Old, beat-up jalopies stalled by the side of the road are a rarity in Germany. And when you do see one, it's usually carrying Eastern European license plates -- Poland, Bulgaria, Russia.

I'm not being nationalistic, there's good reason -- mandatory bi-annual safety checks known as Tüv keep run-down vehicles off the road. The checks are performed by an actual engineer with an actual college degree and, after today, I can tell you they take a quick look at everything from the basic car mechanics to doors, seats and even headrests.

They even lift up the car, walk underneath and let the jack shake it back and forth to check the suspension (I'm sure another Tüv engineer checks out the jack to make sure it won't drop a 4300 pound Volvo on two diminutive engineers).

The check is known as Tüv because of the company that used to have a monopoly on the inspections. In the late '80s, Tüv was forced to break up and any number of engineering companies were certified to begin providing the checks. They even introduced a rarity in Germany -- customer service. Inspectors will travel to your local garage to take a look at your car while you're getting an oil change, or your winter and summer tires swapped.

This seems like a nice idea, but it's not. My old Tüv expired in June and so, while getting it done, I figured I could check out a new independent garage (the Volvo dealers have been expensive and crap). I took it in, and told them to change the oil as well. Several hours later I got a phone call -- there's no way, they said, the Volvo would pass the Tüv. The brakes were worn down and there's a pit in the windshield. What would the repairs cost? One thousand five hundred euros, at least.

Right.

He might have had me with the brakes -- they were completely redone five years ago and I only drive the car in the city, which probably isn't so nice. Except: I only drive about 8,000 kilometers a year. Brakes that only last 32,000 clicks? Maybe. But the thing with the windshield was preposterous -- it's passed three other inspections with different Tüv inspectors since I've had it.

"Our guy would never let that through," he said.

Right.

So I took it to Tüv myself this morning and 20 minutes after arriving I had a pink sticker on my license plate showing the Volvo had passed.

I was apprehensive about asking them about the brakes -- maybe they'd take a second look and repeal the Tüv I had just been awarded. But I figured, what with the kids often riding in the back and all, I should ask. Besides, like that criminal having acquiesced to Dirty Harry, I gots to know.

Mr. Engineer Man and his intern looked at me like I had just asked them to make balloon animals. The pads are only half worn, Mr. Intern said.

"You've got at least 5,000 kilometers left. They'll either start squeaking or a light will come on to tell you when they need to be done," Mr. Engineer Man said. And then they both smiled that kind of smile the doctor gives you while handing you a scrip for antibiotics in the midst of a bad infection. The all-will-be-well smile.

I'm against Tüv as a an unnecessary bureaucratic exercise that taps time and resources, but today I'm rethinking my position -- though had I not needed it in the first place, I would have never even thought about spending 1.5 large on brakes I don't need.

Yesterday I was sitting outside at a cafe in the Bötzowviertel when a tatooed skater guy road by and blurted out, "Schwabenficker!", which translates roughly as F**K YOU YUPPIES. In typical passive-aggressive fashion, he did this as he was in full motion and without actually looking at any of us.

I retorted with a, "You go, Green Day!" but I'm not sure he heard me let alone understood the implications of my Green Day slur.

I then noted his Vision skateboard, Diamond Back BMX bike and Eastpack backpack and thought: Dude, check yer own glasshouse before you go tossing molotovs. It's even more absurd when you know what it costs to cover 85% of your body in ink (about as much as a small car).

But then it started to bug me because what he said also included a regional reference: Swabians (English for Schwaben) are people that live in Swabia, roughly the area around Stuttgart. It's one of the richest regions in Germany and Berliners love to blame them for the city's woes (as in, they come in and buy everything up and raise prices until no one can afford anything. Obviously, the people who use this slur are a bit gray on the mechanics of a free market).

Whitewashing (pun intended) people with stereotypes in Berlin -- or Germany -- always gives me an uneasy feeling. Did that dude learn nothing in school?

Anyway, I'm sure when his buddies aren't looking he turns up not just the Green Day, but probably Coldplay.

Never again will I play down the level of bureaucracy in Germany. It's. Insane.

Our nursery is essentially a cooperative nursery where parents cook, keep the rooms in shape and run the place. I've volunteered for the running the place bit and I'm run down. We're a club, which in Germany has a special legal meaning. This makes some sense because it allows clubs to act a bit like corporations -- the club carries the liability, not the members.

But in order to get club status you have to come up with club regulations, elect a club board and hold an official club meeting at least once a year. You also have to register your club and board with an administrative court. OK, I thought in the beginning, a bit of a run around but that legal status thing is kind of nice.

Except, in order to register any board changes with the court, you have to go through a notary, which in Germany are attorneys. They look at your passport, the minutes from the last meeting and charge you about 30 euros. Then you get to send it all in to the administrative court where they enter the changes. To keep my spirits up, I always envision court clerks as monks standing at long rows of lecterns entering information in centuries-old ledgers using feather quills.

You'd think that'd be the end.

You'd be wrong.

Rather than just manually entering your club's information in the ledger (lord knows German bureaucrats are still nervous about the "on" switches let alone the keyboards computers require), they actually get a cup of coffee, spread all the documents you've submitted on their desk and have a nice, deep look at everything. Everything, you assume, that's right because you paid an attorney to review it before you submitted it (isn't that what I paid her for?).

Then the court sends you a letter that you didn't follow the letter of your regulations and you'll have to do it again. In typical German bureaucrat style, they offer you a bit of a workaround with a wink of the eye but, I always think, if you're going to wink your eye, why not just let it slip past? This is not the proper etiquette, however. The proper etiquette is to thank them for moving their eyes at all.

And do it all again. I admit, the process takes twice as long for me because it's in a foreign language and -- for this particular work around -- requires me to collect letters from two other equally busy volunteers. But is this really the most efficient way of going about it? Doesn't every newspaper every day report on how the courts are backed up because they don't have enough personnel? Yet this one can care about paperwork submitted in bad German by a non-profit daycare that looks after 18 kids? Really?

I've learned to chuckle and just do what they want, though. You can't fight city hall.

But this makes it even more absurd that the EU appointed an aging German politician as their anti-bureaucracy specialist.

I hope they filled out the paperwork correctly.

Sure there's a recession. Sure we're all worried. But I'm still very much psyched that my wife and her friend decided to take a risk and try something all of their own doing. The only thing I contributed to this venture was the occasional errand and plenty of childcare (but since they are my own children it's hard to call it "contributing", especially since I'm enjoying the extra time with them).

We didn't get many pictures of the opening but if you're ever in Berlin, stop by the Pomeranza Design Ranch ("Pomeranza" is like the female German equivalent of a yokel).

So it turns out there is a Halloween in Germany. Of sorts.

It happens on the night of Dec. 6 in Catholic areas of the country and is supposed to commemorate whatever bishop or saint Dec. 6 (Nikolaus) commemorates. What's supposed to happen is that all the kids studying for confirmation dress up, walk around the neighborhood, ring doorbells and sing carols. They are then rewarded with candy.

What actually happens is that about half of all the kids in the neighborhood dress up but every one of them (Confirmation or no) all ring, sing and receive. Since we were in deepest, darkest, Catholic Germany the weekend of Dec. 6, Cy and Martha got to participate. They were happy to dress up but their cousins refused. Though I've never done Halloween with my kids, this felt exactly the way Halloween felt. We hung back while the kids did their thing. Some people would ask the kids who they were and where they lived while other people just listened to the song and handed out treats.

Most of the houses went to some trouble to put together little treat packets with gingerbread cookies while others just wrapped up a couple euros in napkins.

Sabine and her brother wouldn't let me offer to sing in exchange for a bottle of beer or a quick nip of schnapps.

They still don't think I was serious.

When Sabine was pregnant with Cy and we would tell German friends that we were expecting a boy, they would turn to me with a bit of a sad face. "Boys are easier," they would say, "until they're grown up."

Then there would be a pause. And they'd say:

"Then they have to kill off their father. Figuratively, of course."

At first I just shook my head and forgot about but it got to be so common that I threw the concept into google. Uncle Google told me it's a Freud thing (I never had Psych 101). It's all related to Oedipus and the idea that fathers are standing in the way of their sons.

I've never put much stock in Freud, so I just filed it away somewhere in my brain. Then I started reading things about child development (I wish I could say books but, to be honest, I never made it that far) and every one of them -- English or German -- referred to an Oedipal phase with little boys where they realize they are different from their mothers and go through a sort of emotional separation.

I didn't put much stock in that either until last week.

Suddenly I am the most important person in Cy's world. It happened over night. He fights with Sabine constantly (but, to be honest, he's always been a bit of a contrarian) and always wants my attention. It's improving his English because he wants to communicate with me on our own level. It happened from one moment to the next.

Since I'm a bit of a self-conscious parent, it's nice to have a little reassurance from the midget squad. But I'm also glad to be there for him. The whole thing coincides with a long-planned boys' weekend in Worpswede (where else?) with just me and him. Martha and Sabine are visiting Kathrin in Hamburg.

These Freud things pop up semi-regularly in my tenure here, but this is the only time I might -- sort of -- believe him. After the honeymoon Cy and I have been having over the past week, it would kill me if he did indeed have to kill me.

Germans love discussion. Laws take forever. Controversies drag on for weeks. Talk shows are dull and press conferences are always marathons of rhetorical oneupmanship. This isn't surprising given Germany's intellectual legacy and faith in academia but you wouldn't expect it to trickle down to everyday life -- unless you're a politician, professor or code enforcement officer.

But it does.

I was vaguely aware of this in my early days in Germany. I more than once stormed away from a government office with the feeling that I just hadn't pressed the issue enough but I could never figure out just how to press an angle -- where did I apply pressure, and how?

Then Sabine and I moved in together.

One afternoon we traipsed off to the Mitte town hall to register our new address with the authorities. Sabine was still on the dole and I finished up work early so we could go after lunch. The office was open until 3 p.m. We figured we'd have to wait an hour or so -- but no big deal.

Once we arrived at the town hall -- a successful renovation of an East German apartment block that's now airy with a touch of Cold War Communism -- we couldn't figure out where to go, so we went into the room marked, "Information."

"Is this where we register our address?" Sabine asked.

"No."

In the past, this is when I would have stormed out, livid that someone who is paid to help me doesn't even understand a leading question. But another part of German culture I've come to understand is that you're responsible for standing up for yourself and asking the right questions. But still I was annoyed at this woman.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Sabine said. "Could you possibly tell me where we need to go."

What? I thought. Why is my girlfriend sucking up to this woman? She's sitting above a sign that says, "INFORMATION". Of course she will tell us where we need to go.

The woman looked over the counter at a full waiting room across the hall. "I need to give you a number and then you go upstairs to [some room] but there's no point now. There's no way you'll get in today. You might as well go home."

I was warming up a tirade that included mentioning how much tax I paid last year, how little she obviously respected me as her source of income and whether I could speak to her supervisor when Sabine raised a calm right hand. To the rest of the world it looked like her saying, "Let me say something first honey" but she and I both knew it was her plugging up my leaky reservoir of rage.

"Would it be possible to just get a number and then we'll go wait for awhile? If we don't get it, that's fine we'd just like to give it a go. We both took the afternoon off from work for this."

"Nah," the woman said. "I don't see why. There's no point. You'll never get in."

I was about to tell Sabine I would be outside when she was finished talking to this knuckle-dragging mouth breather but I found myself entranced by the discussion. There was a rhythm to it and it was clear Sabine was the conductor.

"It would just be a big help because we both took the day off of work. We don't mind waiting awhile. If we don't get in, we don't get in."

"Do you have all the paperwork?"

Oh wow, I thought. She's countering with an offensive move -- if we don't have all the paperwork, then we're obviously idiots and don't deserve a number anyway. This woman was a gambler -- if we did have the paperwork she'd have to relent. I was beginning to like her.

"Yes," Sabine said producing our sheath of stuff. The woman took it and began typing stuff into the computer. She looked at Sabine's ID card and my passport. She typed some more stuff in the computer and then printed something out. She grabbed a stamp off her desk and placed a Berlin seal on the piece of paper and then handed everything back to Sabine.

"There," she said. "I just did it. Sending you up there wouldn't do anyone any good. Have a nice day."

Only recently did I discover that cultural differences matter because of what people expect of me. Those times I stormed away from government offices, the workers were probably as baffled as me. I still get miffed when someone wants to enter a negotiation with me about something I'm entitled to but it's the way the game works -- it just took me awhile to learn the rules.

Most Germans say they like to camp but the campgrounds they mean are tidy rows of plots for tents and RVs -- discount hotels where they provide nice showers, grocery stores and a full-service snackbar, and you bring your own room.

The Waakhausen Campground is what run-of-the-mill Germans call "nature camping" in the same tone of voice they reserve for our current president. Waakhausen is like everyone else likes it -- a bit rustic, friendly, with a suitable bathroom and one slightly moldy shower stall. Since most Germans hate it, we were there with various hippy-esque German parents and a handful of Dutch lesbians. We made friends with one dude from the WWF and his kids.

Although it seems obvious why, I'm always surprised when the kids make big developmental strides during vacations. It's like they have time to concentrate on the things we've been trying to show them while distracted by the everyday banalities of life. Cy started walking in Illinois. Martha's English appeared in Colorado.

For about a year I've been disappointed that Martha hasn't been able to swing while all her friends go ever higher on the playground. But while I was puttering about in the bathroom or kitchen at the campground, I heard Martha and Sabine talking about how she was suddenly able to propel herself on the swingset. "That's great, Martha, that's great."

I came out to her cruising up and down. Up and down. Every chance she got, she went over to the swingset to practice.

Cy now speaks English with me without it seeming like an inconvenience. This, too, started somewhere on that campground.

I'll probably write a travel piece about the place and Worpswede, a former artist colony. And Cy and I are returning at the end of August for a Männer Wochenende.

Finally, vacation.