Berlin, 16.02.01 Thanks to everyone who wrote. There are enough of you to create obligation, which was the point of the exercise. In the spirit of interactivity, which seems to get the literary juices flowing, I now invite readers to ask me questions about Germany. Previously, a reader from Western Canada asked: Is your Ikea that different from ours? Indistinguishable, except for German rather than English subtitles (the product names are all the same Swedish anyway). The whole store comes straight out of a box, shipped from Sweden. Completely identical. The only differences between the Berlin and Vancouver Ikeas, as far as I can tell, are no free water in the cafe - like everywhere else in Germany - and pushy, irritating Germans rather than pushy, irritating Asians in the huge Saturday afternoon lineups. (That wasn't racist because I said equally bad things about people of all ethnicities!) And in Berlin it's not open on Sundays. There, now you know. I've also had a long and interesting dialogue with Aziz about all things Turkish, and then some. Much more fun than working! Random notes... Another phrase added to the baby porn banned list: "felching Mr. Bear". We are having a much happier week, despite the fact that Annette is working to a weekend deadline. She's had a team of babysitters coming every day to give her writing time, which of course gives me a bit of skating time, which then keeps me from being all PMS-y. Plus Maddy's generally been in a great mood now that she's fully recovered from the trip. I am skating the ice marathon tomorrow, thank goodness. I tried to skate Tuesday night but broke the spring in the clap mechanism and had to scramble to find another, but was able to skate quite hard last night. My training has not been optimal, but it's enough that I'll be able to survive without too much damage to my back, I hope. Here's something I wrote to my mother yesterday: Turns out we have a blue-blooded babysitter. She's a "Freiherr" (or however you spell the feminine version) which is the equivalent of a lord or something like that. They don't have any money, obviously, otherwise she wouldn't be babysitting for a living. There's no real advantage to being nobility except that once or twice a year she gets invited to lavish three-day parties in luxurious castles where she is introduced to titled young men who are probably just as penniless as she is. All this babysitting is going to add up after a while but Annette really needs to finish this article, and since the German government has to date given us 3,480 DM for having this child, I think we can justify the expense. Can't spend it all on ourselves, now can we? Had to go pick up something [a new spring for my skates, actually] from a friend's office in Kreuzberg on the way to work this morning, and as I was riding back through our old neighbourhood I realized how much I miss the Turkishness of it all. Friedrichshain is great, and I love our apartment, but there were things about the old beat that I really adore. His office was in a beaten up old loft space in a crumbling Hinterhof building, rather like what we had except never renovated. I love the back courtyards, you can be feet away from the busiest streets, but everything is calm and quiet. Plus you have these great addresses: "Urbanstr. 43, 2. Hinterhof, Linke Seitenflügel, Aufgang II, 4. OG Rechts." And here's something I wrote to various family members a couple of days before that, which is kind of like what I wrote in the journal except that I made some stuff up in a desperate (and thus far unsuccessful) attempt to get a rise out of my father-in-law: The Kita is in one of the massive old Stalin-era buildings just behind Karl-Marx-Allee, about fifteen minutes walk away. It was a big child care centre back in the DDR, with special facilities for infants and bright colourful pictures of Lenin and the other Heroes of the Revolution on the walls. (It was fairly routine for mothers to go back to work full-time after a few months. In theory, the fathers did an equal share of the domestic work. In theory.) One of the great advantages of living in the East is the abundance of Kitas. It is much easier to find a spot here than back in West Berlin - the triumph of Socialism. Every day I will fall down on my knees and thank the Worker and Farmer State for having had the foresight to create this excellent network of affordable child care facilities. Blessed be the memories of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ulbrecht and Honecker! Madeleine, your first lesson in life: Communism wasn't all bad. Viva la Revolucion! Now if only Canadians would wake up and do something like this. Subsidized day care, I mean, not the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. (Though if it got rid of SUVs I'd say why not give it a try?) Meanwhile, life continues apace. We had a rather fun evening at home last night. Maddy was in a very good mood, now that she's finally sorted out her sleeping pattern a bit and, um, cleared the post-travel "backlog". Very pleasant and playful. Latest trick: attempting to take off her socks using only her gums! Annette, meanwhile, was a zombie after writing most of the day without taking her regular afternoon nap. So I did the dad thing until they both fell asleep a little after ten. Great, I thought, I can finish a couple of chores, watch the Swedish Rally highlights on Eurosport while fixing my flat tire, then have a reasonable night's sleep. Just past eleven I tiptoed into the bedroom, dug a very hot and sweaty baby out from under her slumbering mother, and gently dropped her into the buggy. A few minutes later the thrashing began. I lay there waiting for the inevitable yelps, but she just continued to thrash without any verbal complaints. Fine, I thought, as long as she's not crying, I'm not getting out of bed. Annette woke up five minutes later and we lay listening to the rustles from across the room, wondering when and if it would stop, quietly discussing our options. Still no crying. After about ten minutes I was beginning to think I should at least get up and check the diaper when we heard a very loud, extremely rude noise. Bang! Wearily I turned on the light and looked over. The quilt was on the floor - it had either been blown off by the recoil or she had launched it with a particularly good kick. She lay there with a stunned expression on her face, legs sticking up at a forty-five degree angle, feet dangling over the end of the pram. Quelle poo! (That settles it - we need to buy something a proper crib, she's too big for the pram now.) So I went and cleaned her up and changed her and put her back in the bed next to the human milk truck, since she was now hungry again. Then just before Annette burped her, as I was finally drifting off to sleep, the little beast let out a strange gurgling noise and launched a fountain of milk high into the air. I suppose we should be thankful that she only soaked the sheet and the mattress pad, not the pillows or quilts or mattress or us (or Vita). Annette hosed down the baby, I changed the bed, and I by twelve-thirty I think we were all safely back under the sheets. The rest of the night passed uneventfully. This is the reality of living with a baby, I'm afraid. Speaking of babies, I discovered that if you put a diaper on a baby's head it looks just like an old British judge in a powdered wig. Sometime this weekend I will post a picture to prove it. [baby porn] PS I actually had a fun evening with my strange little daughter. Babies are great for a few hours, really. But one thing I'm going to have to do soon is stop using smutty, pornographic language when talking about her. Annette is growing very tired of it and sooner or later it is going to cause some serious embarrassment. So from now on, a huge bellyful of vomited milk is just puke, not "the cumshot". ("Babies and cum have nothing to do with each other!" declared Annette, unwisely, explaining perhaps how this one came to be. But I figure I can still sneak "money shot" past her if she's a bit distracted.) When she sucks on a finger she will not be addressed as "you little fellatrix" or "the next Monica". And most of all, when she chews on the nether regions of the stuffed bug, she is not "performing cunnilingus on the bee". Definitely not.