The beginning of the end of the old days came in 1995, when Deutsche Bundespost, Germany's former state-owned mail and telecommunications monopoly, split into three stock companies: Deutsche Post, Deutsche Postbank, and Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Post went public in 2000. (The German government, its largest shareholder, has a 31-percent stake.) Since profitability started trumping service, the company has slashed branches, mailboxes, and staff.

And the cost-cutting ain't over yet. Deutsche Post announced recently that it planned to sell about 700 of its remaining 800 independent outlets nationwide to retail partners such as bakeries, supermarkets, and newsdealers by 2011. It said that the some 3,000 employees at the affected outlets would keep their jobs and continue to provide postal services under the new proprietors, though. Great. I'll have whipped cream and a dozen stamps with my apple strudel, bitte.

The German mail giant has also raised postage, which was already high. A standard letter (which weighs up to 20 grams, or about 7/10 of an ounce) to the United States now costs 1.70 euros. By contrast, a first-class letter from the U.S. to Germany costs $0.90 so long as it weighs no more than 1 ounce.

The last time I got riled at the post office -- the last time I was there, incidentally -- was when I mailed my 2007 income tax return to an IRS center in Texas a week ago. ("April is the cruellest month...") Postage for the return came to 4 euros, or $6.27 at the day's exchange rate. Ouch.

Deutsche Post also gets me riled with its big jumps in postage from one weight class to the next. A so-called compact letter (up to 50 grams, or 1.77 ounces) to a destination outside Europe costs 2 euros. A letter weighing a single gram over 50 costs twice as much. Over 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces), postage jumps from 4 euros to 8 euros. Even if the euro and U.S. dollar were at parity, we're talking steep postal rates here.

By contrast, the U.S. Postal Service, an independent agency of the U.S. government, charges $1.80 for a first-class letter to Germany weighing more than 1 ounce, up to 2 ounces. Postage is $2.70 for a letter between 2 and 3 ounces, and $3.60 between 3 and 4. That's reasonable. With gradual increases you don't have to worry that an ink blot will double your postage.

Then there's size. A standard letter in Germany, which costs 0.55 euros to send to a domestic destination, has a length between 140 and 235 millimeters (5.5 and 9.3 inches), a width between 90 and 125 millimeters (3.5 and 4.9 inches), and a thickness up to 5 millimeters (0.2 inches). A letter just a tad longer or a tad wider becomes a "large letter" (Großbrief), which costs 1.45 euros. A letter just a tad shorter also becomes a "large letter." Verstanden?

E-mail is such a wonderful thing.

Bonfires are among Germany's Easter customs, and they're especially common in the north. Going back to a pre-Christian tradition meant to drive out winter and make the fields fruitful, they've come to symbolize the resurrection of Christ. Mainly, though, they're beacons for Teutons looking to party.

Hamburg's "Easter fires" (Osterfeuer) are lit after dark on the evening before Easter Sunday. They're built at various places in and around the city, including private yards and in front of churches. The biggest are on the banks of the Elbe, the one in Blankenese -- an upscale western district with villas perched prettily on the hillside by the river -- being the most popular.

That's where me and the missis went. We rode out on the suburban train, walked through the district center, descended a steep stairway to the shore, and there it was: a huge, crackling bonfire spewing sparks into a black sky. A large crowd of people had gathered around it, some, sitting up close on a stone balustrade, silhouetted eerily against the dancing flames. Boats strung with lights and filled with sightseers floated by. An occasional airplane flew low overhead.

We warmed ourselves by the fire for a while, then strolled along the sandy beach. The line at the stand with grilled sausages was long, so we got a herring sandwich and mulled wine. We felt fine.

Despite the blazes all over town, everything was firmly under control. Germans are real sticklers for safety: Firefighters, and their equipment, stood by in full force. My biggest worry was whether I'd trip over a fire hose and break a leg.

Last night it was freezing again. Hey, spring: ready or not, come!

The stranger wasn't a cop, criminal investigator, or private dick. He belonged to a lower taxonomic order, closer to creeping and crawling creatures. He was an agent of the hated GEZ, the acronym for the Gebühreneinzugszentrale (Fee Collection Center) of Germany's public television and radio broadcasters, namely ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. Heavily restricted from running commercial advertising, they're financed largely with a fee paid by owners of broadcast-receiving devices such as television sets, radios and (since January 1, 2007) computers with Internet access. The GEZ collected 7.29 billion euros in 2006, which is more than the company that sponsors this blog paid me in 2006 and 2007 COMBINED.

The fee -- currently 17.03 euros a month for a television set, or for a television set and any combination of radio and/or computer -- is in addition to any private fees a viewer may have for cable or satellite TV. It doesn't matter if you watch public programming or not, or even if you watch the tube at all. The German government has mercifully exempted some folks from the fee, including children, welfare recipients, the blind, the deaf, and people who have been certifiably dead for five years or more (just kidding -- ALL dead people are exempt). Failure to pay can bring a fine of up to 1,000 euros.

Needless to say, resentment at the fee is high, all the more so as cash-fat public broadcasters often copy the lowbrow fare that commercial stations lure viewers with. Fee foes' ire has been further fanned by a number of recent covert-advertising and product-placement scandals involving public broadcasters. Some people, be it for reasons of principle or pocketbook, refuse to pay.

That's where the GEZ agents come in.

GEZ agents are freelancers paid on commission. The more deadbeats they collar, the more money they make. They're motivated, in other words. In most of Germany's 16 states, residents registration offices (Einwohnermeldeämter; in Germany you're required to register your place of residence with the authorities) provide names and addresses to GEZ agents, who check them against lists of people who have registered their broadcast-receiving devices. The GEZ is also said to pay private sources for names and addresses of people who, say, have bought a cable TV subscription or taken part in a TV quiz.

While GEZ agents have no legal right of entry into a home to look for unregistered receivers, they're known to use trick questions ("Have I disturbed you during the evening news?") and the psychology of fear to find out if someone "watches black" (sieht schwarz, i.e. watches television without paying the fee). Many people falsely believe that the GEZ has patrol vehicles with signal-locating equipment.

As for me, I pay the fee -- and gnash my teeth. So why the friendly visit by the GEZ? I presume the agent came to call on our new neighbors and spied an unfamiliar name along with mine on our door.

"Who's that?" he asked me.

"My wife," I replied.

The agent was disappointed -- the fee for a married couple is the same as that for a single person. He wasn't about to go quietly, though. Did we have a garden house? Or a car that we use for business? (A TV set or radio in those places is subject to an added fee.) No, we don't have a garden house, I replied. Nor do we own a car.

It's easier to dodge bullets when you're thin.

Here's the background: Smoking in Hamburg's public buildings has been banned since January 1. But Hamburg's most famous citizen, ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt, is also his country's best-known Qualmender (heavy smoker). The leader of West Germany from 1974 to 1982, Schmidt puffs away on menthol ciggies wherever he goes -- no-smoking signs be damned -- except in church and, earlier, in the Bundestag, where he switched to snuff. Hamburg's prestigious weekly newspaper Die Zeit, which Schmidt has co-published since 1983, even launched an interview series with him last year called Auf eine Zigarette mit Helmut Schmidt ("A Cigarette With Helmut Schmidt").

Here's what happened: At a New Year's reception in a Hamburg theater, guests of honor Schmidt and his wife, Loki, also a chain smoker, did what they always do: They lit up. The popular Bild tabloid published pictures of the puffers, prompting a non-smokers group in faraway Wiesbaden to report them to the police for violating the no-smoking ban and "causing bodily harm."

The online edition of the newsmagazine Der Spiegel quoted Hamburg's chief prosecutor as saying late Friday that while smoking was unhealthy, "it is not to be assumed" that the Schmidts caused bodily harm -- certainly not to the people who've accused them. Loki and Smoky, as the Schmidts are fondly known, may yet get nicked for flouting the ban, though.

Loki, by the way, is 88. Smoky, who's had four heart bypass operations and wears a pacemaker, is 89.

It's not that Germans lack Christmas traditions of their own. By golly, Germans basically wrote the book on them. Christmas trees, hot chestnuts, gingerbread, nutcrackers, mulled wine... Christmastime in Germany is wunderbar! And there are plenty of German Christmas songs, too, such as Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht; O Tannenbaum; and Alle Jahre wieder. Pleasing though they may be in their solemn, sentimental way, they're missing a certain something, and Germans sense it.

Let's call that something PIZAZZ.

Compare the lyrics and melody of "Jingle Bells" with those of Kling, Glöckchen, klingelingeling. See what I mean?

Part of the reason is probably the relative clunkiness of the German language. German jazz vocalist Roger Cicero, who's featured in the next issue of Schau ins Land, says German has "more rough edges" than English does, is "a lot more straightforward" and harder to sing. He's not the first singer to notice.

But a larger part of the reason, I suppose, is the relative stiffness and seriousness of the German people. We've got light and loose ditties like "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree," "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth," and "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer." They've got light and loose ditties like... ah... wait a second... um... ?

See what I mean?

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!

The cousin spent a few months in Germany some years back, and he's glad, very glad, to be outta here. The Swedes are more relaxed and tolerant of foreigners, he related, and aren't forever talking about money.

An obsession with money is usually ascribed to Americans. To be more precise, Americans are absorbed in making money or, if need be, borrowing it. Germans' great preoccupation with money, however, is focused mainly on saving it -- and having the grasping state redistribute as much of it to them as possible.

It's remarkable how exercised Germans can get over essentially piddling amounts. Germany is a wealthy country, and German politics often seems to be a never-ending chain of drawn-out disputes over who cops a few more euros from the treasury, be it in the form of child-care benefits (Elterngeld), subsidies to first-time homeowners (Eigenheimzulage), subsidies for private pensions (Riester-Rente), subsidies for business start-ups (Gründungszuschuss), tax deductions for commuters (Pendlerpauschale), or whatever.

Germans' abiding love of penny-pinching was encapsulated in the advertising slogan "Geiz ist geil!" (loosely translated: "Stinginess is cool!"), which has become a mantra of sorts over the past several years. The slogan was launched by the German electronics retailer Saturn to plug its low prices.

There's nothing wrong with frugality, of course -- quite the contrary -- so long as it's not taken to extremes (the meaning of "extreme" being highly subjective). But it often goes hand in hand with a certain small-mindedness.

One of my first memories of Germany was a display of frugality. The year: 1976. The lady of the house where I was staying, in Freiburg, dropped an egg on the kitchen counter. Rather than wiping up the mess and pitching it, which I, a continuously well-fed American, would have considered normal, she carefully collected the innards on a plate. I was struck by her behavior and put it down to wartime want.

Fast forward about 20 years. Then with a job in Moscow, I was subletting my Hamburg apartment to a young German carpenter. Part of our deal was that he pay for his telephone calls and I pay the monthly fees for both the telephone and the connection. During one of my visits, he offered to replace the telephone with one of his own so that I could save some money. I thanked him but said that the amount wasn't really worth the bother. Not worth the bother? he said, surprised. Why, in the space of months I could save enough for an ice-cream cone...

Seen from a foreign perspective, the size of Germans' concerns over small sums seems more than a bit excessive. In an interview several years ago with the newsmagazine Der Spiegel, German rock singer-songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer, who lives in London, described a TV show he'd watched back home in Germany about a German company: "A woman was sitting in a big, beautiful office that in England five people would be working in. She looks into the camera and says, 'My paycheck is for eight euros less. Now I have a crisis,'" Grönemeyer was quoted as saying.

"If someone in England sat in front of a camera and claimed a crisis because of earning 10 pounds less, the person would be institutionalized."

But wait! This wasn't a daydream. This was the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. And the words she spoke were German. Not, "Zieh dich bitte aus!" Rather, "Machen Sie sich bitte frei!" That, gentle reader, could only mean one thing: I'd been led into an examining room. The young blonde was a nurse. The doctor would be in shortly. I hoped it wouldn't hurt.

It did.

What were you thinking?

Sich freimachen, which can also mean "to take time off work," is the official way of saying "to get undressed," literally "to make oneself free (of clothing)." This is the meaning of frei in Freikörperkultur ("free-body culture," i.e. nudism), which is quite popular in these parts.

A body that's been "made free" isn't necessarily one that's been disrobed or allowed leisure time, though. The Nazis -- who advocated freedom through work, not freedom from work -- attached the cynical motto Arbeit Macht Frei ("Work Makes [One] Free") to the entrances of some of their concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Laborers there, as we know, were typically made free of their lives.

Then there's einen Brief freimachen, "to put a postage stamp (or stamps) on a letter," freeing it for delivery -- or rather, freeing it from an obstacle to delivery, namely no prepayment.

Frei (and its English cognate, "free") has an interesting background -- it's a love child. Linguists say an early meaning was "beloved," "belonging to the loved ones" (cf. Gothic frijon, "to love"). A related word is Freund ("friend") -- originally "loved one," "lover." The archaic German verb freien means "to marry"; also "to court," "to woo." Hence a Freier is a "suitor." Today Freier is chiefly a euphemism for a customer of a prostitute, or "john."

For the ancient Germans, frei was a legal term. "Belonging to the loved ones" were kinfolk and fellow tribesmen, and frei came to mean "protected," "enjoying full rights," "not in bondage." The modern meanings of frei developed from this.

They're diverse. Take the three compound nouns Freibier, Freibad, and Freitod, literally "free beer," "free swimming pool," and "free death." While Freibier is what you think it would be, a Freibad isn't a swimming pool that costs nothing to use. It's a swimming pool im Freien, or unter freiem Himmel ("under the free [i.e. open] sky") -- that is, an "outdoor swimming pool."

And a Freitod is neither a death outdoors nor a death that costs nothing, such as one outdoors as opposed to in a hospital, where you're fed through the arm and pay through the nose. A Freitod is a "suicide," i.e. a voluntary -- freely chosen -- death.

Hmm. Could Patrick Henry have had it both ways by blowing his brains out?

... the World Series. An American man's thoughts, anyway. Which brings us to two burning questions: Will the Injun-stomping Sox scale the Rox? And, Mommy, is there baseball in Germany?

The answer to the second question is yes, which is no small source of solace for U.S. expats (or Dominican expats, Japanese expats, etc.) who sometimes simply must get a fix -- in the flesh and not just on the tube -- of the boys of summer. While baseball has become increasingly popular in soccer-mad Germany in recent years, it remains a marginal sport. The top players are all basically amateurs, the fields are sorry, and the level of play is about what you'd see at an average college game in the States.

But it's baseball.

One thing that immediately stands out is the teams' names. They're not the usual clipped, matter-of-fact German variety, which in soccer is typically something like 1. FC (short for Erster Fußball-Club, or "First Soccer Club") followed by the name of the home city. The baseball teams in Germany's premier league (1. Baseball Bundesliga) have jazzy, American-style names, most of which are English words: Capitals (Bonn), Cardinals (Cologne), Indians (Gauting), Disciples (Haar), Regents (Hanover), Stealers (Hamburg), Athletics (Mainz), Tornados (Mannheim), Nightmares (Neunkirchen), Untouchables (Paderborn), Hornets (Saarlouis), Alligators (Solingen), and Hawks (Tübingen).

Two teams have German names: the Regensburg Legionäre ("Legionnaires") and Heidenheim Heideköpfe ("Heath Heads"). Heath Heads? That one sounds like it came out of left field, but it's hardly odder than, say, Dodgers, not to mention such minor-league gems as Muckdogs, Lugnuts, Dust Devils, and Mud Hens.

Baseball lingo in Germany is also a mishmash of English and German, only more so. Some American terms have been adopted more or less completely, such as Strike, Bunt, Catcher, Single, Double Play (or Double-Play, Doubleplay). Others are used alternatively with German equivalents, such as Inning/Spielabschnitt, Out/Aus, Innenfeld/Infield, Run/Punkt, Hit/Schlag, Runner/Läufer, Flyout/Flugaus, Batter/Schlagmann, Pitcher/Werfer, Walk/Freilauf, Error/Fehler. In a few cases, only German terms are used, such as Spielstand ("score"), Schläger ("bat"), Wurf ("throw"), Handschuh ("glove").

There are also mongrel terms such as Buntversuch ("bunt attempt"), Outfieldzaun ("outfield fence"), geladene Bases ("loaded bases"). And along with Playoffs, there are Playdowns.

Playdowns (or Abstiegsrunde in proper German) are among the relatively few areas in Germany -- a land steeped in socialistic solidarity -- where competition is rougher than in the generally more cutthroat U.S.A. In Major League Baseball, a player who performs poorly can be sent down to the minors. In German baseball, as in German soccer, entire teams that perform poorly are relegated to the next-lowest league.

German baseball rules call for the last-place finishers in the No. 1 league's two divisions to drop to the No. 2 league (2. Baseball Bundesliga) the following season, while the winners of the No. 2 league's two divisions are promoted to the No. 1 league. Meanwhile, the next-to-last teams in the No. 1 league play a best-of-three relegation series -- Playdowns -- against the second-place finishers in the No. 2 league.

Imagine the New York Yankees, after a season in which their zillion-dollar payroll brought them zilch, in a league with teams like the Buffalo Bisons, Columbus Clippers, and Durham Bulls. Would they then be the Bronx Bomblets?

(Friendly acknowledgements for consultations on this post go to Douglas "Dougout" Sutton, formerly with Hamburg's Stealers and now, as always, a true-blue fan of the St. Louis Cardinals.)

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.

Their products not only taste great -- there's a great selection too! Germany has about 1,200 kinds of small baked goods, from Apfeltasche to Zwetschgenplatz (my favorite is in mid-alphabet: Mohnkuchen). There are more than 300 varieties of bread, which is generally thick, dark and rich, and often made with whole meal. This is serious bread, pardner, not the long, silly white stuff the Frenchies love to eat.

Getting together over Kaffee und Kuchen is as German as, well, Apfelstrudel. The typical German supper (known as Abendbrot, or "evening bread") consists mainly of bread and cold cuts. All in all, the country's per capita consumption of bread, buns, small pastries, etc. is a carb-crazy 87 kilograms (about 192 pounds) annually, and rising.

But life isn't all gingerbread for Germany's master bakers these days. According to the Berlin-based German Baking Federation, the number of bakeries has fallen from more than 55,000 in West Germany during the 1950s to about 16,000 in all of Germany today. Traditional bakeries, combining start-to-finish baking with a shop on the premises, are being crowded out by discount giants. The discounters' plants mass-produce a relatively small range of pre-mixed, partly baked or unbaked frozen dough pieces that are baked off in self-service sales outlets or supermarkets.

Germany's recent economic slump has helped the outlets to spread. Many fine stores -- specializing in things including hardware, stationery, seafood, and fashionable attire -- have closed and been replaced by "now" enterprises like Internet cafés, cell phone shops, tattoo and piercing studios -- and bakery outlets. Yet another outlet opened several days ago near our apartment.

So there you have a picture of the modern German: munching a cheap roll in an Internet café, a cell phone on an ear, a tattoo on an arm, and a piercing ring God knows where.

Some two weeks earlier, on a cross-town bus in San Francisco, a guy with a scraggly goatee sitting behind me with a companion discoursed wildly on the merits of marijuana and incense in a voice strong enough for the stage. Nobody told him to shut up, and nobody gave him so much as a disapproving look.

Besides public conveyances, bars in the United States -- whether or not you count the noise from the irksomely ubiquitous TV sets -- are usually a lot louder and livelier than their German counterparts. Americans like to let it all hang out.

This isn't to say Germans are always quiet, of course. They can be quite loud, for instance, at soccer matches, rock concerts, and complaining about the beer while vacationing abroad. Generally speaking, though, they hold quietness dear. Some of the greatest German minds -- including Goethe, Kant, and Schopenhauer -- expressed annoyance at noise. Schopenhauer called it "the most impertinent of all forms of interruption because it even interrupts -- indeed shatters -- our own thoughts."

In keeping with their fondness for regulations, Germans have established mandatory "quiet times" (Ruhezeiten). Depending on where you live, these times tend to be from 8 or 10 p.m. to 6 or 7 a.m., from 1 to 3 p.m., and all day on Sundays and holidays. People who pump up the volume on their stereo systems, run their lawn mowers, etc., at unallowed times may cause neighbors to call the cops. A fat fine can result.

This being Germany, the regulations are often very specific, sometimes to the point of absurdity. The Karlsruhe-based Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) ruled in 1998 that singing and music-making at home was permitted from 8 a.m. to noon, and from 2 to 8 p.m. Nuremberg allows drum-playing during those times for only 45 minutes in the summer, and 90 minutes in the winter. Düsseldorf restricts nighttime baths and showers to a maximum of 30 minutes. In Cologne, dogs may bark for 30 minutes daily from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and from 3 to 7 p.m., but no more than 10 minutes at a stretch.

Tell that to Fido.

Having tolerant neighbors makes life easier, and blandishments can help them turn a deaf ear to transgressions of noise rules. Our new neighbors didn't invite anyone in the building to their housewarming party about a month ago, but they apologized to everyone for any disturbance in advance, and passed out bottles of Prosecco in compensation.

Na prost!

It was addressed to the people living in the apartment on the other side of the staircase. The name tag on their mailbox happened to be missing, and they weren't at home.

"Just drop the letter in their mailbox," I suggested. "It's the one closest to their door."

"But there's no name on the mailbox," the postman objected.

We live on the ground floor of a three-story building with six apartments in all. Six mailboxes hang in the stairwell on the wall opposite the entrance. With six names attached to six doorbells outside, and five names attached to six mailboxes inside, it didn't take a genius to deduce whose mailbox the nameless one was. Besides, the postman had delivered letters to their mailbox before. And if the name tag was gone because the neighbors had secretly moved, how was I supposed to hand them the letter?

This wasn't a matter of logical reasoning, though. This obviously was a matter of rules. And the rule that our postman dutifully upheld must have been something like "Achtung, Mail Carriers! It Is Verboten To Drop Mail Into Unmarked Mailboxes!" Discussion was pointless.

"All right, I'll take the letter," I said. After he left, I dropped it in the mailbox.

Germans have loosened up somewhat in recent decades but remain notoriously rule-bound, conservative, and poor at improvisation. Another current case in point: A street parallel to ours is being widened. The public buses that normally use it have been temporarily rerouted onto our street, which also enjoys bus service. Although all of the buses clearly have the same destination, namely the district center and train station, some elderly German women who live on our street let the irregular buses pass and wait for the regular ones.

Meanwhile, at the intersection near the spot where the road work is going on, people still wait for the traffic light to turn green before crossing the street. This, despite the fact that the area is closed to traffic.

Pedestrians zealously obeying traffic lights (not all do), even in the dead of night with no cars in sight, is probably the most cited example of Germans' often blind adherence to rules. I myself am more obedient to traffic lights in Germany than those elsewhere -- when a child is around, always, so as not to set a dangerous example, and sometimes to avoid Germans snarling at me. A few months ago, my wife and I were on our way home from a visit to friends. It was late. We had to cross a one-lane street. Not a car far and wide. The traffic light was red. On the other side of the street, a punkish-looking young woman with a German shepherd stood waiting. We crossed, naturally.

"What do you think YOU'RE doing?" the woman erupted. "A fine example to children THAT is!"

I pointed out that the hip-high fella at her side was a dog.

"But it COULD have been a child!" she snarled.

Discussion was pointless.

Thus preoccupied, I glumly set off for the watch shops in my neighborhood.

I went first to the place where I'd bought my latest -- now dearly departed -- model. The shop is solidly German, and run by what appear to be father and son. While the latter waits on customers, the former, a loupe over one eye, is often hunched over a balky mechanism in back. The two know their watches, and the prices on the tags are what you pay -- Germany isn't a bargaining culture, after all. You can bet they set their prices carefully: low enough to attract buyers, high enough for a decent profit.

My search continued at a shop on a choice corner down the street. The proprietors there, a Turkish couple that has lived in Germany for 30 years, moved in fairly recently. I spotted a watch in their window very similar to one I'd examined at the first shop -- same brand, just about the same features. "How much?" I inquired, wanting to compare prices. I must have flinched when the woman presented the tag -- the cost was nearly nine times higher -- because she quickly assured me: "For you, half price!"

Nice try, lady!

Such "bazaar behavior" is no longer unheard of in Germany, which has got a lot more multicultural since the end of World War II. Some 500,000 foreigners were living in West Germany in 1950, about 1 percent of the population. Recruitment of "guest workers" -- mainly Turks, along with Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, Yugoslavians, Moroccans and Tunisians -- raised the number to about 4 million by 1973, according to Germany's Interior Ministry.

From 1973 to 1985, most new immigrants were family members of foreigners already in the country. Travel restrictions were lifted in the former Soviet bloc at the end of the 1980s, allowing more than 2.5 million ethnic Germans (including dependent family members) -- chiefly from Poland, Romania and the former Soviet Union -- to resettle in Germany between 1987 and 2000. In addition, the number of applicants for political asylum increased dramatically between 1987 and 1992.

The European Union's recent eastward expansion is also prodding Germany, which long sought to protect its ethnic and cultural homogeneity, to open up to more foreigners. Ten countries -- among them neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic -- joined it in the EU three years ago. Bulgaria and Romania entered the now 27-member bloc last January.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, about 6.8 million foreign nationals were living in Germany at the end of 2006, more than 8 percent of the population. Turks were the biggest group, at 26 percent, followed by Italians (8 percent), Poles (5 percent), Serbs and Montenegrins (5 percent), and Greeks (4.5 percent). When naturalized and ethnic-German immigrants are taken into account, however, nearly one in every five persons living in Germany today has an immigrant background.

Foreign influences are increasingly felt. The famously stiff Germans have loosened up a bit. Turkish döner kebap has surpassed sausage with fries as Germans' favorite snack. A bright-robed African in the subway on Monday morning isn't necessarily a figment of delirium tremens anymore. It's now common to hear Russian and Polish on the street, and stores have taken to stocking the better Russian vodka brands.

Alas, the trains in this country aren't as punctual as they used to be. Heading home last weekend from a visit to a friend in Westphalia, for instance, I learned upon arrival at the station in Münster that my train to Hamburg would be coming more than 60 minutes late. Fortunately, I only had to wait 15 minutes or so because I caught another train going to Hamburg.

It was running 75 minutes late.

My wife, normally not disposed to Schadenfreude, made this remark the other day after hearing a report about Warsaw's opposition to a new voting system for the European Union, which Poland joined in 2004. Under the system advocated by Germany, holder of the EU's rotating presidency until the end of this month, legislation would be passed by a "double majority" of at least 55 percent of the EU member states and 65 percent of the EU population. This would give Germany (pop. 82.4 million), the EU's most populous member by far, more than double the voting clout of Poland (pop. 38.2 million). At present, Poland has 27 votes to Germany's 29. The voting plan is part of a slimmed-down treaty meant to replace the stalled European constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 referendums. Warsaw has threatened to veto the treaty at an EU summit meeting in Brussels today and Friday unless voting in the 27-member bloc is based on the square root of a country's population, which would give Poland six votes in the EU Council of Ministers to Germany's nine.

"Square root or death!" has become a Polish battle cry. Yikes, the Polish cavalry rides again!

Like most Russians, my wife has definite opinions about the Poles, and they're not very positive. The Poles, she says, were the Russians' biggest headache in the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact. The Poles, she says, are cunning. The Poles, she says, complain. Not that this has stopped her from having Polish friends, whose Slavic soulfulness and hospitality she appreciates and shares. And then she married me, a somewhat cunning, sometimes complaining, halfway hospitable soulmate of Polish descent on the paternal side.

My natural sympathies tend to go to famously rebellious Poland in disputes with its biggest, baddest historical enemies, Germany and Russia, which have squeezed it, vice-like, for centuries. Here isn't the place for a long chronicle of woe. Poland hasn't been an innocent victim always, of course, and has got in some good licks too. Remember the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410? But Poland has mostly been on the receiving end, which is why it's so prickly when it feels bullied or belittled, and so alarmed when Germany and Russia team up over its head.

Poland is indignant at Germany's deal with Russia to build a gas pipeline between them under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland. Some Poles have even likened it to the 1940 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact dividing up Poland and the Baltic states between the Soviet Union and Germany. The pipeline is just one of several running conflicts that Poland has with Germany and/or Russia. The NATO newcomer has angered Russia by entertaining a U.S. plan to base missile interceptors on its territory. It's blocking talks on a new partnership accord between the EU and Russia because the latter, alleging health concerns, has banned imports of Polish meat and plant products. It recently clashed with Germany over a Berlin exhibit devoted to German expellees from Poland at World War II's end. And so on. And so forth.

And now, "Square root or death!" The cover story in this week's Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, is titled "Unloved Neighbors -- How the Poles Get on Europe's Nerves." Highly critical of Poland's pudgy conservative-nationalist president and prime minister, the twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski (whom another German publication compared to "young Polish potatoes"), the story's authors declare: "Warsaw's pigheadedness is balm for the Polish soul."

Ouch. At the root of Poland's problems with the Fritzes and Ivans, besides being sandwiched between them, is the condescension of both toward the Poles. A well-known Russian rhyme is "Kuritsa ne ptitsa, Pol'sha ne zagranitsa" ("A chicken isn't a bird, and Poland isn't a foreign country") -- in other words, "Poland isn't sovereign." Gigantic Russia has long seen Poland as a midget and a nuisance. A midget that bites. Since 2005, Russia has celebrated National Unity Day on Nov. 4, replacing the Nov. 7 holiday that marked the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The new holiday commemorates the 1612 expulsion of Polish troops from Moscow, ending Russia's "Time of Troubles."

Nor do the Germans see the Poles as their equals. For many, they are largely a bunch of thieves and prostitutes, unworthy of respect, and a threat as cheap labor. "Kaum gestohlen, schon in Polen," an expression that gained currency in the 1990s, is emblematic of German attitudes. It was aimed at car thefts by Poles in Germany.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, 5 percent of the 6.75 million foreign nationals living in Germany at the end of 2006 were Poles, the third-largest group after Turks (26 percent) and Italians (8 percent). Although big, neighboring, prosperous Germany should be the prime destination for footloose Polish workers, a sluggish -- but now resurgent -- German economy and restricted access to the German labor market have driven hundreds of thousands of them to greener pastures in places like Britain and Ireland.

German asparagus farmers are crying foul. They rely on seasonal laborers from Poland for the backbreaking work of harvesting the highly prized vegetable. This spring they complained that they were 40,000 workers short. A lot of asparagus rotted in the fields.

German-Polish relations need cultivating.

Germany, at long last, is cracking down on smoking. Much of Europe already has. Smoking has been banned at workplaces in Ireland -- including pubs, where having a cig with a pint of Guinness was a way of life -- since 2004. This past February even La Grande Nation, land of the late, great Gauloises smoker Jean-Paul Sartre, stubbed out the weed in many public places. Germany's ban, covering federal government buildings and public transport, takes effect on September 1. Naughty nicotine fiends risk fines of up to 1,000 euros. What's more, the minimum age required to buy tobacco products rises from 16 years to 18. The under-18 crowd won't be allowed to puff away in public anymore, and that includes the bus stop outside our bedroom window -- opposite a middle school I fondly call Monkey Island.

So far, so good.

Germany fell short of a general smoking ban in public places because the federal government lacks constitutional power to regulate facilities under states' control. Meanwhile, leaders of the country's 16 states have agreed on smoking bans of their own -- with exceptions. Restaurants and large pubs can permit smoking in rooms closed off from the rest of the premises, for example. That's fine. Soon we'll be able to go out, tip an elbow, and return without smelling as if we'd sat all evening by a campfire.

I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, strange to say. Sticking rolls of burning leaves in my mouth was never really appealing, even before the health hazards were hammered home to everyone and his uncle Dudley. I did, however, puff on a couple of cigars in my youth, as a joke, with my buddies, à la big shots, on payday. My wife quit smoking about five years ago, thanks to a gradual process of enlightenment encouraged by gentle badgering.

I should be happy.

Our Hamburg surroundings are getting more smoke-free. Not so the place where the air should be freshest though, namely our apartment's balcony. At the back of our building, facing the North and Baltic seas some 60 miles off, our little flower-filled paradise looks out on a stand of tall, leafy trees along a proverbial babbling brook. Behind the balcony's western wall -- upwind, in other words -- lies another balcony, the lair of the Smoke-Spewing Monster, our new neighbor.

I don't know which brand of cigarettes the monster devours. Stinky Strike? Dunghill? Magnitogorsk Fats? I only know that I can even be sitting in my workroom, at the apartment's farthest end, and my nose tells me when the monster is OUT THERE, lighting up for the umpteenth time.

Home, sweet home.