Things We Do in Swabia but not Wisconsin, Part 1

It's been a while since I compared life in the Schwabenland to life in Wisconsin. It's also been a while since I last blogged! The will is there, but I've lacked inspiration. We had some lovely weather recently, which was perfect for Easter (and then it got cold and snowed, but never mind that), and I started thinking again about things we do differently here vs. in Wisconsin.

So let's see what comes of this.

Things We Do in the Schwabenland that We Don't (Didn't) Do in Wisconsin

Plan Easter meals well in advance

I think Easter has always been my favorite holiday. When I was little it meant a new Easter dress, an Easter bonnet, white gloves, new white shoes, and a wonderful fancy brunch at a local country club. The music in church was uplifting and beautiful, and even though snow was not uncommon at Easter in Wisconsin, at least Spring was on its way.

ca. 1970, probably Easter Sunday

Here in the Schwabenland Easter is even more special in some ways. The best part is that we have three days of forced family time and relaxation. Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday are stille Feiertage, which means all stores and businesses are closed. No shopping (even for a last-minute ingredient one forgot), and M doesn't go to the office unless there's an emergency. Lamb is the traditional meat served on Sunday and/or Monday, and we typically make our lamb stew.

Since [loud] yardwork is frowned upon on stille Feiertage (weeding is tolerated if you feel guilty while doing it), we quietly get indoor jobs done, read, watch TV, cook, and relax. It's really nice to have M home for basically four days in a row (he spends a short time in the office on Saturday). So while Easter has always been my favorite holiday, it's even more special now. It feels strange to me by now that Good Friday and Easter Monday are just normal days in the U.S.

Bring our glass bottles to the recycling center

In my hometown, items that can be recycled - paper, cardboard, glass, plastics, and cans - all get thrown into the same huge rubbish bin and collected by the city every week. Here only the gelber Sack (plastic and packaging recyclables) and Altpapier (paper & cardboard) get picked up from the city, and that's only once a month. We have to haul glass bottles to the recycling containers, which is not a big deal. 

This is in Wisconsin, and I'm pointing at the recycling bin.
The other is garbage, and ours here is 1/3 the size of that.
Wisconsin garbage pick-up: once a week.
Horb garbage pick-up: once a month.

Sort the recyclable glass by color

White (clear), brown, or green? Unfortunately the wine M and I drink comes in bottles that are greenish-brown. I have no idea which bin they belong in.

Buy our meat from the local butcher (and lamb from the Turkish butcher)

There's just something about a small local butcher where everyone knows your name. I have the luxury of not having to worry about convenience, which is why most people just buy everything at the grocery store. I have lots of free time and am good at planning ahead. And although I never cared about that in Wisconsin, I like knowing where the meat we eat comes from. All the meat our butcher sells comes from farms within our state. If I ask where the Rinderfilet is from, the butcher will tell me a farm in the Black Forest (for example). I once asked the butcher in a store in Sheboygan where the tenderloin was from, and he said (I kid you not), "a cow." I could tell from his smile he was being funny, but he also had no idea where the shipment came from.

Drive to local farmers to buy fresh produce (especially Spargel)

We buy most of our produce from Mustafa, our vegetable guy who comes with his truck on Tuesdays and parks for 20 minutes in front of our neighbors' house. He also tells us where everything comes from, though he gets it all from a Großmarkt. Being an American, I don't care if the strawberries come from Italy or Spain as long as they are nice and red, but I know Germans who will buy one but not the other. 

Mustafa and his seasonal produce

Spargel, however, I only buy from the Spargelhof  seven miles from home. Picked freshly that morning from the field I have to drive around to get to their shop.

the white blankets cover fields of delicious weißer Spargel

In fact...

While in Wisconsin I bought everything in one grocery store, the other day I drove to the Bäckerei one village away to get fresh rolls and pretzels, then to the Spargelhof  above for a kilo of that deliciousness, and then to one more village beyond to the Kartoffelhof for potatoes. Total time: ca. 45 minutes. The grocery store would have been a 3-minute drive, but fresh local products are worth it!

Bring our own reusable cloth bags to the grocery store

There's a sensible charge for plastic bags in most stores in Baden-Württemberg, so any self-respecting Swabian will bring her own bags or shopping basket with her to avoid this charge and damage to the environment. It just makes sense, and would even if there weren't a charge. We bag our own groceries here, which I also vastly prefer to waiting for the bagger in Wisconsin (especially the ones who insist on chatting).

I love my granny basket. Don't judge me!

 

Change tires twice a year

M calls this "putting the summer/winter shoes on the car". Although he did teach me several years ago how to change and pump up a tire with a foot pump, I would have had someone at a garage do this for me in Wisconsin. Of course, despite several layers of frozen snow on city roads for three solid months, I had all-season tires on my Jetta (damn, I still miss that car). Here in Swabia we have summer and winter tires, and M changes them himself. 

It goes without saying that he thoroughly cleans each tire after removal. And this had to be done on Easter Saturday (not a holiday), because again, it is frowned upon to labor publicly on holy days.

This list goes on, so I decided to make this a two-part post. My dad arrives tomorrow to start his month of learning/improving his German, so I should have all kinds of things to write about in the next few weeks. He'll be taking a class at the local language school, and I'll be his evening tutor.

Expat readers: What kinds of things do you do in your adopted country that you didn't do in your home country?

The Rest of the Story

My absentee ballot is in the mail on its way to Wisconsin. Whether it makes it to its destination and is counted is out of my hands, but at least I've done what I can.

Just as a quick re-cap, I signed into my account and printed my absentee ballot from the MyVote Wisconsin website. Along with the ballot I printed the official certification and the instructions. This is when I discovered that, thanks to Wisconsin's new Voter ID law, I now need an adult U.S. citizen to witness the filling out of an absentee ballot. The closest American I know is in Stuttgart, and although she kindly offered to be my witness, I was slightly vexed that voting absentee was going to cost me time (several hours to get there and back) and money (€20 for the train).

At the suggestion of friends and acquaintances and with a few ideas of my own, I contacted:

• the German-American Institute in Tübingen (DAI)
• the Volkshochschule in Horb
• the Volkshochschule in Nagold
• the Ausländeramt in Horb
• the International School in Sindelfingen
• U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt
• an online community (forum) at Expat.com
• the language department at the university in Tübingen (a friend did this for me)

Each contact ended up fruitless, though the people who know me personally sent me additional ideas as they thought of them.

The end of the story is this: M and I spent last weekend in Breisach on the Rhein, and on the off chance that I would bump into an American, I brought my ballot and all the other papers with me - including the page of Act 261 concerning the witness to prove that "if the certificate is missing the address of a witness, the ballot may not be counted."

After checking in at the hotel on Saturday afternoon we headed toward the Rhein, where there are often river cruise ships docked while their passengers explore the pretty little town and the Münster. I eavesdropped on each group we passed but heard mostly German. Finally from a slight distance I spied a couple who looked American. I don't know what it is, but somehow Americans are usually easy to spot. The man had what looked like a DSLR camera, and the woman was calling to someone on one of the ships. I approached the woman and asked if she is an American. Bingo!

She was willing to witness my ballot, sign her name, provide her full address according to the instructions, and even to have her picture taken with me!

The deed was done, she gave me her email address so I could send her the photo, and she's got a funny story about meeting a strange American in Germany while on her river cruise.

Interestingly that very day an article appeared in the Milwaukee Journal that thousands of absentee votes might not be counted because they lack the witness' complete address. How could someone neglect to write his or her full address on the form, you might wonder?

Although apparently these forms vary across the state (explain that one to me), my form is deceptive, and was probably designed by an intern. The single line for the witness' address is shorter than the signature line. Every form I recall having seen provided two lines when an address was required. Until this new Voter ID law, the ballots were accepted with only the street address.

In addition, there is no line for the witness to include her date of signing. Only on the instructions does it say "One adult U.S. Citizen must witness you mark your ballot and sign and date the certificate." (emphasis mine)

The certificate is deceptive in another way as well. Under the voter's signature is a line labeled "date." Again, almost everything I have signed requires the signer to include the date of signing. That is logical, and that is what I would understand with the label "date." The instructions, however, say "Be sure to sign the certificate and provide your date of birth in the presence of your witness." (emphasis mine)

So on the certification no date of signature is required? That seems odd. The designers of this law are supposedly so terribly afraid of voter fraud, yet without the dates of signature, how can they be certain the witness actually witnessed and signed the certification according to the instructions? The state has already announced that ballots without full addresses won't be counted - has no one noticed the issue with the date of birth vs. date of signing?

Poppycock.

I wrote to my "state legislators," but of course I don't expect to hear from them. I'll post an update on this post in the unlikely event that I do.
Um...awkward update: I just read that one of those two legislators died yesterday.

Update 2: an aide to my remaining representative responded moments ago with an email confirming that it is true that I need a witness (which I clearly already knew) and wished me luck finding one. She also added another requirement that does not appear in the instructions or on the ballot: the witness' signature must be legible. My ballot is already in the mail, so it's lucky that my kind witness had beautiful handwriting - I had even complimented her on it. I don't know about you, but I know plenty of people whose signatures are not legible. I guess if that's an additional requirement they should also include a space for the name to be printed.


I want to mention before I end that on Monday I was contacted by a professor in Tübingen who said he would be happy to witness my ballot, and I also received a phone call from a woman who'd received an email from the DAI about my problem. She would have also been willing to meet me in Tübingen to witness my ballot. I will therefore have plenty of options for next time and just need to remember to start the process early enough to give people time to respond before I get nervous.

In celebration of this saga ending, I baked banana bread today - a typical American treat that Germans find a bit odd. Strangely, I don't like bananas all that much and the smell of them makes me gag. But banana bread (including the smell) is somehow delicious - especially warmed and with butter.

This is actually a baking fail. It should be twice that high.
Oh well, still tastes good.

My Mom's Visit

This month's Highs and Lows post is being supplanted by the following because 1.) I didn't have any lows this month - seriously, not one! - and 2.) most of my highs had to do with my mom's visit from the U.S..

While my dad is trekking and sight-seeing in the Himalayas, my mom popped over for a visit with us for almost two weeks. She arrived a week ago today, and one of the nicest things about her visit is that nothing is rushed. She has no "official" reason for being here - no cruise or other European vacation, no official exchange business, no parties to attend.

What this means is that my mom has spent some days seeing my life and what I do from day to day. This often includes hours of "down time" - she's taking a nap as I write this. We've been relaxing to the point of being dull some days, but everything we have done has been really enjoyable so far! There's more to come next week, but here's what we've done in the last week.

Good Meals

M and I have enjoyed cooking together for her.

Maultaschen in Brühe

Rouladen in the making

Rouladen mit Nudeln
(This is an older picture with Spätzle, but for my mom we made homemade noodles with our pasta press)

Spargel Überbacken
White asparagus with ham & cheese in a white wine-butter sauce

Züricher Geschnetzeltes und Rösti - one of our favorites

Forewarning if you ever plan to visit us: this is not a low-fat household and we don't know what to do for vegetarians. We cook everything from scratch, though, and buy as much from local farmers as possible. But it's all about the meat.

Bounty from Wisconsin

My mom brought a whole bunch of things I'd asked for, plus one surprise - a Marguerite Henry book I fondly remember from my youth, Five O'Clock Charlie! This was a gift from the son and daughter-in-law of my grandmother's sister. I associate this book with memories of my mom's Aunt June, because I always found it on her shelf and read it cover to cover when I visited.

Other items pictured: cutting boards in the shape of Wisconsin, refrigerator magnets and tea towels of Wisconsin and Sheboygan, Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate chips, a scarf my dad bought me in Argentina, a silicone pot scrubber, and Baker's string cheese (there are no words for how much I love this string cheese, bought fresh from the factory near my hometown (and then frozen for the overseas journey). The Wisconsin-themed items are for when I have occasion to give a gift and want to give something from the homeland.

Esslingen

On Monday we drove to Esslingen (I drove!!) to have a lunch meeting with friends who are in charge of the Esslingen-Sheboygan exchange and then met for ice cream and a chat with the Sheboygan, Wisconsin exchange students who are spending five months in Esslingen.

Kaffee und Kuchen

On Tuesday we drove to the Spargelhof in Bondorf where I always buy our asparagus - picked that morning - and in the afternoon we met six of my (former) students from Syria and Eritrea at a café in Horb for coffee. I was definitely looking forward to introducing them to my mom, and we had a lovely afternoon!

Moms Geburtstag!

Wednesday was my mom's 74th birthday, and she was treated to a lazy morning while I went to M's office for the English lesson. In the afternoon we picked up my Schwiegermutter from the Bahnhof, and in the evening we all four had a wonderful dinner at Straub's Krone.

 P.S. No, that is not a missing apostrophe in "Moms Geburtstag". In German possessives do not take apostrophes.  

our mums
friends since 1987, 19 years before their kids got married!

creme brulee with a birthday candle

American vs. British English

My mom and Schwiegermutter came with me to my Englisch-AG (where I teach conversational English at a school for students with mild learning disabilities), and we did several activities focusing on the differences between American and "proper" English, as I often call the two languages. It often seems true that Americans and Brits are "separated by a common language" (George Bernard Shaw)!

Ancestors' House in Nöttingen

On Thursday I drove my mom and Schwiegermutter to Nöttingen, where we met the couple living in the house my great-great-great-great grandfather built in 1797. They are such warm and gracious people! They had prepared for us delicious homemade cakes as well as a CD full of information about the village and the house - including details about the renovations they've done. The house is under Denkmalschutz, and when they gave us a tour they pointed out the parts of the structure that are original. They helped us visualize what the house and rooms looked like when Jacob Jung lived there.

a painting of the house done by a relative of the current owners

Damenreitstunde

My ladies' riding lesson is on Friday mornings, and my mom was kind enough to come along and snap a few photos despite it being a bit cold. This was nice for me because I could finally have some pictures of me with Mallory, the little horse I ride most often.

Syrisches Essen

On Friday afternoon we were invited to the home where several of my Syrian students live, and they cooked for us several Syrian dishes: Taboule, Freekeh, and a dessert. The food was delicious, and the Deurabisch (Deutsch-English-Arabisch) conversation was very interesting! We talked about religion, customs in Germany, Syria, and the US, their journeys from Syria to Germany, and their hometowns. They showed us on Google Maps where they used to live (much of which has been destroyed by the war). Several of these men lived in villages outside of Damascus just a few kilometers from each other, but they first met when they arrived in this tiny German village back in September 2015.

Pre-Mom's-Visit Highs

The following highs happened before my mom arrived...

• meeting one of my students twice for several hours so that he could tell me his story - of his life in Syria before the war and his journey from Syria through the Balkan route to Germany. His complete story is too long for a blog post, and since I will be talking listening to my other students and some of their friends as well, this may well be the start of a new project!


• our sixth Kochkurs at Straub's Krone, this time focusing on Spargel, Wildkräuter, and Rhabarber.

That's it for April! I hope you had a good month as well!

Meanwhile, Back in Wisconsin...

This link to a story in the Milwaukee Journal came across my radar the other day. GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin have proposed and will be deciding (or perhaps have decided by now) on whether to put in place a preventative ban on potential future restrictions on the use of plastic bags. That's right - at the final meeting of the year for the state senate, among the bills being discussed was a bill to ban the banning of plastic bag use. There are no current proposals to ban or restrict the use of plastic bags - which are harmful to the environment and wildlife, whether people choose to believe it or not - in Wisconsin, but some of the lawmakers want to make sure nobody gets the bright idea to do so any time in the future.

Update: The bill passed.

Can you imagine what would happen if Wisconsin store owners - like store owners in some other states - were no longer allowed to offer plastic bags to their customers? What on earth would people do?? Would they be expected to bring their own used bags from home (Ewwww!), or canvas tote bags - or, heaven forfend, a granny basket - for a short drive to the grocery store? Could consumers be charged 5 or 10 cents for each plastic bag they need at stores to transport their cartfuls of groceries, clothing, and paper products to their SUVs because they couldn't remember to bring along their own bags from home? My dear Lord, the horror!

I love my granny basket! I use it every time I go to the store.

The poor cashiers at Piggly Wiggly (that's a grocery store, for my non-Wisconsin readers) would have to re-train themselves not to ask "[Would you like to contribute to the world's pollution problem with] paper or plastic?"

Bravo, lads and ladies! You successfully banned bans on what hasn't been banned yet, so we don't have to face the inconvenience of doing one tiny thing for the benefit of our environment! There will be no future lawmakers stomping on our freedom to pollute our rivers, lakes, and seas, strangle wild water fowl and adorn farmers' fields and parks with plastic sacks we no longer need or that blow away on a windy day.

Germans take it as a matter of course that they need to bring their own baskets, bags, or crates to the grocery store or pay for bags at the store. Most retail stores in Germany offer bags for free, but they ask first if the customer needs one. Most often we consumers have a bag or purse large enough to stuff whatever we bought into it rather than taking a new bag. If you live here long enough you get used to sticking an extra small canvas bag or two into your purse or backpack for incidental purchases. It's just not a big problem in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, I could have ironed them, but then you wouldn't see
how well-used they are.

Why it is these Wisconsin lawmakers feel the urge to pronounce loudly and clearly that they (and therefore supposedly the people of Wisconsin they represent?) don't give a hoot about the environment - and certainly not at the expense of personal convenience - will remain a mystery to me. Proposing, discussing and passing a law to prevent potential future laws from encouraging consumers to use less plastic was apparently important enough to use up some of the "11 hours the state senate spent working yesterday during the last day of the season."

Well, good work, folks. I thought the GOP wanted less government regulation, not more. But the proposal is to prevent communities from deciding themselves whether plastic bag use should be limited? The only arguments I've seen for this ban on future restrictions is that it would be inconvenient for consumers and expensive for businesses (it would be expensive for businesses to stop providing free plastic bags??). Screw the environment - each of us only needs it to serve us for about 85 years anyway - screw marine life (a study by the World Economic Forum predicts that by 2050 there will be more plastic by weight in the world's oceans than fish), and screw the notion of trying to cut down on the tremendous amount of waste that is dumped daily into landfills in the U.S..

I'm not an active environmentalist, but I am willing to bring my own bags or basket when shopping, and I think lots of other Americans would do the same without grumbling more than a few months about it.

Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
How about the Great Lakes Garbage Patch, discovered in 2012?

Researchers are not making this stuff up, folks. And yes, one person does make a difference, however small. Bring your own bag(s) when you go shopping, or at the very least, reuse the bags you bring home as many times as you can. Use paper bags to cover textbooks or wrap presents. Use plastic for garbage can liners or pet poop picker-uppers. They'll still end up in the landfills, but at least they were used more than once.