Personal Life: Hallelujahs and Diatribes

We're in love with German daycare. We pay 160 Euros a month. (The Director went into aploplexy when I told her what daycare costs in St. Louis). The building is light, airy, clean and inviting. The classrooms open up onto the back of the building, where there is an alluring playground that feels like an Italian townsquare for the under- 4-set. The facility has its own chef, and the food is fabulous. For lunch, the kids eat things like cauliflower in hollandaise sauce and spaetzle with feta cheese. Eve has become a little gourmand and at home seems to give a resigned sigh if we dare to open a jar of baby food.

The daycare workers are happy, devoted to the kids, and proud of their jobs. Many of them have been with this daycare center for years.And the kids are diverse. Eve's group of 11 includes children from Africa, Jamaica, Turkey, and Argentina.

I drop Eve off each day and find myself wanting to stay. (Perhaps if I could do daycare again, I'd get everything right this time.....)

Nicole spent most of the summer in intensive German classes. She's made stunning progress, and I can no longer get away with making up wholly arbitrary translations of people's comments to us when I have no idea what they've been saying. Since August, she's been doing a comprehensive seminar on German politics and society with the other Bosch Fellows. (In German!) She starts her first internship in October, which will be with the Institute for Urban Studies. The Institute's theme this year is "shrinking cities." Apparently Berlin has been losing population over the past decade, and the urban planners are getting nervous. They're afraid that Berlin could be going the way of Detroit or, well, St. Louis. Nicole, formerly of the St. Louis Development Corporation, may be thrust into the position of resident expert or dark prophet of doom. So far in Berlin we've had little sense of deja vu, except that tonight I had pizza so bad, with cheese so gummy, that I did for a moment think I was back in St. Louis, munching at Imo's.

But the Berliners really are worried about things. The city is massively in debt. The public schools have fallen precipitously in quality and are allegedly plagued with disorder. Many parents have started sending their kids to private schools or moving to the burbs -- mainly to get away from the Turks and Arabs and other "Others." The media speak constantly of "crisis."

For us it's funny what counts as a crisis. The crime rate is a joke compared to the U.S., particularly if one speaks of violent crime. There is relatively little pan-handling, public drunkenness, or drug-abuse. The museums, operas, symphonies, and theaters are fantastic and -- though threatened with collapse - still going strong. Public parks are dirtier than they used to be, but are still attractive places for families.

Public transportation is a marvel. We've always known about the great German U-Bahn and el-trains, but the buses have been a revelation. They are clean, quiet, comfortable and on-time. Everybody uses them. (Giving the lie to the American claim that the middle classes "won't ride buses"). The best thing for us is that they have rear entrances for strollers and wheelchairs, and the entire bus drops down on hydraulics almost to ground level at each stop. Inside the bus is a place to latch your stroller, so it doesn't roll. We've yet to miss having a car.

Which makes me think again of St. Louis. When you compare German and American cities, it's odd that the Germans are constantly wringing their hands about "crises," while we Americans just plow forward with our famous and self-congratulatory optimism. Often this summer, I thought of the bored faces of people on Kingshighway in St. Louis waiting endlessly for buses on a hot summer day or a cold rainy evening in winter. Why DO they put up with it? Like the Indian tribal chief who visited 18th century London, I sometimes get this naive sense of wonder at why the poor folks in America don't simply rise up and slit the rich folks' throats. (Well, I guess sometimes they do). Poor people in Germany would never put up with the things that poor Americans usually assume are just a "natural" part of life.
In St. Louis we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build one puny light-rail line from whitey-stop #1 to whitey-stop #2, mainly so a playgroup of wealthy suburbanites can appease their lust for choo-choo trains, while all of public transportation is otherwise a creaking disaster. In Germany that would never happen -- not because the rich people here are nicer or more empathic, but because everyone would be afraid of the consequences.

But really I should get back to pizza....