i'm back

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

The Mountain Show

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...

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

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

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

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

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.