Things I'm going to miss

In no particular order:

1. Gun control. I have yet to see a newspaper headline about someone being shot in Baden-Wuerttemberg. On the website where I check my hometown news, three of today's regional headlines are about people being shot: a seven-year-old hit by a stray bullet at an ice-skating rink in Charlotte, a Goldsboro teenager hit by a stray bullet while hunting with his father, a Sanford man murdered in his apartment. Germans tend to use knives to kill one another. When people fight with their rivals and wave weapons around to look intimidating, they're less likely to accidentally stab a skating seven-year-old in the knee than they are to accidentally shoot her.

2. Walkability. 90% of what we need here can be reached by foot.

3. A philosophy that discourages befouling one's environment. Germans recycle pretty much everything. The government offers incentives for reducing carbon footprints, from providing affordable mass transit to building extensive networks of bicycle paths. Solar panels abound on rooftops.

4. The idea that it is worth sacrificing excess consumption for improved quality of life. The grocery store on the corner is small, but it has pretty much everything we need, it's innocuous, and we can walk there.

5. Abundant farmers' markets that emphasize fresh local and regional produce. At the St. Urban farmers' market in particular: the ravioli guy, and the produce lady who always has a pear or apple or clementine for Elias, whether he's shopping with me that day or not.

6. Having an elementary school in the backyard.

7. Elias's third grade teacher, who is mature, laid back, practical, and enthusiastic, with sensible priorities.

8. A school system that gives teachers flexibility with classroom curricula, that maintains high enough standards for certification that no one thinks twice about trusting teachers with said curricula, and that doesn't mandate day after day of in-class, multiple-choice testing as a way to answer the question, "is our children learning?"

9. Trail-covered mountains five blocks east of the front door, and the option to walk or bike from any town in Germany to any other town entirely on designated pedestrian and bike trails.

10. The idea that all of society benefits when its members are well educated and in good health, backed up with a general willingness for tax dollars to go toward services that serve people other than oneself.

11. Alemannisch, Bairisch, and Schwyzerduetsch.

12. Rot Spaetburgunder, trocken.