There must be a name in German for a phenomenon I observed in Berlin earlier this month. About 50% of the parked cars on the streets contained cute little stuffed animals—I called them “die schpunkies” (since The German word for Smurfs I learned is Die Schlümpfe)—hanging above windshields or lying on dashboards. Perhaps die schpunkies are merely the German version of fuzzy dice, little trees or those poor plushies bound to the grilles of trucks, but they stood out in the otherwise austere clean cars.