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I guess it is pretty much the same for Germans and Americans – most of us love the Christmas pre-season that is called advent. Though most of us also don’t want it around in the stores when it’s still summer. Advent and Christmas carols have their season, and this year, when Thanksgiving is almost two […]

Trains have something nostalgic about them. So do train rides – not so much those for the sake of commuting to work in suburban areas as those undertaken for leisure. Maybe it is because their pace is so steady and calm. Maybe it is the landscape you pass through and wouldn’t see from any car […]

Ask Germans to name the bleakest month of the year, and you will probably end up with a unanimous vote for … November. It’s as if the year, once a balloon, had lost all its air and remains but a floppy rubber bladder that stretches, but holds nothing. November – an accumulation of fog, drizzle, […]

Until I came to the United States, I never had a garden. This is not unusual at all. In comparison to this nation, my mother country, Germany, is tiny, and its almost 90 million inhabitants literally live on top of each other in many places. I grew up in apartment houses. Later I rented apartments […]

Next week Wednesday is a red calendar day for so many American children. They have probably been figuring for weeks already what costumes to wear. Some will go to parties. Some will walk from door to door the old-fashioned way. Some will go trunk-or-treating in the safe surroundings of a local church. The rest of […]

As long as I can remember, winter and snow have almost been synonymous for me. I grew up in Southern Germany, and we always experienced the white load sooner or later. We built snowmen and igloos, went tobogganing down any slope we could find, had snowball fights, ate icicles, and simply enjoyed the sight of […]