Losing Things

I have now lost my glasses in 8 inches of snow at the dog park. I took them off in the twilight of New Year's Day so I could watch the intriguing ascension of a small paper hot-air balloon, fueled by some sort of live flame - I wasn't close enough to the young women who were inflating it to be able to see if it was a candle or some other special device, but whatever it was it sat high up enough into the balloon to make it glow a deep orange like an enormous pod from a Japanese lantern plant. It glowed, and drifted farther and higher for at least five minutes; I watched until it either went out or got too far away to see. I couldn't believe how far it went; I had assumed it would last 30 seconds before being extinguished and spluttering to a wobbly descent. Nor could I believe that its chief engineers didn't watch the entire performance, but they wandered away after a while, joyfully content with their moment of fun. The whole thing was magical.

(Speaking of balloons, ten years ago in Paris a boyfriend and I had been most amused by the incongruous sight of a green balloon bobbing along the street in a construction zone. Yesterday, New Year's morning, another green balloon found its way into my walled garden, where it remains parked in a twiggy shrub.)

After the hot-air balloon disappeared I was distracted by yet a third sign of celebratory New Year's whimsy (somewhat unexpected in still-dour east Berlin) - a large chocolate Santa, still fully clothed and unmolested in his foil wrapping, stuck into a mound of snow on one of the park benches. There was something so endearing and so generous in this gesture - hard to imagine myself willingly giving up anything sweet for some stranger or leaving such a token for possible removal to a garbage can by a paranoid parent. It was awfully cute. (It was still there today, only sitting on a different bench, devoid of its snow base.)

And then I lost my glasses, probably as a wildly enthusiastic young black lab leapt at the pocket in which both glasses and dog treats resided. I didn't discover the loss until I got home, by which time it was quite dark and a return trek was pointless and out of the question. St. Anthony was supposed to find and hold them for me until I got back there today, but he apparently has other plans. I think it's just possible that the great patron of lost things has in mind a new vision for me this year and that my old way of seeing, as manifested in my old bifocals, will remain lost. (Looking for them without being able to see much because, of course, I have lost my glasses, reminded me of the Ray Bradbury story of the misanthrope who sits out a nuclear war in the bowels of the city library, is ecstatic to find the rest of the human race wiped out so he can read in peace, and then obliterates his one pair of glasses in a fatal misstep.)  It is also possible that they will turn up when all this snow melts, along with the earring I lost a couple months ago.

A few weeks ago I lost a glove at the farmers' market, on a VERY cold day. I retraced my steps around the circuit a couple of times with no luck - and a very cold hand - but on the third round, with Hannah in tow, I found the errant handshuh carefully placed at eye level on a fir tree at a Christmas tree stall. Thank you, St. Anthony.

At the St. Lucia concert at the Berliner Dom I lost both gloves, again on a VERY cold evening. I discovered my loss on the way out, swam back upstream to my pew without finding them, dropping my hat in the process. The gloves turned up in the vestibule, neatly placed on top of a display case, probably dropped when I arrived for the concert and was hunting for my ticket. St. Anthony has my undying devotion.

I have also dropped a hat at the dog park, retrieved by Mocha, a young chocolate lab, and a glove, joyfully borrowed for a quick romp by Fattska, the puggle puppy. I left a hat behind at a museum cloak room and had to go back for it. I lost my wallet at the grocery store. I locked my keys inside my apartment. I lost Maggie's leash one day, also in the snow at the dog park. I have lost track of my German online-banking pin three times. I lost a Visa card before I even got here, although I think it's safely locked up in my shed at home. I am finding it harder and harder to keep track of what little German I've learned. I have lost any motivation to do ANYTHING. Some days I feel I am losing my entire mind except the part that mandates food intake. St. Anthony does not seem to be helping much in that department.

On the flip side, I have now found a total of €21.79 and a quite useless 2-Deutschemark coin, although I suppose it is entirely possible that at least one of the €5 notes I have found was one I had dropped myself. I choose to believe otherwise. I must have SOME dignity left, especially after stooping to pick up so many 1¢ coppers off the sidewalks.

Pinball

After as dreary and dismal a day as yesterday (Christmas) was, today was sunny again and finally the ice is all melted from the sidewalks and streets. I miss the snow, but not its gradual trajectory into frozen death-traps and the inevitable piles of grit. It's particularly treacherous on all the slick granite cobblestones a lot of the paving here comprises. I will hope for more snow this winter; Maggie adores it and I find it so much cheerier than sludge. Besides, it fits my fantasy of winter in Germany.

Watching Maggie in the dog park this evening was like watching a rerun of my own afternoon at the Deutsches Historisches Museum. I finally appreciate what she is up to when she smells bush after bush, digs a little in a mud puddle, wanders over to the fence for a good sniff, moves some sticks around, snuffles under a pile of leaves, and moves on to yet another bush. The bushes all look the same to me, but Maggie knows better.

Today was my first visit to this historical museum. I need some new territory to prowl around and mark as my own, and there is a LOT of acreage at this one. I stayed within the confines of the medieval period, which was all my eyeballs could take in in a two-hour period, and is my favorite, anyway. I snooped happily among the pieces of pottery and woodcut books, avoided the armor for the most part although I was drawn to the paint-encrusted leather battle shields, and bounced like a pinball marble from Cranach portrait to Dürer portrait, back to Cranach, on to a huge carved wedding chest and an Imperial edict of some sort with a fringe of huge wax seals along the bottom. Another Cranach. A gold folding pocket sundial. A Bosch. A Breughel or two. (Some more Baby Jesuses but I didn't have my camera with me.) The place is a wonderland, and beautifully laid out. I will probably have to get a yearlong membership there as well. It would pay for itself in a few short months. Oh, but wait. I don't have a year left here any more. Just 7 months as I will be home by the end of July for my younger daughter's wedding in mid-August. Unless I come back after that for a second year...

Christmas Day

Somehow I have lived here for four months without picking up a hint that Christmas Eve is the big family day here. Everything closes down at 2:00, even the Christmas markets (open again Christmas afternoon) and the big retailers (not open again Christmas afternoon). (Imagine Nordstrom or K-Mart missing an extra 10 hours of sales!) Since I had been hoping to make plans to go out for at least one holiday dinner with a friend, I hadn't thought about meals much. But my friend ditched me for the flu and I realized that if I didn't want to eat tuna on Skorpa crackers for Christmas dinner I'd better go to the store. I was lucky to get there before they closed, although the in-house bakery had already shut down. Just as well.

Then the bigger "what now" issues arose - what WOULD I do with the rest of Christmas Eve? What WOULD I do on Christmas Day? Being alone in Berlin was never part of my plan, no, no, no. I was either going to be alone in Crete or Mallorca, where it wouldn't even feel like Christmas, or be amused with a friend here. This had the makings of a major Christmas Fail and I was getting more than a little grumpy at this new scenario. I needed to turn this fiasco into a project.

I went into town on a quick errand before things shut down and while I was there decided I needed a nice candle for the apartment, to cheer me up and add a little holiday touch. Browsing the Christmas market for the right one, I realized this was exactly the project I needed for Christmas Eve, to be Santa for myself since I didn't have the usual Santa-ing for my daughters to do and nobody else was going to be Santa for me. I'd forgotten to rent a video when I went food shopping so I ducked into my favorite large department store to see what they had for sale that Santa could bring home. Aha! First season of 30 Rock! Perfect! Oh, but wait, there's the 12th season of South Park. Better have both. This could be a long week until Hannah gets home again. And getting to the videos, the toys and games section caught my eye and I had another revelation - what I really needed was a good jigsaw puzzle. Yes! Now Santa is in full swing! Christmas Eve with pork tenderloin and Tina Fey, Christmas Day putting together a map of Berlin with Eric Cartman. And let's not forget the sugared nuts from the Christmas market; they're only available for another few days. And a marzipan Santa. Just a little something for my stocking. Except that I don't have a stocking here and had to use my hat.

Got home fully laden, as a good Santa should, and took Maggie for her Christmas Eve walk, which somewhat deflated my spirits as none of my regular dog-park friends were there, and the group of my nodding acquaintances were all drinking hot toddies together out of a thermos, telling their German jokes, laughing their German laughs, breathing their alcohol-spiked breath into the air. I felt - and was - completely left out. Not that I wanted a drink, I wouldn't have accepted even if one had been offered; but a friendly greeting would have been nice. So home we came, greetingless, and a little sad. Well, VERY sad, to tell the truth. But I did have a nice dinner and then a fun Skype chat with Hannah, then some 30 Rock before bed. And I had a plan for Chrismas Day.

I discovered that in fact the museums here ARE open on Christmas and so I decided that for my Christmas project I would go to the Bode Museum, which has a luscious collection of medieval and Gothic art, and photograph as many Baby Jesus statues as I could find. Seemed in keeping with the theme of the day, somehow. So, after spending the morning doing laundry, mopping my floor and cleaning up the dog yard (snow's all gone now...), I went off with my camera and came home three hours later with 122 pictures. Not all of them are the Baby Jesus, mind you; I got a nice one of St. Vitus in his cauldron and one of a head of St. John the Baptist on a plate, a few baby-free Virgins, and some of the mourning Mary 33 years later. I got sidetracked by the notion of Mythic Motherhood and got very annoyed that the wise men (hah!) hadn't thought to bring bath salts, a good moisturizer, and a nice new bathrobe for the new mother. Wise women would have known.

And now I have done it. I have survived Christmas alone, with my faithful dog Maggie, bless her large canine heart. And thanks to the ever-to-be-praised developer of Skype I was able to have video chats with my daughters and both brothers this evening - in Seattle, Indianapolis, and Mexico. I said on my FaceBook page today that having Christmas alone is something either nobody should have to do or everybody should have to, at least once. Like chemotherapy, I hope never to have to do it again, but if I do at least I'll be experienced at it. And now it's time for some more 30 Rock.

A Christmas Tea

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to an 'Adventstee' by a new acquaintance, my so-called Tandem partner who helps me with my German while I help her with her English only we never end up speaking English and it's beginning to dawn on me how little I understand of her help with my German. As Hannah says, Birgit doesn't dumb it down for me. But she's fun and I have enjoyed the couple of outings we have had together. She has three grown daughters and was excited to have me to tea at her home. For my part, I am always intrigued, especially in Europe, to see the insides of others' apartments and what they serve for food.

The tea was set for a Sunday afternoon at 3:30, the day Hannah flew back to Seattle for her 3-week Christmas trip, and a good day for me to have an entertainment planned. It required a tram ride and probably about 20 minutes by subway, so I allowed an hour travel time. First misstep was leaving my apartment 10 minutes late, probably looking for my lipstick. This caused me to just miss the tram and have to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. Got to the subway station, a conglomeration of two separate lines, the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, which don't necessarily go in the same directions, and just missed the U-Bahn train I wanted. I had to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. Once on the train, I realized it had been an S-Bahn train I needed. Fortunately there was another stop coming up where the two lines again converged; however, I managed to miss that S-Bahn train by about 5 seconds while trying to determine if this was the one headed in my direction. Waited another 10 minutes for the next one and THEN had my 20-minute subway ride. I decided that tears really wouldn't help.

By now, of course, I was trying to reach my friend by phone to tell her I was running late but I couldn't connect. At 4:00 I emerged from the subway into the dark, unable to see any street signs. A passer-by kindly directed me to the street I wanted, which was at the intersection with another street of exactly the same name which somewhat confounded me as to which way to turn. At this point my phone rang and it was Birgit wondering what had happened to me. She hadn't had my phone number at home (she usually meets me after work) and had to call her daughter in Frankfurt to get it. My cell couldn't connect with her landline because you have to have an additional prefix for that here, which she had forgotten to give me, and her cell phone was off. The phone system here can be more than a little annoying. And so I arrived.

I was assuming that a daughter or two (English speakers) would be joining us, but nope. It was just Birgit, her introverted husband, and me. I don't think he was too happy that I was a half hour late and I had a hard time explaining what had happened. We spent quite a bit of time examining all the pottery their daughters had made in grade school before Birgit brought out the coffee, which I can't drink at that time of day. I had orange juice instead. Their English isn't much better than my German so conversation was a little jerky, at best, and neither of them seemed inclined to eat which was, oh, just a little awkward, given the poppyseed cake and platter of cookies they kept passing my way. I stayed for what seemed like a polite length of time and then bolted. One more merit badge earned.

I was really glad that I had had the foresight to remember a hostess gift, especially under the circumstances; not that Birgit needed mollifying, but it would have added a layer of boorishness to the all-too-obvious other incompetencies in language and use of train schedules.

Concert Fail and a Hockey Game

We had a VERY cold week last week, between 7 and 10 degrees most days, with an occasional high of 12. It snowed first so the white has stayed put pretty well until today, when suddenly it has been almost 40 and I don't really need the extra-warm hat and slightly warmer dog-park coat I just bought. There is still a lot of winter to get through, though, so I'm sure I'll get my money's worth by March.

This clearly did not turn out to be the daily disciplined writing I had hoped for, but the days have begun to blend together and move so rapidly it has gotten hard to keep track of what I've done. I have been to a lot of museums: the Pergamon, the Neues Museum, the Altes Museum, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode, the Guggenheim, the Berlinishe Galerie, the Dali Museum, the Illustrators Forum, the Berggruen, the Bröhan, the Hamburg Banhof, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, some of them multiple times by now. I've also spent a lot of hours at the Volkspark walking Maggie and hanging out at the Hundplatz, getting impromptu German lessons and making acquaintances of dogs and people alike. And then there have been the Christmas markets and concerts I've been attending lately.

The third concert, on Sunday afternoon, was not what I expected. For one thing it wasn't in the Dom itself, but in one of the separate chapels which could have doubled as a meat locker it was so cold. I got a front row seat, but that didn't matter as the choir, the Capella Cantorum Berlin, performed in a loft where nobody could see them. The 300-year-old Italian organ was also in the loft, so nobody could see it either. What I was left looking at were a couple of huge and quite ghastly religious paintings, one of the Pentecost I think, as the altar piece, and one other mumbly composition with lots of rolling eyeballs, gesticulating digits and stiffly floating drapery off to one side. There was a vast quantity of liver-colored marble as well, in the huge columns supporting the ceiling and in the altar itself. Maybe not my favorite stone.

The 17th-century Northern German music would have been lovely if the basic a cappella men's choir had been left alone to do its thing, but someone's misplaced zeal mandated the addition of a boys' choir to the mix. We know that everyone loves the Vienna Choirboys, but these were not they; being shrill and unblended they were a distraction rather than an enhancement. A rather tedious hour, it was, and with nothing else for my visual sense to latch onto besides the paintings, it led me to wish very much for a Pentecostal-like revelation of German as a language I can suddenly speak and understand.

Musical entertainments were punctuated by a hockey game on Friday night, to which I was invited by one of my gracious dog park friends, who is a sports psychologist with the Berlin team. I sat with his parents who were visiting from Frankfurt, his fiancee and a friend of hers, as he, of course, had to sit with the team. There were the usual stadium-pounding loudspeakers spewing rock music before the teams appeared and stupid contests for fans at the intervals, but much less hawking of merchandise and food and very little rambunctious behavior in the stands. One whole end section of the arena is designed just for standing - no seats at all, just rails to lean on. This was filled with the die-hard and well organized fans of the former East German team, who still - and continually - shout out the old cheers to the beat of a couple of drums hammered mercilessly by unrelenting pack leaders. Most of them were dressed in team jerseys, and despite the constant goading by the drums they were very orderly in their enthusiasm. The whole game was surprisingly tame - much more like the college hockey games I've seen, but then the Berlin team - the Eisbären or Polar Bears - is on the first rung of a five-rung league structure and still seem to play by strategy and skill rather than brute force. Not that my take on hockey means a hoot, but hey.

I completed my Christmas music entertainment schedule this evening, back at the Dom for a superb concert by the Rundfunkchor Berlin ( the Berlin Broadcasting Company) - in a very unusual program of newer music, at least mostly 20th-century; a spectacular piece by a young Latvian composer called "Sun Dogs", parts of a Rachmaninoff Vespers liturgy that was as rich and haunting as anything I've heard, a couple of organ solos, ending with the required German carols "Vom Himmel Hoch","Stille Nacht" and "Er ist ein Ros entsprungen", all of which I have heard at the previous concerts in one form or another. And I'm sorry, but nothing can induce me to like organ music.

A Concerted Effort (to Enjoy Christmas Alone)

I am looking out on my white snowy garden, watching a tiny mouse run along the edge of the wall, eating German Christmas cookies, listening to the CD I bought at Tuesdays Dom concert by the "Stockholms Musikgymnasiums Kammarkör." This choir was the first-place winner of the International Chamber-Choir Competition in 2009. They were in Berlin to sing at the Federal Foreign Office, an event organized as a musical thanks to Germany for its support of the Swedish EU presidency. They sang there on Monday and at the Dom on Tuesday, presenting these two concerts for the big Swedish feast day of St. Lucia.

(As the name implies, this is a Chamber Choir from the music high school in Stockholm. It was begun in 1989 as an addition to the program for senior-level singers, a fact I note with mild interest, given the celebrations here this year commemorating reunification and the fall of the Wall, also in 1989.)

It was an entrancing evening, my first visit to the Berliner Dom, as I have been too cheap to pay the €5 admission just to look at yet another Baroque cathedral, especially one hailing from the 20th century and not one that Baroque composers such as Bach or Handel would ever have enchanted with their presence. And this one really is pretty much what its name implies - a huge dome sitting on its piers, enclosing an enormous unbroken interior space - no long, vaulted aisles or transept chapels - and without those peripheral spaces it is accoustically like sitting inside a huge bell. The music really rings.

St. Lucia became a biggie in Swedish lore although she was a Sicilian virgin martyr. (I researched the tradition once for a book I wrote for the Seattle Children's Museum; my younger daughter also did a report on this and I made her a Lucia outfit for her school presentation, although with fake candles. I consider myself fairly Lucia-friendly.) Lucia is celebrated as a 'bringer of light' on the darkest day of the year in one of the darkest parts of the world, and as a help during a terrible famine. Once when people were starving in Sweden, a boat filled with food was seen upon Lake Vannern, a woman at the helm with a glow about her head. She was recognized as Lucia because one of the other legends already circulating about her was that she took food to Christians hiding in the catacombs and in order to see her way through the tunnels she wore candles on her head. This early headlamp became her trademark and explains why the Swedish Lucia girl - or "bride"  - wears a crown of candles as she takes her tray of coffee and buns around the neighborhood. There are enough versions of how Lucia lost her eyeballs - later miraculously restored, of course! - to fill a whole blog entry alone.

The choir - about 40 singers aged 16-19 - was dressed in full Lucia Day regalia: the girls wore long white gowns with red satin sashes, red and green twined garlands on their heads and the boys wore starboy outfits which only need ruffled collars and large black pompoms to double as costumes for a producion of Pagliacci. They are basically white pajamas and tall white pointed hats with varying degrees of decoration - star and moon cutouts and a few strands of tinsel for the most part. (It looked suspiciously as though the young men had made and decorated their own hats.) It was a little hard to take them seriously at first, looking like so many overgrown schoolboy dunces of another century, but their musicality more than made up for the initial distraction of this peculiar traditional garb.

The choir processed down the main aisle of the darkened Dom, holding candles - yes! real lighted candles! - which provided most of the light for the whole evening, and once they were in position in front of the altar they sang the Lucia bride down the aisle on her own. This girl didn't get to sing very much as her job was to carry the blazing 7-candle gold crown on her head to the front of the choir and stand there - also holding a candle in her hands - while being serenaded by her choirmates for the first half of the concert. She was able to join the singing once the conductor finally lifted the crown off and laid it on a stand, where it continued to flame for the second half, making a weird candelabrum with definite medieval reliquary overtones. (But then, I had just been to see a fine collection of such medieval objects at the Kunstgewerbemuseum and was particularly alert to this echo.) The crown goes beyond a mere 4-candle Advent wreath - there are 6 long, thick candles around the head and one right on top. It is this last one, with its necessary curved cross-pieces meeting at the top of the head, that gave it the feel of something still inhabited while sitting on its own. I admit to having gotten a little worked up over the fate of that poor 15-year-old Sicilian girl while gazing at this illuminated headpiece, musing on her story and the terrible sufferings imposed by intolerance while listening to haunting music in the semi-dark. Fortunately for my public face I did not cry until I got home.

So, they sang carols in Swedish and German - all the music memorized - and moved around within the space a bit for variety. At one point they spread out through the cathedral and performed a song that morphed and shifted chords among their various positions, which must have been very difficult both to perform and to direct in such a darkened cavernous space. It was eerie and mystical, all those trained voices clear as bells in a cold winter night, right on cue although they could barely see their director. They reassembled, sang "Silent Night" while the Lucia bride was once again crowned with the still-burning candles. They serenaded her back down the aisle to "Santa Lucia" and then followed her out with subsequent verses.  They could not be persuaded to do an encore. We tried.

I followed this with a second concert on Wednesday evening, also at the Dom. This was by the 10-piece brass choir "German Brass" and although the first half of the program focused on Bach and Handel it had much more the feel of a pops concert, which was a little jarring during the swingier numbers of the second half as they perform right at the marble altar with its crucifix front and center. I was also reminded why all brass, all evening, has not been something I seek out with regularity. Don't get me wrong, they did wonderful things with their instruments - sounded very like an organ on Bach's great Toccata and Fugue, like saxophones and almost like strings a time or two, superb musicians all. But as with any choir of like instruments, the texture and timbre of the sound has a certain constant, no matter the efforts to vary the voices, tempo and mood. It was a LOT of brass.

I bought a cheap ticket from a man selling his in the lobby, figuring that with a brass concert the location wouldn't be as important to me as it had been for the choir concert, for which I bought a good seat. Since the concert did not sell out, though, we lucky holders of the humble seats were moved into better ones, a real bargain, although I seem to be a magnet for people who insist on whispering during performances.

Of the pops numbers they performed, the most memorable was their first encore (they did two), a number I almost know but can't quite place, a rhythmic Latin tune with great trombone slides. The choir had comprised 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 French horns, and a tuba; one of the horns also doubled as moderator, reciting a good bit of German doggerel to introduce each number in a most incomprehensible (to me) fashion. For the encore, however, all but two of them played trombone. After exiting to applause, a  really large bass trombone (double bass? I know next to nothing about brass instruments) reappeared alone to begin the number. He was joined after a bit by a slightly smaller instrument who repeated the riff until a third and smaller one came out who repeated it again...and they kept coming and shrinking and playing until there were 8 trombones ranging in size from the large bass to one so tiny it looked like it could hang on a Christmas tree. They were like musical Matryushka dolls. (The other two musicians played maracas and guiro.) They were beautiful instruments, too, no doubt custom crafted for perfect sound. It was great fun, in spite of the crucifix.

I am off to my third Dom concert tomorrow, a late afternoon program of 17th century choral music. And then I hope to attend some at other venues, but it's hard to beat the Dom's offerings. However, St. Hedwig awaits, as does St. Marie and St. Nikolai so I will try and be generous with myself and make the rounds. So much music...

Weihnachtsman is Coming to Town

Now that Christmas is looming, Berlin is filled with outdoor Christmas markets - Wiehnachtsmarkts - a six-week city-wide (region-wide) crafts fair and food fest, with ice rinks set up in the concrete plazas, even a sledding hill with a snow-making machine at one of them. There are pony rides, donkeys and reindeer to pet, sled-dogs who pull people in a wheeled contraption, children's trains, carousels, swings and huge ferris wheels, the kind with cabins instead of open bench seats. Think Vienna. Think "The Third Man". There are musicians, carolers, storytellers, nativity scenes, and giant-sized twirling wooden pyramids with carved figures going around and around in the breeze. As at home, the city trees are picked out in little white lights so it sparkles at night. Fortunately, there is not a single inflatable Frosty the Snowman to be seen.

The craft stalls range from hand-felted hats and slippers and amusing garlands of flowers to woodcarvings, jewelry, pottery and leather goods. In one, an Orthodox nun sells tacky reproductions of icons; in another is a blacksmith making iron hooks. There are Peruvians selling handknit sweaters and mittens and jewelry made from seashells. There are rows of patterned wax candles from Swaziland, soapstone items from Kenya, the ubiquitous wooden cats-on-chairs from Indonesia, eggshell mosaic bamboo bowls from Vietnam. My favorites are the few stalls run by individual craftspeople rather than the ones selling the mass-produced items, but even the mass-produced objects have a certain charm - the traditional German painted wooden ornaments and toys, the mechanical wind-up Santas and ducks, the beautiful leather gloves in more colors than I would ever need (but I covet every single one).

Being a collector, it is hard to pass up making a few purchases for myself, although I must be mindful of the eventual return trip home and the packing it will require. To make that a little less onerous, I am attempting to accumulate only small things, and to that end my Santa Claus collection now includes a tiny wooden Wiehnachtsman in a walnut shell case, and one in an impossibly tiny matchbox toyshop. I have also purchased a second walnut-shell piece, this one with a nativity scene and a tiny propeller on top to spin it around, to expand my over-the-top nacimiento display.

My favorite acquisition so far, however, is a nativity scene made in an old prayer book binding. I met the artist, an older gentleman from Austria, who uses tiny molds to make figures from ceramic clay, handpaints them all using a jeweler's loupe to help him see the fine detail work, and then constructs scenes of varying complexity, depending upon the size container he is using. He uses old boxes and books and shadowbox frames, mostly fairly small, but he has a huge one on display that must have hundreds of figures in it. In every single scene is the joyous "Jubelkarl", a goofy character from a 400-year-old Austrian tradition which I am still trying to decipher from the German handout I was given. Jubelkarl is apparently some sort of let's-look-on-the-bright-side of things Pollyanna, jolly no matter what the circumstances, and not associated with any particular holiday tradition. His presence in these nativities is completely whimsical. He wears 17th-century Austrian garb and is waving his hat about with happy abandon.

The markets are also crammed with the usual German food stands, with some other regional specialties thrown in, like Hungarian Langos - the eastern European answer to Indian frybread, served with sheep's cheese, tomatoes, sauce - and Dresdner Handbröt which requires an outside brick oven to bake the handmade bread stuffed with cheese to a melting wonder. There's wurst, potatoes in a dozen incarnations, huge pans of cooking mushrooms and onions, kraut and kale, flame-cooked salmon, goulash and soups, pasta, pizza, crepes, pastries, candies, and hot chocolate so thick you have to eat it with a spoon. My favorites are the nuts that are tumbled with a sugar mixture in a heated copper kettle until the sugar has cooked into a crunchy coating. Still warm from the vat they are excruciating. My dentist would be appalled at my consumption. The candy stalls also sell frosted gingerbread heart cookies of varying sizes (some of them must be 18" across) that are strung with ribbons and worn around the neck, and another newbie to me, the Schaumküsse, which are fluffy cylinders of lightly flavored delicate marshmallow cream dipped in a variety of chocolate coatings. (Can you tell by my loving description that I have also consumed several of these?) There is also, of course, beer. And Glühwein; everywhere Glühwein. (The German word for lightbulb is "Glühlampe"; I'm not sure if the warm spiced wine derives its similarly glowing name from the effect it has on its consumers - perhaps the glowing feelings it bestows, or the eventual transformation of those drinkers' noses from mere prosaic fleshy extrusions into something more incandescent. I may never know.)

So far I have no plans for Christmas myself. With the dollar continuing to drop against the Euro, an expedition to Crete is probably not in the cards. I thought about Mallorca as it's super-cheap to get there, but with Hannah gone I would have to board Maggie, which doesn't seem like it's in the cards, either. I am scoping out the Christmas concert scene and plan at least to get to a musical event or two, and will possibly go to Christmas dinner and a movie with an American friend from the Goethe Institute who is also familyless here. In any event, it's Christmas in Europe! What's not to love?