The Old-Lady Waltz

Sitting in the office, tea at my side in my American commuter mug, which is becoming more popular here with each day, munching on Quarkbällchen, something like a doughnut hole, only slightly bigger and denser and much less sweet. It's one of my favorite baked goods in Germany, and one that nobody can screw up, not even in the East. I will complain about the quality of East German baked goods at a later date, but suffice it to say that it pales in comparison to other regions of Central Europe.

Today is St. Nikolaus Tag, or St. Nicholas Day, the day you are supposed to wake up and either find treats in your shoes or the special Nikolausstiefel (Nikolaus boot) that you leave at the door or in front of the fireplace, or a branch if you were a bad child the past year, probably related to the old custom of being sent outside to cut your own switch for the beating you were about to receive. I thought it you got coal, maybe you did in places like the Ruhrgebiet, Germany's industrial area, formerly well known for its coal mines.  For more information, check out Wikipedia:

St. Nikolaus Day

What I find the best is the description of what happens in Central Europe:

"In highly Catholic regions, the local priest was informed by the parents about their children's behaviour and would then personally visit the homes in the traditional Christian garment and threaten to beat them with a rod."

Maybe Rihanna's (ex?) boyfriend could get into that.

I got a Choco Lolly in my mailbox at work this morning, which is the only reason I remembered.  As an American, I am more aware of Pearl Harbor Day, which is tomorrow.

I am also paying more attention to the snow right now than anything else. Here's what it looks like outside my office window today:

Charming, right? Wrong. This means only one thing to me: Rutschgefahr, translated by dict.leo.org as "slip danger" or "slip hazard."  As I have lived in Germany and Austria before, I am all too familiar with the dangers of snow and ice: Rutschgefahr, Dachlawine (literally translated as "snow avalanche," a concept I didn't understand until about three pounds of snow fell on my head and cracked my coffee mug one morning while I was standing on my balcony in Vienna and smoking a cigarette), shoes ruined by salt, and the desire to remain inside and eat enough food that you'll never be able to pass through the door again. I have slipped, fallen, eaten pavement and thrown away perfectly good shoes.

The physical aspect of slipping and falling doesn't bother me too much. Sure, your hip is bruised for a minute, but the bruise to the ego is much greater and of extensive duration.  The older you get, the more likely you will slip.  A friend of mine even has an expression for it, and I don't think she coined it: "Old Woman Fall." I forget the idiom. If anyone has a clue, leave a comment.

The ego is bruised because there is always someone around to see you fall, no matter where you are, what time of day or night.  If you slip and fall on the ice at 3:30 in the morning on a farm in the middle of nowhere, a crop of looky-loos will shoot up out of the ground, smoking cigarettes and watching as you struggle to stand up again and regain your composure, holding up their score cards to let you know just how amazingly pitiful and amusing your fall was.  The cows will also sidle over, munch on some hay, smoke a cigarette and then go home and tell the sheep--"'Nother human bit it just now. You should have seen the look on her face!" There is no playing it off, like when you stumble over a crack on the sidewalk, look back at it as you continue walking to make sure the concrete assailant is not following you.  Bad, bad crack. You deserve coal in your shoes, or to be beaten by a rod.

And though we have all experienced it, we still laugh or snicker when we see others do it, or watch to see how they cope with it. The Germans especially.  After all, they are the ones who created the term Schadenfreude.  They are specialists in this field.  And the larger the group of people who see you fall, the more it hurts, the harder it is to get back up, the crappier your day becomes.

So right now, I'm practicing my winter gait, a step-step-slide-shit myself, step-step-slide-shit myself..., a drunken waltz in a winter wonderland. I only hope that if I do fall this winter, no kids are in the area. Pre-teens and teens are especially cruel in this regard, without the slightest amount of decency to at least laugh quietly among themselves.  These are also the same people who in a few years will call me "Ma'am."

In the meantime, I will continue waltzing through the streets of Weimar and Erfurt, praying and cursing all at the same time, disagreeing with T.S. Eliot.  April is not the cruelest month, unless there's a freak snow storm.

And our time is up.