School and a field trip

Elias headed off this morning for a two-night field trip to the Landschulheim ("country school home") in Bonndorf (in the Schwarzwald) with his 3rd-grade class. This trip highlights all sorts of ways school here is different from school in the U.S.

Consider:

* Third graders here go for extended overnight field trips, without parent chaperones. The 24 students will be supervised by their teacher and four trained teaching assistants. The kids will go hiking, play games outside, build kites, and learn how to safely whittle with pocket knives. Parents are advised to chill out and trust their kids are in good hands.

* We first heard about the trip two and a half weeks ago, when Elias's teacher sent home a xeroxed hand-written note: "In the flurry of school starting up, I forgot to tell you the class will be taking a two-night trip to Bonndorf Oct. 13-15. Details to follow at the parents' meeting later this week."

* Instead of weeks of permission slip requests and reminders and final warnings, a permission slip came home a week ago, along with a finalized list of things to bring (sheets, hiking boots, warm clothes, a flashlight) and not to bring (iPods, Handys, Gameboys), and instructions for paying the 70 Euro fee by Ueberweisung (bank money transfer). Asking parents to pay 70 Euros for a field trip is possible here because most of the kids live in Herdern, a relatively well off neighborhood. The government will subsidize the trip for families who need financial assistance.

* Meals will be provided, and vegetarians will be accommodated. Elias said that when his teacher asked the class who else besides him doesn't eat meat, everyone raised their hands; when she asked who else can't eat meat, all but one of the hands went down.

Field trip aside, there are other observable differences between school here and school back home in Durham, NC.

Elias attends 22.5 hours of school per week here; at home, 32.5 hours per week (or if you subtract lunch, 30.5 hours per week). He claims that kids at home are much better behaved, but that he's learning more here.

At the parents meeting, the teacher described the class as "almost completely homogenous"--meaning almost all of the kids are performing at the same academic level.

Several people told us kids don't learn multiplication here until after third grade. It turns out that "multiplication" in Germany means "multiplying numbers greater than 11." Kids learn "Das kleine Einmaleins"--"the small one-times-ones," a.k.a. multiplication from 0-10--in second grade. Third grade covers addition and subtraction of numbers up to 1,000.

Religion--a choice between Katholisch and Evangelisch Christianity--is taught at school twice a week. Children can opt out of these lessons, although no other lessons are provided during that time. Elias is hanging with the Protestants, but it continues to grate on my U.S. sensibilities that in a country where millions of people not so long ago were slaughtered for their religion, government-run institutions are asking children to self-identify as being outside the mainstream. The folks I've talked with here about this have reassured me, saying that even Christian kids are opting out more often these days. Hmm.

"Sport" is taught three times a week. Kids bring and change into gym clothes on those days. After they get all sweaty, the kids either change clothes again or go for the layered look and put their regular school clothes on on top.

Children bring slippers or houseshoes to wear in the classroom. Street shoes stay outside by the door.

In Grundschule, the same group of kids typically has the same teacher from the first day of first grade through last day of fourth grade. Each classroom operates as an independent entity: while Elias's class mingles with the other third grade classes during recess, they don't mingle academically.

Kids practice spelling and handwriting with regular "Diktat" (dictation) exercises. As in the U.S., when German kids compose their own texts, the pedagogical emphasis is on expression rather than spelling and grammar.

German kids are just as reticent as U.S. kids when their parents grill them about what they did at school on any given day. The one-word highlight of the school day in here is virtually identical to the one-word highlight of the school day in the U.S.: "Pause" ("recess").

More Stolpersteine

Definitely in the minority, but good to see: a Stolperstein that ended with the word "Ueberlebt" ("Survived") rather than the place of death.

And then there were chickens

Everyone we know in Germany is getting a chicken for the holidays, because there's something comforting about creating a flock of cheerful chickens when you're living an ocean away from your well-equipped community pottery studio back home. In case you're wondering, the photos demonstrate that to make a chicken, you have to start with an egg.

The recycled clay this evening had clumps of unidentifiable black leathery crud in it, and there were many casualties among the eggs on the ancient 33 rpm Shimpo wheel as a result. From a bad egg comes a contaminated chicken, and who wants a chicken with a hole blasted through it due to exploding organic crud? No one, that's who.

The tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells

It rained all day long. During a brief, promising sunny spell, Stefan, Elias, and I drove up to the Platte, an elevated area above St. Peter, to hike to some water falls. We had barely set foot out of the car when dark clouds and a renewed downpour descended upon us. So we drove back home and sat inside twiddling our fingers until we couldn't stand it anymore, and then we took a hike up the Schlossberg in the pouring rain. By the time we had finished collecting another few kilos of chestnuts, we were soaked but happy, and the weather was finally clearing.

Arriving at the Kommandantengarten, we heard the sound of bells all over the east side of Freiburg. When we reached the viewing tower atop the Schlossberg, the sound was joined by bells on the south side of town. It was quite the concert!



Those of you who know about my profound fear of heights might wonder how I got all the way up to the top of the tower. (Well, almost all the way up; I skipped the last part of the tower because--as Elias demonstrated with glee--if you hold onto the railing and thrust your weight back and forth, you can make the platform sway.) Turns out that my two trips climbing the Muenster tower have taught me about the heady pleasures of an adrenaline jolt. Next stop: the Schauinsland Turm.

We saw Stefan's mother off at the Bahnhof this morning. After three and a half weeks of hosting assorted visitors, we're ready to settle back into a more regular routine.

Not a photo opportunity

Today I trotted into the hills behind Herdern and made my way to the top of the Schlossberg on trails I hadn't traveled previously. Sometimes when it's gray and wet down in Freiburg, hiking into the hills will bring you over the fog into sunshine; not so today. Nonetheless, the mountain looked lovely in the mist.

In 1706, after the Habsburgers had recaptured their hold on the Schlossberg, someone decided the view of Freiburg down below would look better from a nice garden terrace, so they built one below the fortifications, in the fashionable French style. An 18th-century engineer's sketch of the Kommandantengarten suggests it included an Asian-inspired "Maison de plaisance." Only a hint of the garden--a semi-circular wall--remains.

Inside the wall are several tall trees, a bench, and, today at least, mysterious remnants of a fire pit begging to have its photograph taken.

Burning acorns

In addition to Kastanien, this is also the season for Maronen--edible chestnuts, as in "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" (or as Elias calls it, "the burning acorns song"*). They are falling in vast quantities on the trails leading from Herdern up to the Schlossberg. I interrupted a trot into the hills today to fill up my jacket pockets with a good kilo of nuts. Maronen are surrounded by needle sharp spiky husks that are best pulled apart by shoed feet or gloved hands. Tomorrow we'll cut slits into the shells and roast the nuts in the oven.

*The other day, Elias explained his talent for singing well-known songs: "I sing them, but I change the tunes and use new words."

Accursed cheese and Landeck

Today, while we were stuck in a traffic jam in the rain, Stefan inadvertently taught me another way to curse auf Bairisch: "So a Kaas." Literally, this translates as "what a cheese" ("so ein Kaese"*), but the tone of voice suggests cheese here is yet another metaphor for Mist.

We were on our way to Landeck, which was supposed to be a quick trip up the road just past Emmendingen. The good news, I suppose, is that I'm not the only driver in my family who gets lost on occasion. Or maybe that's bad news. In any case, it took most of the afternoon to travel, as the crow flies, 15 km and back, yielding what Stefan's mother Helen described as "eine wunderschoene Schwarzwaldreise." "Das Wetter wurde immer besser" ("the weather got better and better") she insists, describing the light drizzle that had turned into a heavy downpour by the time we got home.

Our destination was the Ruinen Landeck, which offered a good excuse for a rainy-day excursion with Helen. Like so many other area Burgs, Landeck was erected in the 13th century by the local nobility (in this case, the knight Dietrich von Geroldsecker) and trashed in 1525 by angry peasants during the Bauernkrieg. The remaining ivy-covered ruins include part of a church and part of the main residence, and the stonework and easily accessible location suggest the Burg was of the posh and expansive--rather than cold and isolated--variety.

*"Kaese," by the way, is another one of those special words that ends with an -e but is masculine rather than feminine, like "Name."