Back in the extreme sport-filled days of my youth in America, I once came across a sticker that depicted a skeleton emblazoned with the words, “You are what I was, I am what you will be”. Always aware of my own mortality even back then, those words stuck with me. We’re all born, and we all eventually die, but it’s what we do in between that really matters. In that regard, and though those random acts of kindness do leave their mark, it only really matters to those who remember us.

I have interwoven truth with a healthy smattering of nonsense in these blog postings, all in the hope of getting a few laughs, mostly from my wife. Sure, I’ll take the occasional snicker/eye-roll from anyone who mistakenly stumbles across this website, but not only do I not know them, they don’t constantly have to put up with my tomfoolery which will surely only increase as I get older. Being a man who relies on his wife for essentially everything, this does not bode well for my future survival, so I have compiled a to do list:

1). Buy Eve something nice. 

2). Tell her that we won the lottery so she won’t leave me, and to justify recent nice purchase. 

3). Sell a kidney. 

4). Realize too late that having only one kidney drastically reduces one’s life span. Immediately regret selling kidney.

5). Start a GoFundMe campaign to buy back kidney. Name missing kidney “Sidney” to increase cuteness factor and elicit empathy and money from Australians. Make millions.

6). Buy Eve something nice.

If we can’t make the ones we love laugh, then what is the point of life? Though one could make a strong argument for tacos, I would say that helping others feel joy is the point of life. We are all inherently social creatures, after all, and so we naturally want to make those around us feel cheerful. More buoyant, if you will, in a world where forces outside our control are constantly weighing us down. If you can add tacos to the equation, then so much the better.

Forces

There are two certainties about growing old: (1) Aging is a force and (2) one need not practice: we will age without much more effort than simply staying alive. 

This is easier in some locales than others, of course. For example, the gun laws in Germany are quite strict and so your odds of being shot here are rather low. Should you live in Georgia, however, where I lived for eight years and where people often only put down their beers so they pick up their guns before muttering, “Watch this”, you are doomed and should immediately leave Wal-Mart.

Interestingly, should one practice getting older, those efforts will affect the force of one’s own aging. As with everything in life, practice makes perfect, right? The expression in German is, “Ubung macht der Meister” (practice makes the master).

Naturally, there are several forces that affect the human body the more time it spends on earth, but the forces that I am specifically referring to are gravity and…

The FORCE. 

That’s right, I mean the same x-wing levitating, “why-not-use-it-to-turn-off-Darth’s-lightsaber” force that made Obi Wan benevolently powerful, and that Anakin turned away from. Both it and gravity affect the body, but in starkly opposing and unequal ways. Plus, had Luke used the Force when he should have, he would still have a hand that he would surely need in his old age. Using a walker one-handed must be no easy feat, even for a Jedi named Sky-walker. Okay, that was bad.

You may ask, “Is he really going to try to combine gravity, the practice of aging, and Star Wars cohesively into the same article? What a boob”. The answer, of course, is, “There is no try, only do”.

Press on, young Padawan. Jedi knighthood, and a pair of arch-supportive German-made sandals, await. And that’s Master Boob to you.

Gravity 

Unencumbered by the heavy burden of experience, and buoyed by their own helium-filled thoughts of idealism, the young can often seem to defy gravity. They live it UP. They stay UP late, but can still jump UP and out of bed the next morning. They even often raise their middle fingers UP in response to anything an older person might say…like using the expression live it up.

Alas, and as Newton has taught us, what goes up must come down. That’s right; they screw UP. Mr. Eliot had it right when it comes to adults, but he was off in regards to teenagers and twenty-somethings: their worlds end only sometimes with a whimper; more often it’s with a resounding bang. Whether it’s a free-fall from a cliff with a snowboard strapped to their feet, or picking a fight with the wrong person, their demise is often caused by either not fully understanding gravity, or the gravity of a situation.

They say that life is a terminal illness, and aches and pains are it’s symptoms. Along with an affinity for sensible shoes, I suppose. To this end, I now wear Clark’s and Birkenstocks. Since I am only in my forties, I find them both stylish and orthopedic. Because I am still, er… relatively young, I am not ready to go all-in for the doctor-prescribed hospital-beige shoes, though my teenage self would still laugh at me…and then go right back to cliff-diving or whatever other stupid thing young-me would have thought of. Young me was a jerk.

Now, as disturbing as the thought of non-existence is, I have been assured that everyone dies, and that I should accept it as fate; That it’s simply a part of “the circle of life”.

Pffftt. What kind of Lion King crap is that? Okay, though I do have the sudden urge now and then to hold my baby daughter up for all of the Pride Lands to see, I do not intend to go gently into that good night. Dylan Thomas was spot on. I intend to fight that dying light with every fiber of my being as I want to spend as much time as possible with my family. Okay, and maybe eat a thousand or so more tacos. If that means that the nurses have to chase me around the old folks home someday, stark naked because I made a break for it during my sponge bath, then so be it. I prefer to air dry anyway: Towels will probably only chafe my aging and sensitive skin.

Since we’re on the topic of forces, I may as well touch on the force of cashing in one’s chips. Assuming that Eve won’t just get tired of my grumpiness and wheel me to the curb on bio day to be collected with the other organic waste, I foresee the following scenario as my likely exit. Hopefully this occurs in forty or so years and not a few weeks from now:

I will be enjoying a relaxing lunch and, having sensed the inevitable, will gently set my Rädler down on my outside café table before inconspicuously grabbing my chest and falling face-first into my Spätzle. The sound-absorbent nature of the sauce-drenched pasta would dull the sound, of course, and so my fellow diners may not even notice.

 “Oh, how cute” a young couple might say. “That large-nosed old man just feel asleep in his lunch. It looks like he’s missed his nap”. Enamored with old age from having watched The Notebook one too many times, and as only the young can because they haven’t yet sprained their backs while performing the arduous task of putting on underwear, they may even be so enchanted that they might pay my check. A sweet thought, really. 

But not really. Because, this is Germany. Waiters here don’t shoo you away like flies before you’ve finished chewing so that they can seat the next tip like they do in the States. They earn a livable wage and so the 10% tip is just icing on the cake. As long as you are still seated at the table, you will be left alone and so if you were to pass into the great beyond while dining here, you would remain there, like me; face-down in your food until the waiters shoo the flies away from you.

Practicing Aging

Gravity exerts it’s force not just on sky-bound skateboarders: After age 40 or so, it reminds us of its power every time we look in the mirror. Our skin sags. Our arches flatten. We have band-aids on our elbows because we fell down after the toaster scared us.

This natural evidence is less evident on many Americans, however, as the US spends untold billions each year fighting gravity. They get a nip here and a tuck there. They buy snake oil in the form of fat-loss pills. They get hair transplants, liposuction, and collectively buy enough skin cream to fill an ocean. Due to the vast amount of money spent, and because it made me giggle more than it should have, I have dubbed this ocean of youth the “Bankrupt-Sea”. Giggle.

Germans, on the other hand, do not fight aging. They kind of lean into it, in fact. Like house-bound Frank Sinatra clones with the flu, German males over the age of thirty can be seen shuffling around anywhere in the world wearing sandals with socks, and with fedoras perched atop their thinning pates. They essentially practice getting older, and this sits just fine with me.

Like my German brethren, I too have decided to meet my fate head-on and so have also decided to wade into the waters of geriatrics that I will be immersed in soon enough, head bobbing like a barnacle encrusted buoy wearing a bathing cap. Like with any body of water, you don’t want to jump in and find that the water is ice cold and have a shock-induced heart attack. Best to ease into it.

Here are a few ways that you too can get your feet wet and embrace your inner German fuddy-duddy, regardless of your actual age:

1). Start drinking your breakfast. The traditional Bavarian breakfast is Weißwurst (white sausage), a pretzel, and a tall glass of Weißbier (white beer, but really wheat beer). If Wheaties is the breakfast of champions, than drinking wheat beer is the breakfast of those who have realized that being a champion takes way too much effort. 

2). Cut in line at any queue. Whether it be the line for the Bäckerei (bakery) or the Metzger (butcher), feign ignorance while trying to slip unobtrusively to the front and start placing your order. I mean, who knows how long you have left? Plus, you drank your Wheaties this morning which means you have both the courage and the bleary-eyed and confused countenance to pull it off. 

3). Wear hats.They protect you from the sun, and hide your thinning hair. No, not a ball cap. You’re shooting for German senior citizen, not middle-aged American dad. You need a real hat, i.e.; a Trachtenhut. They are made from wool, have brims and, if you are a sassy Mann, even come with a feather. There you go, you saucy peacock. You can now strut confidently to the front of any line. 

4). Drink your lunch. That Weißbier has probably worn off by now and you’re most likely feeling the grumble in your belly, if not your liver. To truly fit in among the aged elite here in Deutschland, you really must have an ice cold Pilsner with your traditional Mittagessen Bratwurst. Because Brats are renown for being as salty as they are fatty, you should definitely have a 2^ndbeer. 

5). Carry a cane. Ah, the cane. The pinnacle accessory of senior citizenry, it enables you to walk without falling down, and is great for whacking anyone who tells you to get to the back of the line. 

6). Or two. Should you be an over-achiever, you can have two canes rather than just one. I have heard that they are also gaining popularity in America, but walking poles are all the rage here. Essentially ski poles with smaller baskets, they are used in an outdoor phenomenon called “Nordic Walking” where middle-aged and older Germans walk around with them one of two ways:

• 1). By slowly dragging them from limp arms behind their exhausted bodies.

• 2). In an overly-animated fashion where the hands are vigorously thrust up to eye level on every stride, and with such force on the downstroke that the tips leave little dents…in the pole-draggers that have given up.

7). Do not obey the rules of the road. You’ve been drinking for half the day, so what better thing to do than get behind the wheel of a car. Don’t worry; it’s not as difficult as you might think since you don’t have to signal, nor drive over the speed of 12 KPH. It’s so bad here that you’d think that cars sold to anyone over the age of 65 aren’t equipped with turn signals nor gas pedals. The truth, however, is that the breakfast and lunch beers have a lot to do with it: It takes immense concentration to do the one-eyed drive while wearing bifocals, and so they must drive slowly and with both hands glued to the wheel in a death-grip. Or rather, a fear-of-death-grip. 

8). Sit. Nothing feels quite as good as a good sit after half a day of dragging your cane(s) around with a three beer buzz. Luckily for you, there are benches to sit on here in Germany approximately every 10 meters. Unluckily for you, these might as well be mirages in a desert as they are often populated with teenagers drinking beer and listening to music that is anything but Frank Sinatra. Heathens, to be sure. You have two options: Keep walking, or fight. That cane you’re carrying  is good for more than just enforcing your right to cut in line. 

9). Take naps. Seemingly popular everywhere except the US where they are seen as sign of weakness, naps are nature’s reset button. A brief ten minute snooze and most people are ready to power through the rest of their days. But you are not them, are you? No, you are a powerful over-achieving specimen that most likely opted for two poles, right? You can do more. Take a twenty minute nap and show those other slouches who’s boss. 

10). Impose your opinion on/judge anyone. You have reached your old age through Entschlossenheit (determination) and not taking Scheiße from anyone, and you’re not about to start now. You have earned the right to force your opinions on anyone brazen enough to look or behave differently than you. That guy with the tattoos? A criminal. That woman begging for change? Surely a leech who would rather pan-handle than work. You know all of this because of your life experience, right? 

So, do you feel good about all you’ve accomplished today? No, of course you don’t. Or at least you shouldn’t. You have a headache, dents in your Mercedes, and you’ve probably pulled a muscle from bludgeoning people with your cane(s). But fret not my wrinkled, friend-less, and possibly incarcerated warrior. There is a another way…

The Force

The force of gravity affects not just the body, but the mind as well. Like sagging body parts, the mind also droops as surely as one’s neck skin. The mind can easily get pulled down into a less than harmonious state of being where one becomes pernicious and mean. This is the Dark Side of aging and the above examples are the many ways that we can succumb to its power. For example, Yoda was the paramount example of a cane-wielding ancient and, though Luke may have occasionally deserved it, he rarely struck anyone. The emperor, on the other hand, clearly had unresolved issues and smote anyone who wasn’t on board with his maniacal plans or opinions. Sound familiar?

Rather than embracing the Dark Side, you can become one with the Force and circumvent becoming a grumpy old fart. Though wearing hats, taking naps, and carrying a cane are always good ideas, the following revisions to the list above will help you turn the tide in the war against aging like a complete tool, at least in Germany:

1). Still drink your breakfast and lunch…but make it a Schorle instead. As Hefeweizen is often garnished with a slice of citrus, having an orange juice mixed with bubbly water (Orangensaft Schorle) in the morning will essentially give you the same taste, but without the ill-desired after-effect of yelling at people for no apparent reason. Having a Johannisbeer (currant juice) Schorle with your lunch better satisfies the thirst, plus the tartness cuts through the Brat’s fat and the vitamin C is good for your eyes which helps you to continue driving instead of losing your license by playing drunken parked car pinball after those morning beers you used to drink. 

2). Trade your Kater for a Kater. A Kater is a hang-over, or an alcohol-induced headache. A Kater is also a male cat. By getting a real cat, you will have companionship and so may actually start thinking about something other than yourself. Better yet, get a dog. Unlike a cat, they are actually happy to see you, which makes you happy, and won’t scratch the living daylights out of your leg for no reason, which will make you not-happy. Plus, dogs can be trained to retrieve your slippers or, better yet, someone else’s slippers, preferably that lovely widow’s next door. Good boy.

3). Ride a bike.Should you decide to not heed my advice and opt for the morning and vormittag (late morning) beers, opt instead to ride your bicycle instead of driving your car. Crashing a bike into a parked vehicle or someone else causes much less injury. It also takes much more coordination than driving a car, which means that I get to laugh at you when you lose your balance and fall over. 

4). Wait your darn turn. We know that you are in a hurry, but so is everyone else. Instead of trying to cut in front of someone, try talking to the young person next to you. It will make the time go by faster, and you will have gained a friend. A younger and, hopefully, fit friend who can also tackle the other old guy who tries to cut in line.

5). Don’t hit anyone. I know this sounds crazy, but people don’t actually like being hit with canes. This is evident from the sounds that come from them while being hit, and from them eventually not making any sounds at all. Rather than raising your weapon, instead try talking to anyone who has drawn your ire. You may be surprised to find that that hooligan whom you thought was touching your fanny was in actuality just trying to help you catch your balance. If you find your wallet in their hand afterward, then commence with the pummeling, by all means. 

6). Don’t judge anyone. Though it may be difficult to take seriously that man with the tattoos, or the woman begging for change, realize that there is likely more to their stories. Those tattoos that you don’t agree with may just be an homage to that man’s son who passed away. That woman may be a refugee who can’t yet work here, but still has to feed her family.

The bottom line is, it’s easy to become cranky in one’s old age. Everything hurts, the new music is too loud and too terrible, and you can never seem to remember what you, um… were about to…

What was I talking about?

Regardless, and even though getting old is about as much fun as being thrown into Sarlaac’s pit, it’s better than the alternative, right? And until that alterative happens, it’s far better to have patience and to be kind to people. Like I said in the beginning, what we do really only matters to those who remember us.

To this end, I too have begun to change my ways. I am trying to become more patient. More understanding. More at one with the positive force of aging. It’s not easy though, and since old habits die hard, here is a fair warning which is also a quote from Yoda: 

“If you try to cut in front of me in the taco line, whack you on the head I will”.

If you are fascinated by history, have gorged yourself in your youth on medieval-themed movies, or find yourself in the exciting yet precarious position of moving to Germany, then please read on. If none of these sound like you, then please kindly go back to whatever it was you were doing before you stumbled across this post. In return, I will remove the only keywords that could have brought you here by mistake: “model” and “fashion”. Okay, and maybe “couture”, but I’m keeping it cause it sounds fancy.

Many people moving to Europe will find themselves adopting different aspects of their new country’s culture: If you are now living in France, perhaps you have acquired a penchant for their delicious desserts and a disdain for boorish Americans. If you find yourself in Italy, you may have become something of a wine connoisseur and now race tipsily down Roman allies on your scooter at mach 3 while screaming “I love Italy”! If this seems oddly specific, I may have spent some time in Italy. So trusting, those Italians; They really should lock their scooters.

If you are now living in Germany, however, you can’t help but notice the abundance of castles. Big, beautiful, “once-occupied-by-knights-with-swords” castles. Every town and city has at least one, and most have a couple of others dotting the surrounding hillsides. Our town is no exception.

The town in which my family and I live, Bad Mergentheim, is the former headquarters of the Teutonic Order (Deutschorden) and was also a base for the Hospitallers (Johanniter). Heck, even the Templars had a presence here as I found by going through online historical documents, though all I could find conclusively was that they owned land here, and had a vineyard. Oh, those Templars. Always up for a party.

We call our house our castle, of course. Everyone does as “every man’s home is his castle”. But when one lives in a land where real castles abound, one can become easily confused, especially when one’s home sits on a hill over-looking the town as ours does. Perhaps this is what happened to me. Perhaps it was the way I would stand on our balcony and loudly address our neighbors and passersby as “my loyal subjects”. It’s a mystery, really.

Regardless of how it happened, I have added screen-shots of Facebook posts to help illustrate my descent into my particular form of culturally-induced insanity; Medieval Madness.

August 2016

The first step toward my affliction started innocently enough; I wanted to hang a shield with two crossed swords in our foyer. “Pretty standard, really”, I thought, but this was my first mistake. It seems that having medieval weapons in one’s entryway is actually not all that normal.

Anyway, since I was brought up to believe that “anything worth doing is worth doing right”, I wasn’t content to simply purchase a pre-made shield with attached swords. Most of them look cheap, and I wanted something special. I redesigned my family crest and made a shield with a custom hanger for two swords that I had purchased for this purpose – though these swords turned out to be less authentic than I had hoped. They are high carbon steel (good), but they have not been tempered (bad). Oh, young Jim; you still had so much to learn.

Clearly, the wall that it hung upon would also need a medieval-ish looking baroque wallpaper.

November 2016

Satisfied, but not entirely happy, the space needed a bit more. A cowhide rug, and a sheepskin laid over a rustic leather bench, did just the trick.

As luck would have it, Eve and I had also just started watching Game Of Thrones. Like warm water under a tropical depression, this show added the fateful ingredient to what would end up creating the perfect storm. What started out as merely a modest slice of interior decorating spiralled quickly into a time-consuming hobby.

December 2016

The next month was Christmas. Every year, I design holiday cards by relabelling food products. That year, I decided to give beer bottles by designing labels for our own castle-themed brewery; Burg Bier (Castle Beer). Anything worth doing is worth doing right, right? Naturally, I bought Eve a medieval-style dress, a surcoat and chainmail coif for myself, and a lion mane for our dog, Buster.

In my defense, I still saw this as relatively “normal”, though maybe a bit eccentric. Eccentric I can deal with. Artists are eccentric, and everyone likes artists. Well, until they start cutting off ears, I suppose. And I am holding a sword…

To see the actual post about this card, complete with better photos and a ridiculous poem written by your truly, please click this link: https://anamericaningermany.com/the-weihnachts-ale-tale/

September 2017

Busy with work, a small child, and home renovations, the next post took quite a bit of time. It was nine months later that I posted the following. You can see that our GOT watching had begun to take its toll.

October 2017

Energized by the shenanigans of John Snow and the refreshing cold of the approaching winter, it wasn’t long before I had my first medieval helmet; a birthday gift from my lovely wife.

Needing a place to properly display my growing collection, I bought a bust to put the chainmail and new helmet on. I called him George.

January 2018

A few short months later, my hobby had rapidly slid into an obsession. I bought an authentic Hospitaller surcoat. I bought a gambeson. I bought a chainmail hauberk, an 11th century kite shield, and my first real sword: A 12th century Templar sword, with scabbard and sword-belt, from Darksword Armory (https://www.darksword-armory.com/medieval-weapon/medieval-swords/12th-century-templar-sword-1340/). This is a real thing of beauty, by the way. Hand-forged from the best steel, and with a hand-stitched leather-wrapped wood handle. After seeing and holding it, I knew that all other swords must be purchased from this company (foreshadowing).

Needing a new way to display all of the new gear, and as evolution mandates through necessity-driven adaptation, George magically grew a full torso with arms. Darwin be praised!

Poor from these purchases, I needed time to rebuild my coffers before I could add to my collection. The waiting was not easy, as any addict knows. There was sweating, cursing, and uncontrollable shaking…and that was only from Eve as she attempted to keep my spending at bay.

March 2018

As a compromise, we agreed, to satisfy both my growing addiction and to provide a source of entertainment for my budding squire, that I would design and begin construction on a play castle for Sam.

April 2018

Though the outlet proved helpful, it was still too cold to make much progress, and so I broke down the very next month and bought George an authentic late 13th century Great Helmet. Like an accessory for a medieval runway model, it gave George just the right touch of both style and menace. Had it been a competition, George surely would have won. I was like a much less attractive Heidi Klum, and George was my star.

May 2018

A short while later, it had warmed up enough to make some real progress on Sam’s castle.

July 2018

Two months and several hundred hammered thumbs later, the project was finally finished. Sam was overjoyed, as were Eve and I. The unveiling even gave me a reason to wear George’s helmet. By the way, wearing a knight’s helmet while standing atop a castle that you constructed in your own backyard does little to assure your neighbors that you are not crazy.

Plus side: Far fewer people ring our doorbell.

September 2018

Though George was unhappy that I had borrowed his prized hat for the play castle photo shoot, I was able to make it up to him in September when he received yet another new helmet, this time a 12th century Enclosed Helmet. I didn’t have the heart to tell George, but it looked way better on Sam.

That same month, I began to realize that George…had changed. Cobbled together from bits and pieces that I had pillaged from various sources, he had begun to take on a life of his own. Tired of serving my needs, he began to exert his own will. Under the guise of a birthday present for me, he demanded yet another new helmet, this time a shiny mid-13th century Great Helmet. He had become my own medieval version of Frankenstein’s monster, and that monster was such a fashionista.

October 2018

In addition, George must have begun throwing telepathic wish-spears at my head, which is presumably why I was forced to buy him yet another sword. I like this explanation as it not only frees me from responsibility, it makes me the victim (see Eve? It was George’s fault!). The sword in Question? Darksword’s Crusader Sword (https://www.darksword-armory.com/medieval-weapon/medieval-swords/the-crusader-sword-1303/).

Great. Now George not only has free will, he has two swords.

November 2018

As my collection had grown, I decided to add some museum-style labels in November. This was partly to help others identify the type and origin of each piece, but it was mostly to add some much needed credibility. Museums garner respect. Some guy haphazardly stocking his home with medieval weapons and armor… Not so much.

January 2019

The new year saw the addition of some much needed items. The cold weather necessitated George receiving a new cloak, as well as a stonewall backdrop so that he would have a more natural-looking and comfortable habitat. More wish-spears had clearly found their mark.

The latest, but certainly not the last, addition was actually a gift from my thoughtful, if not bemused, sister-in-law. She gave me a changeable message sign, and suggested I use it to advertise my museum’s hours of operation. Done. But I also added a disclaimer to not feed George as he had became a tad too thick in the middle from his holiday indulgences. From the photo below, I can only assume that these two had been sneaking him cookies and ale.

It is unwise to keep food from anyone over six feet. Even more so if that someone is a well-armed Frankenstein’s monster/knight that becomes hangry when his blood sugar drops.

And so concludes this public service message post about adopting your new countries culture. Everything will most likely be fine, even if, like me, you go a bit too far in embracing that culture. Remember, we create the life we want. But also remember that sometimes, the life that we created wears chainmail and throws thought-guided wish-spears at your head.

George and I have since made amends, by the way, but mostly because I now always keep Snickers bars with me. In return, and though he has had his eye on a Viking sword, he has agreed to ease up on his fashion demands…

…which is good as he’s still a bit pudgy, haha. Now where is George? He was just here…

Wait. What are you all looking at? He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?

Crap.

No, the irony of my name so closely resembling “German” isn’t lost on me. In fact, it kind of adds to the flavor, the “Christmas spice” if you will, that leads to the creation of these cards in the first place, and last year’s card was no exception.

Like most law-abiding, tax-paying, and clothes-wearing adults, Eve and I have a healthy fascination with werewolves.

Wait. You don’t? How odd. You should probably keep that to yourself, you weirdo. Now go put on some pants.

Anyway, because we live in Germany, the mecca of medieval werewolf lore, and because it was our first Xmas with our son Sam, it was only fitting that we created a card involving Sam, a medieval castle, and – you guessed it – werewolves. Naturally, we decided to create beer labels. But not just any beer labels, mind you: Burg Bier’s Weihnacht’s Ale (Castle Beer’s Christmas Ale) labels.

Burg Bier is, of course, a fake brewery we created as we live in a Burg up on a mountain. Everyone’s “home is their castle” as the saying goes, but ours kind of is: It’s made of stone block, has a wall, and sits on a mountain.

Okay, every house in Germany is made from stone, our wall is short and has a gate so the postman can deliver us the stuff that we are too agoraphobic to buy in town, and the mountain is more of a large hill. Tomato, Tomatoe.

Like the wine bottle labels from five years ago, we also created actual folding cards as you cannot ship alcohol to the US. Too bad for those Stateside: It was a delicious and rather hoppy Pilsner, just bitter enough to take the blame of your grimace that was actually caused by your uncle’s foot-breath. He gets much too close when wishes you “Frohe Weihnachten”, doesn’t he?

Also, and as too was the case with the wine labels, I wrote a poem for the backside. Unlike with the wine labels, this particular poem explains the creation of the beer itself. This is important so that people (A) don’t think that we actually don medieval dress every day (only on Saturdays, really), and (B) don’t think that we are stranger than we really are. Sam will have to attend school here eventually and we’d like him to have friends. Okay, a friend. That also wears chainmail.

As it will be hard to read, even when opened in a separate window, I have pasted the poem text below

“In a time long ago, in ancient Germany,

A royal family did live, though oft filled with anxiety.

Though normally happy, a secret they kept,

By day they smiled, but at night, rarely slept.

The secret they hid? They all shared a curse,

As the full moon drew close, it grew steadily worse.

This family were werewolves, passed down over time.

There was nothing to do, it was in their blood line.

In means of defense, they built a burg on a hill,

Not to protect themselves; to hold them against their will.

For as the full moon drew close, the curse they were under,

the walls kept them from tearing peasants asunder.

For further safety, they got a lion for a pet,

To keep them inside, so no blood could they let.

With powerful jaws it would bite, if they deigned to stray,

another benefit was that it kept salesmen away.

But their true salvation, what kept the curse at bay,

Was a special elixir, conceived on a cold winter’s day.

Twas the 24th of December, and as the father turned,

His wife fed him a drink; away his hunger it burned.

One sip of this concoction, the change it did stay,

He looked at his wife, but then looked away.

“What’s wrong”, my love, she did ask with a frown.

“Our baby’s to young to drink; he’s crawled into town”.

That night there was mayhem, as the baby did feed,

On the townsfolk and livestock, with slobbering greed.

That was the birth of Burg Bier, the truth I’ve let slip,

This is why Germans sometimes give their babies a sip”.

And so that is the tale, folks. As anyone who has one knows, rearing a toddler can be like raising a werewolf: They both bite, howl as if possessed by Satan himself, and drool uncontrollably.

The next time your little demon experiences these symptoms, go ahead and give them a sip. Sure, maybe they are just being the tiny insane creatures that all toddlers are, but maybe, just maybe, they are about to transform into tiny insane creatures with a lust for blood. You’re not a bad parent; You are a saver of lives.

Did it work? Of course it didn’t. I was just kidding. Didn’t you read the part where the baby doesn’t drink because it’s too young? Besides, your kid isn’t really a werewolf. It’s just a poem I made up, and you clearly didn’t get the allegory. In the story, the father takes a sip to prevent his transformation, and not into a werewolf, but into that snarling parent-beast that has lost both his patience and his grip due to the havoc wreaked by every young child. If music soothes the savage beast, then a couple swigs of good strong German beer makes it roll over onto it’s belly and purr.

Now, I hear that you are hosting Weihnachten this year. Fret not, fearful father; you have some Weihnachts Ale on hand. You’re covered.

Wait. Your in-laws are sleeping over? Dear god, man! Quick! Stock the fridge! Now by a second one and stock it!

Why the panic? Because your in-laws will undoubtedly bring their little lunatic lycans, and you’re going to need all the help you can get. One is hard enough to contend with on its own, but the sinister shenanigans of wee wolves multiplies exponentially when they are among their own kind.

They are pack hunters, and your sanity is their prey.

The German language, like English, also has its perplexing expressions. Unlike English, the sheer amount of German idioms, combined with the fact that they are almost entirely about pigs or food, will leave you “kratzen dein Kopf” (scratching your head).

The following is a list of German idioms, followed by their almost literal English translations, their actual meaning, and my somewhat sallow comments.

Keep in mind that these are German expressions, and so many involve Wurst (sausage). This simple fact will titillate the perverted mind of the average American, but please know that these expressions are without carnal intent. Germans are nothing if not honest, and so they rarely disguise their sexual colloquialisms. They don’t “beat around the bush” as we Americans do. Rather, if a German is stalling, they will “Um den heißen Brei herumreden” (talk around the hot stew). See? There’s the first food reference. Now that your whistles have been whet, let’s dig in, shall we?

1). Jetzt geht’s um die Wurst (Now it goes around the sausage). Right off the bat, your mind has taken a turn into dirty town, hasn’t it? Get your mind out of the gutter, weirdo. Rather, it means the real meaning of a conversation, or “the heart of matter”. In Germany, sausage = important.

2). Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof (I understand only train station). This means that you do not understand what in the hell the other person is saying, at all. Applicable when speaking to small children laden with fantasy, and unqualified presidents. Pretty much the same thing, really.

3). Sie spielt die beleidigte Leberwurst (she’s playing the insulted liver sausage). Someone who has been easily offended, and is being very melodramatic about it. Have I mentioned unqualified presidents?

4). Ich glaube ich Spinne (I think I spider). No, you are not communing with arachnids. Spinne means spider, but it also means crazy. By saying this, you are so completely amazed that you must be going crazy. “That An American In Germany guy is so funny, ich glaube ich Spinne”, said no one ever.

5). Du hast es faustdick hinter den Ohren (You have it fist thick behind the ears). Because Eve says this to me constantly, I used to think it was a good thing. Turns out, it isn’t…and is. It means, “brat” and, according to Linguee “a sly old dog”. Sly? Old? Dog? Boy, does she have my number. Germans won’t understand that last bit, which serves them right. Tit for tat.

6). Das ist nicht mein Bier (That’s not my beer). If you hear someone say this, it means that something “is not their concern”. Unless, however, you are having a beer with them and you are drinking Budweiser. Then they probably mean that it is not their choice of beer because it is disgusting.

7). Jetzt mal Butter bei die Fische (Now butter by the fish). This one, naturally means, “relax” or “chill out”. Wait, what? Butter by the fish? This one was clearly the “drop the mic” stumble-off winner at the “come up with random expressions while drunk as hell” competition.

8). Hier ist die tote Hose (Here is the dead trousers). Uneventful. Nothing going on here. One doesn’t need a lot of imagination to figure out where this one came from, though I will give the metaphorically-challenged a clue: Germany = beer. Too much beer = dead trousers. Still don’t get it? Then your thirst has clearly been satisfied. Your partner, not so much.

9). Mein lieber Herr Gesangsverein (My lovely Mister singing club). This one is similar to the one above, but in a bad way. Why a singing club? Why mister? And why lovely? Decipher these questions and you will have won. Won what? The admiration of a nation who also has no idea what this expression means.

10). Jemanden Honig um den Mund schmieren (smear honey around someone’s mouth). The English equivalent, I suppose, would be “kissing someone’s ass”. I prefer the German expression, though the combination of the two would at least taste better.

11). Ich glaube mein Schwein pfeift (I think my pig pipes). Like “I think I spider“, this is yet another exclamation at something unbelievable, yet a bit more impactful.

Mensch #1: “I think my pig pipes”.

Mensch #2: “What happened”?

Mensch #1: “No, I mean, I think my pig can really play the flute”.

Mensch #2: “I think I spider”!

12). Du bist du auf dem Holzweg (There you are on the wood way). This means that you are on the wrong path toward your goal. You want to seem mature, yet you sleep in a Bat Man bed? At your parents house? Or the White House? Du bist auf dem Holzweg.

13). Du gehst mir tierisch auf den Keks (You walk me animally on the cookie). You are really annoying me. I imagine some baker/father from long ago giving his child cookies to quiet his incessant “I am three and must ask every question ever conceived” questions. Maybe this is how animal crackers (cookies, really) originated.

14). Entschuldige, mein Englisch ist unter aller Sau (Sorry, my English is under all pig). This one I find slightly offensive. It means, “Sorry, but my English is terrible”, but why under all pig? It’s not like we Americans have a reputation for acting like… Wait… Okay, never mind.

15). Du bist so ein Angsthase (You are such a fear rabbit). One that is afraid of everything. We have “scaredy-cats”, Germans have “fear rabbits”. Like in that old Monty Python movie, I imagine them with “big pointy teeth”.

16). Holla die Waldfee (Holla the forest fairy). An exclamation of happy surprise. I can’t help it, but every time I hear this, I always think “forest fairy” and then can’t help singing “The Lumberjack Song”.

“…I cut down trees, I wear high heels. Suspendies and a bra.

I wish I’d been a girlie, just like my dear papa”.

I’m beginning to think that many a Monty Python skit were based on German expressions…

17). Es ist nicht gut Kirschen essen mit dir (It is not good cherry eating with you). It is very difficult to get along with/do anything with you. Maybe this guy makes weird slurping noises while eating cherries, or insists on showing you how he can tie the stem into a knot, every time. Either way, this dovetails nicely with our expression “Life is a bowl of cherries”, meaning life is great. Or at least it would be, if it wasn’t for this guy.

18.) Es ist mir Wurst (it is me sausage). Insert a comma into this one and it would appear that whomever said this is a sausage. In reality, it means “it doesn’t matter to me”. Someday, I am going to attend a conference and write “Wurst” on my name tag. When someone asks, I’ll say, “What do you mean? It’s me, sausage”! Then I’ll erupt into a fit of laughter and, years later, die alone.

19). Ich muss die Brötchen verdienen (I must the bread rolls earn). This is essentially the same as our “I need to bring home the bacon”. As the delicious offspring of a German/American union where both spouses worked, this is clearly how the BLT was born. As for the lettuce, I assume that they had a garden. You don’t have to bring home what you can grow at home, right?

20). Ich lach mich tot (I laugh me dead). The German equivalent of “LOL”, this one simply means “that is so funny”. Possibly born from an American playing with name tags, most likely with a heart condition. Note to self: Lay off the bacon.

That’s it. Bacon is where I am leaving you. More of a whimper than a bang, really. Regardless of whether you were enthralled or overwhelmingly underwhelmed, this list was compiled as a public service to any English-speaker who might one day visit Germany, but mostly for those whom are dating, or are married to, a German. When one has a spouse whose nationality is different from their own, I think it’s important that they both teach each other about their culture’s idiosyncrasies. This way, they each can get as close as possible to having a full understanding of what makes them who they are. Cultural expressions are, of sorts, a gateway into the national mind that makes someone who they are.

For example, today I learned that when a German screws up, they say “I built a shit” (ich habe eine Scheiße gebaut). Good to know, and interesting, but not particularly overwhelming. My parry, and because we have a young toddler at home that thankfully doesn’t really understand anything we say, was to teach Eve the words to our dubious national anthem disguised as a crass children’s song, “Do your boobs hang low?”.

I thought that I had won this round but, because she has it stuck in her head and is now singing it non-stop, I realize that not only did she win, but that I just may have built a shit.

Since I am married, however, I am used to losing to my better half and so don’t really care.

After all, it is me, sausage.

“What?!”, you might exclaim. “What would Jesus think? Outrage”!

Well, let’s not get carried away. History tells us that the 25th was a date picked by the roman emperor Constantine as it was already around the date that the locals celebrated Saturnalia and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. He chose that date so the masses that he wanted to convert would offer less resistance since they could keep their day(s) of debaucherous celebration. It would just now be called something else. With a different, and only one, deity.

Constantine: “You now have a different God. Submit”!

Masses: “Hmmm. Unfortunate. Can we still worship our old Gods”?

Constantine: “No. That is punishable by death”.

Masses: “Sounds bad. Can we keep our raucous and wine-sodden celebrations?”

Constantine: “Yes”.

Masses: “Wooo Hoooo!!! Jesus, Jesus”!!!

Most historians and biblical scholars say that this merry chanting of acceptance of their new savior was accompanied by music. This music sounded remarkably like “OPP” by “Naughty By Nature”, except, of course, that it would have actually been titled “OPG” (Other People’s God).

Constantine: “You down with OPG”?

Masses: “Yeah, you know me”!!!

Constantine: “Who’s down with OPG”?

Masses: “Every last homie”! (The translation of homie from ancient Latin was difficult and was actually closer to ‘dear friend’ or ‘dude’).

Back to the debate of the date of Christmas, historians and scholars have also claimed that Jesus was most likely not born on the 25th of December, and that this date would have been closer to, say… September 23rd.

“Wait a minute. Isn’t that your birthday, Jim?”, you might ask. Well, yes. Yes it is. Us Libras are well known not just for our charity, but also for our penchant for long hair and sandals, especially during our teenage hippie phases. You may worship me if you must, but please, for the love of Me, at least pay your darned taxes. Churches should not, in my humble opinion, be exempt from paying their fair share. Me knows that they make enough through tithing to not be carried by the rest of us, peculiarly since many are stubbornly reluctant to help those that they say they want to help, i.e.; the poor, especially during the Christmas season.

Comedic side note: Since dough means both “money” and “almost-bread”, and since Jesus supposedly fed thousands with only a few loaves, is it wrong for me to point out the irony that many evangelicals are so darn greedy?

Jesus: “I will feed all of you with the meager amount of bread that I have”.

Evangelicals: “It’s my dough. You gave it to me, even though you all are far worse off than I. Tough break. My Rolls’ heated seats are broken and it’s nippy this time of year in Florida. If it’s bread you want, once my heated seats are fixed you can all place your lips upon my toasted buns”.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Traditions

Now that I am likely to burn for eternity in hellfire, let’s get back to Christmas in Germany, shall we? German Christmas traditions seems to be a muddied mix of ours, or rather, ours are a muddied mix of theirs as America is a much younger country. Our holiday traditions seem to be mainly buying gifts at greatly reduced prices and evading taxes. The former I will address in a minute. The latter, as evidenced by the church and the über-wealthy, actually makes sense as America was launched, so to speak, by the Boston Tea Party where the revolutionists threw crates of tea from ships into the Boston Harbor in protest of taxation by the English. For those of you whom have been living under a rock, Plymouth or otherwise, this is how the American “Tea Party” got their name.

I have to say that the popularity of this party, so great is it that they’ve won the White House, is confusing to me for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because of the name. Of all of the people who voted for them, I can say, almost unequivocally, that none of them drink tea. It is simply too stuffy and elitist. You know who drinks tea? The Queen of England. And Obama. Together.

Tea Partiers are grassroots people. They drink coffee. And Budweiser. And not necessarily in that order. Surely some even mix the two into a sort of morning breakfast power-drink to fuel their day-long hatred of Obama. Racism is so exhausting.

In the US, the holiday season unofficially begins with Black Friday. This is the day after Thanksgiving where we all rush out to buy Christmas gifts at reduced prices and so, due to the time required to nurture our wounds before we must once again happily darken our cubicles, is part of a four day holiday weekend. Virtually no one works, except those that work retail. This is because (1) no one is productive on the day after they’ve eaten 80 pounds of turkey and (2) because we are a nation of consumers, especially if what we are buying is reduced by 70% and there is a 30% chance of violence. I’m getting ahead of myself, but someone has to ring up our blood-spattered merchandise which we have wrested from the hands of the slower and weaker. Forget the other examples of Darwinism that you’ve learned about. Peppered moths and Galapagos iguanas are mere evolutionary footnotes; Black Friday is the pinnacle of natural selection.

Since it’s a vacation day, we do what many vacationing Americans do: We go camping. But instead of camping in a lush and pristine forest like on a normal summer vacation, we do something special for Black Friday: We camp out in front of a Big Box Store, in sometimes sub-zero temperatures, to make sure that we are allowed into Wal-Mart at the earliest possible moment. Sure, we’ve camped closest to the door, but since our other competitors are sleeping in tents beside us, we must stay vigilant by drinking coffee (and Budweiser) all night to maintain our advantage.

Once the doors open, however, all bets are off. Even though you may have slept virtually pressed up against the store’s automatic glass doors, the odds that you will be the first inside are slim at best. This is because there are people out there, driven insane by the allure or cheap goods, mingling amongst us undetected until Black Friday. Like a starving hyena, they will rush the gates at the slightest movement from within inside indicating the store’s opening, with arms flailing and while screeching “That is my X-Box 1,000,000! Stand aside or die”!

Since many of these look like trashy Castle Black extras from The Game of Thrones, it would be best to heed their warning. Should you not, they may hit you hard enough that you suffer a brain injury so severe that it leaves you in a waking yet vegetative state where you defend “the (Mexico) wall” and swear off sex, most likely because you couldn’t get any anyway.

St. Nicholaus

In parts of Germany, the holiday traditions kick off with Nicholaustag (St. Nicholaus Day). St. Nicholaus is very similar to our St. Nick or Santa. Celebrated on December 6th, and what was the precursor to our tradition of nailing socks to a mantle, children here leave their shoes by the door on the evening of the 5th (this also just happens to be Eve’s birthday) and awaken to find them filled with small gifts and goodies. In the case my wife, however, this is a dangerous undertaking. Eve’s family likes to joke that her feet smell, and so she has been lovingly nicknamed Käsefuß (cheese foot).

When she was younger, they used to vacation in Portugal and Spain. The combination of walking around in close-toed shoes, in a hot climate and without the absorbent barrier of socks, is perhaps how she earned her moniker, though I doubt the effect would be as concentrated during the cold temperatures of December. Even so, legend has it that Eve’s parents, in an attempt to ward of the smell (and because the drinking age is much lower here) would place slightly opened bottles of Schnapps in her shoes. This practice killed not only the fungus, but also Eve’s desire to be awake and therefore annoy her parents with the deafening sounds of their own screams from having stepped on her Legos.

Glühwein

Christmas time in Germany is truly a lovely time. The Marktplatz of your local Stadt will be festooned with real pine garland, twinkling lights, and, most important of all, Glühwein stands.

“Pray tell, heathen, what is Glühwein?”, you might ask. Terrific question. Glühwein is hot mulled wine whose mug heats your cold hands and whose contents puts a smile on your frowning and frozen face. It warms both the body and mind though it’s purpose – I’m quite sure – is to enable one to withstand the jostling multitudes and the inevitable encounter with those whom you do not wish to meet. Everyone attends the Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas market) and so you are destined to run into your boss, your racist and politically-inept uncle, and a smathering of other unsavory acquaintances. Should you have enough Glühwein, however, you will not only get through it, you will exit the Marktplatz with more friends than what you had upon entering.

“Great. I don’t need anymore friends”, you might sarcastically mutter. “I barely have enough time to see the ones I already have”. Not to worry. You will also exit the Marktplatz with decidedly less brain cells, so you won’t even remember your new friends. Glee! Allow me to illustrate the point with a meme that Eve recently gleaned from Facebook:

The drink itself is served in small mugs – sometimes in the shape of tiny boots – bedecked with the name and logo of the town from which it was served. Like Starbucks, maybe the servers should also start writing their customers’ names on the mugs. This way the extremely inebriated will know not just what town they are in, but their own name as well. This is especially helpful if you are visiting another town’s Marktplatz – as is a popular pastime here – and you grab someone else’s mug. You may very well end up as Thorsten from Hamburg or, worse, Jim from Bad Mergentheim. Trust me, you do not want to be that guy. You will be forced to write bad blog columns and inject Rogaine directly into your eyebrows. I am essentially a cross between a brain-damaged John Grogan and the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show.

The Christmas Tree

Like we do, Germans also erect and adorn Christmas trees. They call theirs Weihnachtsbaume and are pretty much the same as ours: they are evergreen and are lit up like…um, Christmas trees. The tradition of Christmas trees can be traced back, again, to Roman times when fir trees were used to decorate the temples for Saturnalia. The were also used by Norsemen in ancient Germany to ward off evil spirits. Another basis is that the Christmas tree was derived by medieval Christians from the Paradise Tree, meant to symbolize the Garden of Eden. These are all easily verified by a quick Google search. How boring.

What is not so well know is how the lighting of Christmas trees began, and so I can now offer my own explanation, unencumbered by facts.

Perhaps the addition of tree illumination began as an homage to Moses’ burning bush. That would make sense, but I think that the very first Christmas tree was lit up by some ancient king who accidentally set his poor wife’s undecorated tree on fire as he stumbled about his castle during Christmas, drunk on Glühwein. The reason that early Christmas ornaments were shaped like animals is because the poor little critters that were living in the tree when King Clumsy set it ablaze were fried crispy as they tried to escape. Horrible, I know, but true. Now that this has been published online, a Google search will confirm it.

I personally think that this is also how the burning bush story started. Moses was probably out camping with his family and unintentionally set the bush ablaze while attempting to light a campfire, but was too embarrassed and prideful to admit it.

Moses’ wife: “Nice going, dimwit. You started a forest fire”.

Moses: “No… Uh, it was…God! Behold, a message from Yahweh”!

Moses’ wife: “Yeah, the message is ‘Don’t let your husband play with matches’. We should have gone to a hotel”.

The German Christmas Tree

The first time I saw a German Christmas tree, I was shocked and angered. It was barely decorated with only illumination and ornaments. No tinsel?! Blasphemy! Jesus shall be avenged! I was raised in a household that used so much tinsel that the tree looked like it was dipped in molten aluminum and then stood upright for the shiny liquid to drip and harden into mini metal stalactites of holy adoration. It’s what Jesus would have wanted.

But, before I could grab my pitchfork and torch, I realized that the tree was already on fire. Well, not on fire exactly, but with fire on the tree. The illumination that I saw with my cursory glance through madness-colored glasses were actual candles clipped to the boughs.

Now, this is a rather lovely sight, harkening back to the simpler days before electricity and homeowners insurance. As we all know, candles emit fire, and fire is hot. Trees and fire rarely get along (just Google “Moses camping trip”). Germans know this, of course, but they also like a challenge and are used to adversity. Germans are a people who used to have to constantly defend against marauding hoards and the bidding of unjust kings. It would be far too easy – and therefore boring – to simply plug it in and sit back to enjoy the softly twinkling lights. No, it is far more exciting (and enjoyable for visiting Americans) to get up one million times during Christmas to make sure that the tree hasn’t secretly burst into flame, especially after they’ve had too much Glühwein. Whereas our favorite holiday expressions of “Merry Christmas” and “I hate this sweater” are uttered while we guzzle holiday themed Budweiser (oh, those Clydesdales), theirs’ seems to be “Does anyone smell something burning?” as they carefully sip muddled wine while staring obsessively at the tree.

The Christmas Meal

Where we in the US typically cook a Christmas ham, in Germany they have a Christmas goose. To us Americans, this is reminiscent of Dickens and Downtown Abbey and so we all emit a heartfelt and nostalgic sigh.

“Oh, if we only could have lived back then. Life would have been so much simpler. I’d love a Christmas goose”, we utter in horrible English accents and with great big moon eyes.

We say that until we realize that not one of our guests are a no-show because they died of tuberculosis and, more importantly, until we have actually tasted goose. Goose tastes nothing like what our British-braised imagination cooked up for us; it tastes like what I imagine opossum (we call them ‘trash cats’), or chicken raised on spoiled fast-food, must taste like: Fat and fungus.

“It has a gamey flavor”, some might say. If what they mean is that it tastes like an herb-glazed and moldy dartboard, then they would be right. The whole bird is essentially dark meat that has been basted and broiled in it’s own generous amount of fat, often with mushrooms. The mushrooms, I suspect, aren’t added so much for their flavor, but to offer a reason why the bird tastes like the underside of a damp log. As you may have suspected, I am not a huge fan of goose.

Hot Dogs

Luckily, the meal on the evening of 24th is the real treat. In our region, this meal traditionally consists of Würstchen and Kartoffelsalat, which translates to hotdogs and potato salad. It is essentially what all of America eats during summer barbecues and family reunions. The wieners at these events are often roasted on sticks over an open fire, and the potato salad is enjoyed by ignoring it completely. Not that it’s not tasty, but because it has the word ‘salad’ in it. Americans do not eat salad as a general rule, though, if meat is also being served, you may as well leave the vegetables at home and carry something which will be used: a portable defibrillator.

Back to Christmas, presenting a platter of hotdogs and bowls of potato salad to an American, especially during the freezing temperatures of Christmas time in Germany, will surely bring a huge smile to their face, and maybe even a wistful tear to their eye. Just be sure to watch their Glühwein intake; that tree is essentially a campfire in your living room, and they are going to want to roast those wieners. Trust me, you do not want an unsteady American falling into your tree. that is, not unless you are tired of traditional Christmas carols and want to add Jerry lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire” to your holiday playlist. Since my first visit to Germany which culminated in the Great Tree Incident of 2012, this is now a tradition at Eve’s parents house.

Celebrating the Birth

One thing that I should mention at the outset is that in Germany, there is a custom of the father inviting his friends to go drinking after the birth to celebrate. This usually happens a day or two after the blessed event, while their wife is still bedridden. I didn’t do it. I stayed at the hospital to change diapers and administer bottles. I may not not know much, but I do know that a very effective way to piss off your wife is to leave her alone in a hospital room with a newborn, after having a routine yet still major surgery, to go drinking with your buddies. Points for me. This was also a teensy bit calculated as I am a guy and it’s only a matter of time before I screw up. I must be strong now as I will need to redeem those points someday, most likely soon. In the immortal words of Herr Eddard Stark, “Oktoberfest is coming”. It’s surely no coincidence that Stark means “strong” in German.

I Have to Leave?

All is well up to the last day when you are asked “What time are you leaving”? For first time dads, this may be perplexing:

“Am I going somewhere?” you might ask. Coddled into a state of irresponsibility due to having been waited on hand and foot, you may even entitledly think “Well it’s about time that I was brought to the massage room. My lobster bisque was cold, my champagne was warm; What kind of spa is this”?! This would be wrong. If you haven’t already addressed the nurse as “my humble servant”, there may be a way to save the situation. First, you are being asked to leave the hospital. No big deal. Since most fathers go home at night, this should be normal. If you opted to sleep at the hospital, you may even wonder, “Is it time for me to irresponsibly go drinking with my buddies again”? It is not. You are being asked to leave the hospital.

For good.

With your baby.

Visiting hours are over, my friend. Your time at that luxurious yet antiseptic time-share is over. Mask your panic, intrepid newbie-parent; stuff’s about to get real. As in real gross. No longer will you be able to call someone else to clean up the substances that endlessly ooze from your itty bitty yuck factory. The Joker (your baby) is running amok and the Bat signal is broken. You, Commissioner, are on your own. Swallow one of your wife’s Percocets, force a smile, and say “Of course. I can’t wait to be showered in formula vomit at home. Which end gets the diaper”?

Now that your ill fate has been unceremoniously laid out for you, you will naturally try to resist. “Surely a nurse will come home with me to help, right”? Well, yes, actually. Or at least they could. If you have a Hebamme, they will, in fact, visit you at home every day for the first couple of weeks after the birth. A Hebamme is 50% hippie, 40% nurse, and 6,000% witch. They instruct you on how to change diapers, show your wife how to breastfeed your baby, and demonstrate how to cure diaper rash with only moonlight and a stick. If you are like Eve and I, however, you will have no such help. First, we have internet and can Google stuff, for crying out loud. Second, we don’t believe in magic (although Google is a bit magical, isn’t it?), and third, we thought that we already had all the knowledge that we needed as we read all of the books about “What to Expect”. And by we, I mean Eve.

Oh, was she ever wrong.

The Ride Home

Before I can illustrate those incidents, however, you must first get your baby home. This seemingly mundane task involves a baby’s car seat, i.e.; the devil’s invention. Take my advice; practice putting that satanic contraption into your vehicle before departure day. If you are like me and did not, then you will have to fiddle with the damn thing long enough to go through a bottle, two naps, and eight diaper changes. In the US, most car seats are dummy-proof and the seat belt slides through a separate base which the car seat simply “clicks” into. They also have these in Germany, but we opted to purchase a beautiful yet impractical stroller that came with a different type of car seat. It did not come with a convenient base and so must be secured in an unnecessarily complicated fashion by going over and around the blasted thing with the seat belt sixty-two times before being secured by no less than five-hundred clips. I am sure that it is safer than the American models with bases, but I just don’t see the wisdom in creating a car seat that the kid will have outgrown before it can used for the first time. Ah, wait, Yes. Now I see the wisdom. If it can’t be used, then the kid will never be driven around and will therefore avoid any potential accidents by default. Luckily for me, I had six rolls of duct tape in the car, like any good American would. When it comes to installing anything, we Amis are all white trash MacGyvers. The marketing slogan for duct tape should be “If you’re too good to fix it with duct tape, you are un-American. And probably a communist”. This is, of course, too long for mass-consumption and will be shortened to the concise “Duct tape; Because ‘Murica”. You know know why duct-tape is often displayed in Wal-Mart next the beer, which is conveniently located next to the boxes of ammo. This is also why our insurance premiums are so high; The unfortunate and collective placement of these items presumedly led many a half-wit to decide that they could create time-saving beer holders by taping their Budweisers to their pistols so that their other hands could remain free to hold their Marlboro Reds. This may even be how they got their red color in the first place.

Okay, that was bad, even for me.

Another thing that you must purchase to simply bring your infant home, aside from the car seat, is a “child car mirror”. This mirror not-so-simply straps (oh, wait; duct tape) to the head rest of the back seat so that you can see the little nipper scream on the way home. It’s not enough that you, and everyone else within 25 kilometers, can hear them. No. You must also see them scream, for some reason. It’s only when they stop screaming, after the duct tape has loosened and the mirror has sagged so that you can no longer see them, that you start to worry. Eve and I had to stop around forty times on the way home so that we could get out and peer in on him through the window to make sure that he was still breathing. We even had to poke him a few times. Luckily, in true consumer fashion that panders to every new parent’s fears, we had purchased the Fisher-Price “Car Seat Child Poker”, complete with CO2 detection and neuron stimulating, eco-minded rainforest graphics. Had we had a Hebamme, I suppose we could have just used her diaper rash stick, but then our five-day old wouldn’t have been as smart, nor would they have been as concerned with the plight of the Amazon pygmy parrot ant. I heard that with our purchase, the company finally had enough money to build their new child poker factory, erected ironically on the ant’s last remaining habitat. Conservation has its costs, I suppose.

At Home.

Now that your baby is home, I should continue with the theme, “Things you must now buy that no parent had in previous times and whose babies still lived”. If this was a Jeopardy category, the question would be “What unnecessary device turns your babies diapers into the worst kind of sausage ever imagined”? The answer is, of course, “What is a Diaper Genie, Alex”. For those of you who don’t know, a Diaper Genie is a three foot high device with a lid and a a plastic bag inside in which you place used diapers and then tie off at the end when full. As shown by Eve’s and my model, in Germany they are called “Angel Care” which was obviously named by someone who has never smelled evil. Regardless of the name, and as evidenced by the height, it essentially creates three foot long diaper sausages. The “Genie” or “Angel” part is, presumably, that encapsulating the diapers makes them smell less bad. This is not the case. I even tried rubbing it like in Aladdin hoping that an actual Genie might appear and take the wretched wurst away. This did not work. In fact, it seemed to only make it worse as the friction heated the contents, like one of those heated air-fresheners, but poop-scented instead of Pumpkin Spice. I have since replaced the plastic bags with sheets of 16 gauge steel which I then weld shut. This still does not completely eliminate the smell, which is why I then wrap them in duct tape. Because ’Murica.

It gets gross.

All babies poo. When it comes to this particular task, ours, however, is a veritable virtuoso. A genius of the upper GI, if you will.

Because he likes being close and hearing us, we often wheel Sam’s Laufgitter (playpen) into the kitchen when we are making meals, doing dishes, or what have you. Today I walked by him, opened the fridge, and caught a whiff of something foul. Since he fills his pants at a rate that a pastry chef on meth fills eclairs, I assumed it was time for a diaper change. I performed the sniff test (you parents know what this is) and found nothing. After putting him back down, I opened the fridge and again smelled the same pungent aroma. Close fridge. Sniff butt. Nothing. The third time that I opened the fridge, however, I spied something: An open package of Limburger cheese. I performed the sniff test on it, found that it was indeed the source of the offending odor, and then briefly passed out.

Two things came from this story: (1) I now know why Limburger has no catchy marketing slogans like duct tape should – no amount of gloss is going to make “Our cheese smells like baby poo” more appealing – and, (2) I learned that, by encasing the smelly substance so that everything else remains uncontaminated, ziplock bags are basically cheese diapers. From now on, Limberger remnants are going into the Diaper Genie.

Another thing that you may have seen in those cute Katherine Heigel movies – that you think didn’t existed outside of Hollywood – is projectile vomit. I am here to inform you that it is not an LA plot to keep you from procreating so that you will have time to spend money at the movies: Projectile vomit is real. The first time you experience it, it will happen in a subtle way, much like in an Roland Emmerich directed alien invasion. You’ll be bouncing your baby boy or girl on your lap and they’ll smile at you, coddling you into a state of moon-eyed unpreparedness. Do not be fooled. This smile is only contrived to catch you off guard so that you have a smiling and open mouth for your tiny extraterrestrial to vomit into. If parenthood were a Sci-Fi movie, I assume that this is how they would replicate; by using our adult bodies as incubators for the eggs we unwittingly swallow until they mature and burst gleefully from our chests. The truth is, in reality, much worse. Vomit often occurs randomly and without warning, like a huge asteroid strike or gamma ray burst, and so cannot be defended against. Babies embody the chaos of the universe, only in adorable, miniature form.

Free Time? What’s That?

When babies sleep, they often don’t sleep long. By the time you have amassed all that you need to enjoy your free time, the baby may have already awoken. Hardly anything is more vexing than having amassed all of your tools of relaxation just to have it interrupted before you can even begin. Your best bet is carry your TV, Xbox, and eight packages of Oreos around with you at all times so that not one nanosecond of their nap will be wasted once they pass out. Trust me, they fall asleep in the strangest of places, at the oddest of times, and so you must be prepared. Like much in life, Übung macht den Meister (practice makes perfect). If you are exceptional, you will learn to munch your cookies rhythmically while rocking your baby with a game controller in your hands so that it actually soothes your baby to sleep, thereby increasing your you time. Did you defeat the demon and get your baby to sleep at the same time? Congratulations. You, my friend, just leveled up.

Child’s Play.

Being a kid at heart, one of the hardest parts about having a newborn is waiting to play with them. I love playing games. Tag. Tickle your kid until they pee their pants. You know, the standard stuff. After a couple of weeks, the anticipation became so great that I couldn’t wait anymore. We started with one of my favorites: Hide N’ Seek. Now, Sam can’t exactly hide – or even walk – on his own, so I had to help him. The problem is that since I am the one placing him in his hiding spot, I would know where he is. We needed another player.

Eve was downstairs doing laundry, so it was the perfect time to place him in an upstairs closet with a kiss and a ”Shhh”. As Eve reached the top of the stairs, I exclaimed “It’s hide and seek time! Sam is hiding somewhere in the house. Go”!

This was met with less excitement than I expected. She said things. Loud things, in German, while frantically running around the house opening cupboards and looking under beds.

After 20 minutes, she said that she wanted to dial the German 911 so they could send someone to find Sam. She called it “an emergency”. I called it cheating.

Your Baby is Insane.

Babies have no perspective. Everything to them is the worst thing ever. The following are a few scenarios that will will cause your newborn to cry, along with what they think while crying:

Hungry: “AAUUGHHH!!! I’m starving to death!!! WAHHHH”!!!

Tired: “AAAUAUGHHH!!! Oh my God, I can’t keep my eyes open! I’ve been drugged!! WAHHHH”!!!

Vomitting: “AAUGHHHH!!! I just puked! POISON! WAHHHH”!!!!

Wet diaper: “AAUUGHHH!!! My wiener is cold…and it looks like a tiny raisin!!!! WAHHHH”!!!

The last one is only for male babies, of course, but it will remain with them into adulthood. This is why most men pull at their vacuumed shorts as they exit a pool, ocean, etc. Swimming in frigid water is like crawling into a time machine set to “baby”; Cold and wetness essentially Benjamin Buttons ones junk.

Another indication that your baby has completely lost their marbles is the amount of delight that they derive from trying to throw themselves from any height. You may them perched on your shoulder, on laying next to you on the bed. Without warning, your little lemming will twist their bodies in an attempt to hurl themselves into the air. Babies operate on pure instinct and therefore unaware of the consequences of their actions. Sure, this is how they learn, but it is also how brain damage occurs. I am by no means a helicopter parent, but if they are concussed enough, then learning becomes less of a concern than them repeatedly running into walls like a human Roomba. Again, the answer is duct tape. It not only secures child equipment that you don’t understand because you fell on your head too many times as a baby, it serves well as a means for securing your suicidal tot to an immobile object. Like a wall.

Don’t Forget the Love.

After all of these seemingly negative stories, I should tell you that there are indeed benefits to having a new-born. Don’t let me scare you away from procreation. Naturally, the feeling of unconditional love that you almost immediately feel toward them is paramount, as is the knowledge that they are completely dependent on that love and care. For you fathers, however, what’s only slightly less important is that if you are a good husband and dad, you will become irresistible to your wife. For example, my wrists constantly smell like formula, and that scent is now Eve’s new favorite cologne. This may seem strange, but trust me; wrists that smell like formula means that you have not only fed your baby, but that you also tested it beforehand to make sure that it wasn’t too hot. Nothing is sexier to a new mother than a father who helps with bottle feedings, especially if he also doesn’t scald the baby’s mouth. If your hands also happen to smell like dish soap from washing said bottles, that combo is essentially Calvin Klein’s Obsession mixed with Spanish Fly. Careful, my friends, or you may soon be feeding two babies. If you thought that you had your hands full with one, just wait until you have two. In the States, we have a saying about multiple children: “One is none, two is ten”. The shark in Jaws was only one. Now imagine ten great whites, not attacking while trying to get into your boat, but vomiting while hurling themselves out of their playpens.

You’re not going to need a bigger boat; you are going to need more duct tape. Lots more.

Now, even though I looked like a hippie, I wasn’t particularly spiritual and I certainly wasn’t new-agey. The closest that I got to karma was that I simply tried to be kind and treat others well because it was the right thing to do and because that was how I wanted to be treated. No energies or auras there, really, just good old cause and effect. Though altruistic, I was more grounded in how I perceived the world and it’s inhabitants. I wasn’t a naive idealist; I was an idealistic realist. That is why the outright hippiness of our son’s birth.. sorry, “birth experience”, caught me so off guard.

To be fair, Bad Mergentheim is a spa town, hence the prefix “Bad” (spa or bath) in the town’s name. In 1826, a shepherd named Franz Gehring discovered his sheep gathered around and frantically lapping at something on the ground. As the story goes, after he literally pulled his flock away, Franz discovered a small spring whose waters were later found to be laden with sodium sulfate. This compound proved to not only be essentially sheep crack, it was also deemed to have healing properties and was peddled as a cure for digestive disorders. Since that fateful day, Mergentheim has become a kind of German Woodstock. It’s all about nature, rejuvenation, and feeling groovy, man. Shops selling energy crystals have sprung up along the cobble-stone streets. Meditation and yoga now rival the popularity of going to church, and rehab centers, both for injured humans and salt-addicted sheep, abound.

This kind of lifestyle and attitude has both its pros and its cons. One good thing about having “Bad” in the town’s name is that we have a lot of visitors in the form of tourists and patients. Lots of visitors means that the town’s natural beauty is preserved so those same people keep returning with their fists full of Euros…which, in turn, fuels the town’s preservation. We would call this a “virtuous circle”. In German, it’s called a “Devil’s Circle”. I can only conclude that this term came from the evil word Kreisverkehr (traffic circle) and is apt as it relates to would-be fathers.

The Kreisverkehr is a modern version of the ancient idea of a self-perpetuating mechanism and has wrought havoc on many confounded drivers, mostly tourists. Like the Cretan labyrinth, once inside, you find that there are several possible exits, though only one will deliver you to your intended destination. Because of other traffic, confusion, jet-lag, and our inherent timidity, most of us that aren’t used to them simply miss our exit and keep driving around and around. I am quite sure that there are several vacationing American fathers-to-be who left long ago to drive their laboring wives to the local hospital whom are still steering their vehicles around the same German traffic circle, only at present with a very large and bearded infants propped next to their now utterly insane wives.

The downside to all of these tourists is two-fold: (1) Those visitors drive even slower than the resident Americans (me) who constantly stop and gawk at anything that looks remotely medieval (everything) and (2), that when your wife goes into labor, she will arrive at her hospital room and find that she is overdressed if she is wearing anything more conservative than Birkenstocks and a tunic. This is basically what happened to us but, to properly illustrate the event’s entire spectrum and gravity, I must tell the full tale of our “birth experience”, beginning with how her labor started.

Eve’s water broke. Well, it didn’t break so much as it starting leaking like a water bed after being jumped on too much. Because of Sam’s excessive kicks and jabs, this is, most likely, precisely what happened.

The term in German for a woman’s water-breaking is Blasensprung (bubble crack). This is quite apt as, in Eve’s case, her bubble (amniotic sac “Ew, gross”) cracked and “sprung” a leak. The leak, naturally, is amniotic fluid. Normally given to concise – if not often harsh – definitions, amniotic fluid in German is “Fruchtwasser”, which translates to “fruit water”. That sounds nice, right? Refreshing even, like you might be serenely sipping a glass while parked in your favorite chair on the veranda. Well, it’s not. It, like the sac it came out of, is also gross and I am almost positive that there is absolutely nothing fruity about it. I don’t know if you knew this or not, but babies pee – and even sometimes poo – in there. Of course, I don’t know for sure just how gross it is because I am very squeamish. I scream like Fay Wray whenever my hand touches some errant floating food debris while I’m washing dishes, so you can imagine my aversion to something as icky as what is essentially in utero baby toilet water.

In the defense of Germans’ perplexity where fruit is concerned, however, I can submit that they are what I like to call “fruit dyslexic”, and are therefore prone to “fruit confusion”. Ananas, which I thought meant “bananas” because, well, it’s the same word without a “b”, actually means “pineapple”. Also, pear (Birne) translates to lightbulb, and there is an air freshener on sale here whose label clearly depicts a lime, but is called “Cool Lemon”. Interestingly enough, Germans put fruit into literally every dessert. I am not kidding. Time and time again I have seen exquisite cheesecakes, puddings, and delightfully-decorated chocolate confections utterly ruined by the discovery of oranges, raspberries, or cherries hidden cleverly inside. This does not sit well with my basic and unhealthy American tastes. I like my desserts without fruit. If I wanted a surprise, I’d eat an American fruitcake which is, essentially, an edible version of the classic arcade claw game. Like the game, the cake is filled with stuff that has virtually no value and that nobody would want if it weren’t gussied up in the form a dessert. Like you would navigate the claw toward something more enticing than a stuffed toy slug, you must also steer the knife around around the cake trying to avoid the useless junk you don’t want (fruit). Once you’ve made your selection and the claw/fork rises, you end up face-to-face with a congealed lump of what is most likely a cherry. Or worse, one of those plush novelty cherries.

Now, I don’t think that Germans are actually trying to subvert our American palettes by adding fruit to every dessert. I think, because of their fruit-dyslexia, that they are merely trying to get as much practice as possible: I can only imagine the disappointment – and pain – of the first bite of the the very first pear-cobbler as the unwary victim bit into glass and filament. Practice makes perfect or, in German, “Übung macht den Meister”. This is probably why they eventually changed Birne to Gluhbirne (glowing pear). A minor, but important, difference.

The Birthing Room

After arriving at the hospital, late due to traffic circles (and having to stop and have a look at a castle or two), we were checked in and made our way up to our room. I’ll take a minute to say that we opted for the “family room”. This means that we had a room to ourselves, with two beds, and that even I had meals – that we could pre-select – delivered to us. This seemingly unnecessary extravagance was anything but. Each night cost us an extra 40 Euros (as of now, about the same in dollars). That is cheaper than a night at a typical US road-side motel where you have to sleep on top of the oddly-stained bedding and pick bugs from the stale Corn Flakes that is your continental breakfast. This, my friends, is German healthcare. The hospitals here are run not as profitable businesses like in the States, but as a way to care for people. Weird, right? The system actually helping people instead of taking everything that they can from them? I gotta say, this notion of goodwill, struck against the flint that was our need, created a spark that began to rekindle my own long forgotten feelings of grooviness, man. Now, before any of you start screaming “SOCIALISM!” (actually social-democracy) and lighting fires, I have to say that doctors here make way less than they do in the States. But how do the doctors pay off their huge student loans and afford six houses? There are no student loans here and most doctors are content to own just one house. College is free in Germany and, because of the lower pay than in the states, doctors here want to become doctors to help people, not as a way to fund their celebrity lifestyles. Those that seek the latter become professional soccer players. Or energy crystal store owners.

Back to the tale, the initial room where Eve was evaluated was a typical German birthing room. This room, however, was anything but typical to a US birthing ward. Like a gynecological circus, there were hooks and ropes hanging from the ceiling. There were also massage balls and scented oils. In retrospect, the room was very much like the secret room portrayed in Fifty Shades of Grey, which is apropos since I’m sure that at least a few of the women there conceived in the same type of at-home setting. Oh, Germany. I love your honesty. And your adherence to the Devil’s Circle. There was also, what I came to find out later, a “Himalayan Salt Crystal Lamp”. This seemingly innocuous piece of illuminated decor supposedly emits negative ions when the salt is heated by the bulb, which in turn is supposed to cultivate a sense of well-being through increased blah, blah, blabbity-blah. All that I know is that it sounded weird to me, like drinking salty spring water in hopes of curing indigestion. Plus, those ions are negative. I, for one, will not sit by while my infant is exposed to any type of negativity. I am a good dad.

One other item that I found in the room was a Cat Stevens CD next to the stereo. Because his soft melodies are supposed to be soothing and are probably not meant to be funny in the least, especially in that setting, I find the thought of someone laboring to “Can’t Keep It In” ironic and therefore hysterical. Even funnier to me at that time, knowing that Eve was going to have a C-Section, was that I could – and did – play “The First Cut Is The Deepest”. Luckily I have a wife that has just as strange a sense of humor as I do. In fact, it may have been her idea.

Moving on, the next steps before Eve could be carted off to the operating room was that she had a catheter inserted and her anesthesia administered. I was there for the catheter which was bad enough. Had I been present for the spinal, I think that I may well have added to the patient count (I mentioned that I’m squeamish, right?). Luckily for all, Eve was whisked away for that procedure and I was given a stylish set of scrubs, a pair of well-used Crocs (probably worn that very morning by one of the commune members while they weeded the community garden), and a face mask to don so that I wouldn’t contaminate the operating room.

After I had dressed in the requisite attire, I waited outside, impatiently and full of nervous energy, to be allowed inside. This took not the several hours that I expected, but only around fifteen minutes and, since I was wearing the face mask, my hyperventilation was nicely averted as I was breathing in my own CO2. I suspect that the face masks given to expectant fathers aren’t really to keep the OR sterile, but to prevent us from overdosing on oxygen and, like not being allowed to witness the spinal, passing out.

Once inside, I found Eve lying on the operating table, smiling, with an enormous blue-green tarp erected above her mid-section. This barrier is intended to prevent the patient (and, most importantly, weak-stomached partners) from viewing the carnage that is being wreaked beneath it. What I didn’t know was that the doctors had made the incision before I arrived. Around three seconds after I gave Eve a kiss and asked how she was, her lower body began writhing around as the effort to remove the baby got under way. Because her torso was being thrashed about by unseen forces, and since that serenely sea-tinted surface was undulating chaotically, I thought that it was almost how my lovely wife would surely look like if she were floating in the Caribbean while being attacked from below by sharks. In fact, due to the blood that I knew was there, but that I couldn’t see, it was exactly like that. Sorry, Eve; no tropical vacations for us. Ever. You are hereby relegated to kiddie pools for life. And only then if they have shark nets.

I was still day-dreaming or, due to my concern, “day-nightmaring”, when a baby’s cry arose without warning over the doctors’ hurried voices. This sound… Well, this sound is almost indescribable in how it makes one feel. By hearing it, you are transported instantly from a father-to-be – a beautiful yet inarticulate idea – to an actual father. You have a child. Like the moon’s gravity tugging at the ocean before a storm, the emotions swell quickly. As you see the nurse emerge from the edge of the tarp, holding your baby, that gathering swell crests into a wave of overpowering joy that crashes from your eyes and cascades down your face.

You have a child. We named ours Samuel.

The Recovery

Once the water flowing from my eyes had ebbed enough for me to see again, I was asked to follow the nurses into an adjoining room where I was asked to cut the cord. This I did with great pride and without hesitation. Releasing your child into the world by way of this ceremony of mock liberation is as important as it is arbitrary. Caring mothers set limitations out of concern for their baby’s well-being. Caring fathers remove limitations, whether it be the umbilical cord at birth or the insecurity of jumping into a pool when they’re four, for those very same reasons.

Once Sam’s cord was clamped, he was swung over to a counter where he was weighed and measured like a trout at a fishing derby. Since he was just pulled from the waters of his mom’s womb and was now gasping for air, I suppose that he was rather like a fish. Our prize fish, since he was the only one in that particular pond and grew specifically for us. Having a baby is kind of like catch-and-release fishing except that you are also a fish and so, instead of just tossing the wriggling little guy back into the water after you’ve snapped a photo, you swim alongside him for life, helping him navigate the seas of existence.

As Eve was whisked away to her recovery room, the nurses led Sam and I back to the same birthing room that Eve and I were in before the C-Section. I didn’t know it then, but Eve had told the nurses that since she would be out-of-sorts, that it should be me with whom Sam should nestle. Newborn babies in Germany are often placed on the bare chest of one of their parents as the skin-to-skin contact, combined with them hearing the heartbeat that they have grown so accustomed to, is evidently soothing to them. They call it “parent-baby-bonding”. This would have seemed unnecessary – if not downright silly – to me only thirty minutes prior. But at that moment, with Sam nestled on my chest and sighing deeply, I began to think differently. In fact, it thought that it was perfect. How could anyone not want to do this? I sat there with a contented smile on my face – a look of slight confusion on Sam’s – thinking of how I could thank Eve for her thoughtfulness. I even considered calling the nurse so she could play the Cat Stevens CD. “Father and Son” would have been nice…

…and then Sam found a nipple.

I’m not sure how he did it since the hair on my chest is as thick as a Costa Rican rainforest, but he did. This was clearly not well thought out. Why would anyone place a hungry newborn directly next to a nonfunctioning nipple? In the split second that it took me to react to the unnatural scene unfolding beneath my nose, Sam realized that these particular nipples were broken. It would be akin to giving an empty water bottle to someone who had just crossed the Sahara. As he released his cry of frustration, I let out out my own cry of horror. Though I’m certain that this wasn’t the experience that the nurses had in mind, I’m still pretty sure that Sam and I bonded, as men do, by learning a lesson. Heck, I’m confident that that is 90% of what fatherhood is anyway. As smaller children are essentially impulsive gremlins who will injure themselves while destroying everything, and since older children will often forget to lock their doors, I’m certain that there will plenty of moments to come where we’ll both be standing there and staring at each other; father and son screaming in unison about their separate yet horribly intertwined traumas. Our first joint lesson: Dad’s nipples are off-limits.

The Reunion

Eve arrived at the room a few hours later and the reunion was as perfect as it could be, at least for a while. Not that it became unpleasant or uncomfortable in any way, mind you. Well, at least not for me. Being a new mom, Eve was naturally ecstatic to see her son. She also seemed happy to see me, at least for a while. That was, until I began with the jokes.

You see, Eve was in not a small amount of pain from her C-Section and I was nervous from being in a new, albeit exquisite, situation. When I get nervous, I make jokes. Bad jokes. Normally, jokes make people laugh and when you laugh, the belly muscles get involved. Bad jokes usually leave people staring at you, shifting uncomfortably. Unfortunately for Eve, she actually laughs harder at my bad jokes. Since Eve just had her belly sliced open and then sutured, laughter was painful. This was not a good combination. Remember the Devil’s Circle? Laughter with Eve and I is another self-perpetuating mechanism. I crack a bad joke, she laughs. Since I like making her laugh, I continue:

Me: “I wish you had an A-Section”.

Eve: “Huh. Why”?

Me: Because a “C” isn’t very good. An “A” is the best. Was that doctor even qualified? Maybe he got a “C” in Section class. We should have asked for an “A” doctor”.

Eve: “Haha. Stop”.

Me: “And why is it a “section” anyway? Section means “partial”. I think that procedure should be done fully. Do you think they left part of Sam in there”?

Eve: “HAHAHAHA! Ow! Leave”.

Most men are asked to exit the room when they need to pass gas or, if they have the nasty habit, smoke. I was demanded to leave the room not for creating foul odors, but because I couldn’t stop cracking foul jokes.

The remaining time in the hospital was spent taking cat-naps, changing diapers, and administering bottles. Eve’s family came in to see Sam for the first time and to check on her well-being. We got used to the idea of having a child. To making the switch from being only husband and wife to being a family. Since newborns sleep around 20 hours a day, we had time to talk about our plans for the future. What preschool Sam would go to. How to finish decorating his room. How to change a diaper at 1:00 AM with only one eye open. It was, truly, a blissful time.

As the last night settled upon us, our bags packed for tomorrow’s first trip home with Sam, we took time to take stock of how lucky we were. Sam was healthy. Eve had recovered well. During those final moments, we couldn’t help but begin to at least see part of the wisdom of the hospitals hippie, okay, natural, approach to giving birth. Eve ordered a pair of Birkenstocks (they are deceptively comfortable, if not stylish). We decided that the aromatherapy that was in our room wasn’t there so much for the “good vibes” as it was to mask the smell of newborn baby poo: Since chemicals like those found in air-fresheners are detrimental to a newborns’s ultra-sensitive skin, and due to the sheer volume of ultra-smelly waste that a baby produces, the addition of Lemon oil to the room was a stroke of genius. Even the salt-crystal lamp began to win me over. I don’t know if it actually works, but its light is rather nice. I’m not sure if it was the ions or if I was just half-stoned from lack of sleep but, as I sat there in the wee hours of the morning with Sam sleeping in my arms and thinking how angelic he looked in its soft orange light, I have to say,…

I was feeling pretty groovy, man.

Having babies is disturbingly easy. After having discovered our tackle at an early age, one needs to only wait until puberty before said equipment turns from “useful decoration” to “the reason for living”. That flood of time-released hormones, combined with only a shred of ingenuity, turns that once simple use quickly to abuse…before we almost instantly realize that rubbing them up against someone else is much more enjoyable. Genitalia have a certain gravity, though illustrated inversely, towards others of their kind. Unlike Newton’s apple which went down due to earth’s gravity, our apples go decidedly up in the presence of other compatible fruit. Newton’s apple was a coincidence, of course, but it couldn’t have been more apt in its relation to procreation and censorship, nor more damning for Newton. The church hates apples. Ever since Adam and Eve were banished from the garden because Eve kept offering her apple to Adam, the clergy has had it in for those tantalizing orbs. This is probably why Newton was persecuted so fiercely for his heretical theory. Had it been, say, a pear that bopped him on the noggin, things may have gone better for ol’ Isaac.

I can only conclude that this fear of apples, passed down over the ages, is what gave birth (pardon the pun) to the story of Snow White who took a bite of the witch’s poisoned apple before falling into a death-like sleep. Because of our species’ inherent short-term memory, however – and due to the fact that we hate to eat healthy but love sex – the moral of these stories isn’t that we should have less sex or use birth control, but that we should be wary of fruit. This, in and of itself, explains both the world’s weight gain and overpopulation.

Thinly-stretched analogies of poorly-conceived conception aside, the difference with Eve and I, however, is two-fold: The first is that we planned our pregnancy. Unlike many pregnancies that start simply with a few drinks and a devil-may-care attitude, Eve and I had to plan ours.

This is not common knowledge, but Eve has Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and so she normally takes meds to control her flares. Unless you’re a seven-tentacled Gorfloc from the planet Mutatagon, this medication isn’t exactly conducive to producing healthy offspring. Eve needed to be off of them for no less than six months before we could even try to conceive. Now when I say “try”, you all know what I mean. Or at least I hope that you do. Heck, even the Gorflocs know what I’m talking about, and they reproduce asexually and so don’t even need to, errr…”try”.

The second part of our planning is, you guessed it, that we knew that we were going to have our baby in Germany. Since Germans are loathe to make even a trip to the grocery store without first having a solid plan, graphed through multiple spreadsheets, you can imagine the amount of prep that goes into creating another human. Aside from the decision to give birth with the help of an Epidural, or to push that new being drug-free into the world via an underwater, Edelweiss blossom and pain-filled utopia while screaming “Wir sind der Welt” (We Are The World), there are many, many other things that must be considered. Since I don’t want to spoil the joke by giving away the punchline, you will have to be patient as I wade through each of those points in the coming paragraphs.

Cloud 7

Assuming that your trying attempts have proved successful and you now find yourself pregnant in Germany, the first thing you will need to do, if you want to truly be a pregnant German woman, is to not tell everybody that you know. Unlike in the States where every expectant mother informs every person whom they’ve ever met that they are pregnant, you must keep your mouth shut. Expectant American women will use every possible means to inform the world that they are “with child” including email, Facebook, WhatsApp, and even smoke signals. The latter, however, usually comes from forgetting that they have something in the literal oven during the late stages of long-term pregnancy called “Prego Brain” where your lovely wife forgets everything, just the now scorched pizza. The point is that while U.S. women are on cloud nine and are freely telling everyone  that they are “with child”, the furthest reach of the the more reserved German’s cloud-scale goes only to seven. This I am not kidding about. When Germans refer to themselves as being ecstatic, they will say that they are on “cloud seven”. The ever realistic Germans know, until the the baby is in hand, so to speak, that they are actually “without child” and are merely hoping for the best. Cloud nine? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Though I normally try to make people laugh with these posts, this particular one is about pregnancy and so I am probably obligated by contract to make all of you weep with sappy tales of creating life. To this end, I will share the story of our conception, though without the actual details of the act itself.

Eve and I conceived in Chieming, Bavaria on the day after our beloved dog Wilson – or Willy the King, as we called him – passed away. I will spare you the details of that event as it will make me weep, but knowing that we created a new being just as another that was so dear to us departed, is as close as I care to get to karma and the fabled “circle of life”. Let’s just say that the significance isn’t lost on me. So much so that since our new addition’s name will be Sam, I fully intend to lift him up for all of the doctors, nurses, and other savannah animals to behold while “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King plays in the background. That’s right; Sam is “Sam-ba”, your new ruler. Better practice your kneeling, insolent peasant.

The “Female Doctor”

Your first stop on the pregnancy train ride is to the OBGYN, or Frauenarzt (literally “female doctor”) to confirm the pregnancy and receive your Mutterpass (mother’s pass). This little book will be filled out by your doctor at each visit to keep a record of your appointments, including your babies growth, tests, etc. It is meant to be kept with you at all times so that if something were to happen to you, it could be found by medical personnel who would be able to not just identify you as pregnant, but would also instantly have a complete record. It is essentially a pregnancy passport but, as you will undoubtedly stuff Ultraschall (ultrasound) photos inside of it over the next nine months, it will grow into an 10 pound baby bible. Since a pregnant woman isn’t allowed to carry anything heavier than a package of Oreos and a grudge, men, it is your job to trudge this thing around. You could lug it around in your arms like a caveman, but that is impractical and this is  Germany. I recommend a stroller that you will be buying momentarily anyway. You will not only save your back, but when someone asks to peek at the baby, you can immediately show them the most recent ultrasound photo that almost always looks like either an H. R. Giger illustration:

“Sure. Hold on… Oh no, he hasn’t been born yet; this book just weighs as much as a baby and I have a bad back. Ah, here he is! What’s that? Why yes, he does look look like an alien! We’re just hoping that he doesn’t burst violently from Eve’s chest. Umm… Maybe we should step back”.

First Things To Buy. 

Now that no one knows that you’re pregnant save for your Frauenarzt, you are free to secretly begin planning for the arrival of your smiling bundle of joy. Ah, but wait. You’re German now, remember? You know better. Forget the fantasies surrounding childbirth of squeaky clean cherubs being placed gently on your chest as you gaze at him or her with perfect makeup. Babies do not come cooing into the world in a puff of lavender-scented fairy dust. Delivery is not a Disney movie. It’s more like a Tarantino film. If you have a old, cantankerous lush uncle like I do, childbirth is not unlike his appearance from the bathroom after he’s drank too much at Thanksgiving: Newborns come out screaming, wrinkled and confused, and covered in icky goo. Luckily for you, there are nurses on hand to clean up the mess. Regarding your uncle, you’re on your own and you’ll probably have to dig into those those wet-wipes that you’ve been stockpiling for the baby.

What’s that? You don’t have any wet-wipes yet as you’ll get most of that stuff from the baby shower anyway? Oh boy. This is going to be hard. I hate to break it to you, but there aren’t any baby showers here in Germany. At least not outside of Kaiserslautern, the American army base teeming with perpetually pregnant army wives like a fishing pond overstocked with patriotic and hormonal trout. You, my friend, are going to have to buy most of that stuff yourself, and – boy, oh boy – is it a lot. Lucky for you, you’re German now, and so you won’t waste a minute. Let’s get cracking, shall we?

The small stuff like formula and diapers (nappies, for you Brits), can all be purchased at your local grocery store or DM. The larger items will have to be bought at different places. Since this is Germany and not New Jersey, there aren’t any Babies R’ Us or Targets on every corner. Baby stores do exist, but they are typically in and around large cities and no self-respecting German would drive three hours to buy a bassinet. Heck, since most people live in small towns like I do that have a brewery, most would just notch out and upholster an old wooden beer keg. If you’re not the crafty type, your best bet is online shopping via Amazon.de or BabyWalz.de. While you’re doing that, I am going to Google “Bierfaß Korbwagen” (beer keg bassinets) to see if I can patent that little gem so I can sell you one. I just have to empty the Faß first. Thank you, brain. Sorry, Liver.

Like in the U.S., the most important items – the ones that will see the most miles – are the stroller, the crib, and the changing table. The bassinet is also important but since it will only be used for a couple of months (and since yours is already on order from beerkegbassinets.com), I’ll start with the most fun first. If you are a guy, this is the stroller. They have wheels, axles, and sometimes even racing stripes. Okay, I realize that “racing stripes” in American English also means something different and decidedly less appealing, but you’re about to have a baby! Eventually everything that you put that little skid mark maker in is going to have racing stripes. Just think of them as real racing stripes.

“Vroom, Vroooom! Screw you, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jr.! You see those stripes?! You’re going into the wall”!

I’m actually not a NASCAR fan, but I couldn’t resist. Watching grown men pilot cars around a closed race-track is about as exciting to me as watching old people cruise their walkers around an enclosed bingo hall. Sure, there is bound to be the inevitable collision, but there are rarely any injuries… Which is good since they’re old. I, for one, one will not stand idly by as the elderly are injured for our amusement. You people are sick.

Anyway, many models are available, but the one that we opted for has a stainless steel fixed-chassis, a six gear manual transmission, and a turbo. I’m just kidding, of course: the turbo was too expensive. This little gem also has a detachable bassinet for newborns that you can swap out for the car seat and, when they are a little older, the upright and forward facing chair. It even comes with an integral shopping bag that converts into a backpack, and a diaper bag that hangs from the handle bar. The only thing that it doesn’t have is side air-bags, but only because those, like the turbo, cost extra. This is Germany, people. Performance handling and sleek styling are necessities. This thing even has spoked wheels and inflatable tires, though they aren’t Pirellis. That option was way too expensive and, to be frank, I don’t want to tempted to drive too fast into curves: Being a dad is all about safety. And impressing the other dads. But mostly safety.

Room Theme

Let’s pretend for a minute that you are in the States. Before you could purchase the other two items, you would have to decide on the theme for you baby’s room. You wouldn’t want the furniture to clash with your decor, right? How gauche. This is your chance to appear creative, ever-so-caring, and clever to boot. No matter how much you might love your child to be, simply buying a Winnie The Pooh bed spread and mobile will not do. The other new parents will be aghast at your indifference and may report you for child neglect. They will call you Stalin and will exclaim things to each other like “How is the baby supposed to BLOSSOM in that oppressive environment”?! Yes, your baby is a daffodil, but that’s not the worst part. Because of your apparent lack of interest, these people may decide that you don’t even want your baby, and, like PETA members at petting zoo, will begin plotting to steal it so that they can be raised in a stimulating room painstakingly crafted to resemble a tropical paradise, complete with forest mural, interactive surround-sound jungle noises, and a real waterfall. In America, truly caring about your baby means that even the most mundane things must be transformed into elaborate productions and so the room – the place where they will spend most of their formative years – must be no less exciting than a Hollywood blockbuster. Luckily for you and your wallet, you live in Germany and nurseries here have a much less whimsical flair. This is because Germans are a serious people. Unlike in America where children are raised on fairy tales, the more practical Germans know that life is serious, if not often dangerous. They didn’t grow up with Disney’s happy endings. They had the Grimm brothers’ tales of the more realistic consequences of what happened to children when they went skipping unaccompanied through dark primeval forests, and this is clearly reflected in their sense of minimalist, if not somber, design.

Since I am an American, however, we did decide on a theme. We painted a mural of Sam as a toddler blissfully blowing bubbles while Buster watches, and added decor with elephants and stars. What we should have done however is pick the theme that straddles the line between the German style that is dull but will keep your kid alive, and their inevitable death of the carefree American one: Pirates. Not only does it combine imagination with both adventure and history, since I will have only one functioning eye from lack of sleep and will reek of rum from stress, I would have matched the decor perfectly. New parents are essentially pirates. Add to this the the fact that when one stumbles one-eyed through a darkened baby’s room at 3:00 AM, they will inevitably whack their toe against the crib and curse like a sailor while hobbling around like they have a peg-leg.

Crib & Changing Table

Should you have chosen the swashbuckling decorating style, you will also now be in a great position to finally buy those other two items I mentioned earlier: The crib and changing table. Since all cribs are basically just tiny jail cells with a mattress floor, not only do you not have to get to fancy, the more beat up it is the better. You want this to look authentic. Because of the Swede’s love of simplicity and the color grey, IKEA has a crib that actually looks like a tiny prison cell. It may even be called “Bäbi Jåel”. When your little first mate attempts a mutiny in the form of not napping (or if they’ve just hit the bottle too hard and passed out), you can just throw the tiny rebel in the brig. The punishment for the most severe offense, willful and premeditated pooping, is reserved for the last piece of furniture: The changing table.

German changing tables are inherently different than American sideways-lying style in that they have the “ass-on” approach. Because of this, they have a table on the top that extends outward which looks uncannily like the plank on a pirate’s ship. The tiny terrorist obviously can’t be thrown in the clink when they have exploded a powder keg in their pants. No, in this case you must make them walk the plank, i.e., change their diaper. Luckily for them, the only thing that actually gets thrown overboard is the offending sack of doo.

When you first change a diaper, you will notice that it is almost impossible. Babies shake, writhe, and yell non-stop during this task. If that wasn’t enough, all of that movement causes the table to also tremor about. It’s like changing a diaper on an aerobics instructor, mid-workout, during an earthquake. Because of this incessant shaking, and because changing tables are typically constructed from wood, I suspect that this spectacle is how the term “Shiver me timbers!”, uttered by some exasperate pirate-parent, was coined.

Author’s note: This last part may not be that helpful as it probably only applies to me but, since it relates specifically to changing tables, I have decided to include it:

As I mentioned above, American changing tables lie sideways, meaning that you lie your baby down so that they are perpendicular to you. If you are right-handed, their heads are to your left and their feet are to your right. Since German changing tables, or Wickeltische, are situated so that you are parallel to the baby and his feet are pointed toward you, this presents a problem for me. My wrist joints do not bend like normal peoples do. Again, I am being serious. I don’t know if it is from some injury early in life, or if it’s just poor ligament mobility, but I cannot bend my wrists past 20 degrees. If the kid was lying with his feet to my right like they would in the states, I could easily wipe and dab as needed. With the kids’s ass facing me, because I can’t bend my wrists, I will essentially be stabbing his nether region with my fixed hand like a stork’s beak trying to impale minnows. This does not bode well for peaceful diaper changes. I may as well have a hook for a hand. While most parents keep Desitin close-by for rashes, I will have to keep bandages on hand to apply to his wounds. Fortunately, I’ll be a pirate by then and my ever present bottle of rum will serve nicely as a disinfectant.

Having gone through this before, I sort of knew what to expect. Having it done in a different country, however, meant that there were bound to be a few differences and so I couldn’t resist the temptation to keep a log of the events as they unfolded. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure (another pun), the prep is in and of itself the worst part. As the day of the procedure runs its course (another pun, really?) on its own, this log contains only the happenings of the prep day or, as I have come to call it, The Day Humanity Ended.

January 14th, 2016: Prep Day.

7:00:00: Open prep package from hospital to take stock of contents: One instruction sheet. One bottle of Prepacol with four tablets. Three packages of EndoFalk. One cheaply made hairnet. One… Is that a maxi pad?! My prep bag was obviously meant for a menstruating lunch lady.

7:05:00: Upon reading the instructions, find that the hairnet is actually a pair of underwear for keeping the maxi pad in place. The instructions state that the maxi pad is to absorb “versehentlichen Leck” (accidental leakage). Fear begins to take root.

7:05:15: Remove underwear from head.

7:06:00: Read instructions regarding food. I am to eat only Zwieback for breakfast and can only drink water, tea or coffee without milk, diluted schorle (schorle is already diluted fruit juice), and broth during the day. Head to pantry to retrieve Zwieback while hoping that Zwieback means “bacon”.

7:08:00: Open and inspect Zwieback. It looks like super-dried mini toast. Take first bite and immediately spit it out. It tastes like lightly-sweetened drywall. Clench buttocks tightly and tell Eve I’m going to McDonald’s. Eve says no.

7:11:00: Eat Zwieback as hunger and the thought of ass crabs overpowers my disgust.

8:30:00: Getting very hungry. Begin working to distract myself from thoughts of food.

9:45:00: Even more hungry. Look down and realize that I have been making doodles of food instead of working. Surprised that it looks better than my normal work. Consider submitting it to my client.

12:00:00: Time for my first dose of prep. The bottle is so small and cute that I want to glue googly eyes on it and make it my pet. Decide on the name Walter.

12:04:30: Prepacol is mixed with 100ml of water. Drink. Almost die. It tastes like salted paint thinner. Decide that Walter is evil and will have to be put up for adoption. Or put down. Time will tell.

13:00:00: First rumblings from down below. Walter’s evil has begun to possess me. Go back to work.

13:01:12: Run for bathroom. Release huge amount of flatulence. Like a Game of Thrones episode, it was satisfying, but I can tell there’s more just below the surface.

13:03:00: Realize that Game of Thrones is aptly named as the author was probably also prepping for a colonoscopy and wrote it during his 16 month stay atop his porcelain throne.

13:05:00: Decide that it was an extremely gassy yet false alarm. Zip up. Begin to leave…

13:05:05: Turn immediately around and claw furiously at pants. Barely get them off and assume semi-squatting position before the gates of hell are opened through my posterior. Walter is the devil. He wants out and he has chosen my butt for his portal to this world.

13:06:06 to 13:44:00: Unearthly screams emanate from bathroom. Some are from me.

13:45:00: Finally leave bathroom.

14:00:00: Rumblings again. Screw it. I can master this. I am the master of my body.

14:00:10: Dead sprint for the toilet. Barely make it. Dear god, WHAT IS THIS?! It’s like a firehose shooting out of my backside. If there are any fires nearby, I can surely help, though I doubt if anyone wants their house extinguished by what is coming out of my rump.

14:15:00: Still perched atop the toilet. My bunghole burns so much that I consider administering a fire extinguisher enema. We have one in the kitchen, but I doubt I can make it in between spurts.

14:30:00: The evil subsides. Walter must be sleeping. Tentatively pull pants up and tip toe from the bathroom so as to not wake him.

15:00:00: Time to take the four pills that came with the Prepacol. I feel like the sixth Russian roulette player at a table with five living and very relieved (4th pun) people: I know that the chamber is loaded with a live round.

15:30:00: Nothing. Maybe they take a while to work.

16:00:00: Still nothing. Maybe they were Imodium? Perhaps the doctors know in their infinite wisdom that I have nothing left to give and need a reprieve. That would be nice.

16:00:05: My butt has been transformed into an M16. Those pills were bullets and my hiney is the barrel. It’s like a semi-automatic diarrhea rifle and my colon is pulling the trigger every 7 seconds. The delay gives me just enough time to wipe before the next round. Unfortunately, my backside is so sore that it feels like I’m wiping with 80 grit sandpaper.

16:16:45: Delay time has decreased and my butt is now on full automatic. Who would create such a horrible pill? Am I on camera? Am I being Punked? I never liked Ashton Kutcher.

16:45:00: Decide to live in the bathroom. I am clearly never leaving.

EndoFalk:

17:00:00: It’s time to take two of the three packages of EndoFalk (the 3rd is for tomorrow morning, yay). Directions say to mix with 2 liters of water and drink within 30 minutes. Mix prepared, take first gulp. This is somehow worse than the previous two. At first glance, the packages state that it is orange flavored. Upon closer inspection, it actually says “orange aroma”. This is clever marketing as it does smell faintly of citrus. The taste, however, is closer to embalming fluid mixed with goat spit. Since I know that this can only end one way, I head to the bathroom, i.e.; my new home, to await my fate.

17:17:00: My ass has been magically turned into a flamethrower. I’m positive that all of the hair on my rear end has been burnt off, but I’m too scared to check. I can only imagine that the toilet has also been destroyed. Decide to take a peek. Find that all of the hair is indeed gone and the toilet is missing. What is left in its place is a large and smoking hole in the floor. Realize that I am still in a sitting position only because my legs have seized from perpetually squatting.

17:25:00: I’m pretty sure that EndoFalk is a militarized nuclear bio-weapon. What was once a localized strike has evolved into an A bomb. Or AA Bomb (Atomic Ass Bomb). Forget the Bikini Atoll. Forget Hiroshima. This is annihilation at its worst. Like a devious serial killer leaving clues regarding their intentions, however, the severity could have been deciphered had German intelligence been doing their job. The name EndoFalk says it all: “Endo” meaning “end” or “bottom”, and “Falk” meaning… Well, since German often has a silent “L”, sounds like “Fock”. In other words, drink this and your “end” is “focked”.

17:43:00: Google scientist that created EndoFalk so I can find him and make him pay. Like the radioactive bite that transformed Peter Parker into Spider-Man, the effects of that vile powder has turned me into a vigilante superhero. My name will be The Singed Schpincter, my super powers horribly obvious (if not, refer to 17:17 entry). Vengeance will be mine.

18:45:00: Fluids are running dangerously low. In my delirious state, I wonder if Germany has successfully transplanted an anus yet. Make note to ask my doctor; I am going to need one. Or several.

19:14:32: Crawl from bathroom. Collapse in foyer. Realize that death is imminent. Search immediate surroundings for a pen to write my will. Find only Buster’s leash and a stale tic-tac under the closet.

19:15:00: Eat stale tic-tac. Have moment of clarity and realize that tic-tac is a petrified rat dropping. Resolve to clean better if I live. Resolve to first brush my teeth.

19:23:00: Lying prone on the floor, the rumblings begin again. Discern that soon I will have a large quantity of ickiness within reach and realize that I may have to scribble my last will and testament onto the tile with finger poo-paint. This is not how I imagined my final moments.

19:45:15: Revived by Eve telling me to “get my ass up”. Look around; no poo in sight. Like the magical spell of a tall and angry blond shaman, Eve’s incantation has cured me. Trudge – gingerly so as not to chafe my already weathered cheeks – upstairs to bed.

Somewhere between sleeping and dawn, I awoke for another round of toilet war and then slipped back into a death-like slumber. You’ve probably heard of how Buddhists and Hindu Gurus can lower their heart rate and breathing and can so appear dead. After experiencing German colonoscopy prep, I can say unequivocally that their transcendental states aren’t the result of spiritual meditation or yoga. They are a side effect of colonoscopy prep medications. C’mon. Do you think it’s a coincidence that only elderly Hindu and Buddhist men attain these realms of bodily control? Of course not. They were clearly just prepping for their, at their ages, ceaseless colonoscopies.

I awoke for good at 05:00 on the day of my procedure as I needed drink the last package of “Oh my god please make it stop”. More of the usual ensued, but I was granted a blessed cease-fire at around 08:15. This (unlike my Imodium pipe-dream) was clearly calculated ahead of time by the doctors so they wouldn’t be doused during my procedure at 09:00.

At 09:00 I was propped up in a corner of the waiting room by Eve and, alarmed by my pallor, was quickly ushered into the doctor’s office by two stout nurses.

After being instructed to take my clothes off, one nurse told me to put on the hairnet/underwear…while he watched. Being the type who jokes when he’s nervous, I asked if these were Calvin Klein. Before I could even say that they were too small and would therefore need a pair of “Calvin Gross, haha”, he said, without a hint of sarcasm, that they were Karl Lagerfeld. Having watched Project Runway, I should have recognized Karl’s blatant overuse of chiffon. I’m sorry, Heidi. I am not worthy.

About 10 minutes later, I was lying on my left side, had an IV port slid into my hand, and was asked if I needed anything. Being still nervous, I said in German that I was very hungry and would like a BigMac. Clearly just as nervous as I was, they promptly bellowed laughter and then quickly injected me with liquid sleepy time.

Anesthesia can leave one feeling a little out of sorts. That’s what the doctor said to me before the lights went out. That is akin to telling someone that if they are lit on fire, they may feel a slight burning sensation. What he clearly meant to say is, “You will not remember a damn thing for quite some time after awakening. Don’t freak out”.

I awoke a couple of hours later, completely groggy and, of course, not knowing where I was. After looking at my surroundings for a several seconds, I deduced that I was in a hospital and thought that my plan to seek revenge against the developers of my prep medicine had gone horribly wrong. As I was making a break for it on extremely wobbly legs, I encountered a restroom whose lure I could not resist. Toilets exert a strong gravity upon those whom have drank ten-thousand liters the night before being unconscious for hours.

When I emerged, the doctor spotted me and asked, just before I was about to break into a dead run (which really would have been more of an old man shuffle), if my procedure went well.

Procedure? Clearly I had suffered extensive injury during my fit of revenge. I could only assume that my victims suffered a worse fate. They were obviously downstairs in the morgue and this was the first line of questioning by a cop disguised as a doctor.

“Of course”, I replied warily. “Just a bit unsteady”. “Oh, good”, he replied. “The anesthesia from a colonoscopy can leave some patients a bit bewildered when they come to”.

And then, in a flash of reckoning, it all came back. The prep. The procedure. The Lagerfeld underwear that I was no longer wearing – I do not want to know the story behind that. But most of all, my hunger.

Eve was waiting patiently in the hallway as I made my departure from the surgery unit. As we walked out of the hospital, we talked about the experience, and two plans were hatched; one together and one by me alone.

Plan (1) – Together: Get a Big Mac.

Plan (2) – Myself: Resume plans of vengeance.

I know where you live, Mr. EndoFalk. You are now my arch nemesis and, like every super villain, you need a menacing name. You shall be known henceforth as… The Crazed Chemist. Be wary, villainous swine: The Singed Sphincter is coming for you.

The trait of being skilled and diligent workers, inherent in German culture, goes back so far that it was immortalized in the 17th century Brothers Grimm tale of Schneewittchen (Snow White & the Seven Dwarves) where the industrious dwarves got up each morning to toil in the mines. So focused were they on their work that poor Snow White was left alone, unguarded, and so was poisoned by her wicked stepmother. In addition to Sneezy, Grumpy, and the rest, they should have employed an eighth named “Nanny”.

Work (Arbeit) in Deutschland is much the same as it is in other countries. You have a boss, colleagues, and a sometimes long commute. That is, unless you are an American and work from home like I do. These two ingredients create a recipe that is about as rife with injury and laughter as any other famous slapstick comedic duo: Laurel & Hardy. Abbott & Costello. Sado & Masochism might actually be more accurate, however, since not only is the thought of two leather-clad weirdos slapping each other funny, only the thrills outweigh the pain. Or vice versa. I wouldn’t know. The one plus side is that since I do work from home, no one in my family will be poisoned by a door-to-door witch peddling toxic apples; I am Nanny Dwarf.

The story of how I came to be self-employed in Germany is a simple one. Upon arrival, I enrolled in an intensive German language course and, thinking that I would be fluent in a matter of weeks, I naively began sending out resumes. My naivety wasn’t that I wouldn’t get any interviews, but that when I did, that I would be able to freely converse with my interviewers and win them over with my charm and humor. Things did not quite happen that way. I did get calls for interviews, but that is where my happy tale took a turn down a much darker and, shall we say Grimm, path…

It turns out that learning German quickly is impossible. For me, it turns out that learning German at all, is impossible. Upon my first (and last) interview, I sat at a conference table flanked by two serious looking Germans who began firing indecipherable word bullets directly at my head. Shellshocked, I had no time to duck and was hit directly. Apparently their ammunition were brilliantly German-engineered smart bullets (anti-smart bullets, as it turns out) as they had the ability to make me act like an idiot. When their firing ceased, they folded their hands and calmly awaited my response. Being a non-German speaker, I replied the only way I knew how; a long and uncomfortable stare punctuated by ill-placed laughter and panic-induced inappropriate phrases. Here is an actual excerpt of the interview:

Serious German #1: “Herr Geren, blah blah blah blah blah blah”?

Me: “AHAHAHAHAHA”!

Serious German #2: “Herr Geren, nein. Blah blah blah bleebity-bloob”.

Me: “Oh… Ja. Entschuldigung. Können Sie bitte ihre Anlage wiederholen? Mein Deutsch ist Specht”. (Oh… Yes. Excuse me. Can you please repeat your equipment? My German is woodpecker).

In my defense, those unfortunate words that I chose sound very similar to what I meant to say. I still have no idea what they said, but judging from their reactions to what I said, I may as well have stripped off my shirt and made underarm fart sounds to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. What I did get, luckily for me, was an email a few weeks later from someone in Canada who wanted me to work for them, on a subcontract basis, online. That initial contact turned into several, and so here I sit, a hapless victim of fate, working from home and typing away at a laptop…about working from home. Oh, universe. I hope that you get loads of pleasure by weaving your ironic tapestries of human suffering, you sadistic seamstress, you.

I could go on, but I won’t – not yet anyway – as there are worse tales to come. In honor of the newly added miniature minion of maternal machination, there are eight of them, to be exact. Now might be a good time to grab yourself a cup of stale coffee, adjust the lumbar on your office chair to “alliteration”, and fetch your mental pickaxe; you are about to accompany me on a journey through the menacing mines of making money from my meager mansion. “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s Off to Home We Go”!

1). YOU WILL NOT HAVE A MEAL SCHEDULE.

When you have a normal job, you have set meal times. You must eat breakfast before work (or on the way), you have a set lunch time, and dinner is usually eaten once you arrive back home. When you work from home, you tend to eat whenever you make the time. For me, this usually happens one of two ways: 1). Breakfast: Sitting in front of my laptop while spewing crumbs of granola into my keyboard or , 2). Lunch: Standing over the sink while eating a Hot Pocket and spewing chunks of pastry-wrapped cheese lava onto the kitchen window. Dinner is usually not a problem as Eve is home by then and we typically have dinner together…after I clean both the office and the kitchen. Another downside of working from home is that it negates any deniability. Of course it was me. Who else would it be? I think it’s high time that we have a kid so that I can deflect the blame and not have to clean. For some reason, any mess – no matter how trivial – that was created by a middle-aged man is disgusting, while the near nuclear-destruction detonated by a baby is somehow “adorable”.

2). YOUR WARDROBE WILL DEVOLVE.

When I worked in the States, I would shave every day and would dress myself impeccably in pressed slacks and a button-down shirt. Once I started working from home, because I didn’t interact with clients face-to-face, I slowly became less concerned with my appearance. It is now often the case that I will open the door for DHL with a five-day beard and wearing yogurt-stained pajamas. Because I live in Germany, sometimes the couture du jour (yes, I know that’s French) is Lederhosen. Though not particularly comfortable, they are made of leather and therefore resist the constant chafing of my frayed and therefore sandpaper-like “pleather” chair better than cotton or polyester. Trust me, you do not want me answering the door wearing what are essentially open-bottomed pajama-chaps. I don’t even like looking at my butt, so I can only imagine the trauma experienced by others. Okay, I can; After the “incident”, my mother-in-law wouldn’t look below my waist now even if I said that my feet were on fire. These little lessons are how you train people to call first before showing up.

3). YOUR MORNING COMMUTE IS QUICKER, BUT OFTEN MORE DANGEROUS.

I lived in Atlanta for eight years and always had a lengthy commute. I once had a job in which I had to drive into the city from the suburbs, a commute that often took one and half to two hours. Though aggravating as hell, it wasn’t all that dangerous as every car moves at a snail’s pace and even if you did have a fender-bender, at 3 mph it would cause neither damage nor injury. At the very least it would break up the monotony. My morning commute now is all of a whopping 25 foot walk from my bedroom to my office and, though I no longer have a forehead vein threatening to burst from anger, I still loudly bellow curses: My morning commute is strewn with various dogs toys, and their large owner, one of which I always trip over and so end up flinging coffee and expletives across the walls before landing on the floor with a resounding and undramatic “Squeak”!

4). PEOPLE THINK THAT WORKING FROM HOME IS NOT A REAL JOB.

When you work from home, everyone will assume that you can’t really be doing anything that important and so, aren’t busy. I mean, who works from home? Surely only unwashed porn site operators and other fiends. Friends and relatives will drop by unannounced with various, seemingly innocuous, questions like “How are you?” and “Why are you wearing that Viking helmet”? What they really want, however, are answers to their only real questions: “Is he operating an adult website?” and “Can he pay the bills with that? I’ve seen his butt. It’s not that great”. I can tell you that answering the door while wearing “peekaboo” pajamas (or leather shorts) – with dubious stains on them – will not help your cause.

5). YOU HAVE NO FIXED HOURS FOR WORK.

Most people have fixed hours that they work, usually 9:00 to 5:00. You, on the other hand, work from home and, because your house is your office, you have no boundaries nor schedule. Your home office is your office, of course, but so is your kitchen, your living room, and, of course, your bathroom. It is not infrequent that Eve will awaken at two in the morning, find me missing from the bed, only to discover me on the toilet, laptop perched on my thighs, answering emails. Again, this will not assuage the fear that you aren’t master-minding some site with a name like “Tasty Big Butts.com”.

Going back a step, every car’s license plate in Germany has the abbreviation at its beginning of the town that the registered owner lives in. Larger cities have a single letter, like “M” for those living in Munich. Medium sized towns like Mannheim have “MA”. Small towns like Mergentheim have three letters, in our case, “TBB”. This is short for Tauberbischofsheim, a nearby town that is even smaller than Mergentheim. Regarding the lucrativeness of working from home, should someone – say, an anonymous (yet brilliant and modest) American – own a site named Tasty Big Butts.com, the subliminal marketing of having said site’s abbreviation on every car would most likely increase that site’s revenue greatly. Naturally, I wouldn’t know. I’m sure that my newly jewel-encrusted Lederhosen are only a coincidence.

6). VACATIONS DON’T EXIST FOR YOU.

Vacations are nice, aren’t they? Time away from work to relax and forget your daily grind. Germany has many more holidays than we do in the States and the amount of vacation days here pales in comparison to the standard two weeks that we Americans get. The amount of time off, combined with the longer lunches in Germany, make working here, for those employed by an actual company, more like grade school than work, except that there is no recess. Not because the Germans don’t like to play but, because of their obsessive tendencies, the effort to organize any type of play would be too much like work and would therefore defeat the purpose.

Perhaps you even have enough time to fly to the beach a couple of times a year with your lavish amount of time off. If this sounds familiar, I hate you. Since I work for myself, and because almost all of my clients are in the U.S., I get no real vacation time. When even they have vacation, I still have deadlines. What I do get, however, are sporadic bursts of downtime between projects that are impossible to plan for. Because these are precious gifts, I use them wisely by playing Bejeweled on my iPhone.

7). YOU WILL AVOID PEOPLE AT ALL COSTS.

There are two phases to working from home when it comes to other people. In the beginning of your self-employment, the less frequent contact with others may spur you to welcome anyone and everyone that comes to, or near, your door. You might even start inviting Jehovah’s Witnesses in for coffee and conversation. As word of your weirdness gets out, you will resort to ambushing your neighbors as they try to sneak into their driveways. Don’t worry, this is only phase one and is temporary as being cooped up at home all by yourself will eventually turn you into an agoraphobic hermit. You will soon shy away from human contact at every opportunity. Where you once welcomed anyone that darkened your doorstep, you will soon peek inconspicuously through your shutters whenever the doorbell chimes before hiding in a closet. This is phase two.

You probably already have a friend like this. He is the one who never attends your dinner parties or, if he does show up (because he is dragged there by his lovely and understanding wife), stays only long enough to make everyone else feel awkward by muttering to himself like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man while touching everyones’ faces. You, like me, are now this guy. We are the same. Let me touch your face.

8). FEIERABEND.

As previously reported, the Feierbabend in Germany is akin to the U.S. Happy Hour where people leave their miserable jobs to become happy by drinking alcohol. Due to their long commutes, this most often occurs in America at a pub close to their place of employment, leaving the attendees to either hail a cab afterward, or play parked-car-pinball when they drive home.

Commutes are often shorter for Germans and so they can usually walk a few blocks to the local tavern, or they can do what most Germans do: Crack open a bottle or two when they get home. As a “work-from-homer” in Germany, you, however, can drink whenever the clock strikes your fancy. It’s always 5:00 PM somewhere, right? No matter the time of day, you can always say “Cheers”! Tough phone call at 3:00 PM? No problem. It’s quitting time in Moscow. “Zazdarovje”! Lost a client at 11:00 AM? Don’t worry! It’s happy hour in Beijing! “干杯”! An added bonus is that you never have to drink and drive. The downside is that you are now an “Alkoholiker”. If you need that word translated, you probably already are one.

That wraps up this one, my pals. All right, former pals. For those of you whom I’ve neglected, I apologize. We can make up, provided you can get over my wardrobe and my fear of you. For the rest of my lapsed friends, we too can make amends: Just bring your account up to date by making your overdue bills payable to “TBB.com”, you deadbeats.