Apr 14, 2009

Now for something completely different...

We had a very odd sort of day yesterday. After debating whether or not to write a post about it, I decided (with Michael's input) to go ahead and write it. I feel a little protective of Jena. I love this city, and apart from the distance between us and our families, I love our life here. So I want to share what happened yesterday, but I also want to make clear that it was an anomaly. Sometimes East Germany gets a bad rap, and I would hate to do anything to encourage people to think dismissively or derisively about a place that I love so much. So, with that little disclaimer in place, I'll just get to the point.

The weather has been absolutely perfect for over a week now. Sunny, warm, clear and just perfect. After a family trip to the park yesterday morning, we took another family outing to our favorite ice cream place in the evening. (I've said it before and I'll say it again, ice cream before dinner is one of my favorite perks of being an adult.) Anyone who has visited us--whether for a day or 2 weeks--has been to the Eis Cafe Riva. That's where the blog photos of the magnificent ice cream creations were taken, and it's the best ice cream I've ever had in my life. There are at least 3o tables outside (maybe way more, I'm terrible at guessing) and we grabbed the only empty one we saw. So that's the setting: a perfect sunny evening our favorite, jam-packed Italian ice cream shop.

We heard a loud bang, and I asked Michael what it was. (Why I always assume he has the answer to these questions I don't know.) He said it was probably a firework, and I said "Who lights fireworks in the middle of the afternoon?" Then we saw a large group of people marching up the street towards us. (We'd guess 30-40 or so, but again that's just a guess.) They were holding a banner, but we couldn't make out more than a word or two. ("Menschen" and "zuruck"; "people" and "back") The people in the front wore white masks that reminded me of the movie Scream. I looked at Michael and said "Should we be scared?"

Before he could answer, they descended on a group of about 6 young guys sitting nearby--not customers--and started pounding on at least one of them. At this point things moved pretty quickly, and I'm not sure that all of what I remember is accurate. I remember seeing them punch someone, and at that point Michael and I--and everyone else--were standing up. (Michael was holding David.) Then I remember seeing that the group didn't stop advancing, but kept coming, and that tables were being knocked over and glass was breaking. I pushed Michael and yelled for him to run. I think I had about a thousand thoughts in those few seconds. I worried that this was anti-foreigner sentiment (we were, after all, at a very successful Italian restaurant) and that, if so, the American couple with a baby would made a good target. I worried that hurting a baby, any baby, would be a good way of making a very dramatic statement. In retrospect, I can't imagine anyone actually targeting a baby, but as a mother I was really freaking out.

We were headed, with the crowd, towards a side street to get away when I noticed that they were now standing in that street as well. I felt totally trapped, and I've just never experienced anything like it before. There is a coffee shop between the Eis Cafe and the street, and they were rapidly closing up. The walls are all glass, giant sliding doors, and the coffee shop was almost full of people and they were closing them in. We stood there, and it turns out we were both thinking the same thing: if we go in, we might be safer, but we might also just be trapped. I mean, if you're looking for a target, then the 50 people crammed into a closed space are the obvious choice. Finally, the man closing up yelled at us to get in ("you have a baby, get in!") and we did. He closed up, and we watched for a minute or two before the group ran off.

After a few minutes, the police came and things looked alright again, so we went back to the Eis Cafe. We found our table, and our ice cream sundae was smashed on its side, a pile of broken glass and melted ice cream right next to David's pacifier. (Amazingly, our camera was still there untouched.) The waiter came by to see if David was Ok, and said he'd remake our sundae. I didn't really want ice cream anymore, but I also didn't feel right just leaving, so we sat (at a new table, of course), ate ice cream, and decompressed. Had the police not been right there, I never could have stayed there. Pretty soon, there were Police helicopters circling overhead, and vans all around the city. As of this morning's news, it doesn't seem that they caught anybody.

Looking back at what happened, it seems extremely unlikely that Michael, David and I were in any danger of being targeted. At the time, though, I had absolutely no frame of reference for what was going on. They were shooting fireworks out of a little hand-held cannon, and for all I knew, they were about to throw a bomb. It sounds so melodramatic, but in the moment it felt completely within the realm of possibility. It was so surreal, and happened so quickly, I just felt like anything could have followed from what we were witnessing.

It now seems likely that the group was targing the youth that were sitting near the cafe, and after the fight (or attack) we realized that the victims were skinheads, and that at least one of them was wearing a white-power T-shirt. There are almost always kids, or youth, hanging out where they were, so it seems likely that they were the planned target. Why they advanced into the ice cafe I don't know, and they were clearly looking to scare us all.

We checked an online Jena paper this morning, but the article had less information than we did. It did, however, have a picture of our table. That was a little weird. Here's the link if you'd like to see it.

http://www.otz.de/otz/otz.jena.volltext.php?kennung=on3otzLOKStaJena39914&zulieferer=otz&kategorie=LOK&rubrik=Stadt&region=Jena&auftritt=OTZ&dbserver=1


I took a picture or two as well--I couldn't resist--so I guess I'll post them too.
This was our table. (That's David's paci up top.)
Some more damage nearby.

To end on a nicer note, David was totally and completely unfazed by all of this. When it had all settled down and were standing in the coffe shop, I started to cry. I could not stop shaking. David, on the other hand, did not so much as bat an eye at the whole thing. As my mother suggested, I think Michael gets the credit for that. He stayed calm, and he was holding David. Had I been holding David, he would surely have cried if only to say "Stop squeezing me so hard, I can't breathe!!!"

so here's David, after the fiasco and after a little bit of ice cream:

Apr 11, 2009

Spring is Here!

We had a wonderful time in Hamburg last weekend. I was a little worried about how David would handle sleeping in a new location, but he did just fine. (Not great, as he's teething, but that didn't seem to be location-related.) Timo and Michael assembled a crib that they borrowed from a friend, and when I laid David down for bed--wondering if he'd sleep in a new crib--he gave me this huge grin, as if to say "oh this is so exciting! do I really get to sleep here???" He went right to sleep without making a peep! The novelty wore off, but it is so funny to me how much he likes new things.

Here are a few pictures from our time in Hamburg. There are more on Facebook, which you can see here (even if you're not on Facebook.) : (Photos Link)

David on the beach!
Michael and Timo, waiting for the ferry from the beach back to the city.

The ferry ride back.

Back in Jena, Michael and I finally have bikes! We also bought a bike seat for David, and it is awesome. Britax (or Roemer, as it's called here) makes an excellent bike seat that's safe for 9 months and up. (For some reason, it's not available in the States.) It's really well-designed, and David seems to love it! He likes it best when we all go out together, because then he can still get some face-to-face attention with whoever's not driving his bike. He likes his attention, as you have probably heard.

Yesterday was just amazing. The sun was out, the weather was SO warm, and we spent most of the day outside. Our church had a Good Friday service, and afterwards we had lunch with a family from church. Their youngest daughter was born a day or so after David, and we saw here in the Frauenklinik moments after she was born. (She is also the baby that David tried to kiss at playgroup. He loves her!) We all ate outside and had a wonderful time together.

Then we went home, Michael worked for a few hours, and we all set-out for our first family bike-ride. There is a path along the Saale River that goes for hundreds of miles in both directions. We picked a direction and headed off! After about a 45 minute ride, we found a beer-garden and stopped there.

As we walked past a couple, they looked at David and said "hi!" I was confused. Germans don't say "hi." Then they said "Hello little guy!" I said "You're Americans!!!" The thing is, Jena is not like Munich or Frankfurt...we simply do not ever meet other Americans. We ended up spending about an hour with them, where I had the wonderful experience of speaking English, in person, with someone other than Michael :) They were great, and I think we all had a nice time.

Then back to Jena we went, enjoying how long the evenings are here in Jena. It's only April, and it stays light out until about 8. I love it!

When we got back home, I made Michael run in to get the camera (which I forgot!) to get a shot of David in his little seat. Here are a few, but he was pretty tired at this point! We'll have to try again sometime when it's not past his bedtime...

Apr 2, 2009

Look Who's Standing!



Why does David look so proud of himself? About a week ago, he learned to pull-up! He's loving it. We're pretty amazed at how quickly everything has progressed. Just a few weeks ago I would sometimes try to put his hands on the couch to see if he would stand like that. (He has always loved standing while holding our hands, so I knew his legs were strong enough.) Well, he would just laugh and look at me like "what are you doing exactly?"

Once he got it, though, he really got it. He's already cruising around, and he can pull-up on just about anything!




This is particularly funny because, strictly speaking, he cannot yet crawl. He can get from point A to point B, but it's not pretty. I'd like to call it an Army crawl, but I think for it to really be an Army crawl you have to use your legs at least a little. David will pop up into perfect crawling formation, rock back and forth, and then if he wants to get somewhere immediately flatten himself and drag himself there with his hands. It's so funny, I think I still laugh every time he does it.

Now that he's standing, we have been taking him to a park around the corner. The weather is finally starting to turn around (slowly but surely), so there are a lot of other children there as well. Nothing makes David as happy as other children!





Except, perhaps, for the toys of other children...



This particular day at the park, it was just David and I. I met a very nice woman with two children, and we were sitting next to each other and talking a bit. David was standing in front of me holding onto my hands, and there was a man sitting to my right watching his two children play. David, having already sufficiently charmed my new friend, turned his attention to this man. He looked at him, and just beamed his biggest crinkly-nosed smile...and waited. And waited. Finally, the man noticed David and laughed out loud. He said "Oh hello! And I wasn't even paying attention, I'm sorry!" Well that did it for David, this was clearly going to be his new best friend. He hopped, giggled, smiled, did all his tricks. So the man asked if David would like to hold his hand for a minute. Sure enough, David took his hands and hopped up and down chatting with him for a few minutes. (I was right there, of course.) After a few minutes, the man said "Well, do you want to go back to mommy?" He put one of David's hands in mine...and David just about cried. He didn't cry, but he looked at his new friend as if to say "but why? what did I do? don't you like me anymore?"

So TEN MINUTES later, I finally got David's little hands back. It's a good think he likes me so much when we're around the house, because in public he sometimes acts like he doesn't even know me. Other people are FAR more interesting, and he is not above pushing my face out of the way so that he can see around me to the wonderful strangers. Sometimes, when we're at the park, I worry that people are going to think I just grabbed this boy off the street and took him to the park in a desperate attempt to pass myself of as a mother.

There is one other side-effect of David's newfound standing ability: naptime, and bedtime, are a million times more difficult.

Actually, he has a new naptime trick as well! He finally says Mama! He said it for the first time a few days ago, when I was letting him fuss a bit in his bed. I had gone in to tuck him in again so many times, I decided he had to fuss some and just go to sleep. Then I heard, clear as a bell, "MaMA!!!" I ran in (of course) and he was sitting up grinning. I said "You said Mama!" and he laughed. I said "You did! I heard it! Say it again, say Mama!"

And he said what he always says when I ask him to say Mama.

"DADA!!!"

He has said it a few times since then, but really only when he's in his crib and he wants out. When he knows he should be sleeping, but would rather be playing. When, that is, he looks something like this:

But at least he says it!