The tree at the Christmas Market at Place de Paris
27 December, 2005
07 December, 2005
Friendliness and Politeness
The Luxembourgish people, for the most part, are not very friendly to foreigners and tourists. Fortunately for the foreigners and tourists, the natives are a minority in this city. Which explains in good part why they don't like foreigners.
On the other hand, the foreigners here -- the Italians, French, German, and British that I've met -- are very friendly. (I have run into only 1 French person who is openly hostile to Americans, and he's someone I've known for years, a fellow statistician.) Many of the people in Kehlen are foreign, but one of our new neighbors is Luxembourgish, and I've been warned already that they won't like us, and they won't speak to us. You just have to accept that some people will not like you no matter what and go on with your life, and then be really thankful for all the really very friendly people that are here, even if they aren't natives.
One of the meanest natives I've met is the woman at the bank that was supposed to help me open my account. But fortunately for me, she's retired now, so now I can go to the bank and speak to someone who was nice instead.
In my experience, it is the older people who are the rudest, though sometimes you also find a rude teenager. (But teenagers tend to be rude the world over, I believe.) I'm not sure if they feel they are entitled to do as the please because they are old, or perhaps it is their hostility to the foreigners who are taking over the country. I'm not sure. I believe in being nice to the elderly, but some of them try my resolve to be nice.
Waiting in line is a good example. There are people who think nothing about cutting into a line, or even pushing to get to be the next person in line. And when the person who is pushing is a little old lady, you don't want to push back, and so they have the advantage. I think what irritates me the most is that if they would ask, I would let them go first. This would be especially true if they have only one thing to purchase or if they are older than me. But to have them push their way to the front is simply rude. If I try to discuss the situation, they won't answer, no matter if I try English, French, or German.
Yesterday evening was a good example. My youngest daughter and I were Christmas shopping at a store called Blokker, and she found something to buy as a gift. We got in the line at the only register open. There was one man who was in the process of paying and then a lady, and then us. My daughter says her shoe is broken, and when I bend down to look, an old lady squeezes in ahead of me. When I stand up, she is standing way too close to me, and seriously invading my personal space, but I'm not moving because I was in line.
There is some trouble with the computer for the register, but eventually the person finishes paying, and when he leaves, the rude old lady gets makes sure that she is right behind the other lady, and we are completely cut off.
Then the register seriously stops working, and the girl is calling for help, but help doesn't come and doesn't come. She leaves and brings someone back with her. By this time, there are at least 12 people in line, maybe closer to 15. The manager works on the register for a little bit, and then hands her a card and a key. She goes to the other side of the store to the other register, and people are shoving and pushing to get in the new line. There was no way that I could have been close to the beginning of the new line because we started out so far away from the other register. I would have left except that my daughter really wanted what we had picked out. The really rude lady who had cut the line in front of me is now trying to force her way into the new line. The other lady who had been waiting the very longest leaves her purchase on the counter and leaves the store. I'm watching, but I don't know what to do. I don't want to be at the end of the new line, and I really want to give up and leave the store. I tell the manager that I hate the way the lines are in Luxembourg and that I should be at the front of the new line because I have been waiting the longest of anyone. He says to me that he understands because it also happens to him when he is shopping, and he will try to help. He says that in France they understand lines and respect lines, but in Luxembourg, the people are very rude.
He says if I pay cash, he can get me through, he thinks. So he scans our things, I pay, but the receipt won't print. I tell him that we don't need a receipt (we won't need to return this item). As we leave the store, people are now pushing to be in line at his register, but he has the top of the machine open and he's trying to fix the printing part.
The man has a point -- the French might not like Americans, but they do seem to respect a line when they see it. Germans are also very polite. I really don't understand where the lack of politeness and friendliness comes from in Luxembourg.
On the other hand, the foreigners here -- the Italians, French, German, and British that I've met -- are very friendly. (I have run into only 1 French person who is openly hostile to Americans, and he's someone I've known for years, a fellow statistician.) Many of the people in Kehlen are foreign, but one of our new neighbors is Luxembourgish, and I've been warned already that they won't like us, and they won't speak to us. You just have to accept that some people will not like you no matter what and go on with your life, and then be really thankful for all the really very friendly people that are here, even if they aren't natives.
One of the meanest natives I've met is the woman at the bank that was supposed to help me open my account. But fortunately for me, she's retired now, so now I can go to the bank and speak to someone who was nice instead.
In my experience, it is the older people who are the rudest, though sometimes you also find a rude teenager. (But teenagers tend to be rude the world over, I believe.) I'm not sure if they feel they are entitled to do as the please because they are old, or perhaps it is their hostility to the foreigners who are taking over the country. I'm not sure. I believe in being nice to the elderly, but some of them try my resolve to be nice.
Waiting in line is a good example. There are people who think nothing about cutting into a line, or even pushing to get to be the next person in line. And when the person who is pushing is a little old lady, you don't want to push back, and so they have the advantage. I think what irritates me the most is that if they would ask, I would let them go first. This would be especially true if they have only one thing to purchase or if they are older than me. But to have them push their way to the front is simply rude. If I try to discuss the situation, they won't answer, no matter if I try English, French, or German.
Yesterday evening was a good example. My youngest daughter and I were Christmas shopping at a store called Blokker, and she found something to buy as a gift. We got in the line at the only register open. There was one man who was in the process of paying and then a lady, and then us. My daughter says her shoe is broken, and when I bend down to look, an old lady squeezes in ahead of me. When I stand up, she is standing way too close to me, and seriously invading my personal space, but I'm not moving because I was in line.
There is some trouble with the computer for the register, but eventually the person finishes paying, and when he leaves, the rude old lady gets makes sure that she is right behind the other lady, and we are completely cut off.
Then the register seriously stops working, and the girl is calling for help, but help doesn't come and doesn't come. She leaves and brings someone back with her. By this time, there are at least 12 people in line, maybe closer to 15. The manager works on the register for a little bit, and then hands her a card and a key. She goes to the other side of the store to the other register, and people are shoving and pushing to get in the new line. There was no way that I could have been close to the beginning of the new line because we started out so far away from the other register. I would have left except that my daughter really wanted what we had picked out. The really rude lady who had cut the line in front of me is now trying to force her way into the new line. The other lady who had been waiting the very longest leaves her purchase on the counter and leaves the store. I'm watching, but I don't know what to do. I don't want to be at the end of the new line, and I really want to give up and leave the store. I tell the manager that I hate the way the lines are in Luxembourg and that I should be at the front of the new line because I have been waiting the longest of anyone. He says to me that he understands because it also happens to him when he is shopping, and he will try to help. He says that in France they understand lines and respect lines, but in Luxembourg, the people are very rude.
He says if I pay cash, he can get me through, he thinks. So he scans our things, I pay, but the receipt won't print. I tell him that we don't need a receipt (we won't need to return this item). As we leave the store, people are now pushing to be in line at his register, but he has the top of the machine open and he's trying to fix the printing part.
The man has a point -- the French might not like Americans, but they do seem to respect a line when they see it. Germans are also very polite. I really don't understand where the lack of politeness and friendliness comes from in Luxembourg.
30 November, 2005
22 November, 2005
Lessons in Packing (Trade Secrets Revealed)
From my husband's blog:
After six months of living in Luxembourg, we finally have our things from the States. Part of the delay was an argument over whether or not we would have to pay for an extra large shipping container. Now that we are opening boxes, the problem is very clear. Most of the boxes that were packed by the "professionals" were only half full. For the large wardrobe boxes, that means 10-15 sq. feet per box. I know, "Contents packed by weight. Some settling may have occurred during shipping." No wonder our load was almost too big for a forty foot container!
Before this move, I thought that I was unqualified to pack for an ocean move. Now I know all the moving trade secrets. I hope they do not sue me for letting out all the secrets. It is probably a very select few who ever learn those secrets. I will now divulge those very secrets. There is some packing school somewhere that I will put out of business by divulging those secrets on my blog. Do not be surprised if they sue me and make me dismantle my blog. I am not afraid. I will proclaim the moving secrets so all who need them will have the knowledge to pack their own things or even start a moving company. Are you ready? Make sure you follow them very carefully or I cannot be held liable for any malfeasance that may arise as a consequence. (Or is that malapropism? Yes, I'm dangerous with a dictionary.)
Here they are: Get big box. Throw stuff in box. Tape box.
I know this may start a revolution of people packing for themselves. Yes, some movers may lose their jobs, but knowledge for the people is more important. Don't worry about me. Just use this knowledge in your next move. Give this useful information to friends and family. The spread of this knowledge will validate my life. My name may be recorded in history, if not, the revolution which I have begun will live and expand until the end of this very world. People will be set free to pack for themselves. That freedom will be enjoyed by relocators across the globe and for countless generations. That legacy is greater than that which any man could dream, any man could strive, or any man could hope.
And other advantage we have over the professionals. We wash our hands. Of course, packed dishes should always be washed, but it motivates us even more after we noticed that some of the packers were not washing their hands after visiting the restroom. All those germs are probably dead after such a long time in transit, but the thought of it makes us want to clean.
After six months of living in Luxembourg, we finally have our things from the States. Part of the delay was an argument over whether or not we would have to pay for an extra large shipping container. Now that we are opening boxes, the problem is very clear. Most of the boxes that were packed by the "professionals" were only half full. For the large wardrobe boxes, that means 10-15 sq. feet per box. I know, "Contents packed by weight. Some settling may have occurred during shipping." No wonder our load was almost too big for a forty foot container!
Before this move, I thought that I was unqualified to pack for an ocean move. Now I know all the moving trade secrets. I hope they do not sue me for letting out all the secrets. It is probably a very select few who ever learn those secrets. I will now divulge those very secrets. There is some packing school somewhere that I will put out of business by divulging those secrets on my blog. Do not be surprised if they sue me and make me dismantle my blog. I am not afraid. I will proclaim the moving secrets so all who need them will have the knowledge to pack their own things or even start a moving company. Are you ready? Make sure you follow them very carefully or I cannot be held liable for any malfeasance that may arise as a consequence. (Or is that malapropism? Yes, I'm dangerous with a dictionary.)
Here they are: Get big box. Throw stuff in box. Tape box.
I know this may start a revolution of people packing for themselves. Yes, some movers may lose their jobs, but knowledge for the people is more important. Don't worry about me. Just use this knowledge in your next move. Give this useful information to friends and family. The spread of this knowledge will validate my life. My name may be recorded in history, if not, the revolution which I have begun will live and expand until the end of this very world. People will be set free to pack for themselves. That freedom will be enjoyed by relocators across the globe and for countless generations. That legacy is greater than that which any man could dream, any man could strive, or any man could hope.
And other advantage we have over the professionals. We wash our hands. Of course, packed dishes should always be washed, but it motivates us even more after we noticed that some of the packers were not washing their hands after visiting the restroom. All those germs are probably dead after such a long time in transit, but the thought of it makes us want to clean.
Hiring a Moving Company
Our many troubles with two different moving companies are chronicled in a footnote below. (See "Timeline of the Moving Nightmare.") This post lists what we have learned for hiring the next moving company (the one that moves us back to the States).
Sales People
The person who you deal with at the front end, before any contracts are signed, is only a sales person. Before you sign anything, find out who you else you will talk to in the chain (perhaps someone with a title like "moving consultant") and talk to them as well. It would also be helpful to talk to someone who is in charge, a manager of some kind.
Are the other people in the company easy to get in touch with? Do they respond quickly to answering machine messages and email? Do they tell you the same story about the moving process as the sales person?
We found this to be a problem with both moving companies we hired. What the sales person told us wasn't always what the others in the company believed to be true. Not that they were lying (or maybe they were), but it seemed more that the people in the company weren't speaking to each other. We also found that though the sales people were friendly and responded quickly to requests, this was often not true for anyone else in the company.
One thing that impressed me about the Dutch moving company, Dijkshoorn Euromovers, that contracted with Access to take care of the move on this side of the Atlantic was that they understood customer service. We went from weeks with absolutely no information to email and phone calls three or four times a day.
Paper work
The Dutch company seemed very competent. There was a lot of paperwork for Luxembourg, and they handled it all quite well.
We had been instructed by our sales person from both Sea & Air and Access to keep a list of everything that we pack ourselves because customs in Europe will need a list. It didn't need to be too specific, but should be labels such as "clothes", "toys", "dishes", etc. So we did that. I numbered the boxes with a big red marker, and we made the list. We gave it to the guys packing the house who were also keeping a list, using stickers to number the boxes. I didn't know exactly how they were going to reconcile their numbers with our numbers, but I didn't worry too much at the time.
As expected, the Luxembourg customs officials wanted to see the packing list, but they wanted it in French. Mark at Dijkshoorn said they would translate it for 150 Euros. We decided that we could do just as well because we knew our stuff, so Mark faxed the packing list to my office. The list from Access had someone else's name printed at the top for the "customer name", but that name was crossed off and ours written in by hand. Most of the items were labeled only as box. It was incredibly discouraging. We spent hours making up a packing list for 267 pieces, and then translating it into French. By thinking back to the list I had done for our packing, and then trying to remember the order they went in packing the house, we managed to come up with a decent packing list. A friend at work helped me fix the French. (He was quite amused at my French translations.)
Luxembourg customs requested a scan of the container before it was unloaded which cost us almost 300 Euros but couldn't be avoided. Mark at Dijkshoorn Euromovers said that would speed up the process at the border. Because of the fudged inventory list, if customs had wanted to find something specific they saw in the scan, it would have taken a very long time.
How much experience do the people you talk to have with customs? If they don't handle that part of the move, ask to speak to the person who knows. Who have they contracted with to work with customs on the other side of the ocean?
Also, make sure that you keep for yourself a list of the contents of the container. It could come in useful.
Packing
In a previous entry (highly recommended), my husband has given away all the trade secrets so that you can pack your own boxes. When we move back to the States, that is what we are going to do. No more hiring packers for our family!
Before the move, before the "professional" packers came, while we were packing our valuables and favorite toys, Darin was making us do an "ocean voyage test" on all the boxes, which meant shaking them and moving them like ocean waves to see if they rattled. The men who packed our things didn't worry at all about breakage. They put in lamps without any protection, which means we need new lamp shades. Though they wrapped the piano and china cabinet in blankets, other important furniture was left completely unprotected. Books were thrown into boxes, not even laid flat, so that a lot of our paperback books now have damaged pages and covers. Almost none of the boxes they packed were full. And then they have the nerve to tell us that our stuff is too big for a 40' container so they need an extra $4,000 for a larger container. They could have just filled the boxes and there would have been no question about the limits of a 40' container.
We are never going to hire packing done again. If you decide that you can't do all the packing yourself, make sure that you or someone you trust is there to watch and protect the most valuable things.
Fortunately, in spite of all the problems, we've seen very little breakage.
Our plans for moving back
We decided before we came that we are going to leave some of our furniture in Luxembourg. Some of our furniture is nothing special and completely replaceable. So our goal is to reduce down to a 20' container for the move back. With the arguments about whether our stuff would fit into a 40' container for the voyage to Luxembourg, we started to have our doubts about the 20' container. But now that we see how much empty space was in the boxes, and we see how much stuff we have already thrown away, given away (kids books and clothes), or recycled, we believe again that we can make it into a 20' container in a couple of years.
So for the next move, we want to contract only for the moving of a 20' shipping container. There are several companies that have prices for "You pack, we ship." We make sure that they are familiar with customs in the States, and we hire a company. I would hire Dijkshoorn Euromovers if they would give us a price for the self-packing method.
We order the container far in advance (a couple of weeks, at least) of the date we fly back. We make sure we have our boxes packed ourselves in advance of the container coming. We make sure that what is left will fit in our suitcases, meaning that we've also packed our suitcases. We load the container ourselves. Anything left in the house we arrange to go to the next tenants or a thrift store.
Of course, before we move back to the States, we have to decide where we'll be living.
Sales People
The person who you deal with at the front end, before any contracts are signed, is only a sales person. Before you sign anything, find out who you else you will talk to in the chain (perhaps someone with a title like "moving consultant") and talk to them as well. It would also be helpful to talk to someone who is in charge, a manager of some kind.
Are the other people in the company easy to get in touch with? Do they respond quickly to answering machine messages and email? Do they tell you the same story about the moving process as the sales person?
We found this to be a problem with both moving companies we hired. What the sales person told us wasn't always what the others in the company believed to be true. Not that they were lying (or maybe they were), but it seemed more that the people in the company weren't speaking to each other. We also found that though the sales people were friendly and responded quickly to requests, this was often not true for anyone else in the company.
One thing that impressed me about the Dutch moving company, Dijkshoorn Euromovers, that contracted with Access to take care of the move on this side of the Atlantic was that they understood customer service. We went from weeks with absolutely no information to email and phone calls three or four times a day.
Paper work
The Dutch company seemed very competent. There was a lot of paperwork for Luxembourg, and they handled it all quite well.
We had been instructed by our sales person from both Sea & Air and Access to keep a list of everything that we pack ourselves because customs in Europe will need a list. It didn't need to be too specific, but should be labels such as "clothes", "toys", "dishes", etc. So we did that. I numbered the boxes with a big red marker, and we made the list. We gave it to the guys packing the house who were also keeping a list, using stickers to number the boxes. I didn't know exactly how they were going to reconcile their numbers with our numbers, but I didn't worry too much at the time.
As expected, the Luxembourg customs officials wanted to see the packing list, but they wanted it in French. Mark at Dijkshoorn said they would translate it for 150 Euros. We decided that we could do just as well because we knew our stuff, so Mark faxed the packing list to my office. The list from Access had someone else's name printed at the top for the "customer name", but that name was crossed off and ours written in by hand. Most of the items were labeled only as box. It was incredibly discouraging. We spent hours making up a packing list for 267 pieces, and then translating it into French. By thinking back to the list I had done for our packing, and then trying to remember the order they went in packing the house, we managed to come up with a decent packing list. A friend at work helped me fix the French. (He was quite amused at my French translations.)
Luxembourg customs requested a scan of the container before it was unloaded which cost us almost 300 Euros but couldn't be avoided. Mark at Dijkshoorn Euromovers said that would speed up the process at the border. Because of the fudged inventory list, if customs had wanted to find something specific they saw in the scan, it would have taken a very long time.
How much experience do the people you talk to have with customs? If they don't handle that part of the move, ask to speak to the person who knows. Who have they contracted with to work with customs on the other side of the ocean?
Also, make sure that you keep for yourself a list of the contents of the container. It could come in useful.
Packing
In a previous entry (highly recommended), my husband has given away all the trade secrets so that you can pack your own boxes. When we move back to the States, that is what we are going to do. No more hiring packers for our family!
Before the move, before the "professional" packers came, while we were packing our valuables and favorite toys, Darin was making us do an "ocean voyage test" on all the boxes, which meant shaking them and moving them like ocean waves to see if they rattled. The men who packed our things didn't worry at all about breakage. They put in lamps without any protection, which means we need new lamp shades. Though they wrapped the piano and china cabinet in blankets, other important furniture was left completely unprotected. Books were thrown into boxes, not even laid flat, so that a lot of our paperback books now have damaged pages and covers. Almost none of the boxes they packed were full. And then they have the nerve to tell us that our stuff is too big for a 40' container so they need an extra $4,000 for a larger container. They could have just filled the boxes and there would have been no question about the limits of a 40' container.
We are never going to hire packing done again. If you decide that you can't do all the packing yourself, make sure that you or someone you trust is there to watch and protect the most valuable things.
Fortunately, in spite of all the problems, we've seen very little breakage.
Our plans for moving back
We decided before we came that we are going to leave some of our furniture in Luxembourg. Some of our furniture is nothing special and completely replaceable. So our goal is to reduce down to a 20' container for the move back. With the arguments about whether our stuff would fit into a 40' container for the voyage to Luxembourg, we started to have our doubts about the 20' container. But now that we see how much empty space was in the boxes, and we see how much stuff we have already thrown away, given away (kids books and clothes), or recycled, we believe again that we can make it into a 20' container in a couple of years.
So for the next move, we want to contract only for the moving of a 20' shipping container. There are several companies that have prices for "You pack, we ship." We make sure that they are familiar with customs in the States, and we hire a company. I would hire Dijkshoorn Euromovers if they would give us a price for the self-packing method.
We order the container far in advance (a couple of weeks, at least) of the date we fly back. We make sure we have our boxes packed ourselves in advance of the container coming. We make sure that what is left will fit in our suitcases, meaning that we've also packed our suitcases. We load the container ourselves. Anything left in the house we arrange to go to the next tenants or a thrift store.
Of course, before we move back to the States, we have to decide where we'll be living.
21 November, 2005
Schooling and Homeschooling in Luxembourg
We have been homeschooling our girls in the States since our youngest was 5. She's 12 now, so we are on our 8th year of homeschooling. I have been working full-time, and my husband teaches them at home. I help with some subjects in the evenings, and I'm in charge of scheduling and shopping for schools/curriculum.
We've been told by many Luxembourgers about the very high quality of the schools in Luxembourg. One person in particular, a graduate of the system herself, told us that the public schools in Luxembourg are the "toughest" in the world, and that when the kids finish school here, they can go to "universities in the States and skip the first two years" since US high schools are so terrible.
I've talked to lots of kids in this country, both in the Luxembourg schools and in the European schools about what they are studying in math -- my personal yardstick to measure against what my kids are doing. Kids at the European school are behind my kids by more than a year, and the kids at the Luxembourg schools are even farther behind in math. So maybe a student from Luxembourg could skip two years of foreign language requirements, but they couldn't skip any math, and they probably would need remedial English classes.
Luxembourg children in the public school system learn first Luxembourgish and then German. I've been told by Germans living here that the German they learn still isn't "hoch Deutsch", meaning they can't communicate in formal German. When they are about 10 years old, they start learning French, and eventually they will learn English as their fourth language. Most Luxembourgers, if they can speak English, do not speak it well enough to go to a university in the States.
I went to the UNESCO web site, after talking to some people at church, to compare the scores from Luxembourg to the rest of Europe. The trend in Luxembourg is for more and more kids to drop out of school as soon as they are allowed, and for fewer and fewer to go on to a university. Test scores are dropping. The Luxembourg schools are designed to produce ployglots, but not necessarily even good linguists.
Several of the British families I know at church have kids who are grown or at universities in England, and their kids did very well in the Luxembourgish school system. Their kids did very well in the universities and the work force, but partly because they were speaking English at home, and I know of several who took extra classes in math and computers outside of school when they were young.
So when someone tells me that the Luxembourg schools are "tough," in a way they are correct. It's very difficult to learn four different languages before you are allowed to graduate. But tough in this way doesn't translate into good, and it doesn't translate into skills that someone would need to get into a good university or to get a good job.
We thought briefly about putting the girls in public schools here. There are fewer religious issues here (with Luxembourg being officially Catholic), and fewer safety issues. Most people's advice was to put them in and let them "drown" for a while because in a couple of years they would be speaking all the languages you need to survive in Luxembourg schools, and then they will be doing really well. The problem with that is that we'll be moving back to the States in a few years, and the girls would be behind in everything except Luxembourgish, German, and French. We decided we needed to keep them on the American system. And since the American school here would cost us more than my salary, homeschooling was our only option.
My girls also wanted very much to continue in their Missionettes Bible clubs, clubs for girls sponsored by the Assemblies of God. They have been in the clubs since they were tiny (our oldest started at five, the youngest at three). They have made the "Honor" distinction in all the clubs they have been in so far. I got permission from our church in Virginia and the Potomac District to start Missionette clubs in Luxembourg -- homeschooling for Missionettes.
I had tried for ages to email the AG missionaries/pastors here with no luck, to tell them about our Missionettes clubs in English (their church is in French). Then one evening I was talking on the phone to an American who lives up the road, and she said I needed to call her friend Debbie because Debbie is an American with two girls and she homeschools. I asked Melanie Debbie's last name, and it was Reynolds, the AG missionary. So I called Debbie Reynolds, and I got all the scoop on how to homeschool in Luxembourg.
The entire key to homeschooling is to never use the word "home."
In Luxembourg, they allow "home" school for kids that have some kind of disease or handicap that won't let them be around other people. So they bring the list of things to teach the kids to your house, and then you teach them from the manual for that grade. Then at the end of the year, or maybe more often than that, they test the kids, and the entire thing has to be done in the languages here. No English.
So the key to being able to homeschool the American way is to explain that you want the kids on an American system because you're going back to America someday, so you're using the curriculum from a school in the States. Use the word "correspondence" frequently because it's a word they understand.
It will be a bit strange for us because the younger girls are in a transition from one school's curriculum to another school/curriculum. Also, we are about three months behind because they weren't doing school back in March-May when I was here in Luxembourg and they were with their father. (I didn't understand how completely dependent my husband was on my scheduling and organizing abilities.)
Our next step is to find a way to get letters from the schools and have them explain what we are doing. I have some hope that we can make it work.
There will be no summer vacation this year. We still need to make up those three months. And no living apart again either, because it's clear we need all of us together to make homeschooling work.
We've been told by many Luxembourgers about the very high quality of the schools in Luxembourg. One person in particular, a graduate of the system herself, told us that the public schools in Luxembourg are the "toughest" in the world, and that when the kids finish school here, they can go to "universities in the States and skip the first two years" since US high schools are so terrible.
I've talked to lots of kids in this country, both in the Luxembourg schools and in the European schools about what they are studying in math -- my personal yardstick to measure against what my kids are doing. Kids at the European school are behind my kids by more than a year, and the kids at the Luxembourg schools are even farther behind in math. So maybe a student from Luxembourg could skip two years of foreign language requirements, but they couldn't skip any math, and they probably would need remedial English classes.
Luxembourg children in the public school system learn first Luxembourgish and then German. I've been told by Germans living here that the German they learn still isn't "hoch Deutsch", meaning they can't communicate in formal German. When they are about 10 years old, they start learning French, and eventually they will learn English as their fourth language. Most Luxembourgers, if they can speak English, do not speak it well enough to go to a university in the States.
I went to the UNESCO web site, after talking to some people at church, to compare the scores from Luxembourg to the rest of Europe. The trend in Luxembourg is for more and more kids to drop out of school as soon as they are allowed, and for fewer and fewer to go on to a university. Test scores are dropping. The Luxembourg schools are designed to produce ployglots, but not necessarily even good linguists.
Several of the British families I know at church have kids who are grown or at universities in England, and their kids did very well in the Luxembourgish school system. Their kids did very well in the universities and the work force, but partly because they were speaking English at home, and I know of several who took extra classes in math and computers outside of school when they were young.
So when someone tells me that the Luxembourg schools are "tough," in a way they are correct. It's very difficult to learn four different languages before you are allowed to graduate. But tough in this way doesn't translate into good, and it doesn't translate into skills that someone would need to get into a good university or to get a good job.
We thought briefly about putting the girls in public schools here. There are fewer religious issues here (with Luxembourg being officially Catholic), and fewer safety issues. Most people's advice was to put them in and let them "drown" for a while because in a couple of years they would be speaking all the languages you need to survive in Luxembourg schools, and then they will be doing really well. The problem with that is that we'll be moving back to the States in a few years, and the girls would be behind in everything except Luxembourgish, German, and French. We decided we needed to keep them on the American system. And since the American school here would cost us more than my salary, homeschooling was our only option.
My girls also wanted very much to continue in their Missionettes Bible clubs, clubs for girls sponsored by the Assemblies of God. They have been in the clubs since they were tiny (our oldest started at five, the youngest at three). They have made the "Honor" distinction in all the clubs they have been in so far. I got permission from our church in Virginia and the Potomac District to start Missionette clubs in Luxembourg -- homeschooling for Missionettes.
I had tried for ages to email the AG missionaries/pastors here with no luck, to tell them about our Missionettes clubs in English (their church is in French). Then one evening I was talking on the phone to an American who lives up the road, and she said I needed to call her friend Debbie because Debbie is an American with two girls and she homeschools. I asked Melanie Debbie's last name, and it was Reynolds, the AG missionary. So I called Debbie Reynolds, and I got all the scoop on how to homeschool in Luxembourg.
The entire key to homeschooling is to never use the word "home."
In Luxembourg, they allow "home" school for kids that have some kind of disease or handicap that won't let them be around other people. So they bring the list of things to teach the kids to your house, and then you teach them from the manual for that grade. Then at the end of the year, or maybe more often than that, they test the kids, and the entire thing has to be done in the languages here. No English.
So the key to being able to homeschool the American way is to explain that you want the kids on an American system because you're going back to America someday, so you're using the curriculum from a school in the States. Use the word "correspondence" frequently because it's a word they understand.
It will be a bit strange for us because the younger girls are in a transition from one school's curriculum to another school/curriculum. Also, we are about three months behind because they weren't doing school back in March-May when I was here in Luxembourg and they were with their father. (I didn't understand how completely dependent my husband was on my scheduling and organizing abilities.)
Our next step is to find a way to get letters from the schools and have them explain what we are doing. I have some hope that we can make it work.
There will be no summer vacation this year. We still need to make up those three months. And no living apart again either, because it's clear we need all of us together to make homeschooling work.
18 November, 2005
Electricity: Lamps, Transformers, and Microwaves
OK, we got our stuff. That means we can start using our lamps. "Wait," you say, "will American lamps work in Europe since the voltage is different?" Actually, yes. A lamp is just wires to supply the bulb with power.
One might think that since the voltage is higher in Europe (220 volts, only 110 in the US) that you would need larger wires, but the opposite is true. The wires here are smaller because it is more efficient to transmit 220 volt electricity than 110.
That also means the plugs are bigger because the electricity can arc across a gap better, as evidenced when we plug an American plug into an adaptor. The girls were frightened to plug in the American computer because of the arc when they did. Now we have the computer plugged into a surge protector type outlet, so we can cut the power before we plug in the adaptor or the American plug.
Someone in America who had lived in Europe told us that we could use US lightbulbs in Europe. Early on, Darin tried a regular light bulb in a lamp from the States. That did not work. He blew the circuit and the bulb. (Now the hall lights won't work, but they are on a different circuit, so he tells us that it's not related to his light bulb testing.) He tested some compact fluorescent bulbs. They didn't blow any circuits, but they didn't last long with the 220 voltage.
Darin changed the plugs on the lamps, especially since we didn't intend on moving them back to the States anyway. The lights I had on the wall when I was a kid had very old cords on them, and the wall lights here mount directly to wires coming out of the wall, so Darin cut off the cords and will put new cords back on when we get to the States.
Lamps are about the only things that don't need a transformer to work.
However, we finally did something right when it came to moving, though it happened accidentally. I had ordered some transformers from a company in the States to be delivered so they could be packed with our things. But because of problems with the credit card (that weren't our fault, not like we were at the limit or something), the order was canceled. Then the stuff arrives, but the girls can't listen to their CD players because no transformers. Darin mentioned this to our neighbor who works for NATO, and his wife picked up some used transformers for us at the Thrift Shop on base, and very cheap. So now we have transformers, at about a tenth of what we would have paid in the States!
Microwave ovens and some clocks are the only things affected by a change in the hertz (50 cycles instead of 60). Transformers only change the voltage (110 in the US and 220 in Europe), not the hertz. We are borrowing a small microwave from another neighbor until we can buy one for ourselves.
One might think that since the voltage is higher in Europe (220 volts, only 110 in the US) that you would need larger wires, but the opposite is true. The wires here are smaller because it is more efficient to transmit 220 volt electricity than 110.
That also means the plugs are bigger because the electricity can arc across a gap better, as evidenced when we plug an American plug into an adaptor. The girls were frightened to plug in the American computer because of the arc when they did. Now we have the computer plugged into a surge protector type outlet, so we can cut the power before we plug in the adaptor or the American plug.
Someone in America who had lived in Europe told us that we could use US lightbulbs in Europe. Early on, Darin tried a regular light bulb in a lamp from the States. That did not work. He blew the circuit and the bulb. (Now the hall lights won't work, but they are on a different circuit, so he tells us that it's not related to his light bulb testing.) He tested some compact fluorescent bulbs. They didn't blow any circuits, but they didn't last long with the 220 voltage.
Darin changed the plugs on the lamps, especially since we didn't intend on moving them back to the States anyway. The lights I had on the wall when I was a kid had very old cords on them, and the wall lights here mount directly to wires coming out of the wall, so Darin cut off the cords and will put new cords back on when we get to the States.
Lamps are about the only things that don't need a transformer to work.
However, we finally did something right when it came to moving, though it happened accidentally. I had ordered some transformers from a company in the States to be delivered so they could be packed with our things. But because of problems with the credit card (that weren't our fault, not like we were at the limit or something), the order was canceled. Then the stuff arrives, but the girls can't listen to their CD players because no transformers. Darin mentioned this to our neighbor who works for NATO, and his wife picked up some used transformers for us at the Thrift Shop on base, and very cheap. So now we have transformers, at about a tenth of what we would have paid in the States!
Microwave ovens and some clocks are the only things affected by a change in the hertz (50 cycles instead of 60). Transformers only change the voltage (110 in the US and 220 in Europe), not the hertz. We are borrowing a small microwave from another neighbor until we can buy one for ourselves.
02 November, 2005
Timeline of a Moving Nightmare
First, we had hired Sea and Air Cargo International, based in Miami, who did nothing except come into our house and make a mess, call the police that we had abandoned our cat (which we hadn't), and kept our down payment for the move. So we had to find a new company. The next lowest bid was Access International, and to be honest, it was the only other company that we could afford.
Sea and Air Cargo International was the real disaster of the move, though I feel fortunate to have escaped with minimal damage. Basically, we paid them $1800 and they did nothing. In hindsight, it could have been worse, because as far as we can tell, nothing was stolen from the house.
Jan 2005: I sign a contract with a company in Luxembourg.
Feb 2005: I quit my government job.
Mar 2005: My contracts with Eurostat begin. I move to Europe without Darin and our three girls.
30 April 2005: We sign a contract with Sea and Air, and my company pays them $1800 as a down payment for our move, scheduled to load on 18 May from Virginia to Europe. Our sales person, Maria, tells us to relax because everything is under control and we have hire full-service packing, etc.
17 May 2005: Eleanor calls to tell us that the container is scheduled for 23 May. I explain that is incorrect because we are leaving for Europe on 21 May. I tell her we want to cancel. She says we can't cancel without 12 days notice, even though they have "postponed" our date with less than 24 hours notice. I talk to Idan Ohana who promises to personally oversee the move. He gives me his cell phone number and tells me I can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I tell him we will leave the keys with our neighbor across the street. He says he will arrive on Sunday to pack the house, and that loading will begin when the container arrives on Monday.
22 May 2005: I try to call Idan from Europe. His phone is off. I call my real estate agent and my pastor. No one from Sea and Air is at the house.
23 May 2005: I call Idan from Europe again. He says that he was able to get the keys, but they can't pack the house because it's too messy and there is too much stuff. I tell him that it wouldn't have been a problem if we had been there because we could have told them what to leave out, if it really doesn't fit. He says he will call me again later.
24 May 2005: I call Idan again. He gives me a long story about how they couldn't get the container in the driveway and that the police told them they couldn't be there. So now there is too much stuff, and they will need a truck to carry the stuff to a container at some other location. Our driveway is much longer than 40 feet, and straight, and I can't understand why the police care that we have a container in our driveway. There is no neighborhood association, or anything like that. Idan says they will need more money.
25 May 2005 - 31 May 2005: Idan's phone is turned off.
1 June 2005: I talk to Idan again. He is back in Florida. He really still wants to be our mover, but he needs more money. They had to send the container to someone else since it didn't fit in our driveway, so he will have to schedule a new container and he needs more money because our house is really messy. He says that he looked at our furniture and realize we had nothing of value, so he's afraid to pack our house and put it in a container because we will decide that we don't want our belongings since we have nothing of value. (Maria had told us that we should pack everything of value ourselves, which we did.) I don't want to list for him everything we do have that's valuable, so I tell him we are canceling the move. I ask him why, when he left to return to Florida, he didn't leave the keys with our neighbor. He said it was because he still wanted the job.
2 June 2005: Friends of ours go to the house to capture the cat. The house is messier than when we left. There are pieces of metal and empty boxes everywhere.
2 June 2005: I call Idan and cancel the move. He says that the $1800 will NOT be refunded because he spent that money going to Virginia, and it wasn't his fault that the police wouldn't let them load the container. He says he will mail the keys overnight to our real estate agent in Virginia. I file my first complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Florida.
16 June 2005: Idan Ohana replies to the BBB that he will refund our money minus expenses and that the keys are already in the mail back to us.
13 July 2005: We send our deposit to Access International. They agree to be at the house on 27 and 28 July to pack the house.
27 July 2005: The men from Access arrive on time with a 1300 sq ft Budget Rent-a-Truck. Things seem to be doing smoothly. They pack the house and take the boxes and furniture to storage somewhere. Because of problems with Sea and Air Cargo, we tell Access that a container won't fit in our driveway. Later we discover that Sea and Air did have a container in the driveway. If Access could have brought in a container, this could have saved a lot of trouble later on, we discover.
28 July 2005: As the men leave, we are told that the container will cost an extra $4000 because we have 600 sq ft too much. This was a bit of a shock to us, and if it had been explained as we were packing the truck, we could have told them what to leave out. We assume that we can work it out later.
I'm going to skip some details here (for now), but we eventually come to an agreement to get back to the original estimate.
We talk to our neighbor across the street about the container. He says that Idan arrived on Monday for the keys, and the container was there Monday also. It sat in the driveway for two days, but there was no activity at the house except for a truck from Florida and came and went occasionally, but it was clear no one was really at the house or working. And still no keys from Sea and Air Cargo.
13 Sept 2005: I mail checks for all the charges to Access. In full. For the next few days, I ask for confirmation that they've received the checks. I finally get a message.
22 Sept 2005: I see that the checks have cleared by checking my bank balance. I write to ask for my receipts and for a date for the move. Nothing. I send email every day for a week. They don't answer my email or my phone messages. And it's difficult to get through on their voice mail system because we don't have a touch-tone phone at home, so I must call from the phone at work.
27 Sept 2005: I file a follow-up with the BBB in Florida for Sea and Air Cargo because we have still no refund and still no house keys.
28 Sept 2005: I finally am able to get through to Dan at Access, and I'm promised receipts. I think the past week bodes very badly for the rest of the move, but at this point, I'm afraid to change moving companies again. I explain that besides the receipts, we also need a date for the packing of the container so that we can have a friend there who will pull out the stuff we don't want packed so that everything will fit into the container.
29 Sept 2005: The receipts did arrive by email.
I had also requested the location of the storage unit so that we can send some friends over with a truck to pick up the things we want left behind. We've been told that we have 600 sq ft over the limit, but I think it's less than that, and there are some things that we don't need in Luxembourg, so we are confident we can make it fit into a 40 foot container. All my requests for the location of our belongings have been ignored. Completely. I have thought all along that the $4000 was a scam, and it's looking more and more like that.
4 Oct 2005: At around 6 pm, the phone rings. It was a guy with a fairly heavy Spanish accent. He said he was with our movers and needed Darin's social security number. When anyone asks for a social security number, it is probably a scam. So Darin had him tell the name of the moving company. He got it right, but Darin wanted more confirmation, so Darin talked to me and then called them back at the Access number. It was really Dan at Access and not a scam. Dan said that he personally oversaw the packing of our container and they squished everything in. After all that bickering over them raising the price for an oversized load and the company not wanting to pay and not trusting American movers and the extra European (expensive) bids, they got it all in. We had worked out a list of things to leave out if things did not fit, but we never sent it because they never communicate with us. We did not know when they were packing the container. We wanted to have someone there to help decide what to leave out and to haul stuff away. I don't think they wanted anyone overseeing them.
Now the question is: Did they really get everything in or did they leave some stuff out? We would rather have chosen what to leave out than have a few, possibly important, boxes missing. We had a list of unimportant things they could have left out -- big things that could really have created more room. We have to wait for about six weeks plus however long it takes me to unpack everything to see if anything is missing.
20 Oct 2005: Our goods have arrived in port in Holland. So far I like the Dutch moving company. We have gone from absolutely no information to email and phone calls three or four times a day. Luxembourg customs wants a packing list in French, and Access (the company that packed for us and was supposed to have the list) lost our list.
24 Oct 2005: We've been getting the paperwork together for customs. Our state-side movers must have lost the original packing list, because three-fourths of the items on the list we got to translate was "box". The town officials have been very professional. I went down for residency papers to prove that we actually lived here, and she printed, signed, stamped, tax stamped, and let me purchase them immediately. We also had to send copies of our rental agreement and my work contract. I don't know how many times we've had to give Luxembourg a copy of that contract. Maybe someday they will believe that I really work here.
26 Oct 2005: The stuff arrives. The Dutch movers are polite and efficient. The girls were concerned about having a bunch of guys in the house who could only speak French. I told them that the movers are from Holland and speak better English than I do, at least with more of a British accent than I have. There seems to be minimum damage to the goods, despite lousy packing from Access.
2 Nov 2005: Things are in pretty good shape. Moving has taken its toll on things, but no total losses confirmed as yet. Darin taped the lampshades back on, and it turns out that masking tape matches the shades really well! No, they did nothing to protect them. Darin's toolbox is suspiciously light. The visegrips, an impact set, and some other things are missing. The toolbox was not in another box or taped shut in any way.
The tools seem to be our biggest loss so far, though we still haven't found everything or finished unpacking.
Sea and Air Cargo International was the real disaster of the move, though I feel fortunate to have escaped with minimal damage. Basically, we paid them $1800 and they did nothing. In hindsight, it could have been worse, because as far as we can tell, nothing was stolen from the house.
Jan 2005: I sign a contract with a company in Luxembourg.
Feb 2005: I quit my government job.
Mar 2005: My contracts with Eurostat begin. I move to Europe without Darin and our three girls.
30 April 2005: We sign a contract with Sea and Air, and my company pays them $1800 as a down payment for our move, scheduled to load on 18 May from Virginia to Europe. Our sales person, Maria, tells us to relax because everything is under control and we have hire full-service packing, etc.
17 May 2005: Eleanor calls to tell us that the container is scheduled for 23 May. I explain that is incorrect because we are leaving for Europe on 21 May. I tell her we want to cancel. She says we can't cancel without 12 days notice, even though they have "postponed" our date with less than 24 hours notice. I talk to Idan Ohana who promises to personally oversee the move. He gives me his cell phone number and tells me I can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I tell him we will leave the keys with our neighbor across the street. He says he will arrive on Sunday to pack the house, and that loading will begin when the container arrives on Monday.
22 May 2005: I try to call Idan from Europe. His phone is off. I call my real estate agent and my pastor. No one from Sea and Air is at the house.
23 May 2005: I call Idan from Europe again. He says that he was able to get the keys, but they can't pack the house because it's too messy and there is too much stuff. I tell him that it wouldn't have been a problem if we had been there because we could have told them what to leave out, if it really doesn't fit. He says he will call me again later.
24 May 2005: I call Idan again. He gives me a long story about how they couldn't get the container in the driveway and that the police told them they couldn't be there. So now there is too much stuff, and they will need a truck to carry the stuff to a container at some other location. Our driveway is much longer than 40 feet, and straight, and I can't understand why the police care that we have a container in our driveway. There is no neighborhood association, or anything like that. Idan says they will need more money.
25 May 2005 - 31 May 2005: Idan's phone is turned off.
1 June 2005: I talk to Idan again. He is back in Florida. He really still wants to be our mover, but he needs more money. They had to send the container to someone else since it didn't fit in our driveway, so he will have to schedule a new container and he needs more money because our house is really messy. He says that he looked at our furniture and realize we had nothing of value, so he's afraid to pack our house and put it in a container because we will decide that we don't want our belongings since we have nothing of value. (Maria had told us that we should pack everything of value ourselves, which we did.) I don't want to list for him everything we do have that's valuable, so I tell him we are canceling the move. I ask him why, when he left to return to Florida, he didn't leave the keys with our neighbor. He said it was because he still wanted the job.
2 June 2005: Friends of ours go to the house to capture the cat. The house is messier than when we left. There are pieces of metal and empty boxes everywhere.
2 June 2005: I call Idan and cancel the move. He says that the $1800 will NOT be refunded because he spent that money going to Virginia, and it wasn't his fault that the police wouldn't let them load the container. He says he will mail the keys overnight to our real estate agent in Virginia. I file my first complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Florida.
16 June 2005: Idan Ohana replies to the BBB that he will refund our money minus expenses and that the keys are already in the mail back to us.
13 July 2005: We send our deposit to Access International. They agree to be at the house on 27 and 28 July to pack the house.
27 July 2005: The men from Access arrive on time with a 1300 sq ft Budget Rent-a-Truck. Things seem to be doing smoothly. They pack the house and take the boxes and furniture to storage somewhere. Because of problems with Sea and Air Cargo, we tell Access that a container won't fit in our driveway. Later we discover that Sea and Air did have a container in the driveway. If Access could have brought in a container, this could have saved a lot of trouble later on, we discover.
28 July 2005: As the men leave, we are told that the container will cost an extra $4000 because we have 600 sq ft too much. This was a bit of a shock to us, and if it had been explained as we were packing the truck, we could have told them what to leave out. We assume that we can work it out later.
I'm going to skip some details here (for now), but we eventually come to an agreement to get back to the original estimate.
We talk to our neighbor across the street about the container. He says that Idan arrived on Monday for the keys, and the container was there Monday also. It sat in the driveway for two days, but there was no activity at the house except for a truck from Florida and came and went occasionally, but it was clear no one was really at the house or working. And still no keys from Sea and Air Cargo.
13 Sept 2005: I mail checks for all the charges to Access. In full. For the next few days, I ask for confirmation that they've received the checks. I finally get a message.
22 Sept 2005: I see that the checks have cleared by checking my bank balance. I write to ask for my receipts and for a date for the move. Nothing. I send email every day for a week. They don't answer my email or my phone messages. And it's difficult to get through on their voice mail system because we don't have a touch-tone phone at home, so I must call from the phone at work.
27 Sept 2005: I file a follow-up with the BBB in Florida for Sea and Air Cargo because we have still no refund and still no house keys.
28 Sept 2005: I finally am able to get through to Dan at Access, and I'm promised receipts. I think the past week bodes very badly for the rest of the move, but at this point, I'm afraid to change moving companies again. I explain that besides the receipts, we also need a date for the packing of the container so that we can have a friend there who will pull out the stuff we don't want packed so that everything will fit into the container.
29 Sept 2005: The receipts did arrive by email.
I had also requested the location of the storage unit so that we can send some friends over with a truck to pick up the things we want left behind. We've been told that we have 600 sq ft over the limit, but I think it's less than that, and there are some things that we don't need in Luxembourg, so we are confident we can make it fit into a 40 foot container. All my requests for the location of our belongings have been ignored. Completely. I have thought all along that the $4000 was a scam, and it's looking more and more like that.
4 Oct 2005: At around 6 pm, the phone rings. It was a guy with a fairly heavy Spanish accent. He said he was with our movers and needed Darin's social security number. When anyone asks for a social security number, it is probably a scam. So Darin had him tell the name of the moving company. He got it right, but Darin wanted more confirmation, so Darin talked to me and then called them back at the Access number. It was really Dan at Access and not a scam. Dan said that he personally oversaw the packing of our container and they squished everything in. After all that bickering over them raising the price for an oversized load and the company not wanting to pay and not trusting American movers and the extra European (expensive) bids, they got it all in. We had worked out a list of things to leave out if things did not fit, but we never sent it because they never communicate with us. We did not know when they were packing the container. We wanted to have someone there to help decide what to leave out and to haul stuff away. I don't think they wanted anyone overseeing them.
Now the question is: Did they really get everything in or did they leave some stuff out? We would rather have chosen what to leave out than have a few, possibly important, boxes missing. We had a list of unimportant things they could have left out -- big things that could really have created more room. We have to wait for about six weeks plus however long it takes me to unpack everything to see if anything is missing.
20 Oct 2005: Our goods have arrived in port in Holland. So far I like the Dutch moving company. We have gone from absolutely no information to email and phone calls three or four times a day. Luxembourg customs wants a packing list in French, and Access (the company that packed for us and was supposed to have the list) lost our list.
24 Oct 2005: We've been getting the paperwork together for customs. Our state-side movers must have lost the original packing list, because three-fourths of the items on the list we got to translate was "box". The town officials have been very professional. I went down for residency papers to prove that we actually lived here, and she printed, signed, stamped, tax stamped, and let me purchase them immediately. We also had to send copies of our rental agreement and my work contract. I don't know how many times we've had to give Luxembourg a copy of that contract. Maybe someday they will believe that I really work here.
26 Oct 2005: The stuff arrives. The Dutch movers are polite and efficient. The girls were concerned about having a bunch of guys in the house who could only speak French. I told them that the movers are from Holland and speak better English than I do, at least with more of a British accent than I have. There seems to be minimum damage to the goods, despite lousy packing from Access.
2 Nov 2005: Things are in pretty good shape. Moving has taken its toll on things, but no total losses confirmed as yet. Darin taped the lampshades back on, and it turns out that masking tape matches the shades really well! No, they did nothing to protect them. Darin's toolbox is suspiciously light. The visegrips, an impact set, and some other things are missing. The toolbox was not in another box or taped shut in any way.
The tools seem to be our biggest loss so far, though we still haven't found everything or finished unpacking.
31 October, 2005
11 October, 2005
Work Permits and Hell
I've always liked the number 22, I suppose because I was born on the 22nd, so I thought it was a lucky number for me when I was little. And I always liked the phrase Catch 22.
Catch-22 is a novel by Joseph Heller, the point of which was to show how illogical modern warfare had become. The main character, Yossarian, is a bombardier who wants out of the war. Contradictions abound. Again and again, we see that want is supposed to be good is really bad, and what is sensible is really nonsence.
The fictional "catch", numbered as Catch 22 in U.S. Army Air Corps parlance in the novel, states that any bombardier who wishes to be excused from combat flight duty must submit an official medical diagnosis from his squadron's flight surgeon stating that he is unfit to fly because he is insane. However, according to Army regulations, any sane person does not want to fly combat missions because they are so dangerous, so by requesting permission not to fly on the grounds of insanity, the bombardier has just shown that he is in fact sane and therefore is fit to fly. (And on the other side, anyone who wanted to fly on combat missions implicitly showed that he was insane, but these flyers would never submitted requests to be excused from flying because they liked it.)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_22_(logic)
For most people and situations, that logic is too complex, and we tend to think along the lines you need A to get B and you need B to get A, meaning that one must come first, but you can't get one without the other.
Any government has these catches. It's not only the military. You can find these kinds of catches anywhere you find bureaurocracy.
I used to work for the U.S. Government, and I thought I understood red tape. I didn't like it, but I had learned to survive along side of it. It was like living with cudzu in the South, cudzu that will slowly take over every inch of sunshine and kill everything else around it. You see it strangling everything in it's path, so you make decisions about what you are willing to sacrifice, and what you will try to protect from it's slowly-moving path.
Universities are another good example. I remember when I was taking classes toward my PhD, I heard two professors talking in the stairwell. The one said to the other that having a PhD wasn't a mark of intelligence or creativity --- it only showed perseverance and the patience to get through red tape.
Everything in Luxembourg hinges on the work permit: bank accounts, housing, residency permits and visas, and so on. So how do you get a work permit in Luxembourg?
To get a work permit, you must first show that you have a job, i.e., a contract with a company in Luxembourg. That company must prove that there is no one in Europe who can do the job that they need done and no one as qualified as you, beyond any doubt. Simple enough. You have a job, you're good at what you do, and then you can have the work permit.
The European Commission knows me and knows my work. They can attest to the fact that there is no one in Europe who can do what I do. I can't work for the European Commission because I'm an American citizen. They have a contract for some work, but I can't bid on the contract with an American company. I can work on the contract with a European company. I find a European company who is bidding on the project and ask them to hire me. Voila! I have a job in Europe.
Now here's the Catch 22: That company in Luxembourg doesn't want to give you a contract unless you will actually be working for them, but then you aren't allowed to work for them because you don't have a work permit. And you can't get a work permit without the contract from a Luxembourg company. So you could wait in the States for the work permit to come through, but then you would no longer have the contract for the job in Europe because you weren't doing any work that needed to be done.
Just to further complicate things, without a work permit, you aren't qualified to be paid. Without any means of support, it is difficult to get a bank account or find housing. Without money and housing, it is difficult to continue to work for the company that hired you, though you need the contract with the company so that you can have the work permit, and eventually the money and the housing.
Now there are some solutions to the problems, for example, it is possible to be "forwarded" some money for expenses even though you aren't really allowed to be paid. But most landlords won't rent to you without proof that you are getting paid, and there is no proof. Though it is difficult to find formal housing, it is sometimes possible to find someone who will rent to you without a formal contract, even at a hotel if worse comes to worse.
To add to my own personal complications, I can't be on a contract with the European Commission while working for the U.S. government, so I had to quit my job. If I don't quit my job, then I would have to remove my name from the EC contract, and then I would lose my job in Europe. Without my good government job in the States, we no longer had health insurance, but while working in Europe without a work permit, we had no health insurance in Europe either.
Perhaps it would be possible to quit the job with the U.S. government and find temporary work in the States until the permit comes through, though there is some chance that the contracts could be canceled in Europe while waiting. Patience could be especially lacking for the contract with the EC if they were told that the work permit was already approved even though you don't have a work permit.
So how does the time line look for getting a work permit?
October – I apply for a job. They must interview other candidates to assure the government that I am the only qualified person.
January – the paperwork is filed for the work permit. I and the company in Luxembourg are assured that everything is in order and that the permit will be approved within three months.
25 February – my last day with the federal government job.
1 March – the contract with the EC begins. When they check on the status of my work permit, they are told that it's already been approved.
15 March – I come to Europe, living in someone's apartment until mid-May while she moves temporarily to take care of her father and his house.
9 April – someone calls to see why my work permit is "unofficially" approved but we don't have "official" word yet. We are told that the paperwork is sitting on someone’s desk because these things take six months, so I need to wait, even if they agree that the company has the right to hire me.
13 April – at the suggestion of my landlady, we ask for my number so that I have proof that I have applied for a work permit. I do have a number in the system, so now I have, essentially, a temporary work permit. (For example, if the bank wants to call and check on it, I can tell them my number, and they can check, and the lady can say, yes we have her file and she will have a work permit eventually.) This allows me to open a bank account in Luxembourg.
5 May – the work permit is officially approved. This means that I can be paid officially for the work I did in March and April also, but using the withholding rate for a single person because I still have no proof, officially, that I'm married with three kids.
3 June – my official work permit arrived in the mail. However, we notice that the birthday listed on the permit is off by a year, and the birthday is part of the official number. My boss had told them in January that it was wrong, and reminded them again in April when they gave me my temporary number. All other paperwork hinges on this piece of paper, and there is some doubt as to whether we should proceed when the number is wrong.
17 June – another work permit arrives with my correct birthday. But it's not a correction of the first, so I now have two work permits with two different numbers. I was in the system twice, with two different birthdays. (So it appears that instead of correcting my birthday early on in the process, they opened another file for me.)
6 July – I received a third work permit, this one dated 1 July. I had to send in the other two so I could get this one with the correct birthday. They seemed very angry with me that I had two work permits, but it certainly wasn't my fault.
Hooray! A work permit. Now life gets easier, we think. We were wrong.
The next step is to register in Kehlen and to get residency permits. Once we're registered in Kehlen, then they can take out withholding for someone who is married with three kids. Until then, my withholding is at the single rate.
And here lies the next Catch 22: You can’t have a residency permit without proof of means of support (i.e., a work permit unless you are retired) and a tax card from your county/parish, and you can't have a tax card without a work permit, rental contract on a house, marriage certificate, birth certificates for all the kids, and the residency permit. Also, the spouse and kids must be in the country, as seen by the passport stamps, but it's very difficult to afford to have the spouse and kids in Europe living on the salary with the withholding of a single person.
The time line for getting a residency permit and/or tax card:
7 July – The administrative office at my company has sent copies of our passports, along with letters, to the Luxembourg administration. To process the entire mess, the Luxembourg administration wanted a notarized copy of every page all five passports. I couldn't afford that. So I send them regular copies, and then I will go later to the office and plead my case, trying to sound as pitiful as possible, which should be simple.
8 July – My pastor suggests that I go as soon as possible to the offices in Luxembourg since I have already been in the country longer than allowed for a tourist. So I go to the offices and tell them that my priest sent me, and he said that they could help. That seems to make them more sympathetic to my case. I see one woman. She tells me that I am illegal and must go immediately to the Office for Foreigners. I walk over there. The guard at the door tells me they are open only in the mornings from 8:30 to 11:30. So much for immediately. I go back to the first office to wait in another line. It’s hot, with no AC, and the ticket machines are broken. Usually you could just take a ticket and wait in the waiting room, but not today. So we stand in line instead of sitting in the waiting room. When I finally talk to the person, she says that there is nothing they can do to help me.
12 July – I go back to the Office for Foreigners, taking my usual bus, and I arrive at the office at 8:50. They tell me I am too late. They can give me a ticket, but the ticket number will probably be for a time past 11:30. He said that some people will take a ticket and never be seen because they **will** close at 11:30 no matter what. This man could have explained this to me when I was there on the 8th. It was the same man. Today he says that if you want a ticket that will assure that you are seen that day, you have to come before 8:30.
14 July – I go back to the Ministry for Foreigners early. It was Hell on Earth. The purpose of the trip was to show them the five passports since I didn't have them notarized. And to ask if there was anything they could do for me so that I could get the tax card in Kehlen. She did look through the passports and mark that the copies were accurate on the copies. I also gave her copies of my marriage certificate, but we're still missing the birth certificates for the kids. There was nothing else she could do to help.
20 July – We all five received letters that we have been approved for our permis de séjour, mine of "type salarié" and the other four of "type membre de famille". I can't believe it's actually happened. The next step is to get medical certificates from a doctor in Luxembourg, and two passport-type photos, and then to go back to the "ministère des Affaires étrangères et de l'Immigration" (my favorite place). There is no way we can all get to a doctor in Lux before we leave, especially since many people have already started their holidays. We also don't have the money to pay for the medical certificates because it costs 30 euro each.
2 September – We have enough money for the medical certificates, and Darin and the kids go to the doctor in Kehlen.
5 September – I go to the doctor for my medical certificate, and then we apply for our permits in Kehlen. They seem shocked I have been in the country since March 15, but tell us it will be another 3 to 6 months before we have the permits in hand.
10 October – We receive letters that we have numbers in the system. But nothing about how much longer we have to wait, or when my next trip to the Ministry for Foreigners, a.k.a Hell on Earth, will be.
And why would I call it Hell on Earth, you say? Rev. Lyons spoke once in a sermon about how we could sometimes get a glimpse of heaven here on earth. I know for a fact that the same is true of hell. And Hell on Earth is the Ministry for Foreigners in downtown Luxembourg.
The Gates/Door of Hell
They are open from 8:30 to 11:30 if you want to apply for a long-term visa, but you must come early to get a ticket to be seen before 11:30. So the last time I went, the time I actually was allowed inside, was 14 July. I thought it was appropriate that it was Bastille Day, as we say in America.
I woke up early in the morning so I could get to the Ministry for Foreigners early. I got there at 7:48, and I found that I didn't have to wait in line for a ticket, so that was good. I was #141, and the guard told me to come back at 8:30. So I went and bought a Coke Light with Lemon. So far so good. Doesn't sound so bad, you say?
At 8:30, even a little bit before, you are allowed to go to the third floor. When you walk into the building from the street, it is noticeably hotter than the already 84 degrees F outside. When you walk up the three flights of stairs, you can feel it getting hotter again all the way up the stair well. Then you go through a door to the waiting room, and you feel the wave of heat as you open the door.
Inside the waiting room there are about 20 chairs around the edge of the room, and about 80 people. We all have tickets, but the machine that shows the numbers is broken, so every one is crowding around the doors and pushing, but it doesn't matter, because we still have to go by the numbers.
At first, you have no idea what door your number is for, or what number they are taking for any given door. I eventually learn that my ticket is for Door #1, and the first number for my door for that day is #130. When I figure out I have a little bit of time, I leave the room and go back outside. It's now almost 90 degrees F outside, but still much cooler than inside the waiting room. I was wearing a tank top and a shirt over, so I take off the shirt. I manage to compose myself enough to go back inside.
A woman who is sitting beside Door #1 has taken it upon herself to monitor the tickets and to let us know where they are in the count. At one point, someone argues with her that I shouldn't be next because I left the waiting room. She tells him it doesn't matter if I'm in the line or not because I'm still #141.
At 9:45 I get to have my turn. When you go through Door #1, there is a woman there behind the bulletproof glass, talking to you through a microphone. It's a little bit cooler because you can feel some cool air coming through the slot at the bottom of the glass where you pass through papers. She makes some copies of my papers, looks through our five passports, and she tells me she can't do anything for me (except take my papers), but she does give me a phone number to call.
By the time I leave, it's difficult to even get to the door of the waiting room so that I can leave. There are at least 100 people in a room 6 meters by 10 meters, most of them standing, and many of them pushing to get in a line that has no meaning. And it's probably more than 95 degrees in that room, and only getting warmer. The smell of bodies and perfume in the room is overwhelming and makes you feel ill.
That's now my picture of Hell --- squished into a tiny room, standing and pushing for a line that has no meaning, and the smell of body odor and many different kinds of really strong perfumes being sweated away in the heat.
I'm a person who believes in signs. It was just so cool how I really wanted to move to Europe, and I was really unhappy with my job, and I found a job in Europe that was perfect for me, and he wanted to hire me, and the salary worked out. But then you hit one of these administrative Catch-22's, and you feel like you will never get anything accomplished. I was starting to have doubts that all those signs I saw before were really signs. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be in Europe. I started thinking about giving up and going home. I started to feel that if Luxembourg really didn't want us here, then I didn't need Luxembourg. Except of course, that I have a job here, and I don't have a job in the U.S.
I like the movie Signs, maybe partly because I like Mel Gibson. In the movie, Mel plays a pastor who has lost his faith in God and has quit his job. When things start to get strange, his younger brother (played by Joquin Phoenix) asks him why he can't just be a little bit more positive about everything. Mel's character responds that there are two kinds of people in the world --- the first kind sees something happen and knows that it's a sign from God and that somehow everything will work out as part of some plan, and the second kind of person sees something happen and knows it's all coincidence. He tells his brother that everyone has to make a decision as to what kind of person they are.
When I first saw this movie, we were on an airplane from Frankfurt to the US back in November 2002. We had just bought a cukoo clock in Triberg, Germany, and I choose the clock based on a "sign" from God. The store had clocks that played four different songs, but only two per clock: "Edelweiss", "The Happy Wanderer", "The Mill in the Black Forest", and some other song I don't remember. The songs were paired so that "Edelweiss" and "Happy Wanderer" were always together, for the tourists. The other two songs were traditional Black Forest songs, and they were for the Germans. But I liked the "Happy Wanderer", it always makes me smile, and I didn't want "Edelweiss" in my German clock because it's an American song, written by Rogers and Hammerstein, whom I love, but it's not German (or even Austrian). Then we found a clock of carved wood with five birds (for the five of us), very traditional looking, and it played "Happy Wanderer" and "The Mill in the Black Forest." I told Darin it was a sign from God that this was our clock. So here we are, just a few hours later, watching this movie on the plane, and Darin says, "I know what kind of person you are," and he rolls his eyes.
I am that kind of person. The problem with being that kind of person is that sometimes things go really badly and it's hard to see the plan.
When we were back in the States in August, a former boss of mine, someone who knows me fairly well, and someone who knows about moving to other countries, told me he's never seen anyone have so much trouble with the red tape that we've had. He said he never expected someone with my skills to have so much trouble getting a work permit. Then he looked right at me and said, "But don't think, just because things aren't easy, that it's some kind of sign from God that you've made a mistake in moving to Europe." It was just so funny that he said that to me. I don't remember telling him about how much I look for signs, but he seemed to be able to read my mind.
But I was thinking about it more, and I realized that government bureaucracies are really the instruments of Satan. And I can say this in all earnestness, because I used to work for the U.S. Census Bureau, so I am well aware of the workings of the devil. So if the bureaucracies are working so hard to keep us down, then that's really is a sign that I need to stick it out and stay here. OK, so now you think I'm crazy, but think about it a little bit more, and you'll see that I'm right. "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching on to war . . . "
I need to keep that song in my head the next time I have to go to the Ministry for Foreigners.
Catch-22 is a novel by Joseph Heller, the point of which was to show how illogical modern warfare had become. The main character, Yossarian, is a bombardier who wants out of the war. Contradictions abound. Again and again, we see that want is supposed to be good is really bad, and what is sensible is really nonsence.
The fictional "catch", numbered as Catch 22 in U.S. Army Air Corps parlance in the novel, states that any bombardier who wishes to be excused from combat flight duty must submit an official medical diagnosis from his squadron's flight surgeon stating that he is unfit to fly because he is insane. However, according to Army regulations, any sane person does not want to fly combat missions because they are so dangerous, so by requesting permission not to fly on the grounds of insanity, the bombardier has just shown that he is in fact sane and therefore is fit to fly. (And on the other side, anyone who wanted to fly on combat missions implicitly showed that he was insane, but these flyers would never submitted requests to be excused from flying because they liked it.)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_22_(logic)
This is symbolized as C (being excused from flying) necessitates A (a request) and ~B (not being insane, without which there would be no request) and A also necessitates B (being insane, which must be the basis for the request).
Symbolically, ((A => ~B) & (A => B)) => C or, more simply, (A => ~B & B) => C. In other words, if you do ask to be excused, this is a sign of sanity, and yet you can't be excused if sane. If you do not ask to be excused, you must be insane, but cannot be excused unless you ask.
For most people and situations, that logic is too complex, and we tend to think along the lines you need A to get B and you need B to get A, meaning that one must come first, but you can't get one without the other.
Any government has these catches. It's not only the military. You can find these kinds of catches anywhere you find bureaurocracy.
I used to work for the U.S. Government, and I thought I understood red tape. I didn't like it, but I had learned to survive along side of it. It was like living with cudzu in the South, cudzu that will slowly take over every inch of sunshine and kill everything else around it. You see it strangling everything in it's path, so you make decisions about what you are willing to sacrifice, and what you will try to protect from it's slowly-moving path.
Universities are another good example. I remember when I was taking classes toward my PhD, I heard two professors talking in the stairwell. The one said to the other that having a PhD wasn't a mark of intelligence or creativity --- it only showed perseverance and the patience to get through red tape.
Everything in Luxembourg hinges on the work permit: bank accounts, housing, residency permits and visas, and so on. So how do you get a work permit in Luxembourg?
To get a work permit, you must first show that you have a job, i.e., a contract with a company in Luxembourg. That company must prove that there is no one in Europe who can do the job that they need done and no one as qualified as you, beyond any doubt. Simple enough. You have a job, you're good at what you do, and then you can have the work permit.
The European Commission knows me and knows my work. They can attest to the fact that there is no one in Europe who can do what I do. I can't work for the European Commission because I'm an American citizen. They have a contract for some work, but I can't bid on the contract with an American company. I can work on the contract with a European company. I find a European company who is bidding on the project and ask them to hire me. Voila! I have a job in Europe.
Now here's the Catch 22: That company in Luxembourg doesn't want to give you a contract unless you will actually be working for them, but then you aren't allowed to work for them because you don't have a work permit. And you can't get a work permit without the contract from a Luxembourg company. So you could wait in the States for the work permit to come through, but then you would no longer have the contract for the job in Europe because you weren't doing any work that needed to be done.
Just to further complicate things, without a work permit, you aren't qualified to be paid. Without any means of support, it is difficult to get a bank account or find housing. Without money and housing, it is difficult to continue to work for the company that hired you, though you need the contract with the company so that you can have the work permit, and eventually the money and the housing.
Now there are some solutions to the problems, for example, it is possible to be "forwarded" some money for expenses even though you aren't really allowed to be paid. But most landlords won't rent to you without proof that you are getting paid, and there is no proof. Though it is difficult to find formal housing, it is sometimes possible to find someone who will rent to you without a formal contract, even at a hotel if worse comes to worse.
To add to my own personal complications, I can't be on a contract with the European Commission while working for the U.S. government, so I had to quit my job. If I don't quit my job, then I would have to remove my name from the EC contract, and then I would lose my job in Europe. Without my good government job in the States, we no longer had health insurance, but while working in Europe without a work permit, we had no health insurance in Europe either.
Perhaps it would be possible to quit the job with the U.S. government and find temporary work in the States until the permit comes through, though there is some chance that the contracts could be canceled in Europe while waiting. Patience could be especially lacking for the contract with the EC if they were told that the work permit was already approved even though you don't have a work permit.
So how does the time line look for getting a work permit?
October – I apply for a job. They must interview other candidates to assure the government that I am the only qualified person.
January – the paperwork is filed for the work permit. I and the company in Luxembourg are assured that everything is in order and that the permit will be approved within three months.
25 February – my last day with the federal government job.
1 March – the contract with the EC begins. When they check on the status of my work permit, they are told that it's already been approved.
15 March – I come to Europe, living in someone's apartment until mid-May while she moves temporarily to take care of her father and his house.
9 April – someone calls to see why my work permit is "unofficially" approved but we don't have "official" word yet. We are told that the paperwork is sitting on someone’s desk because these things take six months, so I need to wait, even if they agree that the company has the right to hire me.
13 April – at the suggestion of my landlady, we ask for my number so that I have proof that I have applied for a work permit. I do have a number in the system, so now I have, essentially, a temporary work permit. (For example, if the bank wants to call and check on it, I can tell them my number, and they can check, and the lady can say, yes we have her file and she will have a work permit eventually.) This allows me to open a bank account in Luxembourg.
5 May – the work permit is officially approved. This means that I can be paid officially for the work I did in March and April also, but using the withholding rate for a single person because I still have no proof, officially, that I'm married with three kids.
3 June – my official work permit arrived in the mail. However, we notice that the birthday listed on the permit is off by a year, and the birthday is part of the official number. My boss had told them in January that it was wrong, and reminded them again in April when they gave me my temporary number. All other paperwork hinges on this piece of paper, and there is some doubt as to whether we should proceed when the number is wrong.
17 June – another work permit arrives with my correct birthday. But it's not a correction of the first, so I now have two work permits with two different numbers. I was in the system twice, with two different birthdays. (So it appears that instead of correcting my birthday early on in the process, they opened another file for me.)
6 July – I received a third work permit, this one dated 1 July. I had to send in the other two so I could get this one with the correct birthday. They seemed very angry with me that I had two work permits, but it certainly wasn't my fault.
Hooray! A work permit. Now life gets easier, we think. We were wrong.
The next step is to register in Kehlen and to get residency permits. Once we're registered in Kehlen, then they can take out withholding for someone who is married with three kids. Until then, my withholding is at the single rate.
And here lies the next Catch 22: You can’t have a residency permit without proof of means of support (i.e., a work permit unless you are retired) and a tax card from your county/parish, and you can't have a tax card without a work permit, rental contract on a house, marriage certificate, birth certificates for all the kids, and the residency permit. Also, the spouse and kids must be in the country, as seen by the passport stamps, but it's very difficult to afford to have the spouse and kids in Europe living on the salary with the withholding of a single person.
The time line for getting a residency permit and/or tax card:
7 July – The administrative office at my company has sent copies of our passports, along with letters, to the Luxembourg administration. To process the entire mess, the Luxembourg administration wanted a notarized copy of every page all five passports. I couldn't afford that. So I send them regular copies, and then I will go later to the office and plead my case, trying to sound as pitiful as possible, which should be simple.
8 July – My pastor suggests that I go as soon as possible to the offices in Luxembourg since I have already been in the country longer than allowed for a tourist. So I go to the offices and tell them that my priest sent me, and he said that they could help. That seems to make them more sympathetic to my case. I see one woman. She tells me that I am illegal and must go immediately to the Office for Foreigners. I walk over there. The guard at the door tells me they are open only in the mornings from 8:30 to 11:30. So much for immediately. I go back to the first office to wait in another line. It’s hot, with no AC, and the ticket machines are broken. Usually you could just take a ticket and wait in the waiting room, but not today. So we stand in line instead of sitting in the waiting room. When I finally talk to the person, she says that there is nothing they can do to help me.
12 July – I go back to the Office for Foreigners, taking my usual bus, and I arrive at the office at 8:50. They tell me I am too late. They can give me a ticket, but the ticket number will probably be for a time past 11:30. He said that some people will take a ticket and never be seen because they **will** close at 11:30 no matter what. This man could have explained this to me when I was there on the 8th. It was the same man. Today he says that if you want a ticket that will assure that you are seen that day, you have to come before 8:30.
14 July – I go back to the Ministry for Foreigners early. It was Hell on Earth. The purpose of the trip was to show them the five passports since I didn't have them notarized. And to ask if there was anything they could do for me so that I could get the tax card in Kehlen. She did look through the passports and mark that the copies were accurate on the copies. I also gave her copies of my marriage certificate, but we're still missing the birth certificates for the kids. There was nothing else she could do to help.
20 July – We all five received letters that we have been approved for our permis de séjour, mine of "type salarié" and the other four of "type membre de famille". I can't believe it's actually happened. The next step is to get medical certificates from a doctor in Luxembourg, and two passport-type photos, and then to go back to the "ministère des Affaires étrangères et de l'Immigration" (my favorite place). There is no way we can all get to a doctor in Lux before we leave, especially since many people have already started their holidays. We also don't have the money to pay for the medical certificates because it costs 30 euro each.
2 September – We have enough money for the medical certificates, and Darin and the kids go to the doctor in Kehlen.
5 September – I go to the doctor for my medical certificate, and then we apply for our permits in Kehlen. They seem shocked I have been in the country since March 15, but tell us it will be another 3 to 6 months before we have the permits in hand.
10 October – We receive letters that we have numbers in the system. But nothing about how much longer we have to wait, or when my next trip to the Ministry for Foreigners, a.k.a Hell on Earth, will be.
And why would I call it Hell on Earth, you say? Rev. Lyons spoke once in a sermon about how we could sometimes get a glimpse of heaven here on earth. I know for a fact that the same is true of hell. And Hell on Earth is the Ministry for Foreigners in downtown Luxembourg.
The Gates/Door of Hell
They are open from 8:30 to 11:30 if you want to apply for a long-term visa, but you must come early to get a ticket to be seen before 11:30. So the last time I went, the time I actually was allowed inside, was 14 July. I thought it was appropriate that it was Bastille Day, as we say in America.
I woke up early in the morning so I could get to the Ministry for Foreigners early. I got there at 7:48, and I found that I didn't have to wait in line for a ticket, so that was good. I was #141, and the guard told me to come back at 8:30. So I went and bought a Coke Light with Lemon. So far so good. Doesn't sound so bad, you say?
At 8:30, even a little bit before, you are allowed to go to the third floor. When you walk into the building from the street, it is noticeably hotter than the already 84 degrees F outside. When you walk up the three flights of stairs, you can feel it getting hotter again all the way up the stair well. Then you go through a door to the waiting room, and you feel the wave of heat as you open the door.
Inside the waiting room there are about 20 chairs around the edge of the room, and about 80 people. We all have tickets, but the machine that shows the numbers is broken, so every one is crowding around the doors and pushing, but it doesn't matter, because we still have to go by the numbers.
At first, you have no idea what door your number is for, or what number they are taking for any given door. I eventually learn that my ticket is for Door #1, and the first number for my door for that day is #130. When I figure out I have a little bit of time, I leave the room and go back outside. It's now almost 90 degrees F outside, but still much cooler than inside the waiting room. I was wearing a tank top and a shirt over, so I take off the shirt. I manage to compose myself enough to go back inside.
A woman who is sitting beside Door #1 has taken it upon herself to monitor the tickets and to let us know where they are in the count. At one point, someone argues with her that I shouldn't be next because I left the waiting room. She tells him it doesn't matter if I'm in the line or not because I'm still #141.
At 9:45 I get to have my turn. When you go through Door #1, there is a woman there behind the bulletproof glass, talking to you through a microphone. It's a little bit cooler because you can feel some cool air coming through the slot at the bottom of the glass where you pass through papers. She makes some copies of my papers, looks through our five passports, and she tells me she can't do anything for me (except take my papers), but she does give me a phone number to call.
By the time I leave, it's difficult to even get to the door of the waiting room so that I can leave. There are at least 100 people in a room 6 meters by 10 meters, most of them standing, and many of them pushing to get in a line that has no meaning. And it's probably more than 95 degrees in that room, and only getting warmer. The smell of bodies and perfume in the room is overwhelming and makes you feel ill.
That's now my picture of Hell --- squished into a tiny room, standing and pushing for a line that has no meaning, and the smell of body odor and many different kinds of really strong perfumes being sweated away in the heat.
I'm a person who believes in signs. It was just so cool how I really wanted to move to Europe, and I was really unhappy with my job, and I found a job in Europe that was perfect for me, and he wanted to hire me, and the salary worked out. But then you hit one of these administrative Catch-22's, and you feel like you will never get anything accomplished. I was starting to have doubts that all those signs I saw before were really signs. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be in Europe. I started thinking about giving up and going home. I started to feel that if Luxembourg really didn't want us here, then I didn't need Luxembourg. Except of course, that I have a job here, and I don't have a job in the U.S.
I like the movie Signs, maybe partly because I like Mel Gibson. In the movie, Mel plays a pastor who has lost his faith in God and has quit his job. When things start to get strange, his younger brother (played by Joquin Phoenix) asks him why he can't just be a little bit more positive about everything. Mel's character responds that there are two kinds of people in the world --- the first kind sees something happen and knows that it's a sign from God and that somehow everything will work out as part of some plan, and the second kind of person sees something happen and knows it's all coincidence. He tells his brother that everyone has to make a decision as to what kind of person they are.
When I first saw this movie, we were on an airplane from Frankfurt to the US back in November 2002. We had just bought a cukoo clock in Triberg, Germany, and I choose the clock based on a "sign" from God. The store had clocks that played four different songs, but only two per clock: "Edelweiss", "The Happy Wanderer", "The Mill in the Black Forest", and some other song I don't remember. The songs were paired so that "Edelweiss" and "Happy Wanderer" were always together, for the tourists. The other two songs were traditional Black Forest songs, and they were for the Germans. But I liked the "Happy Wanderer", it always makes me smile, and I didn't want "Edelweiss" in my German clock because it's an American song, written by Rogers and Hammerstein, whom I love, but it's not German (or even Austrian). Then we found a clock of carved wood with five birds (for the five of us), very traditional looking, and it played "Happy Wanderer" and "The Mill in the Black Forest." I told Darin it was a sign from God that this was our clock. So here we are, just a few hours later, watching this movie on the plane, and Darin says, "I know what kind of person you are," and he rolls his eyes.
I am that kind of person. The problem with being that kind of person is that sometimes things go really badly and it's hard to see the plan.
When we were back in the States in August, a former boss of mine, someone who knows me fairly well, and someone who knows about moving to other countries, told me he's never seen anyone have so much trouble with the red tape that we've had. He said he never expected someone with my skills to have so much trouble getting a work permit. Then he looked right at me and said, "But don't think, just because things aren't easy, that it's some kind of sign from God that you've made a mistake in moving to Europe." It was just so funny that he said that to me. I don't remember telling him about how much I look for signs, but he seemed to be able to read my mind.
But I was thinking about it more, and I realized that government bureaucracies are really the instruments of Satan. And I can say this in all earnestness, because I used to work for the U.S. Census Bureau, so I am well aware of the workings of the devil. So if the bureaucracies are working so hard to keep us down, then that's really is a sign that I need to stick it out and stay here. OK, so now you think I'm crazy, but think about it a little bit more, and you'll see that I'm right. "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching on to war . . . "
I need to keep that song in my head the next time I have to go to the Ministry for Foreigners.
29 September, 2005
Language Lessons
I always thought that I was fairly good with languages. After all, I've been telling people for years that I'm bilingual because I can speak American and East Tennesseean. I had been the unofficial translator for my family and friends for years.
For example, I think it was after my senior year in high school, there was a national convention for youth for the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and several people from my church went. Being from East Tennessee, we were part of the Southern District. Now most of the people from my church had relatives up North, so most of them spoke fairly descent Yankee. But there were some others in the Southern District who didn't, and they figured out they could come to me for help.
The conference was at Southern Illinois University, and it was hot that week. The arena where we had meetings had no air conditioning, so the temperatures in there were absolutely stifling. There was one night when they had to take people out because they were dropping from the heat. There was a boy from Pennsylvania who was describing one such scene to one of the girls from Chattanooga, Tennessee. She wanted to know where this was happening inside the arena and asked the question, "Where did you sit?" Unfortunately for her, "sit" spoken in East Tennessee sounds like "see it." So he thought she was saying, "Where did you see it?"
His answer, "Last night, at the meeting."
Her response, "I know. But where did you see-it?"
It went on and on. Finally, she noticed I was close, and told the boy that I could explain. She asked me her question. I said, "She wants to know where you were sitting last night in the meeting."
The boy answered, "Oh. That's what she said? Really?"
"Yes. 'Where did you sit?' was the question."
"Sit?"
"Yes. Sit."
"I had no idea."
"I know. I understand."
I didn't particularly choose to be bilingual. It was my parents' fault. They are both from Nebraska, where I was born, too. We moved to East Tennessee when I was 12 years old and my two brothers were 10 years old and about 10 months old. The first thing my parents did was to send me to Girl Scout camp — a brilliant idea. At first, the other girls made fun of my strange accent, but one of the counselors suggested they make it a camp project to teach me how to speak like the rest of them. By the end of the week, when my parents came to get me, my parents couldn't understand a word I said. I had learned that words like "fire" and "science" were only one syllable, and words like "hill" and "cat" were two syllables. And though my parents weren't crazy about my new way of talking, it did come in useful, like when the lady cutting my mom's hair asked if we were going out to the fair they have every year, and my mom thought she said "fire".
But when my littlest brother was three, he same out to the kitchen one morning and said, "Mama, I have a turrible hay-dake." Mom pointed her finger at me and said, "This is all your fault." From then on, I was forbidden to speak "East Tennessee" in the house.
So I lived my life switching between East Tennesseean and Nebraskan, and when I went to college in South Carolina, even learned a little bit of Charlestonian and Columbian, both very different accents than my East Tennessean. I spent my summers playing the piano at the Old Faithful Inn, and the Yankees around me were so surprised when I could recognize where the tourists were from by their Southern accent. It wasn't difficult at all for me. Any Southern accent I heard when I was in Wyoming was like music to my ears.
Then it happened. I decided I needed something new and different. I decided that for graduate school I should move up north. So I did. I moved to Iowa City, Iowa and started working towards a Masters degree. I had been born in Nebraska and been to visit my grandparents often, so I was sure I could handle the weather. I was confident I could speak the language. My parents are from the Nebraska, so I thought there couldn't be cultural differences. I had spent my summers in Wyoming surrounded by people from all over the country. I thought I could handle anything.
I was wrong on all points. Iowa is cold. And I was watching the weather maps, eastern Iowa wasn't even as cold as Nebraska, but it was still much, much colder than East Tennessee. And East Tennessee was colder than the four winters I had spent in South Carolina. I was already homesick, but that first ice storm made it so much worse.
And I couldn't speak the language. Nobody knew where the "soda machine" was, because in Iowa, soft drinks are "pop". If I had asked in East Tennesseean, and asked where the "soda pop machine" was, they might have understood. But in South Carolina, they would laugh at me for calling it that. When I would give an answer in class, the professors didn't understand. I remember Dr. Robertson in particular, "What was that? Was that five or nine? Maybe you should just hold up some fingers." Some of the other students were from China, and I didn't understand what they were saying, but the professors did. The same professors that didn't understand me.
And I didn't understand the customs. How could things be so different between the South and Iowa? I was completely blown away. Dr. Robertson hated that I called him "sir", but it was difficult for me to stop. He was probably my dad's age, but he said I made him feel old. I called all my professors at Furman "sir" or "ma'am", and some of them were not old enough to be my parents, but they didn't complain. It would have been disrespectful to not say "sir."
And all over town, I would try to make small talk with people just to be polite, like with the ladies working at the grocery store. Nope. No talking allowed it seemed.
After a few years there, I met and married an Iowan, and together we moved to Northern Virginia. He didn't like the crowds and the traffic, but I liked the people. There were people from all over the world living near DC, and plenty of Southerners who understood me. And the weather is warmer than in Iowa.
I love to travel, and spent some time when I was in high school as an exchange student in Germany. With my job in DC, I had a chance to travel quite a bit, and went to Tokyo and a couple of trips to Europe alone. My husband didn't want to go anywhere where English wasn't the official language. Then I was offered a free trip to London, and I convinced my husband that he and the kids should come along.
I had a terrible time in England understanding the accents. I kept asking Darin, "Was that English?" At one point on a tour of Dover Castle, the docent was handing out headsets for the tour and asked if anyone needed a language other than English. Darin asked her if she had American for his wife.
But it was a start. I next convinced Darin that he could come to Germany with me, and we included a side trip to Paris. We had a nice trip, and English isn't an official language in Germany or France.
But my husband's language skills were tested along the way. He took French in high school, and switched to Spanish in college because he thought it would be easier. While in a Metro station in Paris, he told the girls that "thank you" in French was "merci" and "please" was "por favor." Our oldest corrected him. "Dad, I don't think that was French."
Then it happened. Again. I decided I needed something new and different. After 13 years in Virginia, I see an advertisement for a job in Europe, and it seems like it was written just for me, and the requirement is that you need to be able to speak English. And what's really amazing is that my husband, who doesn't like foreign languages, is willing to move to Luxembourg. English is not an official language in Luxembourg, and it's the fourth language taught in the schools (after Luxembourgish, German, and French), so many people don't speak English.
But once again, I think that I can handle all the differences. Not with the confidence of moving to Iowa, but with a plan to learn about the language and the customs. French is a difficult language to learn, but I know a little bit of German, and many people can speak some English.
I first saw the job opening in September, and I started my French lessons in November. I bought a set of Pimsleur CDs for my husband and I to learn French. The idea is that they teach you conversational French that you will really need. So I thought it was a bit odd that among the early lessons in French I is how to say "no" to a really pushy guy who invites you for drinks or dinner. One of the funniest parts on the CD is that she corrects him, "Pas mademoiselle. Madame." (Not Miss. Mrs.) But it doesn't slow him down one bit.
But then it happened to me, after I had been in the country for less than a week. I was standing at the outside door to my apartment building, looking for my keys so I could unlock the door to the building. I hear a voice behind me. This is the conversation, which was in French unless otherwise indicated below:
The man (in his 50s, I would say): Excuse me, Madame, do you know where Louis Something-or-other lives?
me: No
him: He has a studio apartment.
me: No (My favorite word in French)
him: Do you understand?
me: yes, I understand, but I don't know ("I don't know" is my favorite French phrase).
him: You understand French?
me: a little bit, a very little bit
him: Do you know Louis Something-or-other?
me: I live here only six days.
him: Oh, where are you from?
me: USA.
him: New York?
me: No, Washington.
him: I have a brother who lives in New Jersey. He's lived there 12 years.
me: Oh.
him: (Something about going to visit or not going to visit his brother, or this brother not coming here. I didn't understand it, but it had to do with brother and going.)
me: Oh.
him: My name is Stephan. (He puts out his hand to shake my hand.)
me: Catherine
him: (a sentence with the word "boit" in it, "drink")
me: What?
him: (making the international sign language for drink) "Boit . . . (in English) drink" (then points to the corner, and switches back to French) Would you like something to drink, on the corner? (There is a pub there.)
me: No, thank you.
him: Later?
me: No, thank you. My husband waits for me. (A complete lie because my husband was still in the States, and I didn't even have a phone to call him.) Good-bye.
him: Good-bye.
It was almost like the CDs, except that he called me Madame from the start. It was so strange, like he had been studying the Pimsleur CDs for ways to pick up women. Which didn't work on the Pimsleur CDs either.
Later, Pastor Chris at the Anglican Church told Darin that he should start drinking wine if he's going to learn French. He says French is much easier to pronounce correctly if you are drunk. Darin said that was the first time a pastor had ever told him to get drunk. Welcome to Europe and the Anglican Church! (And German is easier if you're drinking beer, we were told.)
There was a time at the office when I avoided speaking French altogether. My coworkers where trying to help me improve my pronunciation, but there are some sounds I just can't say. I was talking to Darin about this at home one evening, and he just laughed. "There are words you don't say correctly in English. Why should it bother you if you can't say things correctly in French?" Good point. So I started speaking French in the office again.
French is hard, but I'm trying to come up with some creative ways to learn the language, besides, of course, turning down dates from strange men. In the evenings at home, I've been watching Pirates of the Caribbean over and over in French while I do needlework or work on the laptop. Darin just laughs at me. I really want to be able to say, "I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request" in French. He says I should listen to my French lessons instead. Sometimes he is just no fun.
And our youngest child bought a travel-sized "Cluedo" in French at the church fair, and I try to make the girls play it using only French. It's quite interesting. Some of the things translate almost automatically, like Miss Scarlett is Mlle Rose. But some things are more difficult, like the word for "lead pipe" which is really the word for a billy club or nightstick. And in French, Mr. Green is Reverend Olive and Mrs. Peacock is Madame Pervenche (Periwinkle).
I know that sometimes Darin wants to avoid learning French altogether, but sometimes a little bit could come in handy. On the day of the Grand Duke's birthday party, there were some street closings due to the fireworks later. I think what the bus driver told us this morning was that he could take us to the station in the morning, but he couldn't pick us up there in the evening. What I didn't quite understand was where we could catch the bus in the evening, but I still managed to find my home way judging by where he was pointing when he talked about evening buses.
And numbers. I'm a math person, so numbers should be easy. I hate French numbers. Sometimes in the morning when I buy croissants for breakfast, the total comes to 95 cents. Seventy in French is "soixante-dix" meaning sixty-ten. Eighty is "quatre-vingts" meaning 4 twenties (like four score), only pronounced "cat-va." Ninety is eighty-ten, and Ninety-five is four-score-fifteen ("cat-va-caz"). It takes me a while to process all of that early in the morning. And sometimes the women use the Belgium way to count, so that seventy is "septante" instead of "soixante-dix". Oh my.
But not all French is difficult. In the afternoons, when I want something other than a chocolate croissant, I sometimes stop by the Quick for a vanilla shake, and the large size -- grand milkshake de vanille.
But I can be quite confusing also. I very often have teenagers come up to me and ask me for money. They are clean and well dressed, in nice jeans and nice shoes, and I really believe they are near the station to try to get drugs. They tell me they need money to get home. But if they live in Luxembourg, they can ride the bus for free if they are students. They ask for money, usually first in German. I say NO. Then they try English. Still NO. Sometimes they try again in French. NO, NO, NO. They are somehow sure that I haven't understood. But I do understand. I asked one young man, in English, "Does your mother know you are down here trying to buy drugs?" He seemed really shocked, and started to speak to me in Luxembourgish. So now, to avoid the hassle, I have a new plan. When someone asks for money, especially someone I'm sure doesn't really need my money, I say, "Ich kanne no sé." That's almost-German at the start for "I can", and then "I don't know" in Spanish. It works. Their little brains start spinning, trying to figure out what language to try next on me, and I just walk away.
And I have always thought it was strange that they teach you, in French, to ask someone if they speak English: "Parlez-vous l'anglais?" And then we are supposed to reply either: "Oui. Je parle l'anglais." or "Non. Je ne parle pas l'anglais."
One night on my way home from work, a man walked up beside me on the bridge and asked, "Parlez-vous l'anglais?" I, of course, gave the correct answer, the one they don't teach in the French lessons: "Yes. I do." He introduced himself. His name was Ali. He said he had seen me on the bridge before, and he thinks that we'll see each other again because we seem to be going in the same direction on the bridge at the same time, and Luxembourg is a very small city. I asked him if he could tell by looking at me that I spoke English. He said, no, he heard me talking to myself one day when I was taking pictures on the bridge. So that was a little bit embarrassing. But thank goodness he didn't ask me for a drink or to dinner. He just gave me his business card (so I would remember his name, he said) and went on along his way.
And maybe I can't really speak English, but my American passes as English for most Europeans on the continent, and my new boss is French. However, most of the English-speakers I meet here are from England, and one of their favorite jokes is to ask, "Has your boss figured out yet that you don't speak English?"
In a way, my language problems should give me a common bond with the Luxembourgish. Luxembourgish comes from a peasant German dialect, but it's not German. I think speaking Luxembourgish to a German is a bit like speaking East Tennesseean, with some Gullah or Cajun thrown in for good measure, to a Brit. But the Luxembourgish will never know how much we have in common, because we don't speak a common language.
For example, I think it was after my senior year in high school, there was a national convention for youth for the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and several people from my church went. Being from East Tennessee, we were part of the Southern District. Now most of the people from my church had relatives up North, so most of them spoke fairly descent Yankee. But there were some others in the Southern District who didn't, and they figured out they could come to me for help.
The conference was at Southern Illinois University, and it was hot that week. The arena where we had meetings had no air conditioning, so the temperatures in there were absolutely stifling. There was one night when they had to take people out because they were dropping from the heat. There was a boy from Pennsylvania who was describing one such scene to one of the girls from Chattanooga, Tennessee. She wanted to know where this was happening inside the arena and asked the question, "Where did you sit?" Unfortunately for her, "sit" spoken in East Tennessee sounds like "see it." So he thought she was saying, "Where did you see it?"
His answer, "Last night, at the meeting."
Her response, "I know. But where did you see-it?"
It went on and on. Finally, she noticed I was close, and told the boy that I could explain. She asked me her question. I said, "She wants to know where you were sitting last night in the meeting."
The boy answered, "Oh. That's what she said? Really?"
"Yes. 'Where did you sit?' was the question."
"Sit?"
"Yes. Sit."
"I had no idea."
"I know. I understand."
I didn't particularly choose to be bilingual. It was my parents' fault. They are both from Nebraska, where I was born, too. We moved to East Tennessee when I was 12 years old and my two brothers were 10 years old and about 10 months old. The first thing my parents did was to send me to Girl Scout camp — a brilliant idea. At first, the other girls made fun of my strange accent, but one of the counselors suggested they make it a camp project to teach me how to speak like the rest of them. By the end of the week, when my parents came to get me, my parents couldn't understand a word I said. I had learned that words like "fire" and "science" were only one syllable, and words like "hill" and "cat" were two syllables. And though my parents weren't crazy about my new way of talking, it did come in useful, like when the lady cutting my mom's hair asked if we were going out to the fair they have every year, and my mom thought she said "fire".
But when my littlest brother was three, he same out to the kitchen one morning and said, "Mama, I have a turrible hay-dake." Mom pointed her finger at me and said, "This is all your fault." From then on, I was forbidden to speak "East Tennessee" in the house.
So I lived my life switching between East Tennesseean and Nebraskan, and when I went to college in South Carolina, even learned a little bit of Charlestonian and Columbian, both very different accents than my East Tennessean. I spent my summers playing the piano at the Old Faithful Inn, and the Yankees around me were so surprised when I could recognize where the tourists were from by their Southern accent. It wasn't difficult at all for me. Any Southern accent I heard when I was in Wyoming was like music to my ears.
Then it happened. I decided I needed something new and different. I decided that for graduate school I should move up north. So I did. I moved to Iowa City, Iowa and started working towards a Masters degree. I had been born in Nebraska and been to visit my grandparents often, so I was sure I could handle the weather. I was confident I could speak the language. My parents are from the Nebraska, so I thought there couldn't be cultural differences. I had spent my summers in Wyoming surrounded by people from all over the country. I thought I could handle anything.
I was wrong on all points. Iowa is cold. And I was watching the weather maps, eastern Iowa wasn't even as cold as Nebraska, but it was still much, much colder than East Tennessee. And East Tennessee was colder than the four winters I had spent in South Carolina. I was already homesick, but that first ice storm made it so much worse.
And I couldn't speak the language. Nobody knew where the "soda machine" was, because in Iowa, soft drinks are "pop". If I had asked in East Tennesseean, and asked where the "soda pop machine" was, they might have understood. But in South Carolina, they would laugh at me for calling it that. When I would give an answer in class, the professors didn't understand. I remember Dr. Robertson in particular, "What was that? Was that five or nine? Maybe you should just hold up some fingers." Some of the other students were from China, and I didn't understand what they were saying, but the professors did. The same professors that didn't understand me.
And I didn't understand the customs. How could things be so different between the South and Iowa? I was completely blown away. Dr. Robertson hated that I called him "sir", but it was difficult for me to stop. He was probably my dad's age, but he said I made him feel old. I called all my professors at Furman "sir" or "ma'am", and some of them were not old enough to be my parents, but they didn't complain. It would have been disrespectful to not say "sir."
And all over town, I would try to make small talk with people just to be polite, like with the ladies working at the grocery store. Nope. No talking allowed it seemed.
After a few years there, I met and married an Iowan, and together we moved to Northern Virginia. He didn't like the crowds and the traffic, but I liked the people. There were people from all over the world living near DC, and plenty of Southerners who understood me. And the weather is warmer than in Iowa.
I love to travel, and spent some time when I was in high school as an exchange student in Germany. With my job in DC, I had a chance to travel quite a bit, and went to Tokyo and a couple of trips to Europe alone. My husband didn't want to go anywhere where English wasn't the official language. Then I was offered a free trip to London, and I convinced my husband that he and the kids should come along.
I had a terrible time in England understanding the accents. I kept asking Darin, "Was that English?" At one point on a tour of Dover Castle, the docent was handing out headsets for the tour and asked if anyone needed a language other than English. Darin asked her if she had American for his wife.
But it was a start. I next convinced Darin that he could come to Germany with me, and we included a side trip to Paris. We had a nice trip, and English isn't an official language in Germany or France.
But my husband's language skills were tested along the way. He took French in high school, and switched to Spanish in college because he thought it would be easier. While in a Metro station in Paris, he told the girls that "thank you" in French was "merci" and "please" was "por favor." Our oldest corrected him. "Dad, I don't think that was French."
Then it happened. Again. I decided I needed something new and different. After 13 years in Virginia, I see an advertisement for a job in Europe, and it seems like it was written just for me, and the requirement is that you need to be able to speak English. And what's really amazing is that my husband, who doesn't like foreign languages, is willing to move to Luxembourg. English is not an official language in Luxembourg, and it's the fourth language taught in the schools (after Luxembourgish, German, and French), so many people don't speak English.
But once again, I think that I can handle all the differences. Not with the confidence of moving to Iowa, but with a plan to learn about the language and the customs. French is a difficult language to learn, but I know a little bit of German, and many people can speak some English.
I first saw the job opening in September, and I started my French lessons in November. I bought a set of Pimsleur CDs for my husband and I to learn French. The idea is that they teach you conversational French that you will really need. So I thought it was a bit odd that among the early lessons in French I is how to say "no" to a really pushy guy who invites you for drinks or dinner. One of the funniest parts on the CD is that she corrects him, "Pas mademoiselle. Madame." (Not Miss. Mrs.) But it doesn't slow him down one bit.
But then it happened to me, after I had been in the country for less than a week. I was standing at the outside door to my apartment building, looking for my keys so I could unlock the door to the building. I hear a voice behind me. This is the conversation, which was in French unless otherwise indicated below:
The man (in his 50s, I would say): Excuse me, Madame, do you know where Louis Something-or-other lives?
me: No
him: He has a studio apartment.
me: No (My favorite word in French)
him: Do you understand?
me: yes, I understand, but I don't know ("I don't know" is my favorite French phrase).
him: You understand French?
me: a little bit, a very little bit
him: Do you know Louis Something-or-other?
me: I live here only six days.
him: Oh, where are you from?
me: USA.
him: New York?
me: No, Washington.
him: I have a brother who lives in New Jersey. He's lived there 12 years.
me: Oh.
him: (Something about going to visit or not going to visit his brother, or this brother not coming here. I didn't understand it, but it had to do with brother and going.)
me: Oh.
him: My name is Stephan. (He puts out his hand to shake my hand.)
me: Catherine
him: (a sentence with the word "boit" in it, "drink")
me: What?
him: (making the international sign language for drink) "Boit . . . (in English) drink" (then points to the corner, and switches back to French) Would you like something to drink, on the corner? (There is a pub there.)
me: No, thank you.
him: Later?
me: No, thank you. My husband waits for me. (A complete lie because my husband was still in the States, and I didn't even have a phone to call him.) Good-bye.
him: Good-bye.
It was almost like the CDs, except that he called me Madame from the start. It was so strange, like he had been studying the Pimsleur CDs for ways to pick up women. Which didn't work on the Pimsleur CDs either.
Later, Pastor Chris at the Anglican Church told Darin that he should start drinking wine if he's going to learn French. He says French is much easier to pronounce correctly if you are drunk. Darin said that was the first time a pastor had ever told him to get drunk. Welcome to Europe and the Anglican Church! (And German is easier if you're drinking beer, we were told.)
There was a time at the office when I avoided speaking French altogether. My coworkers where trying to help me improve my pronunciation, but there are some sounds I just can't say. I was talking to Darin about this at home one evening, and he just laughed. "There are words you don't say correctly in English. Why should it bother you if you can't say things correctly in French?" Good point. So I started speaking French in the office again.
French is hard, but I'm trying to come up with some creative ways to learn the language, besides, of course, turning down dates from strange men. In the evenings at home, I've been watching Pirates of the Caribbean over and over in French while I do needlework or work on the laptop. Darin just laughs at me. I really want to be able to say, "I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request" in French. He says I should listen to my French lessons instead. Sometimes he is just no fun.
And our youngest child bought a travel-sized "Cluedo" in French at the church fair, and I try to make the girls play it using only French. It's quite interesting. Some of the things translate almost automatically, like Miss Scarlett is Mlle Rose. But some things are more difficult, like the word for "lead pipe" which is really the word for a billy club or nightstick. And in French, Mr. Green is Reverend Olive and Mrs. Peacock is Madame Pervenche (Periwinkle).
I know that sometimes Darin wants to avoid learning French altogether, but sometimes a little bit could come in handy. On the day of the Grand Duke's birthday party, there were some street closings due to the fireworks later. I think what the bus driver told us this morning was that he could take us to the station in the morning, but he couldn't pick us up there in the evening. What I didn't quite understand was where we could catch the bus in the evening, but I still managed to find my home way judging by where he was pointing when he talked about evening buses.
And numbers. I'm a math person, so numbers should be easy. I hate French numbers. Sometimes in the morning when I buy croissants for breakfast, the total comes to 95 cents. Seventy in French is "soixante-dix" meaning sixty-ten. Eighty is "quatre-vingts" meaning 4 twenties (like four score), only pronounced "cat-va." Ninety is eighty-ten, and Ninety-five is four-score-fifteen ("cat-va-caz"). It takes me a while to process all of that early in the morning. And sometimes the women use the Belgium way to count, so that seventy is "septante" instead of "soixante-dix". Oh my.
But not all French is difficult. In the afternoons, when I want something other than a chocolate croissant, I sometimes stop by the Quick for a vanilla shake, and the large size -- grand milkshake de vanille.
But I can be quite confusing also. I very often have teenagers come up to me and ask me for money. They are clean and well dressed, in nice jeans and nice shoes, and I really believe they are near the station to try to get drugs. They tell me they need money to get home. But if they live in Luxembourg, they can ride the bus for free if they are students. They ask for money, usually first in German. I say NO. Then they try English. Still NO. Sometimes they try again in French. NO, NO, NO. They are somehow sure that I haven't understood. But I do understand. I asked one young man, in English, "Does your mother know you are down here trying to buy drugs?" He seemed really shocked, and started to speak to me in Luxembourgish. So now, to avoid the hassle, I have a new plan. When someone asks for money, especially someone I'm sure doesn't really need my money, I say, "Ich kanne no sé." That's almost-German at the start for "I can", and then "I don't know" in Spanish. It works. Their little brains start spinning, trying to figure out what language to try next on me, and I just walk away.
And I have always thought it was strange that they teach you, in French, to ask someone if they speak English: "Parlez-vous l'anglais?" And then we are supposed to reply either: "Oui. Je parle l'anglais." or "Non. Je ne parle pas l'anglais."
One night on my way home from work, a man walked up beside me on the bridge and asked, "Parlez-vous l'anglais?" I, of course, gave the correct answer, the one they don't teach in the French lessons: "Yes. I do." He introduced himself. His name was Ali. He said he had seen me on the bridge before, and he thinks that we'll see each other again because we seem to be going in the same direction on the bridge at the same time, and Luxembourg is a very small city. I asked him if he could tell by looking at me that I spoke English. He said, no, he heard me talking to myself one day when I was taking pictures on the bridge. So that was a little bit embarrassing. But thank goodness he didn't ask me for a drink or to dinner. He just gave me his business card (so I would remember his name, he said) and went on along his way.
And maybe I can't really speak English, but my American passes as English for most Europeans on the continent, and my new boss is French. However, most of the English-speakers I meet here are from England, and one of their favorite jokes is to ask, "Has your boss figured out yet that you don't speak English?"
In a way, my language problems should give me a common bond with the Luxembourgish. Luxembourgish comes from a peasant German dialect, but it's not German. I think speaking Luxembourgish to a German is a bit like speaking East Tennesseean, with some Gullah or Cajun thrown in for good measure, to a Brit. But the Luxembourgish will never know how much we have in common, because we don't speak a common language.
19 September, 2005
Good morning to ye!
Good morning to ye, on this fair holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day!
The crew here in Luxembourg was to be celebratin' today, but Cap'n gave the orders for the plans to move to yesterday. Arg!
We boarded the fair ship Luxembourg Playground yesterday, and were havin' much fun about it, when our second mate (I bein' the first, o' course) found herself with a bloody foot. No, that not be only pirate talk, thar was a lot o' blood. (And this first mate don't do so well with blood, as some of ye may know.) But with some help from the local lubbers (and a first-aid kit), we got her bandaged up, and aft on her feet. And the second mate now be havin' a new pirate name --- Pegleg!
When we were back to home port, Pegleg soaked the foot in the tub, and then Cap'n pulled out a good-sized piece of the ship from inside her foot (fittin' o' the name Pegleg), and we bandaged her up again, and she be doin' right well this mornin'.
I'll teach ye some pirate talk I be learnin' here in Luxembourg, most in French ---
What be the best way to learn pirate in French, ye ask?
Thar be a "translator" on the TLAPD site, but I be thinkin' the translator is straight from the chumbucket. The best way t' learn pirate, other than bein' one, is t' watch movies. It be hard work, all the watchin', but I be feelin' fairly happy with me pirate talk today.
And on the theme of movies, here's my list o' French pirate, from Pirates des Caraïbes ---
On est des demons, des moutons noirs, des pommes pourries
(We're demons, the black sheep, the rotted apples)
Yo ho yo ho, la vie de pirate c'est pour moi!
(Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me!)
And some of my favorite lines from Pirates des Caraïbes ---
Captain Barbosa: Je suis peu enclin a acquiescer a votre requete. C'est «non». (I'm disenclined to acquiese to your request. That means "no".)
Will: Vous avez triché. (You cheated.)
Captain Jack Sparrow: Pirate.
(In French, Pirate is pronounced like "P-rat".)
Thar be on the TLAPD site also links t' several pirate-name generators. When I stirs it all up, this is how it falls out for the crew, in order of appearance:
Cap'n Pete the Badly Burnt
Pirate Jezebel the Blue
First-mate Wilma the Honest, aka Pegleg
Admiral Abigail Nimble Bottom
Pirate Stinkin' Jane Horngold
But I still be likin' Mad Matilda, so maybe I'll be Mad Matilda the Blue. And I be the first-mate, no matter what anyone else be sayin'.
Also from the TLAPD web site, some German for ye:
to wish a pirate luck, "und immer eine steife Brise!" (and always a strong wind)
In French, it's "Toujours un vent fort!"
So Godspeed to ye, and always a strong wind!
Mad Matilda the Blue
The crew here in Luxembourg was to be celebratin' today, but Cap'n gave the orders for the plans to move to yesterday. Arg!
We boarded the fair ship Luxembourg Playground yesterday, and were havin' much fun about it, when our second mate (I bein' the first, o' course) found herself with a bloody foot. No, that not be only pirate talk, thar was a lot o' blood. (And this first mate don't do so well with blood, as some of ye may know.) But with some help from the local lubbers (and a first-aid kit), we got her bandaged up, and aft on her feet. And the second mate now be havin' a new pirate name --- Pegleg!
When we were back to home port, Pegleg soaked the foot in the tub, and then Cap'n pulled out a good-sized piece of the ship from inside her foot (fittin' o' the name Pegleg), and we bandaged her up again, and she be doin' right well this mornin'.
I'll teach ye some pirate talk I be learnin' here in Luxembourg, most in French ---
- "Bon sang!" means "good blood", and a good expression to use when we feel like cursin' a French pirate.
- "La pleine voile" means "the full sail", or going as fast as ye can.
- "Coffre de trésor" means "chest of treasure". Need I be sayin' more?
- "Le fond de la mer" means "bottom of the sea," a good place to be sendin' your enemies.
- "Copain" or "mon gar" (or "ma fille"), how to address your mates.
- "Monsieur!", how to address the Cap'n.
What be the best way to learn pirate in French, ye ask?
Thar be a "translator" on the TLAPD site, but I be thinkin' the translator is straight from the chumbucket. The best way t' learn pirate, other than bein' one, is t' watch movies. It be hard work, all the watchin', but I be feelin' fairly happy with me pirate talk today.
And on the theme of movies, here's my list o' French pirate, from Pirates des Caraïbes ---
- un homme a la mer (man overboard)
- vous êtes prévenus (be warned)
- Nous sommes d'humbles pirates. (We're only humble pirates.)
- Mes cales sont remplies de trésors. (The holds are full of treasure.)
- le butin (spoils, booty, swag)
- On les rattrape. (They're catching up.)
- Levez l'ancre! (Raise the ancor.)
- Laissé allez de l'ancre! Pesez l'ancre! (Let go the anchor! Weigh anchor!)
- Hissez les voiles! (Raise the sails, or set the sails.)
- Avec ce vent, on aura besoin de toutes les voiles. (With this wind, we'll need all the sails.)
- Les pirates maudits naviguent ces eaux. (Cursed pirates sail these waters.)
- Vent dans les voiles! (Wind in the sails!)
- Mains en haut! (Hands on deck!)
- Mais pourquoi n'y a-t-il plus de rhum? (But why is the rum gone?)
- Si vous gardez les yeux ouverts, vous verrez des voiles blanches a l'horizon. (Keep your eyes open, you'll see white sails on the horizon.)
- Il y a une fuite. (There is a leak.)
On est des demons, des moutons noirs, des pommes pourries
(We're demons, the black sheep, the rotted apples)
Yo ho yo ho, la vie de pirate c'est pour moi!
(Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me!)
And some of my favorite lines from Pirates des Caraïbes ---
Captain Barbosa: Je suis peu enclin a acquiescer a votre requete. C'est «non». (I'm disenclined to acquiese to your request. That means "no".)
Will: Vous avez triché. (You cheated.)
Captain Jack Sparrow: Pirate.
(In French, Pirate is pronounced like "P-rat".)
Thar be on the TLAPD site also links t' several pirate-name generators. When I stirs it all up, this is how it falls out for the crew, in order of appearance:
Cap'n Pete the Badly Burnt
Pirate Jezebel the Blue
First-mate Wilma the Honest, aka Pegleg
Admiral Abigail Nimble Bottom
Pirate Stinkin' Jane Horngold
But I still be likin' Mad Matilda, so maybe I'll be Mad Matilda the Blue. And I be the first-mate, no matter what anyone else be sayin'.
Also from the TLAPD web site, some German for ye:
to wish a pirate luck, "und immer eine steife Brise!" (and always a strong wind)
In French, it's "Toujours un vent fort!"
So Godspeed to ye, and always a strong wind!
Mad Matilda the Blue
08 September, 2005
Introduction
Luxembourg is a real country. It's not part of Germany, at least not since the mid-1940's. It's not part of France, at least not since Napoleon. It's a very real, but very small country of it's own. It's a lovely little Northern European country, tucked between Germany, France and Belgium. There are parts of the European Commission headquartered here, and it is an important financial center. Therefore, the native Luxembourgers have a sense of importance, even though they live in a very small country. In area, Luxembourg is about the size of Rhode Island, the smallest of all the 50 states. The capital city, Luxembourg, has about 80,000 people. The population in the entire country is about 441,000 people. (For comparison purposes, Rhode Island's population in the 2000 Census was just over 1 million.)
The language here is Letzeburgesch (also called Luxembourgish or Luxembourgeois), which has it's roots in a low German dialect, but it's not German. French is the official language of the government, but it's the third language taught to the kids in school here, so not everyone speaks French. The people here are mostly Roman Catholic. There is a parliment and a Grand Duke, which makes Luxembourg a Grand Duchy and not a kingdom.
But this story isn't really about Luxembourg. It's about us: Catherine --- a 40-something, happily married mother of three who decides in a moment of temporary insanity, or maybe temporary clarity, or maybe a mid-life crisis, to leave my job with the U.S. government and work for a small private company in Luxembourg, taking my husband and kids along for the ride, and Darin --- the above-mentioned husband.
It's not a beautiful story, or inspirational, or romantic, but in our story you may find something useful if you are thinking about moving to Luxembourg, or changing jobs, or starting a mid-life crisis of your own.
The language here is Letzeburgesch (also called Luxembourgish or Luxembourgeois), which has it's roots in a low German dialect, but it's not German. French is the official language of the government, but it's the third language taught to the kids in school here, so not everyone speaks French. The people here are mostly Roman Catholic. There is a parliment and a Grand Duke, which makes Luxembourg a Grand Duchy and not a kingdom.
But this story isn't really about Luxembourg. It's about us: Catherine --- a 40-something, happily married mother of three who decides in a moment of temporary insanity, or maybe temporary clarity, or maybe a mid-life crisis, to leave my job with the U.S. government and work for a small private company in Luxembourg, taking my husband and kids along for the ride, and Darin --- the above-mentioned husband.
It's not a beautiful story, or inspirational, or romantic, but in our story you may find something useful if you are thinking about moving to Luxembourg, or changing jobs, or starting a mid-life crisis of your own.
31 August, 2005
31 July, 2005
30 June, 2005
30 May, 2005
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