American Wolpertinger in Bayern

I'm back!

2010-08-19T22:41:00.000+02:00

Yup - I'm married, so I am back to my American Wolpertinger blogging life - as a Mrs!

I have lots to write about, and I am so excited to have room in my life now to focus on other aspects than weddings - although I really enjoyed it while it lasted. By the way, the wedding was GREAT. Now here's a little photo from the day, and I will be back soon with Munich Expat adventures and other tales of a patchwork existence - now a wedded one!

Switching over...

2009-11-20T09:18:00.000+01:00

Just a quick reminder to my readers that I haven't stopped blogging, I've just temporarily moved locations (and changed subjects, a bit): head on over to my Bavarian Bride wedding planning website here!!

http://weddingdiplomat.blogspot.com/

I'm ENGAGED!

2009-08-05T09:35:00.003+02:00

Guess what .... I'm engaged! Which is why i'm starting a new blog for the time being, to chronicle my intercultural wedding planning adventures (that sounds pretty wolpertingery to me!!)

Check it out! http://weddingdiplomat.blogspot.com/

oh my oh my

2009-07-09T15:32:00.001+02:00

Just wanted to excuse my absence... my Masters Program combined with vacation in the US and a full time job just isn't leaving me any blogging moments. I promise to be back online soon!! (After all the final papers are written)

finally, I can show my true self

2009-05-11T21:12:00.002+02:00

'nuff said (thanks to bizarro blog)

what to read on the train?!

2009-04-17T10:22:00.001+02:00

I really like to read "Tina, die Frau von Heute". It's one of those cheap-o German women's magazines with the tissue thin newsprint and the articles that repeat every month. I find, however, that I can't put it down. And I learn lots of German words, ones that aren't found in the SZ or bild: Hausfrau words. Mostly, I read the recipes.

I am actually currently following the "5 day US Miracle Diat" from a similar publication, "Bild der Frau". which is a strange collections of recipes including "Egg Burger" and Herring in Jelly Salad". Not really US American, but interesting nonetheless. I really just needed a break after the Easter gorge fest at Artur's family's house, and I am now on day 4 of 5. I've already lost some weight and I'm feeling better. And, I am taking a liking to vegetable juice with rolled oats. Every morning, I start the day with a spoonful of olive oil mixed with lemon juice. It's supposed to "encourage my de-poisoning". That's a euphemism if I've ever heard one… At any rate, I've almost survived (and I've learned some new recipes to boot) and I hope that at least my stomach has shrunk so that I'm not hungry all the time.

I highly recommend cheap cheesy women's magazines to all of you Expats who would like to deepen your knowledge of cooking, cleaning and ironing vocabulary as well as read some tear jerking sappy stories of life changing experiences…

Guilt Trip

2009-04-17T10:09:00.001+02:00

You know that saying "when you fall off the horse, get right back on it?" yeah. I missed that one.

Sorry that I haven't written ANYTHING in a few weeks. I was in Vienna visiting my dad (he was there for business) and then.. I dunno… the spring weather just snuck up on me like crazy. I was outside the last few weeks, soaking up the sun, enjoying the biergärten, entertaining visitors.

Is it just the cold gloomy weather that makes me want to blog about life instead of getting out to live it?

I'd like to take a look at what Amiexpat's offering for the Real German Cuisine Challenge this week.. maybe I can get off my butt and onto the blog horse!

Until then, ta ta!
PS: I just saw that the next challenge with be a Spargel dish, one of my FAVORITE veggies (and times of year in Germany, Hooray for Spargelzeit!) but not until next week. Maybe that will give me time to do all the 100,000 other things I have to do…

Pharisäer Coffee Cocktail- Real German Cuisine Challenge

2009-03-30T23:04:00.004+02:00

So, back on the horse. After skipping out on last week's challenge, I managed to raff my self together this week to conjure up the delicious north German coffee-cream-rum treat.

The story of this drink(recipe here) is cute, legend being that the North Sea Germans, fond of coffee but especially fond of rum, thought to mix the two and used whipped cream to hide the sin from the town priest. I, myself, think that whipped cream is sin enough, but apparently it pacified the preacher until he discovered what was hiding underneath all that froth. The townspeople were then denounced as debaucherers with the exclamation "you Pharisees". This is actually a very interesting if not a bitsy bit un-pc remark. See wiki's article: here

My drink was a non political version, and it was easy enough, except that whipping cream is quite a feat for me without a mixer. I managed to splatter it everywhere although I like to think that I burned off at least some of the calories.

I brewed up some delicious espresso in my lovely Italian Caffeteria bought from the market in Padova during my study abroad time there, mixed it up with sugar and then topped it with my hard earned whipped cream.

As an added beautifier, I used a small sieve to dust cocoa over the top. Deeeeelliiiccious. Artur thought so too!!

Kung fu fighting the Märzwinter

2009-03-26T10:45:00.003+01:00

I recently read the following advertisement for the "Ninja Umbrella" (pictured below)

Everybody Was Kung Fu Lightning
NINJA UMBRELLA

Rain: Ninja. You are but a mere mortal and no match for my powerful torrent. Do you surrender?

Ninja: Ah, Rain. You are a most worthy opponent and teacher. But I will never surrender.

This is what I need for Munich's March weather. There is apparently a weather phenomenon called Märzwinter bringing the ridiculously cold temperatures and miserable cloudy melty slushy snow blizzardness that has been the last two weeks.

We are currently suffering under the reign of the low pressure system named "Herbert". That's right, they name them here. Maybe it's just Germany's way of dealing with the bad weather. At any rate, it turns out that they've been naming their high and low pressure systems since 1954. At first, all the high pressure systems got male names and the low pressure systems got female names. But then the feminist groups got (rightly) riled up because the bad weather systems were all female, and now the naming procedure alternates yearly.

Also, you can adopt weather systems for your special someone here complete with name and information packet. Too bad valentines day is over.

At any rate, bad weather like this is an excuse for EVERYTHING. Especially not blogging. Or tweeting. Or not making Sauerbraten (guilt!!). I will, however, be venturing to Südbad today to try our their aquafitness course. I have developed a liking for water aerobics.. I'll let you know if that amps up my life motivation, but until then, I will still grumble about the weather.

The B-word

2009-03-19T10:28:00.000+01:00

There's been so much going on lately in German current events that I've been sticking with my cooking activities and shying away from any real commentary. But perhaps It's time to delve in a bit.

The most shocking of all the events lately was, of course, the school shooting at Winnendon. As an American living in Germany, this kind of horrible occurrence brings to mind the analysis (and Michael Moore films) that followed the Columbine disaster, all of which seemed to believe that such an event was a purely American creation, coming not only from such relaxed gun control laws but also from some kind of intrinsic cultural violence. Since then, this has been proven wrong and the western world has had its share of similar sad and horrifying incidents. Of course it's only natural to ask such questions as "why us" or "why here" and then "how can we prevent this" and "who is to blame". This discussion has been circulating in Germany for the week or so since the shootings and there is, of course, discussion of stronger gun laws or punishing the father for not locking up his gun. I, too, found myself blaming and questioning, wondering how this could happen in a place like Germany, where I often consider myself to be so insulated from the "dangers" of the outside world.

I also wonder, as an American, if these events aren't probably instigated by globalized media and violence, by a certain illusion of a community and a retreat into a virtual, far away world where such actions seem accepted. The concept of alienation from one's own culture due to rapid changes in that culture, anomia, is a term used in the study of socio-ethnic conflicts. In such a globalized, interconnected world, this phenomena is becoming ever more wide spread. Rapid societal changes instigates instability and insecurity and the ever changing world around causes a sense of isolation from one's surroundings. This term may not be directly applicable to the various psychological analyses of the shooter, but I think it describes the state of many societies right now. Those who are estranged by their rapidly individualistic and quickly changing culture do have an outlet, the internet, where they can try to find acceptance and a group which understands them. But what happens when that very group is one that encourages such acts, and takes participants further away from any sort of value sets or societal moral standards?

Another recent bit of news is that German youths are more right-leaning than ever, and are showing especially pronounced rates of xenophobia and hostility towards foreigners. It's no wonder, in tough economic times, in times where societal problems are nearly always blamed on the "others".

Blame. Finding someone to Blame. The Bush years were about Blame. Blaming the terrorists, the Muslims, the axis of evil. For the shootings, we blame the school, the parents, the gun laws. In this economy, some people blame foreigners for taking their jobs away, for working for lower pay, for ruining the economy. I'm starting to think that, in hard times, the best thing to do is to stay away from the B-word, and think about our own contribution to the solution.

In one of my classes, we are learning about the ZOP method of project planning (Zielorientierte Projektplanung), where, in order to solve a problem, a list of smaller problems that make up the bigger problem is made and put into a "cause-effect" tree. Then, the biggest "original problem" is chosen, the one that is the cause of most of the other problems. And here comes the important step: you turn the problem around into a formulation of what the situation will look like when the problem is solved. This is your goal. Example problem: the education system in Germany divides up the "classes" too early. Example goal situation: a flexible system where students are fostered in their strengths and helped with their weaknesses without a distinct "separation" at any point.

I think this method is a very good way to turn around blame and take real action. Find the root of the problem, and make it into a goal. Then, strive towards that goal.

If anything, I am hopeful for the triumph my American optimism…

Root Soup - Wurzelsuppe - Real German Cuisine Challenge

2009-03-16T21:12:00.006+01:00

Welcome to the fifth week of the Real German Cuisine Challenge! After Semmelknödel mit Pilzen, Rahmgulasch, Käsespätzle and Apfelstrudel, his week was an easy, straighforward (and nutritious!) soup from the Schleswig-Holstein region (far faaarrr north). Get the recipe here

The whole thing began by measuring out the ingredients. Thank goodness for my scale (and here's a glimpse of the ugly but taste German "Celery" which is actually celery root.

And everything sliced
This is me. With my leek. My big giant leek. That inspired me to play baseball. Maybe I'm homesick... but in the end, i'm a pittsburgh gal... we're steelers fans, after all.
Everything got tossed into the pot, and cuddled up with some sizzling butter for five minutes or so. Then in with the stock, on with the top, and I let it simmer away! I used those cubes of veggie broth... (gasp!) because I just don't have homemade stock. Does anyone have a good easy recipe that I can freeze?
Then the whole thing went into my beautiful Philips blender (a birthday present from Artur). The thing doesn't shoot the blending stuff into the air like most, instead it makes a lovely blending tornado. Look! And it has lovely blue lights, kind of like the blender version of a VW Golf.
The a nice glob of Cremè Freiche and some dill and... TADA! Easy monday dinner. I used frozen dill from the grocery store to garnish... a great alternative to always buying (or raising) your own!

BTW, I met Christina from Amiexpat and her lovely husband and adorable son last thursday (on her birthday, what an honor!) and it was lots of fun to chat with a fellow blogger! We talked about German TV and the school system...two favorite gripe topics of mine. Perhaps a future blog post in the making...

Next, I'll be telling you about my spring project for the apartment: a balcony veggie garden! (perhaps some fresh dill is in sights..)

Weird quirks that I have developed while living in Germany:

2009-03-10T16:59:00.003+01:00

Irrepressible need to take off my shoes and change into house shoes when entering my or someone else's home
Penchant for cold cuts for breakfast
Need to frequently "air out" a room
Frustration at trains and subways that are more than 2 minutes late
Answering the telephone simply with "Flechtner" instead of "hello"
Constantly carrying cloth shopping bags with me
Giving exact change when paying for anything
Buying overpriced Sunday night wine at the gas station
Checking grocery stores and discounters for their weekly specials and, when I find something I like, buying it all right away. After all, they won't have it anymore in 24 hours.
Buying every piece of outdoor wear possible. Yes, I have a rain suit.
Using the German keyboard and getting frustrated when I'm at home any I keep typing Emilz and crayz!
Getting a headache when the alpine wind "Föhn" is blowing

I'm sure there are many more. What are your "weird Germany quirks"?

Apple Strudel - Real German Cuisine Challenge -

2009-03-09T17:11:00.003+01:00

Another entry in the Real German Cuisine Challenge being run by Christina from Amiexpat!

I was really scared of this one. Dough. Filling. Baking. Ayayay!

Get the recipe here: Apfelstrudel

But, it was alright. Messy, but not as messy as Käsespätzle.

I started by making the dough, which consisted of piling 250 grams of flour on a board, putting a cracked egg and some oil into the middle, and kneading. And kneading. Well, what I got was sticky hands and very crumbly dough. I'm starting to believe that this cookbook is from a time where chickens laid much larger eggs. Or 250 grams weighed less. Or gravity was different. Anyways, I had to add water to even make it "smooth" like it was supposed to be before adding the water, but after that addition it seemed to be a fairly happy dough.

are those wavy lines?

I painted it with olive oil (I didn't have any vegetable oil) and put it to "rise" under a "warmed" bowl (my warmed bowl was plastic run under hot water… and I am wondering how it was supposed to rise without any yeast. Maybe it was just supposed to rest..)

Then, the apple marathon began. 1.5 kilos of apples. That's 3.3 pounds of apples. That's a lot of peeling. A lot of coring. A lot of chopping. But I have to say, I am so very proud of my very best European kitchen skill: the ability to peel fruits and vegetables in my hand with a paring knife in one long glorious spiral of skin.

This pride and glory got me through the first kilo or so. Afterwards, it was pretty boring. But I made it. The apples got mixed with the spices and then lemon rind and juice, and then came the fun part… rolling out my "risen" (or rather just well rested) dough.

Without a rolling pin. I just don't have one. But my 1 liter thermos which I use regularly for my homemade teas worked just fine. I spread the dough with sour cream and heaped the apple mixture and the plumped raisins on top of it. Oh so many apples and raisins. Then I brought the edges together (a bit of water helped them stick) and, as the directions indicated, "BOLDLY" flipped my strudel.

Then I read the next step "place in a U form into the pan). Hmmmmm. I think my kitchen counters would have to be longer to make a strudel that would by able to form a U. Mine was more like a… like an I! Or a #1! (or an elongated blob...)

Anyways, after brushing it with butter and pouring milk overtop, into the over it went. For an hour. Getting a quick breather with periodic bastings. I also made the Vanilla sauce. But I skipped the beaten egg white step. No mixer, no egg whites (too much work for me…). The sauce tasted delicious but was very liquidy.

All in all a HUGE success. I brought what Artur and I didn't eat for dinner (that's right, apflestrudel for dinner)… to work, where it was promptly gobbled up and I was serenaded with stories of various regional versions of apple strudel from my German colleagues.

All I have left to say is "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…"

Real German Cuisine Challenge—Käsespätzle (or: the attack of the killer slugs)

2009-03-02T13:23:00.004+01:00

I want to say right off the bat: this recipe was really funny. Hilarious. And it made a giant mess. Get this hilarious messy recipe made as part of the Real German Cuisine Challenge here .

I didn't have a spätzle press, so after mixing up the dough, browning the onions and boiling the water, I had quite a time of "spätzlehobeln" as I clumsily tried to use my knife to scrape delicate portions of the dough into the water.

What I got, instead, were giant spätzle blobs. They kind of looked like big slugs. Not very appetizing. I thought it was rather hilarious, though.

I also had problems with the dough. The amount of water called for didn't even absorb the flour, so I had to keep adding until it had any reasonable consistency. Then, it was very sticky. I basically developed the technique of running my knife under water after every third spätzle to keep them from sticking.

I got better though, and as the layers formed in the pan, they started looking more and more like the spätzle I know. Last but not least I topped everything with the onions and extra cheese, and the final creation was yummy. But the smaller noodles were definitely better.

Lessons learned:
GET A SPÄTZLE PRESS!
Onions browned in butter taste DELICIOUS and i'm sure they would spruce up any dish
Giant Spätzle slugs are also yummy... a bit tough, with a "robust" quality
This dish can be reheated. Reheated. And reheated. And gets better every time.
German food is hard. Schwabian women are amazing.

I'm kind of scared for Apfel Strudel. But a wise woman once sang: cream colored posies and crisp apple strudel...when the dog bites, when the bee stings... i simply remember my favorite things. And then I don't feel soooooo baaaaaaaaaaaddddddddd! (sorry. gotta love sound of music. why else do you think i moved here? found out too late that it's austria...)

PS: I really enjoyed reading my fellow challenger's recipes! Thanks especially to Christine and Yelli!

HOW-TO: Homemade Tea Bunches!

2009-02-27T21:35:00.003+01:00

As these last days of winter trickle away (at least we're hoping these are the last days) I have been looking for new things to sip and warm me up. The Glühwein season is over, and coffee just isn't doing it for me. I have a big selection of packaged teas, but they're boring me. So I started to make my own.

I used some great recipes found in a German Women's magazine, all of which use a combination of whole spices, root plants like ginger and other interesting ingredients like lemon grass and various herbs, many of which I had hanging around in my spice cabinet anyways! This has been lots of fun and the possibilities are endless.

Ginger Infusion

I can also imagine that these could make great gifts, with the ingredients either packed up in teabags or wrapped in cloth ready for preparation (see photo above!). Here are some delicious recipes:

TIPS:
A normal kitchen sieve works great.
If you have a thermos, use it! Just drain your tea right into the thermos. It will stay warm all day and you won't be able to get enough of it!

Ingwerguss – Ginger Infusion (citrusy and zesty)

1 small piece of ginger root (about 1.5 inches)
1 organic orange (or a regular one, well scrubbed)
Honey

Grate ginger into a glass carafe, or wherever you will be brewing your tea. Immediately add two tablespoons of honey or agave nectar and stir. Peel the orange into a spiral (or just make pieces, but make sure to take only the orange part, and leave the white). Add 1 liter (about 1 quart) of water, let steep for five minutes. Remove orange peel and enjoy!

Heiße Tasse – Hot Cup (spicy and refreshing)

2 tablespoons dried peppermint leaves (or a handful of fresh ones)
A pinch of chili powder (or ½ of a small dried chili)
Two cinnamon sticks
A dash of nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)
4 whole cloves

Break the cinnamon sticks in half, add the spices and chili power and peppermint leaves, and pour a quart of boiling water over the spices. Let seep for 5-8 minutes and the drain off the spices and serve. Sweeten with honey, if desired.

K and K Drink (Kardamom und Koriander)

4 cardamom capsules
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 piece lemon grass

Crush the cardamom and the coriander in a mortar and pestle. Cut the lemon grass into medium sized pieces and crush them with a rolling pin. Put everything into your carafe and add 1 quart of boiling water. Let seep for 10 minutes and sweeten with honey, if desired.

Pikant-Tee (Lightly Piquant)

3 tablespoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon dried green peppercorns (found in spice aisle)
2 tablespoons dried peppermint (or a handful fresh)
3 pieces Star Anise
1 quart water

Crush the fennel seeds and the green peppercorns in a mortar and pestle. Put the crushed spices in a carafe with the star anise and the peppermint leaves. Let seep for ten minutes, drain off the spices.

Citrus Drink with Bay Leaf

1 organic orange (or regular one, well washed)
3 bay leaves
a dash of cinnamon
¼ cup orange juice
3 tablespoons milk

Peel the orange in a spiral and place peel in carafe along with the bay leaves and cinnamon. Brew with 1 quart water for 10 minutes and then drain off the bay leaves. Serve with a splash of orange juice and milk.

Enjoy the warm and cozy refreshments!

YES YUNS DID IT (transl: yes we did! in pittsburghese)

2009-02-27T20:41:00.000+01:00

And a MUCH MUCH overdue tribute to my beloved Steelers and their Superbowl Victory #6
Our handmade Terrible Towels, English and Polish versions.

Real German Cuisine Challenge: Kalbsrahmgulasch

2009-02-23T21:35:00.004+01:00

Ingredients (read about ziplocked cream further on..)

This is my second cooking session as a participant in Amiexpat's Real Germany Cuisine Challenge

This week, we made "Kalbsrahmgulasch" or Creamy Veal Gulasch. Mmmmm. The recipe can be found HERE

I started out by chopping everything and clariying the butter (heating it and skimming off the "white stuff". I used a handy trick I read somewhere on the internet and used kitchen scissors to chop my tomatoes. Then, I used the scissors to cut up my veal.

chopped onions and tomatoes

I browned the veal in the clarified butter, added the chopped onions and sprinkled with paprika, and then, finally, topped everything with chicken broth. I used chicken broth instead of the recommended beef broth because a) i am not one of those people who makes their own broth so b) the only one without MSG at the store was the organic instant chicken broth.

Then, everything got to hang out and simmer for a while. When I say a while, i mean an ETERNITY!! Ok, so i am not one of those people who is very patient. I like food that involves a lot of activity and not a lot of waiting. And I didn't start cooking until 8pm. So... instead of letting it all simmer happily for the recommended 45 minutes, i only waited 30...

sizzle sizzle

And then added the cream, salt and pepper. Now I had a little adventure with my cream on the way home when it burst in my shopping bag (which i noticed as I was waiting for the ubahn as a white puddle started to form..) but i managed to rescue the dinky german plastic container with a foil lid by slipping into one of my newly purchased ziplops. That's right, call me Ms. Resourceful.

Anyways, I had just enough cream left and, to me, the whole thing looked a little TOO creamy. So I added some tomato paste and some Sriracha sauce. Then I let it cook away, finishing it off with some Crème fraîche (which, indeed, is very cheap in Germany) and lemon zest (i couldn't resist licking the Crème fraîche spoon..yum yum).

In the meantime, I made rice in my rice cooker (basmati, cause that's what i had..) and heated up yesterday's baguette in the toaster oven. Here's the finished product.

DELICIOUS! The only thing I would change would be...my patience. I think the meat really could have used those extra 15 minutes. Next time...

It DID taste like an Indian dish! But in a really cool fusion German way. Yummy yummy.

the final product

By the way, Christina, thanks so much for starting that. I am having SO much fun(and my boyfriend is too!!!) ! I look forward to every week and can't wait for Kässpatzen!!

After a while, I'll have Artur do a guest blog post and rate my German cooking skills :)

up up and away!

Germany vs. USA: the culture clash

2009-02-23T16:52:00.007+01:00

Ok, let's play a game.

Everybody list their favorite thing about living in Germany (either in this forum or on their blog... i'll link you here), and their LEAST favorite thing. It can be anything. We're going for the two extremes here. Don't worry about stereotyping or generalizing or whatever. Just vent (or rave!) Here are mine:

MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT LIVING IN GERMANY IS:

Man: "the biggest idiots always have the most beautiful wives"
Woman: "oh, you flatterer, you"

Lots and lots of vacation. Unlimited sick days. Only working 252 days a year (that's 70%! a total of 104 days not working)

MY LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT LIVING IN GERMANY IS:

The lack of silliness in everyday life. I totally can't joke with the cashier or the waiter. Not really, anyways. And my girlfriends just don't have a sin for the absurd. Or for self deprication. Or for making a fool out of themselves. Which is why they need Fasching. A designated day to make a fool out of yourself.

Ok! Your turn! what do you think?

Bremen—the traveling musicians and other tales from the North

2009-02-22T23:48:00.000+01:00

Bremen at night

My Valentine's day present came early this year. At 3am. When I asked Artur, in the midst of our party on friday evening, how long I could sleep in. He answered:

"mmm..hmmm… it would be better not to sleep at all"

we packed, cleaned up the remnants of our party, threw out our guests and headed for the train station to hop an ICE at 6:50 am. Destination: Bremen.

The Hansastadt, the home of the traveling musicians, and almost on the North sea! I was thrilled as I drifted off to the gentle 220kph swaying of the ICE. When I awoke what seemed like hours later, I was awed by the scenery outside my window.

WOW! The north looks so different! The houses are different, the trees are different.. it's like being in a different country!

And then, the train announcer: In a few minutes, we will be reaching Würzburg.."

Oh, MAN! Still in Bavaria. Maybe I need to get out of Munich more often if Northern Bavaria already seems so different to me.

our spacy elevator

We dozed the rest of the way and checked into our space themed hotel after many mishaps with the Bremen tram system and fighting our way through the screaming chanting Werner Bremen fans. And when I say space themed, I MEAN space themed. There was a Saturn painted behind the reception, our room was curiously outfitted with early 90 style slanty metal, blue and yellow furniture. Even the elevator was lit with blacklights which illuminated a Disney world style planet and star mural on the shaft walls. Freaky. But despite the theme, it was a rather sterile business hotel, very nice, with the best feature being: the FREE minibar. That's right. Of course, there were only two beers, a coke, a water and an orange juice. But you better bet we took everything with us when we left. Along with the shampoo, soap and shower caps. I considered taking the slanted chair…

this sign says "weapons and dangerous objections forbidden between the hours of 8pm-8am

Bremen itself was charming. The Rathhaus and the Dom were the most beautiful buildings, and I fell in love with the surrogate city symbol, the Bremner Musikannten.

me in front of the "Bremerstadtmusikanten"

We spent Valentine's evening in a cute little corridor of clubs and restaurants where we drank two amazingly giant 4 euro cocktails and ate Mexican food, which for German standards was pretty good. I actually was hoping for fish, since we were so close to the north sea, but by the time evening rolled around we were so beat that we didn't have the energy to walk too long to find a place. The down blankets in the hotel were the best part of the day.

a giant tribal mask

In the morning we ate breakfast and braved the snowy gray weather into the city towards the giant and fascinating "Übersee" museum. You know how some museums manage, with a little effort, to make the most benign displays fascinating? This was one. We actually spent hours reading the descriptions of various plants, animals and customs from all over the world and examining the collections brough back from the first German colonists. Did you know that residents of many tropical countries weave themselves "sleeping bags" out of straw to keep out the mosquitos. Great idea!

Afterwards, we had time for our last two missions: take a picture in front of the Bremner Musikanten sculpture, and eat Pommdöner. The first was accomplished in a flash, the second was a bit harder. We had seen a sign for this wonderful Döner creation on saturday, and were now determined to feast on it for dinner. A cone of french-fries topped with pieces of döner. Could it get any better? This had to be a Bremen specialty, as we have never seen this in munich. After three tries, we hit the jackpot.

All in all a wonderful romantic surprise and a fun Ausflug. We would do it again anytime and take this moment to remind all those other Expats out there to get out and explore Germany!

Alka Seltzer Vitamins

2009-02-20T11:10:00.003+01:00

That's right. Vitamins in Germany don't come in pill form. They come in fizzy tablet form. In a fancy tube. I really like them, although the first time I purchased them I didn't realize that they were fizzy dissolving pills, and stuck one in my mouth to chew up on the commuter train. Big mistake. I had pink strawberry flavored foam coming out of my mouth and nowhere to go. Oh dear.
Now I drink my daily multivitamin. It probably doesn't really help, but it sure tastes good (a LOT better than alkaseltzer) and I think the packaging is a pretty cool idea.

I wonder if they would be a hit in the US? I wish they would just make Crystal Light or other drink mixes in this fancy fizzing dissolving form, and not in that clumpy one. It would be a great marketing ploy "fit and fizzy"....

It's COLD outside! Don't open the window!!!!

2009-02-19T13:29:00.001+01:00

I am having a cultural war at work. A war of windows. A war of fresh air. I war of warmth.

Ok, so here's the thing. I like "fresh air" like any other. But I have to say, I much prefer warmth. I admit it. I prefer stale warm stuffy air to fresh clear ICE COLD winter air. I don't like to shiver at work. I don't like to feel like I have to wear a sweater. I do not feel like imitating camping when I go to the toilet. I HATE FRESH AIR!!

I know that this is a very German obsession. It's driving me insane. Does anyone else have this cultural clash? There's a great article about the German fear of the "Zugluft" here, which seems to be in complete contrast to the "fresh air" obsession. In the summer, opening the windows is taboo, because of the "evil breeze". In the winter, opening the windows is a necessity because of the "stuffy air". Are they just on a mission to scare us expats away? What's the deal with the hypocrisy?!?! Somebody help me!!!!!!!

Real German Cuisine Challenge: Semmelknödel mit Pilzen

2009-02-16T17:32:00.004+01:00

Me and my first Knödel

I am tagging along with American Expat and other expat Germany bloggers in working our way through the cookbook "Die Echte Deutsche Küche" for the Real German Cuisi ne Challenge.

Our first week's attempt is Semmelknödel mit Pilzen (link to recipe here), which is known, in Bayern, as Rahmschwammerl. Delicious, plus, I had never made my own Knödel before, and if my destiny is anywhere near becoming a German Housewife (he he) then I'd better master this one.

The ingredients

I started by cutting everything: chopping mushrooms, whizzing onions and parsely through the food processor, then soaked the bread in the warm milk.

Then, I cooked everything for the dumplings and had a blast forming them into lovely bready spheres (kind of like making a snowball. I had to fight an urge or two to throw one across the room) and plopped them into the boiling salt water (but not before making a cute little "test dumpling" to make sure they didn't fall apart).
The sauce cooked up quite nicely and I (unlike Amiexpat) did use Shitake Mushrooms, along with Austerpilzen and rehydrated dried mushrooms Artur and I got as a gift from his relatives in Poland (hand gathered, of course). It cooked up nicely and had lots of flavour, and the lemon juice was a lovely touch. I didn't need anything to thicken it—I just let it cook off for a while.

Overall rating: delicious, fairly easy, and very authentic. This will go on my list of German meals to make for my family when I go home. I can't wait for next week's Rahmgulasch (Creamy veal goulash).

"Bush is dead"?! and other problems of the press

2009-02-11T16:23:00.004+01:00

According to BBC Ex president George Bush is dead. He's not, of course, but apparently one of the technicians for a South African TV station wishes he were: the technician was "testing" the rolling headline system and "accidentally" pushed them button to go online, upon which the headline was on air for about three seconds. He meant to use it as a test phrase. Makes me wonder how often those little headlines running along the bottom of the page are just tech guys fooling around…

Apparently, the new policy is to now test all headlines is "gobbledygook" language so that the same error doesn't happen. I'll be on the lookout for the next "dsfkljsdkiuwsxcnx,yqweesa asdjsdf" headline post when I'm in South Africa.

This makes me think a lot about newspapers, and the press, and free speech, and bias in news coverage. I find German TV news to be wonderful and German newspapers (with the exception of a few) to be horrendous. Kind of the reverse of the US. I am especially disturbed by the frequent (daily, rather) photos of naked women. What's the deal with that? In my opinion, Bild and the like make our McPaper (USA Today) look like top journalism. As Artur pointed out, one of Bild's favorite tricks is to turn an unsubstantiated fact into a headline by adding a question at the end. Like: "Popcorn Causes Cancer! (is this true? Find out on page 11). I am also quite disturbed by the fact that all three "McPapers" in Germany usually have some form of the same headline. And when all else fails and there isn't any gruesome or scandalous news, there's always the favorite three topics: sex, the weather, and the price of beer.

Copy of the "Bildzeitung" claims "My dog ruined my marriage"

What do you think about German news media?

Oktoberfest 2009: the logo meets...Vegas?

2009-02-11T14:16:00.009+01:00

Those Münchner love their Wies'n (the Munich resident's term for Oktoberfest, because it takes place on "Theresienwiese" or "Theresa's Meadow") There's no sadder moment for many than the second weekend in October, when it's all over. Now here we are, in the middle of Fasching, only four months after the Dirndl and Lederhosen Hochburg is over and the city is talking about it again. Because, the new logo was announced, unveiled on February 5th at the Stadtmuseum. And it's a giant pretzel. But not just any giant pretzel: it is completely devoid of salt or that lovely golden pretzel color, and there are no dancing Dirndlmädels or Stout Burschen in sight. It's a modern word pretzel. A feat of bakery, a neon parade of words twisted into that oh so famous shape. Oktoberfest 2009 meet Las Vegas.

courtesy of Muenchen.de

I, personally, am not a fan. Oktoberfest isn't something modern! It isn't "hip" or "innovative" or "sleek". It's old and dusty and traditional, boisterous and loud and heavy with customs and family heirs. It's a wonderful stereotyped thing that should continue to embrace its own kitschy yet authentic heritage. I liked, for example, the slightly modern take on the traditional in 2006:

And, can someone tell me what the deal is with the early 90s color scheme? Who decided that jaggedy neon letters and graffiti like motifs were cool again?! Were they ever? Apparently the 2012 Olympic committee thinks they are…

Bring on the Bretzen, but the baked kind, please!! Anyways, this logo will find a place with all the other Minikrugs to expand my memory collection. Maybe the nostalgia will grow on me…

Stripes on the Run (Zebras escape from Augsburg Circus)

2009-02-10T16:50:00.006+01:00

Escaped Zebras! In Augsburg! Today, four Zebras escaped from a circus. From a circus! Pedestrians cornered one, but the police chased the other three through Augsburg (65 Kilometers from Munich) until they finally caught them. But then, one escaped again, and they needed two hours to corral him.

I can't help but make allusions to an old fashioned police chase and escaped prisoners...

Clothespins and Wild Pig Gulasch or: my adventure in cross country skiing in the alps (spitzingsee)

2009-02-08T21:19:00.013+01:00

After a long month of studying for finals, it was time for some Erholung in the Alps. I signed up for a cross country skiing course with the Deutsche Alpen Verein and headed off Saturday morning to catch the train with my group. As if to further attest to my American chaotic nature, I managed to miscalculate my ubahn ride and nearly miss the train. Due to my lateness, I couldn't find the group I was supposed to share a ticket with, so I just hopped onto the train and hoped for the best, realizing very quickly that I was in the wrong section and that, since the train splits into three pieces after a short ride, I would have to hope over two sections before that happened if I wanted to get to my destination. I ran like a madwoman to the next section and the first stop, nearly losing my sleeping bag from my hiking pack in the process, praying that the doors wouldn't shut and the train wouldn't drive away before I reached the entrance. After repeating my mad dash at the next stop, I made it into the correct train car – which was oh so apparent due to the many hundreds of skis and snowboards packing the aisles. To make a long story short, I did locate my group (the only ones with the very long cross country skis) and managed to repress my flusteredness all the way to Fischhaus-Neuhasen.

There, we boarded a bus and rode up and up into the mountains until we reached the tiny town of Spitzingkirche. There, I rented my equipment (I was apparently the only non professional who didn't already have grade A equipment with me—something oh-so German) and trekked with the rest of the group 15 minutes down icy roads to the Albert-Link-Hütte, our base for the weekend. What a view.Upon arrival, we changed clothes and met our course leader outside—it was a bit chaotic, given that two other Cross Country Skiing courses, a ski tour course and an Avalanche Survival course were also staying there and getting ready to head out into the snow. Nonetheless, we managed to march down to the practice course together and spent the morning practicing everything from balancing on our skis to correctly shifting our weight. We even played a game where we had to try to pin clothespins on the other members of our group while wearing our skis and tripping over each other and the know.

By lunch, we had all the steps together, and we were finally allowed to try the full thing, and before we knew it we were (inching) down the practice track like (non) professionals. But it sure was fun, and the Alpine scenery was spectacular. Lunch never tasted better, especially because the menu at the Gasthaus is quite extensive and oh-so-delicious. I ate a gigantic baked potato with Kraüterquark and shared a Kaiserschmarrn for desert. Mmmmmmmmmm.The "weather station" at the hut. And carved wooden faces.

We spent the afternoon working on going downhill and stopping, and when the sun started to set we headed into the Hütte for an evening shower and a delicious meal in the Gaststübe of Wild Pig Gulasch and beer. And nothing tastes better than a beer in a warm cozy room after a day in the winter air. Mmmm. The Wild Pig, it turns out, had been shot by the owner's husband—he wanted to take a weekend to go hunting with his pals, and his wife told him "alright, but only if you bring back something that we can use". It turns out he did, two big bristly somethings, which we devoured in delicious gulasch form with Butterspätzle and Blaukraut. shoe dryer in the hut

After a night of intermittent sleep—I kept waking up dangerously close to the edge of my very high up bunk bed—one look out the window revealed a much winterier landscape. It had blizzarded in the night, and everything was white white white. I lifted by head from my hay pillow (that's right. It smelled like a giant Chamomile tea bag and was very crunch) and headed down the ladder. OUCH. My calves were quite sore. Very sore. I limped to breakfast but was immediately revived by fresh coffee, boiled eggs, ham and wurstaufschnitt, cheese, yoghurt and delicious bread made in wooden ovens on the premises. Then, we headed out to face the snow. I learned the hard way that rental skis aren't always well taken care of. Since the snow was so wet, it immediately stuck to my well worn skis, despite spraying them with multiple layers of "deicing" spray. I trudged along, hardly gliding, very frustrated, and by lunch I was so exhausted that I could hardly move. But the group convinced me to go out one more time, and our instructor lent me his fancy schmancy skis, so I was in good shape again to enjoy our last jaunt through the snow covered woods. Amazing and beautiful.

We had to run 15 minutes uphill to catch the bus to the train, and when I finally got home I was completely exhausted but I had enough energy left to unpack my delicious souvenirs: freshly baked wood stove bread, game (hunted) salami and smoked Bergkäse. Dellllliiiiccciiiouuuusss. Anyone interested in joining me for my next cross country ski adventure?

Food Buy: “Provencal Wildlachsfilet” from Aldi

2009-02-03T22:54:00.004+01:00

For my fellow Germany residents, I present the first of hopefully many "product reviews"... so that, in this jungle of foreign food, we can find what's good...

This beautiful piece of herb-encrusted salmon is from Aldi: cheap and kitchy (but somehow loveable) Aldi.

But it’s certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, and it only cost 4,99€!!!! For 700g of Wild Caught Pacific Salmon.

This is what it looks like frozen.

Here it is, in its aluminium foil “boat”

The verdict: DELICIOUS! Moist, flavourful, fresh, and no bones. A big bargain that I’ll have to rebuy. Plus… it was so easy. Oven on, fish in, 40 minutes later I had a meal. I served it with rice cooker rice pilaf (sautéed scallions in butter in the pan, toasted the rice, added water and hot sauce, mixed in chopped fresh dill and chives at the end)

british tourists lick and hug frozen tuna

2009-02-03T11:50:00.002+01:00

"Tuna is a very expensive fish," Takagi said. "One tuna can easily cost more than 1 million yen ($11,000). But some tourists touch them and even try to hug them."

Check out this article about the tourist boom at the Tokyo tuna market. Oh those British...

They Strike, I Bike (or "The Tragic Tale of Floyd the Fahrrad")

2009-02-03T11:38:00.005+01:00

Today, the union of public transit workers incited a "Warnstreik" all across Bayern. It made me realize just how dependent we are on public transit—I literally had no idea how I was going to get to work. All the ubahn and trams were out of service—the busses were running on a limited schedule.

In the end, after much consideration of my options (taxi, walking for 1.5 hours, limited and unreliable bus service…) I decided to shake the ice off of good old Floyd, my neon pink (and nearly rusted through) bike.

Floyd is a relic from my very first weeks in Germany and represents my first successful German language purchase (which consisted of pantomiming "brakes", "gears" and "lights".) He is, as his name would suggest, pink. You may recall from this post.

But Floyd's adventures have taken a toll. The gears are broken, the handbrake cable snapped and hangs dangerously frayed (and has cut me numerous times) which leaves me only with my kickback brakes, and the luggage carrier which supports my basket has lost a bolt and so it clangs around dangerously on the left side.

But he served his purpose this morning and got me all the way down Lindwurmstraße past various fruit vendors, including one selling oranges for 49 cents a kilo out of a stolen shopping cart, through Sendlinger Tor Platz, down the hill whizzing past the new Jewish Museum and past the Neue Rathhaus and the Opera, through Odeonsplatz at the foot of the Theatinerkirche and up Leopoldstraße all the way to my office building directly at the Siegestor.

And it was like tugging me out of my Winterschlaf. Munich! Outside! At its most beautiful and lively! Luckily, the weather was (slightly) warmer than usual and the roads were dry. I really enjoyed it and felt part of Munich's urban outdoors once again.

My next goal: buy a new bike (sorry, Floyd..)

Zucchini Garlic Soup with Prosciutto-Feta Grilled Cheese

2009-02-02T20:16:00.016+01:00

I discovered this recipe at the Kitc hn today and it sounded delicious. Monday has become something of "soup and sandwich" night for Artur and I, so it fit the bill. I started out by heading to Aldi and picking up the only two ingredients I didn't already have (and i am not one with a well
stocked pantry...): Zucchini and Onions (I usually have onions, actually..)

Then I went to work. I started out by melting a hunk of butter and sweating 9 cloves of chopped garlic and 4 sliced shallots until soft. (the recipe does call for onions, but as we walking europeans know.. toting a 3 kilo bag of onions along with the rest of the shopping can do a number on your muscles. So I sprung for the much smaller bag of shallots).

Then, I grabbed my oh-so-handy "cucumber cutter" and mandolined all six zucchinis into the pot. Flew by like a breeze.

I let those babies cook away under cover and, in the meantime, boiled water in my Wasserkocher and dissolved two cubes of chicken boilloin. I really wish they sold cans of chicken broth in Germany!! But these fancy schmancy organic cubes did the trick just as well.

Once the Zucchini was soft, I let everything simmer and mingle for about 15 minutes. The recipe calls for 45...but I was HUNGRY! Then off to the blender in three batches and voilà!

While the soup was simmering, I assembled my sandwiches by thawing whole wheat Toastbrot and slicing my delicious chunk of marinated feta from our neighborhood "middle eastern market" and combining yellow tomatoes and prociutto.

Then off into the pan! I grilled the sandwiches (butter side out, like any good grilled cheese deserves) until toasty and plated everything up. The soup got an extra dose of "crema di balsamico" (my absolute favorite easy gourmet condiment) and fresh chives and dill. Absolutely delicious.

Hobbes and Hobbina: Tiger Costume Tutorial

2009-02-01T18:29:00.011+01:00

So, the decision was made: Calvin and Hobbes for Carnival. But Artur didn't want to be Calvin: he wanted to be Hobbes! And so did I. So we settled on being Hobbes and Hobbina.

Here's a tutorial for my version of a tiger costume.

First, we went shopping at a second hand shop, and bought bunches of orange stuff, including this lovely 50 cent fleece hat:
This would become our tiger tails. First, I cut the hat in half down the center:
Here comes the lazy part. I am not a sewer--i don't have a machine, or the patience to sew very much! So I just took a piece of orange yarn and wrapped up the tail:
it worked like a charm. Then I split the black pom pom in half with scissors and secured it to the tail by wrapping the two tightly together with black thread:Here's my end result!
Next, I needed to assemble the ears. To do this, I chopped off the ends of the tail so that I had two rectangles of fleece. Then, I cut these rectangles in half to form two squares.

I folded them along the diagonal and sewed them up (this is as far as my sewing goes..).I flipped them inside out, stuffed them with a few cotton balls, and voila! To finish them up I sewed Artur's onto an Orange banana and mine onto a headband:

Then, I took my orange smock and cut in to form a more "stylish" cut, and drew stripes on Artur's pants and my smock. Then, all we had to do was get dressed and paint our faces like tigers. Voila! Oh what fun! What do your costumes look like this year?

In Germany on Twitter

2009-01-30T21:13:00.003+01:00

If you're a twitter user and want a daily bit of Germany-- my observations, tips, tales and links-- follow my on twitter at @ingermany

Get ready for your daily dose of cyberschmaus

Here's a sample:

ingermany In Germany theres a song called Dschinghis Khan that goes "Lasst noch Wodka holen denn wir sind Mongolen" (go get vodka 'cause were mongols)

ingermany bakeries sell "hawaiian" soft pretzels covered with melted cheese, ham and pineapple

ingermany you have to insert a euro coin into a slot in your shopping cart to "unlock" it -- you get it back when you return the cart

ingermany three ring binders don't exist-- they only have two rings

ingermany cell phones are called "handys"

ingermany cold cuts, horseradish, sausages and weißbier are all part of a normal breakfast

ingermany people eat marmelade-filled doughnuts for Carnival--as a prank, they are sometimes filled with mustard instead

Fasching...

2009-01-30T17:45:00.003+01:00

Who has an idea for a good couple Faschingskostüm? I'm thinking "Calvin and Hobbes" or "Hans Solo and Princess Leia"... opinions? thoughts? what are you going as?

HERE WE GO STEELERS!

2009-01-30T16:49:00.001+01:00

and, for those of you in Munich... come join me and my fellow Steelers fans at the Arc Pub for a rowdy Superbowl bash!!!!

The World on a Wednesday (erm...friday)

2009-01-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

Sorry folks, studying for exams has set me back a bit with my posting. Nevertheless, I present you with (ehem, two days late), the second annual "world on a wednesday"

Today, I have two joyously absurd stories which are making headlines in the German papers.

The first is an announcement that will have Cello players and Yo Yo Ma admirers everywhere breathing a sigh of relief: the "cello hoden" syndrome is a farce! there's no such thing!

The British Medical Journal printed a letter from two readers meant as a joke--but they missed the humor and took it to be a serious medical condition. The joke was prompted by an earlier article about the "Gittaren Nippel" condition in which guitar players experience "irritation" on the most "sensitive" area of their chest because of "friction" from the instrument. The joking letter writers insisted on the existance of another condition affecting Cello player's "sensitive areas"...erm... lower.

Needless to say, many terrified Cello players can now relax and continue their musical passion without worrying about its effects on...erm.. you know.

The next article features a giant bronze shoe. In Iraq. Yes indeed, a private foundation has erected a memorial to commemorate "the shoe incident", in which an angry Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at Bush during a press conference. Apparently, the shoe throwing has become somewhat of a "celebrated" symbol for Bush hating. The turkish producer of the exact shoe thrown at Bush (Baydan, Model 271) is planning on producing a special model, and even applying for trademark rights for the name "Bush Shoe".

All in all, shoes and cellos... it was a pretty eventfull week. Hopefully the cold and grey weather in Munich won't dampen our spirits. Now, back to work!

Homemade Citrus Vodka (and how to repurpose the leftovers)

2009-01-26T14:16:00.000+01:00

As part of finger-lickin' Tuesday, here's a HOW-TO for making citrus infused vodka. I took a bottle of Absolut Vodka and stuffed it full of lime, orange, lemon and grapefruit peels.

In its essence, it's a really easy project. And cheap, considering all you have to do is buy the vodka and put in the peel—something you would probably trash anyways. But as I discovered, getting rid of all that "white" stuff from the peel is quite hard work.

Ingredients:

Vodka
Citrus Fruits

1) peel off sections of each of citrus fruits. Pick your method: I read that a vegetable peeler works well, but I had better luck cutting thicker sliced and then trimming off the white by holding the knife at a slight angle and cutting towards my fingers. Sounds dangerous… and it kind of was.. I sliced my finger a bit. Let me know if you have a better method!

2) Fill the bottle. I threaded bits onto a skewer, to make it more decorative, but they were really hard to get into the bottle. In the end I just stuffed the rest in--- this looked pretty, too. You may have to pour a bit of the vodka out to fit in the peels. That's ok, you can make yourself a vodka gimlet with the juice from your lime and a simple syrup or powered sugar. Mmm.

3) Time to wait. Mine was a birthday present for a party a few days later, and when I tasted it, it was already pretty citrusy (and had a pleasant orange color). But most tutorials suggest waiting at least a week.
4) Don't forget to label it! Here's my label which I made with word. I colored in the picture with colored pencils. The cocktail recipes are of course only a few of many different ideas. Experiment.

All in all a big hit at the party. I did have to explain that no, I did not make the vodka myself in my bathtub. I had a laugh over that one.

CITRUS PUNCH

After all the peeling, I was left with a bowl of naked citrus fruits! What to do?! I decided to peel them and slice, and then douse them in sugar and let steep in the fridge. The next day Artur and I bought a bottle of Sekt (german champagne) and doused our citrus fruits. Mmmm mmm delicious (it was still delicious on sunday night, too… if not less bubbly).

LEMON LIME JAM

My third use for my leftover ingredients was to make "lemon lime jam" which was actually my first venture into the world of jam making. I happened to have a package of "gelierzucker", which is sugar mixed with a gelling agent. I followed the following steps, improvised from a series of internet recipes:

1) slice lemon and limes into thin, half moon slices (I used 2 lemons and 4 limes)
2) boil in 1 quart of water for 20 minutes, or until tender
3) add package of gelierzucker, stirring constantly until the contents boil
4) continue stirring for four minutes while everything boils nicely.
5) Pour immediately into sterilized jars

I didn't take any photos while cooking because it was too sticky. It's quite tasty, kind of like sprite marmalade.

Here's to a vitamin C overdose!!!!

long live the blog

2009-01-23T00:50:00.000+01:00

So, it's 2009, and I'm currently studying for exams (why?? why work and study at the same time?!?!) so I need a distraction. MY BLOG! So I'm doing a big push, and I need your help. Because, well, I admit it. I'm a total novice. I am looking for connections with other expat Munich bloggers. So far, I have discovered Lucid in Deutschland, A merican Expat in Deutschland and Coffee from a Cardboard Cu p. Who else can help me discover?

Thanks, Lucid, for your great link list... I am working my way through the Bayern section.

Until then, a few photos that have been collecting digital dust in the hallows of my computer.
I have posted this before, but it's worth a replay. This restaurant in Munich has, as its logo, a lovely graphic of the "dönertier", the "döneranimal". I guess if there really was an animal made out of slices of various meats stacked on a metal stick, topped with tomatoes, onions and garlic and roasted to perfection, it would look like this. ICK.

SHINY CAT IN SAUCE. Sold in Munich Stachus, at the pet store. Delicious.

Artur armed to fight the Ikea gods to the death.

World on Wednesday

2009-01-21T20:13:00.000+01:00

Another "structure" update. On Wednesdays, I will show the world, or some snippet of it, from my corner in bavaria. Today I have two clips from German papers.

The first is a cartoon from "Die Welt Kompakt"

Barack is stuck in a jungle of "Vorschuss-Lorbeer" or a german term which mean, literally "advanced laurel" or essentially "praise before the fact". To escape from this jungle, cartoon Obama is asking for a Machete.

My second peek at the world is an article of a miracle on the water (another one, after the amazing Hudson river plane landing)

The headline reads "fishermen survive in a cooler". Yup, that is a giant cooler and two normal sized people, fishermen from Myanmar to be exact. According to the article, they were the only two of a 20 person fishing boat to survive its sinking, living inside the bathtub-sized cooler and eating fish pieces and drinking collected rain water. As the article notes, "they must have been really thirsty, because, our sources inform us, one of them drank four whole glasses of water when he was rescued." After 25 days... go figure!

Change and Chili

2009-01-20T15:26:00.000+01:00

As part of my new "blog structure update" I will now be posting, as part of my "finger-licking tuesdays" a recipe or delicious food experience weekly.

Today, I present, (drum roll)… patriotic Obama Chili to accompany the inauguration day ceremony. Obama posted his "family" Chili recipe and I'm going to try it out.

We expats sure don't have it easy when it comes to watching events live on TV. I still have a headache when I think of my day of work after the election, having stayed up until 6am to watch the acceptance speech. The Steelers big win at home against the Ravens on Sunday night kept me up until 3:30, and I fell asleep before the end (shame on me). The Superbowl will be a long one as well (HERE WE GO STEELERS!). But this time, we lucked out. I'll be heading home from work today at 4pm just in time to whip up a batch of Chili and settle onto the couch for an evening of patriotic pride (finally).

Obama Family Chili Recipe

1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
Several cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground turkey or beef
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon ground oregano
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
¼ teaspoon ground basil
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Several tomatoes, depending on size, chopped
1 can red kidney beans

We'll start with the shopping, something we expats all know isn't an easy task for American recipes. The veggies should be no problem, the kidney beans either. I'll have to fudge the spices a bit (I could probably find everything, but I'm not sure I want to buy it all…), ground meat, tomatoes… looks like we're in the clear. The cheddar cheese might break the bank, but I'm sure a nice emmentaler would taste great too. Now it's time to go shopping!

Saute onions, green pepper and garlic in olive oil until soft.

Add ground meat and brown.

Combine spices together into a mixture, then add to ground meat.

Add red wine vinegar.

Add tomatoes and let simmer, until tomatoes cook down.

Add kidney beans and cook for a few more minutes.

Serve over white or brown rice. Garnish with grated cheddar cheese, onions and sour cream.

All the cooking went on during the ceremony. I seeded peppers during the vice presidential oath, and during the presidential oath, I, appropriately, cut onions. My tears were plentiful, to say the least. During the speech I quickly browned the meat and threw in the tomatoes, spices and vinegar and then I ran to the sofa to let myself be swept up in the tone and cheers of history.

The Chili was a hit, served with Fresh Whiskey Sours, and I am so happy that the Bush years are over and a new time has begun. Cheers!

WALL-E at Oktoberfest

2009-01-18T23:04:00.000+01:00

This is a picture of an advertisement for the Disney film "WALL-E" which was posted during Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. The text reads, in bavarian dialect, "talking isn't really my thing"

Ja, wir haben es geschafft!

2008-11-10T14:38:00.000+01:00

Everyone was too nervous to talk. It was the big moment, the one we'd all been waiting for, and everyone in the room was petrified with fear of the worst. It sounds negative, but after the last two elections, we weren't about to be too careful.

Downstairs, a gospel band was playing and singing, and everything was decked out in political colors. Red, white and blue, with Obama logos everywhere. Upstairs the atmosphere was a bit more informal, with the chatter of people sitting at beer hall tables and sipping cold drinks from the bar in the next room. CNN blared in the background, but the nervous banter made it impossible to understand the various predictions about the election outcome.

It didn't matter because we knew we would all have a few hours of nervousness to wait it out until we would know more. The day had been agonizing enough, having started it six hours earlier than the eastern voting population, and now we were drowning our jitters in Augustiner Helles and Schnitzel.
The first predictions came in slowly, first showing only 1% of Indiana's returns. By the time Pennsylvania had been called, we were all biting our nails and staying awake only on a mix of beer and adrenalin. The final pronouncement came at 5am, McCain's and Obama's speeches ended after 6:30am. Needless to say, where most Americans were out in the streets shouting or tucking into bed happily ready to wake up to a new world the next day, relieved that another vote counting debacle hadn't delayed the results until the wee hours, we Munich watchers were thinking "gee, it's hard being a politically committed expat." Those of us, like me, who hadn't taken the day off of work fought our way through the day in a euphoria-lightened sleep-induced haze. Some of us may or may not have napped on the floor during lunch break. But it was worth it. Oh boy, was it worth it.

fall breaks

2008-10-19T22:31:00.002+02:00

Well, fall is here. And I mean full-blown fall. Rainbow foliage, lovely sunshine, chilling breezes, dried brown leaves whooshing below your feet. Fall in Munich is beautiful. When it's so fall-y. The sudden drop in temperatures just in time for Oktoberfest brought us beautiful foliage and stunning panoramas.

I spent the weekend in the alps, and boy oh boy, there are just postcards waiting to be made. Mountains dotted with rust toned trees, verdant green slopes blanketed with fallen leaves, but still the sunshine and the clear air enough to drink a bavarian beer in the open air.

In Buchenberg, the sun was shining and the ski-jumps that are so integral to the training of young (and mini) skijumpers were dusted with the traces of fall that we all so love. We took a long walk and the cow bells klanging accompanied us along our treck past plump red berried bushes and sun-sprinked hillsides dusted with such picturesque landscapes that I practically invisioned myself in that Robin Williams film where he walks through oil paintings. Van Gogh would have had a field day.

In Munich, fall is still stunning, if not somewhat dulled by the smoke and banter of a "bigger" city. When I climb the stairs out of the Ubahn every day, I am greeted by fall-tinted trees swaying in the wind and Cafes deciding whether to haul in their outside sitting and offer only a well heated interior or if they should deck all the hardy outdoor furnishings with fleece blankets and tempt cafe-goers with warm glühwein or spicy-warm fall teas with cinnamon and apples.

Oktoberfest is over but I drove by the Theresienwiese the other night and they are still dismantling the tents-- a bit of a somber sight, but then, we're all camping down for the long winter.

But not yet. I am preparing hardily for a festive halloween party with glowing jack-o-lanterns and costumed germans (i force them), a glutinous thanksgiving evening where i try to roast a turkey in my iffy electric oven and attempt to approximate cranberry sauce by using "johannesbeeren" currant jelly. I will enjoy those somber november months, before the air turns crispy and the cars frost over with drunken messages from wobbly teenagers on their way to the subway at night.

So there's still a pre-winter time. And it's not even "fall back" yet, where the evening hours are short and it's dark even before I leave my office at night. So I'm embracing the rainbow, crunchy, orange fall. Winter, you'll have to wait a bit.

fall

2008-10-19T22:31:00.001+02:00

can't you see that it's just raining...

2008-07-13T21:00:00.000+02:00

Last week was the Jack Johnson concert. And it was a beautiful day.. sunny, hot. I had spent the morning taking photos all over munich for my darkroom session on sunday and had a nice sunburn going on. But it didn't matter. We arrived rather early to get good spots and hung out until the concert finally started, around 8:30. Despite the long beer lines, we had a blast! And the music was great. And then it started. Omnious black clouds swirling around the stage. We thought it would pass but then BAM, lightening, and more, and then came the rain. CATS AND DOGS! We put our cheap fleece blanket over our heads and hoped for the best. But it didn't really stop. It let up a bit, only to start again 15 minutes later. And it just kept on pouring. But nobody left...they all just opened their umbrellas, pulled on their ponchos, or danced without in the rain.

The concert continued until one of the tech guys came out on the stage and announced that they were worried about all the lightening. They said they would stop the show for ten minutes, and then start again. At that point it started to really pour, and we decided to leave. But by the time we made it out the gates, the music was starting up again, and the rain was letting up! So we turned around and headed back. The ticket guy even asked for our ticket! Haha, as if we had been hiding for the past two hours in the bushes, getting soaking wet, so we could sneak in.

Boy were we cold but i still really enjoyed the last half hour, even though it started to pour again and we really got soaked. After the concert we headed for the train, which was a 15 minute walk anyways and with thousands of other soaking wet and freezing fans. Some had umbrellas, some had ponchos, some had even stolen a giant plastic banner from the concert. We made our way along underneath our soaking wet and heavy fleece blanket till we came to the tracks, which we had to cross. They were being controlled by police men who were lined up holding a rope. Of course they stopped letting people through two rows before us and we had to wait over 20 minutes while the trains went by and the policeman spoke through his loudspeaker, telling us to "stay calm"

The germans then all starting spontaneously singing, which is something that germans usually reserve for oktoberfest and soccer games. They sang "let's all go onto the green-white party bus" (the police car, in germany they are green and white) and "die mauer muss weg! die mauer muss weg!" (the wall must go! a famous historical chant from the days of the berlin wall) But really, the germans are very law abiding and all of the soaking wet young people stayed put, just like the policeman asked, until the trains were gone and the ropes were lifted.

Then we all made a run for it, to the station. Of course it was packed, and the first train that came was full to the brim and the windows were already fogged over. The next train was supposed to come in one minute, but then it switched tracks! Everybody tried to go back down the stairs to the other side, colliding with those running to the original train, and there was a huge jam. The train was late anyways and when it came we allowed ourselves to be smooshed inside by the mob. Finally, we got out 5 stations later at Ostbahnhof and shivered our way to our bus. But the concert was totally worth it...

conversations about the future

2008-06-13T22:12:00.000+02:00

Today, i was wearing rainbow earrings. Beaded earrings, nice and long, nice and colorful. Native American style. The kids LOVED them. I had kids on my lap all day, touching my earrings. At lunch, the whole table came over. It was great. In what other job do you have people saying "emily, pretty earrings! can i play with them?!"

One girl was especially fascinated by my jewerly today. Somehow, she associated the attributed femininity with fertility, and blurted out the loaded question "do you have kids?!" The dialouge progressed as follows:

me: oh.. i'm too young
leonie: how old are you?
me: 24
leonie: oh. thats old.
me: yeah... but i'm not married.
leonie: why not?
me:well... i have a boyfriend, but im not married
leonie: would you marry him?
me: well i guess. if he asked me.
leonie: why?
me: because i love him
leonie: EWWWW. BLECCHHHHH.
me: hehehehe
leonie: why don't you get married?
me: hehe. i dunno. he hasn't asked
leonie: well why dont you ask DUMMY!
me: hehe. because. i cant afford a ring.
leonie: a ring! you dont need a ring. give him a flower! i flower's nice. Here, take this one. (gives me a flower)
me: hehe. ok.
leonie: (noticing my hesitance) ok. in five years. but then i get to be your flower girl!
me: ok!

I retold my mom this story on the phone. This was her response:

mom: where can i send her check? we've been waiting for these answers for months!

ah, kids and family. i'll miss my job.

germany flags, and more

2008-06-10T14:54:00.000+02:00

So, the European Cup has begun, and all the Audis, Mercedes, BMWs and Volkswagens are driving around with one, two, or even three Germany flags flapping in the alpine wind. Then there are the bipolar fans. Combinations crazier than peanutbutter and pickles. The classic: Germany-Turkey. Germany-Italy, Germany-Croatia, and of course, Germany-Poland. These "multiflaggers" are the creme de la creme, my favorite part of the flag mania. Showcasing munich's multiculti diversity.

The kids in the kindergarten arent showing quite the same multiculti openness. Today, one kid had brought in a special face painting stick that automatically draws the germany stripes. Try that with the half moon of turkey! Within five minutes the kids were covered with flags. On their cheeks, foreheads, stomachs, collarbones, feet, hands, arms. My personal favorite were those who used the facepainting stick as lipstick, which, due to the black stripe at the top of the german flag, turned them into little mini (ehem) moustached germans. Shiver.

We did have one child come to the kindergarten today with two flags: germany and spain. When I asked her why she was such a spain fan, she answered simply "because it looks the most like the germany flag"

And who says that "Football" doesn't bring the world together :)

river revelry

2008-05-07T16:27:00.000+02:00

Spring is here! Say the trees. And the weather is fantastic. Yesterday I pulled my "Isarmat" out of the cabinet (a foam mat to cushion against the notorious pebbles of the isar riverbank), stuffed it into a giant blue Ikea bag along with a blanket, pillow and some reading material, and headed off. Since I live a ten minute walk away from the "Flaucher", the isar's sunbathing and grill paradise, it didnt take long until i was strolling past the tiny beer garden hut and strolling out onto the "Flauchersteg", taking in the view of the river and small scattered islands of trees. The first island was a no-go for me--naked island as i call it, home to the most devoted of FKK sunbathers. The next few sections were mixed, so i picked a spot near a group of teenagers dressed in black and playing jack black on their guitars and spread out my goods.

Not a bad life, having time after work to read and doze... I enjoyed the muffled guitar chords and slept fitfully in the sun, every now and then reading a few pages of my book before drifting back to sleep. The flaucher is one of my favorite spots in munich, such a mix of mega fit joggers, super suntanned nudists, crowds of teenage grillers slugging river-cooled beers, families with small kids splashing about in the puddles, fishers casting into the current, and the occasional kajaker, riding the waves on the isarkanal. A good neighbor, that river.

A trip to the Bakery

2008-04-24T22:33:00.000+02:00

It smells like bread, and flour is floating through the air. It can’t be anything else but a bakery. And that it is: Bäckerei Ziegler, and Herr Ziegler is leading us through the labyrinth of bread and Brezel baking. Each child has a baker’s hat on, and we’re all ready to be taken on a journey of delicious discovery.

Our first stop is the giant mixer. Herr Ziegler types a few keys and the computer communicates with the main flour storage unit, delivering us five kilos of flour within a few seconds. All the children wow as the flour is poured through a transparent tube into an oversized mixing bowl. This bowl travels to the next station, where the fluid ingredients are added to the flour, salt and yeast. Everything is kneaded with a giant dough hook. Then the finished dough gets fed into a dough cutting machine, which divides it into equal portions and then feeds it into, as the kids call it, “a snake rolling machine.” These snakes are normally thrown into Bretzel shapes by professionals, but today we are on the job.

Every child gets a dough snake. Everyone thinks about the story that Herr Ziegler told us about the slave who bought his freedom by creating a baked good through which one could see three sun, a seemingly impossible task made easy by the Bretzel’s three “windows. And we begin to cross and twist. Finally, we’ve completed 18 beautiful Bretzen which go through a Lauge
waterfall before being shoved into a hot oven.

In the meantime we visit the Sußgebäck division, and watch as a giant roller transforms a lump of dough into a 20 meter long sheet. This sheet is then cut into triangles by another machine and fed into a “croissant roller” which twists the triangles into perfect uniform horns. The chocolate ones have to be made by hand, explains Ziegler, as he hands out thin pieces of chocolate intended for the croissants to the children.

We make our way downstairs to retrieve our Bretzen from the oven. They look golden brown and perfect, and steaming fresh from the oven. Bäcker Ziegler gives each child a handmade Brezn’ and a drink and sends him on his way, but I stop. I’ve just had another one of those intercultural moments, and I thank him for his kindness. Now I know just how another traditional Bavarian food is made!

going to paris tomorrow

2008-02-13T23:32:00.000+01:00

that's right..the city of loooooooooove for valentines day. And who better to take with me than my boyfriend...and my boyfriend's parents...

artur and i are treating his mom to a paris trip for her birthday. And Artur's never been there. And i'm living my dream of going to paris for the weekend. On a whim. wahoo!

berlin oh berlin

2008-02-07T17:32:00.000+01:00

So the trip to Berlin was great. The first day was "tour" day and after Artur and I arrived exhausted on the 5-11am ICE train, we went and ate an amazing buffet brunch with everything imaginable for only 7,90 euros. Ah berlin is so much cheaper than munich. And then Michael chauffuered us around in his car for a few hours and told us all about berlin, including stops at kreuzberg with its fantastic view and the siegessäule, for its also fantastic view. Unfortunately, the pedestrian tunnel under the racing traffic island was flooded on one side, so it took us a while to get up to the top, but when we did, the views were commanding. The second day was "flea market day" and we took off for the antique markets at kupfergraben. After browsing the array of old DDR paraphenalia, cds, gas masks, babuschkas and china, we sipped some glühwein to thaw out and headed to a cafe to warm up, and then to a chocolate shop to eat chocolate ice cream and cool down.

Monday was then "badeschiff" day and we set off to bathe on the river spree... no, not IN the river, ON the river, on a half sunken barge that has been converted into a retro swimming pool. In the summer, the thing is just open surrounded by wooden docking, but in the winter, it's turned into a white bubbly creation by way of a plastic roof and includes two saunas and a bar. We spent three hours enjoying the mix of warm, cold, naked, dressed, and just plain crazy. An ingenious design.

the eye

2008-01-19T10:43:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a while. And lots has happened--- hospital visits, a trip home to Pittsburgh, my first set of finals at a german university--and the beginnings of my first "container vegetable garden"

But now i'm back on my feet and ready to write again. I'll start with the story of my companion from Azerbaijan in the hospital. During my stay in the intensive care unit, I had a neighbor, a bed neighbor, that is. In between IV changes and doctors visits, I noticed that she was having trouble communicating with the doctors. Strained attempts at English were made by the surgeons, but the nuns who did much of the care work just kept on speaking in their native Bavarian dialect. One day, when sister Fransiska was doing her "get up out of bed and move around" motivation rounds, I decided to pitch in. I translated the enthisuastic sister's instructions, relaying commands to breath deeply, stand up, cmon, you can do it!! Zoora, I learned was her name, looked and my with grateful eyes.

During our time "upstairs" in Intensive care, I became her translator. I thought a lot about how scary it must be to not understand anything the doctors say to you.. the whole thing was scary enough, as it was! In turn, Zooras sister, who was almost always by her side, would often fetch me water and pick things up that I dropped--the kind of little favors I was more than thankful for at the time.

The day before I was set to leave the hospital, I took a walk down to Zooras room (both of us had been relocated to the "stationary" (and more humane) portion of the hospital and gave her a christmas card and said goodbye. A few hours later there was a knock on my door and there she stood... she very quickly slipped a silver armband off her wrist and onto mine this is the eye, for protection and good luck" she said, and disappeared back down the hallway.

The bracelet depicts a round, blue eye, surrounded by half moon engravings and a wavy silver band. Now, I wear it everyday.

i'm back

2007-12-20T09:26:00.001+01:00

so... after a 20-day stay in the hospital i'm back online. More updates to come...

The Mountain Show

2007-11-26T19:49:00.000+01:00

In America, there's the house show. You know, that show on sundays that just shows houses for sale: no video, just pictures of the houses and the asking price. Watching the show is soothing, it requires no brain power, it's so elementally boring that it's like automatic meditation: you aren't thinking anything.

In Germany, there's the mountain show. Intended to provide skiiers with a view of the current weather conditions in each ski area, this program flips from one mountaintop to another, broadcasting images recorded by some tiny camera mounted, in most cases it appears, high up in some snow covered tree. This show is even better than the house show, not only because the images sometimes rotate to show the full panorama and because the video is live, but also because more than often all there is to see is white because, well--it's snowing. Sometimes there are droplets on the camera, sometimes the blustering snow lets up for long enough to identify the tree a few meters away from the camera--the only way to identify these places is by the logo in the lower righthand corner.

As if this wasn't already enough to beat the house show, the whole thing is accompanied by a background of traditional bavarian and austrian "Blasmusik" Fantastic. Of course, on a beautiful day the mountaintops look gleaming white and I cuddle up under my blanket on the couch and think to myself "this is so much better than real estate."

auf der Autobahn...

2007-11-25T22:33:00.000+01:00

Germans love their autobahn. They like to drive fast, and the rules of the road are followed so strictly that drivers don't expect the unexpected. The roads are cleaned, the signs are repaired, all the lines are visible, and potholes are nonexistant-- hitting one at 220km/h would be a pretty big jolt.

Of course, even Germans know that not everything runs perfectly all the time. That's why the radio stations and their traffic programs are so crucial. Concerned drivers are provided with locations of the biggest traffic jams, construction sites and even speed traps. But my favorite section of all in German radio traffic programming is what I call "What's lying on the road."

Usually, the items are run of the mill things like tree branches, tires, hubcaps--there are also the occasional reports of people walking on the highway, accidents and construction vehicles. But often there are a few more exotic objects in the mix: rubber mattresses, couches, a family of geese walking along the side. These earn a prime spot each half hour in the traffic report--their exact location is relayed to the entire state of Bavaria.

This always made me laugh. The Germans say to me "but it would be very dangerous to drive if you didn't know that these things were on the road!" I usually chuckle and say "if they tried to report irregularities on america's highways the traffic reports would take hours"

So each evening while making dinner I flip on the radio, anxious to hear what's lying out there today.. I picture these objects, these people, those duck families, perched on the edge of the road while traffic whizzes by. Maybe there are even a few sightseers who hear the reports and take an extra trip to check out that abandoned pole lamp. Maybe these object sightseers cause their own traffic jams!

Today I listened to the radio report as always while filling out my christmas cards. The reporter whizzed through the traffic facts, the list of speed traps, the various construction detours, and finally arrived at the juiciest fact: lying on highway A6 near exit 4, albiet a bit early in the season--is a christmas tree.

Truthahn Tag

2007-11-23T14:43:00.000+01:00

Truthahn is the word for turkey in Germany, and yesterday that word was on my mind. Of all the holidays, I feel most homesick on thanksgiving. It's not because it's necessarily my favorite holiday, but it's the only holiday that goes unnoticible in Germany. Halloween is celebrated (if rather lamely), St Patrick's day even has its own parade! But on Thanksgiving I have to go to work and eat healthily while the rest of my family is on its way to Cleveland to meet up with the relatives, eat and drink themselves merry on turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, only to plop on the sofa and watch football in a Tryptophan-induced coma for the entire day-off friday. It's not fair!

To alleviate some of the homesickness pangs, I conjured up a cozy "thanksgiving for two" meal with Artur... turkey cutlets rolled and stuffed with stuffing, creamy mashed potatoes, Preiselbeeren (the german equivalent of cranberry sauce) and apple crisp for dessert. I also gave myself and Artur license to indulge, and kicked off the meal with homemade whiskey sours fresh from our new, "one armed bandit" as Artur calls it (juice press). Here's the recipe for fresh whiskey sours, from the cooking genius Barefoot Contessa:

Fresh Whisky Sours

3/4 cup whiskey (recommended: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (4 lemons)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (4 limes)
2/3 cup sugar syrup (cook 1:1 water-sugar mixture until dissolved, cool)
Ice cubes
Maraschino cherries

mix all ingredients, fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice and 3/4 full with cocktail mix, and shake for 30 seconds. Serve in highball glasses

mmm mmm sour

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2007-11-21T15:32:00.001+01:00

I started out the day by singing christmas tunes loudly in the shower: Silver Bells, It's Beginning to Look alot like Christmas, White Christmas, Chestnuts Roasting... the classics. Artur and I watched "Jack Frost--der Coolste Dad der Welt" yesterday, and it put me in happy christmas spirit. So today I was more than happy to see the dark wooden stands of the Marienplatz Christmas Market already set up and ready to roll.

The giant tree was already standing in front of the Rathaus and the Maroni--roasted chestnut--stands were already crackling away. The wooden stands built up like a labyrinth across the usually wide open cobblestoned plaza set me dreaming about Glühwein, Bratwürstl and Lebkuchen.

The Christkindlmarkt on Marienplatz in Munich has a long history itself. Founded in 1642, it holds the title of the oldest and biggest market in the city, and has been selling the gingerbread-like Lebkuchen and Oberammergauer wood cutouts since at least 1805. With over 3 million visitors a year, it may seem like a tourist trap, but every Münchner loves to stop by Marienplatz on the way home from work to stroll through the christmas-scented bustling stands, or to meet friends over a glass of Glühwein or a steaming Feuerzangenbowle-- literally "Fire Pliers Punch", prepared by heating a giant bowl filled with mulled wine, suspending a Feuerzange, a metal holder for the Zuckerhut (sugar hat), a large conical mass of sugar , which is placed above the bowl. The sugar is soaked in rum and burns a caramalizes with delight into the wine, resulting in a more dramatic and more alcoholic version of Glühwein.

The markets don't open until December 1st, but until then I'm going to sing myself into Christmas oblivion. In Germany, my fairytale christmas comes alive...

drilling in the afternoon

2007-11-20T22:23:00.001+01:00

My artistic inspiration has been somewhat dulled lately by my lack of sleep and the onslaught of children's cold and flu germs. So today after work I turned out all the lights and law down in bed for a midday nap. Not five minutes after I started to drift off, I was ripped out of sleep by the vibrations of someone drilling in my building. If you live in an apartment building you know what I mean-- when anyone drills into any wall connected with your wall, youre whole apartment shakes and it is just as loud as if someone were drilling next to your bed--if not louder.

The worst part about it all was not the drilling itself but its intermittent nature-- it would go on for two, three minutes, and then stop for just long enough to let me drift back off to sleep--only to start up again, punctuated at some points by some lighter hammering and sanding. Not helping the situation was the biting cold draft that was blowing through our leaky windows causing me to roll up into a tiny ball of warmth under the blankets. And then I realized what all the drilling was-- they are changing the windows in the building--but they won't get to ours till next spring.

I gave up the napping after a while and started to work on the 50 example test questions given to us by my "Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik" professor for our test in two weeks and eventually decided to slip on my winter boots over my sweatpants, grab several cloth bags, and go grocery shopping. Oh, and I forgot to mention: my Handy (cellphone) died on me today, so it's time to use my Christmas bonus to buy a new one. The highlight of the evening was Artur finding a stone in his rice. A stone! Somehow, it just wasn't one of those days...

Ocean of Noise

2007-11-17T19:55:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday was spent riding the train back from the Alps, changing into more comfortable clothes, and heading off the the Kultfabrik Gelände for the Arcade Fire concert! Artur came along, and it was pretty exciting to see all the fans streaming from the S-Bahn station despite the pouring rains (what came down in the Alps as snow was streaming down in Munich as rain, filling the street with giant lake puddles.)

We picked up our "guest" stickers at the entrance windows and secretly smirked at the jealous stares coming from our fellow concert goers-- I had emailed a friend from college in the band to let him know i'd be coming, so we would get to go backstage afterwards to say hi! We stuffed our jackets into the stage scaffoling work lining the sides of the concert hall and took central standing room places in the front third of the room. The crowd kept getting bigger and we had to revert to some physical elbow jabbing to keep from getting jostled from our places, but we managed to hold our ground and had a great view of the action once the band came on stage.

It's funny, seeing an old college acquaintance and a band I once saw with 40 other students in Champagne-Urbana Illinois playing in my new hometown Munich-Germany to a crazy sold out audience of over 3,000 fans. I just have to say, I was proud. We jumped and screamed and sang and sweated our way through the new songs from the Neon Bible and the old classics from Funeral until the air in the room was literally unbreathable. The best part was before the encore, when the audience stared humming Wake Up and didn't even stop when the band came back on stage. I think the masses had just discovered their own talent!

After the show we stood by the freshly opened doors and breathed in huge mouthfuls of fresh air while we waited for clearance to go backstage and say hi. Finally allowed inside, we got to say hi and hear great stories of life on the road and watch the band members navigate past at least five buckets collecting dripping water from the leaking roof. Well, fame isn't quite so glamorous as we all think, but it sure is exciting.

My hero for the evening, however, was Artur, who, on the walk back to the train after the show, pulled me to the side just before a car drove through a puddle and soaked me-- it just soaked the girl walking in front of me. My Hero.

let it snow

2007-11-12T19:28:00.000+01:00

I spent the weekend in the Allgäu region of the Alps, in the tiny town of Buchenberg, my boyfriend's home since he moved to Germany from Poland over 20 years ago. Picturesque, tiny, and this weekend--full of snow! One of the best parts of the trip is taking the cozy ALEX train from Munich, especially when we snag seats in "ALEXTreff" with the comfy Edelweiß-decorated seats and can sit with warm paper cups of coffee and watch the buildings of Munich dwindle, the cow population increase, the Alps come into view, and that slightly unpleasant but also nostalgic smell of cow manure creeps into the train car. Ah, a weekend full of relaxation is ahead of us.

The best part of spending the weekend with my boyfriend's parents is the food: delicious mom home-cooking. But this time newer things awaited us other than wining and dining: a cat! His mother has been famous among the cat population of Buchenberg for years for having an open door policy: whenever I'm there, various neighborhood cats drop by for warm milk, noodles with chicken, steamed dumplings (really, she's a regular gourmet!)... but this time, the cat had come to stay! Suri is her name, and she appeared on the doorstep screaming with hunger and was immediately adopted and cooked and cleaned into supreme health. Now she spends her days dozing on top of the heater with her head resting on a rose potpourri pillow--really!

The cat must have been relieved, because coinciding with our arrival came the first big snow of the year--two feet in 24 hours, blanketing the postcard perfect town and zapping me into premature christmas spirit. Suri ventured out once into the snow--and we laughed the whole time watching her take dainty steps only to fall through the crust of snow and disappear into its depths. Needless to say, she came back inside after just minutes. We acted much in the same way, venturing outside only on saturday to spend the afternoon with hordes of Allgäu teenagers in the Kempten mall, managing to survive the slippery downhill drive from Buchenberg. The rest of the time we sat and wined and dined with the spoiled little kitty...

defrosting the refridgerator

2007-11-07T23:17:00.000+01:00

yup, really. Our freezer and fridge are covered in a thick layer of white snow. I kept imagining hoards of frozen eskimo fruit flies in tiny fur lined parkas building mini igloos and worshipping our funsize bottle of jägermeister. But if it kept growing at the rate it was going, I wouldn't have fit our bottle of Grasovka Vodka back in their by tomorrow. So Operation Defrost took effect. I emptied the fridge and put everything in one of those handy german collapsable baskets on the balcony (see photo), opened all the fridge and freezer doors, unplugged the thing, and away we go! My boyfriend built a contraption to funnel the water out using 1) a pot 2) a shoe horn 3) duct tape. Oh those brilliant polish germans.

To celebrate, I made defrost-stirfry. I threw it all in-- frozen spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots... mmm mmm good. I had to part with my icecream, though...

why does it always rain on me

2007-11-06T16:06:00.000+01:00

...and on my chocolate croissant? i bought a delicious one at Olympiazentrum this morning on my way to work. It was meant to rip me out of my sleepy cold morning grumpiness. It was certainly mouthwatering... with real chocolate in the middle, not that imitation nutella stuff. But then it started downpouring, and my the time i reached the covered island in the middle for bus 173, my pastry and my pants were soggy.

I ate it anyways. I would need energy for the kids today.

The kids were pretty good, though, and with an exception of the usual sand throwing, nit picking fights and water spillage, everything went as planned. I ironed fall leaves that the kids arranged between sheets of waxed paper and pasted on the windows. It made this grey day look a little cheerier.

Next invention: tiny umbrella for tiny breakfast pastries. or maybe i should have just remembered my own...

current music: why does it always rain on me, travis

Milk, Zippers, and other English things...

2007-11-05T16:41:00.000+01:00

I work in an English-German kindergarten. I do everything a normal German kindergarten teacher would do: help cut up Würstchen, make sure the room has frische Luft, build Sankt Martin lanterns... and of course, zip up jackets...except I do it all in English. A couple of the kids are English native speakers, a couple of them are language wizzes...but most of the time they just tilt their head and try to interpret the one, two words they do understand.

Ok, that would be underestimating them. They know a lot of sentences. "I'm finished!" "clean up" "please" "thank you" and "sorry"... and I require them to learn the somewhat more difficult construction "could you please zip my jacket?" Of course, these sentences appear in many versions, like "dank you" and "ich bin finished", and "could you please zip my jacket" often comes out as "could you please my y-ack-uh zip?" But they're learning and they're charming.

One of my favorite moments was with a girl in my group last year. We have müsli day and if they would like milk added to their bown of oats and dried fruit, they have to ask, and I like them to ask in English. I accept many forms, I basically expect at least the words "milk" and "please" to appear. On one particular day a girl from my group was standing in front of me holding her bowl out. "What would you like?" I asked. "Milk" she whispered quietly. "What milk?" I replied. Where? Milk here? Milk for me? (getting 4 year old to talk in full sentences can be a tedious process) She shifted her weight back and forth, scrunched her brow in concentration, trying to recall the right sentence from somewhere back in her brain. Suddenly, her eyes lit up. She smiled, looked me in the eyes, held out her bowl and asked proudly and loudly

"Can you please zip my milk?"

Jack Johnson and Lemon Drops

2007-11-04T00:43:00.000+01:00

The day was actually packed quite full:

Artur went to the hairdresser and got his shoulder length hair cut off--he looks like a better version of Hugh Grant, now; then we took our recently extended U3 subway line to Olympia Einkaufszentrum to go wander around the mall and check out dishwashers; ate mall chinese and later drank an iced coffee; exchanged his pijamias for a bigger size, rode back and I blanched the veggies I bought at the farmers market, heated up the pizza leftover from visiting Sigrid, my "ex-host-mother" for him and i read the end of my book, "Drachenläufer" (The Kite Runner, in German) in sniffling tears next to him on the couch while he rubbed his chin over programming problems in his new facebook chess application.

We both drank italian red wine and were completely absorbed in our own tasks... I was in charge of the cds...travis, eros ramazzotti, bob marley, red hot chili peppers, REM, and then.. I made a batch of lemon drop martinis with the last of the lemons and the remains of the vodka from the freezer... and now we're off to bed with jack johnson strumming away in the background... good night...

Hunting and Gathering

2007-11-02T14:48:00.000+01:00

The perfect fall day, and I have the day off from work! What better conditions to get out of the house. I clicked through the muenchen.de website until I found the link to the "Munich weekly market calendar" I picked out two market's I'd never been to, and set off, taking the subway to Marienplatz and then switching lines to the Sbahn westwards.

When I reached Laim I had to trek through an ugly train track underpass and walk about ten minutes along a heavily trafficked street: the market was tucked cozily in a corner behind some shops slightly off the main road. It was pretty small but I browsed the wares happily, weighing new potatoes in my hand, staring at giant heads of cabbage and huge "muscat" pumpkins and trying to decode names of at least 5 different kinds of turnips.

The cheese stand was fragrant and the pumpkin seed goat cheese beckoned, but I decided to leave the cheese buying to my boyfriend, a true feinschmecker. I tasted at least 5 kinds of apples fresh from Lake Constance and bought three kinds, mixed together in a clear plastic bag. Into my orange backpack came tiny heads of cauliflower and broccoli, and five small ruby red onions.

I set off for Laimer Platz, the subways station, stopping on the way at a bakery for a fresh "Leberkässemmel", a Munich specialty. I munched a cold apple while waiting for the subway. Next stop: Neuperlach, for what I hoped would be an even bigger market.

When I arrived I still had 45 minutes to wait until the market opened, so I wandered towards the shopping center on the other side of the road, and into a starbucks there. I'm always amazed when I walk into american franchises in europe... it may sound sad, but it feels like home. Jazz musik was playing in the background and I could have been on the Waterfront in Pittsburgh reading the postgazette. A nice feeling, actually, as I took my latte sat down on a comfy overstuffed chair to read my book.

This market had even more to offer. I bought a nice chunk of ryebread with oats, a jar of local honey, and a few handfuls of brussell sprouts. At the next stand I chose 4 gleaming mandarines and a bunch of fresh carrots. My last purchase was two sturdy sweet potatoes, and I was on my way back home, with quite a heavy backpack.

Define: Wolpertinger

2007-11-02T14:21:00.000+01:00

According to Wikipedia, a Wolpertinger is an "(A)nimal supposedly living in the alpine forests of Bavaria in Germany. It has body parts of various animals — generally wings, antlers and fangs, all attached to the body of a small mammal."

So what does that make me? An American girl with a minor in Italian language, Irish, German and Welsh ancestors living with a Polish boyfriend in the "most Northern city in Italy," or "the world-city with a heart"--Munich, Germany. Sounds pretty Wolpertingery to me.

And that's what it's all about, living abroad. Giving up pieces of myself, switching them for others, so I sort of fit in everywhere and then again nowhere. A freak of nature, the stuff of fantasy. Ok, it sounds a bit self important. But then again, blogs aren't there for self importance, than what is?

To follow are the tales of my adventures as a culturally-mish-mashed expat. Enjoy!

the most beautiful bike path in the world

2007-03-15T20:11:00.000+01:00

Well, the sun is finally out, Floyd is finally free, and I am out on my bike exploring. My poor floyd, my pink bike, hes been stolen twice, both times to be rescued by the police. I am convinced he has a girlfriend, although what female wants a man who always wears bright pink. Maybe he has a boyfriend...

So I have been out and about, riding through Munich, rediscovering the city in many new ways. My plan has been all along to ride to work when it gets warm, so I set out yesterday on a trial run. Even equipped with a bicycle map, i got completely lost and rode aimlessly around the north of munich for more than an hour and a half until i found the kindergarten, at which point i was too tired to ride back, so i left my bike sitting at the subway station. At least it would save me my bus ride the next day, and I could attempt the route home.

So I found myself this morning on my bike, running 20 minutes late, freezing without gloves or a hat in the morning fog, and trying to resolve a small fight with artur about waking him up every morning (torture..) on the cell phone, ,while attempting not to get run over. The day had started out well.

But as I managed to find the perfect route home on another sunny day, I discovered that my route would take me past munich's most beautiful sites: The English Garden, the Isar river, the bavarian government building, the state art museum, the freedom angel monument, the deutsches museum, rows and rows of turn of the century houses, forest, water, sunbathers, cafes...i was so happy. Every day I will see these things on my ride to and from work... not bad.

now I am baking a cake for my half birthday, which is tomorrow. Germans celebrate half birthdays even less than americans, but i am trying to right an embarassing moment at work, where i brought only cookies but everybody after me brought a feast. So tomorrow i am bringing a feast!! to make up for it.

Now, back to Anna and the King dubbed in german...

bardzo dobrze

2007-03-12T20:49:00.000+01:00

well, it was good to be back to work. Postage stamp lotto worked well, the kids were happy to see me, and i felt productive again. The sun was shining and sitting on the park bench watching the kids screaming and running around and feeling the color returning to my face was a joy.

After work i went to MY apartment (apartment #2) and got my mail, and jumped for joy because i had finally received my work recommendation that ive been waiting for to send off my application for the masters program at the munich university of applied sciences in international communication and cooperation.

And so i took the ubahn to apartment #1, got my papers together, and rushed to my polish class. Today we learned "how are you" (jak sie masz), various greetings, and other grammar. I love it. I cant wait to test out my new knowledge on my next visit to arturs family.

Now i am sitting at home, drinking a weißbier and waiting for artur to come home even though its 9pm. Have i already become so spinstressly?

Oh well. Tomorrow I meet Mauro for italian refresher # 3..it might be possible to do the lesson in a beer garden, which would be great. Really great. Barzdo Dobrze!!

15 euros for 2 beers and a country song

2007-03-11T23:12:00.000+01:00

well, i survived my boredom well enough, and resolved my guilt about artur, and calmed my stomach, all on friday afternoon, mostly with a heavy dose of aerobics and bike riding, sweet floyd is back! The evening included a nice peaceful dinner at my french friends house and an attempt to attend a party on friday evening, which was somewhat successful but which proved that i wasnt quite ready to consume a large amount of alcohol.

saturday was lazy at first and then artur and i went to breakfast, delicious breakfast, at a cafe that serves all kinds of interesting food combinations. Mine included spicy salami, vanilla yogurt, special cheese, a blueberry muffin, banana marmelade, and tomato scrambled eggs. Mmmm.

Then artur and I ventured into the city center, a virtual zoo on saturday, to stroll through shopping malls and stores. Purchases included: an outerspace calendar (on sale cause 2007 is well underway...), a half a kilo of used stamps for collectors that i want to use in my post office theme in the kindergarten, which we sorted over diet cokes in mcdonalds, the worlds most crowded mcdonalds, two glasses of juice cocktails from a promotion action at a department store, we got the juice and got to keep the glasses, they even packed the sticky empty ones up for you in a pretty bag, and we shopped for an alarm clock and finally decided on one, but everywhere was sold out.

And then the evening took us to a country music bar called oklahoma, where we sat peacefully and enjoyed one song and marveled at the fact that such a bar in munich exists until we realized that the owners hat sneakily written the cover charge on our coasters (cover charge?? we didnt know) and 8 euros was a bit too much for such a kitchy experience, and we fought with them over paying the charge for having seen one song, ended up paying for the beers we didnt even finish and for one cover charge, 15 euros for 2 beers and a country song, almost new york prices!

but we didnt let that stop our evening, and met a group of friends for some cheaper beers and then watched the kitch horror movie slither until 4am. Which turned our sunday into a lazy day, complete with adam sandlers click and postage stamp sorting. I made a memory game with postage stamps.

Now I have to go back to work tomorrow...hopefully i will get back into the swing of things after my hiatus.. at any rate, only three weeks to go till vienna and then sardinia vacation...mmmmm

it started out well...

2007-03-08T19:47:00.000+01:00

I woke up with Artur at my side to the horrible beeping of the alarm that I normally fight with every morning, hitting it every three minutes to silence the beeping that resumes again in three minutes, making it the most horrible alarm clock ever made, with the shortest snooze ever. Sometimes I even take the time to reset the alarm for seven minutes later, just to get a reasonable snooze, before flopping back into unconsciousness.

But this morning Artur got to fight with the alarm, and although I am not particularly reknowned for bounding out of bed and greeting the day with cheer, it's an art i have slowly mastered after dozens of grumpy winter mornings waking up at 5:45, knowing if i don't, 3-6 year olds will be standing along in the cold waiting for me to unlock the kindergarten door. Artur is a master of not getting up, and since the only smiling faces waiting for him at work are computer monitors and adult coworkers, he isnt quite as motivated as me, so i actually have to wake him up after 45 minutes of snoozing, because im wide awake and i have to go to my ultrasound in an hour.

Thats right folks, an ultrasound. I thought they were only for pregnant women, but appartently they are also used for people with strange stomach pains. Which are sometimes one and the same, but in my case im hoping to hear something like "ah, your left quadral intestinal apartment is a little swollen" instead of "it's a girl!" So I shower and leave the house after a ruffled Artur runs out the door, and catch the subway to my doctors office.

I really liked the waiting room from the first moment I found this doctors office, in the way I find all my favorite places in Munich: desperation. I really needed to see a doctor, and this was the first sign I saw that said "general practice" so I walked in and tada, I am now the proud patient of drS teubner... a mother and daughter pair of doctors who are apparently fond of elephants or at least their family, friends, and the entire country of germany thinks they are, as the waiting room is littered with china elephants, wooden elephants, stuffed elephants, elephant paintings, elephant postcards, and all manner of quotes about elephants.

I am called into what appears to be the nurses room and the bubbly nurse (i didnt know there were bubbly GERMAN nurses!) noticed immediatly that getting a blood sample taken made me very nervous. So she asked me exactly eleven questions in a row whereareyoufromyoudonthaveagermanaccentahtheUSAwhereahpittsburghiveheardofititsonthewestcoastisntitahokeastcoastwellokbutnowimdone I have to say, it wasnt so bad, i was pretty distracted by her round of questions. After a short round of elephant counting i was recalled and sent into the doctors office, told to lie on a table, and grinned as i was smeared with ultrasound gel, the real stuff you see in the movies!

I was disappointed that the grey blobs on the screen didnt resemble my stomach like i had expected, but then again i dont think they really resemble babies either, when babies are inside. The doctor told me i have air in my intestines (and asked me if i had ever had my appendix removed. and i swore i would NEVER have to know that word when we had to learn it for a german quiz) and a virus, gave me various prescriptions and instructions to eat only noodles, and told me not to go to work for the rest of the week and to come in the following morning for my blood test results.

It was a nice day so i took a tram to the main train station and picked up my arcade fire concert tickets, and bought my books for my polish course. On the way I rented two movies, bought noodles, and planned a nice relaxing afternoon for myself.

After watching the movie and eating noodles though, i was bored and felt guilty. I didnt feel sick, my stomach didnt hurt anymore and I wasnt tired enough to sleep all day on the couch. Two days off and nothing to do. Not sick enough to while the day away sick in bed, not well enough to go to work, just well enough to feel guilty about not going to work. All those tiny faces waiting for emily to appear, my poor assistant teacher running the group all by herself. And what fun is a day in bed without junk food? I couldnt even pig out on haribo gummi bears or drink a bottle of wine and watch a romantic comedy.

The boredom set in once I read my book in silence for two hours. It was sunny outside, maybe I should go for a bikeride? But then again, i was staying home from work because im sick. I should rest. And the rest of the day went like this. I tried to convince myself of my sickness, of my rightness to stay home from work, while at the same time trying to enjoy my free time, although not too much, because after all, sick people at home from work shouldnt enjoy themselves. And then I got the brilliant idea to paint my fingernails. Finally, something i never have time for but that sick people can do too, without using up too much energy. I am sick, after all. So I painted my fingernails a beautiful maroon color, which ate up almost fifteen beautiful minutes, and as I finished them and admired their shiny, stick, beauty, i realized... that I now couldnt do anything, not even check my email or turn on the tv. I tried to blow my nose, which took an additional five minutes struggling not to smudge.

And then, Artur called. I had actually been waiting for him to call for almost an hour, because he is almost always done with work by 6:15, and it was already 7:30. My boredom was already driving me to contrive tiny plots to kill time until his arrival, and when he informed me he would be working for at least another half an hour, I wailed nooooooo into the phone, some sort of instinctual boredom reaction. Why do the people we love always see our worst sides? He promised to only be a half an hour, and I vowed, out of guilt, to finally do something with my time, and started to write this blog post. Suddenly, the time flew, and my newly laquered fingers tapped over the keys with grace... writing about my boring day is entertaining! And then he called again... I had almost forgotten about him! He was finally on his way! I asked, somewhat distracted as I formulated the next paragraph...if he had already left work. Because if he needed to work longer it was ok, I was entertained for the mean time... and found out he had left all his work colleagues slaving away on a project with a deadline, he, the newby, because i had made him feel guilty. arghhhhhhhhh could it get more tragic?

The evening will hopefully include another movie and more noodles. Tomorrow im crossing my fingers that the doctors will give me the green light to eat at least cheese, my french friend is having a dinner party.... the way things are going, I doubt it. Now, off to boil water....

the terrible horrible no good..

2007-02-09T22:24:00.000+01:00

you know the rest. friday was horrible. after being sick all week the kids were out of control and I was in a bad mood. Plus I had kitchen duty, and the dishwasher is crap and the dishes never get clean so i had to soak about 20 plates with hardened on mashed potatoes and then scrub then with a brush. Not exactly what i had imagined as my dream job, but most of the time the kids make up for it.

Then I spent 5 hours looking for a dress for the polish ball tomorrow. And learning polish with my new computer program. I can now say "5 dogs jump". I got upset because i was in a bad mood and sleepy and shopping is rather tiring especially if you have to make decisions like "buy the dress or look more?" especially when you have no money. sigh. these are the great times in our 20s well be happy for later, right? artur is at chess club and im grumpy because chess club is on friday night when i want to have fun instead of waiting for my boyfriend with itunes, paint by number and cocktails. hmph.

im baaaaaaaaaaaaack

2007-02-07T19:21:00.000+01:00

its been a while, but since Artur finally repaired my computer (ah the advantages of a computer geek boyfriend) I can hopefully manage to write regularly now.

Things havent changed much... still working in the kindergarten, thats going well although this week i have been sick with a sinus infection and this morning woke up with such a killer pressure headache that I had to take the day off, again. I felt quite guilty leaving my co teacher for the second time this week alone with the kids, but i wouldnt have been much up a help with my eyes closed in pain all day.

I managed to sleep the day away, which gave me time to think about the various changes in planning stage: moving in with artur, applying for a masters program, and attempting to make it regularly to the gym.

Otherwise, this weekend is the polish ball with artur and the following weekend were heading back to buchenberg to visit arturs family for his moms birthday. I also signed up for a polish course which will begin in march, to begin to prepare for our trip to poland in the summer.

and now for a dinner of chicken and rice, very nice.

everything but roast beast

2006-12-02T14:02:00.000+01:00

yesterday was december first, and the city looked like it had been decorated by the whos from the grinch. Lights, wreaths, garlands, baubles, everything imaginable. And the infamous christmas markets opened, marienplatz dotted with a maze of tiny wooden huts selling ornaments, nativity scenes, mulled wine, roasted chestnuts, sausages, sauerkraut, mini trees, wooden toys, candles, cookie cutters, and other toasted, spiced and carved treats. A fairy tale land which can't help but enchant.

we met up with juliette and jean baptiste from france, laura from montreal, maltir from spain, malanie from ingolstadt (and artur was there) and saw little miss sunshine (and laughed and cried) and then went to a bar to see sven and friends, a bar with foosball (kicker, here), beer, couches and cross dressers. After a few drinks we waited in the cold to buy turkish food at 2am..a 15 minute line, and then hopped the last subway home. Fell alsleep once again with the lights and the radio on. But today is saturday and were going to see happy feet, with penguins. Its a movie kind of day, although its sunny, because the city is overrun by christmas shoppers. Ah, the weekend.

i made it to the top

2006-09-30T11:06:00.000+02:00

A beautiful but exhausting hike south of munich, almost 4 hour hike but worth the view and the cold beer at the top! I still have muscle cramps a week later...

the mountain was "heimgarten" at 1790 meters, we climbed 1100 of them ourselves.

my class!

2006-09-30T11:00:00.000+02:00

all's fair in love and binders

2006-08-22T06:09:00.000+02:00

I never thought I would be the kind of person who has a file of recipes, but some combination of a recent domestic instinct and an obsession with the magazine "real simple" has driven me to clip, fold and file. Tonight, by candlelight and guitar music from my dad on the porch swing, I devoured magazines for snippets including recipes as well as household mainainence and beauty advice and filed it neatly in a binder. I also organized my letter writing supplies and placed them in a plastic-storage clipboard for heart-outpouring emergencies.

Why? Because Artur left today, and I suddenly emerged from the fog of love and was catapulted into the world of..organizing. I don't believe they've ever been cited as antipodes, but in love and organized seem to be my two most happy and.. new states. 2006 is actually the first year I can cite being either. So my days until Thursday will be happily filled with clipping instead of kissing, folding instead of fondling, copying instead of copul.... right. Not martha stewart material, but it's my own brand of distraction. Plus, I never seem to find the time to paint my nails or fold my socks when cuddling is an option, and I hope I never do.

flight spy

2006-07-28T12:48:00.000+02:00

here i am, at 644 am, squinting at my computer screen in the light of the dawn. After a 2am scramble out of bed to make sure that the first flight from Munich to Milan took off smoothly, I retreated back to the confines of my bed, only to be awoken by my newly acquired 6am mental alarm. Once again I trudged to the glow of the laptop, left on all night in case anything really important should happen (laptops can only tap you on the shoulder when they're left running) and clicked the requisite buttons. Flightview search failed, but Alitalia registers a 15 minute late departure, perfect for his cutting it close hour layover. I could picture the passengers waiting as my recently long haired boyfriend jogged breathlessly through the halls of the Milan airport, finally stumbling onto the Jumbo Jet in time to be tiraded by a bunch of angry italian american new yorkers headed for queens. But at least he probably made it, or he would have called by now. Now all thats left is to fall asleep and hope to sleep till 1230, when the flight lands.

and fighting the grumpies

2006-07-27T05:57:00.000+02:00

wow, my stress levels hit the roof this evening, and I am not quite sure why. The day had relaxed me more than I expected, spending the time with my mom and reading kindergarten books, but as soon as I got home I realized how edgy I was. I called Artur, who I had expected to call hours earlier, to discover that he was sitting in his new apartment having a beer with his new roommate. This should have made me happy, but instead I felt a mixture of hurt and jealously, that he hadnt called earlier if he was home and relaxing and that he was having fun. I wasnt having that much fun, was I? I guaged my irrational female reaction, and hung up with a promise of a return phone call at six and a giant lump in my throat. I was supposed to be heading to happy hour to drink frozen cosmopolitans with my mother and I knew it would go one way or the other: relax me and cheer me up or drown my sorrow and make me all the more irritable.

But I got downstairs to ensuing chaos as my brother and dad struggled to make Quiche Lorraine with recently purchased farm fresh eggs in our boiling hot kitchen, and my mother got herself embroiled in the debate about how much bacon they should use. I could feel my grumpiness boiling over like a cloud, and fussed that we should be going soon, then felt guilty and offered my help, and when refused due to the small size of the kitched, slumped on the couch in a sweaty grumpy teary lump mood. What was wrong with me? Theres nothing to complain about, I am sitting at home on vacation and whining because my boyfriend is so busy moving out of his apartment that he only calls twice a day. Not really much to complain about. But I knew my grumpiness wasnt bound to pass until I talked to him, cause I knew what was really wrong was that I missed him, rational or not, and didnt feel like whiling away the 2 more days till his arrival.

At any rate, my mother and I finally made it out of the house, probably to short circuit an oncoming grumpiness blowout on my part, and ordered our drinks: lovely vodka cranberry slushies. And then hummus, with lime. And then another slushie. Things were looking better, and then the phone rang. Oh hooray, that must be Artur. But no, it was dad. Andrew had spilled the eggs. Could he talk to mom, he needed to know how to get the stain out of the carpet. Blech. Oh, and Artur had called, and they had given him the cell number but he couldnt seem to get it right. Damn. Now I wasnt going to get to talk to him, the one thing I knew might shake me out of my funk. I glowered through the evening, through an espresso, a gelato, and what should have been some wonderful mother daughter bonding time. My mother tried her best to comfort me, but to no avvail. The only slight comfort was the apology email from Artur when I got home, saying he tried the number but it wasnt working. Well, better than nothing.

The best comfort of the evening was taking my scratched cds to the grindstone literally, using a bizarre but functional device of my brothers to buff away the blemishes and burn off some of my nervous energy. Then there were push ups and crunches, part of my new "responsible" fitness routine. Laundry folding, face washing, body lotioning..who was I? Some weird German version of myself, I guess, who didnt seem so weird back in Germany. I have to say, I always thought that dealing with difficult strangers was hard...try it when the foreigner is yourself!

hot and sticky laptop musings

2006-07-27T05:50:00.000+02:00

As I sat, staring at the geese waddling across the lawn and continually recrossing my legs to prevent them from welding themselves together because of the heat, I heaved a sigh of relief. I was happy, excited. I was sitting at a very crooked picnic table on the grounds of my moms new pre kindergarten program. It was a beautiful albeit sticky hot July day, and I had tagged along because I couldn't stand to sit one more day in the house and check my email every five seconds. Her new classroom is a small white farmhouse building, clapboard sided, and inside is her usual enchanting kindergarten world. Even I am continually enchanted by the materials in jars, baskets and on trays displayed in the art center: bits of tissue paper, metallic shells, sequins, clear plastic, twigs, stones, paints in every color of the rainbow, yarn, packaging recycled and cut into workable bits for gluing, stringing together: a virtual limitless playground for the imagination. And now that I know I'm heading back to Munich to try my own hand at Kindergartening, I was soaking it all up like a sponge.

I brought my things down to the wooden picnic table by the pond and spread the glossy books out on the table: science for preschoolers, designing a learning environment, mudpies to magnets and every array of children's education books. Armed with post-its, I paged through the idea-filled pages, marking ideas I planned to photocopy for my own personal teachers portfolio. Next year would be an experiment, but I knew I would enjoy it. Getting up at 6am will take some getting used to, but having the experience of both working with children and indulging my passion for languages while living in the city of my dreams with my boyfriend who I love, within hours of the places that lie closest to my heart after my Pittsburgh home: Padova, Italy, home to my 4 month study abroad adventure, Vienna, Austria, home to Hundertwasser, my favorite artist, Spain, the start of my adventures abroad, and hemmed in by countries and lands yet unknown to me: Prague in the Czech Republic, the entire north of Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium, Greece in the south: the possibilities were endless. Plus, within a small radius of Munich, the opportunities for adventure seemed endless: mountain hikes, lake-dotted bike tours, local festivals, ancient churches, and that infectious European spirit that seemed to have stuck to me.

But now I was home. In humble Pittsburgh. My friends are: all over the place. Chicago, Washington, California, Boston.. almost none here. My days have been spent cleaning out the terrifying chaos that was my closet, reorganizing my room, cuddling with our pet pug, and catching up on law and order reruns. And waiting for Artur. My almost 7-month boyfriend is coming to visit me in less than 4 days now, his first trip to the US and my first experience introducing a boyfriend to my parents. And the waiting is killing me. Not only am I used to not being apart from him for more than a day at a time, but so much has happened to both of us since I left: I have been reintegrating myself into my old home, and he has moved to a new apartment, made travel arrangements and attended to a lot of little life details. The process of our reunion in MY country and his visit with MY family made me excited but also slightly nervous. Would he like it? Would it be fun? Would the revealing of my "mystery" life at home take away some of my mystique (did I have mystique in the first place?) Well, we would see pretty soon. Until then, I was working on whiling away the days.

The unending nostalgia the accompanied my return from Italy was certainly relatively absent from my visit here, which I attested to the knowledge that I would be heading back at the end of August. I also hoped it was a good sign: a sign that I thought of Germany not as some interesting specimen of a foreign culture, but as my new home. Paging through a picture book the other night, I did feel the reassuring pangs of longing for my new found dwelling place. Of course, my experience this next year would be completely different. Germany would no longer be experienced as a part of a "cultural immersion experience, but rather as a component of my much more "daily" life. Work would be every day, 7:30 to 2, I would have to live from that money:pay my rent, buy food, furnish my apartment. I was looking forward to it more than anything. Plus, I had my own space, a room in a two bedroom apartment in the center of Munich, right near the river and a beautiful church, shared with an apartment mate from..where else...Italy! I had taken it as a sign when I noticed that the walls on the way from the subway stop were decorated with an imitation Hundertwasser mural, made by a local kindergarten.

And the waiting for Artur was getting more tolerable. He had been relatively stressed out by his move (prompted by the relatively intolerable behavior of his 50 year old alcoholic, unemployed roommate), and now that that was taken care of, he seemed (at least through email and phone calls) to be relatively relaxed and getting excited about the trip, even going to the bank and changing his money into dollars. A few hurdles remained, however: the flight, with a nail biting 1 hour layover time in Milan before boarding the plane to New York, a short stay on the floor of the tiny Manhattan apartment of a fellow program student in Munich this year, Christy, and then the short hop of a flight from JFK to Pittsburgh which had taken me last week because of JFKs horrible organizational problems more than 7 hours, including 4 hours sitting on the runway in the loaded airplane. But it would all work out somehow, at anyways, we had been through similarly complicated things before.

But because my computer is becoming as sun baked as my scalp, I am off to seek refuge in the air conditioned confines of my mother's wonderland, and then to happy hour and frozen cosmopolitans with my mom, to muse and dream of our new and exciting years ahead. Until then...

and in the end...

2006-07-12T11:35:00.000+02:00

the time is a flying/and I will be flying/ on monday back to america/ im scared but excited/ but mostly excited/ because im coming back here/ but until I leave/ I have much too much to do/ packing and baking and parties on the river/ pushing trees through the city/ big giant festivals/ fun fun fun.

The way it looks now

2006-06-01T18:37:00.000+02:00

I found out yesterday that I am being offered a job at a biligual kindergarten in Munich! (http://www.lerchennest.de/indexe.html) This is fantastic news because 1) it's a full time job, with full benefits and a guaranteed salary, plus insurance and basically all the rights a normal german citizen would get and 2) this place is really cool, and i am excited to try my hand at something this new and exciting! A pro and con is that my hours are 7:30-2 daily, which is a realllllyyyy early time to have to be there, but being done at 2 is also pretty great. I am currently in the process of working through the paperwork with the kindergarten to get my work visa and residence permit, but it's looking good. I also have an apartment which according to all my munich friends is amazing, in a fantastic place and really cheap—which I didnt quite know when I found it, but now i am pretty excited about.

And I will also be teaching business english classes to adult professionals a few evenings a week, to try to haul myself out of the debt hole from northwestern and/or give me some extra cash to travel around with. Plus, the school is fantastic and they are offering to pay to certify all the trainers under the „Common European Foreign Language Exam" which is exciting. Plus I am currently discussing a possible very part time position on a project with the group where I am doing my internship now, Green City. They are planning some environmental projects with Italy and I obviously am a good resource in this case, with both knowledge and language, plus anything to do with italy makes me really happy =)

Soo...things are looking really good. I am actually planning on booking my ONE WAY ticket back to munich tonight, then things will pretty much be set. I have a fantastic boyfriend named Artur (picture on his birthday, homemade crown!) who is coming to the US in August and will be traveling around with me to my various reunions and peanut butter buying missions.

My exact schedule is the following:

US: July 17th-August 24th

The weather in Munich is...cold. It was warm, for a little but, but now it is cold again, which makes me want to whine but then I look out the window at the mountains and I think ok, if this is the punishment for living with an alpine view then I guess I can stand it, as long as it EVENTUALLY gets warm. I am going with artur to his parents house this weekend in the mountains and we just hear that it snowed six inches today. Ayayay, and we were planning to go hiking...maybe sledding would be a better idea.

I was however in Florence for the weekend at a Unterwasser Hockey tournament and the weather was FABULOUS (35 degrees Celsius) we drove down from munich, a beautiful drive in itself through the mountains and then down through tuscany, and we camped and had and amazing view of the city and played in an outdoor pool. So my memorial day weekend was actually quite similar to yours, only mine involved pasta and not hamburgers, and wayyy more snorkels.

Florence Team!!!

2006-05-14T11:49:00.000+02:00

because i can =)

2006-05-14T10:08:00.000+02:00

here

is where I will live

here and here and here and here and here

is where I will work

wahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

my life in a suitcase

2006-04-25T16:08:00.000+02:00

Wheels, heels, flippers. Bathing suit, yoga pants, sports bra. Grey suit, resume, two budweiser beers. Pijamas. Running shoes, tshirt. Underwater hockey stick, towel, sweatshirt. Just packing my normal bag for a normal trip to work.

Monday morning. I have so much stuff I can barely ride my bike to the train station, the bike basket is brimming with sporting equipment and corporate attire. The plan: to work. Then, to Artur at work to leave my mounds of stuff with him. Then, to yoga class. Then, to blade night. Then, to Arturs, then job interview at 10am, then press action at 1pm in Marienplatz: soccer game between the renewable energies and the radioactive elements. It's just another day in the life...

Yoga class! A challenge for my german anatomy knowledge. Blade night! A marvel.

15,000 Münchners, rollerblading 15 km through the city, streets blocked off to car traffic, and I work at the group that runs the thing! We float by cafes, roll down Leopolstraße, can smell roasting Hops from the various breweries, and have to watch out for the tram tracks. I love this city.

A perfect prelude to my job interview in the morning—a gateway to stay! Job interview! Fantastic. I am basically hired, and can start right away teaching a sort of test course after I get trained. I can earn a bit of money right away and see if I like it enough to do it full time when I come back in September. Plus, I have two more interviews on Friday.

Marienplatz! Where the glockenspiel is...if you know anything about munich this is probably what you picture, if it's not beer and lederhosen. I helped the work colleagues carry the various protest items, and then took the train there—a sunny, spectacular day. Artur was already there, in the line of regally yellow rikshahs...that's right, I am dating a rikshah driver =) Could my life get any better?He took me on a short ride around the center, and then feeling already pretty cool, I headed to the protest. To commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we did a „soccer game" between the „renewable energy" and „nuclear power". Needless to say, the renewables won and it was fun to sit in marienplatz for two hours and watch soccer players from my office goof around

Flipperybladeyenvirorikschahridinhappygoluckyineuropelivingjoyjoyjoy

Bud...weis...errrrrr....

2006-04-24T11:35:00.000+02:00

There was a river, and there was budweiser, but there were no frogs. Although there were strange creatures with webbed feet, glossy eyes, odd plastic breathing appendages, and bizarre wooden sticks clasped by silicone encased hands. The sounds to be heard were the oddly extraterrestrial and deeply marine noises of churning water, grunts of struggle, and an occasional odd metal clanging.

The Unterwasserhockey tournament had come to Budweis, Czech Republic. Teams from Croatia, Slovena, Belgium, Poland and Germany met up to compete in the world's most absurd sport. And as I would soon learn, also one of the most dangerous. The Munich team toughed its way through 5 twenty-minute long brutal losses to highly skills teams from eastern and northern europe. I got battered by flippers, brutalized by pucks, pinned to the wall, the ground, strained my wrist, can't really use my mouse any more, and have more bruises than I can count...it was wonderful.

The sun shined the whole day, and in between each brutal beating, we would take a break on the balcony overlooking the river flowing through this ancient colorful town, eating a banana or two, refueling ourselves with short naps in the sun to prepare for the next slaughterfest. And after it was all over, we opened our warm-welcome-present budweiser beers (the real, czech variety) and celebrated our survival.

What we weren't quite prepared for was the party. Yearning for our sleeping bags-on top of-czech-probably-sweatcovered-gym mats in a soviet area gymnastic hall, we trudged on to the after party and award ceremony, hungry and beaten yet glisteningly exhuberant. A veritable united nations of the unterwasserhockey world-- french being translated to german being explained in english to a czech player, polish being spoken to the attractive czech waitress in hopes of a date, broken italian trying to cross the french-english border, flemish, slovenian, croation, and beer. We received our 6^th place award graciously, tossed beer coasters, danced to the hungarian heavy metal band, and ordered extravagant icecream sundaes, wowed at the non-euro prices. As we trudged home in the rain, across the bridge that shuddered as we crossed it, past the romancing couples in the park, the factory near our gym-hotel that seemed to produce mostly steam, through the old-tire-paradise-gokart-park, and then collapsed on our mats under the swinging rings and ropes, I thought...this is what Mark Twain meant when he said „Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.“

ribbit ribbit...

A crowded noisy party with my best and biggest dreams

2006-04-20T16:27:00.000+02:00

Two! Two! I have two job interviews! They're with two different language schools, which in itself is exciting, but additionally they both have world-wide focuses and would give me the chance to take translating classes, other languages, keep up my italian...wow, the opportunities are endless. Hopefully these interviews go well, the one thing we be seeing if they are willing to promise me a job so much in advance, but it could be the case that I could work at both schools. And then if i could get some of this type of experience under my belt, I could really work anywhere! Experience teaching English, maybe master another language, maybe get training to be a translator..then go to grad school and get a masters in development work or somethinf of the sort, and then..go! I really feel like this is one big qualification that's missing for me, some hard core teaching experience. And I could really build up a cool life here! Teaching, being a counselor for a kids english camp on the side, doing environmental work and volunteering, maybe spending my free time trying to put together a project between the veneto and bayern... wow. Cool, the future is looking bright again.. I feel like all I ever need is a jump start and then I'm off...ideas ideas ideas.

What else..I'll let my mind run. I could do this for a while and see how I like it and what direction it takes me in, of course taking advantage of any educational opportunities that come my way (wouldn't it be great to take free language courses!? Spanish! French! Portuguese! Then I'll have the qualification as a teacher plus the ability to speak new languages, and some really important working with people skills, as well as particularly organizational ones. And then..well who knows. A masters program in Germany, in the US...maybe I could look into Rotary again, or maybe all of this will lead me to a logical subject for a big research project for a Fulbright or just for fun.

I'm so...I don't know, I guess because I'm reaching the end of the program here I was starting to feel like I was... done? But more like not wanted, or not qualified, or something. Maybe because I haven't had a new job every three months like in the U.S. And I finally made it here, to Europe, and I love it, and dammit, I want to stay but of course it's not that easy... so it's exciting to feel like maybe there is some hope, more because then I feel like it is really true what I believe, that if you really want to do something you can really do it. My optimism can live!

It's so sunny here, it's finally spring, I'm going to Budweis in the Czech Republic this weekend to play unterwasser hockey and my co worker gave me a bike so now I have a bike in the city too and monday is my first yoga class and first blade night and the next week is full of job interviews and meetings and I love it when my life is so crowded with wonderful exciting diverse things, it's like being at a party filled with all your friends who are all so different from eachother but you love them all, and it's a bit crowded but every time you turn around you see a different smile, hear a different voice, are challenged in a new way, reminded of your different passions.

WAHOO!!

tadddaaaa

2006-04-05T12:18:00.000+02:00

And the following note from Artur:

and today....

2006-04-04T15:16:00.000+02:00

a treck to olympia swim hall from work. 6.76 Kilometers (if i don't get lost) a true test for my sense of direction (it's just north, emily!!! follow the giant television antennae!!)

and then, an evening of unterwasserhockey

but i'm not walking back to feldafing...

solar musings

2006-04-04T11:04:00.000+02:00

The sun makes me so happy. Anyone who knows me, understands that on a sunny day, I can't stay inside. A pull of obligation floats me out the door, to pursue whatever activity I had planned somewhere in the sun. Essay writing on the lawn with my laptop, textbook reading, knitting, listening to music, singing, yoga, sleeping—and then the more absurd—organizing my desk (yes, I have actually brought my belongings outside to do this), job applications, heck, I've even considered showering (bucket, deserted patch of grass...) When the weather is nice, the things around me that usually fill me with a muted joy when it's cold out (hey pretty building brr snowy wind hey nice tree ahh my hands are freezing off have to get inside cute bundled up baby ahh i want to be wrapped in a down sleeping bag in a cozy stroller too...) absolutely emanate joy, especially because I actually have time to appreciate them. It's a fantastic feeling, to practically explode with joy because a tree is beautiful. Yeah yeah yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, right? I mean no one is so cheery all the time, and if they are then they are just annoying. Right? I guess the flipside is the ephemerality of it all. My prophets, the Beatles, have quite a bit to say on this front: here comes the sun, it's alright, all things must pass all things must pass away live and let die but tomorrow may rain so i'll follow the sun.

And now it's warm here. And although it hailed yesterday, it looks like it's pretty much here to stay, and that we're about to experience and explosion of green and lawns and sunbathing and waterbathing and a few of my absolute favorite things. And here it is. It's one long stretch of sunlight and I don't even have anymore bitter cold weather to numb my passions for this city before I leave, it'll happen in the heat and height of it all. But as they say, better to leave loving it and not wanting to leave than to leave gladly.

I am currently completing a puzzle of the Matterhorn. I already put together the hut and the two hiking people and the border and now I have the sky and the mountain and the grass—those indistinguishable hard parts. Yesterday I worked on it for an hour and got two pieces. I guess just as you think the picture is becoming clearer, it's the final details that turn out to be much more complicated than you thought. I joked with my host family over dinner yesterday that if I don't finish the puzzle before I leave, I'll have to come back. The metaphorical connotations of such a statement abound. In fact, enough metaphors for today, I'm supposed to be reading the bicycle stand plan for Munich. Vorradklemmen, Anlehnbuegel...I never knew I would learn the technical terms for bicycle stands in German (I don't even know them in English!!)

And now I'm off to enjoy my sunny day as it should be enjoyed...moment for moment.

And now, a smile:

Q: Did you hear about the guy who stayed up all night just to see where the sun went?

A: Then it dawned on him.

ahahahahaha

spiderwoman

2006-04-03T14:31:00.000+02:00

The days are longer, the flowers are out. My scenery is constantly changing, and the city feels suddenly like a new place. And yet, my co worker still whistles jingle bells are work. Have you all seen the movie „fallen“? It's about a devil, that lives inside people, who always sings „time is on your side“ by the rolling stones. And when someone carrying the devils bumps into another person on the street, that persons starts to whistle or sing the song. Yesterday, on our way home from a fantastically relaxing evening in a heated outdoor pool, artur and I were whistling a tune, and as we approached his new apartment door, a man walking towards us picked it up and whistled along. I cant remember anymore if it was Sousa's „Stars and Stripes Forever“ or Darth Vader's imperial march (frequent performances of ours) but caught on quickly, and before we knew it, our friend was following us into Artur's apartment building—apparently he lived there too. The whistling didnt outlast our smiling, of course, because just like sneezing with your eyes opened, whistling and smiling just dont work simulteneously. Whistling and smiling while sneezing might be worth a try, however... Our third instrument left us as he trecked to his fourth floor apartment and we entered Artur's on the third, but there was that residual feeling of a funny, unspoken connection. Like those little strings of spider web that invisibly crisscross paths in the woods in the morning and catch in your face before you can see them, little delicate connections form constantly between people and people, people and animals, people and billboards in the train. And in my more-self-reverted form, that inner reflection euphoria that a bit of language confusion and cultural amazment brings, I feel virtually webbed in, new strings being formed each time we walk away and break the old ones. A successfully coaxed smile out of a fellow grumpy ubahn rider, a door held, a baby smile, a tail wag... or the surprising visit from two obviously romantic ducks to the heated pool last night at 11pm, drawn not only by the warm water but also probably sensing the otherworldy human romantic pull of lighted steaming water and a crescent moon... Slowly but surely, I am webbing myself in here, zapping connections like spider man here and there, to that beautiful fountain, that baby with the banana, the alps and my book and my nap and the funny upsidown swan, and they zap back, with a smile, a quack, a splash, a magnetic kiss.

the stupidest, dummest, no goodest very baddest day...

2006-03-14T14:08:00.000+01:00

sleeping through alarm
can opener
meeting mixup
computer off
finger in wipes thing

and iraq, after three years...

2006-03-14T13:12:00.000+01:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Police found at least 72 bodies killed by gunfire in Baghdad in the past 24 hours -- a gruesome wave of apparent sectarian reprisal attacks in some of the capital's most dangerous neighborhoods, officials said Tuesday.

The bloodshed -- the second wave of mass killings in Iraq since bombers destroyed an important Shiite shrine last month -- followed weekend attacks in a teeming Shiite slum in which 58 people died and more than 200 were wounded.

The American deaths brought the number of U.S. military members killed to at least 2,308 since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

a deadly irony...

2006-03-14T12:58:00.000+01:00

A top toxicologist in the Netherlands said Monday that he believed that Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader, had been manipulating medication to fake a medical condition, a ploy that contributed to his ill heath and may have played a role in the heart attack that caused his death.

2006-03-07T23:31:00.000+01:00

ok. at some point here i crossed an un-recrossable-bridge into the land of really living in this city, really speaking german 95% of the time, really working, really practically being a daughter. It's slightly disorienting, more than I thought it would be. In Italy, I loved being there, and it grew on me every day, but i felt myself constantly saying "wow, i'm in italy, i'm a foreigner in italy, i'm constantly talking about how i'm a foreigner and people ask me why im here and i am conspicious with my blonde hair and unsure attitude and lack of wine knowledge." But here...I forget. I forget that I don't belong, and i guess that may be because I do. I mean, I think I belong here more than practically anywhere else I've ever lived!

In Pittsburgh, I have my family. I have my dogs. I have my friends. I can drive from my house to my friend's houses, and get only occasionally lost. I've been to most of the museums. But I have this constant feeling that I want out. That it's only temporary, and that feeling didn't just start when i started living there only a few months out of the year because i was at college the rest of the time. I've almost always had a vague sense that Pittsburgh would not be my final home, or at least not my 20-30something home. I think since the first time my dad explained to me what college was, and that I could go anywhere I want for college. The doors were flung open, and even my 6-year-old-mind was long gone.

In Chicago, I have my College days. My University. My lake. The animal shelter, the concrete university library, the keg, the parties, the lecture halls and the walk down sheridan avenue. My evening yoga classes, my happy trecks senior year up those wooden steps to cook dinner and chat the night away with my 4 fantastic senior year roommates. My memories of days with friends and studying and riding the el into the city to work and be a tourist. But I never really lived in Chicago, and even last year when I finally got a real taste of the city, as a 21-year old who could FINALLY check out some bars and during my work on the nitty gritty west side at CCGT, it still was just a place I visited. And I always felt alienated from Evanston, from that strange mix of spectacular to the point of disgusting lakeside homes and the depressing high density of homeless men and women that populated the yuppie streets. The most at home I ever felt was when I was sitting by the shore of the lake, but even that was alienating, because I felt strangely alone in my heart filling admiration of the crashing waves, the sand, the seagull with the twizzler, the Ba'hai Temple and my secret bay of baots, my rollerblading destination, my escape to the tunes of badly drawn boy and the beatles. It was exactly that, that feeling of empty elation, that the things I loved so much about the place, no one really understood.

And then there's Washington, another one of the places that I feel I can rightly call home. Born right outside of the city limits, I returned summer after summer to soak up the tropical jungle heat and the airconditioned intern culture. I loved the paul simon walk to work, mathematical in its execution, down 21st, up M, to 25th and M on the border of Foggy Bottom and Georgetown, whistling along to "me and julio down by the schoolyard" loud enough so that everyone in business suits would stare at me, even though I was in a business suit too. I adored cooking in that tiny kitchen, where you actually had to stand outside of the kitchen because it was so small, and that tiny room with the three beds, and my roommates, the incomprehensible one from Wyoming and the darling Sejal Shah from Texas. And the balmy nichts on the national mall, and the delivering letters to congressmen and loving every minute of checking out the decorations in each and every office, and my shock the first time I saw Senator Stevens of Alaska's horrendous bearskin wallcovering. And my runs...my runs from 21st and H to the Jefferson memorial, and then sitting in that concrete coolness dripping sweat and staring at the tourists and thinking I LIVE here that's why im sitting here, so hot and tired because i jogged here because i live here! I jog past the white house and the world bank and the eisenhower administrative building and the redcross headquarters and that guy who camps outside of the whitehouse to protest nuclear proliferation and the kickball teams that play on the national mall and the lincoln memorial is my neighbor and so is the vietnam memorial. I know the smithsonian inside out, as well as the metro system, because im a commuter and a resident and i live here. Or my jobs when I lived in maryland, with abby. Running around and around the beautiful southern quad, touching the brass turtle on the nose every time around, enjoying the downhills, hating the uphills, and lying in the grass and the end, sweating, breathing hard, listening to my dixie chicks and thinking "i was born to be a fish, not a runner" And the cat that clawed me awake in the morning, that dragged me out of my bed in the brutal heat to shower and breakfast and walk the 20 minuetes to the subway only to find my fancy work clothes soaked with sweat by the time i got there, but so happy to read the metro section of the washington post, race the crossword with abby, and get out at Chinatown and take the elevator up to the fancy greenpeace usa office with the pioneerlike display at the entrance. The lunchtime meetings with senators, the intern events that i repeatedly attended, for the free food, for the company. The thousands of fountains that satisfied my every fountain fantasy, and the feeling of the lincoln memorial at night. This was almost it, I could almost call DC home.

But here, I feel the pull even stronger. I ride the commuter rail like a pro, because i live an hour away from the city. And I await the moment every morning when we'll pull into Starnberg where I can see the lake and finally find out if today is a day where we can see the Alps. And I know which end of the trains will put me closer to the escalator which will take me through the main track area of the main train station in munich, and I can muse over the various possible destinations: rome, paris, berlin, copenhagen. Just like that, I could be off, but the funny part is, I don't want to go. Because just outside those doors there is the doughnut man whose doughnuts are much too small and expensive, there are the discount clothing stores that line the streets, followed by the turkish grocery stores, where I comparison shop for grapefruit, mango, eggplant, olives, feta. There's my airy, renovated industrial office, with goofy environmentalists, 5 of which have red hair. It's on the 4th floor, but it's really on the 5th, because while germans aren't optimists at heart, they are when it comes to numbering the floors, gracing the first floor with the simple "earth story". The trash bins in the kitchen are an essential part of my love for germany, because throwing something away here is a mental excercise. Plastic, paper, metal, biodegradable. The paper can be removed from the plastic yogurt container with the pull of a special tab. The soda bottles go back to the grocery store, so you can get your deposit back. My deposit money rules me life here. Shopping carts require a deposit of one euro. You can buy and carry a specially designed shopping cart deposit token. Lockers are everywhere, as libraries, museums, and any other public place allow no extranous baggage. They require a one or 2 euro deposit, as does the gym. The swimming pool is fantastic, it's in the old olympic stadium and indulges my absurd water fantasies such as underwater hockey, 24 hour swim event and big splash contest. There are entire facilities devoted to sitting, swimming, floating and lounging in pools of water set at various temperatures. There are clubs for everything. There are guides for guides to guides of cultural events. There is old and new and cobblestones and asphalted and shiny tall and short and faded and carved, fountainy, dressing up and christmas market joy eating outside and when its cold for beer gardens then blankets for you and radio news every hour. And a tolerance for run on sentences that the english language cannot (normally) accomodate.

But I really think what keeps someone somewhere is a combination of a feeling that the place suits them, and a feeling of place with the people who comprise their experience there. And here, I feel like I have it all.

Thank you for indulging my trip down memory lane...

3 feet of snow in march

2006-03-05T23:03:00.000+01:00

okidoki artichoki

2006-02-09T19:56:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I haven't written for a while, and even when I have written it's been a bit half-assed. Sorry. But as I mentioned before, usually when I don't write it doesn't mean that nothing is happening, instead it means that LOTS is happening. And this is once again the case.

1) I've started my praktikum! It's fantastic...laid back but fun work, good practice, nice people, challenging but not too challenging. I'm planning a sustainable mobility festival, working on the bike campaign and working on another event for kids and public transit. I'm still getting adjusted to waking up early every day, but it's really nice to have a schedule.

2) The Steelers won the Superbowl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm still a bit in shock that they FINALLY win and I'm in Germany. But it was a pretty fantastic/unique experience nonetheless. I had a party and then watched the game and a packed bar in the company of some real live pittsburghers and the world's best freshly minted polish-german steelers fan there is. More on this character later... Needless to say, going to work the next day on two hours of sleep was no cake walk, and I found it rather laughable that the pittsburgh school children got two hour delays but got nothing for watching a superbowl that BEGAN at midnight. I really think the consulate should have granted us some sort of amnesty.

3) Right. So I don't really know the etiquitte for introducing someone to my blog-reading public who I know is also reading this. Hmmmm. Damn it, why does he have to speak such good english? Maybe the best way is with a large dose of sarcasm. So there's this guy. His name is Artur and we hang out every now and then (HA) get along alright (HA HA) and sometimes have fun together (HA HA HA) and he was a terrible steelers fan (HA HA HA HA). Ok, those are pretty much all lies. We hang out a ridiculous amount, get along fantastically, have fun doing the most inane of things and he is the best non-pittburgher-steelers fan i've ever seen. And he made a terrible towel written in polish. These are the things that charm me, folks, taking notes? ;-)

So the last week has been pretty much comprised of working and hanging out with Artur, with a shockingly small amount of time logged at my host family's house, much to my and my host mother's regret, so that's why i'm sitting at the kitchen table right now writing in my blog... hmmm....

Oh, and yesterday my watch battery ran out, causing me to think it was an hour earlier than it was, miss my train, and marvel at the fact that i've had a watch for so long without losing it that it needs a new battery. I'm growing up! ;-)

among the appalling

2006-02-09T14:23:00.000+01:00

Censoring Truth

New York Times February 9, 2006

The Bush administration long ago secured a special place in history for the audacity with which it manipulates science to suit its political ends. But it set a new standard of cynicism when it allowed NASA's leading authority on global warming to be mugged by a 24-year-old presidential appointee who, quite apart from having no training on that issue, had inflated his résumé.

In early December, James Hansen, the space agency's top climate specialist, called for accelerated efforts to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming. After his speech, he told Andrew C. Revkin of The Times, he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for aggressive action.

This was not the first time Dr. Hansen had been rebuked by the Bush team, which has spent the better part of five years avoiding the issue of global warming. It was merely one piece of a larger pattern of deception and denial.

The administration has sought to influence the policy debate by muzzling the people who disagree with it or — as was the case with two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and 2003 — editing out inconvenient truths or censoring them entirely.

In this case, the censor was George Deutsch, a functionary in NASA's public affairs office whose chief credential appears to have been his service with President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee. On his résumé, Mr. Deutsch claimed a 2003 bachelor's degree in journalism from Texas A&M, but the university, alerted by a blogger, said that was not true. Mr. Deutsch has now resigned.

The shocker was not NASA's failure to vet Mr. Deutsch's credentials, but that this young politico with no qualifications was able to impose his ideology on other agency employees. At one point, he told a Web designer to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang.

As Dr. Hansen observed, Mr. Deutsch was only a "bit player" in the administration's dishonest game of politicizing science on issues like warming, birth control, forest policy and clean air. This from a president who promised in his State of the Union address to improve American competitiveness by spending more on science.

CREDIT AND ALL THAT JAZZ: NEW YORK TIMES INC.

and tomorrow...

2006-02-04T23:36:00.000+01:00

Smiling Alone

2006-02-03T14:24:00.000+01:00

If there's one book that was referenced more than any other during my career as a polical science student at Northwestern, it was most certainly Robert Putnam's „Bowling Alone“, a theory-based case study of American society and the recent decline of „social capital“ which exists in the form of social organizations, PTAs, quilting societies and...bowling nights. The idea is that the more people hung out, the more social ties they had, and these social ties functioned as a sort of currency...they could find jobs more easily, had help in times of need, were happier, healthier, and generally „richer.“

Really the only reason I've been thinking about this book is because the phrase „Smiling Alone“ has been running through my head because, well, that's what I've been doing (more explanation soon) and, well, it sounds like the book title. But as I think about it more and more, I realize that Putnam's description of the lone bowler in a nearly empty neighborhood bowling alley as a well-adapted metaphor for much of my lonesome smiling activities. Engaging in an activity that's usually done in the presence of others, where continual smiling/bowling is supported by the group, where laughing and cheering is encouraged, group bowling/smiling is even a good first date activity!...the big difference is that bowling is a lot louder and requires a lot more skill. But wait, smiling alone is more infectious, more a cause of general cheer than that lonesome bowler. At least in my experience...

The number one cause of solitary simpering, at least in my case, is the presence of cute, goofy, funny-looking, sleeping, or even completely normal looking dogs or babies on the train. The subway is just such an apersonal atmosphere, but the dogs and babies don't know the rules yet! They stare you down, lick your feet, giggle, eat things off the subway floor, and generally break all the (oh so german) rules of subway personal-space etiquitte. Another related cause is people making faces, jingling keys, talking to, babywaving, petting, playing with or otherwise communicating with these furry/juvenile creaturtes, especially when the respective parents/owners don't seem very happy about it. Also related to the baby theme, especially grin-provoking are small children using what to me seem like absurdly complicated grammatical structures: seperable prefix verbs, subjunctive clauses, genitive possession, all in German! The mother toungue is a marvelous thing.

And then there are those instances that are just too notable to not react to. Those times where you think, I wish there was someone else here who could understand the irony/absurdity/hilarity/tragedy of this situation. There was the time that I found myself with my entire unterwasserhockey equipment, most notably with my flippers and snorkel poking out of my bag, sitting next to a man carrying his surfboard on the subway, in January. There was the man in complete bavarian dress talking on a payphone in Marienplatz. And then there are the people who make you smile because you're making up stories about them in your head to try to understand their behavior, like maybe the crazy businessman who threw the entire contents of his briefcase into the fish fountain and slowly watched them sink just gave up all his worldly possessions and is moving to the Canary Islands. And then there are the little things: funny advertisements, silly hats, people speaking english next to me who think i can't understand, cool houses, views of the alps, congregations of birds floating on lake starnberg, sunrises, sunsets, perfect songs, and of course, there's the smiling alone that comes from thinking of a particularly sappy romantic moment that gets you smiling inspite of yourself.

All I can say is, smiling alone turns out to be an excellent solitary activity, but you won't find me in a bowling alley without at least a couple of other people, namely so no one notices that i only use the 8 pound balls... Mini golf however, I might be able to tolerate solo. Now, i'm off to listen to some Lyle Lovett...

This calls for some blatantly teenagerey internet behavior:
:-) ;-) =) :-P

there, now i'm not alone :-D

2006-01-28T18:58:00.000+01:00

krynn1010 (6:49:23 PM): in germany
krynn1010 (6:49:36 PM): where you play hockey under water and save the world

i love you kate =)

City Mouse, Country Mouse

2006-01-27T18:22:00.000+01:00

Childhood books often provide striking analogies to real life. In this case, I'm feeling a schizophrenic congruence with the book "city mouse and country mouse," the tragic rather romeo-and-juliet- for-children tale of two mice friends who just can't seem to get past their anthropological differences. In my case, however, i'm half city and half country (A little bit country and a little bit rock and roll...?)
and instead of bringing fights and disagreements over cow milking and fast car driving, this odd duality brings me a butter-churn-full of satisfaction.

Munich is, like most European cities, bustlingly urban but also quaintly nostalgic. It has all the suited-cell-phoned-workers, late-night-discos, and ecclectic metropolitan flair you could want, complete with the occasional tragic infringement of the all so american-urban-accoutrements: mcdonalds, starbucks, and loud, bright colored advertising, written almost entirely in (if rather misused) english. But of course, there are also the narrow cobblestones roads and fading frescoed facades, the regal and intricate churches, patinaed fountains, commemorative statues, and bustling marketplaces that reminds us of Munich's humble pastoral beginnings as an outpost for monks. And there are huge swaths of green, rolling hilled parks with trickling rivers (even the occasional nude sunbather), tumbling waterfalls, daring surfers, natural and articifial lakes, the river Isar which meanders through the city like a sneaky but peaceful blue and green caterpillar.

Really, in Munich, I don't miss open spaces, because there seem to be plenty. It's no Chicago (or Pittsburgh, even), no skyscraper jungle where you only see the sky if you happen to stand in the middle of the road long enough without getting hit by a speeding car to look down the long line of buildings to a small and distant swatch of blue. It is, in fact, quite beautiful in Chicago to witness the genius of the directionally oriented city, when the sun as it sets aligns itself perfectly with the East-West streets and shines blindingly but beautifully directly down that clausterphobic alley of glass. But that is an exception, for in America, the city is usually suffocating. But here, I feel rather at peace with my surroundings, with the pleasant mix between old and new, busy and boring, shiny and crumbling. Which is why I am always so shocked when I step out the back door of my house in Feldafing.

Feldafing has a population of 4,000, but is essentially a suburb of Munich, although the word suburb lacks the necessary romance and brings to mind cul-de-sacs, SUVs and street names which have all decided disgustingly to have a theme, like "shooting star way," "neil armstrong alley" and "moon rock road." No, it's not like that, it's a beautiful little town on a spectacular lake with villas, winding roads, old churches, and a general cozy charm. And it's really in the country. I live on the "outskirts" which means about as far from the lake as you can get. It means that when I sit at the dining room table I'm looking at a giant field, a forest, and quite often a family of deer. When I walk into this (what is now a) vast whiteness with the family labrador retriever, I feel like I'm Peter in Ezra Jack Keat's "Snowy Day," like Polly and Digory stepping through the Wardrobe in C.S. Lewis's "Narnia", the little boy in the wordless "The Snowman" by Raymond Briggs". In other words, it's like a childhood fairytale.

Benni and I have taken many a long walk through magical forests, over white fields, and through frozen creek beds. We've tracked geese over hills, rabbits under fences, and deer across frozen ponds. I've been overwhelmed by the sensation of being surrounded by thousands of footprints in the snow, none of which belonged to a human being but my own, and totally awed by the breathtaking view of the alps silloutted by the setting sun. I fetch cheese, milk, and eggs from the neighboring farm, and watch neighbors transport themselves on horses, cross country skis and wooden tabbogans. I'm Davy Crockett! Tarzan's Jane! Aldo Leopold!

But wait. How can this be? I love the city, I love the rough edge, the action, dancing till 5am, watching my purse, riding the crowded subway, being a part of the throbbing mass of the working, the unemployed, the rich, the poor, the foreigners, the bavarians, the kind, the rude, the children, the grandparents, the whole messy soup of humanity. But I also love the peace of nature, the totally silent moments with just me, the dog, the geese and the trees (hey, they don't call me a treehugger for nothing).

Why did I bring this up, after all? In the last week I've been back and forth between "home" in Feldafing and "the city", Munich, and I've realized how much I love both worlds. It could just be my love for ambiguity and contrast (what hippie-liberal-eurofetishfull-treehugger loves the NFL and the Steelers with such fervor?) but I've come to the conclusion that I'm more than happy to house both city and country mouse in mousey-housey-harmony.