Hunter Baker’s Christmas in Old Europe . . .

When my wife proposed a Christmas trip to Germany to see her sister give birth to her first child, I balked. “Surely they don’t expect us to make a 10-13 hour flight to Frankfurt, followed by a multi-hour train ride to Freiburg with a six month old in tow,” I suggested hopefully. Although I pinned my hopes on the inconvenience of traveling with an infant, I was also thinking about my own problems as a “big and tall” fellow strapped into an airline seat for far longer than the fifteen minutes I felt I could tolerate. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had brought up the issue of my own discomfort. She had obviously plotted the trip with her sister for some time now and was unimpressed by my reluctance.

Seeing that I stood little chance of preventing the journey, I set out conditions for my participation. If they could not be met, I would not go. In this way, I hoped to frustrate her project or at least make it tolerable for me. My conditions were these: we must have bulkhead seats, with an aisle seat for me, and a special bassinet that mounts on the bulkhead for our child. To my surprise, she called Lufthansa and arranged all of the above. Fate appeared to be on the side of the former Martin sisters, so I gave in.

The task before us was daunting. My wife was unmoved by my appeal to take as little clothing as possible. We did try to pack all of our wearables into “space bags” and then vacuum out all the air to cut down on the number of suitcases, but an experiment indicated our clothes would arrive in Germany more badly wrinkled than a chain-smoking, octogenarian sun-worshipper, so we abandoned the plan.

We would have to hustle far too much baggage, the baby, his car seat, his stroller, our winter coats, the diaper bag, approximately three hundred diapers, and our passports through airport and train terminals, not to mention somehow finding a way to load all of the above into my sister-in-law’s little Euro-car. Some of you may be wondering why we took 300 diapers to Germany. Why not buy them once we arrived? The answer is found in Europe’s green regime. Disposable diapers are hideously expensive in Deutschland. Residents are encouraged to use cloth. I had a different view. Scraping infant waste out of cloth diapers caused me to turn green in a way that made we want to leave the planet rather than save it, so the disposables had to come along.

Next stop, the airport. The Christmas rush at Atlanta-Hartsfield was daunting, but I felt secure knowing our seat reservations were solid and my conditions had been met. When we finally made our way to the front of the check-in line, I presented our tickets and passports, fully expecting to be sent on to the metal detectors without delay. We were quickly dispatched, but not before the desk clerk bluntly informed me that our seats would be in the middle of a row. No bulkhead. No bassinet attachment. No aisle seat to ease my big man’s claustrophobia. A silent scream began to build as I shot my wife a baleful glare. Perhaps sensing that our marriage was taking on water, she tried to argue with the desk clerk, but could not regain our promised seats.

Although I was extremely upset about the seat reassignment, I did obtain some relief from watching our luggage float down the conveyor belt behind the counter. Knowing I’d have to pick it up on the other side, part of me secretly hoped at least a few suitcases would be lost. While we waited at the gate, I decided to obtain some Euros for walking around money. After paying various surcharges and incurring the cost of an apparently unfortunate exchange rate, I think I got 70 euros for about 500 dollars. Being a philistine when it comes to travel, I hadn’t picked up on the admonition not to change money at the airport.

By the time we boarded the airplane, I had worked up a little enthusiasm. After all, this was my first foray to Europe. The positive feelings lasted until we took our seats next to a sweating young man with his hair plastered to his forehead. He appeared to be a refugee from somebody’s big fat Greek wedding. He also appeared to be quite ill. I had to hope he’d gotten hold of a bad gyro. Otherwise, my little family was going to be prime candidates for some vile Euro-flu. While I eyed him suspiciously out of the corner of my eye, the sadist in front of me leaned his seat all the way back and crushed my knees. The Greek with the Euro-flu let loose a nasty, wet-sounding cough. Only ten hours to go. I was in Hell.

I survived the flight somehow. We claimed our bags and rode an escalator down to the train depot. Although my wife’s sister assured us we would easily be able to determine which train to board and where to stand, the situation was completely unclear to us on the ground. I used my high school German to converse with a woman waiting on the train. She did tell me which train we should take and where to stand. Beyond that, I wasn’t good for much, but she was hungry for conversation and continued to engage me. I’m not sure what we talked about, but I agreed that birthdays are good and that people need jobs. Perhaps not trusting my information, my wife (who speaks no German at all) interrogated a porter and obtained a different answer. We moved to a different spot on the platform. The train came. We were standing in the wrong spot. We, our baby, the stroller, the car seat, the diaper bag, and several suitcases had to sprint down the platform to get on the train. With both hands full and several heavy bags hanging from my neck, I paused on the steps of the train as a family with young children blocked my path. My mercenary wife screamed for me to get on the damn train. I stepped on and over the people in my way. My wife and child got on as the doors closed. The Germans apparently allowed a generous nine seconds for boarding.

When we arrived in Freiburg, a very pregnant sister-in-law met us in a very small Mercedes. After packing our luggage, baby accessories, and children (born and unborn), there was very little room for me. I did my best impersonation of a folding chair and inhaled. It was just enough. We arrived at their apartment building and lugged our bags up FIVE flights of stairs. I felt the apartment was a bit nippy and began looking for a thermostat to adjust. In my search, I spied a series of radiators. Although I adjusted each radiator to the upper end of its range, I never detected a change in temperature. Having been admonished by my wife to stop complaining, I learned to enjoy the concept of relative warmth. For example, while the apartment bordered on frigid, compared to the bathroom with its open skylight designed to vent undesirable odors, it was relatively warm. It should come as no surprise that I completely abandoned my normal practice of taking reading material to the toilet.

Though I already knew the Germans were enviro-friendly, I had no idea how far the obsession had gone. Our family members explained that every piece of garbage had to be sorted and deposited in the correct garbage can, but I kept forgetting which crumb, pit, or piece of paper had to be taken to each of the 37 different receptacles in the apartment. After a couple of days, I just started throwing everything into the same trash can and counted on Big Brother to sort it out. By the time our trip was over, I was secretly pleased not to have been assessed a fine for failing to save my own solid waste products for recycling in the community’s compost heap.

It turned out that our sweating Greek seatmate was not reeling from bad yogurt on his gyro. He did have the Euro-flu and we caught it: Daddy, Mama, and baby. Not only did our little boy never adjust to the time change that comes with crossing nine time zones, but he also was miserably ill. I spent most nights from 1-5 a.m. pushing him around the little apartment in his stroller trying to help him sleep while I sipped peppermint tea to ease my own symptoms.

Peppermint tea became my drug of choice because of my unsuccessful dealings with the German pharmacies. It is essentially impossible to purchase over the counter remedies of your own choosing at the local apothecaries. The process worked like this: I approached the pharmacist and explained my symptoms and that I’d like some Nyquil or other similar cold medicine. The pharmacist looked at me skeptically, disappeared behind a curtain, and emerged with a small box. I paid the price quoted, walked outside, and examined the box. It contained Tylenol with vitamin C. Though highly annoyed, I didn’t go back for more. My previous trip had gotten me a container filled with sage (yes SAGE) throat lozenges. Try to imagine sucking on a hard candy flavored with sage. Then again, maybe you shouldn’t. The concoction could easily be sold to bulimics to help speed things along.

Despite dealing with a slightly less malignant version of the Bubonic Plague, I was determined not to miss out on Freiburg. During the days, I walked the streets for hours, amazed by the beautiful cobblestone roads and the little streams that run alongside the sidewalks. A few things struck me on my unguided tours.

First, there were plenty of homeless people hanging out on sidewalks and under bridges. Their presence came as a great surprise to me since I knew Germany funded an extensive welfare state. Oddly enough, they were much better looking than American homeless persons and all had large dogs. When I asked my brother in-law (or whatever you call your sister in-law’s husband) why the homeless had dogs, he earnestly assured me the dogs count as dependents for tax purposes. Because he is a liberal, I knew he wasn’t joking.

Second, Germans appear to be fashion-obsessed. Everyone wore cutting edge clothing and shoes, even while shopping for groceries. I walked around in a confrontationally un-chic ensemble consisting of a navy mock-turtleneck in poly-cotton blend, khaki pants, emerald green ski jacket, and gray New Balance running shoes. To complete the look, I added a cheap French beret that looked exactly like the one Charlie Brown wore to the international spelling bee. It pleased me to think I was a walking affront to the shallow aesthetic values of Old Europe.

Finally, and this part really isn’t funny at all, I was overwhelmed by the sight of some of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen. One was in Freiburg. I visited it every day. Another was in Strasbourg, France. Having grown up in the American South, I was more accustomed to simple buildings with wooden pews and basement fellowship halls. These glorious cathedrals reached into the heavens like antennae tuning into God’s personal frequency. And yet, both structures had become more like tourist attractions than churches.

The cathedral in Strasbourg had a monument in its sanctuary to the American soldiers who had given their lives in World War II to free the French people. I wondered how many similar stones marked American glory on French battlefields and what awful sickness of the spirit had befallen the citizens of France to bring them to their current shallow state. More broadly speaking, I wondered why Europe had so easily abandoned its once robust Christian faith and leadership of the civilization project in favor of a mediocre socialism and focus on mere leisure.

Our two weeks in Europe eventually came to an end. I began packing 48 hours before our train was scheduled to leave. The night before our departure, my sister in-law bitterly complained to my wife that I was now in a better mood than I had been for the entire duration of the visit. Regretfully, her accusation was true, but I’m an American optimistic about our ability to lead the world of the future and being in Old Europe during the new millennium was just too damn depressing.

Besides, it was Christmas and I was tired of seeing pornographic images in public sidewalk windows and listening to CNN International harp on American failures to apprehend global complexities. I needed to get my little boy back to the place of his birth, a nation still wrestling with history instead of hiding from it. And for that, I was willing to endure another lap-crushing, Euro-flu inducing flight through the friendly skies with Lufthansa . . . even if they did separate me from my wife and child on the way home.

Hunter Baker may be contacted at bakersemail@yahoo.com

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