The Thoughts of JT

The blog still lives. Updates soon.

After all, the adventures don't stop just because I forget to post.

4th of July

We are now going to try describing the 4th of July in Germany, as celebrated by expatriates.

There is a lot of Budweiser, although its the original Budweiser, from somewhere in Eastern Europe.
There is a lot of rock and roll, although its the Beatles.
There are hamburgers, although each hamburger costs 2 euros ($2.50).
There are hot dogs, although mostly bratwurst.
There are Germans watching in awe as the Americans show their national pride in a strange way, although ironically they're all in Deutschland football uniforms, waiting for the game to start.

Overall, the experience was surreal. There were 20 or so Americans gathered together, in a strange amalgam of unity amongst a group of people who have little in common beyond nationality and rarely congregate in larger groups.

But the strange European 4th of July experience didn't stop there. My little cohort made the mistake of inviting a Norweigan, and more importantly putting him in charge of procuring our food. We have learned, definatively, that one does not put a Norweigan in charge of buying food for a barbeque, particularly when the Norweigan in question has reservations about touching raw meat. There was some consteration when, upon opening his grocery bag, we discovered that our dear friend Nikolai had, in fact, purchased premade, frozen cheeseburgers. Not just frozen hamburger patties, but frozen burgers, with buns and cheese, ready for the microwave.

We were going to forgive Nick this odd selection until we read the ingredients list. There was, in fact, no hamburger in our hamburgers. Instead the patties were 70% pork. As for what made up the other 30% of the burger, our German isn't good enough for us to know, and frankly we probably don't want to know.

We grilled them nonetheless. Only a few of us dared to try them, but I did, and was hungry enough (and brave enough) to eat a second. The only way I can describe these...things... is as a pork mcnugget on a sesame-seed roll.

After the picnic we adjurned to a television to watch dubbed American television. While I doubt I would understand the Gilmore Girls in English, Dr House and Law and Order translate pretty well. Although I will, at some point, have to write a short post about German "Law and Order" rip-offs.

The World Cup

Some of this might be repetition of previous posts, but bear with me.

They have this sport in Europe that they call ‘football’, and, unlike the sport we Americans are used to, kicking the ball with your foot is something the majority of players (and not just a guy on the special team’s roster) actually do. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

And there is definitely a bit of fanaticism regarding the sport. Every game is widely watched, no matter who is playing, and every German seems to want to see their national team play. When the games start the streets clear out; the institute closed their library early Saturday so the staff could watch, to the irritation of the American students. Few US Olympic teams have ever had this sort of national support.

Watching the rallies that happen after a victory is quite the experience. Unlike the Patriots and Red Sox rallies in Boston, there is simply a large group of people who show up because they’re genuinely excited that their country won, and who cause almost no damage, at least thus far. Yesterday several hundred people gathered in the marktplatz to celebrate a win over Sweden in the second round; in response to which the Gottingen police had six guys (better armed than usual, to be sure, in that they had guns) one street away to manage the crowd. Last night’s victory party was early, around 7pm, so fewer people were drunk than at a few of the others, although many people show up with a beer in each fist: one open, one in reserve. Some guys show up with a whole case, carried by two guys and guarded by others.
As they walk down the streets to the marktplatz, chanting all the way, they are easily mistaken for a parade, because the crowd is so huge and so uniformly covered in red, black and yellow. Bedecked in flags, face paint, and other memorabilia in the national colors (including, increasingly, leis), they do the same chants over and over and over, lead by the first people who get there, who camp out atop the city fountain of the goose maiden. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of guys showing up with marching band drums to help keep the beat.
When the Mexicans win their fans show up as well, and the Germans are very good hosts; helping them get their flags atop the fountain and even making room for guys in straw sombreros along the base to help lead the chants.

All in all, its quite the spectacle to see, even the fourth time around.

And Germany is still in the tournament at this point, so I expect much more craziness, if not chaos, before I leave this city.

“Berlin. Berlin. Wir fahren nach Berlin.”

Sauces

A post on the subject of sauce: As has been forever immortalized by one of my colleagues here: “Germans love sauce.”

Three weeks into my trip, when I think of German cuisine it is the sauce that stands out. The main ingredients to their dishes are very basic: generally pork or chicken (and fish on Fridays), with potatoes (but in special circumstances pasta or rice). However the sauces are complex, rich and bold. I have developed the theory that, in Germany to a degree I have not experienced elsewhere, your basic ‘meat and potatoes’ meal is merely the canvas upon which they slather their true culinary creation, their sauces. There is not even an attempt at blending: There is the meal, and then there is the sauce, designed not to enhance but to define it. The Gottingen nudelhaus (aka noodle house) confirms this, in that it takes chicken, pork and four types of pasta and mixes them with different sauces to make 60-odd different dishes, which, while they all sound the same on the menu, are actually fairly unique.
My interest in the place of sauce in the German mindset comes in part by our observations in the cafeteria at the institute. Several of my less bold colleagues often turn down the offered sauces, to the continual shock and dismay of the cooks who serve them, as they seem to take some degree of offense to it. I can only confirm this observation by saying that as the weeks wear on and I steadfastly wrestle with their culinary artistry, I am usually thanked when, being asked if I want an unidentifiable sauce on my noodles, I say ‘bitte’ (please). It is as if I am doing them some honor by being willing to subject myself to sauces the color of which I never associated with foods; from their dark grays (a tuna sauce last Friday) to bright, glowing yellows (my first, a pineapple sauce on chicken that glowed brighter than saffron rice).
A footnote to this love of sauce is a note on the subject of condiments. The fact they slathered three condiments on my fries in Goslar suggests a relationship between sauce and condiment, although I am told that more often than not they merely put ketchup and mayo on their fries, without the mustard. Nevertheless, in the supermarket, 17 of Heinz’s 57 original varieties of sauces and condiments still stand together in solidarity upon the shelf, with several of their brothers and sisters spread out through the store. I had long assumed these creatures to have succumbed to natural selection, but here they seem to have adapted to the European environs, and perhaps even flourished outside of their native North America.

Duderstadt

Saturday we made a trip to the town of Duderstadt, which is yet another reformation-era town; this one even more picturesque than the others… the town wall is almost entirely in place, including the towers. One tower, which the town has adopted as its symbol on many of the tourism brochures they put out, has a tall steeple which actually twists around on itself to an impressive effect. The town is a very small and symmetrical oval, with the central axis being a wide pedestrian-only street that starts at one beautiful church and ends at another even more beautiful church (of which I got no interior pictures, sadly, due to a wedding). This cobblestone street is shadowed for its entire length by meter-wide canal that we think might be an artistic updating of some old sewage system, but now suffers mainly little kids watching sticks that are swept up by the current as it flows to its drainage point, near the aforementioned tower. Being the weekend, in the morning the western end of the main street hosted a very large flower market, with a dozen or so vendors selling a large variety of plants. The whole ‘market day’ thing might be one of my favorite traditions, just because its so cliché ‘old world’-ish.

We went to Duderstadt with the promise of seeing some sort of Highland Games/Medieval Reenactment, and while we did see the opening events, it seemed to us that it just sort of disappeared after these. We found out, after a leisurely lunch and tour of the old council hall, that in fact the games were taking place a bit outside the city, and we would have to walk for an hour, hire a taxi, or wait for a shuttle bus to get there. Unfortunately our bus back to Gottingen would arrive within a few short hours, so seeing the event wasn’t really an option, much to our chagrin. However it was still a very nice day, relaxing in a very beautiful town that I imagine the young folks there find very, very dull.

We still have some question as to the reason for there being ‘Highland games’ in the middle of Germany, as having experienced Germans playing bagpipes in kilts, I can confirm it is slightly surreal.

On another note, I am continuing my culinary adventures by trying a pizza combination I could never have before considered: tomato sauce, salami, mushrooms and a fried egg. It was actually very good. I’m still trying to figure out why.

The pizza was also very filling. The large ice cream concoctions Shannon and I purchased later were underappreciated due to it. For four Euros one could get probably six scoops of ice cream with the greater parts of a watermelon, another melon, an orange and a lemon hanging off the sides of the dish like a collection of elephant ears collected as trophies by a pack of leopards, topped by a large mixture of berries. Shannon tried to order a scoop of ice cream, instead she received the largest sundae at the table.

Goslar

Saturday we took a daytrip to the town of Goslar, an hour north of Gottingen via the slower regional train. It’s a medieval town where every building (except the department store) would fit properly into the 1600s.

The trip was fantastic. The three theology students went with two theology professors and pre-teenage boys belonging to one of aforementioned professors. While their attention-spans and short legs hindered some of our travels (I would have liked to go into the Rothaus, which appeared to have some impressive artwork painted on the paneled walls), they provided ceaseless amusement. There are a lot of bottle caps on the streets of Germany, so when a twelve year old gets it in his head that its funny to ask “Does anybody collect bottle caps?” he has lots of opportunities to test this theory. They were also fascinated by European automobiles, trying to find specific models of Renaults and Mercedes Benz. Apparently they’ve been disappointed by the lack of Ferraris.

We explored the exteriors of some of the older houses, some dating back to the 12th century, along with a pilgrim’s hostel of about the same age. That building was interesting for the 5 foot doorways, which now have beanbags hanging from above them to cushion your head as you crouch through. The first floor rooms of the hostel now hold little craft stores, but nothing that was that great. The problem with many of the little craft-type souvenirs in Germany is that they look exactly like the ones someone could find in, say, New Hampshire.

We explored one church which was absolutely fantastic, with the area around the altar painted in some great iconography: From top to bottom, Christ enthroned, Mary as queen of heaven, disciples. They had a 12th century Bible manuscript on display, open I believe to the beginning of Luke, with gospel scene illustrations on the facing page.

I had my first almost-authentic German food. It’s nearly impossible to find German food in Gottingen, because no one in Germany wants to go out and eat German food. So I had a bratwurst for lunch.

At noon we watched the town Glockenspiel reenact the history of the Goslar mine. It wasn’t that exciting, but it was still fun, and all the tourists in town came together in the town square to watch. We actually grabbed a spot on the porch of the town hall so we were above all their heads.

The Goslar mine is why Goslar is so important to the Germans. It’s a silver mine that they operated continuously for over a thousand years until 1986. Until the beginnings of the twentieth century the average daily tunneling progress was something close to 13 centimeters. We had a one-hour tour through the mines, going through some impressive and extensive tunnels through a part of the mine that was renovated in the 19-20th centuries to support a water-powered elevator system. They built, inside the tunnels, a series of six wooden waterwheels each 4-6 stories tall. These turned long chains which were attached to elevators in another part of the mine, meters away. Walking through a barely six foot tall tunnel which opens up into a huge cavern that is completely filled by a waterwheel is really impressive, especially as you’re climbing staircases beside it and realizing how massive it is.

The water they pumped in had to be pumped out, so using a pretty basic but ingenious system of pneumatics and basic physics they managed, using 22 pumps, to push the water back up 220 meters to the surface.

By they time we headed up we were quite far down, although the mine extends much farther, the kids really complained on the last long haul up an endless series of staircases. But we reminded them that the staircases were an improvement over the equally endless century-old rusted narrow ladders that followed our progress up the rock wall.

When the mine closed in 1986 it was declared a world heritage site, so they put in decent lighting and staircases, etc, in the part of the mine we were in. Thanks to the lights there was quite a bit of lichen growing along the trail, in colonies near all the lights. Also, all the oxidized copper they left meant there were large blue-green stripes running through the rocks for a rather cool effect.

To give the full effect of working in the caverns in one room they turned off the lights and turned on the tiny oil lamp the miners would have had to work with. That made a lot of the tour a bit nervous. I was more impressed with the fact that to fracture they rock they would fill a large portion of the tunnel with wood, to the ceiling, light it on fire and let it burn through the weekend so the heat would expand the rock, allowing the fires to go out when they ran out of oxygen- and then everyone would immediately go in there to work the next day. That just seemed wrong to me.

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Walking back to the train station we passed part of the old city defenses, a Renaissance wall with several towers that looked imposing, and had once ringed the city. They really gave some gravitas to the whole town, even as remains of something far more complete. The Anglos, Saxons, Normans and Vikings in my blood all showed up for a moment and wondered how easy it would have been to take out that wall with a few siege weapons.

The end of the day was probably my favorite part. We found a ruin of a church that stood for three centuries, from the 12th to the 15th. The full foundation is still in place, every room outlined in rock two to three feet high. Based on the sketch, it would have been a beautiful building, and it was great just to walk and look.

We sat there for a few minutes before heading to the train station. I snapped some photos, and then everyone left. I paused for a few minutes, knowing I could catch up. The sight was just spectacular, this empty, powerful collection of rocks that had survived some test of time, a reminder of a building that hadn’t even existed for 500 years but still survived, somehow, in the heart of a town. And for a moment, just a moment, only I saw it.

And then I saw the Nalgene bottle one of the kids had left, sitting on the south side of the main chamber wall. So I grabbed it, turned around, and found the gang.

Preview for Next Week:

-More on Gottingen
-Thoughts on the German language

Stay tuned.

A Minor Victory

About a year and a half ago I became incredibly fed up with blogger after my posts began falling below the sidebar. It disillusioned me to no end. I tried everything to fix it, including minute changes to the html code behind my blog template. Nothing worked.

Today, after 40 minutes of the same tedious work I went into google and typed in my problem. After 20 minutes of the same useless answers I saw a year ago, there was one shining example, by a blogger staff member in a staff blog. One setting switch later and suddenly I like my blog again.

I'm very excited about this for many reasons, but the main one is because this template seems to be impossible to find, and I'm quite attached to it.

However, for the record, the color scheme is all mine. I'm a dangerous man when it comes to hex coding.

"They can take our time, they can take our minds, but they can never take our Freitag!" -Sloan

Ah yes, it is Friday in Germany. A short day of classes, fish for lunch (because this is a European Friday, after all)

Germany is not what I would call a customer-service country. I'm sure the customer is always right, but only when you can get to the store in the first place.

Its not just that the stores close early. I mean, if you're sick, I'm sure the fact that the late apothoteks/pharmacies close around 6pm isn't possibly a problem. The fact that grocery stores close around 7 during the week? Managable. Open for a total of 4 hours on the weekend? Survivable.

The fact I had to go to three different stores to find a pair of nail clippers? Slightly more irritating.

But two apothoteks and a supermarkt later, I managed to get my nails trimmed.

And thus I learned a poignant lessons about the good and the bad about small stores versus chain stores.

On the good side, brie and bread cost less than a 1 liter Coca-Cola.

And in related food news, apparently Whole Foods supermarkets are going to stop selling lobsters because of their 'inhumane treatment'. These are clearly the same people that go through the whole process of freezing and stabbing the overgrown insect before cooking it.

And they are clearly not from Northern Maine.

Ice Cream and Football

I'm in Germany at the same time as the World Cup. The Mexican national team is staying in Gottingen, and so we see a lot of Mexican flags and Spanish-speaking folks on the streets. Every cafe it seems has a new plasma TV to show the game on, and dozens of people are at every bar, watching intently.

Friday night after Germany won my comrades and I saw a rally in the town square. The leaders climbed the statue of the Gaenseliesel, or the Goose Girl, sort of the town mascot. I'll have to get a good shot of her up on facebook shortly. They waved flags and lead a few hundred fans in Deutchland chants. It was pretty amusing for us apathetic Americans. I've noticed the police doing extra patrols during the World Cup games, but it was clearly just to make their presence known rather than out of concern, as they were usually eating ice cream as the patrol van rode by.

I'm amazed by the German love of ice cream.

They love ice cream here. While Eiscafes are not as ubiquitous as real coffee shops they’re as more common than pastry shops or kiosks (convenience stores) in the old city.

Yesterday we found an ice cream place that puts about every other ice cream place on the planet to shame. It doesn't even have seating, but the line just a moment after we got there at 6pm went out the door. I don't know how to describe it, except to say it was incredibly smooth and rich... hard ice cream with a texture like soft-serve. It wasn't gellato, but it was as if gellato had snuck into the ice cream bucket and a powerful mutant ice cream had formed.

As for classes, I'm understanding more, but not learning what I want to learn. I'm probably being impatient, but I feel that we're being paced pretty slowly for an intensive course. We'll see how it picks up shortly.

Note: I had no internet access for my first 7 days here, so the blog was updated in a word doc to be posted today. Some is actual post, some is summary. After this, however, it’ll be as close to real-time as possible.

And so it begins….

Tuesday, June 6th

Heathrow: 6am local, 1am Boston, 12am Chicago time

The flight was uneventful, other than the heavy drinking, heavy snoring guy two seats over and the mediocre movie selection. Although I suppose I shouldn’t complain that they gave me my own movie screen. But I’ve now seen Good Night and Good Luck three times, and while I definitely think it’s a great movie, it’s not quite that rewatchable. But you should at least see it once. Of course I feel similarly about Thirteen Days, and my film major roommate from college seemed to have other opinions (Eric, you can at least admit Costner’s Boston accent was hilariously sad).

As for the meal, the British Airways lasagna, to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams, was not entirely unlike lasagna. But not for lack of trying. I think it was a lasagna with an adolescent identity crisis: its parents were probably good, upstanding lasagna folks, but junior had to rebel, and in doing so ingested some inappropriate chemicals that even a good healthy shower of salt and pepper couldn’t fix. Breakfast was good though.

But as for Heathrow: I’ve gotten over my initial shock and remain firm in my conviction that this airport is far, far too big.

My first hint was when I printed off my boarding passes in Boston and noted the warning from British Airways that one should allow 75 minutes in order to catch a connecting flight. It really did take 12 minutes to get from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1 on the bus. There really are about 50 stores in the Terminal 1 lounge alone. There really are 50 flights leaving this one terminal in the next four hours.

I’m thankful we got in at 4:50 AM local time. I think I would have been way too stressed dealing with crowds my first time here. As it is, it’s almost 6, I made it to the right terminal and past security, and instead of 10 people in a room made for about 500, there are about 80. I can deal with that.

Rest of day review:

Frankfurt: 11:30am local

Another uneventful flight; except for the loss of an almost new notebook in which I was practicing article declensions. I hope the next folks to fly British Airways flight 902 enjoy it.

This time they fed us a ham and cheese sandwich on Panini. 99.9% of the flight was made up of business folks. In this regard I like flying early in the mornings. Basically they want to get to their destination and don’t make much fuss on the way. A third of them were asleep before takeoff. In an interesting trend, the majority of that third were in the middle seats on either side of the isle.

Getting into Germany was, in fact, easier than getting into Logan Airport. The immigration agent simply flipped through my passport in a curious fashion, stamped a random page and waved me through. Not even a cliché ‘purpose of your visit?’

Found the railway station on the other side of the airport, managed to get a ticket and took a train into the main station in Frankfurt, a giant glass and steel building covering 18 or so tracks. Waited for my train, exactly on time just as the clichés dictate, and headed for Gottingen.

Gottingen: 4pm local

The train ride was just under two hours. Spent it in an isle with a woman who was watching over her kid, asleep in a stroller, and two guys who had just come back from a trip to Australia and New Zealand, who had a meal brown bread and beer on the floor. No one gave them a second glance when one flipped open a 2” Swiss Army knife blade. Except the American, of course. Got chastised in German by a man who thought the stroller, which was blocking the exit, was mine. I managed to tell him I spoke little German and he responded by continuing to chastise me in perfect English, which is the norm for anyone who speaks any English. He finally realized the entire luggage blocking the exit belonged to the woman, and they discussed it quietly in German as I tried to fall back asleep.

Made it to the Gottingen train station, which is just outside the town center. Found a cab driver who was very intense, very fast and very loud. At one point going around curves at high speeds he started pointing out the window and shouting fast and loud, almost panicked. I managed again to say my German wasn’t that good at which point he responded “ok, its ok” and then said the same thing slower. I finally made out he was asking if the window being rolled down was bothering me in the backseat.

A few interviews and I had a room and a course. Exhaustion made the interview for class placement difficult at best, but they decided I wasn’t at least completely incompetent, so I managed to get out of the first course.

They ran out of room at the institute for all the students, so they ended up moving me to a hostel. It’s not bad: the downside is a 30 minute walk every morning; the upside is my double was upgraded to a single. The other downside is I have yet to make the internet work.

Wednesday, June 7th

Class was rough. Really rough. My ears still haven’t adjusted to hearing fast (well, normal) German, so I’m barely making out any words said to me. My written and read German, especially the read, is somewhat better, but I basically got to spend three hours making a fool of myself. And as for the exam we had to take to confirm we were in the right class… I haven’t been told yet that I’ve been sent back, so that’s good.

Explored the city of Gottingen.

It’s a beautiful city. The residential neighborhoods are filled with matching little quaint houses, whose owners have sacrificed most, if not all, of their respective yards for massive gardens. There are some front yards, granted small ones, which are nothing but great jungles of rhododendrons of four or five colors.

The city center is even more impressive.

Weekend

Class at the end of the week went slightly better. My ears are finally making out German words shot out at normal speed. Went to a choir concert at Kirche St. Jacobi. Took pictures of Kirche St. Johannes. Found at least 6 used book stores, several of which are definitely worth return trips.

The blog returns!

Standby for stuff from Germany!