Dachau with Daughters

This afternoon turned out to have odd, interesting and bothersome twists. It was cold, but the sun was out so I decided during Sorchia's nap to pick up Olivia and Oona early from school and bike them out of Unterschleissheim, across farm fields and through woods to the Dachau Concentration Camp (Olivia is 5 and Oona is 3 and its high time they learned about genocide). On the way, Sorchia and I were accosted and nearly attacked by a lone swan that has taken up residence in the park we ride through every day. He had in fact been harassing a 12 year old boy as we drove up. (I've got a video to prove all of this).

The ride out went well. I knew half of the route and the other half I'd memorized from scrutinizing Google Earth. But as we entered Dachau and neared the camp, Sorchia, sitting in the bike seat immediately behind me, started crying. Clearly she was getting very cold, even though I'd bundled her up tight. The sun was sinking faster than I'd calculated, so we aborted the camp and opted for a few minutes at a playground.

While we were unloading, a man walking his dog came up and started chatting in German. His face was friendly, gray stubbled and shy of most of the important teeth. He wore a dirty peasant hat and peasant coat. From the little vocabulary I've picked up in the last two months I learned that he and his family were among the ethnic German's expelled from Romania in the years after WWII. I thought this quite interesting because the phenomenon of this expulsion is something I had never heard of before recently reading about it in depth in Tony Judt's excellent Postwar: Europe Since 1945. Ethnic Germans had been emigrating to different parts of eastern Europe for hundreds of years and settling in farming communities and small towns. These people hadn't lived in Germany for generations and were "citizens" of the countries in which they'd settled. It was the breadth and success of this dispersion that had, in part, emboldened Hitler to conquer territory that contained these ethnic Germans. After the war, whether because of their unwitting contribution to Hitler's plans or for revenge, the Allied leaders acceded to the demands of Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland and others to allow the expulsion of these, likely largely innocent populations. Many settled in Bavaria, and here I was talking to one of them.

After 10 minutes or so at the playground, long enough for me to negligently fling Oona violently from a spinning appartus, causing her to face-plant into the woodchips, I noticed the sun was now setting and so we had to go!. This was urgent. I had no headlight on the bike, the way back was unlit and one short stretch was on a narrow road with some traffic. Also, the temperature was dropping noticeably. Sorchia balked at loading and she sobbed all the way back, 7.5 miles as I flew as fast as I could while pulling two girls in a trailer. When we got home and inside, I realized that poor Sorchia's feet were underdressed and were ice-blocks, clearly to the point of causing pain. Bad Dad! She and I cuddled in a chair for awhile until she warmed up. I'm hoping that tomorrow the rain holds off so we can try again to make the camp.

Out of the Closet

I need to comment on the quality of quality in western consumerism in the early 21st century. We all work hard for our money while mass producers are simultaneously drilling us with advertising to get that money. They promise a fair exchange. But is it really? I bought a digital camera just over a year ago. I did my research and went to Camera's West, decision made on what to buy. Of course Russell the salesmen thought that maybe I needed something just a step up from the one I'd set my sights on. One with less shutter lag, because of course this would be important to me in taking action pictures of children. He was right, I thought, and the Sony he sold me was a good camera and took great looking photos. Never mind that I spent $150 more than I'd intended.

As an aside, I don't think this would have happened in Germany. I've dealt with a few salespeople at Media Markt, the German version of Best Buy. They don't work on commission and don't really even want to be bothered with you, much less consider you a customer to be served. The upside is that no one tried to push us into the next highest price on whatever appliance we were purchasing. No pressure. I like that a lot.

Back to the camera. So what then to make of what happened 8 months later? While on a day trip to Mount Rainier, Olivia was holding the camera and slipped on the trail. The camera didn't slam on the ground, drop or hit a rock. It rather rolled gently through the dust. The camera was off and all orifices were closed tight. I picked it up, dusted it off and turned it on. The camera popped the lens out part way, made a straining high pitched noise and quit. It was done. Kaput. No cost effective repair available (of course I hadn't purchased any warranty), "but for only $150 more, you can have almost the same camera, brand new." IPODs cost $250-$350 but are only expected to last a few years. It seems that there is so much disposable income in the developed world, and so much pressure to spend that income rather than save and that whether anything of quality and long lasting value is purchased is no longer the point or the aim. The spending is the end in itself.

I've been contemplating the IKEAization of our lives recently because, as may or may not be generally known, German houses do not have closets. I first learned this several months ago while furiously online-researching reasons not to move to Germany. I found a blog from an ex pat woman who had much to complain about Germany, lack of closets included. I went straight to Melissa and said, with no thought toward presentation and no small amount of indignation, "They don't have closets in Germany." "No", she responded, "that can't be right."

But it is right, and its not really all bad, for a couple of reasons. First, all of the square footage that would have gone into closets is instead living space that you can walk upon and see, leaving the impression that the rooms and the houses are more generous in size, more useable for action. Second, the lack of a closet requires confrontation of actual clothing needs, rather than impulsive wants. Is your closet full? I'll bet it is. All of our closets in the States were so full that the bars were strained in the middle like sway-backed horses. The rub is that over half of the hanging clothes were rarely to never used. Instead of closets, Germans use wardrobes, or kleiderschranks. By definition, smaller than most closets. Excess is precluded and one must choose carefully what goes into the kleiderschrank, based presumably on what is actually regularly used.

Which brings me back to my point. We've been here for 2 months and have not yet purchased our kleiderschranks. This is not because they're hard to find. In fact they are everywhere and we get circulars in the mail daily advertising them. We've visited IKEA and at least 5 other stores several times (an activity that likely awaits me in hell, 24 hours per day). Each time we vow to make a decision so we can stop the death marches. But so far we haven't, in spite of the fact that the products are pretty much all the same and are relatively cheap for a large piece of furniture.

The problem, as it occurred to me recently, is the absolute failure of the worthy idea and mission of Charles and Ray Eames. I'd never heard of these people (husband and wife, 20th century designers. This is what wikipedia is for if you've not heard of, or much of them) before stumbling on an exhibit of their life's work and philosophy at the Library of Congress when we lived in Washington D.C. Possibly best known for their design of a molded plastic chair, the Eames's were convinced that quality and aesthetics in design should be available to the middle class. These plastic molded chairs, ubiquitous 30 years ago, are now classics and are ironically beyond the reach of the (shrinking, thank you very much GWB. Asshole.) middle class. They were wrong, quality and aesthetics are generally beyond the reach of the middle class.

And this is why we haven't yet bought our closets: Anyway you look at it we're going to spend good money on furniture that is absolute crap. This is a trigger that the common sense part of our brains have for two months been screaming at us not to pull. We'll go into a store and examine a store model that seems to work just fine. Then we'll pay money and receive flat boxes that fit neatly into our vehicle and contain all of the parts to construct our very own piece of crap at home. We won't even need any tools, except a screwdriver and 2-4 hours of our time, because they've invented these new fasteners that aren't screws or nails but are a series of straining points pulling sections of particle board together. Inevitably, when finally constructed, something won't square up just right, or a piece will be missing, or I will have misread irreversible step 16 causing a self-inflicted flaw I must live with. In the end, after 2-3 years and we return to Seattle we will leave these pieces of crap here. Probably to be destroyed, landfilled because who is going to buy used crap? (don't answer that one.)

I've tried reductio ad absurdam on this problem: If we're just going to buy crap, let's just put up a bare open bar for hanging clothes. Ah, but this leaves out aesthetics, so we're back to the crap. It's Thursday and, I swear, by the end of this weekend we are going to be resentful possessors of brand new crap. What choice do we have?