A busy week 4

As you have noticed, this blog has been more about parenting than about living in Germany. It turns out parenting is the bigger deal. Go figure. But that doesn't mean that we don't notice the change in scenery. Here's view of the Frankfurt skyline from across the river.



Our rudimentary German is still a problem, although it's possible to get by without it. A lot of signs and such are actually in English.

And some things are self-explanatory...









So it hasn't been too hard to make ourselves known, although I hope to start German lessons soon. We visited the cathedral in Mainz last week, which was nice, although the farmers market on the plaza outside was actually more interesting. The outdoor markets here are really great. Last week in Frankfurt we went to one (accidentally happened upon it, actually) that had a blacksmith tent and live animals for sale. We got dinner from a stand; it was five baked potatoes in a bowl of dip (3 euros!). Churros for dessert. And I had pumpkin wine. Delicious.

Elias travels well, which is good because we go out a lot. Here he is on the train.

Elias continues to grow and be wonderful. He's not sleeping through the night yet, but when he's tired, he's tired.

Maybe it's from all that exercise.












We finally got our bank account and EC card. We went shopping for clothes for Elias, because it's gotten colder and he didn't have enough warm stuff. Here are nice corduroy overalls.

Playtime is always fun. He's very active.





This morning we went to the flea market on the river bank, in a neighborhood called Sachsenhausen. It was CRAZY. Think of anything--anything at all--that might conceivably be sold for under $10, and you will find it there. The saying "everything but the kitchen sink" might apply, but we did see a kitchen sink for sale. More candelabras than you could dream of. Not one but two stands selling secondhand surgical equipment. Plenty of big-screen TVs. A miniature working cannon. Mannequins! We could go on. We can't wait for the Christmas markets!

Oh by the way...

The roller-bladers were back last night! This time in both directions--down the autobahn, then a little later back up the autobahn. Fascinating.

Our phone number

Our home phone number until October 1 is (069) 970-81214. The number of digits in a phone number is not standardized like in the U.S. To call that number from the U.S. you first have to dial the country code and such. In total you would dial:

011-49-69-970-81214

Of course that will only work for a few more weeks. I'll post the next one when we get it. What will always work, and is much cheaper, is email (powell@jhu.edu) or Skype (our username is "powells.of.germany", without the quotes).

Elias is Two Months Old

So the strangest thing happened to us Tuesday night. Eli had just gone to bed, and we were sitting at the table drinking our nightly beer (for research purposes). We heard a dull roar like a strong wind or a sudden rainstorm outside, and Jenny got up to close the window. Streaming down the autobahn outside our house were thousands of … rollerbladers. At 10pm on a Tuesday! Some of the rollerbladers had lights on their skates. It went on for several minutes. Truly the strangest thing we have seen here; well, maybe except for Germans in shorts. I shot video of it for a few minutes. Apparently this happens several times a year. On the one hand, Germany is a westernized, economically powerful country just like the U.S. I mean, it’s not like we’re in Burkina Faso. On the other hand … rollerblading? There were thousands of them! I guess some culture gaps aren’t meant to be bridged.


Elias is two months old today (Wednesday). It’s hard to believe how much life has changed in the last two months. We bought him colorful wind chimes. Sounds strange, but the wind chimes at his Grandma Evey’s house always calmed him down. Jenny spent the morning with Elias in the park, while our apartment was being cleaned. Eli slept in his Baby Björn and Jenny people-watched. Since getting over his jet lag, he’s been great. In fact, he’s sleeping right now. We’re testing a new brand of diapers now. There was too much, how should we put it, leakage, in the other ones. We’ll let you know how it goes. Not that you asked.




We are still busy trying to breach German red tape. First we went to the einwohlemeldeamt, to register our address with the city. Then we had to go to the auslanderbehörde to get permission to stay in the country. Which we could not do, because we were told to come back tomorrow. Hopefully it will work out, or we will see you earlier than we thought, after we get deported. Then we have to open a bank account. In German. Maybe we will come back early, and poor.

The bread here is wonderful. There are bakeries everywhere, and we are having a hard time not trying them all. Of course, you can get great bread in America, too. Just as you can get great American beer. But I think the difference is the priority each country places on different things. I can get good bread in America, but I have to search for it; in contrast with Germany where there are twenty bakeries, all with fresh, amazing bread, within walking distance. America makes some great beer (whether they are better at making beer than the Germans, only more research will show), but the average German beer—the kind everyone drinks—is much better than the average American beer. And you have to pay a lot more for the great American beers (which you can’t even buy here; I’m not sure if that’s snobbery, or good taste. More research is needed).

Matt has also discovered Cuban products, since Germany has no embargo against Cuba. So now we're getting two new cultures for the price of one. We'll let you know how it goes.

Touring Frankfurt

Howdy, all.

Scott & Sara -- Congratulations! Email when you get a chance (wlu address still works--does yours?). No rush, we know how it is.

My office building is very drab, but it has a great view. Frankfurt's mix of old and new is pretty obvious in this panoramic view.









No one we had spoken to who had been to Germany before was enthusiastic about Frankfurt. Too modern. But so far I really like the city. There's a difference between visiting somewhere as a tourist and living there as a resident. Frankfurt is really liveable. Nice parks, wide sidewalks, fun shopping, etc. And I think there's a difference between visiting a country as you want it to be, before you get there--like cuckoo clocks and castles and large beer steins--versus visiting it as it actually is, which is a place where people wake up and go to work each day and don't really care how great the museums are or how photogenic the scenery is. The guidebooks love Munich, but those buildings are just replicas, right? It got bombed along with Frankfurt and everywhere else, but it was just rebuilt in a different style. Of course I don't know, I haven't been to Munich yet. Here's our walk to work.











Boy oh boy do the Germans know how to put on a good street fair. Incredible food (we had African, from Cameroon), terrible music (Jenny got video of a German Barry White impersonator), lots of alcohol.

















We are still exploring Frankfurt and haven't left the city much. Here's two photos of the Old Opera House. Eli had to get out to explore by himself.




























Things are going great. We are getting email now if you want to contact us. Or get Skype (we are: powells.of.germany). Or just leave a comment here! We love to hear from everyone.

Walking Around Town

(Our first post is below this one...skip down if you haven't read it yet.)

We’ve been here for almost one week and finally have internet, at my (Matt’s) office. No internet or international calls from the apartment (or box, as Jenny likes to call it) yet.

On Monday we went to Mainz on the train. It took about an hour. The trains are great, both in town and between towns. They’re fast, on time, and pretty cheap. America needs a transportation system as good as Germany. Mainz is a smaller town than Frankfurt. It has about 200,000 people while Frankfurt is close to 700,000. But we didn’t see much of it because Elias was crying too much and needed to take a nap, so we left after a while. And at the time all we had was the Baby Björn (a front carrier), and man does that hurt after a few hours of carrying a ten-pound baby. Later that day we went to the Zeil, the main shopping street in Frankfurt, to look for a stroller, but they were too expensive. So Tuesday we took the U-bahn (the subway) to the mall—yes there is a mall—and bought a kinderwagen from Toys R Us.

We walk through Grüneburg Park every day. It’s a large city park with lots of paths and playgrounds and even two pagodas. It’s right across the street. We just take the pedestrian bridge over the autobahn, and let me just say thank goodness there is a bridge. More on German drivers later.

The other place we walk through a lot is Leipzigerstrasse, a shopping street that begins just outside of the University of Frankfurt. Anything you could ever want is sold there (although finding what you want, when you don’t speak German, is a totally different matter). Leipzigerstrasse is where we shop for groceries. Germans don’t stock up on groceries for the week like Americans. Instead they shop every day or so. We’re trying to adjust but it’s hard to break old habits. Most things cost about the same as America. Some things are more expensive, like bananas, because they have to travel further to get here than to the US, and some things are much less expensive—like beer. Hallelujah.

For example, just before we left, I bought a six-pack of Oktoberfest beer for 9 US dollars; yesterday I saw a six-pack of the same beer for 4 Euros. And, in the US that’s a six-pack of 12-oz. bottles; here it’s a six-pack of 16-oz. bottles! So naturally I’ve been taking advantage of the 79-cent half-liters of beer. Once I taste a wider range I will report back in full. All in the name of cultural research, of course.

The weather has been wonderful. Which is great because we haven’t seen any air conditioning yet and shorts seem to be verboten. We are still adjusting to our new life, but as Eli re-learns how to sleep at night it is getting easier.

Our one complaint is the cigarette smoking. It is everywhere. You can even smell it in our apartment sometimes. By everywhere we mean inside the stores, outside the stores, inside and outside every café, in the park with all the joggers, everywhere. We are a little concerned about Eli, but there seems to be no escaping it. But he is still able to cry mightily, so his lungs appear to be working quite well and are thus far unaffected.

Elias is learning to sit in his chair (actually car seat) by himself, which makes dinner time nice for Matthew and me. He still prefers being held, but as he grows he is able to be more and more independent and seems to enjoy it. He is getting much better with his hands. He is learning to suck on them, and is definitely on his way to sucking his thumb. He’s smiling a lot now, but we haven’t captured it on camera yet. He sleeps in his crib all night; although he

still wakes up to nurse, he goes back to sleep right away without crying and doesn’t need to be rocked back to sleep. He is getting a little chubbier in the face too, very cute. He still enjoys looking around at everything and makes a great tourist in that respect. And, he has developed what is apparently a baby Powell trait of talking to and smiling at wires (a phone cord, in this case). We love spending time with him.

Now that we have internet we’re going to check out how the Powells of Utah are doing. I hope Baby Joseph Smith and his Mom are doing well. And, happy birthday, Megan! In Germany it is customary on your birthday to give, not receive, presents. You can mail ours or just wait until we get back to give it to us. Auf Wiedersehen.

Arrived in Frankfurt

Actually Sunday, 3 September
(Blue fonts are photo captions.)

Hello, everyone!

Well, we made it to Frankfurt safely. The flight over was terribly long but Elias was great. No screaming and minimal fussing. We held him most of the time to keep him calm, but because of that we didn’t get any sleep on the plane.

We were picked up from the airport by my new colleague and went straight to our apartment, which is actually just a room with an alcove for a kitchen. It’s really small! We slept for a while, got falafel at the Kebap Häus, then went to the grocery store. You pay a deposit to use a grocery cart, which you can take through the multi-storied store using ramp escalators. You have to bring your own grocery bags, or buy them there, and then bag your own groceries, which is pretty hectic. But those are just details; mainly it’s just like American stores.

Then we slept some more, or anyway we tried to. Jet lag is a terrible thing when you have a seven-week old who is also jet lagged. We were worn out, homesick, and ready to get back on the plane and go home. I would like to say our transition here was smooth, but why put on airs: it was (and is) hard. Moving a seven-week-old to a new country was a stupid idea. I did think beforehand that it would be difficult, but I also expected the great things to outweigh any difficulties. But then you’re eating peanut butter and Ritz crackers with leftover falafel in a studio apartment and it’s three a.m. and the baby is still crying and you haven’t slept in 30 hours and you’re face-to-face with the fact that you’re not the person you thought you were, or were pretending to be, and you wonder what the heck made you think you could do this? The Europe you read about in the guidebooks seems very distant.

But then day two begins. At 6:30 a.m. a still-awake Elias and I walked down the street to see a view of the mountains while Jenny tried to sleep. The neighborhood is fancy; large, gated houses that remind me of some neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. We live in one of those fancy houses, but of course we only occupy about 300 square feet of it. We also walked across the street into Grüneburg Park, which has lots of nice jogging paths. Later that day the three of us walked to the shopping street, Leipzigerstrasse, and scored a minor victory by being able to purchase a cappuccino at a sidewalk café. After dinner we walked to the Catholic Church but couldn’t decipher the mass times, so I’ll have to report on mass in German next week. After extensive consultation with a German-English dictionary, we managed to wash a load of laundry. Why does our German phrase book think it’s important to include “How much does a deck chair cost?” (Wieviel kostet ein Liegestuhl?) but not Schranktrocken? Then we washed Eli. In the sink. We finally made it to bed. The second night Elias slept much better (meaning he actually slept at all) but still wasn’t back to his pre-Germany sleep schedule.

Day three, Sunday (today), Elias and I continued our early-morning exploration of the neighborhood. (Jenny is up at night nursing, so I take the morning shift while she catches up sleep.) We went back down to Leipzigerstrasse and found a few bakeries. Most shops are closed on Sundays; only bakeries and a few other random shops and cafés can be open. After a pastry and a coffee—ah, coffee—the world seems a little brighter. Tomorrow we plan to take the train to Mainz, outside of Frankfurt, to see if we want to find an apartment there or stick with what we’ve got here.

We’re making good use of our time but obviously haven’t been here very long. Still we’ve found lots to like: Dollar coins instead of bills. Outdoor cafés. Grüneberg Park. Really beautiful neighborhoods (imagine the Mt. Vernon neighborhood in Baltimore, but the whole city like that). Shopping streets, not malls. Really cheap fresh-baked bread from the bakery. I haven’t had the beer yet—we’ve been drinking some sort of seasonal, partly-fermented, still-sweet wine, which is fantastic—but the beer is out there and cheap and I’m ready for it. I’ll keep you posted. Oh, and where are all the fat people? Jenny thinks that’s why German toilet paper is not as wide as the American version (smaller butts).

So to sum up. Arriving here was in many ways like camping. Your life is stripped down to essentials, minor things take great effort, and you are forced to take stock and decide, is what we have enough? And God willing it will be. Despite the pressures of culture shock, homesickness, and baby-raising, Jenny and I are keeping it together. We miss everyone terribly. Auf Wiedersehen.