzburg Christmas Market as well as the one from Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Maybe I can get those on the site later if anyone is interested.

All of them left on the same day, December 27th. The Queen and I had a couple of days to do things on our own, but circumstances got in the way. On the afternoon of December 31st, the Queen found me unconscious and having a seizure in our bedroom. Honestly, I can’t relate very much of what happened, because I have absolutely no recollection of that afternoon at all. She found me in bed, and I had taken off my bluejeans, so I must have planned on taking a nap….but that’s only conjecture. I can remember sitting on the couch downstairs, earlier in the day, and checking email, but I do not remember going upstairs at all. I have never had a seizure before, and it was caused by severe hypoglycemia. I take insulin for my diabetes, and I can now piece together what must have happened. Normally, I get a “warning” when my blood glucose drops too low. I must have not recognized the symptoms this time. The Queen force-fed me an entire tube of glucose tablets that we can buy in the German Apotheke. She also fed me two larger glucose tablets that I kept in a jar on my nightstand. I was non-responsive and apparently was flailing around all over the place. At some point, my glasses got bent up, and I got some minor injury to my hand (which I believe was cause by the EMTs trying to insert a line into my vein while I was seizing….but I could have struck something…or someone). The EMTs and the Notarzt (emergency doctor) finally did get an IV line inserted and began infusing me with glucose. After all of that, my blood glucose level only measured 30. Imagine how low it must have been earlier! I’m lucky to be alive.

After I was roused, I felt fine, but they told me that I needed to accompany them to the hospital. I was able to dress myself and walk to the ambulance for the ride to the hospital. I was taken to the ER where I stayed for about 4-4 1/2 hours until I was released to a ward. Because it was New Year’s Eve, not much happened that night other than to make me comfortable and to monitor my glucose level about 300 times. Well, it felt like that many times. Here in Europe, the New Year is rung in with fireworks, and I got a spectacular show from my 4th floor (third floor in European terminology) room.

With the next day being a holiday, and then the weekend after that, I didn’t start any treatment until Monday. But then things began to happen quickly. After the admissions office determined that I wasn’t a deadbeat and really could afford the treatment, I was asked if I wanted to be treated by the Chefarzt (chief doctor). “Sure,” I said, and he came later on to take over my case. I saw a diabetes counselor and went to “diabetes school”, which is probably something that should have happened 20 years ago when I was first diagnosed. They were reluctant at first to criticize the care that I had been receiving from various military hospitals and clinics, but later told me what they thought. The standard of care wasn’t the issue, but the type of insulin that I was being prescribed gave them pause. They changed the type of insulin that I use and changed the schedule. It seems that the NPH insulin (a type of long-lasting insulin) that I had been using made me hungry, which caused me to eat more, which caused me to need more insulin, etc. it became a vicious circle. One result of the new insulin is that I have lost 16 pounds so far and am not hungry at all.

The doctors also got me on an exercise program which has made me feel better than I felt before, and I didn’t even realize that I felt bad before. This is really nice. I am taking Apidra insulin before my meals, and I have to calculate the dosage based on my blood glucose level and what I will be eating. Basically, I am counting carbs, but here we use BEs, which is short for Brot Einheiten, or “bread units”. I even bought a book which gives the BE details on many foods. As the book is in German and listing German foods, I also have another book in English which lists many American foods, but I have to convert grams of carbohydrate to BEs. Not much of a problem. Twelve grams of carbohydrate equals one BE. Even I know how to divide by 12! I also take Levemir, a 24-hour insulin, right before I go to bed. I think I need to tweak that dosage, but I’ll talk with my doctor this coming week about that.

I was in the hospital for eight days, and it certainly helped my German. They knew that I spoke German, so they did not use English with me. On day 3, I believe it was, I got a roommate…another American. He was a young soldier who had some stomach pains. When these same nurses were speaking English with him, I was astounded that they could speak English. After that, they would speak English with me if I requested them to do so. It was fun trying to stretch my German. Many of the nurses were also speaking German as a second language, just as I was. They came from Eastern Europe or Russia, so they were stretching their ability too.

The hospital bills have started to roll in, and I paid four of them today. I’m still waiting on the doctor bill, the bill from the ambulance, the bill from the emergency doctor, the bill for the ultrasounds that I had to undergo, and the bill for EKGs that were administered. There are probably more bills that I haven’t even thought of yet. It’s part of the normal course of business here to bill for things separately, so I might still be getting bills in this coming summer. I’ll pay ‘em. I’m glad that they fixed me!

Some of the Queen’s colleagues lent me some DVDs while I was in the hospital, and I am still enjoying them. I’m just finishing up NCIS and about to start on JAG, but I have seen many of the JAG episodes. I thought I had seen many of the NCIS episodes, but they didn’t seem familiar as I watched them. Maybe my memory was affected by the “incident”. We’ll see.

And that’s what I have been doing. I wish everyone a Happy New Year, even though I’m a bit late with my wishes.

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In Sickness and in Health

Posted on January 2nd, 2010 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

I am sorry for the lack of posts lately. We hosted our two daughters and one son-in-law for the Christmas holiday. I planned to post about that.

However, on December 31st, my wife found me unconscious in our bedroom due to hypoglycemia. I have been in the hospital ever since while the staff tries to get my insulin intake better adjusted.

I start posting again when I get out!

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Perhaps my Daughter is Right

Posted on December 18th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Why do they...?

UPDATE: 19 DEC 09 A front-page article in today’s Stars and Stripes indicates that Wal-Mart has reversed its policy of charging more for APO mailings. It states that they will now charge the same for APO as they do for domestic mailing. Finally, they get it. It’s a good PR thing to support your troops overseas.

I’d like to think that it was my blog post that tipped the scales, but I know better. Chalk this one up to the power of the press.

My kids are pretty smart; they have my genes of course. Well, half of them are their mother’s genes, and she’s really smart too. Anyway, my younger daughter, Allison, refuses to shop at Wal-Mart. She’s a bit of a political animal, and her refusal to shop there is on political or moral grounds. Since we frequently disagree politically, we haven’t fully discussed her reasons to boycott the place, but I assume that they center on their hiring policies and treatment of employees.

I may be joining her in her boycott, but for a practical reason that is dear to me. You see, there was an article in our “local” newspaper yesterday. The Stars and Stripes printed this article about how some retailers jack up the shipment price when sending items to an APO address. For the uninitiated, the APO address stands for Army Post Office (or Air Force Post Office) and gives us government employees and military members an opportunity to mail and receive goods without paying customs duty and to mail at US domestic rates. For those of us in Europe, a package mailed from the USA will have postage paid to New York, and the Department of Defense picks up the tab from New York to our local mailroom. In the Pacific, the cost is to San Francisco or Seattle and the government likewise picks up the tab for the remainder of the cost.

In theory then, a retailer should charge no more for a package going to an APO address then would be charged for the same package going to New York (or the West Coast). An enterprising reporter compared the cost of items being sent to a single address in Atlanta, GA, and the same item going to an APO address. Now there may be some room for error here because the cost to Atlanta might be different than the cost to NY or SF. But there shouldn’t be huge differences. The article compares four retailers: Amazon.com, Target, Wal-Mart, and JC Penney. Guess which one hoses us the most? Wal-Mart. Amazon had exactly the same cost to an APO address as it did to Atlanta. JC Penney was slightly higher. Target (praise them!) had lower rates to the APO address. Wal-Mart, however,charged almost five times as much to ship the same item to the APO address as it did to Atlanta. Boo! Hiss!

I’m willing to keep an open mind about this, provided that Wal-Mart provides an explanation. When the Stars and Stripes tried to interview them, they declined. So, in this case, it’s “guilty until proven innocent”. I certainly won’t be shopping there. I doubt if they will miss my business, but it’s the principle. The Queen shops a lot at JC Penney online, but she almost always qualifies for free shipping (as much as she shops there, I’m surprised that they don’t send it in a limousine, but I digress). So we’ll give JC Penney a pass and they can keep our business. We also shop a lot with Amazon.com, and they are fair with their shipping costs, so they will keep our business. (Disclaimer: we own some stock in the Amazon.com company).

Because not everything that a person would want is available in the PX or on the German economy, we do a considerable amount of shopping online, and I wish that the retailers would be consistently fair. The best that we can do is to shop with the retailers that show that they want our business.

By the way, our daughters (and son-in-law) will be arriving in the next few days to celebrate the holidays. Some of their presents under the tree will have come from these fair-minded retailers. There won’t be any from Wal-Mart.

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Will the Rain Ever Let Me Visit Another Christmas Market?

Posted on December 10th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

It really is a dreary time of year, just as I mentioned before. Today, as I closed the garage door after the Queen left for work, I noticed just how dark it was outside. I went out to buy a newspaper and some coffee, and it was still dark. In fact, it didn’t start to get light until around 8:30 AM. And, of course, it was raining cats and dogs. I think that yesterday was the only day out of the past two weeks that it didn’t rain, and I was stuck inside doing laundry and cooking, just like an old Hausfrau. (The meal was excellent, by the way.) The rain has kept me from my plan to visit as many Christmas markets as I can this season. So far, my count is at …..well, just one. I’ve been sharing some pictures from the Schweinfurt market with you, and here is the final installment.

Want some spices? You can buy them at the Christmas Market of course.

And candles of all varieties, shapes, and colors. Here are a few.

Aroma therapy anyone? Better than scratch ‘n’ sniff any day.

Bratwursts on the left; pretzels on the right: two German staples

(And you thought that bratwursts originated in Sheboygan)

The stage where musical groups perform several times daily

Woodworking craft items from England

The artisan at work

Christmas kitsch (is that a German word?)

Woven Wicker Ware (the original www)

Many Germans like to shop for food daily. They’ll carry their purchases home in baskets like these.

Gift pack in store window. Among the goodies: wine, gingerbread, liverwurst (three of the five essential food groups here…well, maybe)

A nearby bakery window. A diabetic’s nightmare!

And finally, the biggest lie of all: “No alcohol served to youngsters under 18 years of age” (or is it 16?)

Whew! That completes the trilogy featuring the Schweinfurt Christmas Market. I do hope to visit a few others, but I will not inundate you with repeated photos. I just hope that the weather will let me get out and check things out. And as I finish this post, it’s almost 4:00 PM, and it’s already starting to get dark. At least the temperature is warm enough that all of this precipitation is liquid and not snow. That will come soon enough.

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Schweinfurt Christmas Market, Part 2

Posted on December 6th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

In my last post, I began to tell the story and show pictures from my visit to the Schweinfurt Christmas Market. I also told of some European Christmas traditions. One thing that I didn’t tell you is that in many European countries, including Germany, Christmas is a two-day holiday. In England, the second day is called “Boxing Day”, but here in Germany, as far as I can tell, it is just called something akin to “the second Christmas day”. It is a holiday for everyone. Thankfully, the restaurants are open, and we will visit one of our favorites on both the first and second Christmas days.

But enough about personal plans, the rest of the Schweinfurt Christmas Market awaits. This post will focus on food and a few other stalls. Schweinfurt is what I would term as a small city. Not a village, but certainly not in the same class as Nuernberg, Munich, or Berlin, for example. The Christmas market also is smaller than many of the larger cities. The largest one is probably in Nuernberg, where it is called the Christkindlmarkt, or “Christ child market”. I probably will not attend that particular market this year. I have been in the past, and there are simply waaay to many people for my taste. And speaking of taste (notice the suave segue) there are some food items that you’ll find at almost any Christmas market. Others are more regional.

For example, you’ll find crepes at many markets

(Once again, click on any image to enlarge it)

Here one patient customer watches her crepe being flipped

And Mickey D’s gets into the spirit

(The pig is from a contest among businesses a few years ago)

Fried fish (Seelachsfilet) Can you feel your arteries clogging up already? I can

A Matjesfilet (raw herring with onions) is very popular in North Germany, but we have it too

Purses and leather goods are almost always available

And so are figurines and other decorative items

Guess what the German word is for “Popcorn”

And a manger scene with real goats

This seems to be enough images for anyone to have to load. The visit to the market will be completed in the next post. Enjoy.

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The “Drearies”

Posted on December 4th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in Daily Life

Well, it’s time once again. We have entered the time of year that I call “the drearies”. The three weeks on either side of the winter solstice can be a bit dreary here in the northern latitudes. My town sits just slightly above 50° North Latitude. That is further north than any point in the “lower 48″ of the United States. I’m not certain where reader Sue lives in Ontario, but I’ll bet that we are even farther north than her location. Why is latitude so important? Well, at this time of year, it gets dark rather early and stays dark for quite a while. As I write this, it will start to get dark around 4:15 and will stay dark until after 7:30 AM. However, as we near the solstice, it will start go get dark before 4:00 PM and will stay dark until after 8:00 AM. For people who have to go to work on a regular schedule, it means that you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. It can get depressing. Of course, the tradeoff comes in six months. In the three weeks or so on either side of the summer solstice, it stays light until after 10:30 at night. I have even tested this by trying to read a newspaper outdoors at 10:30. It can be done. It will get light around 4:15 AM. So the good comes with the bad. And winter isn’t all that bad.

For example, this weekend (December 6th, to be exact) is Sankt Nikolaustag or “St. Nicholas’ Day”. This is a big day for kids in Germany and some of the other European countries such as Austria and the Netherlands (although the name may be different, such as Sinter Klaas in the Netherlands). You can read all about it at the link provided. On the night before the big day, many German boys and girls will put their shoes out by the door or window and Sankt Nikolaus will fill them with presents during the night. It is a lot like the American tradition of Santa Claus on Christmas eve. Somehow, I think that the Santa Claus tradition has become universal, so I bet that German kids clean up twice, once on St. Nicholas Day and once on Christmas Day. They probably have a better union!

This is the Advent season in the Christian calendar, and that means that Christmas Markets abound throughout Germany and most of the rest of Europe. They are always a lot of fun, and there is lots of gemütlichkeit (I would translate that as “congeniality” or simply “good times”) to go around. You’ll always find plenty of wurst (sausages, especially bratwurst), pretzels, and warm mulled wine called “Glühwein”. In addition, there are many vendors occupying stalls who will be selling food, drink, and many types of consumer goods, such as sweaters, purses, belts, Christmas ornaments, wood carvings, kitchen gadgets, you name it.

Yesterday I went to our nearby city of Schweinfurt for their Schweinfurter Weihnachtsmarkt, which, as you have probably guessed, is the Schweinfurt Christmas Market. I hope to visit several other Christmas markets during the season and report on them here on the blog. I took quite a few pictures, and it has been a struggle to decide which ones to show you here. I hope I chose wisely. You can click on any image to enlarge it.

This guy is found all over the Marktplatz (marketplace) and announces the day’s schedule. You can also see some of the stalls.