An American abroad rarely has to sit through paeans to the homeland these days, the W. & Co. wrecking crew be praised! But last weekend I did. The setting, naturally enough, was Berlin, where my wife and I were guests at a dual birthday bash for half of a quartet of sisters from an English class I taught more than 20 years ago.

Merrily flowed the evening, along with the contents of many a bottle. At an hour when booze-buoyed hearts had risen to tongue-level, the husband of the younger birthday girl plopped down next to me and poured out his thanks to the U.S.A. Like most of the people who were at the party, he's a western Berliner too young to have memories of Hitler but not of JFK.

"After Kennedy declared, 'Ich bin ein Berliner,' we felt secure knowing that America stood behind us," the man said, referring to the president's famous speech in front of West Berlin's city hall in 1963. Two years earlier, the Berlin Wall had gone up.

Kennedy's speech gave a huge morale boost to Germans in West Berlin, an enclave surrounded by Soviet-backed East Germany. It came on the 15th anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led Berlin Airlift, which kept West Berlin supplied with food, fuel, and other necessities during the Soviets' 11-month blockade of all land links.

Even before the airlift, the United States had won friends in vanquished Germany with CARE packages and the Marshall Plan.

The G.I.s stationed in West Berlin during the Cold War (smaller contingents of British and French forces had sectors too) were generally made to feel quite welcome. Their "American Way of Life" -- Coca-Cola, country music, easygoing can-do-itiveness -- attracted many Germans, and a rich web of German-American relationships developed. I benefited from this goodwill, emotionally as well as materially, when I studied in West Berlin. (In my final year I received a scholarship from the Stiftung Luftbrückendank, or "Airlift Gratitude Foundation." Established in 1959 by then West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, it has helped more than 200 American, British and French students at Berlin universities.)

No "Green Zone" was needed.

My wife and I had long been meaning to visit Nuremberg around Christmas. The city's Christmas market -- called the Christkindlesmarkt, not Weihnachtsmarkt -- is widely regarded as the best of them all. Since my mother-in-law made the trip from Moscow to spend the holidays with us, we decided to buy three train tickets and go.

I'd been to Nuremberg before, about 25 years ago, and my memories were hazy but positive. I recalled the picturesque medieval castle on the hill, and the opaque Franconian dialect. I also remembered meeting an old-timer still proud to have shaken Hitler's hand. Nuremberg, of course, is known not only for its meistersingers of yore, Albrecht Dürer, toys, gingerbread, and grilled finger-length sausages. The Nazis adopted their anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws in the city, the site of huge Nazi rallies and the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. But Adolf and Co. was the last thing on my mind.

Until we got there, that is. Nuremberg was decked out in all its Christmas finery. And over the street leading from the train station to the Christkindlesmarkt hung strings of lights in the shape of ...

... angels, if you looked closely. But at first they looked to me like Nazi eagles. The ones with wings pointing downward. Really. I thought it was just me. But my wife saw the resemblance too.

We walked on and soon came to a monument. It was a World War II monument of sorts, dedicated not to those whom the Germans attacked or exterminated, but to the Germans consequently expelled from the German-ravaged East.

Eventually we reached the Christkindlesmarkt, where we pushed happily through the throngs, soaked up the sights and smells, drank mulled wine and eggnog, and ate Nuremberg sausages. On the street they're sold three in a bun, or "drei im Weggla" (not "drei im Brötchen"), as they say in Nuremberg. Then we strolled up the hill to the castle.

By the time we descended we were hungry again, so we stopped at a cosy litle restaurant with smoke curling from the chimney. The menu consisted essentially of one item: Nuremberg sausages. Diners had a choice of how many -- six, eight, 10 or 12 -- and of a side dish of sauerkraut, potato salad or pretzels. The food was served on pewter plates. A grill stood in the center of the room, under the chimney, surrounded by long wooden tables and benches where Germans and foreigners of every stripe sat elbow to elbow, hip to hip.

I was working on my third beer -- but who was counting? -- when our waitress squeezed in two elderly German men at our table. They had a rather dignified air, and were still straight-backed and hale. The one next to me was talkative, and I asked him if he was from Nuremberg. No, he replied, but he'd been living in Nuremberg since shortly after the war. He went on to say that he'd been born in Karlsbad, which is the German name of the Czech town of Karlovy Vary, in the Sudetenland, then predominantly German. Toward the end of the war he was captured by Soviet forces in Hungary and sent to a POW camp in Kiev. After his release he settled in Nuremberg (Germans were expelled from Karlsbad in 1945).

A pall fell over the jollity. My mother-in-law was a child in the Soviet Union when German troops were wreaking havoc there.

"And where, if I may ask, are you all from?" my neighbor inquired.

I explained that my wife and her mother were Russians, and that I was an American.

"Ah, now that's a combination of extremes!"

"How so?"

"Oh, you know, the Russians and Americans were the Cold War's principal adversaries."

"They actually have a lot in common," I countered.

"Such as? That they both fought Hitler?" There seemed to be the barest hint of hostility in his voice now, but maybe it was just me. And then he added -- just a bit too self-consciously, it seemed:

"Well, it's a good thing they did."

The telephone rang on Tuesday morning, and I decided to pick it up.

My mother-in-law was on the line.

"Happy holiday!" she chortled. I didn't understand at first. "What holiday?" I said. "Victory Day!" she shot back. Her voice now carried a note of indignation.

Victory Day, of course! I'd simply forgotten. It was May 9th, the 61st anniversary of Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies in World War II. In Germany -- can you blame them? -- May 9th isn't a holiday. My mother-in-law is Russian, though, and she was calling from Moscow.

"Happy holiday!" I chortled. My mother-and-law and I are allies.

Tatiana Sergeyevna -- that's my mother-in-law -- was 3 years old on May 9, 1945. She was born in Tashkent, Uzbek S.S.R., and nearly died of typhoid there. Her maiden name was Swedish (her father's father was a Swede), so her family, deemed potentially unreliable by the Soviet authorities, was evacuated from Moscow to the Soviet hinterland at the start of the war. This indignity was really a blessing: Her father wasn't sent to the front.

The war left an estimated 27 million Soviets dead.

After I hung up the telephone, I got out a music box that Tatiana Sergeyevna gave me in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War. I opened it, and my wife and I listened to the popular Russian "Victory Day" song. My wife sang along. In the music box is a pocket watch embossed with a portrait of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who, among his other World War II exploits, commanded the final assault on Berlin in 1945. When we were living in Moscow, we'd often arrange to meet friends by the big equestrian statue of Zhukov, which is just off Red Square.

May 9th passed quietly in Germany, just another day. That's not to say the Germans don't remember. Some do, anyway. Here and there are commemorative events. They don't celebrate Germany's defeat, naturally, but the end of the horrible war, and "liberation" from fascism. The mood at such affairs is thoughtful, not proud, not joyous. As on the anniversary of a shotgun wedding.