Rue Rude

Anomalies of German life: buying a bus ticket in Frankfurt (where 20% of the population is foreign)

You can get a €40 fine if you haven't figured out how to buy a bus ticket by the time you have to get on. You won't have.

Snow flurries in Frankfurt

What weird weather. Tomorrow is the first day of spring, and it's snowing.

The French peasants, with their generation after generation attached to the soil, believed that snow in March was a good sign for rain later. I hope they're right this year. There is a drought.

Neige de mars, vaut un parc.  Snow in March is worth a park. [A large garden]

A mars poudreux, avril pluvieux. Powdery March, rainy April.

Autant de gelées en mars, autant de rosées en avril.  As many freezes in March as dews in April.

Northern Europe feels as if it is rushing toward the sun. I love the way it is going to get lighter and lighter and lighter in the evenings from now on. I'm not a morning person, and the long evenings give me more time outside. Here are some photos of a sunset walk by the river in Frankfurt last week. By summer, it will be like this till ten o'clock at night. It's one of the things I love about Europe.

Legend says that Frankfurt was founded when Charlemagne and his small army were being chased by a horde of  heathen Saxons. They came in haste to the river Main (pronounced Mine), which you see in these pictures, and stopped in dismay. Then suddenly a doe came bursting out of the woods and splashed across the river at the only ford. Since that day the place has been known as Frank-ford (Frankfurt). I love to think that there was a time when this was all covered by forests and so unknown that people didn't even know there was a river here. However, another more likely story, since the city cathedral area has been settled since the Stone Age,  and the Romans were here, is that the name means "Free ford" because you didn't have to pay to cross. Either way, Charlemagne liked Frankfurt and that was the origin of the city. It has been a free city since 1220.

There is still a big forest south of Frankfurt, owned by the city since the Middle Ages. Within it there are Stone Age graves, thousand-year-old oaks, and nightingales. I like this statue of a wild boar family at Unterschweinstiege (under-swine-crossing).

Anomalies of German life: medical toothpaste

This is what you find when you look for toothpaste in a German grocery store.

German children, or not

The news about the German birthrate, yesterday, is making big waves here in Germany (where I am stuck, but not for much longer!). Experts, academics and politicians are now demanding that childless people get smaller pensions than parents,  or pay more into the retirement system.

When I saw R last night, I asked him why he thought the German birthrate was declining.

"We are a very child-unfriendly society.  Children don't fit into people's plans." He pointed out that there is little support from the government for parents. I said that American parents got little support from the government, either. R said that the few German nursery schools were oversubscribed, "and it would never cross anyone's mind to start a new one."

"Americans don't have public nursery schools either," I said. "That can't be the reason. " (Although in France, almost all children start school at age 3, petite section maternelle.) R said that he thought the most important reason was that people felt their children would face a difficult future.

Germans talk about a difficult future. Yet when you look around you, Germans look prosperous. Houses are well-kept-up, everyone has a shiny car (or else),  people dress-- well, I can't say they dress well. You have rarely seen so many ugly shoes and coats. But they don't look poor.

"The majority still has it pretty good here. And that's why nothing changes."

R said his daughter did very well on her Abitur (the end-of-high-school exams, like the French baccalauréat). She got into one of the best medical schools in Germany. Medical school here begins right after high school, and the universities are all public and free, creating the endless-studies syndrome-- Germans all seem to have Ph.Ds.

R's daughter wants to become a pediatrician-- and then move to England or Spain. R himself is planning to move to Switzerland once his son has finished school.

We exchanged news of the As who have moved to Australia, and of B who has decided to go there for a year with her family-- but it's her second time to go there for the year, and her oldest son is in his third year there. "I think they won't come back," R said.

I thought of other Germans I know: the Hs, whose sons are growing up British; the Fs, who are raising theirs in Italian; the Ps in Portugal; the Ks in France; the Hs and the Ls sending their kids to London. In fact offhand I can't think of any German friends whose children plan to stay in Germany.

Then we went out to dinner. The restaurant was packed, perhaps 150 people, but there were only three waiters in the whole place. They were all from the former Yugoslavia.

The empty cradle

Caption: "He's an only child, isn't he?" "He is now!"
[Cartoon by Martin Perscheid]

I'm still in Germany, aaaargh! Taking care of business. R is coming over to deliver a gift at 18h. R is a guy who sits down with his family and four calendars, every New Year's Day, and plots out every holiday for the whole year. They must save a lot of money that way, but it doesn't seem quite human to me....or is that just my undisciplined French side speaking?

A report came out of Berlin today that has the German media in an uproar. Germany has the lowest birthrate in the world. (I translated this article on it.)

I'm not surprised, in spite of Germany's generous Kindergeld (child-money). Every family gets Kindergeld in Germany--154 euros a month per child, or 179 per child from four children onwards--until the child is 27 years old, if he or she is still in school or job training.

The biggest problems are the schools and people's attitudes. German schools get out at lunch, five days a week. And the attitude is very much that mothers should not work.

My four best German women friends are all doctors, who all went through many expensive years of excellent public schooling and public higher education. They all quit their jobs when their children were small, except one who moved to Australia (and still works). This is considered normal.

The real problem is not people like them, however (they each have three children). Having several children is practically a sign of wealth in Germany. The real problem is that working-class women are not having children. I am not sure why this is, but the whole culture is against them, from the school hours to the "kinderfeindlich" [child-unfriendly] restaurants and stores, from the German über-emphasis on long vacations in exotic places, to the popular political "Greens" who think the world is far too crowded already, to the very term "Rabenmutter" (raven-mother), which means a neglectful mother, and which you still hear quite a lot, usually "humorously" applied to working mothers.

The trouble is that a country that doesn't have children doesn't turn into a wonderful empty country full of forests and wolves, as many of the Greens seem to wish (it's not an accident that pre-Christian Germans used to worship trees...). Although as a matter of fact the wolves are coming back into East Germany's deserted forests now.

No, historically a population that declines just loses control of its own country to other people.

Time and its discontents

Germans are terrifyingly punctual. If someone is three minutes late, he will pour out apologies. Once a real estate agent just went home, deeply insulted, when we were five minutes late.

As you might expect, watches are important in Germany. Salespeople openly stare at your wrist to judge you by the watch you wear. I feel sure there are more watch magazines per capita than in any other country.

Watch mania affects many Americans who move to Germany, too. I know one who bought a very expensive, beautiful watch he had dreamed of for many years, as a Christmas present to himself when his ship came in. When he came into work after Christmas, a co-worker said, "I see you have a [expensive watch name here]."

Proudly, the American said, "Yes!" and held it out to be admired.

"I myself have a Lange," said the co-worker. Smugly.

Transatlantic

I bought a bunch of magazines for the plane. American Vogue had a feature article about Segolène Royal, the French présidentiable who is more popular with the French electorate than within her own party, the Socialists ("The presidential race is not a beauty contest," said one Socialist senator cattily). She is a remarkable, elegant woman of 52, a top French political figure, who has four children with another politico, also a présidentiable, François Hollande. They are not married. (I don't get that. Surely having children with someone is a lot bigger commitment than getting married.)

"I believe I can beat Sarkozy,"she told the interviewer. "He talks about making a clean break, but I am the clean break."
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I was sitting in the exit row next to a young man going to Tel Aviv, who asked the flight attendant if the sandwich had ham in it. I assumed he was Jewish, but he was an Israeli-Palestinian from a Christian family. It was odd to hear his lazy American vowels and know his native language was Arabic. He spoke Hebrew too.

He was a kind, slightly pudgy young man of 28 with a five o'clock shadow, who works long hours in a butcher shop in a Florida retirement community. "The old people like me because I'm very patient." We talked about his large family, his grandmother who tried living in Florida with her children, but missed the old country too much and went back to Tel Aviv. "It's such a nice place to live," he said longingly.
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At baggage claim at the Frankfurt Airport ("Fraport: the Airport Forum") , I was struck again, as I have been many times before, by the physical difference between the French and the Germans. The average German is just much taller. What a difference something like that must have made in wars in the old days.

The airport is so big that employees ride around on bicycles. It's the second-biggest airport in Europe, after London Heathrow, but a lot pleasanter.

The signs saying "Keep your airport clean" and "Takeaway here" are in English. All the people at the check-in desks and most of the businessmen flying in or out speak good English. In Germany, your English is an exact marker of your social status.

You could easily believe, at the airport, that the German language is gradually dying out.

Milchkaffee and a baby

I had breakfast at this pleasant museum cafe, surrounded by peaceful Germans reading the newspapers. I ordered a big slice of homemade orange cake with whipped cream and a Milchkaffee.

One man had brought a tiny baby in an infant seat and sat near me on the wall bench you see behind the coat rack. In Germany it is normal to share tables, without having to ask, and he needed space to put the baby seat. He jumped up though when I coughed a few times, smiled apologetically, and moved across the room. (I don't blame him.)

You often see men alone with babies, on weekdays, in Germany and Scandinavia. It's quite rare in France.

When I got up to get a second delicious cup of Milchkaffee, he was standing near the cash register holding the seat, and the clerk, who looked Iranian-German, was cooing at the baby.

The drive here yesterday was a bit scary for the first couple of hours. Right outside of Reims, there was a snowstorm and the road got so slippery that you could feel the tires slipping and then catching, skidding and then the ABS would kick in. All the traffic-- there was a lot of traffic-- slowed down to a crawl as we entered an almost-whiteout, with big chunks of hail-snow hurtling against the windshield, and suddenly thick ridges of icy snow appeared in the road. The tank truck right in front of me started sliding around on the road. I could see a car in a ditch on the other side of the road. It was surreal just at that moment to hear Radio France Info announce that the driving alert had been lifted for Champagne-Ardennes (where I was) and Lorraine.

It was the worst driving I'd experienced since a snowstorm many years ago in western Massachusetts, when I had to get off the interstate, driving almost blind, skidding terrifyingly, and find a motel in a blizzard. I certainly don't think most of the French drivers around me have as much experience as I do of that kind of weather. So  why were they going so fast the second they could see again? As I stayed in the truck lane, I could see them speeding by almost bumper-to-bumper on the shiny white road at 140 kph. I noticed the truckers and the foreigners from snowy countries-- for some reason there were a lot of Slovakians yesterday-- ignored them, and went slowly till the road was black again.

A Tale of Two Movies: German business vs U.S. business

D went to see a German movie called "Barfuss," which some friends of ours had told him they loved. He called me up in disgust afterwards. "It's just another one of those movies where the businessman is the villain," he said. "The movie ends with the hero deciding not to take a high-paying business job because it would be selling out." He described the plot to me and I said, "But how is he going to support the girl? She's mentally ill, she can't work?"

"No, instead they just live happily ever after on welfare, I suppose. The problem is that they can, in Germany," D said. "It's the trouble with this country! Their whole way of life is made possible by those evil businessmen, but they just don't get it!"

I had just watched a very different movie under duress. It was called "Mr Deeds" and is about a hick from New Hampshire who inherits his great-uncle's multi-billion-dollar company. All through the movie, the assumption is that the great-uncle was a pretty cool guy and ran a good company. Of course, the villains were ALSO evil businessmen (yawn) who were trying to destroy the good company. It wasn't just assumed that all businessmen were evil. I think that Americans identify with entrepreneurs much more than Europeans do.

In France I don't think I have ever seen a movie where the high-level businessmen weren't evil, either.

I heard on the radio that in the last three months of 2005, France created a total of 900 new jobs. Nationwide.

Driving from Germany to France

It was snowing this afternoon when I left Germany to drive back to Paris. The snow fell all last night and I opened the window to look out in the middle of the night. It was soft and peaceful and so quiet. I still have a sort of awed reverence for snow that probably comes from falling under the spell of the Narnia books at age 7 while living in southern Louisiana. The opening of the first one is a little girl who finds her way through a wardrobe into a snowy landscape in a magical country. Anyway, I have always loved snow and I was so happy to look out at it that it completely escaped me that I was going to have to drive six hours in it.

This morning as my car, which doesn't have snow tires because you never need them in Paris, skidded all over the white icy road, I almost thought better of it and was about to take the train. But the main roads were clear and I ended up with no trouble.

Driving from Germany to France, you pass through Lorraine, which still has long landscapes of open hills rolling to the horizon. It's one of the emptiest parts of France and the French air force sometimes practices its low-flying over it. Once I saw the Patrouille de France flying back and forth in formation (the French equivalent of the Blue Angels, or the British Red Arrows) north of the highway. The land is so empty that it's easy to let your imagination wander back in time and think of all the invasions that have marched in and out of France over those long rolling hills. The Gauls, the Romans, the Goths, the Burgundians, Attila the Hun, the Franks, Charlemagne! Attila burned down the cathedral at Metz on Easter, 451. I always think of that when I drive through Metz (which the French pronounce "Mess").

The road passes by Verdun, which is now Verdun, Ville de la Paix. Verdun, City of Peace. You come down a long, long hill and the city is at the bottom. Those few miles cost half a million lives and half a million wounded  in World War One. Several times I have stopped and taken tours around the battlefields, cemeteries, the Tranchée des Baionettes (where in 1916 a trench fell in over two standing platoons of soldiers, who were buried alive with their bayonets sticking out of the earth), and the underground village at the fort Douaumont, a French stronghold captured by the Germans in February, 1916. It's easy to see why it was such an important loss. Douaumont is the highest ground for many, many miles-- from here to Paris is almost flat. In front of Douaumont is one of many huge cemeteries in the area. It's very moving to see those rows and rows and rows of white crosses extending out of sight as far as you can see. If those young men had lived, so many of the best young men, I can't help thinking the last century would have been so much better and different. Maybe Hitler would never have come to power.

Then you go through the city of Rheims (Reims in French), where Clovis was crowned the first Christian king of France, and where all the kings of France were crowned afterwards. It's a lovely town with a famous laughing angel carved into its cathedral, whose spire you can see many miles across the plains. At the gas stations near Rheims, you can buy champagne along with your windshield wiper fluid or oil. I passed a salt-spraying truck that sent rattling streams of salt against my poor car. The French still use salt on their roads, although I believe the U.S. stopped decades ago for environmental reasons.

Then you go past Château-Thierry, where my grandfather was wounded so badly in July, 1918, he spent a year in the hospital. There is a big American cemetery there. There are so many American cemeteries all over France that the U.S. embassy here has a special official in charge of them. It's strange to see how close the battles were to Paris. One was so close that Paris taxis famously helped bring troops up to the front.

Disneyland is next; right after the last toll. This was one of the many concessions Disney got from the French government to persuade them to put the park in the Paris area rather than in Spain. Today as I drove by in the early darkness and the grim sky I wondered if Disney ever regrets that decision.

Then across the beautiful city, home to my apartment and a nice glass of red wine!