Growing Up

Really, I don't want to write about my childhood.

Or rather, I want to, but I want to try and remember the good parts.

My childhood rests on my shoulders like a huge load, a burden I've been carrying around with me for all of my fifty-three years, but a short exchange with Frauke yesterday brought back some memories that keep bothering me now.

It was not much more than her mentioning that she had begun to learn Arabic at some time because she was interested and rather liked the "basic tenets" of Islam, and that triggered, with me, the old queasy feeling of growing up with a Muslim father in a Western country.

Now, in hindsight, I understand my father a lot better, and also his struggle to introduce me and my sister to his culture and faith, and the obstacles he must have encountered in my mother's family and his surroundings. How lonely he must have been, having no support at all! And he had come here for the love of my mother, leaving his home country and his family behind, only to meet this uncompromising resistance.

Sadly, my father never was a very patient or gentle man, but rather blessed with a terrible temper and no great understanding on how to treat children.

The one thing he never forgave me was that I was not a boy. His firstborn, and a girl.

He tried to raise me as a Muslim and Arab girl in Germany in the 60s.

SO not an option.

Imagine that wooden house in the forest on the dirt road, the staid German neighbors, my civil servant grandparents and uncles, my headstrong mother (she had gone to Arabia, remember, to marry this stranger!), and one child to fight over, and you have a potent brew.

When I entered high school at 11, I was the only child with foreign roots at a school with nearly 1000 students, and the only one for whom tuition had to be paid.... and the only one who did not have the German nationality. I don't think there is need to elaborate.

The same went for holidays.

Muslim holidays were ignored, but it was expected that my father would celebrate the Christian feasts.

He must have been a truly torn man. He wanted the Western education, and yet he wanted it not. He wanted a perfect Muslim daughter, but with all the trappings of a modern, educated woman. H would tell me how he saw me in a strapless white ballgown, with satin gloves and jewels, a debutante, but he would not let me attend dancing lessons because that would have been immodest. According to his wishes, I would either be a doctor or a lawyer, but I was not allowed outside the house in the early evening to attend a typing course (which would have been useful!), and of course I would "return" to Saudi Arabia to practice that profession.

Where I would always ever be only a doctor for women or children, or a lawyer.... for what?

And we have not even spoken yet about the fact that I wanted to be neither.... ever.

Or that I did not speak any Arabic, despite his efforts to teach me... in grueling, torturous lessons on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights, together with instructions in "faith".

Now if I want to make sure my own kids really learn something and like it, too, I try to teach them the fun of it, first. I try to make them WANT to learn in, and not be afraid of it, or even loathe it

And here we return to Frauke and her interest in Islam. I LOATHE it. With all my heart.

To this day, and now I'm middle-aged and a lot more tolerant, there is this one thing that I loathe and want nothing to do with it at all.

Only now, with my father being 88 and a lot less rigid, we can talk about his life and what he wanted for his family, and for me, and he is able to accept my view of things, and I can see his.

The sadness of it, a life time wasted.

The misplaced love, wasted.

And the loneliness of one man, lost in a strange world because of his love, redeemed at the end of his life.

Food Memory Lane

One of my twitter friends from Britain just tweeted to me:

"I'm going to drown in my Pavlovian responses to your cooking updated here soon!"

Which brings me back to yesterday and the question I posted there.

What is the first thing you can remember ever having tasted, as a child, and do you recall the circumstances?

There were not many responses, but some.

Chocolate (of course), boiled eggs, which I thought was very, very sweet and childlike, and a couple of other, more exotic things.

I asked because I have a very clear memory of mine, it is a scene that is, in all its usualness, so unremarkable that you'll probably just say "duh".

This is it. A boring, simple wheat breakfast roll with butter and honey.

But I remember everything about it.

My father had by then gone on to Brazil, and I lived with my Mom and her three younger brothers at my grandparents' house. This is what it looks like, it has not changed at all during the years. My sister and I went by there last fall.

In case you are wondering, that house is a lot larger on the inside than it looks from here. A magic house, in fact.

In which my Mom and I shared a room, and over my cot was a pic of my father that I would look at every morning when I woke up. I must have been five, because that was shortly before we left to join him in Sao Paolo, and he was the hero of my little world.

That particular morning of the roll and honey, I woke up early. It was winter and still dark, and very cold in my room because the wood stove had gone out overnight. My mother was up already, I was all alone snuggled up in my bed, but I could hear the voices of the grown ups from the kitchen, which looked a lot like this

with a table and a bench in one corner (the cat liked to poop in that corner; my grandmother had a hell of a time getting under there to clean up) where we would have our meals.

So I got up and went there to join them.

Someone had made his way to the baker a mile away that early to get those rolls, and there they were, in a basket on the table, warm and fragrant, a mountain of them.

My grandfather sat me down between himself and my mother, wrapping something warm around my feet, and then they fed me that heavenly bread with butter and the runny, sweet honey and let me sip their milky coffee. I still recall that I felt all grown up and very important to be there with them that early in the day right before they all went off to work or school and I would stay behind with my grandmom and be with her until my friends from the neighborhood would come to pick me up for a day of romping around outside.

We could do that, back then. We lived on a dirt road in the forest. There was no kindergarten, no pre-school, no necessity to watch us.

My mother, that morning, was wearing a navy plaid skirt and a white blouse, and when she bent down to kiss me good bye a while later I could smell her perfume. She looked so young and pretty, and I remember feeling a little sad because she had to go away to work and had so little time to spend with me.

The next food I recall distinctly is the Filet Mignon we were served aboard that ship that took us to Brazil, and the special time when we crossed the Equator and the kids got little gifts from the Captain. On that long journey, that was the first time my mother sent me to lunch by myself because she was so scared she would be caught and get an "Equator Baptism" in the ship's pool.

And then, the very first day in Sao Paolo, and I know it was a Sunday, I came to love Olives.

Not too far from our new house was a huge market place, or at least it seemed huge to me back then.

Well, this was obviously not taken in Brazil but somewhere in cool Germany, but you get the drift.

The point I wanted to make was, I got lost that morning while I walked the aisles with my parents, only to be rescued by a friendly farmer who picked me up and sat me down on his crates to wait, and while I was sitting there - totally unafraid, mind you; it never occurred to me that I was lost - he fed me olives.

I loved that taste. And the tart, salty smell, and the feel of the hard, smooth ovals that would pop open and release their unique aroma when I bit on them, and simply everything about them. Even the pits that I could spit all over the place.

My parents came to pick me up way too many olives too soon in my opinion, and they were not half as happy that day as I was, but the good thing was, I got to eat many, many olives from then on.

And that was because my father, being an Arabian, liked his breakfast in Arabian style, too, which consists of fresh pita, olives, feta, some tomatoes and a dash of virgin olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and coffee or tea with it.

This here is another great family favorite for breakfast: Humus. You all know this, the Indian/Oriental chickpea dish, right?

My family is big on cooking and eating. My parents love to put on a big spread when we children get home. They fight over what they are going to cook for us for days, wanting to make all the childhood goodies and then, when we get there, urging us to eat eat eat, and we do, and then they pack up the rest for us to take back home and eat it at night.... really, Mom, we're SO full.... it is their way of showing their love, and I love them for it.

Food makes the greatest memories, and they stick with you, even if times get rough in between. When everything else fails, the meals you shared with loved ones will pull it back together. I know. I've been there.

Oh hey.... those orgies with the home-made pizzas, and watching Star Trek with my father?

To Blog Or Not To Blog

Seriously?

I hate blogging.

The pressure is really too great. This here has to be interesting, funny, captivating, there should be some pics for those who do not want to read a longer stretch of text, and it should make an IMPRESSION because the odd literary agent or publisher or well-connected author might just happen along and take a fancy to my writing.

So the subject had better be something... momentous, yes? A story that will make you stop and read.

Well, here's the sad part: There is nothing momentous.

I'm a really, really boring person, and I do what every one else does, too: get up in the morning, go to work, come back home, make lunch for the family, do some household chores, watch some TV, go to bed.

In between, I write - as you also know - and tweet - hell yeah. As you certainly know.

And that's it.

So really, what should I blog about?

I guess I could always tell you a story....

I was here as a child. You all know where this is, right? Rio de Janeiro? Brazil?

My parents were pen pals.

One day, at school, my mother's English teacher suggested that the class might like to have contact with "foreign" kids from all over the world, and my mom ended up with this young guy in Saudi Arabia. They exchanged letters for years, but never met in person until my father proposed to her, in writing.

By then, my mother was twenty-four and working as a secretary for some kind of Ministry, and she wanted out very badly. So when that one letter came, asking her to come over to Cairo and get married off the spot, she took that chance and left her home. Until then, she had been a good kid, living with her parents and younger brothers, but right then and there she decided that her life needed a really dramatic change, and she took off.

She got on a plane, went to Cairo, and married that Arabian man right off the spot.

And this is their wedding pic.

They moved back to Saudi Arabia after that and lived there for a while, until I was born and year old, before they decided to relocate to Germany because I was sickly and they wanted better doctors.

My mother used to tell me wonderful stories about her life in Jeddah in the 50s, about meeting other European women who had married Arabs, about their social life, about the heaps of trash right behind their apartment house and their camel rides on the beach. How my father would take her out on trips into the desert in their old Jeep, and how she used to hang up wet bed sheets in the windows to cool down the rooms a little. No air conditioning back then.

Germany, though, proved not to be the right place for them, either.

Back then, my father was the only "foreigner" in the little town where my grandparents lived, long before the first Italian and Turkish came to Germany for work. He was not welcome.

So, after a rather brief period, my parents decided to emigrate to Brazil.

Please don't ask my why, probably it was just far away enough from everything else, and my father took a fancy to it, I just don't know.

But I do remember he left us and went ahead to find a home and a job, and a year later, when I was five, we went to join him, my Mom and I.

We went by ship, and we left from Hamburg.

We left from here. It looks just the same today as it did then, and I can tell, because we live in Hamburg now.

At that time, in the early 60s, there were still a lot of ships transporting passengers across the oceans, and it was a great adventure. There's not a lot I recall from that trip, but this much I do remember: there was a group of nuns aboard who were going to do missionary work in the jungle; I lost one of my brand new shoes on the second day of the trip, it went over-board; the kids had their meals before the grown ups, and we got filet mignon every single day; when we crossed the Equator, my mother hid under the bunk and I got a little plastic doll from the Captain which I called "Pia"; the other woman in our cabin had a Holy Mary statuette with her that glowed in the dark and creeped me out.

And I remember arriving in Rio, where my father was waiting to pick us up.

This, I really remember very well.

The ship made its way towards the harbor among all those hilly islands, and the air was so soft and warm, and it was in the early evening. The shore could be seen, and the many lights from the Copacabana, and the Jesus statue on its mountain.

My father took us down to the beach that night for dinner, right down to the famous stretch where all the tourists and beautiful people hang out, where I played in the sand.

We did not live in Rio, but in Sao Paolo. The next day, we had to board a bus and go all the way inland to that city, where a small house in a small street was waiting for us, and here we spent the next three years of our lives.

Until I got sick again, and my parents returned to Germany once more.

Now that I'm writing about it, it occurs to me that I've really never taken the time to reflect on this time in my life at all. There was only always the memory of being sick and in and out of hospitals and doctors's offices, but the longer I think about it, the more I recall very good times, too, like that day when we went to the snake farm outside Sao Paolo, or the one time when me friend Celia found that huge spider in the mail box, or the maid's room at the back of the house that I was never allowed to enter because, my Mom said, there were fleas inside.

Also, the market just around the corner and its heavenly smell, and how I came to love olives.

Mangoes!!!! Those Brazilians really know about mangoes! And the coconuts on the beach in Santos.

Ok, I do like blogging. I've changed my mind.

At School

This is the place where I spend most of my time.

My school. The yard is covered in snow right now, as you can see, and at this moment deserted because the lessons are running. There are only two young teachers in the Teachers' Room with me right now, Wanda and Sandra, and they are discussing fur coats. Not having, but

wanting one. And also if they want breakfast now, and who's going to get it from the cafeteria.

This is what everyone is having today:

Cafe Latte and salami sandwich. It's Wednesday, after all.

If you look closely at my laptop, you can see the broken keys.... I think. They look like knocked out teeth, and they HURT me!!!! Typing is no fun, either, but this will remedied, because my beloved bought me a MacBook Pro. NO more missing teeth!

This is our Teachers' Room.

Well, part of it. It was rebuilt just this summer when the two neighboring schools merged and the two groups of teachers became one. There was quite a lot of upheaval and unrest because no one thought it would work out, but it did, in fact, and the atmosphere is a lot better than expected. The seat in the front with the pink bag next to it is mine, by the way. You might have guessed. Pink.

Our school now houses (hosts? teaches? serves?) nearly 600 students. For German Secondary Schools, this is fairly average. We teach grades 5 to 10, which would make it, in US terms, a "junior high school", I think. There are 62 teachers working here, three social workers, two headmasters, two secretaries and one cook.

This is Yvonne, one of the secretaries, and the kindest soul in the world.

And our cook, Gaby, feeding the hungry little ones.

My headmaster, Birgit, in her office, after saying she always looks stupid when she smiles for a snapshot, but this one actually pleased her enough to permit me to use it. Without her, I would not be doing the job I love so much. She believes that theater and musical work are essential for kids, and for their education, and she is my greatest supporter.

In fact, she never looks stupid. Harassed, at times, or worried, but most often she radiates a wonderful, positive spirit.

Break, again. The Espresso machine is in use.

This has become a ritual. There is nothing like a fresh brewed coffee to get together and chat for a moment. We bring different roasts and blends and then compare, and it has become a little of a contest to find the rarest and most exotic one. Hamburg has many coffee companies, and we are good hunters, all of us.

The Hubby. We work at the same school, but do very different things. He is a math and physics and chess teacher, I do the arts. But we both love coffee. Obviously.

This here is not a new school building. In fact, it is rather old. You can see it in the stark dullness of the hallways, the grey, uncomfortable angles and the uninspired class rooms. There is this unspecific and yet very particular smell, I don't know rightly what it is, but common to all schools.



It is associated with hoards of running children, chalk, over-stuffed school bags and damp winter jackets, mashed sandwiches in greasy wrappers and spilled tea.

There are no nice retreats for the kids during lunch break, and no peaceful corners.

This is the one recreational room:

As you can see, not a whole lot. But we have a lot of fun. I've taught a group of 5th grade girls knitting here, and we play and sing, too.

Also, I hear a lot of stories, from favorite pets' antics to sad family fates, newly separated parents, families torn apart, new families forming and not working too well.

Most of the kids at our school are from socially challenged backgrounds, most have a migratory history. Only a small percentage is of "German" origin, the others are from all over the planet. We have one 6th grade with 16 (!) nationalities in it, which is wonderful for the kids. There is no better way to learn about the world than living and studying together.

And this here, finally, is what I do when I don't hang out in the Teachers' Room:

I teach theater and musical classes. Right now, we're putting together a show that will go on stage on February 5, at the official opening ceremony for this newly merged school. We will be singing and performing Musical and movie songs for the mayor, the Minister of Education, the press, the city council, other heads of schools, etc.... and we're very excited about it.

These are "my" kids:

And this is how we look after a successful show:

Had to break off blogging on Wednesday and could only resume today, but actually there is little to add anyway. The pictures talk, I think, and no one looks unhappy, do they?

My Macbook arrived Wednesday afternoon, and we have been spending a lot of time together, and making friends. I know now why people who have one would never go back to a Windows machine. This is not a clever Apple slogan, it is really true.

Teacher Knud asked me today why I thought it was different to use a Mac, and I replied that it felt as if some very clever people had taken apart a Windows laptop into a squazillion little parts, looked very closely at every one, reshaped, painted and maybe turned it over and then put it back together to work properly. A little like a Borg starship: neat, sleek, efficient, doing what it was meant to do, exactly.

And on this note, I'm closing shop for this week.

Postscript

Right off the plane, here she is!!!

So the girl came and left again today after five days of fun and laughter and a lot of sight-seeing.

AMAZING what you never get to do in your own city, isn't it? There's always this thought that there will be SO much time to go to that place or see this thing - and then you end up never doing it until someone from far away comes along and wants to see it all.

So we went to Berlin, where my family and I had not been since the Wall came down, and you know when that was, right? It is a modern, big city now, the Capital, and you hear many languages wallking down the boulevards, but not German. It was as COLD AS HELL.

I'll start at the beginning, though. While waiting for Charity, we strolled through the airport and came across these four guys. They look like a band, and they were sleeping the first time, but I wanted to ask if I could take their pic before I did.

"Yeah, man, sure!" was the reply I got.

I kept making up stories about them. My favorite version is: they are a Finnish rock band who performed in one of the Reeperbahn bars the night before and were now waiting for their plane to get home for NYE.

That was, as I said, on New Year's Eve.

We had a party and some friends over to meet our American Guest, and the neighborhood put on a really great firework show for us.

After a day of rest, Berlin.

Berlin in winter. Really, you realize how much closer to Russia and Moscow it must be, it being THAT cold there. Also, where in Hamburg you would mostly hear English or Japanese from tourists (and there are a lot of those here), in Berlin we mostly heard Eastern European languages, which are hard to know from each other and sound so much more foreign, and why exactly is that?

Here's what's left of the Berlin Wall. A piece of about 20 yards with some documentation, but that is all. The city looks the same on both its former sides, sometimes even grander and more spectacular on the Eastern.

Have I mentioned that it was cold?

Uhm, cold, right?

That huge cream building on the right is the US Embassy. It is huge, and right next to the Brandenburger Tor, seperated from it by a German bank. Go figure.

There was a rather cute guy watching the Embassy's gate, but none of us felt we should start a flirt with him. WAY to serious looking.

A piece of international history.

And yes, we still call the Americans "allies". They are. Were.

On a friendlier note, Berlin does have a Hard Rock Café.

I never knew why there was such a cult around the thing until we walked inside and had drinks and dinner there. That place alone might make me want to return to Berlin.

Heck, the starters alone would want me go back there!

The drive back home that night was less pleasurable because of - right; the snow. but we managed, and were up in time for more good stuff the day later.

Charity meets German food - not a good idea. The roast goose was fine, the red cabbage and dumplings - no. Sorry for that, girlie! You'll never have to go near it again!

Uhm, we went to this bar because of Pea.

When Pea and I first met and I told her I lived in Hamburg, she said she had been here, and visited the Red Light District.

Now Pea is the sweetest and daintiest of well-mannered ladies I've ever come across, and for the life of me I can't think what she might have wanted there, but she assures us that these are all hers and would we please return them to her post-haste via Charity, she is out of undies.

"Wait, what???"

They served pretty good Long Island Ice Tea at that bar, and it was only a few steps away from the place that is "forbidden" to "normal, regular, not-whore women".

Which is called "Herbertstrasse" and is a narrow street of shop windows with nekkid ladies in them. You know what that's all about, right? And here it is. Yes, we did dare go inside. Free country, and so on.

At a bar/lounge that allows smoking. One of a very few places left in Hamburg, I have to say, but an especially nice one.

And this is the view across the little lake right in the center of Hamburg where we were sitting then:

Here now comes the part that I'm really loathing.

Charity loves art, and so we went to the Hamburg Kunsthalle, the Art Institute.

We were there a couple of times, mostly with other guests, but not during the last ten years, quite honestly because I think 20$ entrance fee p.P. is a little steep for a regular Sunday afternoon enjoyment. But this here, this was different, and a great joy.

And I know that I will now go there more often, because it is money exceedingly well spent, and here we come to the loathing part:

I'm deeply ashamed I did not know about the famous paintings we had here!!!

There are some of my very favorites on display right here in Hamburg, and I never knew.

This, I loathe. Seriously.

Yep, folks, now you know why I am loathing this part alright. ALL those famous painters, right here, in front of my nose. *Turns away in shame*.

Now here is my conclusion.

We did not sleep very much. We did not really eat very regularly, either, we probably drank a little too much, and we covered a lot of ground.

I loved having Charity here, and it would have been great if she could have stayed longer, but hey, this was a spontaneous, fun thing we did, and a week with her a great, wonderful gift.

Also, it probably put me on my own way to traveling more than anything else ever did.

Bug, when you read this, I loved you coming over like this. And I'm looking forward to showing you Chicago in summer, just the way you showed me Hamburg.

And here is the last pic, and it shows how we felt most of the time.