Corona’s surprising effect on an evening at the theater My favorite small theater has reopened after months of lockdown and we are attending a two-woman show called Primacomedy. I return here with mixed feelings. Would it be full? How will they deal with the social distancing inside the theater? I…

Listen on Apple podcasts / google podcasts / Spotify Now that China has ended its zero covid policy, the virus is exploding, prompting the EU to require testing Chinese passengers before boarding a plane to Europe. In other words, it’s back to the good old days. Not the early days…

List to the audio version on Apple podcasts / google podcasts / Spotify People ask me occasionally if I would ever move back to the U.S. I pause to ponder. I do miss my family, the humor, and particularly the buckwheat pancakes at IHOP which I still haven’t managed to…

Read by the author Bang, bang, bang! In the U.S., this noise usually means guns and maybe even another mass shooting. Fortunately for us here in Germany, it just means that it’s that time of year again: December 31st. New Year’s Eve in Germany means elaborate fireworks displays. But in…

Listen here or on Apple podcasts / google podcasts / Spotify As someone who grew up in a cookie-cutter American suburb, I am surprised again and again to discover secrets of buildings in Munich whose histories I thought I knew. Walking past Munich’s Bayerischer Hof Hotel on the way to…

It wouldn’t be a holiday without pumpkin pie, but what I bake today is a far cry from what my mother used to put in the oven. Read by the author I have cherished memories of holiday meals from my childhood. Certain foods were always on the table for Thanksgiving…

Read by the author or subscribe at Apple podcasts / google podcasts / Spotify I don’t like sports and I don’t care that the Germans were eliminated early on at the World Cup. I’m far more interested in everything happening off the pitch. Growing up on basketball and ice hockey…

Part II: Tragedy People associate Munich first and foremost with the Oktoberfest, but this was not always the case. In post-WWII Germany, the city was strongly associated with the place where Hitler came to power, as Munich was the site of his attempted putsch and it was here that he…

Looking at U.S. politics over the past few years, Germans recognize many patterns from the Third Reich. One of these is the banning of books. There is an unusual monument in Berlin in what looks like an empty square called Bebelplatz. It sits on the grand boulevard Unter den Linden…