The morning before my oldest child’s first day of school in Berlin, I found myself wrestling with a roll of gold construction paper, a glue stick, and a creeping sense of panic. I was trying to assemble a Schultüte — a giant paper cone traditionally filled with candy, school supplies, and tiny gifts — because I had somehow missed that every German child receives one at the Einschulung, a welcome-to-school ceremony that is a rite of passage here. I’d heard of the cones before, but when my son’s