Christmas has passed and we are entering the truly dark days of winter between Weihnachten and Silvester, waiting for the weather to finally warm again in …. May? I was on a call with a new colleague from Turkey and she visibly blanched at the news that we have months...
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Getting Tested for COVID-19 in Germany
Perhaps this post will be a bit of a time capsule, a reminder of a time when you needed to get a swab shoved up your nose to enter a store, but I still thought it would be interesting to share. In these strange times of a world-wide pandemic, my kids have looked to me...
COVID Vaccinations in Germany
The first vaccinations have been administered in Germany over the weekend with a flurry of publicity. The Local.de reports that a 101-year-old woman in a retirement home was the very first person to be inoculated against coronavirus on Saturday, December 26th. Though...
Is Christmas 2020 Canceled in Germany?
If you have ever been in Germany at Weihnachten (Christmas), you know it is a magical time. Christmas markets bring people together, the glühwein flows, the smell of Gebrannte Mandeln is everywhere, and Germans are at their jolliest. It is also a Coronavirus...
Stories from the Front Lines: Berlin COVID-19 Edition
I have a cousin from Arkansas who recently moved to China with her family. I admire their adventurous spirit as I can't imagine a much more drastic change for them. Moving from Seattle to Berlin as two footloose and fancy-free twenty-year-olds is one thing. Moving as...
How to tell when Germans are really being rude versus just being German
If you want to confirm the fact that the internet is not improving people's IQs, just type "rude Germans" into your favorite search engine. Boom! You'll get over 1.9 million results, most of which were written by morons. (But "rude French" pulls an amazing 39.1...
Celebrities Who’ve Called Berlin Home
For the past few days the world has been in mourning. David Bowie has died. And like the rest of the world, Berlin is laying claim to its adopted son. Bowie lived in Berlin in the 1970s, departing LA and Switzerland for something altogether more hedonistic. He was...
Making a small contribution – refugees in Berlin
The situation is all over the news, it's what people are earnestly discussing over dinner, it has moved the country on a national scale - I'm talking about Europe's migrant crisis and the role Germany is playing. This is not the time nor place to be political. All...
US Women Destroy Germany’s World Cup Dreams
The headline in today's Bild online says it all: US-Girls zerstören unseren WM-Traum. In a contest between the top two teams in the world last night, the United States came out on top 2-0 in a surprisingly dominant performance, outlasting a loaded German side in the...
A Golden Cup
Tomorrow one of the most coveted trophies in sport will come to Berlin. Today Germany woke up collectively hungover but with a jubilant smile on its face. Yesterday, just before midnight, the nation erupted into euphoria when the German football team won the World...
The Famous Swabian Hausfrau
I was delighted to find an article in the February 1, 2014 edition of The Economist dedicated to the mindset of the Swabian Hausfrau. The article links the economic mindset of this stereotype from Germany's Southwest to the economic mindset of Germans within Europe....
Playing Monk in Switzerland
It's unusual for me to find that it's my turn to blog and not have a topic or two that I'm bursting to write about. When that happens, I virtually leaf through Spiegel online and its English section, The Local and Deutsche Welle. My Facebook feed also sometimes...
And the sky became a sea of light – Silvester in the Hauptstadt
A Scary New Year's Eve in Berlin We were lucky this year that the Berlin snow waited long enough for Silvester's detritus to be cleared away from the streets. In 2009/10 - the winter of the big freeze, when the pavements stayed covered in thick layers of ice and snow...
A new government for Christmas
Germany has a new government, and it's arrived just in time for Christmas. CDU, CSU and SPD will govern under Angela Merkel (CDU) in a Grosse Koalition (Grand Coalition). That Koalitionsvertrag I wrote about in my last post has been approved. The SPD party members...
Without a voting card on Election Day
Yesterday - Election Day. I, as an expat, was merely a bystander. But that did not stop a familiar shiver of emotion running up my spine at the sight of people strolling to the local polling station, peacefully coming together to democratically express their hopes and...
Election year – time to swat up on German politics
Before I became an expat I was well versed in politics. I read the broadsheets daily (usually at the top of a London bus on my way to work) and, when occasion called for it, I voiced a distinct opinion at dinner parties. So I find it embarrassing that after three...
Something from home
"Can we bring you anything that you can't get there?" is a common question our visitors from the UK ask. We usually spend a good ten minutes, both of us running through supermarket shelves in our minds' eye, but almost always to no avail. Aside from the odd big pack...
German efficiency and Berlin’s new airport
There is a German term for "German efficiency" – several in fact: deutsche Gründlichkeit, Effizienz, Fähigkeit, Leistungsfähigkeit, Tüchtigeit. German efficiency can be found gloriously in German doors and windows, in energy use (hall lights that only turn on if...
The German Past raises its ugly head
A couple of days ago I opened my local newspaper here in Reno and turned to the "Nation & World" section. Wow! A huge headline jumped out at me: "Germany links serial killings to neo-Nazi sympathizers: Turks are outraged by slow action." The Reno Gazette-Journal...
On Food
I have long believed that food in Germany is better than food in the United States. This was mostly based on (literal) gut feeling: since about age 14, my life in America was a battle with my digestive tract. I spent many nights as a teenager awake in bed with...
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