Having lived in Germany since 1988, I haven't seen too many football games in past years. Americans may not believe this, but American football games are rarely shown on German TV. Oh, the Super Bowl is usually shown, but since it's usually on at 2 in the morning I haven't bothered watching very often. It's not much fun watching a game alone at 2 AM. Anyone who thinks my dear wife would stay up and watch the Super Bowl with me, raise your hand! You back there? Wrong! Go to the back of the class. Well, a few weeks ago I ordered digital cable and it was activated just in time for the Seattle Seahawks first-round playoff game against the Washington Redskins. I didn't know when I ordered digital cable, but Kabel Deutschland includes NASN, North American Sports Network. And they show all the important games. My wife is sure I ordered digital cable just so I could watch football games, but I really didn't know it would work out that way. Really, I didn't. So I rec...

Everybody is doing Christmas letters. Driven by guilt pangs, I've decided to join the crowd. Not having children, there are fewer events to list here - no PTA meetings, youth baseball games, or, as many of my former classmates report (are we that old?), graduations, weddings, or grandchildren. If this is boring - too bad. Stop reading now. In January Anja & I celebrated our birthdays (inevitably, but as I always say, it beats the alternative). The winter of 2006-2007 saw very little snow, but we were able to spend the first week of February on our traditional winter vacation in Mittenwald, a beautiful town in the Bavarian Alps. Note: this photo is from 2005! This year we had the pleasure of having our nephew Randolf Carr spend the week with us. Randolf proved an accomplished and daring skier, and we very much enjoyed his company during the week. Too bad he doesn't have any winter vacation this year! There was just enough snow to ski, but this year we'll be spending our ...

Why don't Germans get as excited about high taxes as Americans? The coalition government in Berlin is increasing the national value-added tax from 16% to 19% on January 1 2007 (imagine paying a hidden sales tax of 19% on nearly everything you buy), gasoline prices, much higher than in the US anyway (how would you like to pay $6 a gallon? We do over here), are going to rise another 6 Euro cents a liter on January 1st (that's $0.27 a gallon), the tax deduction for interest income is being sharply cut - the list goes on and on. And yet no one seems to notice very much. No American politician who voted to increase taxes like that would be re-elected.

As a native-born Seattleite who's been living in Germany since 1988 and in Munich since 2000, I plan on occasionally commenting on German and American culture and politics, from the perspective of one with a foot in each country.