DARN TEUTON!

I had a very housewifey day today. I generally have housewifey days every day, seeing as that I am now a housewife, but since I’m on “spring break” from my German class (three whole days! the Germans are very serious about condensing their fun for efficiency), I could waste the entire day hauling heavy things up four flights of stairs, instead of the usual few hours.

First haul: a borrowed travel bed for my 2-year old niece who is visiting this weekend.

Second Haul: a full basket and several bags of groceries for said niece (and her parents) since Friday is Labor Day here in Europe and no-one, especially not grocery stores, will be laboring. By the time I got to the butcher (that’s right, I go to several specialty markets with my little basket, like some kind of giant red-riding hood) at 1:30, there was a line out the door as if a hurricane was coming and we all needed to stock up on sausages and batteries.

Third Haul: just my self from a quick shopping trip for a bedroom vanity. I’ve always wanted one and now we finally have room — but really, am I going to brush my tresses to a warm glow with 100 strokes each night as I lounge in my dressing gown? Maybe I will… if I just had a vanity. And a tufted stool. And one of those three-way-mirrors. And a time-machine.

Best Haul: a vintage Vivienne Westwood velvet jacket for 3 Euro which a woman was selling directly in front of my door this afternoon. Now that I have the time, maybe I’ll be the new Rachel Ashwell (the Shabby Chic lady whose brand of flowsy is now going out of business) and comb German garage sales and flea markets. I assume they are probably be very well-organized, with only the politest of haggling. Although, how many black turtlenecks does one need? I won’t let that Dieter me, though. HA!

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.