Darn Teuton!

I recently started swimming again — and by that, I mean I went to the large indoor pool, twice, a few weeks ago.  But it’s a start, considering that I haven’t seen the inside of a regulation sized pool in 15 years.  There are some very nice public pools here, and like a lot of things here, are very modern but housed in these beautiful old turn-of-the-last-century buildings with columns and wide lawns and everything. 

Since I am a housewife, I go in the afternoons, where it’s just me and the retirees.  And here I witness something which continues to confuse and amaze me.  I’m always surprised at how the generally very orderly Germans cannot que up to save their lives, which translates into a bunch of older ladies darting all over the pool, while I try to bob and weave.   The indoor pool has no lanes dividers, and it’s every man for himself in there.  

Now, I like a flowered bathing cap as much as the next gal, but to seem them coming at you sitting on top of a face full of make-up and announced by a pair of torpedo boobs is disconcerting.  It’s impossible to get out of the way, since there is no “way” — just a bunch of ladies fighting for water space, and I’m in now way ready to win that fight club.  First, I’ll need that flowered bathing cap. 

It’s amazing how good weather, and you know, having friends and speaking the language can really effect your ability to enjoy a new country.  

I’m also getting a kick out of the German spring/summer wardrobe.  While they can definitely rock the well-knotted scarf in the winter, the relative freedom of summer styling seems to confuse them (just like the subject of relative freedom of, oh, the individual… which is a topic for another day).  Of course, there are lots of pretty girls in summer dresses, but many of them — even very young girls — cock up the whole outfit with pantyhose. PANTYHOSE! Nude, shiny, pantyhose.  With open toed shoes! Or worse — with shorts.  Shorts and PANTYHOSE.  I half expect a Laura Ashley dress to make an appearance.  

I don’t understand how a country so close to Italy and France can have such a poor fashion sense.  How many baggy and poop colored dresses does one need? Of course, if you’re a 20-year old 6-foot tall blond, you have the legs to pull off the L’eggs.  But just barely.

I have a guess. Is it: living in a provincial European capital with a superiority complex, with no job, no husband (half the week) and the pressure to OHMIGOD enjoy this time, you’re never going to get it back, isn’t living in Europe SO WONDERFUL you can walk everywhere, and look, there’s even a subway? A subway! These Europeans are so clever with their innovative underground tubes and jauntily-tied scarves and what not.

As if there’s nowhere else where scarves and subways can co-exist peacefully where, perhaps, the conservatism wasn’t so palatable, and the idea of a woman Working While Parenting (WWP) wouldn’t get you pulled over by the Society for Creative Re-enactments of Time Gone By. (Oh those career gals with their crazy idea of suffrage — its so cute how they want to use their educations at the same time as their uteri. Don’t they know the two are mutually exclusive?)

For example: I am actually watching a woman yodel on television now. Wearing a dirndl. Surrounded by a trio of lederhosen-clad musicians. The kind with shorts. And accordions. During prime time. Unironically.

In the four months we’ve been here, I haven’t quite acclimated. I didn’t realize how much having a job — even a horribly stressful one which gave me grey hair and dandruff like snow in a Chicago winter — made me feel like a person. And how much being a hausfrau makes me feel like Virginia Woolf. Probably because being a hausfrau here is still considered a valid role for women (also, apparently, Prime Minister. Get your gender roles shit together, Germans).

(God, more dirndls. And a polka. What AM I watching?)

Oh, New York, how I miss your cramped apartments, your long work hours, your sticky summers and your frigid winters, your diversity, your open-mindedness, your warmth, your sense of possibility, your vitality, your creativity, your pulse, your subways and your jauntily-tied scarves.