Carp In The Bathtub

Mush-a-boom

2008-09-07T23:28:00.004+02:00

Yesterday Wolf and I woke up earlyish and headed just outside of Berlin to pick mushrooms. One of the great things about German cities is given the relative lack of suburbs, its pretty easy to get yourself out of the city, amongst trees and other foresty things. We ultmately collected a sizeable pile of mushrooms and while the camera didn't quite make the journey to the woods, itdid make it into the kitchen. Thusly, here is a little start to finish slideshow of the mushroom presentation: eat your hearts out!

6 Reasons...

2008-08-27T21:31:00.008+02:00

WARNING: This post has the potential to be sticky and sweet (not unlike Madonna's new tour) and have a slightly gooey consistency. Avert your eyes if you're adverse to such things.

6 Reasons why I'm happy:

1. I'm packing - I always get a little sentimental when I'm packing. Well, doesn't everybody. A little Dar Williams, and I'm singing cheesy songs about traveling and curling my pants into fist-tight rolls. Plus, one of my first blog posts was when I was packing to come to Germany. Life is like all circular and stuff.
2. I'm packing because I'M MOVING TO BERLIN ON SUNDAY. Not only am I way over Hamburg, but I'm way into many, many things in Berlin.
3. I have a ticket to Seattle, Crotch-chester, and NYC. While the ticket itself isn't so exciting, the people on the other side are. Saying I miss them doesn't even touch it.
4. The NYT has confirmed one of my core beliefs. Once they write something equally snarky about France, my life will be complete.
5. Cool things coming up: Tour of a HUGE East German bunker, a super cool Berlin street festival, Jewish-y festival in Berlin, trip to a strange German country estate, trip to Scotland to meet a fellow whiskey aficionados, and painting Wolf's kitchen princess pink.
6. Being in Germany has been 6% beyond awful, but 94% pretty damn good. Seems like an okay relationship to me.

The Klempners are coming!

2008-08-25T20:22:00.009+02:00

So, my shower broke. Mysteriously, without warning, and most certainly unrelated to a certain young man feeling the need to retrofit the shower to his own showery needs. I'm moving out of my flat in under a week (yay!), but it didn't quite feel right to force the next guy to shower on his knees. Given that my explanation of what is wrong in English would sound something like "the clampy-screwey-holdy thing is broken", its easy to imagine how painful my conversation went with the apartment manager. He got the point eventually (DUCHE KAPUT) and offered to come by tonight. There was also some mention of a Klempner. Both sounded good to me.

He stopped by and promtly suggested that I shower while sitting on a stool. Once I nixed that idea, he kindly offered to come by every morning and hold the shower head nozzle while I shower. I shot that one down too, and he brought up the Klempner again. Now is probably a good time to mention that I have no friggin' idea who or what a Klemper is: animal, vegetable, or mineral - all the same to me. See, this is how I've recently decided to make living in Germany more fun. While there are abundant resources for, say, translating unknown words, it simply makes life less interesting. Hell, most Germans would even be able to tell me what Klempner means in English. But, that is boring. Its much more fun to imagine them as lederhosen wearing, green, shower fixing fairies who come to the aid of confused Americans. Anyway, the exciting news is that the Klemner will be coming soon, and then my shower will be fixed.

If you know what Klempners are, please don't tell me. I'm going to sit around and wait for them to show up. Hopefully they'll be green.

Trip Photos

2008-08-21T10:36:00.002+02:00

Here are a couple of photos from my recent trip - they are more or less in order (Sydney, Singapore, and then Vietnam). Note that I've only included 2 of the 50 or so koala pictures I took.

Sometimes a Girl Just Needs a Little DDT

2008-08-18T16:29:00.006+02:00

I'm back from my little adventure in Australia and Asia, but here is something I scrawled on the back of a piece of paper while waiting at the Singapore airport....

Everybody has these moments in life when they find themselves thinking or uttering absolutely surreal things. After noticing the quizzical look on the Singapore customs officer's face while thoroughly examining my passport, I said "I'm American, but I live in Germany...on my way back from a conference in Sydney, well...on my way to Vietnam." That cleared things right up. Also, wandering through the Singapore Airport, I could not help but mutter to myself, "I WILL NOT LET BED BUGS RUIN MY VACATION!!". I don't think you need much more detail on that last note, other than:

Bed bugs are fairly precocious creatures that can inhabit even the swankiest of hotel beds (and subsequently your clothes)
Bed bugs are undaunted by multiple international journeys
2-4 days after getting a few bed bug bites, one's whole body can theoretically break out into a red, itchy, totally awesome rash.

Anyway, I am now heading to Vietnam after 24 itchy hours in Singapore. Singapore is a great, frenetic city, particularly if one enjoys food and shopping. Luckily I enjoy both. Singapore is a huge asian melting pot, and not so much with the white folks in the non-tourist areas. I found myself walking around with a map in my hand and thinking, in that half conscious way, that I had to put the map away or else I would look like a lame, lost tourist. And then the other half of my brain would kick in with 'Right, as if they could't otherwise figure it out'.

Wooh, my flight just got called.
Back to itching mself.

Bad Breakfast Boundaries

2008-07-31T14:21:00.005+02:00

Yesterday, as I raced down the steps of the train station to to catch my train to work with a spicy Italian beef sandwich in my hands, two things occurred to me:

Living in Germany has all but eradicated my previously held boundaries around what exactly constituents breakfast food. See, this sandwich was consumed at 9:45 in the morning. I will now happily stuff down sandwiches made from the stinkiest, strongest cheeses for breakfast. Reheated Thai food at 8 am (Yum! or... Gross!).
Upon ordering the sandwich, without even thinking, I unrolled it from its wrapper, removed the top slice of bread, grabbed a napkin, and shoveled off what was easily over a tablespoon of butter on a fairly small sandwich, tossed out the napkin, and commenced with the eating. Gross!

In other exciting news, in about 2 hours, I'm catching a bus, to a train, to a plane, to another plane, and after 30 hours of pure, uninterrupted fun, I'll arrive on the other side of the world.

Summer Heat Wave

2008-07-29T20:09:00.004+02:00

As I sit at my desk writing this, the sky is painted with dark blue and purple rain clouds. This appears to be the end of the Hamburg summer heat wave. Given the German's apparent distaste for air conditioning, fans, and even ice cube trays, its been pretty a pretty sweaty couple of days.

Seeking a way to escape the heat this weekend, my charming partner-in-crime and I did a bit of research into possible watery escapes. While there is lots of cool options nearby (North Sea, Baltic Sea), it turns they are not so nearby as to make for a pleasant day trip. We ultimately decided to keep tings simple and toss our bikes on the S-bahn and take a 40 or so minute train and bike ride to a local nature preserve that doubles as popular local swimming spot. In addition to being lovely, it was very, well, German. As in the very naked kind of German. Many hoo-hoo's and haa-haa's were spotted and I left feeling like I could easily go 2 or 3 years without seeing another naked person.

After fleeing the nakedness, we biked back to the train and then once back in the city, biked over to my favorite fish restaurant, where I spent a very embarrassing 15 minutes gushing about the 'European lifestyle'. While there are plenty of things here that annoy me, there is something so unabashedly wonderful about how easy it is here get out of the city, ride your bike through rolling pastures, go swimming in a lake with about 200 gay men, and be back in the city for a fish dinner by 7.

In exciting Berlin-related news, I'm moving to Berlin in early September, where I will shack up with the aforementioned lovely partner-in-crime.

Fall: This Summer in Hamburg

2008-07-21T19:49:00.005+02:00

The front page of the Hamburg monthly arts newspaper for July boldly stated:

Summer: This summer also in Hamburg.

Well, the bastards lied. Without complaining too much about the weather about the last few weeks, let's focus on today. Roughly 50 degrees, and pouring all day. At some point during the day, I even shut my office door and stripped down to my skivvies to put on a pair of leggings underneath my pants. I sat in my office wrapped in a coat and scarf, but still shivered for most of the day. Its been a good four weeks since we last had a decent bit of continuous sun. The good news, however, is that in exactly 10 days I will be on a train headed to Frankfurt, where I will board a plane to Singapore, where I will hang out a bit, and then after a journey of more than 30 hours, I will land in Sydney. Even though its technically winter there, it appears to be a twilight-zone version of winter, with endless stretches of sunny, 70-degree weather. This trip is muuuuch further than I've ever flow before, and I can't help but be intimidated at the thought of spending that much time on a plane, I'm ready to go just about wherever to get some proper summer weather.

Citizen Services

2008-07-15T20:37:00.012+02:00

An American passport is, for the most part, a very handy thing to have. I have this fairly involved fantasy of needing to run, passport extended and waving, towards the American embassy. Its not exactly that I have gun-toting hordes behind me, but perhaps something truly awful - like huge globs of floating mayonnaise. Once past the embassy gates, and securely behind several hundred armed marines and 10 tons of chicken wire, I can raise my fist at the thwarted mayonnaise. Since I moved to Germany, and a have a German visa, this fantasy has evolved to also include the German embassy and the Goethe Institute.

Since I needed to get additional pages added to my passport (exciting, right?), I made a trip to the Berlin office for American Citizen Services. Note, this is actually not the embassy, but rather a depressing complex of buildings about 1.5 hours outside the heart of Berlin. In either case, I got probably the closest I'll ever get to my mayonnaise-fleeing fantasy.

I had heard from a friend that there would be a long line outside the embassy and I could just prance past it and flash my passport. Unsurprisingly, I found this prospect very exciting. Sure enough, there was a line of roughly 100 people waiting outside the embassy gates when I arrived. After a quick shoe check, I was fairly certain none of them were American. Thusly, I took out my passport, waved both it and my hair around a little, and may have actually said, "Excuse me...American coming through." The seas did in fact part. After flashing my passport outside the security booth, I was ushered in and treated perhaps the most politely I have ever been by security personnel. They called me ma'am and actually apologized for having to retain my luggage outside the building. Once inside, I headed upstairs past the swirling masses of visa applicants to a relatively tranquil room where I received my citizen services. Though, I'm a little confused why it took them 40 minutes to tape about 10 pages into my passport. Anyway, while twiddling my thumbs during these 40 minutes, I stared out the window at the growing line of folks outside. Now having lived out my passport waving fantasy, I felt pretty outraged that coming from a country of immigrants, the best we could treat folks who wanted to temporarily join us was to force them to stand outside in the rain before shoving into a crowded waiting room.

Who wants their teeth done by Marqui DeSade?

2008-05-08T13:45:00.005+02:00

I don't have a strong aversion to going to the dentist; I mean, who doesn't love a little time off work and a free toothbrush? Not to mention a denture-free future. Plus, the survey my Seattle dentist has you fill on the first visit actually includes the question "How do you feel about your teeth?." He also offers mild sedatives for folks with dental anxiety and has a vast array of DVDs you can watch during your cleaning. I worked my way through all 3 X-men movies over the years. Plus, they take note of any preferences and discuss them with you before they begin. Thusly, I am not tortured with the nasty baby aspirin flavored tooth polish. Twice a year, it's fine.

Before I left for Germany, I visited both my doctor and dentist for a checkup. In both places I was informed (without my prompting) that medical care in Germany is most excellent, but that the dental care is still operating in the paleolithic. Grrrrreat! Perhaps because of that, I put off going to the dentist here for almost a year. This morning I visited a dentist. I have a decent relationship with my teeth (I feel good about them!) but still expect a little more scraping than usual. I had done a fair amount of research and gotten referrals. I had even waited 3 weeks for an appointment (I figured that was a good sign). You know where this is going, right? To the painful place.

After a bit of consideration, I won't traumatize you with the details. But, its safe to say it was orders of magnitude more painful and strange than anything that has ever been done to me in the US. They actually numbed my gums before they began! I complained rather loudly and got them to change the way they were cleaning my teeth, which made things a little better. But, still, it was not pretty.

Polish Excursion

2008-05-04T18:38:00.002+02:00

Photos from a yesterday's day-trip to the Polish port town of Szczecin, pretty close to the German border. Szczecin has a rather interesting history, having been at points in the past governed by the Slavs, Germans (3x), Danes, Swedes, Prussians, the French (Napoleon) and, quasi, the Soviets.
We happened to hit the city on the a huge national holiday, and the city was largely abandoned and shockingly quiet, but it was still a pleasure to walk around.

May 1st: Just like Labor Day, except with water cannons

2008-05-02T12:56:00.005+02:00

As you are probably aware, yesterday was May 1st, which is actually a federal holiday here in Germany. It's kind of like Labor Day, but mixed with a sizable dose of 'fight the man/power/system'. Berlin has a pretty long history of relatively wicked demonstrations (riots, burning cars and such) but seems to have achieved a state best described as 'mostly peaceful' due perhaps to the well organized music festival that now occurs on the first of May in the neighborhood (Kreuzberg) where the riots traditionally occurred. Hamburg, on the other hand, seems headed increasingly in the less-than peaceful direction. My Berlin home-away-from home is in Kreuzberg, so it was quite interesting to watch the streets transition from eerily quiet in the morning, to fairly friendly protests in the afternoon, to all out mayhem (complete with thousands of riot police) in the evening. You'll note (mom) that the photos of the riot police were taken while leaning out a window 4 stories up. Though, my retreat from the streets was more due to one of the white helmeted men running into me full force as they abruptly ran off en mass, presumably to fulfill their party-pooper role on an adjacent streets. The resulting crunch my body made ruined my partying spirit.

Anyway, here are a bunch more photos from yesterday.

Über Biked

2008-04-29T21:22:00.007+02:00

The first step, I think, is to admit I have a problem. I now own not 1, not 2, but 3 bikes. In Germany, that is. 4 if you count the one I have in the US. While that may seem like allot, there is a perfectly good reason for the preponderance of bikes in my life. You see, I bought my first bike over the summer in Bonn, and it traveled with me to Hamburg (via Berlin). The second is a sassy little number I couldn't resist buying from my apartment's caretaker. Its technically uncomfortable small, but more than adequate for visitors - particularly if they are getting on my nerves. The third, well, that is my greatest success. I've been spending a fair amount of time in Berlin and given how much I enjoy both Berlin and bikes (particularly in the summer), I couldn't resist adding another member to the family. I'm hanging out in Berlin this week and I took a break from working this afternoon and headed to the Turkish market a short walk away. On the way I passed some upstanding gentleman standing on a bridge selling used bikes. I'm sure the bikes are not in any way ...um...stolen. Anyway, after a test ride and a employing my shark like bargaining skills (I wiggled the price from 80€ to 60€), I brought home my newest find. In fact, I just got back from a fantastic ride through Kreuzberg as the sun was setting. Though, I'm a little sad as I have no idea how I will concoct my next excuse to go bike shopping

Last Weekend in April

2008-04-29T11:39:00.001+02:00

Here's a couple of shots of me and my associate running around Berlin this last weekend. Enjoy!

Random thoughts on my unintelligent and unsophisticated nature. Bonus being – I’m okay with that.

2008-04-14T20:26:00.008+02:00

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week attending a training for a *really* intimidating software that does pretty much everything. Well, as far as water and sediment are concerned. Lots of scary words were used, including ‘finite difference’, 'advanced sorption', 'curvilinear grid', and 'coupling', which was used allot. However, worst of these was probably ‘contraction’ which the German engineers seemed convinced was the right word to use to describe what happens when water moves through a culvert. I was unable to convince them that the right word is ‘constriction’ and contraction is makes babies head towards the light. If this vocabulary alone doesn’t scare you, perhaps the fact that the software alone costs 94,000 euros (that is roughly 150,000 dollars for those of you still unimpressed by the power of the all mighty euro). How I got the software for free is a secret I will take with me to my grave.

The training was highly scary, as I fear that I left more confused then when I walked in the door. What we are attempting to model is in no way trivial, and the path towards an answer is abstract and comes in 3 or 4 different flavors. Furthermore, the still mysterious path towards some type of actual result involves not only actually understanding allot of what the previously mentioned schmancy vocabulary means, but also the right things to do in about 10 different intertwined software programs with pages of toggles, switches, and dimensions and such. Yup. Momma’s in a little over her head. Luckily, the folks have a big office in Bremen (about 1 hr from Hamburg) and an office packed full of over intelligent and overworked engineer types who seem happy to smush helping me into their already overpacked schedule. Um….right. If the carrot at the end of this weren’t a little jump to Australia and Vietnam, I’m not so sure I would actually have the motivation.

Since the two-day training was in Bremen and the professor I work with grew up about 20 minutes away, we spent the night at her parents house to save some driving. It was really fun to visit them (they had perhaps the most fantastic home garden I’ve ever seen), but yet another cultural difference (at least on a small scale) struck me. After dinner, her family adjourned to the living room with a bottle of wine, and sat around and talked. That’s right….talked. No television. Nobody ran off to check their email, they just sat and talked. FOR THREE HOURS. Now, I’ve experienced this phenomena before in German households before and I must say…perhaps it is my extremely infantile attention span, but this is something my family never does. Unless we are at a restaurant and thus deprived of the distracting joys of internet, the phone, the dog, other rooms to run off to, we simply don’t do this. I’d say the maximum time for which we are all actually sitting down together is generally about 20 minutes. Its not that we don’t like each other, its just without the pleasures of warm food to glue us together, we are unlikely to all sit at the table and chat for long. Plus, I think we all enjoy yelling at each other through walls and closed doors far too much. Don’t get me wrong, this behavior of actually sitting down and chatting is and far more civilized that what we normally have going, but it simply doesn’t feel right to me. I truly enjoy chatting with folks, but something about the formality of this all drives me a little batty. I get bored. I want to wiggle. Excuse me while I go watch a little Nickelodeon.

Belated Birthday Treats

2008-04-07T15:02:00.004+02:00

I'm behind in life (yet again), but here are some photos I took with my new super-wide lense while my mom was here, including one rather cool shot of the Berlin skyline way too early in the morning before my mom left for the airport.

Interview with a Real, Live Mother

2008-04-01T22:49:00.006+02:00

So, my mom has been in Germany for about 2.5 days. I figured she is the perfect interviewee for my blog.

Kari: Please briefly describe yourself for our audience:

Mom: Not only your mother and a wife, but also the Official Executive Director of a non-profit agency in the best city in the world (Rochester, NY)!

Kari: So, what do you think of Germany?

Mom: I think its allot like the best city in the world. Except for the language, the sauerkraut in your green salads, and the weird window at the Apoteka people need to talk through when they want drugs on Sunday.

Kari: I think you're being a little bit silly! What really do you think of Germany?

Mom: This is likely to insult many Germans, but it seems surprisingly American. After all, I mean, they have a TJ Maxx. What exactly is the difference between the US and Germany beyond the aforementioned language, Apoteka window and sauerkraut in the green salads?

Kari: So, you're really not having a hard time adjusting then?

Mom: No.

Kari: Let's talk a little bit more about me, and what you think about me.

Mom: I think you are a brilliant, beautiful, and intrepid adventurer who is very funny! Also, your brother is nice.

Kari: I know, right? Anything else you'd like to add?

Mom: I'm having fun, its a nice city to visit. The public transportation is splendid! Ohhh, so are the pretzels at the subway station!

Kari: I know, right?

Anyway, we are heading out tomorrow on the early train to Berlin. Stay tuned for more highly stimulating conversations!

Photos from Easter Weekend in Berlin

2008-03-28T20:55:00.004+01:00

Happily...its Friday, which heralds in yet another huge chunk of time off work. A certain mother of mine is coming to visit (yay!). Since uploading photos is far more fun than facing the pre-mom house cleaning, here's a pile of photos I took over the long weekend in Berlin.

Interview with a Real, Live German

2008-03-27T14:25:00.000+01:00

Since I'm starting to see some signs of spring around here, I figured it might be nice to get a new perspective on things blog and Germany related. Plus, my loyal blog readers (hi mom!) may be a little tired of hearing only one person's angle on what it is like to live in Germany. Thus, my friend (German sense) Wolf kindly agreed to respond o the five questions below:

Kari: Please briefly describe yourself for our audience:

Wolf: Bookwormish historian with an oversized affection for computers, databases and butter, easy going if provided with intellectual stimulation.

Kari: Please describe, in detail, your relationship with butter:

Wolf: I was raised by my father who firmly believed that you could eat anything, provided you chopped it to pieces and fried it in butter, and that any meal not undergoing such treatment is either "haute cousine" (and should therefore be fought as if coming from our arch enemy - the French.) or simply some modern silly idea about healthyness and the need to stay slim. People that work stay slim anyway. Further, I grew up with the notion that some poor people in faraway countries (aka the USA) need to use stuff my father referred to as "war butter", which I was fortunate to only be exposed to while watching TV. Consistent with my German heritage, I will never change my mind about this (or anything else). [Kari's note: 'war butter' = margarine. Also, I'm with you about the French, they are totally stinkpots.]

Kari: Do you agree that Germans are wayyy too pushy on public transportation and would go so far as to push a cute and snuggly grandmother aside if it assured them a slightly better seat on the train/bus/plane? Also, have you noticed that Germans have no shame about picking their noses in public?

Wolf: I'd push her myself, she probably was a member of the BDM in her younger days anyway. [Kari's note: BDM = Bund Deutscher Mädel, Nazi girls organization]
Wolf: Nope, do they? I thought this kind of habit distinguished the Bavarians from the rest of mankind. [Kari's note: Bavaria has been called the Texas of Germany]

Kari: I know that its not very nice to say that Germans are pushy, but I simply find it to be true. Any specific stereotypes about Germans or Americans you care to dispel or support?

Wolf: I support all sorts of stereotypes, as they make it so much easier to dismiss 95% of the people if I'm so inclined - or love them for the charm their native habits radiates, depending on my mood.

Kari: Please detail, to the best of your ability, my feminist theory:
Wolf:
1.) Women are opressed
2.) The opressed are right *per se* (cf. Jesus, Buddha, Wat Tyler, Marx or Foucault)
3.) You are a woman
4.) Therefore, you are always right.

Fair Weather Traveller

2008-03-25T12:42:00.000+01:00

Apparently I´m a fair weather traveller: rain, snow, ice and respectable chunks of hail made the side trip to Poland this weekend distinctly unappealing. Somewhat ironically, I spent the bulk of the 4-day weekend in the aforementioned rain, snow, ice and hail walking around Berlin. I stopped by some of my usual haunts (Hackescher Markt for boots!) and ate myself silly on cake at a rather lovely restaurant called Kuchen Kaiser (Cake Emperor). Berlin is well known for its vast selection of flea markets, and I spent a good chunk of Sunday morning at a huge one in the former east, but found the prices to be head explodingly-high. Some fellow wanted 15 euro for a used cocktail shaker, and I refused to start bargaining from there. We also visited the breathtakingly stark Soviet War Memorial at Treptower Park (photos in a day or so) that was opened in 1949 to commemorate Soviet soldiers who died towards the end of WWII.

Somewhat guiltily, I am actually still in Berlin (and yes, skipping work today) as I was not able to get up the motivation this morning to head back to Hamburg. Ehhh, perhaps tomrorrow...

A brief note on German food

2008-03-18T14:57:00.000+01:00

One of the great things about living abroad seems to be that extreme prolongation of your birthday. I got my first present about two weeks before my birthday and they have been rolling in pretty regularly ever since. Keep 'em coming, I say! I picked up a birthday box this morning that contained, among other things, a shapely, green bottle of habanero salsa. This is most certainly a welcome addition to the culinary repertoire, as most German foods are rather on the highly bland side of bland. At most restaurants I reach for the salt and pepper and apply generously before even tasting. I've considered on several occasions the prospect of keeping a jar of chili flakes in my bag. Don't get me wrong, there are several yummy things here. Breakfasts, in particular, are beyond delicious. Anything involving potatoes and butter, also good. As I've mentioned before, the cheese selection is simply alarming in its tastiness and rock bottom prices. However, given that I cannot survive on dairy fat alone*, the salsa arrival was a happy happy thing.

Since this coming Friday and the following Monday are Easter bunny related vacation days, I'm considering a quick trip into Poland - its only 3 or so hours from me. What my travelling companion is entirely unaware of, is that about 30% of my interest in Poland is directly related to culinary adventure. I've been to Poland once before, and was shocked by how delicious the food was. Now I can't help but wonder what strange (and porky?) treats linger just beyond the German border. As usual, a full report to follow.

*I mean, I could, but....

Going back in time...

2008-03-17T21:57:00.000+01:00

I'm finally back in Hamburg from my two week torture trip through Germany and Belgium. I'm quite behind on all of the important things in life (email and laundry). Thus, I thought I would procrastinate and post some pictures of the birthday party I shared with my friend Micha a few weeks ago. So, here are 11 pictures of people you mostly won't know, but would most definitely like. Note that the first picture is particularly interesting, and is worth staring at a little.

Pretzel Obsessed in Munich

2008-03-09T18:21:00.000+01:00

Greetings from Munich -
I'm currently about half way through a mandatory 2-week trip through Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, Karlsruhe, Leuven (just outside of Brussels) and Brussels. The trip is part of my grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and consists of a pretty motley mish-mash of meetings, presentations, factory visits, and museum tours. Not to mention the pure joy of spending long days on a bus with 30 other people. I'm still a little unclear what the exact intent of this trip is, but I'm trying to infer a little meaning from the particular visits we make. So...last week, we visited Meissen (highly expensive porcelain - thimbles start at 60 euro) and the Glashütte watch factory (watches start at around 6,000 euro and top out at around 250,000 euro). We're dropping by the Mercedes-Benz factory next week. The lesson I'm getting from these visits it that German produced goods are among other things, compulsively engineered and wayyy out of my price range. The program actually includes some rather cool cultural stuff - guided tours through art and history museums, as well as a brewery visit here in Munich, which truly does seem to constitute culture here in southern Germany. The scary about the brewery tour is that it started at 930 in the morning and we were tossing back 'samples' by 11:30. Interestingly, the samples were not so much samples as unlimited full size glasses of anything in the Spaten or Franziskaner Bräu repertoire. This was of course accompanied by a huge slab of pig and unlimited big doughy pretzels. Since I'm avoiding the piggies, I ate something on the order of 3 pretzels. Couple that with the multiple pints of beer and I felt something like Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the girl who puffs up into a huge blueberry).

Of the three cities we've visited so far, I enjoyed Dresden the most, and would highly recommend it as a side trip if you're ever in Berlin. Its a really interesting mix of historic and artsy, and the vestiges of GDR rule results in quite fascinating architecture. I also had a vegan organic, ayurvedic meal, and I realized I was quite missing hippy-child food. Though, my enjoyment of Dresden could have something to do with the fact that it was the first city we visited and my patience for this whole trip quickly wore out. I took a pile of photos in Dresden, and here are some of the cooler ones.

Very Important (Sediment Related) Announcement

2008-02-26T11:13:00.000+01:00

Big news, people! Yesterday I got a guided tour of the WORLDS LARGEST SEDIMENT TREATMENT PLANT!!! I'll completely understand if you are unable to contain your excitement. The METHA (Mechanical Treatment of Harbour Sediments) plant was built about 15 years ago to separate the relatively clean sand from contaminated silt in dredged material from the Port of Hamburg. Here are my photos.

Linguistic Heresy

2008-02-24T18:22:00.001+01:00

Being a native English speaker, and frequently speaking English with Germans who have very good, but certainly not perfect English, I often get away with what a bit of grammatical and word choice creativity. Well, if I'm to be totally honest, its more laziness than genuine creativity. Couple that with the fact that I only regularly speak with one other native speaker and that word order in German is quite different than English, some of the stuff coming out of my mouth recently is just plain strange.

I mostly get away with this. I say mostly because this weekend I pulled off my most egregious and heretical linguistic misstep and was shamefully busted. A good friend of mine, who is German, has most excellent English, to the point where I'm pretty convinced his active vocabulary is larger than mine*. I've inserted a few curve balls into our conversations now and then, but he never seemed to notice. I think this only had the effect of making me bolder with my..ahem...creativity. However, today I was on a silly high-horsed rant about something or other, and said actually uttered the following phrase:

"What's important here is attention to ethos and mentos"

Realizing what I had said, I plowed ahead, hoping he wouldn't notice, but his cheeky smirk slowed me down, and he responded with

"Mentos, as in the minty candy?"

So, yes. I actually tried to substitute the name of a mint for word meaning somewhere between mentality and morals. And I got caught by someone whose native language is not English. I'm really not sure which is worse.

*Now if I could only get him to start saying 'meet' instead of 'learn to know', his English would be pretty much perfect.

Where are you my beautiful flower (Stockholm)?

2008-02-14T15:58:00.000+01:00

Yes, I've been a rather crappity little blogger recently. Sorry about that. You see, its just that I've been so busy flitting around Europe. You're not feeling so sympathetic anymore, are you?
Let's see...Stockholm last weekend, I'm heading to Berlin this weekend, taking a week off of travelling for my (hopefully) kick-ass birthday party and then a little jaunt through Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, Karlsruhe and Brussels.

Anyway, my recent trip to Stockholm was quite fantastic. Its a georgous city, not least of all because the Swedes seem to have discovered the perfect pastry.

These lovely little babies are called Semla. Somehow related to fat Tuesday, they are constructed from a cardamom tinged bun, a thin layer of marzipan, and a significant pile of cream. Apparently Swedes take Semla quite seriously. According to the semla academy in Gothenburg:
-There must be cardamom in the dough;
-The almond paste must be authentic;
-The whipped cream must be fluffy;
-There must be powdered sugar sprinkled on the lid.

Its safe to say that once purhased, we gobbled these puppies up in roughly 30 seconds.

Anyway, here are a few of my photos from Stockholm.
(Alex - check out the stretch Volvo taxi)

Not So Secret Places...

2008-01-30T22:07:00.000+01:00

Moving sight unseen to a new city makes you think allot about the geography of familiarity. In particular, the importance of semi-private places that create a sense of intimacy in what is otherwise a sea of unpronounceable street signs, snaking train tracks, and Döner stands. The interesting bit, though, is that my relationship with these places is apparently not static.

Back in Seattle, this meant Ballard. Given, Ballard isn't exactly a secret. Rather, most people in Seattle are well aware of Ballard's existence. But, it was sufficiently far away, and difficult to get to, from the zip code that I called home for 8 years, thus satisfying whatever it is I require in a secret place. Plus, I have a crush on large boats and things Scandinavian, and Ballard puts out.

In Hamburg, I've found two almost diametrically opposed places where I like to plant myself and be alone. One, a rather tasty Indian joint in the sleazy neighborhood behind the train station. I was once propositioned for sex (I think) when heading there to pick up a cup of their wickedly tasty chai. Either way, the owner doesn't seem to mind when I sit there looking crabby and for once, I'm completely unbothered when someone responds to my German with English and points and me and says "Ah yes...the American girl." The other place is a stately, candle-lit, wood paneled bar in a swanky neighborhood that serves up a particularly luscious bowl of tomato soup. Particularly exciting since I do not like tomato soup (except for at this place, apparently). This place oozes the kind of distinguished charm that makes me want to take up pipe smoking.

This is all to say, that suddenly after four months making the same trip, my daily train ride past a memorial commemorating deported Jews makes me cry. um..yeah.

Betting on me...

2008-01-27T16:30:00.000+01:00

An open letter to the two meaty Germans who last night informed me that they had a bet on where I was from and then proceeded to illustratively grab my (apparently foreign looking) nose:

You have angered me, and my wrath is to be feared. Further, you are stupid and rude stinkpots and I bet you have very, very small penises.

Sincerely,
Kari Leigh

Friday night I spent a big chunk of the post-dinner/pre-going out hours working on a blog post about what it’s like to be Jewish here. To be more accurate, the real issue is what it’s like to look Jewish or look non- German. It’s difficult, if not impossible, for me to separate the two. The post didn't quite come together, and I felt like it painted an unfairly negative view of Germans, so I left it for later, when I could even it out.

The whole nose grabbing incident that happened a few hours was a crescendo of sorts. Well, more like a crash. A teary, teary crash.

This issue has been on my mind allot recently, as I accumulate a growing repertoire of distressing run-ins with folks related to my appearance, last name or religion that leave me feeling freakish and exposed. These experiences are not only an affront to my sense of human decency, but also feel like an invasion of my inner universe, which is where I’d prefer to keep my religious life. Also, they make me want to scream (and purchase brass knuckles).

Before I got to Germany, I could count the number of anti-Semitic or just plain stupid things people have said to me on one hand. Granted, I guess I look Jewish but I guess I was always surrounded by enough other Jews that it simply wasn’t interesting. With other Jews, it simply served as an open invitation to discuss the Hebrew school hijinks and shared fear of the scary ass jelly gefilte fish is packed in. Or, upon hearing a non-Jewish co-worker slip ‘chutzpah’ into a his parlance, you get to give him an approving nod. He may even rise slightly in your esteem. Yes, this is the cultural component, and I don’t mean to undermine the importance of the religious component. However, I consider religious business to be private business, and not one that I’m used to getting into with folks I don’t know and certainly not brought up within 15 seconds of meeting eachother.

In the scope of a day, Friday night’s experience is a pretty minor event – perhaps 30 seconds from start to finish. If only looking in, I'd tell my upset self to keep my head on straight. Stupid people say stupid things. Ordinarily, I'd agree, but that was really the gem on top of growing pile of Jew/foreigner-related bullshit that’s been slung my way since I got here. The past few weeks have been harder, for some reason. My friend L. summed it all up quite eloquently - "Welcome to the world of being a visible minority.”

The particularly ugly part for me is that I have next to no capacity to deal with comments about my religion/how Jewey I look. My response Friday night was to lunge for my coat, jet out of the bar, cry, and call my mom. A tad embarrassing in the end. For less offensive offensives, my coping techniques include getting really defensive and cranky. Neither of these reactions is ideal, and leaves me feeling unsettled, violated (hate the word, but its accurate!), and wondering how long I can subsist in my apartment on only the food I have in the cupboard. Since none of these things are good, and my cupboard currently contains only one bag of lentils, a can of soup and some Dutch coffee-flavored candies, I clearly need to beef up the whole coping mechanism thing.

I'm new at this, and honestly have no idea how to respond when people spout off things I don't want to hear. These situations often pop up out of nowhere, and I'm apt to do the bambi-in-the-headlights thing rather than respond in a way that makes my objections clear. Or, rather, just to layer a little stupid on top of their stupid. If I keep getting mad and bounding off, my head might explode. I guess a start is to simply stop being so shocked. Honestly, email me if you have any snazzy ideas for how to cope with this crap.

Lastly, please don't think that the stupidity that I occasionally run into is in any way representative of the majority of Germans I meet. Rather, a moronic, annoying minority. I cannot say enough nice things about the Germans I count as friends. Yeah!

Afterthought: At a loss for what to get me for my birthday? I really am serious about the brass knuckles and I particularly like the engraved 'USA'. Seems like a viable part of the coping mechanism database.

Me, but on the other side of the world....

2008-01-14T15:34:00.001+01:00

Today I found out the absolute bestest thing ever. I get to go to Australia in August - on somebody else's dime. This somebody being Alexander von Humboldt (aka 'Uncle Alex'), the light in the loafers namesake of the grant that funds my German life of leisure. You see, every four years a bunch of nerds gather somewhere in the world to talk things things like dirty, dirty sediment. This year they are converging on Australia. After preparing two rather convincing spreadsheets (if I do say so myself) and a little sweating, I managed to convince the fellow in charge of such things that its a good idea for me to attend this conference. Rather sweetly (and Germany-ly), his primarily concern was how I would be able to fit in some vacation after the conference and stay within Uncle Alex's constraint of not being away from my host institution for more than 14 days. Being German, I expect both Uncle Alex and the fellow in charge of the money giving to be rather inflexible on the 14 day thing, so I may need to do some aggressive bargaining.

Potential visitors - you know who you are - consider meeting me Australia August 1-8th or, in SE Asia soon thereafter. W00t!

HafenCity Hamburg

2008-01-13T17:05:00.001+01:00

Hamburg has a rather spectacular city re-development project taking place in an area that was formerly part of the Port of Hamburg. Both the size and scope of the project are enormous - it will increase the size of downtown Hamburg by 40% and there are a bazillion construction projects underway including a concert hall intended to make Sydney drool. And let's not forget the German headquarters of Unilever! The particularly cool thing about HafenCity is all of the yuppy condos smushed up against majestic old buildings, set against the surrounding Port-related industrial area. The bummer, of course, is that housing seems to be almost exclusively for folks with sizeable bank acccounts. The Elbe (everybody's favorite European river) and related canals cut through the whole area, so there are lots of fun bridges to go zipping back and forth across.

Given the rare appearance of the sun this morning, I figured HafenCity would be a good place to
take my camera for a spin. I had allot of fun walking around, and took some okay pictures. Here are the best of them. The I was, however, not the only person feeling photograph-arty this morning, and my camera ended up developing a rather serious lens size inferiority complex.

Off to the sauna for my Sunday night schwitz...

Men are from Mars...

2008-01-08T17:22:00.001+01:00

I spent the weekend in Cologne, visiting a friend whose sense of humor, particularly when it comes to things German, makes being here roughly 13% easier. He had visited me in Hamburg about 2 months ago and we had the following foreshadow-ey conversation while walking around:

Friend: You know, Kari, Hamburg smells like shit.
Kari: pouting a little
Friend: Well, don't worry, Cologne smells like vomit.

Doing my best to ensure that Cologne meets his expectations, I developed a rather gnarly stomach virus on Saturday evening. After thoroughly coating his slippers (which I had borrowed) in vomit (gross, right?), I spent the rest of the day complaining and reading Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, one of the few English language books he had in his house. I learned many things from this book, including that men should be spoken to in short sentences and praised constantly. I then practiced these techniques on the aforementioned friend and he was quite receptive. Apparently he had learned from the book that when women talk to men, they have absolutely no interest in what the men have to say, as long as the men appear to be listening. There seem to be an inherent disconnect, but we've had some pretty charming conversations (short sentences//lots of praise//him only half listening) since. I really feel like we're both growing as people!

That said, wash your hands twice when you ride Deutsche Bahn trains, which I convinced was the vector of my nasty stomach bug.

Happy 2008!

2008-01-01T19:56:00.000+01:00

Landing in the low-key Hamburg airport amidst fields of wind generators was a sizable relief after being on two previous flights, and going through security three times, and putting up with a cumulative 9 hours in Logan and Heathrow airport. Not to mention a bit of time on planes. Heathrow, by the way, is truly a special kind of hell. I'm totally okay with the size and scope of Heathrow and that it can take you roughly two hours to cross it. I think that's cool. I'm fascinated by all of the freaky novelty airlines that Heathrow serves (who names an airline TAT, or TAP for that matter). The problem with Heathrow is that they don't 'release' the gate until roughly 45 minutes before the flight leaves. Passengers are directed to wait in the 'Departure Lounge'. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Not so much. Imagine your most despised local mall. Double the amount of fluorescent lighting, triple the amount of people, and quadruple how expensive everything is. Now imagine large banks of uncomfortable chairs setup in the middle of the mall corridor. This, my dears, is something akin to the Healthrow Departure Lounge. Lovely, isn't it?

Okay, enough complaining.

I spent New Year's Eve proper on a friend's friend's roof shooting off industrial grade fireworks. Apparently such things are legal here. It was actually a pretty fantastic sight. Folks piled onto their roofs and a bit before midnight there was a pretty impressive grassroots fireworks show.
Ohh, here are some photos of the pre-firework cheese orgy.

Scary Suitcase

2007-12-30T16:25:00.000+01:00

I was just throwing my USA-purchased items into my suitcase and realized it made for a pretty scary witches brew of items. With everything from knitting needles to conditioner to Tom's of Maine spicy Cinnamint toothpaste, I appear to be arming myself for a toiletry free Armageddon:
At least I'll have some good reading material while I prepared to the end of days...

If it hasn't already become apparent, I'm having allot of fun with my new camera. In the short term, at least, I expect I'll be more motivated to take pictures that doing much writing here. The good news is that you will be able to enjoy the fruits of my labors. Here are some photos I took at the Rochester public market. Caveat: it was overcast and the photos aren't particularly jaw dropping.

If there's anything in particular (and German) you're interested in seeing photos of, email me privately and I'll try to indulge your whims.

Photo Apparatus!

2007-12-24T23:54:00.000+01:00

I got a fancy new camera for Hanukkah - wrapped in a lovely Flickr bow. I took a bunch of photos while my mom, my brother, and I were traipsing around NYC. Clearly I need to spend some quality time figuring out how to use the camera, but here's a link to some of the photos I took in New York.

My Mom, Ira Glass and Transformers

2007-12-10T11:42:00.002+01:00

I like my mom because she sends me ridiculous, yet highly useful boxes packed with presents. Extremely superficial, but nevertheless still true. The woman puts things in boxes most people wouldn't even begin to consider: Chanukkah themed mugs that change color when filled with hot liquids, twizzlers (sorry, but yuck!), several pairs of gloves, a bike bell, a huge jar of asian sesame seeds for pan frying tuna, and a (used!) carabineer keychain with a small light that was indispensible last night. Once, a huge containers of straws. This is just to say, keep up the good work!

I like Ira Glass because he makes getting out of bed on Mondays not as bad as it could or should be. On Monday mornings, I roll over half asleep and connect the cable between Lappy and Mr. Ipod that will make my commute several orders of magnitude more pleasant. It would not be unheard of for me to walk into work on Mondays a little glisteny-eyed. This week's This American Life is particularly fantastic.

I like the Transformers movie because it may well be the best movie I have seen this year! I have entirely stopped pretending that I enjoy profound, arty films. Nothing beats a good car chase and this baby is just packed with 'em! Vroom vroom! Though, I seem to recall as a kid particularly enjoying the moment just when it seemed like the Transformers were about to take a good wooping and then they all combined together into one uber-Transfomer. Sadly, this did not occur in the Transfomers movie. How's that for a critical review?

Germany Hate Tom Cruise & Friends!

2007-12-07T17:50:00.000+01:00

Okay, I take back all of the times I cursed under my breath about Germs being unreasonable.
While I'm all for religious freedom, and Germany doesn't...ahem...exactly have a clear conscience when it comes to a history of religious tolerence, this is still the most wonderful thing I've heard all week...Germany Moves to Ban Scientology.

Candy Belongs in Boots!

2007-12-06T21:23:00.000+01:00

Consistent with my general disinclination to attend work on any day following Wednesday, I had a meeting in downtown Hamburg at 10 am today. This seemed like reason enough to skip the rest of the day. In my defense, paying attention to a 1.5 hour long meeting in Germ is no cakewalk, particularly when one was carousing until 2 am the night before. Why was I up until 2 am? well, In case you haven't been informed, we have declared Wednesday the new Friday. After the meeting, I wasted away the daylight hours in bed reading Bill Bryson and eating Ferrero Rocher chocolates (which I still maintain don't taste that good and additionally look like poop).

Anyway, swinging around slowly to my point here, which shockingly is the answer to: If you don't enjoy Ferrero Rocher, why were you eating them? The short answer (and thusly the point of this post), is that I bought them to put in my friend's shoes.

You see, Germs and a couple other Central European countries, celebrate the holiday of St. Nikolaus, the patron saint of children and archers (that seems like a dangerous combination to me). The basic idea of this holiday that children put a boot (Nikolaus-Stiefel) outside their door on the night of Dec 5th. If the kids have been good, jolly old Nikolaus pops by and fills the boot with candy. However, if the children have misbehaved, they find a tree branch in their boot which they may or may not get beaten with (fun!).

Of course, the minute I heard about this, suddenly nothing sounded like more fun that sticking a gratuitous amount of candy in my friend's and roommate's shoes. Particularly icky, old, smelly shoes. I bought a pile of fancy candy and somewhat stealthily stowed the candy in my friend's stinky ass running shoes outside his door. However, I simply couldn't wait for him to find it the next day, so after he served me dinner and asked what I wanted for dessert, I suggested he go outside and check his running shoes. That alone made it all worth it. We were both excited to have had a Jewish version of St. Nikolaus (on the first night of Hanukkah, no less) make the ritual drop-off.

Death (probably) sucks

2007-12-04T00:50:00.001+01:00

Note: This is a rather unpleasant and very graphic post. If you're feeling more hugs and bunnies, skip this one.

I left work a bit early this afternoon, after receiving an insanely dramatic email from a man comparing me both to a coke addition and a Siren (of the Homer sort). Neither felt so good. I plugged into my Ipod and turned on the most fitting music I could think of (Rachmaninoff), pulled my huge jacket hood over my head, and headed out into the wet, pitch black, freezing night towards my German course. Its about 1 km between work and the S-bahn station and when I was about half way to the S-Bahn station, I heard a crash and saw a shadow pass by my right side. I turned to look and after blinking about 10 times an shaking my head, I realized there was a body sprawled out on the street. After tossing down my backpack, I realized it was an older lady, with her jacket and dress sprawled above her head, her house slippers laying on their sides in the wet pavement.

I was lucky enough to witness a birth once, and I have to say, being near death isn't all that different. Shit and blood everywhere.

As she naked from the torso down, I tossed my jacket over her legs. As a small crowd had started to accumulate and as it was raining and ice cold, my first aid training kicked in. I asked folks for their jackets, first rather politely - in german. Then louder - also in german. Then louder and quite rude - in german. Then quite fucking rude - in english. What got me, and still gets me is that folks just stood there. Did nothing. I can understand some of them being in shock, but there was quite a few folks gathered by now. Blood and shit are gross, but I can't understand not helping. I've been missing empathy recently.

Eventually a rather cool headed German fellow came running from his car with an emergency kit. As I stood in the middle of the street, my feet holding the emergency blanket down against the wind, I realized she had probably been crossing the street after leaving a small convenience market. It had been so dark, and my Rachmaninoff so loud, I literally thought she had fallen from the sky. Standing there, I noticed a huge indentation in the windshield of the car stopped about 10 m from the body. Perhaps it was the cracked glass, but I kept thinking about the fact that I was standing only 200 meters or so from a plaque commemorating a synagogue that was destroyed on Kristallnacht (literally, the Night of Broken Glass).

Eventually, I was interviewed by a very thorough (and very German) police man. I'm not sure how she's doing, but one of the police men early on made it clear her chances weren't so good.

About two hours later I sat shivering on a restaurant bench, shit and blood covered jacket next to me, waiting for the friend who I had thoroughly freaked out by calling 2o minutes after the accident to come join me. I ate small, mushy brussel sprouts and felt sad.

Hit the Books...

2007-12-03T10:36:00.000+01:00

9 million consecutive days of rain apparently makes me lose my sense of humor...

Anyway, I'm having allot of fun shopping for books online to bring back with me to the Germany. I'm looking for suggestions, so email me privately if you've read anything good recently.

I had a fantastic time in Barcelona and will be sending a slideshow with a pile of photos (complete with snarky comments), once my friend gets around to uploding them to my photo site.

Assimilation is Not Necesarily a Bad Thing...

2007-11-20T16:40:00.001+01:00

For those of you keeping track, I have been in Germany pretty damn near 6 months now (eek!). I think this gives me license to poke a bit of fun at our Kraut-y friends - and myself, of course.

So, without further ado...

10 signs you have become part of the problem:
1. Even the fanciest of salads looks naked without corn kernels.
2. A recent arrival to Germany complains about yet another senseless rule that does nothing but makes life more cumbersome. You kindly, but firmly, tell him "Its a rule, so deal." (In my defense, the gentleman in question spends a good 20 minutes every time you see him complaining about how much he misses his mother. I miss mine too, but ccmon people).
3. You realize you have sent no less than 12 text messages in the last hour.
4. Its Tuesday, so you swing by Tchibo to oogle the new cheapo goods in the window.
5. Its Saturday, so you push, shove, and nudge you way through your local food and clothes retail outlets without even the slightest bit of consideration for the personal space of your fellow shoppers.
6. You find yourself waiting at an intersection for the light to change, even though its 3 am and here are NO cars around.
7. You automatically say your last name when you pick up a phone, a procedure you found horrifying for the first four months here, but now feels oddly comforting.
8. You stare unabashedly at anything you find remotely interesting.
9. You think eating a roll slathered with only Nutella for breakfast is ridiculous: Its missing the required butter layer!
10. Your fridge consistently looks like a culinary dissertation on full fat yogurt, cheese, and milk.

Kiddie pool!

2007-11-18T21:42:00.002+01:00

Say what you want about Germans, but these people know how to bathe! Today I spent a few very moist hours at Bäderland, yet another German pool/sauna wonderland. The place has no less than 6 pools: one outside, one bitchin' wave pool, and then the gamut from ice cold to cozy warm. I lost track, but there are roughly 10 saunas of varying temperatures, moistness, and scents (eucalyptus anyone?). In addition, the building was simply beautiful. I simply cannot think of a better thing to do on a cold winter Sunday.

In other news, I'm heading to Barcelona on Thursday with a friend and I'm really excited. I was there, oh, roughly 13 years ago and can point with a fair amount of certainty to a smushed Nutella/baguette sandwich that I ate there as the beginnings of my intimate and endearing relationship with culinary adventure. On the other hand, my mom can point to the wickedly tasty bottle of olive oil I brought back with me as a the source of many stomach aches. They do this thing there were they take a freshly baked banquette, smother it in salt and olive oil, and then smush a nicely ripe tomato into it. Yum! Luckily I'm flying a real airline, and not Ryan Air - whose Draconian luggage measures would otherwise keep me from flying back with a suitcase full of wine, cheese, and olive oil. Bring on the stomach aches, baby!

Friday I'm at Work

2007-11-16T11:17:00.001+01:00

I've done some rough calculations and it looks like I've spent 58%, 13%, and 29% of my life in Rochester, north-central Ohio, and Seattle, respectively. Neither of these places are known for being either warm, sunny, or particularly rain-free. I'm willing to bet, rather, that a few minutes of research will show that they are some of the gloomier places around. I've never much struggled with the winter weather in these places, but hot-damn am I having a rough time with the gloomy winter weather here in Hamburg. Getting out of bed suddenly seems like a struggle of epic proportions. I saw an ad for this while commuting to work this morning and spent a good 15 minutes once I got here considering whether it was a justifiable expense. Hopefully my jaunt to Barcelona next week will bring a little Vitamin D activation into my lazy little sphere.

Denial is also fun, so let's focus on the spring for a bit! Quite a few folks have mentioned visiting me, so here is some info you may find helpful.

Schedule:

I'm booked the first two weeks in March.
April/May are good times to come - before the height of Europe travel season

Travel:

Emirates Airlines and Continental airlines have direct flights from NYC. Both are quite reasonable (500 USD) when booked in advance. You could also look into flying into Berlin or Bremen, but it may not save you much in the long run (see below). If you're already in Europe, discount airlines fly to Lübeck, which is a 1 hour/8 euro bus ride away from Hamburg.
European railways are not the affordable, reliable panacea you always thought they were. For example, the express (1.5 hr) trip between Berlin & Hamburg costs roughly 60 euro each way if not purchased in advance. There are cheaper train alternatives if you are tricky, but I'd look first into flying since the discount european airlines are often an order of magnitude cheaper than train if purchased in advance. Sky scanner is your friend.

Destinations:

Europe :

Berlin, as well all know, is something akin to heaven
Amsterdam is fantastic, but expensive
Scandanavia is expensive
Greece - I would love to go!

Eastern Europe

Krakow and Budapest are great, and generally cheaper than European cities
Prague is dumb

Other

Turkey - I would love to go!
Egypt - I would love to visit Egypt, not only because this nerdy website helps you pick your destination.

Ode to Berlin (Though, Hamburg is nice too...)

2007-11-15T12:43:00.000+01:00

I'm back in Hamburg after my romp through Berlin and Leipzig. Its great to be back, but I have a ton of email and laundry to sort through. Berlin, as usual, was fantastic.

Its not that I don't like Hamburg, really I do. Hamburg is elegant, reliable and sophisticated, and I can see us getting along quite nicely. However, I don't ever expect to fall head over heels in love with Hamburg. Berlin, however, is something completely different. Big, loud, and sporting excellent boots, I fall deeper and deeper in lust every time I visit. The scale/scope/breadth of Berlin is unlike any other city I have seen. Berlin seems to hold endless exploration potential in the form of neighborhoods, bars, restaurants, flea markets shops, alleys, cafes, street art, and museums. The Badeschiff (see link in previous post), an uber-modern and naked version of your nursery school water table, bordered on a religious experience.

The conference I attended in Leipzig was good; I met folks working on similar issues and heard a few interesting talks relevant to what I'm working on. Best, however, (and consistent with my general snarky-ness), was sitting at the back of the room making jokes about whether the data being presented were normally distributed. Well, at least, that's what I think we were laughing about, the rapid-fire-while-laughing German was a little hard to follow.

Meanwhile, if you want to practice your German, here's a little blurb about me.

New York, Berlin, and Leipzig (but not in that order)

2007-11-09T15:05:00.001+01:00

After allot of plotting and planning about spending Festivus in a warm and exotic local, it looks like I will instead be spending roughly 10 days in the not-so warm and not-so exotic state of New York. I'm excited, can't you tell?! I'll be in NYC for the first few days and then the rest of the time in Rochester. It will be really nice to see my family, but I am having a hard time imagining going somewhere potentially colder and darker than here. The weather for the past two weeks has been and will continue to be dismal. Rainy, ice cold, and dark, with at most a few 3 minute quasi-sunbursts a day. Couple that with a two + week and counting sinus infection/cold, and eek! I'm done whining now, really I am.

On a slightly more upbeat note, I'm jumping on a train in about an hour and a half and heading to Berlin for the weekend. I'm staging a somewhat hostile takeover of a friend's apartment while she's in Rome for the weekend (though, it was a little dumb of me b/c I'd really like to see her). I'm going to get picked up at the train station by two friends, and we're going to stuff our faces with some of the tastiest Indian food I've ever had. I have some serious boot shopping planned for Saturday, and I'm going to spend Sunday doing some of the touristy things I didn't do last time I was there. I'm going to check out the Jewish Museum and potentially this very cool Sauna/pool on a canal. On Sunday I had to Leipzig for a conference on Risk Assessment in European River Basins. Woot!.

Not With the Feet!

2007-11-02T10:19:00.000+01:00

I always thought camera phones were pretty superfluous. That is, until I caught this hysterical little ditty taped to the stall in my language school restroom.

The more I say about this, the less funny it becomes - but cc'mon, people - who mounts a toilet seat like that in the first place? Further, what led the creator of this fine sign to believe that the perpetrator was wearing pair of knee high galoshes? I know I should be more culturally sensitive and all, but jesus. Then again, I can only imagine what the folks outside the stall thought when they heard my camera phone snapping away right before the toilet flushed. Crazy ass Americans!

Krank and Quiche

2007-10-30T16:52:00.000+01:00

I saw Michael Moore's film 'Sicko' about a week ago. I really enjoyed it, but being in a room presumably full of non-American's, I found myself getting surprisingly defensive at times, particularly when he used slightly slippery time/space juxtapositions to get his point across. He discusses the French (but not German) health care system and I wondered what the German health care system is like.

Well, being the good little scientist I am, developed a painful, raging sinus infection so I could test out the German health care system and see how it compares to the US. This morning, I found a well-recommended English-speaking doctor in my neighborhood and popped on my bike to go visit her (yes, on my bike...yes, I had a fever...yes, it was fantastic).

Thus, the first difference between US & German doctors - no actual appointments. Most doctors have morning office hours - one just pops in, plunks down and waits to see the Dr. The person I spoke with me on the phone told me that waiting time are usually around 15 minutes - but up to an hour if you're not lucky. When I got to the doctors office, I walked into a crowded, ice cold waiting room full of coughing, sneezing, old Germans. The office was nice, the receptionist was nice, but hot damn was that room unpleasant. However, I soon found a stash of books for 5-yr olds (right about my level), and spent a very pleasant 30 minutes learning about the ups and downs of childhood athsma. I couldn't help notice that only 1 of the roughly 10 people in the room had been called while I read the books. The next 30 minutes were dedicated to looking at pictures of shoes in trashy magazines, shivering and thinking "I have a really high fever." I filled the next hour by running across the street to get a Ditch pizza, shooting surly looks into space, and a wee bit of pacing for good measure.

Is everybody keeping track - we're at 2 hours now?

Anyway, somewhere midway between the 2 and 3 hour mark, my name gets called. Well, rather I hear someone say 'Frau Xberg'. I am really not sure who 'Frau Xberg' is, but assuming she meant me, I followed her into her office. After all of my surly looks and pacing, the doctor was quite nice and more than happy to engage in a 5 minute conversation about the exact color of my phlegm. She prescribed me a bucket load of drugs and after plunking down a shockingly large number of euros at the Apoteka, buying a pile of leeks, carrots and potatoes at a nearby store, and sleeping for 5 hours, I am feeling remarkably more civilized.

Speaking of leeks, I made a eggy, leeky, Comté-y quiche this weekend! Here is a picture...

And now, in complete defiance of all common sense, I am going to go get on my bike and satisfy the ferocious ice cream craving I've been having for the past few hours. Yum!

I Am Most Certainly NOT French!

2007-10-24T18:12:00.002+02:00

This afternoon I popped into the local branch of my cell phone company to update some payment information. I started babbling about what I wanted to do and the following conversation ensued:

Customer Service Man (CSM): Do you come from France?
Me: (Oy, the horror!). No, but can you help me change the bank account?
CSM: Yes, can I see you passport?
Me: (whip out what is clearly an American passport)
CSM: But, you are French. You sound French and you look French.
Me: Nein. Still not French.
CSM: I would have thought you came from France!?
Me: Nein

This is about the 9 millionth conversation I've had since coming to Germany where somebody more or less informs me where I am from and then acts shocked when I have the audacity to correct them. The list of my potential homelands, (more or less in order of popularity) includes:

Spain
Greece
Israel
Palestine
Canada (yes!)
Tunisia
Egypt

You'll notice the absence of the US from the list. I have no idea why this is. To make things even stranger, I was in a bar about a week ago about a week chatting with a fellow who was speaking midwestern-y sounding English. After about 2 minutes, and right after showing me the requested Michigan hand, he complemented me on my English. I thanked him, but he was essentially dead to me from that point on. This is particularly bizarre, given that many of the Germans I've met speak what they refer to as 'European English' (characterized primarily by egregious overuse of the word 'Nice') which any fool can discern from my absolutely lovely American english..thank you very much.

Big in Berlin...

2007-10-11T21:18:00.001+02:00

I haven't posted any photos in a while, so below are a couple of bon-bons from my time in Berlin (and environs). Meanwhile, I registered today as an official citizen of Hamburg, which means I can do exciting things like rent videos.

All of the Bukas had a little outing to Spreewald. Frankly, I am not so sure what exactly Spreewald is/was, but if we engage in a little German word dissection, we get Spree (a huge river) and Wald (forest). So, yeah, there was a river and some trees, and somehow we ended up all piling into a large boat and getting pushed around narrow canals. The whole thing was frankly a little strange, but, strange has become quite ordinary at this point. We even consented to having our photo taken. It was nice, though I never got to sample the famous Spreewald pickles.

About a week later, we celebrated the end of our time in Berlin with a copious amount of alcohol. My friend L. has ridiculously long limbs and was reeking complete havoc on a friend's studio apartment in his drunken state. Rather than destroy the palace, we ended up outside taking less-than arty photographs of each other. Yup.

Biking while Drinking...

2007-10-09T21:13:00.000+02:00

A friend and I were contemplating a trip to Copenhagen this coming weekend, but ultimately decided against it given that it's relatively expensive and logistically complicated to visit in a weekend. We were discussing possible alternatives on Google chat and she kindly agreed to accompany me on a trip to Lübeck, which is essentially the marzipan equivalent of Mecca. I've been getting ready for the all-out marzipan orgy since months before my arrival in Germany and cannot think of one good reason why I shouldn't eat myself sick on the almondy goodness...

Anyway, I found the following bit of our google chat eloquently summarizes a big chunk of the differences between living in Germany and the US:
me: meh! so, let' consider a short/cheap drunk biking (but without too much exertion) trip involving a train.
only in germany, baby...
friend: only in deutschland...so many things are special to me here:
public drinking
sex for sale
getting chastized by strangers
the PFAND

I could explain the items on her list, but rather than bore you to death, suffice to say, things here are still different enough to be interesting (and make your drinks cost up to .25 cents more than you think they should).

Somewhat relatedly, I think...I had my first rather distinct sense of homesickness after a recent visit from a friend. Perhaps its just the relatively easy camaraderie I feel with him or simply the ease of having someone with a full command of the German language around, but it made me miss places where everything makes a little bit more sense and drinks cost exactly what it says on the bottle. bleh!

Rat Partially In a Cage

2007-10-04T19:25:00.000+02:00

I think I have been permanently soiled by my four months away from a desk job. Yuck! So, it most definitively doesn't help that I only slept a few hours last night, but truly: I would much rather be riding my bike around town and drinking coffee. Work is boring! There, I said it. Work is boring!
However, given the low probability of significant lottery winnings, I can't really come up with a viable alternative.

Hamburg-tastic!

2007-10-03T19:20:00.000+02:00

So, I was just biking down the neon-tinged Reeperbahn as the sun set, after having a delicious cup of Portuguese Coffee with a very cool woman I met a week ago, after having laid in the sun by the Port of Hamburg for a while, after visiting a cool flea market, after eating a bowl of muesli. I thought, "This is fucking fantastic".

So, I have arrived safely in Hamburg, and have moved into my flat. After four months in hotels, I cannot express how nice it is to have a lovely, somewhat permanent place to come home to. Speaking of which, here are two photos of the place (kitchen and bedroom) before I moved in. One of the nicer things about the place is that the since folks who I am leasing this place from moved to London for a year, they left it fully furnished and with a kitchen full of food and beer. It was great to be able to wake up the first morning here and have a German breakfast - which is in my opinion the only shining star on the German culinary horizon.

Tomorrow is my first day of work. After four months away from the 9-5 routine, I am less than reluctant to dig back in, but I will have to suck it up. Meh! I will report back on work-related adventures soon...

The Amsterdam Propaganda Collective

2007-09-07T15:46:00.000+02:00

I traveled to Amsterdam a few weekends ago and the trip confirmed my suspicion that Amsterdam is simply the coolest city on earth. The city has absolutely everything a girl needs:

Canals winding throughout the entire city
Wacky Dutch folk on bikes
Um..other stuff
Tasty, tasty Indonesian food

Amsterdam also provided a refreshing (and much needed) contrast to Germany. While I find Germany to be an extremely pleasant to live, most of the cities or places that I've seen so far lack that gritty//diverse//je ne sais quoi that really makes me want to get to know a city. Frankly, Germany's castles and churches, while lovely, get rather droll after a while (okay, by droll, I actually mean drool worthy...and the bad drool, not the good kind).

Amsterdam, on the other hand, is overflowing with cool-city spice. I had a complete blast just wandering around for most of the weekend. Amsterdam is chocked full of twisty secret side streets, and I had some really really tasty food. In particular, the Indonesian food I had was great.

Its not a cheap city, but I highly recommend it if you can swing it.

Hyper-kvell!

2007-09-04T09:31:00.000+02:00

I just got a SMS message from my friend's friend's sister's ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend that caused me to start jumping up and down at 8:45 in the morning in an otherwise rather sedate coffee house.

I made a quick trip to Hamburg last weekend to look at apartments and be interviewed by potential roommates. The whole thing was rather disheartening. I biked around (of course in the rain) and was not too excited at the prospects. At the last moment, my friend/evil twin Micha managed to get us both into the apartment of the above tenuous connection. The folks are going to London for a year and need someone to sublet the beautifully furnished place for that time. It has two bedrooms+ living room + a beautiful kitchen, hardwood floors and a ton of light. Its spitting distance from my other buddies in Hamburg and a short bike ride to the train station that will zip me off to work. I'll need to look for a roommate, but one thing I learned this weekend is that the housing siltation in Hamburg is really tight and I'll have NO problem whatsoever finding someone fast. Yay me!

I have a ton of more exciting stuff to share, but I need to go be hyper for a while. The past few weeks have been BUSY (thus the lack of posts), but September should be allot lighter, so stay tuned.

It's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and....

2007-08-27T16:59:00.000+02:00

This is only a super-quick post to say I'm alive. I've been really busy (and traveling allot). I've got a few fun posts in the works...stay tuned!

2007-07-31T21:33:00.001+02:00

I spent some time at the Cologne Chocolate Museum last weekend. While the idea idea of the museum is beyond cool, chocolate has a rather sordid and unjust history, which I can convey in two simple steps:

Step 1: exploit folks in the third world
Step 2: add sugar

However, there was an OBSCENELY large chocolate fountain. Tragically one is not allowed to submerse ones head (or even one's finger) in it. Rather, a rather cruel lady serves you wafers dipped all too quickly into the chocolatey goo. Clearly, chocolate-related injustices continue to this very day!! Nevertheless, oogling the chocolate was the good fun, and I went a little berserk in the gift shop. Yes, I'm hip to the hypocracy.

Crazy Lecker Look

2007-07-29T12:39:00.000+02:00

During the first few weeks here, a pile of us were at a bar celebrating a birthday. A few of the German teachers came along and one brought her 2-ish year old son - Klein Tornado (little Tornado). He was sitting on her lap and she had a class of Kolsh in front of her. He was living up to his Tornado-nickname and wiggling around and grabbing for her beer while hollering what I heard as "liquor". I was convinced for about week that they really do get them started on the hooch what is, in my estimation, a tad early. It wasn't until about a week later in class that I learned that "lecker" actually means tasty!

When learning a new language, its easy to pick up similarities (and thusly confuse) entirely unrelated but similar sounding words. I don't think these unholy blunders even occur to native speakers. In class on Friday I couldn't figure out why my teacher looked supremely confused when I told him I was going to send him something via email. It turns out I was using the word for bacon (Schinken) instead of mail (schicken). Tricky little letters! A few days ago I was thought I was complaining about something or other being horrible (furchtbar) to a fellow at a bar. He seemed to get most of what I was saying (and I was rather pleased with myself), but and I could not figure out why he suddenly looked thoroughly confused. Turns out I was saying "fruchtbar" which means fertile. oopsies! Even more embarrassing, I found the most beautiful pair of shoes at a store in Cologne. I was getting along nicely in German until I confused my numbers and asked for a size 50 instead of a 40. After looking at me like I was completely insane, the lady switched instantly into English and informed me that 50 would be really big (sadly the shoes didn't fit). More on the difficulties of actually getting Germans to speak German with me later.

Happily all of these mistakes (and the 9999 I'm not even bothering to mention) are all simply funny and make good stories (and I have absolutely no ego in German).

Photo Opportunity

2007-07-25T20:54:00.000+02:00

I recently learned the German verb for freaking/flipping out (ausflippen) which I proudly - and not so subtly displayed in German class this week. I picked this and a bunch of other ditties while watching one of the two English channels on my TV. When my German-sponge brain is tired, I can pick between CNN and MTV (BBC disappeared a few weeks ago). CNN is nice, but doesn't actually suffice to cure my overcooked brain. Thus, we have MTV. Most of the shows on MTV come from the US, and about half are dubbed into the German. However, the other half are in English w/ German subtitles, and are the source of the bulk of my German slang. Pimp My Ride is probably the best among the bunch. Though, I must say, the British version of Pimp my Ride is an absolute snore.

Anyway, most nights MTV presents an array of brainless shows - The Simple Life, White Rapper, Strange Love (detailing the train wreck/romance between Sylvester Stallone's ex Brigitte Nielsen and Flavor Flav), and of course, Pimp my Ride. While the shows are certainly entertaining, a girl can't help but think about the image of the good old USA that is being beamed out to the world. Granted we're talking MTV here so I shouldn't be shocked, but the other US-news I've seen (CNN) is surprisingly celebrity-focused and a little salacious. Combined with the other US-beamed media, the picture is even more a study of extremes (very rich//very poor - very fat//very thin) and even less even handed that I would have guessed. As a friend pointed out, someone would have be quite naive to think that these shows represent more than a tiny fraction of American culture, but I find it genuinely scary how easily someone could (mis)interpret what they see/hear/read about the US.

Halfses

2007-07-22T14:43:00.000+02:00

So, we're a little more than half done with the language class portion of the program, and as one is prone to do at mid-points, I've been thinking a bit about the last couple weeks. Particularly interesting (at least for me) has been the dramatic change in my state of being in my when I have absolutely no stress.

My average day goes something like this: Wake up around 8, bike to school along the Rhine, attend German classes for 5 hours a day. While school is while genuinely draining, it pales in comparison to a regular work day. Plus, all I need to do is behave in a sponge-like manner and sop up as much German as I can. Nights are chocked full of Donner eating, beer drinking, bike rides, swimming in the gorgeous Bonn pool, and occasionally scratching at the walls of my all too small room. Oh, and the homework, which I actually enjoy. How long has it been since its been your job to open up a happy red workbook and fill in blanks with your favorite foods and colors or label the objects in a living room?

Yes, its a little juvenile, and coupled with the summer-camp like atmosphere (sleepy Bonn, traveling in small packs, essentially living in dorms), the whole thing is nonetheless quite relaxing. Actually, I can't recall a time when I've had things so easy, and the ?interesting? thing (in the personal growth department) and I've realized the extent to which I think the moderate amount of stress or discontent in every day life can have a disproportionate and dramatic impact on my disposition. Relieved of these stresses, I actually feel a little off kilter at times (what's a girl to worry about?). I'm sure all of the German new-ness is contributing to the off kilter-ness, but the bottom line is all of this change is forcing a fair amount of reflection, which I refuse to believe is a bad thing.

Tomrrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (and other conspiracies unveiled)

2007-07-14T10:55:00.000+02:00

The German words for morning (morgen) and tomorrow (morgen) are THE SAME! At first, I was convinced I’ve uncovered a large scale conspiracy, but nobody here seems the least bit concerned. To avoid confusion, “Tomorrow morning” translates to “tomorrow early.” Interestingly, the word for “early” is the first half of the word for “breakfast”. The second half of the word for “breakfast” translates to “piece”. ..as in piece of cake. See where I’m going with this? Well, neither do I. The paradox is thusly unresolved. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? I can’t help but think a certain obscenely attractive small blond person can help me talk myself out of this box.

While we're on the topic of conspiracies - let's delve into the skinny German//heavy beer drinker and ice cream eater paradox. I'm convinced something is slightly amiss here. These folks throw back beer and ice cream like there is no tomorrow, yet are generally quite spry. I'm mixed as to whether I should attribute this to to the huge amount of bicycle riding or to the appetite suppressing effect of all of the nicotine: Pretty much everybody here smokes. From school kids to almost all of the teachers at my school - people seem highly cigarette addicted. The good news (for me at least), is that smoking will be banned here indoors starting on January 1st.

Hamburg Herring

2007-07-12T21:06:00.000+02:00

I had a fun-tastsic trip to Hamburg this weekend. Loren and I busted out from school a little early on Friday and were in Hamburg by early evening. We quickly met up with my friend (and Hamburg resident) Micha and we were all on the Reeperbahn to meet a current Buka (also a Hamburg resident) by 10 pm or so and we ended up at rather cool bar on a side street. I've yet to visit Amsterdam, but it sounds like the red light district there is at least somewhat dignified and subtle. Not so much with the Reeperbahn - its like Vegas meets a fairly nasty sex shop, with a pile of drunk teens and tourists mixed in.

I was a little traumatized, and with the rainy day we had on Saturday, I was having a hard time fighting back my Berlin envy. However, I was thoroughly sold by Saturday evening/Sunday morning. Now, we're all familiar with my unhealthy Port obsession, and Hamburg sure puts out. We took this picture at the port at roughly 4:45 am while Micha and I consumed a tasty, tasty herring sandwich with a pile of onions (note the remains in his right hand). From left to right: Micha, your truly, Loren and Andrea. Here's another photo of Loren and I- she has a rather glamorous smile and suggested I may look a wee bit surly at times in photos- so we tried each other's faces on for a bit - much to both of our detriment if you ask me. Oh, important detail: we were at the Hamburg fish market - which occurs every Sunday morning in Hamburg at 5 am. More details about this another time.

Anyway, back to the herring sandwich. It was damn tasty! Loren and I also had a much excellent fish lunch on Sunday. Overall, the food was allot more promising (and fishy) than Bonn.

In other exciting news, I am totally nerding on on this language learning program called Phase 6. Its essentially an electronic flash card system - you enter 20 or so words a day, and depending on whether you can type them correctly or not when prompted, it brings them back in either 2 or 4 sessions. I'm really digging this. My paper flash cards were getting a little bit out of control, and I was doing a crappy job of forcing myself to look at cards I had previously learned, thus the older words were slowly leaking out of my brain. This software has the added bonus of having an Access database back end so you can share with friends and easily create flash cards if needed. Yay nerd power!

Me and my Nutella (aka German 2/France 0)…

2007-07-09T20:23:00.000+02:00

The love that dare not speak its name…

In the US I like Nutella. I’ve had jars in my fridge for weeks or months at a time and never paid the Nutella all that much attention. I hate to highlight my embryonic Euro-snobbyness, but there is something suspiciously tasty about the Nutella here. Setting aside for a moment that the mini-fridge in my hotel room is 1/10 the size of my old fridge and my friendly jar of Nutella is a beacon in of hope amongst the full fat dairy products, it’s safe to say that of late I’ve been unstoppable when it comes to Nutella. I bought a jar a shamefully short amount of time ago, and pretty much licked it clean. I’ve put it on EVERTHING! Here are a few tasty combinations you’ve probably never considered, but I’ve found to be most delightful:

· Nutella, peanut butter, and (yes!) yogurt/quark sandwiches

· Nutella served on a butter knife (a la popsicle). Note the knife works 82% better than a spoon.

· Nutella on sesame Wassa crackers

· Nutella on Orecchiette pasta. And yes, Orecchiette works markedly better than penne.

· I’ve got a tin of fancy Anchovies in my fridge. I was tempted to go there, but sadly ran out of Nutella before I got up the nerve.

The worst part thing here is that the huge quantities of Nutella most certainly upset s my poor stomach. After one particularly indulgent session, I spent about 24 hours feeling like I had a rock tumbler in my stomach. Embarrassingly, this only slowed down the Nutella-to-mouth deluge for a few days before it picked right back up again. Eek!

Speaking of food…

After school today, my buddy and I were sitting in a small platz snacking on sweet afternoon treats when we spied a small outdoor market with folks selling meat, cheese, and bread. She pointed out the trucks behind the stands had French license plates. As you might imagine, we completely lost interest in our conversation while we (okay, I) stuffed the rest of my pudding pretzel in my mouth and hurried over to the stands. The good news: we bought two absolutely beautiful baguettes and sampled a few very tasty cheeses before each buying about 100 g cheese. The bad news: 99.6% of the baguette’s charm was aesthetic and the cheese, while quite tasty, cost 6 Euro a piece for our 100 grams. This is about twice what I’ve paid for equally tasty cheeses in the smancyiest of markets in Bonn. Germany is hereby awarded 2 points for moxy and pizzazz and while France gets nothing but the stink-eye. Shame on you, France!

4th of July

2007-07-05T13:18:00.000+02:00

Hi hi-

I only have a second, but we had a soggy 4th of July grill out last night. A certain ipod speaker and umbrella/flashlight were exceptionally popular. Thanks again!!

Clean Clothes Day...

2007-06-30T15:46:00.000+02:00

.....Before I forget, I got a German cell phone. If I forgot to send you the number and you'd like it, let me know and I'll send it along.

I'm sitting in a cafe/laundromat/copy shop/piano bar in a beautiful old building and frankly I can't think of any reason to ever leave. Not to torture you all with my new-found Euro-coolness, but it seems important to mention that one can have a quite decent class of red for 1.50 euro while doing their laundry.

While sitting here, I'm being stared at by a super cute four year old Ecuadorian boy hanging out with his mother and aunt. They are switching rapid fire between German and Spanish. I tried a bit of that and after about 30 seconds I could smell the burning rubber in my neural cortex. As an aside, German laundry machines are REALLY small. They hold roughly 1 pair of jeans and about 2 socks.

I went out boozing in Cologne with two lovely ladies last night. Its been a long time since this happened...but the sun was fully up before I got into bed. I had my first, second, and third run in with the alarming frankness of Germans. In particular, a some comments about religion and race made me uncomfortable. Nothing blatantly offensive, but the gents were wayyy intrigued and interested in our collective different-ness. Bleh!

Oh...and annoying postscript on my epiphany post. Well, first...we had a small test(ish) on Thursday and the teacher offered chocolate for the best grade (you can probably guess whose requested we set this bad example for school health everywhere). Anyway, guess who got a big old bar of Milka chocolate? Yup, yours truly! Anyway, after dispensing the chocolate first thing on Friday morning, the teacher announced our class would be splitting into two groups....the naughty, naughty Chinese in one group with our current teachers, and the rest of us would be merging with the class slightly above us. I was (and still am) pretty cranky about this. Not only were the folks in the class above us less than enthused about their teacher, it seems to be rewarding the disinterested folks with more attention, and having the rest of us have to deal with a much larger class. I protested a bit, but was sort of told to suck it. Meh...hopefully this will change in the future.

Revolt & (minor) Epiphany

2007-06-28T20:31:00.001+02:00

I had a very (minor) epiphany today that resulted from a quick chat with my two German teachers.

First, my German class consists 2 Americans, 2 Chinese, and 1 Russian. The other American (we'll call her 'A'), the Russian and I are fairly religious about doing our homework (it takes all of 15 minutes to complete) and doing a bit of studying after class. Not so much with the Chinese guys. They NEVER do their homework, and seemed to be genuinely disinterested and struggling with German. However, I cut them quite a bit of slack, since I can't imagine learning German more or less in Chinese (our teachers cut to English if things get confusing). Plus, the Chinese guys are funny (they have pretty good English) and interesting to talk to. However, its pretty clear that in terms of proficiency, the class is becoming increasingly divided.

However, today there was a minor revolt: the two Chinese guys disclosed their complete lack of interest in learning German. Not so much that they are finding it hard (we are all), they simply aren't interested. They are more interested in cultural aspects, and not so much the language. Ergo the incomplete homework. Ergo refusing to speak German and answering all German questions in English. As the rebellion continued, it became clear that three of us want more (AND FASTER) German while others want essentially nil. Clearly this is not a sustainable model for a class. A and I approached the teachers after class and they were lovely and sympathetic and expressed their appreciation for our active participation and a bit of frustration at the other folks - particularly having to remind one of the fellows the word for jacket (Jacke) four times in two days. They urged patience as we slog through a pile of grammar in the next two weeks, but it seems they have been actively discussing this issue themselves and will likely split the class up soonishly.

This conversation left me feeling reasonably content. Partially, I think that even though its certainly no fault of mine for showing up here with absolutely no German (and not to overstate my own intelligence), but I am not used to being in the lowest level class of anything. I'm extra sensitive about this because I don't consider myself particularly language facile. I think it was (and is) wearing on my ego a bit to but it meant allot that our teachers get that we're trying.

yeah.

Überwältigend...

2007-06-27T20:44:00.000+02:00

I caught myself doing something a little odd the other day, and I realized I'm feeling more than a little overwhelmed by this whole experience. Not a particularly tragic brand of overwhelmed...more deer in the headlights. The oddball thing is that no one thing here is particularly overwhelming. The language barrier is only occasionally frustrating (and sometimes funny), I'm enjoying German school, and the folks in my program are quite peachy. None the less, I think reality and the breadth of all of this change are beginning to intrude on the euphoria brought on by the the endless racks of full fat diary products. I get that its the aggregate of all of this change, but the ugly part is that I don't quite feel like myself and that makes all of the fun a little less so.

I'll have to noodle on this, I guess...

Cake and Coffee!

2007-06-24T17:47:00.000+02:00

We spent a good chunk of time in Cologne on Saturday night. What a cool city and wow….the contrast between Bonn and Cologne’s nightlife could hardly be more stark. Cologne’s streets were swimming with bars (from gritty to swanky) and a diverse range (age-wise) of folks out enjoying themselves. I sampled the local beer (Kolsch) which is served in small Kari-size glasses. It’s a little bitter for my tastes, so I’ll be sticking to the highly addictive Kristal Hefeweisen.

I woke up pretty late Sunday morning and went for a 35 km (or so) bike ride along the Rhine. One of the more amusing things I’ve learned about Germans is there complete obsession with ice cream. ‘Eis’ seems to be available at all times of the day, in the oddest places, and frankly, in highly strange forms. We sat at a café the other day that had a 4 page ice cream menu! Mind you, this didn’t even list the flavors, but page after page of ice cream-based entrees. My favorite so far is spaghetti ice. I haven’t sampled it yet, but it looks like they somehow extruded white ‘noodles’ of vanilla ice cream. They top it all off with a ?strawberry? sauce that looks like pasta sauce. This seems to be a big hit with both kids and groups of old men sitting at ice cream cafes in the afternoon. The German’s ice cream obsession paid off half-way through my bike my ride. I literally ran into a small ice cream truck after taking a hill a bit too fast. I got to enjoy a yummy stratchatella ice cream while admiring my lovely new wheels (pics to come).

The Germans also have a delightful tradition of afternoon cake & coffee (or tea). Yesterday, I indulged in a delightful slice of cheesecake. The cheesecake was mild (and not as sweet as its American counterpart) and had a crumbly almond crust. The coffee was good, but complete schwag compared the Italian fellow who rolls up outside our language school in a little red 3-wheeled car/van/coffee truck at promptly 11 am each day. Yum!

The princess needs shoes!

2007-06-23T12:38:00.000+02:00

Oh my... I just wandered into two Italian shoe stores that left me absolutely breathless. I'm feeling a little less than Euro-swanky in my current kicks. I may flirt with the most lovely pair I saw for a bit but commit more fully in a few weeks.

I'm currently sitting outside Einstein Kaffee enjoying the rather moody Bonn weather. Its been rainy off and on this week, and humid beyond belief. I know no one is truly interested in this, but hot damn my hair is poofy! We may head to Cologne later this afternoon to get a taste of a real city . . . I have probably mentioned this before, but Bonn is more than a little sleepy. Other pending travel includes a trip to Hamburg next weekend to scope out neighborhoods and a trip to Amsterdam the following weekend to celebrate American independence day the best way we know how. . . In somewhat surprising news, the German rail system is quite expensive. Even with my 1/2 off rail card which cost me 200 Euro (which Germans rather endearingly pronounce oy-ro), it will cost me 100 Euro RT to Hamburg (which is only 4.5 hours away). I'd much rather spend $$ on shoes.

A couple folks have asked how my German is coming...I'm actually surprised how much I'm enjoying my German classes. The pronouns are uber-evil and the grammar rather persnickety, but its a treat to be able to consider learning German my full time job. This makes spending hours oogling cheese, wandering through markets, reading trashy German magazines, and sitting at bier gardens almost a required part of any day. Our class is a mix of Chinese, Russians and Americans. We all seem to have pretty different attitudes/methods towards learning and interacting with the teachers. This is mostly fine and interesting, but can require a few deep breaths in the afternoon after 5 hours of German grammar and as our classroom gets hot and rather dank. The Germans and Chinese have fairly good english, but we're now getting to the point where we can have decent conversations in German. Well, I think they are decent, but its hard to miss the teacher's minor cringes when we speak.

In other VERY important news, what is this business about Jay-Z cheating on Beyonce with Rihanna? I'm going to strangle someone if I hear that damned umbrella song one more time.

The people demand pictures....

2007-06-15T09:05:00.000+02:00

Good news…I’m now a registered citizen of Bonn and have a very official looking guest researcher visa in my passport. This followed a very sweaty (its damn humid here) romp through German bureaucracy with about 20 of my fellow Gastwissenschaftler (guest researchers). The experience of getting a visa was about what you’d expect. Moderate confusion, a plethora of forms, a few hours spent in a waiting room, and a visa celebrated with a huge (and might I say very tasty) slice of cheesecake and a frosty beer. I can’t complain too much but my brain was more than a little fried.

I’ve had a few people (okay, everybody I know) ask about the food here. There is much to tell, but first, my kitchen. When I first arrived in my hotel room I was more than a little confused. Information from the folks funding my time here had indicated our hotel room would have a kitchen, but my room only contained a bank of closets (see below). When I attempted to unpack my clothes to the closet, I realized it was not only a closet but also a kitchenette. While it was a novelty at best, its beginning to cramp my style a bit.

In other food news, the cheese here is obscene. The cheese case at the grocery store goes on for miles, and I get a little anxious thinking about how I’m going to cover all of this ground in only 14 short months. Short of taking pictures of the cheese case, dividing it into quadrants, and developing a spreadsheet to track my progress, I’m a little uncertain of how to methodologically approach the cheese. The easy answer is just by grabbing what looks prettiest. That’s what I did yesterday. I bought a little bit of this bite-y Spanish cheese WITH FIGS ON TOP. It was perhaps the best cheese I’ve ever had (this week). It was bitey, earthy and creamy. The slightly sweet figs rounded the cheese out perfectly. Yum!

Another food story...two nights ago, a few buddies and I were riding the train home from a bar in the Bonn city center. At one of the stops, about 9 artily dressed Germans all file onto the train. In an act of maniacal organization, they all sit down and all (at essentially the same time) pull out identical white plastic cups. I overhear the word ‘spiegeleier ’ which I know means ‘fried egg’. It turns out they are all drinking egg liquor. They saw me not-so-subtly staring and offered me some of the liquor. It was tasty, and I declared this fellow my absolute favorite German (this week).

Exciting Development

2007-06-08T09:16:00.000+02:00

Exciting Development -

I now know at least 100 words in German. Since the bulk of the average person's spoken vocabulary consists of roughly 200 words, I figure I'm more than half fluent. I'm not exactly sure why I need the other 2 months and 3 weeks of class. Okay, actually, German is a little tricksy. Unlike Spanish, where noun endings make it easy to noodle out the noun's gender, German nouns appear to have entirely random gender and the only way to learn them is sheer memorization. Also, there are three genders (male/female/neuter). Yuck! You'd figure the Germans would have a more efficient/organized way of going about this. However, I'm finding that lewd mental images are helping my recall quite a bit.

We had a day off of school on Thursday. Apparently it was some Catholic state holiday. The interesting bit is that none of the teachers nor the administrators of our school were aware of what exactly the holiday was celebrating. Either way, it was an opportunity for me to finish unpacking and spend some quality time leaning against a tree overlooking the Rhine and munching on a pretzel and drinking a frosty beer. Lest you think I’m living a life of complete leisure, I spent about 30 minutes working on my homework! One of the more refreshing things about being here has been seeing how much a culture of biking really permeates the culture. While leaning against the tree, there was almost a constant stream of folks riding by on bikes. Not just young folks, either, or folks with fancy bikes, but a diverse set of bikes and age ranges. I found a bike shop yesterday (but it was closed given the late hour of 3 pm), and I'm going to return on Monday to try and get myself a bike.

Other cool things:

Since we're so far north, it stays quite light until about 10: 30 pm. I know I'll pay for this in the winter, but I'm enjoying this novelty for now.
I have a scary small kitchen in my room. I'll post pictures soon.
Aldi (grocery store) is the fortress of cheap food. Its kind of scary in the US, very cool here. I got like 10 liters of mineral water for <1>
A buddy and I found a few really lovely (and a little swanky) cafes in a cool neighborhood. Look for food updates soon!

2007-06-06T08:56:00.000+02:00

Hi -

I am having SOOO much fun. A couple of updates:

I am more or less exploding from all of the fun. Yesterday, I took a nice long walk along the rhine, got a train pass, stopped by a veggie market, and spent about 2 hours in a grocery store. Oy, the cheese! Mooky- you know that round ?goat? cheese that you get from MM with the white middle and slightly off white outer part? Well, I got a pile of that yesterday for <<2 euro! These huge white asparagus are in season and I made pasta last night with asparagus, garlic, and cheese. It was good, but esthetically a little boring (white, white, and white)
German is fun! I have two quite different, but lovely teachers. I am now fully in command of about 30 words in German. very exciting!
There is some unknown state holiday tomorrow. Perhaps I'll take a trip to Cologne.
There is no internet in my hotel. Well, rather, the internet costs 200 euro/month. I do have access during the day at my school, but schlepping my laptop every day is a bit of a pain. This may make my blogging less frequent, but I'll aim to suck it up and drag this baby to school. I also need to figure out the best way to make phone calls. I'll stop by a few cell phone places soon and figure out the dealio.

Okay, ta ta for now

Bonn-y

2007-06-05T09:15:00.000+02:00

Just a quick post to say hi. I've arrived in Bonn and will be starting language classes this morning. The city (what little I've seen of it) is beautiful. More soon....

No Amount of Glitter....

2007-05-31T09:41:00.000+02:00

I'm heading to Germany tomorrow. Technically, Germany by way of a few days in Sacramento. However, Sacramento seems so odd, it may as well be Germany and thus I am considering them to be the same place. Its best to just let me get away with this.

I feel excited and remarkably calm about the bizarre adventure I'm about to embark on. It struck me again how hard the past couple of weeks would have been without the humor and support of the lovely people in my life and how having all of this support has contributed to my relative (and frankly surprising) degree of calmness. Hopefully I've said this to folks individually, but, en mass, thanks for the breakfast/lunch/dinner dates, remarkable tolerance, silly errands, barbeques, mix CDs, multitude of car rides and loaned cards, uber cool gifts, phone calls, and a variety of gifts of food. I'm lucky.

Addendum to my last post. Include Lark in the yum list. Oh, and Circus Contraption, even though there is no food involved.

Seattle Restaurants

2007-05-29T00:27:00.000+02:00

A lovely friend recently asked for a list of Kari-approved restaurants. Of course, I'm more than happy to oblige. However, since I have rather strong opinions about food and restaurants, I also included a list of restaurant that I think are a waste of your time, money, and calories.

Kari-approved (no particular order):

1. Tilth - Tilth may be located in the belly of hell, but its certainly worth the trip.
2. Udupi Palace - Well, I guess hell has two bellies. Again, more than worth the trip.
3. Zoe - Yum! Try the gnudi and the tuna. Top if off with the 'ruby, my dear'.
4. Salumi - Holy Crap! Take the day off, get there early, and don't expect to be functional after you eat.
5. Tamarind Tree/Green Leaf - Try the 7 courses of beef at Tamarind Tree. Both places can get crowded, so go prepared to wait.
6. Cafe Selam - Great lentils. Even better cabbage.
7. Cafe Septieme - Feeling cranky? Go for breakfast, get the poached eggs (and extra toast) and a huge cafe au lait. You'll leave less cranky.

8. Campagne/Cafe Champagne - I've had one great meal and one mediocre meal at Campagne. However, the cafe is consistently a treat for brunch.
9. Shanghai Garden - The hand shaven noodles are the stuff myths are made of.
10. Sushi Land - All hail the industrial revolution! Nothing makes me happier that my food arriving on a convener belt. Medium quality, but low prices. If you're looking for excellent uber high-quality sushi, try Nishino.
11. Tutta Bella - Most excellent pizza. The truth hurts, but I prefer the pizza at the belly-of-hell/Stone Way location to the non-belly-of-hell/Columbia City location.

Everyone else is wrong:

1. Wild Ginger - the big, overrated suck.

2. Cafe Flora - gag! Avoid the portobello wellington like the plague.

3. Volterra - salty, expensive, and bland. The sad truth is that its best to simply avoid all Italian food in Seattle.

4. Crush/Crave - I'm putting these together because, well, they both start with C, both have way too many tables for such a small space, and everyone seems to like them but me. Also, I always get sweaty when I go to Crave.

5. Stellar's - I'm defying a sacred trust by mentioning this, but while this place may have seriously cool atmosphere, the pizza most certainly blows.

6. La Carta de Oaxaca - Yuck! I'd rather chew on rocks!

7. Ray's Boat House - ugg. If you enjoy dining on low quality, overpriced food, while seated next to a table of annoying tourists from Kansas, head here asap. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

Scientist Studies

2007-05-22T06:56:00.000+02:00

I have two new favorite games to occupy my overstuffed head. Since we have lots of time over the next 14 months to play 'where will Kari go in Europe', let's start with 'what will Kari be when she grows up'. Now, we know that simply having my business card read 'Scientist' means I have the coolest possible job (with the possible exception of 'Director'). Not to mention that I generally enjoy many aspects of my job. However, like many people, I'm not always convinced I'm in exactly the right line of work, and now I have luxury of being able to spend 14 months noodling over what I want to do next. Here are some of the possible options, in no particular order:

Return to the same job I've got. I was promised an unending supply of cool ranch doritos and a soda dispenser. I've got my eye on this baby. However, given that I rarely drink soda and have eaten exactly 5 cool ranch doritos in the last couple of years, the novelty items may quickly lose their appeal.
Teach nerdy science classes at a 4 year school. I'd love to teach geo 101, environmental science 101, and intro stats classes. This would probably at least another MS.
Get my PhD. I have a program or two in mind - but I'm not entirely jazzed at the prospect of spending 4+ more years in school.
Nix the idea of getting more schooling, and try to get a job somewhere like here or here.

Hmm, this list clearly needs some work. It will be interesting how it fills out or changes over the next year or so.

MOT

2007-05-18T05:43:00.000+02:00

My mom just send me link to an ADL summary of Attitudes Toward Jews and the Middle East in Five European Countries. Putting the insipid graphics aside for a moment, the surveyors asked folks in five countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland to respond a series of statements about Jews. While the results are intensely disheartening, the good news is that Germany comes out smelling (relatively) like a rose, while Spain and Poland are quite a bit more stinky. Maybe somebody should have let me take German in 6th grade, after all.

The first question got me thinking...over half of the people surveyed thought that the statement "Jews are more loyal to Israel than this country [the country in which the survey was being conducted]" is "probably true". I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the significance of this response. Are Mexican-Americans more loyal to Mexico than the US, and if so, is that a reason for concern? Granted, given the obvious differences between Mexican and Israeli politics, its a fairly tenuous comparison. I wouldn't want someone to assume I'm more loyal to Israel than I am to the US. This of course begs the question of what exactly loyalty to a country means. I'm clearly not loyal the current administration, but I am quite loyal to the lifestyle and freedoms I'm afforded here. I'm very loyal in my belief of Israel's right to exist, but I take issue with some of the finer points of its existence. I understand that drawing into question the loyalty of a distinct community to a larger group is fairly classic form of xenophobia, and that this is a subtle, but important form of antisemitism. However, perhaps what they are really getting at is if we'll all join run off and join the IDF if our country and Israel go at it. I digress, but I think the question as they word it is ambiguous enough to be misleading.

Anyway...39% and 44% of Europeans surveyed apparently believe that "Jews have too much power in the business world" and "Jews have too much power in international financial markets", respectively. Ugg!

Two Down, Six to Go

2007-05-16T07:48:00.000+02:00

Because I'll be handing over all of my keys before I leave for Germany, the weight of my keychain seems to be a good barometer for how close I am to leaving. Today, I exchanged two car keys for a large bag of cash, I'll turn in two work keys in a little over a week, I need to return two other keys, and hand in my two house keys the day I head to Sacramento. I guess it feels pretty significant that I'll be entirely key-less in about two weeks. I'll ultimately be leaving Seattle pretty much the same way I arrived: with my belongings stuffed into two duffel bags and only a vague notion of what is around the corner. Hopefully I can avoid getting the two duffel bags stolen this time.

Baby, you can have my car...

2007-05-14T05:28:00.000+02:00

Dear Future Self -

I HATE cars. I hate driving them, paying for them, insuring them, fueling them, parking them, and I particularly hate selling them. I hate small scratches on the bumper and spilled cups of tea on the backseat. I hate tight parking lots. Don't even get me started on the mountain of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, PBDEs, and metals contained in or released from my car. I hate when cars make odd noises, and distinctly hate when tires explode on the highway (though this may be partially my fault for inflating them to the point where they no longer 'looked flat' but never bothering to check the tire pressure). Who knew tires could explode? I'm also not a big fan of car maintenance, especially oil changes (again, this may be due in part to me checking the oil by inserting the dipstick directly into the engine, deducing the car was low on oil, and filling the oil to the brim. After a friend calmly described the impeding fiery engine explosion, I high tailed it to the nearest Jiffy Lube).

Yup. Best to avoid cars in the future if at all possible.

Sincerely,
Current Self
(note to Janet/Alex: Yes, I'm aware that hate is a strong word - I still feel this way).

Three Weeks and Two days

2007-05-12T04:35:00.000+02:00

Someone pointed out recently that our house is a bit like a bad sitcom: breakups, relationship changes, moving in with boyfriends, finding reasonably priced housing (ha!), moving out, selling cars (ugg!). Its all pretty good fodder for emotional delirium and head explosions.

Mostly, I kept wishing I could stick a valve into my side to let the pressure out. Luckily, I had today and yesterday off and made most excellent progress packing and have a deposit on my car (pending the car's trip to the mechanic on Monday). The progress did slow dramatically, though, when I came across a cache of body glitter and nail polish. The bottom line is that packing is much more fun with red jazz hands and glimmery cheeks.

I think it started with driving...

2007-04-30T08:53:00.000+02:00

I'll have been in Seattle almost exactly 8 years when I leave for Germany at the end of May.

Big changes like this force you to reflect on how seemingly small decisions made years ago effectively lay down the path that you walk days and years later. I ended up in Seattle more or less on a lark and am feeling pretty sentimental about leaving, particulary when driving through the city at night.

I was lucky enough to thoroughly enjoy my college experience in a small Midwestern town. So much that I stayed the summer after my senior year to work for a professor. When the summer was over, I packed up my much beloved gold Volvo 240 DL (aka Norman) to the brim and headed home to my mother's house to spend a week before leaving for Seattle. As I was leaving town, I stopped on the corner of the town square and got out of my car and stood for what must have been a good 30 minutes. Its rare, I think when you can literally stand on a corner, before stepping off the edge to what is an entirely new page in your life (yes, I'm totally mixing metaphors here). I'm doing this soon, and I keep wondering where the corner is going to be.

To do list. . . .

2007-03-28T06:08:00.000+02:00

I've been working on a little list of things I'd like to do before I leave. Not surprisingly, all of the items on this list involve stuffing my face. . .

ID Tea Place
Nishino
O'Hana
Hana
Monsoon
Old Country Bakery
Huong Binh

Mystery Solved!

2007-03-27T06:33:00.000+02:00

The first mystery, in what I'm sure will be a long series of rather serious brain twisters, has been solved....Bonn is located in western Germany. Particularly exciting is the close proximity of cool countries - Belgium and the Netherlands.