Where I live: Day 3

I know everyone is getting out for summer break, but we're still in until the first of August. In September, a huge event will take place, ie, the start of school. For six-year-olds, this is their official entrance to school (kindergarten is optional and not particularly academic). Thus, you will see scenes like this (photo by my husband):



The cones lying on the ground are called Schultueten, or school totes. Parents and grandparents make or buy them, and then fill them with candy and treats so that the kids' school years will be sweet. The kids bring them to school on the first day, and the phalanx of adults who accompany the one small child take a zillion pictures of said child and Schultuete. Sometimes I think the class takes a picture of the kids with them. Then after school, the first-grader gets to eat as much as the parents will allow. You can also buy smaller ones for siblings, so they don't feel left out. My six-year-old is looking forward to this, so I think we'll have to make one in the fall for her, even though we'll be back in the States by then.

Of funerals, bzw. German funerals

I've been to tons of funerals in the States (I grew up in a retirement town, see, and funerals are kind of one form of social activity), one in Chile, and now one in Germany. Today my kids' nursery teacher was buried. She was 78, so I suppose it was her time to go, even though we'll miss her. I rode with friends to the cemetery in Nurnberg, which has got to be huge, because they have a funeral scheduled there in the chapel on site every 30 minutes, like an automated factory or something. They had a nice organ prelude of a few minutes and I have to say, I'll take the German organ music over American funeral organs any day. American funerary organ music sounds like jello to me ("Wackelpudding" in German). German music is gloriously baroque, the notes echoing and crashing over each other. That's the kind of sendoff I'll take, thanks! So I have no idea how representative this is of German funerals in general, but there was an opening song and prayer, then an account of her life, then a brief talk/sermon, then the choir sang a song (nice echoey sound in the stone chapel), and then a closing prayer. Then the very practiced funeral workers whisked the casket (closed) out so the next group could come in, and we all took off for a rather long walk to the very opposite end of a very long cemetery. Lovely old trees, but all new headstones. Why? you ask. Because in Germany, graves are "recycled." Yep. You pay for 25 years or so, and after 25 years, if anyone is still around who cares, you can renew it for another length of time. But at some point, they dig up what's left and dispose of it elsewhere. (I tried to find out, but the person I asked didn't know. Probably thought I was odd for asking.) I'm used to thinking of cemeteries as old, so it's a weird feeling to find everything so recent.

Anyhow, then we sang another song (there being no time in the actual funeral for the closing song), and there was a dedicatory prayer on the grave, and then the family threw flowers inside. I figured that was it, but no, there were these stands of flowers next to the grave, and everyone there was expected to take one out, stand over the grave, and toss it in. I read that the ancient Germanic tribes buried their dead with flowers, too, which I thought was nice. (One attendant told me when she was young, they dumped in handfuls of dirt, instead, which she always found pretty grausam--horrible. I agree. Flowers are much nicer!) And afterwards the family and the choir had cake.

All in all, it was a nice funeral. I like the kind where everyone there knew and loved the deceased, where they've lived a full and interesting life, and it's more of a happy sendoff than anything. The kind I hate are the ones where there's barely any family there, and most of the people attending are strangers trying to find a way to honor someone they don't know. I'm usually involved in the choir in those, and they are awkward. Give me a good sendoff any day!