danny, the champion of the world

First of all, don’t tell Mia it’s 2007, not until at least this evening. She was all excited to stay up until midnight, but her eyes glazed over and her spine went all boneless and we sent her to bed around 8:30 with a fever. But we promised her – promised – that we’d finish New Year’s Eve tomorrow, that in fact it was a two-part affair, and that tonight was just a prelude. She bought it, and anyone who tells her otherwise is in big trouble.

Sarah doesn’t have a fever, but she followed Mia off to bed a couple hours later, though no deception was involved. I, on the other hand, poured a glass of champagne and a bowl full of peanuts and took up residence on the balcony to see what, if anything, Zug had to offer for Neujahr.

As it turns out, Zug has a lot to offer.

First came the bells. From about a quarter ‘til, the churches started sounding the coming of midnight. One steeple rang out, then another, then two more, and by 11:55, the entire perimeter of Lake Zug and the whole of the valley surrounding it were vibrating with the peals of a hundred church bells, maybe a thousand. Whatever, it was loud. Loud enough to rouse Sarah out of bed and upstairs to my side. And then…

Well, not total silence, but close. Within thirty seconds, the bells stopped ringing, all of them, the last ones rattling to a halt with about a minute left in the day. Then, on the stroke of midnight, the fireworks started with a thick, dull boom over the northern end of the lake. And suddenly, the whole valley was alight with explosions of color, fireworks launched from backyards and front yards and balconies in every direction. The effect was, in Sarah’s apt description, like being in a darkened stadium when everyone starts taking pictures. It was enchanting.

The bells started up again slowly, then more quickly, reaching another crescendo around fifteen minutes after the hour before settling down again. The fireworks, on the other hand, continued unabated for another quarter-hour before they too dissipated, followed closely by a lazy, sulfurous haze, which floated slowly off towards the clouds.

I have no idea how we’re going to re-create all this for Mia.

1. Driving a cab in Barcelona makes you crazy. Our cabbie from the airport shouted at us because we hadn’t told him the name of our hotel. Of course, we had told him the name of our hotel. In fact, the first thing I said to him, in Spanish, was “Do you know the Hotel Sant Joan Despí?” To which he responded, “Sí.” To which I responded, “Good. Take us there.” Later, on our ride, he asked for the address, and while we searched for it, he became more and more impatient, until I finally said, “Wait, you don’t know the Hotel Sant Joan Despí?”

“Oh, the Hotel Sant Joan Despí!” he said. And then he yelled at us. For not telling him the name of the hotel. You figure it out.

Our cabbie from Las Ramblas to Parc Guëll fussed over his upholstery, even swatting at Mia’s foot because her shoe was touching the seat. (She’s four. Her legs, really, are not all that terribly long. Her shoe, inevitably, touches the seat.) Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’ve got a car and I’m super-precious with my back-seat upholstery, you know what I don’t do with that car? I don’t turn it into a cab, that’s what.

But then, that’s just me. Mr. Pragmatic.

Both cabbies were crazy. Neither cabbie got a tip.

2. Barcelona is for walkers. The Metro is, anyway. We might never have noticed this had we not traveled with Max’s stroller, but we did (it came in awful handy around nap-time), and now I’m wondering how handicapped people get around.

It’s not that there aren’t elevators, because there are. It’s just that they’re not always where you want them to be, and they don’t always go where you want them to go. For example, they don’t always go out to the street. You’d want that, right? In a subway? If you couldn’t walk?

Instead, they may get you to a walkway that gets you to the other side of the tracks, but if you want out, you’re going to need to get out of the chair and climb some stairs. Or they may exist only on a sign – the picture of the elevator points to the stairwell, or to an escalator, or even to a dead-end, but not to an actual elevator. Even those elevators that do exist – and in fact lead up to the street – often sit at the top of a short flight of stairs. It’s as though the Barcelona Transit Authority thinks people only ride wheelchairs because they’re sick of walking.

Of course, that’s why Max rides his stroller half the time, but when he’s feeling that way he’s pretty ornery, so it’s best not to haggle with him. As a result, we spent most of the week lifting the stroller up and down stairs, sometimes with Max in it, sometimes without. It got a bit wearying, to tell the truth. At one point, after an entire day of this, we dragged the stroller down a flight of about ten steps only to discover, after about twenty feet, an identical flight up. I got the feeling the entire Metro system was intentionally set up as an obstacle course for rollers like us. All that was missing was a rope wall.

Finally one day, I found myself standing above an empty stroller, pressed into a far-from-empty train car next to a pair of subway cops. Max was ten feet away on the lap of his big sister, who was on the lap of her mother. It was rush hour, and I was cheek-to-cheek with the two cops, one of whom nodded to the stroller and asked, “Can’t you fold that thing up?” I smiled and shrugged. “Not here I can’t,” I said. Then I asked him why there were no elevators in the subways.

He shook his head. “No, that’s not true,” he said. “There are elevators in the subways.” I told him that I always had to carry Max and his stroller, and he nodded. “Oh, yeah. There aren’t really elevators for that.” So there you have it.

3. Spain is for meat lovers. But I already knew that. There are two kinds of food in Spain: food with beef, ham, chicken, and seafood, and food with just ham. I had the patatas bravas.

A lot.

4. Antoni Gaudí is way rad. I knew that too.

5. Barcelona is also way rad too. I’d been there before, but for some reason it hadn’t made as much of an impression on me as the rest of Spain. This time, though, it hit me, despite the fact that we were with the kids and, by definition, unable to see the city the way it really ought to be seen. That means no late nights stumbling from tapas bar to tapas bar, no lazy, sangria-addled afternoons on some beach terrace, and no lingering visits to the Picasso museum, or the Miró, or the Dalí. We did do some of that – Sarah let me visit the inside of Gaudí’s crazy aquatic Casa Batlló while she waited on the street with the kids, for instance, and we did settle everyone down enough for a (very early) round of tapas one evening. But Barcelona with kids – anywhere with kids, really – is just a different experience altogether.

Still, we managed to blanket the city pretty good in about five days. We craned our necks at Sagrada Familia and hopped from street tile to street tile along the Ruta del Modernisme, and we found a nice spot on the long, curvy bench at Parc Güell for some sweet pastries and chocolate milk. We navigated the crowds and the birds and the human statues on Las Ramblas, and we squeezed ourselves into the buzzing market just off to the west, where fruits and vegetables and flowers and so, so many dead fish and squids and cows and pigs form a gorgeous, brilliant walk-through collage.

We also let the kids take a break from all-Barcelona-all-the-time and visited the zoo and the beach and the aquarium, the very sight of which caused Mia to break into a dead run, shouting – I kid you not – “Come on! Let’s go experience the world of fish!”

And on Friday night, after a long, trying day of hauling Max’s stroller up and down the Metro steps, we hiked up to Montjuïc to watch the dance of the Magic Fountain that lies between the National Museum of Art and Plaza España. The sun set, the lights filled the sky, the music settled an otherwise itchy Max, and the spray damped our tired faces, and it was an altogether gorgeous way to end the week.

We caught a cab from there back to our hotel. As we rode off through throngs of locals shopping and drinking and strolling, I asked the driver if the part of town we were in had a name. “Sants,” he said. Then, after thinking for a moment, he laughed and told me, “Every part of Barcelona has a name.” We listened to the radio, and told me about Saddam, and about Mike Tyson, and he brought us straight home without once yelling or swatting or fussing.

That cabbie was not crazy. That cabbie got a tip.

Sarah took Mia to the office Wednesday morning. Like you, I assumed was a good way to get some cheap Power Point help, but as it turns out, Mia just wanted to go to work with Mommy. This being a slow week for everybody involved, she did.

I wasn’t there, so I can’t report directly on the day. But here’s what I hear. I hear that Mia spent most of her time coloring, first on the whiteboard, then on paper. I also hear that she made paper snowflakes. Actually, I know this for certain, because she gave me one. I hear that she visited the kitchen, and I hear that she ate a croissant from the basket and drank a bottle of water (ohne gas, bitte) from the fridge. Word is, she was also a little shy. When I picked her up, I said, “What did you do at work with Mommy?” She said, “I was a little shy.”

Not that shy, though. See, Mia has a very loud habit of singing while she goes to the bathroom at home, and from what I hear, this habit extends to her professional life as well. According to Sarah, my girl sat on the toilet in the European headquarters of the biggest biotech concern on the planet and sang – in full voice – “Part Of Your World,” from “The Little Mermaid.”

When’s it my turn?
Wouldn’t I love
Love to explore that shore above?
Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world.

You do whatever you want with that lyrical symbolism. Sarah’s reaction was to gently shush her. I can’t say as I blame her. (Mia, I mean. Who doesn’t sing in the bathroom?)

Oh yeah, I hear one other thing. I hear that Mia documented the day with her new digital camera. It’s from Fisher Price, and it’s pink, and she’s been recording her life with it all week. She got it, as you might guess, for Hanukkah.

Which is now just…about…over.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Hanukkah is a marathon, not a sprint, and the seventh night is where even the hardiest givers start to break down. Which is my way of saying that I’m low on ideas tonight.

(Oh, and you’re not?)

Anyway, I’ll just offer this: For nearly three months since we got here, I’ve been trying to figure out what the business next door is. There’s almost no traffic there – nobody ever seems to come in or go out. And the street-side sign offers almost no hint at all for the non-German-speaker. All it says is “Zimmerman, Bestattungen,” and there’s a drawing of a rose.

Now, I’m pretty close to illiterate in German, but I do know this much: Zimmer means room. That, plus the flower, let me to the obvious conclusion about my neighbors: they’re interior designers.

Or not. I probably should have paid more attention to the second word. Turns out, Bestattungen means funerals. And today we got a little independent confirmation of the goings-on over at Weinbergstrasse 10.

Anyway, now I know why it’s always so quiet over there.

There are days when it’s exhausting. I love them. I love them more than anything, I really do. But there are days when I get whipped by it all, and by the end of these kinds of days, I’m bent over, like a fighter who’s been taking body blows for 10 rounds. Maybe I’m a wuss, I don’t know, but I am, to put it plainly, completely worn out.

Today was such a day. For most of ten hours, I spent my time coaxing and arguing, prodding, promising, wheedling, reassuring, arbitrating. I pushed, I got pushed, I scolded, I warned, I implored, I refused. I coddled. I begged to no avail, and I fended off begging with some success. I deflected. I distracted. I directed. I ignored whining. I tried, anyway.

I filled cups, I wiped noses, I mopped floors, I got juice, I got milk, I made meals, I washed hair, I calmed nerves, I kissed tears, I bundled children, I installed shoes, I lifted 35 pounds into a car seat, I lifted 35 pounds out of a car seat, then I repeated it with 40 pounds. And then I did it again. I walked very…very…slowly, and then I ran to deflect danger. I was ridden like a pony, I was sat upon like a log, and was walked on like a doormat – literally. Maybe figuratively.

I had no personal space. At all.

Of course, there’s plenty more. I also laughed and sang and wrestled and tickled. I played Connect Four. When’s the last time you played Connect Four? I held the boy while he fell asleep, then I held him when he woke up, upset, needing a long, warm hug from his father. I sat on a big, comfortable chair and read a pretty good story about hippopotamuses and elephants while the two of them nuzzled my neck and chest. So I am not complaining. I’m just saying. When the whole thing was over – before it was over – I was beat.

Then Sarah got home. Then we lit candles. It’s day six. Then I went for a long walk. From here to the Kolinplatz, over to the Postplatz and then the bahnhof by way of the Bundesplatz. I platz-hopped. At the bahnhof I browsed magazines and bought a newspaper and a Mars Bar. I ate the Mars Bar slowly. Nobody asked for a bite. Then I started up Baarerstrasse, right on Lüssiweg, up past the 24-hour milk barn, past the Kantonschule, across Aegeristrasse, and home. It took an hour in the bitter cold, but it seemed like ten minutes. My hands never left my coat pockets.

I walked fast. Sometimes very fast.

Tonight, that was all I wanted.

There’s always gelt on Hanukkah. I don’t mean the money – for those who don’t know, Hanukkah gelt is the money given by grandparents to 11-year-old grandchildren this time of year to help defray the rising cost of baseball cards and/or little souvenir baseball bats, depending on how smart an investor you are.

The gelt I’m talking about, though, is the money that gets hollowed out and filled with chocolate this time of year. It’s not great chocolate, but it’s chocolate, and it comes in a little meshy sack, like a bag of gold coins ought to. This is also Hanukkah gelt, and it’s this gelt of which I speak today. It’s this gelt of which I say, Gelt is good. Gelt works.

Which is why day five is as good a day as any to point out that Switzerland is basically one giant, meshy, golden bag of gelt. There’s tons of money here, and it’s all been hollowed out and filled with chocolate. Only in this case, the chocolate is really, really good.

I’ve spent enough time on this site talking about things I don’t like about Switzerland. More than enough time. Too much time, considering how much there is about this place that’s really wonderful. So for day five, I present the chocolate aisle at the grocery store – any grocery store. You won’t find salsa anywhere in Switzerland, but you could hold an Olympic triple-jump trial in Aisle 16 at Metalli Migros in Zug, and it’s true in every supermarket, mini-mart, and train-station kiosk in the country.

Everybody talks about chocolate, but nobody does anything about it. Except for the Swiss. They eat 22 pounds of the stuff every year, most on the planet. Now that’s what I call dedication.

It’s cold today. How cold? I’ll tell you how cold. It’s cold as Christmas. Cold as a well-digger’s arse. Cold as a landlord’s heart. That’s how cold.

It’s cold as a polar bear’s paw. Cold as a witch’s teat. Cold as a dog’s nose. Cold as a butcher. Cold as a cart wheel. Cold as a cadaver. Cold as stone. It’s colder than that. It’s cold as a winter sea. Cold as a cast-iron commode. Cold as death.

It’s cold enough to hang meat. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Cold enough to create a Bose-Einstein condensate, for the physics-inclined. And it’s supposed to get colder this week.

It’s cold as a motel bible today. But it’s not nearly so lonely.

Happy fourth night!

Third night’s always a bit of a let-down. First night’s the big guns, and second night is some decent-sized guns, but by the time the third night rolls around, you’re generally down to your bayonet.

This year, the third night is Otto’s, which is no kind of gun at all – more like a sharp stick, really. Or just a dull stick. But still. I like the place.

Maybe it’s because it’s cheap. Maybe it’s because I’ve finally mastered the complicated parking situation there. Or maybe it’s because Otto’s makes me feel at home. It’s sort of like a Target, only without all that attention to “design,” and “presentation,” and “putting similar items in the same place in the store.” Actually, it’s what it might look like if Target had a giant garage sale to get rid of all its old crap.

You don’t shop Otto’s the way you shop other stores. You can’t just go to the aisle that has what you’re looking for, because there aren’t any aisles, save for a few rows of shelves in the far back corner. What there are is vicinities – as in, the men’s sweaters are kind of over there, next to the pasta sauces and the soap. And the candy is right here, between the cologne and the dishware. Toys are on that side, and furniture is upstairs.

All these regions are populated by little islands of merchandise crammed close together, leaving almost no space to pass between. What space there is is limited further by the shopping carts filled with even more merchandise. You can’t stride at Otto’s, you can only zig-zag, and every now and then you get blocked by a shopping cart and have to back up to find a clear path out. It’s like driving a bus through a corn maze, is what it is.

The result of all this haphazardness is that every trip to Otto’s is an unfocused amble down Serendipity Lane. Liquor bumps up against Bath Fixtures, which ends at a bin filled with dented 15-oz. cans of beans.

Today I stopped in to buy band-aids. By the time I found them, I had already picked up five sleeves of instant soup, including one that claims to re-hydrate into full-fledged matzo-ball soup (we’ll see about that); two reams of printing paper; one daily diary upholstered with velour and embroidered with a cartoon elephant and a mouse; one roll of scotch tape for Mia so that she’ll stop taking mine; and one bag of kässewaffeln knoblauch – cheese-and-garlic waffle-chips so good I almost made them the third night’s gift, all by themselves.

It was a balancing act to get it all back to the one tiny checkout counter with the cigarette cubbies above the cashier, but I did it. The whole haul was less than 30 bucks, which is insanely cheap. You’re just gonna have to take my word for that.

Happy third night of Hanukkah!

Second night. Second gift.

The kids don’t sleep in. I would sleep in, but the kids don’t. Nor do they get up and cook breakfast. We’ve got to work on that. Happily, in this house the second night of Chanukkah happens 7 mornings a week.

You get a mug. You put it under the coffee-spigot. You push a button. Twice, if you’re extra tired. And then there’s coffee. Delicious, wonderful, foamy coffee.

It’s a Festivus Miracle, Jerry!

First night. This lady, she’s the shamus.

She stands above the others. She lights up the room. She starts the singing. She makes things happen. (She also makes the latkes.) She gets the fire going.

Er, heh. Let’s move on.

First night means first gift. First gift means best gift. Obviously, it’s these knuckleheads:

Not all the nights are this good. Nor are they all this sappy, or even this short. Bear with me. See you tomorrow.