Being Cosmopolitan

Last time I wrote sort of a tongue-in-cheek account of frustration and woe about life here. But this time I am writing to make you envious. We traveled to Germany this weekend to visit our daughter Amanda and also spend some time with friends there. It was wonderful. For almost a decade I served on the Young Life – German Partnership committee. Sometime in the mid-1970’s Young Life established a partnership with the state church in Wurttemberg in and around Stuttgart in Southern Germany. The relationships formed from doing this work have enriched my life deeply.

So we stayed this weekend in Ludwigsburg, Germany, with Kerstin, who heads the partnership committee on the German side, and her husband Sven. They are really smart and really nice, and I like people like that. On Friday night we went to a restaurant that specializes in serving game and I had wild boar. It was spectacular – served with fresh cranberries in a special sauce with spetzel. Man, that was good. On the way to the restaurant they asked how Gretchen and I were adjusting to our new lives and I mentioned that I had been struggling between the two cultures and have been asking myself, “who or what am I when I know I am not Dutch but then have questions when I go back into American culture?” Sven said, “Then you are cosmopolitan, but more than that you are human, which is the best any of us can hope to be.” There is real wisdom in that statement.

Sven is a collector, and I appreciate that personality. I used to collect stamps as a boy and baseball cards as a boy and an adult, and now I guess I collect friends in different countries. Sven collects things related to fantasy literature, and Kerstin and Sven together collect Scotch whiskey. I asked them what turned out to be one of the smartest questions I’ve ever asked anyone on Friday night. I said, “I don’t really know anything about Scotch. Will you teach me?” And they did. We had a tasting, and also an education. They have traveled in Scotland many times and visited several distilleries and they brought out lots of different types and we learned about the taste differences from the types of barrels Scotch is aged in. I found out I was an oak man, although it seems like the most distinguished palates go for the “peaty” whiskeys. We learned about using your hand to warm the Scotch to bring out its full flavor, and although we sampled many different types it was just in small sips and we kept our wits about us. (If we had gotten hammered, I just wouldn’t write about it.) I will say, though, that I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep Friday night.

On Saturday they took us to the baroque Christmas market in Ludwigsburg. The market is baroque because Ludwigsburg is baroque – the castle in Ludwigsburg was inspired by Versailles and is a European treasure. The market was huge and featured a brass band, people dressed in period costumes, and most anything you could imagine a Christmas market might have for sale. We bought some vanilla honey, which must have been made by angelic bees because it is heavenly, and a cherry-balsam mustard that you simply would need to taste to understand how good it is. We were also introduced to the wonders of Gluhwein (I am missing an umlaut on the “u”), which is a warm, spiced fruity wine, and I learned the secret of being able to stay outside for hours on end in the cold. We brought some of that home to fortify me the next time I walk Maury in a cold Dutch drizzle. I posted a picture above of me with Sven and Kerstin having a cup of Gluhwein at the Barock Weihnnachtsmarkt in Ludwigsburg. Guten Tag! Amanda joined us Saturday afternoon and we had a very nice time together. One interesting thing was Sven noted how Amanda’s German got worse as she spent time speaking English with us. But Gretchen and I are amazed at our tri-lingual daughter and are very proud of her.

We said goodbye to Kerstin and Sven Sunday and headed over to Esslingen, where Amanda lives, on the other side of Stuttgart. We had dinner Sunday with Dieter, a pastor who is also on the partnership committee, and his American wife Nancy, who is also a pastor, and their two children Anna and Hannes. They are a great family. After dinner we went for a long walk and I asked Dieter about two dozen theological questions I have been thinking about. Dieter told me a great quote from Vaclav Havel, the playwright who was once president of the Czech Republic. He said that hope isn’t the belief that everything is going to work out okay someday, it is the belief that what you are doing now is making a difference. That is quite profound and worth thinking about. He also gave me an unexpected answer to one of my questions. I asked him what sin is and he said, “Sin is failing to trust in life.” I said I didn’t know what that meant and he went on to talk about how in his resurrection Jesus has shown that life is stronger than death. Sin is to live as if you don’t believe that, that you don’t believe life has meaning, to live in a way that doesn’t respect or value others, our planet, our lives, our world, to take this gift of life and not do with it what we could or can do with it. There is much to think about there, also.

German pastors are so much better educated than their American counterparts. I know there must be exceptions, but every German pastor I know has depths of knowledge, not just about theology and people, but also about things like literature, history, language, music, wine, Scotch, and art. I am always enriched after spending time with any of them.

Gretchen and I went home via Luxembourg, just because. Well, not exactly just because. It is almost a seven hour drive home from where we were, and I didn’t want to feel pressured to cut our time short on Sunday. So I looked for a place to stop and break up the drive, and I picked Luxembourg because Amanda and I are having a contest of who has been in the most countries and she was ahead by one…was ahead because I tied her on Sunday night. I was thinking of her when I registered at the hotel. The desk clerk was speaking German when I got there, then spoke French to the person in line in front of me, and then spoke English with me. It is funny because Gretchen and I consider Amanda’s speaking of French, German and English to be such an accomplishment for an American, but I realize this accomplishment qualifies her to work the desk of a hotel in Luxembourg.

All of which made me think of seeing Penelope Cruz on David Letterman on TV a little while ago and she told him she makes films in English, Spanish, Italian and French. And he just looked at her for a second and then said something like, “We are so stupid.” I don’t think we are stupid, but we sure don’t have to know the same things people in other parts of the world need to know.