Basketball in Berlin!

By Micah 

(Annotated by Mommy)

Last night (it was Saturday.  As we all know, Mommy is delinquent in blogging), we went to a basketball game last night at the O2 World arena.  ALBA Berlin was playing Trier.  ALBA is the professional team in Berlin.  We got signs at our seats.  One side said “YEAH” and the other side said “BUUUH”!    

Mark and I decided we would answer all questions-from-children with these signs.  That didn't go over so well.

The signs folded up like fans to make noisemakers (insanely loud ones, if you ask me).  The ALBA mascot is an albatross (but Dafna insisted it was a duck).

If it looks like a duck...

The team colors are gold and blue.  Their uniforms looked like the Golden State Warriors.  Trier’s uniforms were green and white.  I wore my Kevin Garnett Celtics jersey, which is also green and white.  But I was still rooting for ALBA.

ALBA Berlin won the game, 87-72.  The leading scorer was Levon Kendall.  ALBA also had a player from Israel named Bar Timor.  Trevon Hughes, who used to play for Wisconsin, played guard for Trier.  He had a good game, even though ALBA won.

Former Badger

(Halftime was hilarious.  An over-emotional accordion player-- the winner of Lithuania's Got Talent! Check him out: I mean, Jan Hagedorn can you do this?  Oh, and of course, dancers dancing to bad hits of the '80's.)

We ate French fries and pretzels at the game.  We got to stay up pretty late.  Today (Sunday) I am tired.   I stayed in my bed almost all morning until lunchtime. (Kind of, first he got up, did computer, ate breakfast and played for awhile.  Then he took a nap.  Then he ate lunch).

I really liked the game.  Daddy and I are going to go back to another game soon.

We all had fun.  The blur is the sign/noisemaker.  Making noise.

Blog once a month and call me in the morning

So, we seem to be hitting a once-a-month blogging pace here.  Since we've last spoken we've:

• Visited Dublin (and added a couple of Saints to our list; some sinners too)

Most definitely NOT a saint this trip...

Outside the jail at Dublin Castle.  The walls are 15 feet thick.  But someone managed to escape through the toilet.  Endless fun if you're a 9 year old boy.

Labyrinths are calming, right?

Dublin Castle

The Pilgrimage

D checking the barley.  Then asked if we could grow hops when we get home.

Writing the recipe.  Seriously. 

Barley roast, hops add, yeast add, ferment, water mix, boil

It really did taste different

The horse-drawn carriage ride back was for their patience at the factory.  And the fact that we made them walk 2 miles to get there...

She liked it.

• Welcomed Aunt 'Chelle.  Which means another trip to Ritter Sport!  I made the best one yet-- dark chocolate, gingerbread pieces and lemon.

We really enjoyed having my sister here with us for the week.  We showed her all of the important sites-- cafes, KaDeWe, M and D's school...  Nightlife?  What nightlife?  Wurst?  What wurst?  But seriously, we really appreciated Michelle giving up her Thanksgiving and trekking all the way here to visit, introducing our children to MadLibs, flat ironing D's hair, sous chef-ing and cleaning in the kitchen.  All that and she's fun to be with, too!

• Gave Thanks in a slightly unorthodox way (though Al Johnson would be proud).

There's no (kosher) turkey in Berlin and it is hard to find cranberries, not to mention a pareve pie crust or pecans.  So we bought the biggest chicken we could find, lingonberries, made mushroom stuffing and a phyllo dough berry turnover and called it a night.  Both Dafna's and Micah's classes had Thankgiving feasts earlier in the week.  I volunteered at Dafna's class feast and had a lovely time.  The class walked to a classmate's house where they found warmth, the smell of turkey, a beautifully set table full with traditional Thanksgiving food and parents waiting to serve them (well, they may have that all the time).  It was fun and exciting to introduce turkey to a bunch of German kids (though it was an American one who asked for a piece with "peel, please").

Walking in to Mikey's house for the Thanksgiving class feast

Singing about Thanksgiving in German accents

• Had Hanukkah looking for light in these dark, dark, dark Berlin afternoons

Seriously, you think Boston is dark?  The sun rises after 8am and sets before 4pm.  And that's only when the clouds aren't covering it.  Don't worry, Dr. Miriam, We've got plenty of vitamin D on hand.  We enjoyed celebrating the first few nights of Hanukkah with Aunt Chelle and went to a couple of parties later in the week.  I was volunteered to present Hanukkah to Micah's class on the 8th day.  Yes, that sound you heard was my mother spinning in her grave.  It was fine; I downplayed the holiday, the gifts and the comparisons to Christmas and taught the kids to gamble.  Everyone wins!

• Gotten our Christmas on:

This is a very Christmas-centered society.  Like shockingly so, coming from the US.  So now, with children in public school, D brought home an Advent calendar (exactly the same project I did as an omer counter with my preschool class...), a St. Nikolaus boot (filled with a Santa chocolate and Hanukkah stickers, lovely idea, but something got lost there) and has made an Advent wreath (our family's first!) and various other Christmas projects already.  All this has led to D telling us that she knows "...Everything about Jesus.  I'm the Jesus expert in our family" which may be true.

We're looking at this as an opportunity to teach our children about different cultures, religions and expressions of religion (with a fair amount of private stress about how much Christianity they are experiencing as the norm).  I'm all for Christmas, and some of you know that I half-joked about getting one of those "Keep the Christ in Christmas" signs for our lawn in Madison (what?  I believe that!), but if you think that there is too much Christmas in public school in the USA, this is in a whole different realm.  But, on the flip side, we're contemplating inviting the Krampus to visit.  Dafna may benefit.

 We've also visited quite a few Christmas markets here in Berlin.  Supposedly the best one is here at our neighborhood castle, so we took Michelle and the kids there on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  It was nice-- warm gluhwein, and treats for everyone, snow fairies, caroling and fake snow-- a regular commercial Winter Wonderland.  With alcohol.

D and the Snow Fairies

Pig roast at the Christmas Market!

On Wednesday, Micah played in the Berlin Grundschulliga basketball tournament.  I got the early shift and Markwent later.  As far as I could tell, the tournament meant that Micah skipped the day of school, had full access to the buffet set up for the players, finished a bottle of Powerade before he got any playing time, and stayed far, far away from the ball.  When I left his coach seemed to be setting him up to spend the next 5 hours as scorekeeper/manager.  She's a wise woman.

Number 5-- actually watching the game

Put me in Coach!

He's in!

And, there you go. 

Our First Saint!

Last night we celebrated St. Martin's Day with a lantern parade in Dafna's class.  It was a lovely evening-- perfect Fall weather, crisp with a clear sky, and 100 Kindergartners walking through dry leaves with candles in homemade lanterns. 

What could go wrong?  

The singing circle

D and Clara and their (unlit) lanterns

Lit

She was very proud (when not heaving)

The long line of lanterns snaking behind us

Rumor has it that there was only one "incident" and that it wasn't even so big.  We saw one of the teachers on the bus home, so they didn't even go out drinking afterward.

We joined together for a bonfire, singing and an appearance of St. Martin on a hobby horse (the skit only alluded to Jesus) and hot cider before heading home for dinner. 

Martin seems like a pretty good saint for us to begin with-- he's all about modesty, helping others and eating geese.  These days between now and Christmas seem to parallel the Jewish months of Nisan/Iyar (known in my head as the "Season of Yoms") when there is a minor, modern Jewish holiday/commemoration nearly every week (Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron...).  Plans are already starting at school for the arrival of Advent and St. Nikolaus, who apparently ensures that we all polish our shoes.


In other news, I'm home for the 4th straight day with sick children.  Turns out that there's some kind of stomach bug going around Dafna's class that she turned up with on Friday evening.  We though she was better yesterday afternoon and risked taking her to the Lantern Parade last night (outside, open air, no touching, etc).  Turns out we were wrong.  Oh, and she has lice, too.  And, did I tell you?  She perforated her eardrum last week and we made our first German trip to the doctor-- 3 buses and a subway.  Fun times!  Micah complained of a tummy ache last night and this morning.  Several things played into the calculus to keep him home:

1. I'm home with Dafna anyway
2. He still complained of a stomachache when reminded that today is basketball club after school
3. He had a field trip to an "Altersheim" (old age home), which is really a bad place to introduce the stomach flu
4. Vomiting at school would hurt his already shaky social status

So, we're home in our jammies, picking nits and watching Pippi Longstocking and basketball game repeats.  On the bright side, I didn't have to make lunch...

An equation for you:
lice+stomach flu= run out of detergent+no dryer= my house looks like the shuk

Hier Bin Ich

Woo-hee!  It's been a long time since I've been here.  Some things that have happened in the month (er... 5 weeks?) since I last blogged:

K-Pen and Bubbie Sue came.  For a month!  It was awesome.

K-Pen and Micah on the Fernsehturm, Berlin's highest point

We celebrated 23 years of German Unity with a Ferris wheel ride and overpriced (and really quite bad) pizza.  Ad meah v'esrim Bundesrepublik Deutschland!

Right about the time I said "This may have been a bad idea"

German unity from up high

I still refuse to move/turn/take my hands off Dafna

Everyone took a vacation.  K-Pen and Bubbie Sue had an Amsterdam adventure and the Copelovitches went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to visit the Desais (after Mark went to London to deliver a paper).  They had a snow day from school while we were there.  Yes, in the Alps.

Emily, knowing Micah very well, took him to stand on the Austrian border.  Another notch in his passport!

20 feet into Austria

We took a train, a bus, another train and a cable car to summit the Zugspitz (the Top of Germany) where we sledded on a glacier, made blu-ish snow angels and suffered some light altitude sickness.

Germany's highest point

It was pretty amazing up there

From the cable car going down

Sledding on the glacier

We celebrated our 15th anniversary in Prague while K-Pen and Bubbie Sue held down the Berlin fort with Micah and Dafna.  I think a good time was had by all.  Certainly by me and Mark...  Prague is a great city and has about 2.5 days worth of sightseeing (maybe 3 if you're really interested in which Bohemian monarchs became Saints and all that kind of stuff).  We were there for 4 days which made for a very relaxing vacation-- sightseeing, wandering, massages, dinner with friends who happened to be visiting at the same time, naps, etc.  It was a pace we could definitely get used to.

Trdelnik-- a new favorite snack

Lots of Art Deco in Prague

Beers by the Vltava

Prague Astronomical Clock.  We haven't quite figured it out.  As our friend Steve said "It always looks like it is 4am".

We arrived home to find K-Pen and Bubbie Sue a) still alive b) still loving our children c) constructing a 3-D scale-model of the Taj Mahal in our dining room and d) experts on the pizza scene in Berlin.  Also, Audrey, our dear friend came to visit by way of New York and Zurich.  It was wonderful to see Audrey (many of you know we've gotten used to seeing her several times a year because of her position at Shopbop, a Madison-based company) and not only because she afforded us the opportunity to communicate with our (Turkish-, Bulgarian- and apparently Russian-speaking) cleaning lady (notice no German, English or Hebrew in that list...).  Our charades-based communication was getting comical when Audrey asked if she spoke Russian.  Aha!  Former Communist-bloc education FTW!  After several more days of touring, shopping and good eating, Audrey, K-Pen and Bubbie Sue went home to the States, leaving us alone in Germany until Aunt 'Chelle comes for "Thanksgiving".

Audrey gearing up to communicate with our cleaning lady

Things at school seem to have evened out for Micah (and his teacher, more importantly).  We had a parent-teacher (counselor, principal...) conference last week and we were really prepared for the worst.  His teacher said that he's doing very well, that he's completing work, a bit more organized, etc.  His German teacher said that he's quite good at German, and though he refuses to speak, his written work is perfect.  The science and music teachers (both young American women) really seem to get Micah and how he works and gave us several examples of small, quiet accommodations they make in class for him that make him more successful.  And they did that in front of his classroom teacher, so maybe she'll get some good ideas...

Let's see.  Other things:

Oh, yeah, the RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES!!! 

#FearTheBeard, Konrad.

We celebrated with a nap.  Mark stayed up to watch the whole game.  I woke up at 3:30 am to watch the last inning and a half and the subsequent celebrations.  We all celebrated the next night with a baseball-themed dinner.

Mark's food photography isn't up to Smitten Kitchen's standards, but you'll notice hot dogs, Boston baked beans, beer and a baseball diamond salad composed of a cabbage field, cucumber base lines, mushroom bases and a red pepper "B" for Boston.  Micah was quite excited (about the win, not the salad) and it almost made him forget that there's no trick-or-treating in Germany.  At least that's what we told them.

So, that's our update.  Stay tuned as we start learning about lots of Saints in the next month.  Apparently we will celebrate St. Martin and St. Nikolas at the very least.  We'll be headed to Dublin, too, so maybe we'll throw St. Patrick in there for good measure.

Eating German food for the Last Supper