Licatae Abroad

A less sized container

2009-08-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

"Thank you for participating in security." This sign at O'Hare made it clear that I'm once again a fully-functioning member of society. For the last year, poorly-phrased signage has slipped under my radar; if I got the gist of a posting, I patted myself on the back and didn't worry about whether the sign was well-written. To drive the point home: an announcement requiring a "three ounce or less sized container".

In Germany, I was a relatively passive consumer, since minor problems weren't worth climbing the language barrier to deal with. In our 24 hours back in the States, I've already noticed how much easier it is to discuss the inconsequential. I asked the United clerk why our plane was delayed, inwardly marveling at the expansiveness of why as opposed to the businesslike necessity of where and when, and in the grocery store, I chatted about the weather with the teenager bagging our groceries. (What? Someone else bagging our veggies? Paper or plastic? Free bags?)

I was four the last time I spent a year away from school, and if all goes well, it will be a while before it happens again. After visiting 18 countries in 366 days, we have virtually no passport stamps to prove it. Instead, we left with fantastic memories, too many foreign coins, and a lot of pictures.

You'll have to take my word for it, but the blur above shows Angela Merkel. During our last few weeks, Bonn was plastered with posters for the upcoming elections, and the chancellor made a surprise appearance by our gym one afternoon. The election really drove home the fact that we were foreigners; in the bustle and buzz of campaigning, we were irrelevant. Nimptsch vs. Finger? Piraten Partei or CDU? After a month, I still never understood the poster with the eggplant.

The mysterious dirt? An annual volleyball tournament when the cathedral square is transformed into a beach. Why not...

Next, a shot of the Hungarian Parliament building from Castle Hill. Returning to Budapest at the end of our year had a nice note of closure. Over lunch there, Anth overheard a group of newly arrived Budapest Semester in Mathematics students getting to know each other and chatting about their upcoming term. He introduced himself, and said he'd done the program nine years ago. One student asked skeptically, "And you never left?" Not quite, but it was good to come back.

The final picture is from our last evening in Europe with Nick and Keli. Licatae Abroad ends here, but they're still living the expat adventure. We couldn't have picked better people to share our year with. Cheers!

Feed the beasts

2009-08-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have flown by, but at least we're going out with a bang. Larissa joined us for part of her post-bar Grand Tour, and we enjoyed some time in Bonn together before hitting the road to meet Keli and Nick in Budapest and then squeezing in a quick trip to Paris. It was great to be back in Budapest with Anthony, and K, N, and L were good sports about our first date reminiscences. It helps when nostalgia springs forth in cafes with extensive cake selections. My recent pictures include elegant castles, somber monuments, and beautiful avenues, but isn't it more fun to see people gnawing bones in a beer garden?

(Full disclosure: there is a comparable pic of me, but I don't have a copy yet.)

Fun with dirt?

2009-08-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things I like best about the Institute is its location. The MPI is in the center of Bonn's pedestrian zone, right off the main square. During the year, this has given us easy access to the Christmas market; a water, noise, & light show; various strange acts of live music; and other unidentified occasions marked by sausage stands and beer trucks. This time, we get dirt. Yesterday morning trucks started pulling into the square and covering it with sand. Only time will tell...

August is nostalgia month

2009-08-08T04:22:00.001-07:00

The countdown is on. In preparation for our departure, I've been making lists of the things I'm excited to return to: friends and family in the same town/state/continent; free tap water; decent sushi; stores open on Sunday; corn. I'm looking forward to all of them, but the truth is that I don't really want to leave. I'm happy to go back to California eventually... but not quite yet.

Our trips and excursions produce the best pictures, but I also like just living in Bonn. I feel interesting here, occasionally a little exotic. Simple transactions have a whiff of adventure, and it feels like an achievement to buy the right stamps. Going to the post office is never exciting in the US. A casual conversation with a waiter is cause for triumphant replay later, and asking the butcher for a cut of meat comes with the promise of high-stakes suspense at dinnertime. I enjoy the tension between being an insider and an outsider. Germany is foreign and different, but not so much that we never feel we fit in. I even like waiting on the curb for the light to change to green, going native and standing with the crowd although there's not a car in sight. The sign (above) instructs us to be a model for the children, and I'm part of the model.

Since we bought our plane tickets, I've really felt the imminence of our departure. Every time I go to a cafe, I wonder if it's the Last Time. When we left New Haven, we had One Last Pizza from Modern at least three times, and I've settled into that mindset here. There are a lot of good cafes, though, and even a mathematician can only drink so much coffee in one day. What if I've already been to Galestro for the last time? Or Goettlich? I almost certainly won't make it back to both Fassbender and Wagner. It's particularly poignant because Bonn is starting to feel like it did when we arrived: the air is getting that end-of-summer smell, and posters for September's Buergerfest Beuel have started to appear. We've had a phenomenal year here, and I admit that a high cafe-to-time ratio is a good problem to have, but is it so bad to want just a little more?

Tales from the Black Forest

2009-07-28T01:29:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, an evil king named Adolf built an enchanted castle deep in the forest and high in the mountains. When his army of darkness was defeated, the castle invited (mathe)magicians from all over the world to come cast spells and prove theorems.

Many years later, the oldest son of a woodcutter was living happily with a princess* in Bonn. One fine summer day, the woodcutter's son left for a long journey. He traveled to distant lands, crossing the seas to talk about hypertoric varieties. The princess missed him very much. When she learned that he was at the enchanted castle, she set off to find him. The castle was many leagues away, but after only a few train delays, the princess reached the remote outpost perched on a hillside above the Valley of the Wolf.

In the castle, the princess saw many strange beings, along with one of the best mathematical libraries in the world. She saw that coffee was available at every hour of the day, and concluded that legions of elves must work tirelessly to maintain the supply. Although the princess would have been happy to stay longer, she was relieved to see that the woodcutter's son was being taken care of. Leaving him to his spells, the princess set out on a quest to slay multitudes of wasps and make their cosy attic home safe for his return. (Actually, she glued mesh across the windows, because wasps are also protected by law in Nord Rhein Westphalia.)

And they lived happily ever after.

*Officially there was no documentation of this status, but having a foundling grandfather in a fairy tale usually implies royal blood.

Moseying in the Mosel

2009-07-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

I rejoined Harry and Meg for the last leg of their trip, spending two days with them in the Mosel river valley. The sign on the bridge by our house said Weindorf Wolf -literally "wine village Wolf"- and there aren't too many options besides wine tasting and climbing up vine-covered hillsides. No complaints here.

Not exactly baby seals

2009-07-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

Along with brown sugar and free tap water, window screens have been added to my list of good things that seem to be missing in Germany. I'm all for fresh air, but I also prefer not to share my light fixtures with enormous moths and clouds of gnats. However, the lack of window screens recently escalated from annoyance to problem.

When I returned to Bonn, I found that yellow jackets had built a busy nest right outside our windows. Although language issues make it a hassle to contact the landlords, this seemed worth the effort: keeping the windows shut is a not a great option for a fifth floor apartment in July. I looked up a few words in the dictionary, drew a little cartoon, and did my best to explain the situation to the woman in the office. She answered regretfully, "Hornissen stehen unter Naturschutz." I had to ask her to repeat this, because I thought she'd said that hornets were under "nature protection". Unfortunately, I was right.

She promised to look into options for us, but a quick Google search suggests that without a deathly allergy, we aren't allowed to remove the nest. I'm not particularly thrilled with this situation, but I hope that sufficient quantities of cheesecloth and duct tape may help us out. Any other suggestions?

At least the pastry tastes the same

2009-07-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Switching gears from conferences to tourism, I'm spending 3 days in Denmark with my friends Harry and Meg. We've had a fantastic two days to start with, with lots of time spent walking around Copenhagen. We've toured an art museum, climbed the spiral stairs around Vor Frelsers Kirke (above), walked around the harbor, played dress-up at a viking museum, and visited the alternative commune Christiana. We spent a great evening at Tivoli, enjoying the rides and the lights as the day faded (eventually) into dark. We also took a field trip to Roskilde, the town where I spent three months as a six-year-old. Although I recognize particular features, I've been really surprised by how unfamiliar most things here are. For example, I was excited to find a small square in Roskilde that still has two red horses on big springs, but I didn't recognize the main street at all. In a lot of my traveling this year, I've prioritized getting a "feel" for place, but that's exactly what's missing from my recollections of Denmark. What did I look at when I was six? I'll admit that I do recognize the toy stores, and the ducks in the park are still happy to eat my bread. I suppose it's not surprising to have a different perspective after 24 years, but I'm still taken aback that Copenhagen and Roskilde look like new places to me.

La vigne et le vin

2009-07-08T09:47:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday afternoon we took a field trip to the big city. Beaune has about 20,000 inhabitants, but after Glanon, it might as well have been Manhattan. Along with a few others from the conference, I paid 10 Euros for a degustation at the Patriarche wine cellars. From the sunny front desk, you descend into dimly lit caverns winding underground. Stacks of bottles with cryptic markings line the walls, and I realized very quickly that we hadn't left enough time -just getting to the tasting room was a 10 minute trip, and our parking meter expired in an hour. The picture doesn't do justice to the 5 km of spooky passages, where some 3,000,000 bottles are stored. The tasting area is a sequence of chambers, each with a bottle on a barrel where you pour your own tastes into a shallow metal cups issued at the entrance. (Note: It's not hard to get your money's worth when you're pouring your own tastes.) A wine consultant began to teach us about Burgundy wines: only Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; 4 level classification; a Grand Cru is named for the field the grapes are grown in, *not* the village... With our unfortunate time constraints, we had to cut short his discussion, but not before he told us about the 1904 vintage still available for sale. They won't guarantee the quality of any wines older from before the 1930's, but he also made it clear that these were priced out of the range we needed to worry about.

Maintain a neutral smile

2009-07-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Picture a village in the Burgundy countryside. The sun shines down on fields of sunflowers, and water lilies float on the river. A green lizard lazes on a stone wall, and giant snails ooze slowly across the grass. Unfortunately, as you turn up the volume on this idyllic scene, you notice that the soundtrack is dubbed in French. There are no subtitles.

The only other non-Francophones at this workshop are my PhD advisor and his daughter. She doesn't speak yet, and since he spends a good bit of his time chasing her ball and offering bites of melon, I have limited conversational options. My French is just good enough that I don't always feel like a moron as a tourist, but the dinner table isn't the right place to buy a roundtrip ticket or ask for directions. Although people have made real efforts to chat in English for my benefit, this week as also provided some of the most awkward moments of my adult life. Think junior high levels of awkwardness, where everyone laughs and you maintain a neutral smile that might pass for a reaction to the joke you didn't get.

The scale of this village exacerbates both the charm of the week and the social disaster. The center of Glanon has a pocket-sized church, and next to it, the town hall, school, and library. The last three occupy the same four-room building, which is also where the workshop lectures are held. The street in front is called Grande Rue, and although it's not clear if the name is tongue-in-cheek, this road is distinguished from all the others by virtue of having two lanes. Since there are no cafes, restaurants, shops, or businesses in Glanon, we eat all our meals together at a long table in the courtyard (shown above); breakfast is a basket of croissants, accompanied by jam, honey, and pitchers of coffee. It's the most pastoral math conference I've ever heard of, by miles. On Tuesday there was a minor crisis at lunch when someone discovered that the red wine left over from Monday's dinner had been put in the fridge with the white. Luckily, there's been no repeat of this travesty. The lunch break is hours long, but since there's literally nothing else to do here, the day holds plenty of time for both math and long meals. Every meal ends with a cheese course, and with a mouthful of Brillat Savarin, no one cares what language you speak.

Lunch as it should be

2009-07-06T05:32:00.000-07:00

When I left the hotel, Dijon was nearly deserted. My company on the cobblestoned streets consisted of other tourists who naively thought a café might be open on a Sunday morning. In the end, feeling degenerate, I sat down at the terrace of a bar. At the table next to me, two old men drank wine, while Mr. T stared at me from the day-glo bottle of “Mr. Propre” on the table between them. Under his gaze, I ordered a café crème; in college parlance, the cafe patrons were evenly split between alcs and non-alcs. Dijon is almost monochrome, with every building dressed in some shade of sand. The houses come in beige stone and pale yellow plaster, and the grey sky behind adds to the sense of living in a turn-of-the-century photograph. Every roof is studded with chimneys and antennae, and on the larger buildings the rust-colored and faded black tiles are replaced by startlingly bright patterns in red, green, yellow, and white.

I left Paris Saturday morning en route to a tiny town in Burgundy. It’s small enough that I’ve yet to meet a French person who’s heard of it, but nevertheless, Glanon is my next destination. With a weekend to kill between conferences, I stopped in Dijon for a day. It’s not all picturesque tranquility; yesterday I watched a breakdancing contest in the park, and my train leaves a few hours before the Michael Jackson tribute concert. In the tavern where I had dinner on Saturday, the rafters were decorated with copper pots, woven baskets, and a lone disco ball. Although the 4^th of July didn’t seem to make much of an impact, Dijon is doing its part for Franco-American relations next weekend, when American chefs and French rockers are the featured acts in a local festival.

The café I ended up in this afternoon was a gem. There’s a coffee shop in San Francisco that’s almost a parody of Mission hip, but is nevertheless a really great place to spend time; in the same vein, Café Chez Nous combines over-the-top French with a cozy atmosphere I don’t want to leave. The building is squeezed between two lanes that even the French find too narrow for a car. I can’t tell the patrons from the staff; they all seem to know each other and split time between pouring drinks and lounging at the benches outside. Inside, the cafe is tiny, with room for only four tables and a vending machine selling cans of pistachios and olives. Glasses of wine start at 1.30, and the 12 Euro lunch special includes wine, the plat du jour, an espresso, and a digestif. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any other options, but it smells delicious and I wish I’d discovered this place before I ate. I like that a corner bar has opinions on how lunch should be consumed, and that despite offering no choices, they provide you a great one.

2009-07-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

Ride your rooster to work day

2009-07-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

OK, so it's not the most exciting picture from Paris, but I would love to know the story behind this medallion. While zipping through the Cluny in the 30 minutes between the end of ticket sales and the museum's closing, I didn't spend much time deciphering small print that may or may not have explained why a knight is riding a rooster.

The conference this week has been pretty good. The major obstacle to calling it great is that the air conditioner, whose existence I've heard claimed, is definitely not working. Someone should have realized that without AC, packing 100 people into a lecture hall in July is not a fantastic idea. Add in narrow wooden benches and tiny wooden desks, and I'm having flashbacks to summer days in the prairie schoolhouses of my youth, when I walked to school uphill (both ways). I suppose the prairie didn't come equipped with a patisserie on every corner, but another problem with this weather is that the core of my pain au chocolat melts while I'm eating it. Last night the waiter took our menus away, even as we begged to keep them as fans. He also grumbled about how much water we were drinking, but I found this display of attitude utterly charming, as it was served up with another refill. The Metro is on the toasty side, as well, and when the doors open a wave of moist human heat rolls out. Inspired by my museum visit yesterday, I would happily substitute this experience for a rooster-back commute.

Sorry about your toe

2009-06-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

It's good to be able to say you're sorry. This isn't pop psychology, but rather a piece of practical linguistic advice. It's especially true as a foreigner, when the fact that you're more likely to do things wrong comes regrettably paired with the fact that you're less likely to know how to apologize.

German offers a few options, but I haven't found the right equivalent of a casual "Sorry!" Entschuldigung means "Excuse me" and Schade is more like "Too bad," neither of which seems to carry much regret. There's also the high school German fallback, Es tut mir leid, but as my friend Harry noted in the fall, that's a more serious, "I'm sorry I cut off your toe" kind of apology. Apparently Harry's description lodged in my head more firmly than I'd realized: last week someone asked me for directions to a place I'd never heard of. When I said as much, my internal playback heard "I don't know where that is. Sorry I cut off your toe." It occurred to me about 30 seconds later that leider, "unfortunately", would have done the trick, but it seemed like a bad idea to run across the square to tell her that I (unfortunately) still didn't know where that street was.

Anth left for Ottawa this morning, and I hop on a train to Paris tomorrow. Between now and August 1 the two of us will attend 5 conferences in 4 different countries and, leider, see each other for only 36 hours.

(The picture is a bit random; it's an election poster explaining that finance sharks vote FDP. Stylewise, I prefer this to phone calls at 3 am.)

Trivia Update

2009-06-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

For 250 Euros*, get three of the following five correct:

1. How many legs does a tick have?

2. Which people did the Romans call barbarians?

3. Which cartoon character was modified in the 1930's for "moralistic" reasons?

4. Edith Piaf or Madeleine Peyroux?

5. What did the Koreans remove from "The Sound of Music" to make the movie shorter?

In the case of the first four, the right answer was debated and rejected. The last one... that's a different story.

*Just to be clear, I mean that if you'd joined us at Quiz Night and gotten three of these right, we would have split the money with you. I'm not personally awarding any prizes.

No trolls

2009-06-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sadly, our trip to Norway ended without a single troll-spotting. Anthony told me not to expect any trolls in Oslo, since there's apparently a city ordinance banning them, but I had high hopes for the Arctic. Maybe it was the just the season. It was cloudy enough that I thought they might pop out, but the weather was very fickle, and they could easily have worried about getting caught in a sudden burst of sun. It's an understandably cautious decision for a misunderstood species.

Dry feet are overrated

2009-06-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

Tony visited Alex here in Bodoe two years ago. As Alex's father noted, over the course of Tony's two trips, he's gotten average weather here. Unfortunately, it was the first trip that came with clear skies and a week of midnight sun. From experience, I can assure you that well-lit midnight drizzle is not quite as spectacular. We shopped around weather forecasts until we found one promising the rain would hold off until late, but as we set out on our hike yesterday afternoon, water was nevertheless falling from the sky. The plan was to hike overland, hugging the coast until we reached a beach that Tony and Alex had canoed to in the afore-mentioned better weather. While we hiked, Alex said funny things to keep us entertained. He made jokes like, “Try to keep your feet dry,” “We’re halfway there,” and “We’ll find a nice cave to build a fire in.” Gotta love that Norwegian sense of humor.

We started off walking along a trail, and that lasted for about 100 meters. After that we crossed beaches of pebbles, boulders, and smooth white sand; scrabbled goatlike up rocky faces; fought through thickets of gnarled mountain birch; and bounced across meadows carpeted with heather and springy moss. When we came to ravines 10 or 30 feet deep, we stepped, jumped, or climbed up with the hope of eventually reverting to one of the first two options. The rock was always changing, from a rough grey speckled with green and orange lichens to a paler shade whose smooth layers made me think of geological time. Often it was a rusty color and streaked with crystal, and on our return, below the tideline, it was dotted with tidepools.

Sometimes we were at the water level, watched our footing for algae (bad) and barnacles (good). Other times we were hundreds of feet above the sea, and only a crab leg on the bracken would remind you that you were oceanside. We found sea urchin shells in pink, green and purple high above the water, and chunks of quartz everywhere. Near the beach, heaps of seaweed masqueraded as pasta: pale yellow spaghettini and dark red tagliatelle, with the occasional bulbous brown manicotti. The shells, however, were stuffed with crab rather than ricotta.

When we reached our destination, it was hard to understand where the crystal blue color of the water came from, since it certainly wasn't reflecting a shade found in the sky. After about an hour we managed to start a fire with no aids besides a hatchet, a knife, and about 40 matches. It was even further from the survivalist's ideal than it sounds, because we (okay, I) also permanently disabled a box of matches when the striking surface oozed off the side of the damp box. In the end, we spent two hours under a slab of rock that fell short of my standards for a cave, but nevertheless allowed us to get dry and warm enough to enjoy hotdogs and marshmallows. We also took the opportunity to exchange our soaking-wet footgear for dry socks and merely soaking-wet shoes. It’s an odd experience to see your feet steaming by the fire, but in the circumstances, it was a welcome change.

I was afraid that our trip back would have less suspense, since we already knew we couldn't keep our feet dry. However, looking for a "shortcut" is always a good way to add some adventure, and our impromptu bouldering session was a success. We made it back to the knee-high dandelions marking the trailhead around midnight, which afforded a great view across the beach at low tide. A break in the clouds suggested that the sun was still there, well-hidden but shining on.

Tell the birds to shut up

2009-06-13T03:22:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had the experience of knowing some fact, believing it, but then suddenly feeling that it's true in a real and certain way? In the last 24 hours, I've become truly convinced that the world is a ball rotating on an axis which, in the Nothern hemisphere, is tilted towards the sun in the summer months.

We're spending a week in Norway visiting a friend of ours who lives above the Arctic circle. The pictures will have to wait until I get back, but the scenery here is absolutely breathtaking. Last night we went fishing at 11 pm to the backdrop of a beautiful sunset ...except the sun didn't set. It hovered above the horizon for hours, and at 2 am it was still doing its thing. I always thought I was less sensitive to light/dark than some other people -the winter doesn't depress me, and I have no trouble sleeping past dawn- but I discovered last night that 2 am sun confuses my body. Was I awake? Was I sleepy?

I think my internet access may be limited for the next few days, as we're spending most of our time in a small cabin equipped with the most modern advances in human litterbox technology. It's also equipped with a picture window looking out over a mountain lake, which is a pretty good trade. Watch this space next weekend for some pics, and eat all your sunsets: remember, some child in Norway doesn't have any.

A kultural experience

2009-06-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Last week we received an email reminding us of the upcoming Arbeitstagung. This semi-annual conference has been held in Bonn on and off since 1957, and the MPI directors asked us to avoid scheduling other mathematical activities for the duration. Our participation -along with a 30 Euro registration fee- was politely but rather firmly recommended. Although every conference likes a good turnout, it's particularly important in this case, since the speakers are chosen "democratically" from among the particpants as the event progresses. Only the big-shot kickoff speaker is announced ahead of time, and the opening activity is a call for nominations. Anyone in the 180+ person audience can suggest a name, and the nominator gets to select the speaker's title as well.

Things went a bit slowly at the first nominating session. One Fields medalist declined to speak, which I thought was a violation of implicit contract entered into by showing up. Still, names were slowly filling the board when suddenly someone suggested that Tony Licata speak on categorical sl-2 actions. The moderator stumbled over the name of the mere postdoc, while next to me, Anth turned dead white. Nevertheless, by the time the schedule for the next two days was set, Anth had a talk to give and less than 24 hours to prepare it. I am quite proud to say that my husband gave a very nice lecture while wearing all of his clothing right-side out. The same cannot be said for all of the speakers.

Nothing to report

2009-06-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

I hate to make a habit of posts with no content, but I thought this picture from my last night in Trieste was worth sharing. Since returning, I've done laundry, beaten Anth twice in Scrabble, lost to him once, been to the gym, and worked. Don't you wish I'd just let the picture do the talking?

Cheers for the UN

2009-05-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

Today’s post comes with little content, but an amazing view. I'm currently at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, a U.N. affiliated conference and research center located in Trieste. Each morning here begins with a steep climb up the hill to the conference center, since the Adriatrico Guest House is, appropriately enough, on the Adriatic. It might be more standard to describe a hotel as being on the beach, but in fact, there’s no room for a beach between the edge of the balcony and the blue water dotted with bobbing sailboats. (While we’re on the topic, I’d like to announce my interest in a having sailboat. Think of it as a declaration of principle, if not a plan for action. Unless, of course, you have a spare…)

Applying to an ICTP workshop involves an unusually substantial amount of work; normally, you just send someone an email saying, “I’d like to go to your conference,” or maybe fill out an online form with your contact info and a research abstract. This time, the application was on the order of 17 pages, and I’m told this is a direct consequence of the ICTP mandate to promote scientific participation from the developing world. In the past –so say my sources- there’s been a problem with people using ICTP conferences as an easy way to get a visa and then disappearing into Europe. Now that I’m here, my theory is the missing attendees probably just spent the time bobbing on a sailboat. Sounds like a good plan to me.

Pimp my Vollautomat

2009-05-20T02:47:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that our landlord is a commercial laundry, there's no washer in our apartment building. In an bid to not succumb to the worst stereotypes of my profession, I therefore trek to the local laundromat every few weeks. I sort of enjoy these excursions as a break in routine, a morning off from work without the guilt of playing optional hooky. Yesterday I passed the 35 minutes of the spin cycle in my favorite tiny cafe around the corner.

The cafe has just one table and a window seat, but I had even that to myself. Unfortunately, with no other patrons around I couldn't tell if the neatly folded newspaper was on sale or for browsing. Faced with constructing a conditional sentence in German, I instead picked up the coffee-themed magazine that I couldn't possibly imagine anyone purchasing. Want to know how to draw a chrysanthemum in your crema? This is the place to look. Did you know about the health benefits of coffee? It prevent diabetes and gallstones! Plus, I was assured, coffee raises your blood pressure no more than a lively conversation. For the style-conscious shopper, "Pimp my Vollautomat" had a glossy spread on the sleekest home espresso machines, but the article I enjoyed the most was on the history of ersatz coffee in Germany.

Although German history has bigger stains, the archbishop of Cologne once banned coffee. A chicory imposter had grown popular, and the bishop was concerned that too much domestic revenue was going to the foreign suppliers of real beans. Luckily those days are gone, but I'll keep this in mind if I'm ever tempted by protectionism. Being honest, I only read this article because it had the word Muckefuck in the title. I was ready to use the "context clues" skills they taught us in elementary school to figure out a translation, but once you start thinking about roasting acorns instead of Arabica, the meaning is pretty clear.

(There's a picture of Anth and me in a similar pose, but my eyes are closed and my hair looks funny, so you get one more Keli & Nick shot.)

Going native

2009-05-17T12:04:00.001-07:00

It's a bit belated, but I wanted to share some more German wedding fun. Although Nick carried no oats down the aisle (the lack of aisle might have been relevant here) and they failed to saw a log together (we tried and failed to procure a saw), Nick and Keli did make a good stab at going native. The night before a wedding, Germans celebrate Polterabend by smashing porcelain. The idea is that the guests make a mess and the couple cleans up to practice working together on unpleasant tasks. Apparently a contemporary twist is to take a sledgehammer to an old toilet, but we made do sans commode. Keli hit the flea market the week before the wedding to ensure a supply of smashable ceramic. She then got attached to some of the plates and tucked a few away to keep, but we still had enough to create a serious mess. As a guest, I highly endorse this custom. (To Jules, Kevin, & Dan: I don't know if any of you are reading this, but if you're looking for ideas...) Given how the evening went, the picture above is a bit unfair to Nick, so you shouldn't read too much into their future division of labor.

(To fully appreciate the second half of the evening's entertainment, a bit of context is in order. For those of you not lucky enough to know Keli, I should explain that it's an understatement to say she avoids the limelight. Although she was a serious enough singer to be in the music school at U. of Michigan, I have yet to hear her do more than hum. And I've begged, pleaded, and bribed. I used to think I was good at peer pressure, but she's thoroughly resisted my efforts. Example two: Keli got extremely nervous right before the wedding in Dresden, but it wasn't cold feet: as she described it, she was thrilled to be marrying Nick, but entering the wedding chamber meant everyone would be watching her. Since I'm still holding out hope for a tune or two, it was fun to see her perform under pressure. Read on... )

On any given Friday night in Cologne, posses of girls in matching T-shirts roam the streets selling junk from a tray. The bride-to-be solicits Trinkgeld, money for the bars, in return for a lighter or a bag of candy. We knew at least the bare outlines of this practice, so Keli was dispatched with a loaded baking pan to accost passers-by. The first hurdle was crossed when everyone she hit with her sales pitch recognized what she was doing -I was briefly afraid this was a regional Rheinish custom that might be as foreign in Dresden as in Chicago. However, even the curmudgeons who wouldn't buy anything wished her a happy wedding. People were slightly perplexed by the crowd of Americans playing German wedding games, but at least they were entertained as well. One couple complained mildly that Keli should be offering them shots of schnapps, not simply the selection of knickknacks and complementary Lufthansa toiletries that we'd equipped her with. Live and learn, I guess, but getting 13 Euros for a Red Vine, an opened pack of tissues, and a pen is pretty good wages.

No hurry

2009-05-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been behind on a project, take heart. Gaudi started the Sagrada Familia church in the 1800's, and construction has been chugging along since. Apparently it's supposed to be finished by 2026, but what's a decade or two among friends?

BCN

2009-05-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Anth and I have had Barcelona in our sights since we first knew we’d be spending the year in Europe, so it’s fantastic to be here as the home team cements its victory in La Liga. There's no shortage of soccer jerseys on the streets, but so far we've been too busy eating to see if any tickets can be found. Dinner last night was a delicious spread of tapas, eaten at the almost respectably Spanish hour of 9:30 p.m. Although an olive was dropped into the sangria, the falling hummus luckily landed on the table and disaster was averted.

We began this morning with a hunting and gathering trip in the market. I wasn’t surprised to see hanging hams and piles of produce, but the arrays of juices for only a Euro each were an unexpected treat. Thus fortified, we spent the day wandering through the city, checking out some Gaudi, the beach, and a fantastic gelateria. The newlyweds are being good sports about spending their honeymoon en famille, although it's dawned on me recently that perhaps they're not viewing this trip through that lens. Nevertheless, it's fun to travel with the fam, and as the only non-Spanish-speaker in the group, I'm happy to be surrounded by a crew capable of ordering me Sangria and fried octopus.

A Wedding Wow

2009-05-10T00:03:00.001-07:00

On Friday morning around 10:25 a.m., a charming but visibly nervous translator announced that Nick and Keli had come to the Dresden Standesamt to take a wedding wow. We're guessing that was "vow" with a little overcompensation, but either translation works. Along with three Sullivan cousins, a pair of friends from Michigan/Munich, and a collection of biophysicists from Nick's lab, Anth and I squeezed into the tiny but cute wood-paneled room for the wow.

Actually, we were herded in by different paths -as official witnesses, Anth and I got to join the nuptial pair in the pre-wedding Green Room (literally), where our passports were checked. In the meantime, the audience was admitted via a different door and given a bilingual briefing on what was and wasn't allowed: "No strewing of rice," for example, and "No chorus of horns". Meanwhile, Anthony and I firmly committed ourselves to the (false) statement printed on the official document which asserted that we're both residents of Texas, and then we were on. As "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" played, Nick and Keli slowly processed to their seats. Since said seats were about two meters from the door, this lasted through the first refrain.

Although short, the ceremony had a satisfying mix of genuine sentiment and comedic relief. The officiant delivered the Journey Metaphor Speech, which was apparently a favorite of hers, as she barely looked at her notes. On the other hand, the charming but visibly nervous translator added a certain freshness as she delivered them for the first time. The gist was that Nick and Keli had chosen their traveling companions for the journey of life, but I ended up a bit confused by her explanation of how travel insurance fit into this picture. In the end, a pair of firm "Ja's" established the newest Mr. and Mrs. Licata. Then the guests and the charming and visibly relieved translator joined the newlyweds for cake and Sekt and general merriment.

Since then we've been enjoying the highlights of Saxony. We had dinner in a small castle just outside of town on Friday night, and yesterday we enjoyed the sunshine and a walking tour of Dresden. Today we took a steamboat ride up the Elbe to Schloss Pillnitz. The palace and amazing gardens were once a gift from Augustus the Strong to his mistress, which is an interesting model for newlyweds with no yard to contemplate. In fact, they've already hit a rough patch, discovering a strong difference of opinion on the subject of Simon Cowell. I'm confident they can get past this, and the upcoming group honeymoon in Barcelona will probably help take their minds off this strife.

Lamb knuckle?

2009-05-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

When we were in Greece last weekend, we ate extremely well. On our last night we had mezedes (Greek tapas) and raki at a small ouzeria on a side street. I know there's no hope of reproducing that octopus salad or spicy cheese at home, but I did think our taverna meal might be transportable. The best dish was a falling-apart piece of lamb with some sort of greens in a lemon and dill sauce. We both thought it was fantastic, and in hopes of reproducing the dish, we asked our waitress what the veg was. I'm fairly sure that what she meant by "lettuce" was merely "something green and leafy," as iceberg and romaine don't generally stew very well.

Undeterred, I purchased what I thought might be lamb shanks yesterday. Or more precisely, I purchased what I thought, yesterday, were lamb shanks. I remain in a state of optimism, but Google has suggested that perhaps I have lamb knuckles, rather than lamb shanks. With 45 simmering minutes to go, the suspense is mounting. What in the world is a lamb knuckle, anyway?

The pics above are from last night's Rhein in Flammen fireworks festival. Along with 100,000 of our closest friends in Bonn, we spent a few hours perched on a grassy hillside, listening to music and eventually watching fireworks set off from a convoy of ships traveling down the Rhein. Until we got there, we weren't sure quite what we were going to, so we brought some picnic supplies just in case. Unnecessary. Carnival rides and stages were set up in the open parts of the park, and the paths were lined with stands selling drinks and snacks. The Germans really know how to do street food well, even when there isn't really a street. We sipped Prosecco and ate kettle chips while it got dark, and after the show we walked home along the river, the path lit by the moon, the bonfires, and the bike lamps gliding by.

Time to go check on the knuckles...

May Day

2009-05-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

Every time we skip out on a day or two of work for a mini-vacation, the Germans obligingly schedule a holiday later in the week so we can make up the time. This week, our Tuesday in Athens was balanced by the May holiday on Friday. As with nearly all the holidays here, shops closed and temporary stands opened up, this time selling baskets, crafts, Pfannekuchen, and of course, beer. We also saw a bunch of decorated trees tied to houses around town; apparently leaving your lady love a bedecked birch is the thing to do. Although Tony didn't get me a birch, he did make me crepes this morning, so no complaints.

Setting Goals

2009-04-27T13:22:00.001-07:00

I hereby resolve that next year, when I am returned to the state of grace which comes from living in an apartment with an oven, I will learn to make an excellent stuffed eggplant.

All Greek to me

2009-04-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

...And the winner is Athens! I was not expecting to go to Greece for three days, but who am I to argue with the whims of Fate or Germanwings? We arrived around lunchtime today, and so far Athens has failed to disappoint. It's absolutely amazing how old things are here; people have been selling counterfeit Prada bags on these streets for millennia.

Our first lunch was unfashionable early by Greek standards, but when you get up at 4:15 a.m., it's hard to hold out for too long. We wandered around the old Agora (above), which is like a huge park in the middle of city. A huge park studded with crumbling columns and ancient stone walls, that is. Although signs ask you to refrain from touching the ruins (or taking obscene photographs with them), you're not confined to a particular path through the complex. Wandering through a quieter shaded bit, you feel as though you're the first one noticing the foundations of the temple to Zeus sticking up around the poppies.

Our second lunch was plateful of 70 fried fish, each one the size of a finger. Nibbling fish with bread, tapenade, and a Greek coffee chaser is something I could get used to, I think. A view of the Acropolis doesn't hurt, either.

Some comedy has arisen from our efforts to read signs. Although the Greek letters aren't unfamiliar, I'm used to thinking of them as isolated symbols rather than things that actually form words. Our attempts to find our hotel involved a strategic choice: use a Greek map which we can't read or use a map in English which doesn't contain any of the same words that appear on the street signs? The jury is still out on which of these is a better approach, but in the meantime, we'll carry two maps.

Blind Booking, Take III

2009-04-23T05:42:00.000-07:00

In a week or so, I'll make the transition from professional mathematician to kept woman, at least for a few months. My eight-month position at Max Planck expires next week, although Tony's twelve-month appointment stretches until the end of August. My salary vanishes in May, but all is not lost: Anth's income is bumped up by a 250 Euro/month "wife stipend" once I'm off the payroll. Household negotiations are still underway about how said wife stipend will get disbursed, but the Max Planck end of the transition has begun. We have a third office mate now, and although he's quite nice, there are some drawbacks to sharing the space. Loud hiccups, for example, come with a certain amount of awkwardness these days.

We'll be heading to Dresden in about two weeks to celebrate Nick & Keli's wedding together with the Sullivan cousins, and then we're all going on a group honeymoon together to Barcelona. I think the rest of us are more amused by the "group honeymoon" formulation than the soon-to-be-newlyweds, but really, what bride doesn't picture spending her honeymoon with six members of her new family? The rest of the summer will fly by, but most of our remaining travel is to math conferences. It's more appealing if you think of it like a band tour: the same people saying many of the same things in different cities around the continent. Those of us attending several are like the die-hard fans, and anyone currently looking for a job for next year crosses the line into desperate groupie.

Between the two of us, we have nine person-weeks of conferences scheduled between now and August 1. It's a bit daunting to look at the calender and realize how quickly the time will fly by, so we decided to squeeze in one more Blind Booking while we could. We decided to take a long weekend and fly to one of the following: Athens, Budapest, Dubrovnik, London, or Rome. With bated breath, we clicked "Purchase Tickets to ?" and then...

Supercalifragelisticexpialigetisch

2009-04-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

Anth is in Scotland for the week, so playing Scrabble over dinner isn't really an option. (Did you know "iwis" and "vug" are words?) Instead, I ended up watching Mary Poppins on TV. They dubbed the songs along with the spoken lines, but I think something was lost: the line translates as "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine sweeter." True, I suppose, but not exactly deep...

Chocolate denser than the sun

2009-04-10T03:29:00.000-07:00

Lest there be any doubt about how the French feel about our new President, here's a small selection of the Obama images we saw in Paris last week. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the poster which showed him in a Superman outfit, but that was another favorite of mine.

Linda, Tony, and their bags have returned to the US, although at last report not all of the above have made it to Texas. On our last night in Paris, we went to a bistro I'd been stalking since we arrived in Europe. I don't know if I'd ever seen a menu without chicken before, but everything was delicious. I also don't know if anyone who ordered the chocolate dessert managed to finish it -the title above is Nick's description, and as a physicist, he should know. My fennel compote spring rolls were equally delicious, though; I've only had veggies for dessert twice, but I'm a fan.

Happy Geese

2009-04-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

One of the features I've enjoyed most about this trip is seeing how Parisians use public space. Everywhere you turn, chairs spill across the sidewalk, and hours after we're ready for dinner, the Parisians are still sitting and smoking and watching the world go by. Every cafe has banks of tables out front alternating with lines of chairs. In an American cafe, the seating would be arranged with each table as a social unit, but here it's a row facing out. It's clear that the street is the entertainment and buying a drink is a ticket to the show.

2009-04-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing I like my in-laws. This is true for a variety of reasons, but I have a new one to add to the list: 40 square meters is not a lot of space to share with five other people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to be spending a few days in Paris with five other Licatas --well, four and pending-- but calling the place we rented a two-bedroom apartment is a bit of a stretch. When a pet store sells a "Hamster Palace", I suppose you don't expect Versailles. Still, the love seat on wheels needs to rotate 90 degrees in order to unfold, and moving the coffee table to make way for the Murphy bed barricades the second room of the flat.

Anth and I arrived a day before the rest of the crowd, and Chantal gave us the keys with a cheery, "There are two of you?" On being reminded that there would be six, she glanced doubtfully at the toilet at said, "This toilet...six people...I do not know..." Following her gaze, we all looked to the toilet, which is separated from the postage stamp of a living room only by a translucent glass door. The same holds for the shower. As Anth noted, this isn't as bad as it could be: the nakedness you see is fuzzy enough to air on USA without the FCC getting upset.

Right now we're waiting for Nick and Keli to arrive, and Tony and Linda will get in later tonight. We're looking forward to adjectives like "cosy" and "intimate" as opposed to "spacious" and "private". I'm sure everything will work out well, but if it gets too crowded, we can always head out in search of "delicious".

Spring is springing

2009-04-01T00:58:00.000-07:00

Spring is a lovely season everywhere I've lived, but I was curious if Bonn's would be of the blink-and-you-miss-it variety, or a more leisurely swing of the seasons. The equinox was March 20, and as one might expect from the punctual German flora, blossoms started appearing right on time. Almost to the day, every cafe in the city put out tables and chairs, so that the walkable part of the streets and squares shrunk significantly. However, someone forgot to notify the weather. For the first few days of spring, we enjoyed the crocuses and daffodils through an icy rain. BBC Weather even projected a mix of snow and hail, but luckily things have improved since then. Today was beautiful enough that if this is some sort of a cruel April Fool's Day tease, I'll be heartbroken.

If only you'd been here...

2009-03-23T14:38:00.001-07:00

There have been a lot of moments this year that Anth and I would loved to have shared with our friends and family, but there's a new contender for the occasion when I most wished you (yes, you) were here. Forget about cultural epiphanies, exotic food, and beautiful architecture: tonight we missed the 275 Euro bounty at Quiz Night by one question.

When we lived in New Haven, we sometimes attended the Trivia Night at the local Irish pub, Anna Liffy's. Fiddler's Pub in Bonn has a different feel, in part due to the piece of the wall dating from 1355. Although "humiliation" might be too strong, I do associate our Anna Liffy's performances with words like "humbling" and "mediocre". Luckily, in Bonn the crowd seems to have sunk to our level. (Or maybe it's the fact that 90% of the audience is playing in a second or third language.) Another difference between AL's and Fiddler's is that playing for pride and playing for money are separate endeavors here. Before the start of the contest, the MC draws a number and tucks it away. The questions come in rounds of ten, and periodically the answer sheets are rounded up and tallied. After all 80 questions are done, the secret number is finally announced. Then the real suspense begins, because if your total score matches, you get to take home the pot. Just like Powerball, an unclaimed prize carries over to the next week. Even coming in dead last could be financially rewarding, especially if you're so much worse than everyone else that you don't split the pot. (That wasn't our strategy...really...)

So here's the question: Had you been here, would you have helped us to get exactly one more point? Pushing us to 48 is no better than the 46 we got on our own, -we wanted only an incremental improvement. Here's a selection of the questions we can remember, some of which we missed:

1. What type of organism is yeast?

2. What actress was in "Mermaids", "Moonstruck", and "Tea with Mussolini"?

3. In Greek mythology, who had 100 eyes?

4. What country was the Skoda originally made in?

5. What's the name of the song that women sang in German? (We had about as much of a chance...)

6. Who won an Oscar for her performance in "A Lion in Winter"?

7. What children's series features the Fat Controller?

8. In what modern day country did Napolean's army defeat the Austrians in the Battle of Marengo?

9. What character was Beatrix Potter's laundress?

10. Which marshall was shot playing poker in Deadwood?

11. Where is Manneken Pis?

12. What common pudding ingredient comes from the Cassava plant?

13. What year did James Brown die?

14. Who won the women's singles title at Wimbledon in 1994?

15. What is the tallest breed of dog?

(The picture is from our trip to Belgium with Joe, Emily, Nick, and Keli; we had a great time, but I was too busy enjoying myself to write. Anth found a Belgian beer he liked, but he switched to the lambic shown above when he found out that buying two of the first type got you a free lipgloss.)

Justinian's Cistern

2009-03-07T23:09:00.000-08:00

Dimly lit and constantly dripping, the cistern feels like an Arabian nights take on Phantom of the Opera. A raised walkway twists between the rows of columns, and when the light hits the water just right, you see schools of grey and orange fish darting below and occasionally puckering up to the surface. If Gollum took up residence in Istanbul, I imagine he'd feel right at home.

Playing Hooky

2009-03-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

At the urging of the conference organizer, the speakers, and every Turk I spoke with, I skipped the talks on Wednesday afternoon to spend a day as a tourist in Istanbul. I don't really care how good the talks may have been: it was a great decision. You can't possibly do justice to millenia in one day, but I did my best. Sandwiched between a bus ride south from Sariyer and a ferry up the Bosphorus in the evening, I visited the Grand Bazaar, the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, a Byzantine mosaic museum, and Justinian's cistern. The Mosque and the Ayasofya were beautiful, while Topkapi was notable mostly for the enormous number of cats wandering the grounds. Much as I hate to admit it, though, the Bazaar might have been my favorite site. Just don't call it a mall.

I entered the Bazaar resolved not to get lost, so I carefully noted the sign over the door which read "Cikis Exit". I figured out, and you can probably guess, what "Cikis" means, but the place is so overwhelming that it would have been hopeless to try to stay oriented. The ceiling overhead is the only surface not covered with goods, and even that is painted. On every side stores offer jewelry, ceramics, leather jackets, metalwork, Turkish delight, lamps, cushions, rugs, Meerschaum pipes, tea, pocketwatches, musical instruments, knives, boots... you name it. There's no such thing as a price tag, and hesitating for a moment draws immediate attention. At various times I was hailed with, "Hello! Obama!'; "You look very Turkish" (in English, of course); "Hey Miss Texas;" and "I like your old lady coat." It probably takes a certain amount of practice to learn how to negotiate well, but I would give myself a B+. Well, maybe a B. With grade inflation. In the end I was happy with what I paid, but only because of the special prices I got because they liked me. (I know this because they told me so.) Mustafa even had to leave the store to ask the owner if it was okay for him to allow such a low price. John (?) was astonished and disappointed that no one else had offered me apple tea. He said he could speak three languages and sell in ten. I also collected six business cards and two dinner invitations. As a potential alibi, it turns out to be extremely convenient to be visiting Istanbul for professional reasons. As a tourist, it may be hurting someone's feelings to decline a return visit, but sincere regret due to unavoidable commitments is watertight.

I'd like to claim I left the Bazaar because I was tired of shopping, but to be honest, I could have spent much longer there. Just looking around without purchasing was a feast for the senses, but I wasn't executing the "not purchasing" part of that banquet very well. In the end I escaped without too much damage, although I did have to change some more money the next day. The cistern is definitely worth a mention, but my taxi to the airport will arrive in about 5 hours, and I'd like to sleep a little first. To be continued...

Gobble Gobble

2009-03-03T00:58:00.000-08:00

Sariyer, depending on whom you ask, is either a suburb of Istanbul or a former fishing village specializing in serving seafood to tourists on Bosphorus cruises. My vote goes with the latter, as I don't really feel like I'm getting an Istanbul experience this week. I suppose it's reasonable that a contact topology workshop has more time scheduled for contact topology talks than, say, for touring the Hagia Sophia, but I admit that I'm a bit disappointed I can't dart out between seminars for a quick tour of the Grand Bazaar. Apparently there's enough local pride that four Turks (including a conference organizer) have suggested I skip the talks tomorrow afternoon to go do some sightseeing. I guess I should be grateful they didn't tell me to skip my own talk for this purpose.

The university itself is a little short on Ottoman domes and arches, since it was built only 12 years ago. Lest Sariyer verge on too urban, Koc University perches on a hill three miles from the town with a fantastic view of the fog bank that covers the Black Sea. Despite this, there have been a few postcard moments: four old men smoking a hookah this morning; minarets rising among the apartment blocks on the hill above town; the beautiful tiled calligraphy hanging on the wall of the hallway in the Science Building. (If you zoom in enough on that last one, you can crop out the hallway and the mathematicians.) Last night's dinner was also a highlight. In addition to the delicious crispy red mullet, I had a Sarah Palin moment, looking out the window and thinking, "I can see Asia from my table."

De Zoch kuett

2009-02-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

The Beuel parade on Thursday turned out to be good practice for the real Zoch in Koeln today. The atmosphere was a cross between a street party and a tailgate, with bits of Halloween thrown in. I was with a bit group of Germans this time, including several Koeln natives who were Zoch experts. Since we were a bit group, we staked out an area and didn't have to constantly jostle for a spot. When a million people are watching the same parade, that kind of distinction matters.

Singing "Koelle, alaaf, alaaf! Koelle, alaaf!" with every single band that came kept me entertained, but I don't know how they felt about playing the same song for six hours straight The parade itself was a mix of floats, bands, honor guards on horses, and costumed groups of marchers. This last type was key, since they were the source of most of the goodies. "Karmelle" is the correct call to solicit candy, but if you want a flower you have to call "Buetzchen!" and be prepared to trade a kiss on each cheek. Although "our" policeman wasn't allowed to be collecting a bag of candy, you can see above that he did okay for himself.

One of the things that I've really been enjoying about Karneval is that it's a local specialty, not some cookie-cutter German experience that's been packaged and exported for tourists. Both today and last Thursday were holidays that shut everything down here, but in Dresden, for example, it was business as usual. In the parades, most of the bands and marching companies wear powdered wigs and Revolutionary War-era uniforms, and apparently this is to mock the French who occupied the Rhineland in the late 1700's and tried to ban Karneval. I know the French and Germans don't have to go back 200 years to find reasons to dislike each other, but this seems to have stuck. Also, a lot of the Karneval songs are in the local dialect Koelsch, rather than in Hochdeutsch. Alaaf!

Viva Colonia!

2009-02-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

I spent yesterday evening celebrating Karneval in high Koelsch style with my language partner Sabine, her friends, and a few other MPI postdocs. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. If you're invited to go to Koeln to celebrate Karneval at 5:00, don't assume dinner is on the agenda. It's wise to buy a Brat when you see one.

2. The German word for "udder" is "Euter".

3. Dressing as a pirate is the least original costume possible.

4. Karneval is all about the communal sing-along.

5. When sung in German, "La Bamba" is a Karneval song.

6. Kosovo declared its independence one year and five days ago. To date, it is recognized by 55 other nations, not including Spain.

6. Lukas Podolsky (a.k.a. Poldi) will be "coming home" to F.C. Koeln in August. Supporting the Goats is Koelsch, and Karneval is Koelsch, so we sang the team song several times last night. To the tune of Loch Lomond, the song is more or less

mumble mumble mumble F. C. Koeln!

7. The bouncers at Heller's will not allow women waiting in the 35 minute bathroom line to use the men's WC, even when it's unoccupied.

8. "Viva Colonia" is the greatest song ever written. (At least, it's the greatest Karneval song written in Koelsch in the last 10 years. Close enough.)

9. McDonald's fries taste great at 2:00 a.m.

We put the "bo" in Haribo

2009-02-19T04:30:00.000-08:00

"Christine! Christine!" the crowd cried out, and she did bestow candy upon them. (That's the Washerprincess herself, standing in the big tub.)

Last week the MPI administration sent an email informing us that the institute would be closed today for Weiberfest, but that we were still allowed to work if we wished. The same email told us where to find the Weiberfest parade, which happened to be about a block from our apartment. Anth left this morning to give a talk at Columbia, so I decided to head out and watch the festivities solo. A visit to Oxfam on Tuesday provided the bare bones of a pirate costume, and I tentatively left the building with the plan to return and change if a costume was out of place.

I needn't have worried: even the policemen organizing the parade wore some sort of decoration. Nearly everyone was dressed up, and it was an all-ages crowd. The elderly ladies next to me, wearing colored wigs and facepaint, smoked and shared shots of fruit brandy from a communal glass stowed in someone's purse, solicitously making sure their wheelchair-bound friend got her share. As each tractor-pulled float went by, the crowd would yell "Karamelle!" and lunge for the treats thrown out. It's not such a surprise to see five-year-olds diving for candy in the street, but the women next to me didn't exactly hold back, either. Have you ever seen a 75 year old push aside a teenager to get at a lollipop? In addition to hard candy, other popular choices were bags of gummy bears (made by local Haribo), packets of popcorn, Kleenex packs, Bounty bars, sponges, mini RitterSports, and sour twists. I also managed to acquire a box of matches and an (unused) leather-bound pocket planner for 1986. The parade lasted about an hour, and it was chilly enough that I was happy to be so close to home. It was entertaining, but that was due more to the spectators than to the parade itself. I wouldn't say I was underwhelmed, but it did seem a bit surprising that this was a big enough holiday to close everything down.

After thawing my toes and eating lunch, I left the apartment again to head towards Max Planck. When I opened the door, I saw a cow, two surgeons, and a sheriff drinking beer on the sidewalk; an angel peeing on the side of the elementary school across the street; and a butterfly and a gladiator making out. Suddenly it didn't seem quite so reasonable to have traded my pirate costume for a parka. Not that pirates weren't already well represented -several were singing on the bridge just past the cluster of ladybugs sharing a bottle with a clown, a kangaroo, and a convict. It's like being in an elementary school on Halloween, except it's the entire city. I tried working in a cafe this afternoon, but I was distracted by the music coming from the dance party in the main square -it was making the floor vibrate. In addition to just checking out the occasional spectacular costume, there's also the "Real or Not?" game. Three policemen? Two nuns? It's hard to tell. I'm fairly confident the kangaroo was a costume, though...

Thuesday

2009-02-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

(I had gotten used to the fact that eggs aren't refrigerated in the stores here, but I'm not sure how I feel about buying them pre-dyed.)

When one of my language partners suggested meeting on "Thuesday" this week, I wasn't quite sure when to show up. Her English is certainly better than my German, but little things like this make me feel like our meetings are not entirely a one-way street...

Good Projection!

2009-02-16T05:15:00.000-08:00

On Friday afternoon Anth and I flew to Berlin to meet Keli and Nick for the weekend. Although we hadn't planned it this way, our visit coincided with the Berlin File Festival (Berlinale), and that became the main theme for the weekend. We managed to get tickets for three different screenings, two Saturday and one on Sunday. In each case, we had no idea what we were going to see until we stepped into the theater. Advance tickets had been sold out ages ago, so Saturday morning Keli and I showed up at Potsdamer Platz when the box office opened and asked what was available for the day. We were offered three choices, and a bit randomly, selected the German film "Von Wegen" showing at 22:30. We then crossed the street to another theater and asked the same question, and this time we got tickets for a selection of six shorts playing that afternoon.

With some time to spare, we spent about an hour at the Holocaust Memorial & Museum, (last picture above). I can't exactly say I enjoyed it, but they were very well done. Our early afternoon plans were stymied by the fact that Berlin has not one but two Mainzer Strasse 11's, so in the end, no one got an eyebrow piercing. We would have fit in better at Berlinale had things gone differently, but we somehow managed. The shorts were Mexican (a lynching), French (homemade rocket launch), American/Dutch (Holocaust survivors), German (sexual predators), Swedish (a birthday party & emphysema) and British (not sure what it was about). The shorts themselves were mixed, but the experience was great. There was a moderator who introduced each movie and did a short Q&A with each of the directors afterward. She bounced between English and German, sometimes in the same sentence. When she wished us, "Good projection" before the second short, we couldn't decide if this was her personal quirk, a phrase that didn't translate, or something that a real film buff would understand. This last option was pervasive --the British director discussed the "partial noises... disappearing noises" which accompanied the drawings of lettuce and light bulbs in his film. I was glad that one was only 9 minutes long.

Our evening show turned out to be a documentary about a concert in East Berlin in 1989. The punk band Neubauten traveled from the west side of the city in December, a time when the Wall was sort of down, the border mostly open, and no one was quite sure what would happen next. Some of footage was taken by one of the roadies in 1989 as they crossed the border, navigated streams of Trabis, and set up at the VEB Elektrokohle industrial site on the edge of the city. Interspersed with these scenes were interviews with people who'd been at the concert 20 years ago, talking about what the end of the GDR was like and what the concert had meant to them at the time. I think in any other setting, I might not have found the film so interesting, but in that context it was really neat.

Sunday morning Nick and Keli took us out for a birthday breakfast with a great view of Berlin. During breakfast, Tony began to dismantle one of Nick's recent projects in a supportive, brotherly fashion. Leaving them to complete the destruction, Keli and I went off to watch a feature about a Maori family. Taken on its merits, this was my favorite of the films we saw. I don't know much about how movies migrate from film festivals to a theater near you, but if you have the chance to see "The Strength of Water," I think the movie is better than the title. It was a great weekend, and I felt like we barely scratched the surface of Berlin. I know Bonn used to be the capital, but it doesn't seem so unreasonable for Berlin to have reclaimed that post.

Skylines

2009-02-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

I have a thing for skylines and silhouettes. When I look through old pictures from trips, there tend to be a lot more outlines of rooftops than pictures of my husband, for example. Since I know not everyone feels the same way, I've been trying to branch out, but today I'll admit to a relapse.

Will work for croissants

2009-02-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

Some blog readers may get the idea that we do nothing but flit around Europe having fun, but I assure you that we're spending this week in Paris for mathematical purposes. After giving a talk yesterday, Tony went native today and attended a demonstration with 15000 people who aren't happy with Sarkozy's university reforms. I was talking to a visiting Swiss mathematician, rather than a French researcher, so I didn't get invited along to sing and chant and march. Sadly, he failed to keep a copy of the lyrics composed for the occasion, but I think the protesters are optimistic about being heard. Apparently there's some confusion, though, as the newspapers covered the nude models' strike last month more assiduously than they did the professors' protest.

I spent a portion of this morning in our neighborhood cafe, "La Halte des Taxis". It's a pleasant environment to work in, nursing a cafe creme while the borderline seedy old men crowd around the counter for their morning espresso and beer. From my window seat I could see that the passers-by uniformly wore shoes nicer than any I own, a fact -along with the large dogs wandering the cafe- which convinced me I really was in Paris. The weather has been pretty nasty since we arrived, so I was content to linger with my notebook instead of joining the crowds bundled and hooded against the spitting rain. I was in good company, as most of the tables were filled by patrons passing the morning with a laptop or newspaper. The one mark against the ambiance was the dragon lady behind the counter, who clearly did not find my bungled efforts at French endearing. I had resolved to win her over by the end of the week, but I think slaying the Hydra might be easier.

Although the French intellectual tradition failed to inspire me mathematically, I did get a new perspective on living well. I've always thought of "Moderation in all things" as a reasonable policy, but I was struck today by the inherent contradiction. Isn't moderation in all things somewhat ...immoderate? It's like one of those logical paradoxes where someone announces, "I am lying." In order to reconcile this, I've decided to choose a few things to leave off the moderation list, and my first selection is pain au chocolate. I'm going to experiment for a week with abandoning all restraint when it comes to chocolate croissants, and then I'll revisit this philosophical position to see how it's working out. Interestingly, it looks as though my epicurean endeavor just might coincide with exact duration of our stay in Paris. More food for thought...

All Hail Christine I

2009-02-06T03:48:00.000-08:00

In some of the early fall posts, I was able to exercise my nascent Beuel pride by describing Burgerfest Beuel and Putzensmarkt, but things have been a bit quiet on our side of the Rhein lately. We do laundry here, but almost everything else on the other side of the river. On two occasions I've even had to suffer Bonn Burgers explaining their disparaging name for Beuel. It seems to translate as "the wall-eyed side," in contrast to the official slogan "Auf der richtigen Seite des Lebens" ("On the right side of life" -a pun on being the right bank). Recently, however, I learned that our laundry efforts can be viewed through the lens of civic spirit. In preparation for Karneval, which is a big deal here, Beuel annually crowns a Washer Princess. This year, Christine I reigns as Waescherprinzessin. On the Thursday before Karneval, she'll lead the charge to city hall to remove the mayor from power. There's some controversy, as apparently there was also a Christine I in 1985, but I think the dynastic genealogists will get over it. A few days ago I saw the official Waescherprinzessin vehicle, a polka-dotted van, driving across the bridge: perhaps a state visit to the other bank?

Not for vegetarians

2009-02-02T08:04:00.000-08:00

Although we sometimes join other MPI postdocs at a local pub after work on Friday, we missed Happy Hour last week because our train to Strasbourg left at 17:14. Upon arrival we walked in circles around our hotel for a while, but eventually we found ourselves turning past a half-timbered building onto the right cobblestoned lane. The room wasn't much to linger in, so we headed out on the town to the bar suggested by our advance team (our friend Sam, in town for a conference). Looping around the block had worked so well for the hotel that we decided to keep it up, but the real problem is that "block" is questionable concept in a town settled over 2000 years ago. In the end we settled ourselves with lambics and admired the local tattoos for a while before being joined by a small crew of symplectic geometers. Although I imagine most people reading this post rarely have the opportunity to sample French microbrews with people who count holomorphic curves for a living, I recommend it.

Strasbourg is an interesting city. Just over the border from Germany, Alsace has been traded back and forth between France and Germany and their predecessors over the last few millennia. Although it's certainly a part of France now -a fact proved by their superior croissants and mediocre cappuccinos- the German influence is quite strong. Many of the streets in the old part of town had two signs, one with the name in French, and the other in what looked like poorly-spelled German (e.g. Rue de la Monnaie and something like Munzlergasse). We heard a lot of German on the street, and one of the local specialties (Tarte Flambe) is also sold in Bonn as Pflammekuchen. Unfortunately, in the picture above you can see the waitress drizzling brandy on Tony's lap, but the flash wiped out the blue flames shooting from his desert and the menacing runoff.

We visited a museum, walked around, and generally enjoyed the city, but all of this was merely passing the time between meals. The bottom picture shows the amuse bouches from Sunday's dinner with Sam. The left-most glass has jellied foie gras with pear, and the center was a goat cheese pudding topped with carrot mousse. However, the bacon foam topping the third glass was my favorite. Tony and Sam both ordered the slow-cooked beef cheek as a main course; I was planning to do the same, but in the interest of diversity, I ended up with a veal filet mignon that I think was even better. Although the region is usually associated more with white wines (consistent with the German influence), there was also a local pinot noir that wouldn't have been recognized by the Sideways crew. Light and served chilled, I think it went better with my rabbit and cabbage salad than with Tony's foie gras creme brulee. We will be enjoying bread and water for the next week to recover. Mostly water.

Once Monday rolled around, it was time to work again. In fact, by 12:15 a.m. Tony, Sam, and I were sitting in a bar talking about holomorphic discs. It was snowing outside and the bar was open late to show the Superbowl, so we were in no hurry to leave. To be honest, I wish more of my workdays took place in Alsatian bars. From my point of view, it was a productive mathematical evening (morning?), so the lesson I've learned is that eating foie gras makes symplectic geometry easier. Why didn't anyone tell me that sooner?

Tidbits

2009-01-23T00:09:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, German has bits of unexpected charm. For example, the girl who sells you Magnum bars in the movie theater is the "Ice Cream Fairy" (Eis Fee). And, at the airport, the rental car company advertises the chance to go "Wroum."

Ounces per Dollar

2009-01-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

I don't know why people say London is expensive. Okay, at first I was taken in by the "exchange rate" they posted, but once I realized that this was just a joke to show off their welcoming sense of humor, I found the prices quite reasonable. It's a bit funny that everything's in dollars instead of Euros, but maybe the colonial legacy is at work? Obviously it wouldn't make sense to actually list prices in "pounds" -mathematicians may not be big on units, but even I know that a pound is a measure of weight, not currency. Once I had that all figured out, I felt much better about the price of my train ticket back to London on Monday afternoon.

In the morning I got a local's tour of Cambridge, courtesy of Rachel and her student ID. I guess you never know where two girls from Richland might meet up! It's unoriginal, I suppose, but my favorite sight was the King's College fan vault. See Figure~\ref{fig:top}. (That's how I direct readers to the right picture in my day job.) Rachel led me through a handful of different colleges, showed me the Mathematicians' Bridge and Newton's statue, and pointed out enough punts to convince me I really was in Cambridge. The university was kicking off an 800th birthday celebration that weekend, and this context helped a bit yesterday when I heard the BBC announcer ruminate on the theme of Americans and history: "...and they have so very little of it, really."

After lunch I caught the train to King's Cross and had just enough time for a quick double header at the British Museum and the highly-recommended cake shop nearby. The pastry was good, but the British Museum was amazing. I was also stunned by the fact that it's absolutely free. They're happy to take a well-deserved donation, of course, but when I wandered in a side door, there wasn't even anywhere to drop a bill before I was staring at a 16 foot Buddha. Any given gallery had multiple astonishing sights: in the same room, I saw both the Rosetta stone and a woman leaning with both arms on a sarcophagus to take a picture. My hour and a half wasn't close to enough, so I stayed mostly in Egypt and Assyria, with a brief but fascinating foray into Arabic calligraphy. I had to make a choice between catching my flight home and seeing the medieval exhibits, and in the end I made the questionable call to head to the airport.

I just looked online, and there's a Germanwings itinerary that would get me to London by 9:00 and home to Bonn by 22:30. If I think of the 90 Euros as an entrance fee, a day trip back to the British Museum still seems like a deal...

Hammers of London

2009-01-20T00:35:00.000-08:00

I'm told it's bad form to let your husband spend his 30th birthday at a workshop on Algebraic Lie Theory, but I didn't really have a choice. Given that, the best I could do was join him for a post-birthday weekend in London/Cambridge. I flew in Saturday night and left 48 hours later, but we managed to squeeze in a great trip.

Saturday morning we decamped from Cambridge, leaving ourselves a generous amount of time to get to the kickoff of the Premiership match we'd bought tickets for. (Thanks, Bill!!!) We had with us a 23 page printout from the London transportation website which advised us the best route to take to Upton Park in light of the Tube closures that complicate weekend travel in London. Signs about closures were posted everywhere, and at each stop an announcement cautioned passengers about the disruptions at upcoming stations. We felt a bit smug with our up-to-date list of itineraries; yes, we had to take a train, two Underground lines, and a bus, but at least we wouldn't be marooned on the Hammersmith Line as the ref blew the whistle. After a while, however, we started listening carefully to the announcements and realized that none of the closures actually affected the line we wanted. This time with mild disgust, we abandoned the London transit advice and navigated ourselves directly to Boleyn Park with time to spare.

The game itself was great. It's amazing how intimate a stadium of 31,818 people can feel, and we had a fantastic view even from the second-to-last row in the east stands. The other fans were an attraction worth watching in their own right, with accents straight out of central casting and all sorts of advice to the players and officials. The blurry picture above is naturally the West Ham Hammer, which probably ranks with the Stanford Tree for least-cuddly mascot. Maybe to broaden the all-ages appeal, they also had a West Ham Teddy Bear cavorting on the pitch. The chants and songs were largely incomprehensible, enough so that we fell back on the explanation formed early in our relationship and concluded they must be in Hungarian. The one exception was a clear and enthusiastic rendition of "Fuck you, Craig Bellamy," sung to the tune of La Donna e Mobile. In the end the Hammers prevailed, and we celebrated over fish and chips with a crowd of other jubilant supporters in claret and blue.

Before heading back to Cambridge, we enjoyed dinner in a gastropub near King's Cross. Although the lavender creme brulee was not as good as we might have hoped, Tony's pear and goat cheese tartine was one of the best appetizers I've ever tried, and my onion soup was amazing. There's nothing like taking advantage of being in London ...and having French food. Monday morning sent Tony back to Algebraic Lie Theory and left me with a day to play tourist before my flight. Since I'm unlikely to do anything nearly as interesting in the next week, I'll leave you breathlessly in suspense ("What did Joan do?") and post on that next time I need to procrastinate.

Those clever Germans

2009-01-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

Here's something fun if you like to play with fire:

Germany is not nearly as credit card-friendly as the U.S. All sorts of places are cash-only, and they don't necessarily have signs announcing it. At the grocery store, the cashier thinks nothing of ringing up 30 Euros in groceries before mentioning that their card reader isn't working. And, if you're lucky enough to find a place that takes plastic, they'll almost certainly print not only your card number but also your bank account number on the receipt. This is less than ideal, to put it mildly, but the saving grace is that all the receipts are printed on magic paper. When exposed to heat, the paper turns black and leaves only a type of watermark showing. I'm aware of the fact that putting paper in a fire usually turns it black eventually, but this happens sans smoke or charring. Pyros and security neurotics, unite!

My recipes are my business

2009-01-12T00:38:00.000-08:00

As anyone who's a Facebook friend of my knows, I added Beef Stew with Carrots and Potatoes to my Epicurious recipe box a few days ago. I find this really, really annoying. Not the recipe -I haven't tried it yet- but the fact that Facebook swooped around my computer, scooped up this little tidbit, and plastered it on the News Feed. I have never done anything to link these two sites beside log in on the same computer. I have limited sympathy for people who post information about themselves online and then are suprised when others see it, but this seems qualitatively different. My relationship with Epicurious is all take and no give, and my minimalist approach to Facebook has always operated under the principle that anyone who really knows me has other avenues of contact. If I post something for my own entertainment or someone else's, fine, but I don't want information, recipes or otherwise, posted for me. Frankly, if I want to Google some obscure sexual fetish, or buy term papers online to see what grade I'd give them, I don't want this shared with my 123 "friends". I also don't really want recipes I've saved posted, largely because I don't want to seem so self-absorbed as to think anyone cares. I'm not blind to the irony of complaining about online privacy on a blog, but Tony's out of town so I have to complain to someone. And, to set the public record straight, my recipe endorsement goes to Chicken Tagine with Apricots and Almonds.

Baaa-ck to the Future

2009-01-10T04:07:00.001-08:00

We spent some time in the fall noting ways in which being in Europe was like living in the Middle Ages: the streets have cobblestones; we saw an entire ox being roasted on a stick; you could buy mead at the market; and of course, there are castles all over the place. I suppose you have to count things like wireless internet, indoor plumbing, and excellent chocolate against this theory, but the recent addition of goats to downtown Bonn is starting to bring it back to life.

(A brief internet search suggests that perhaps "Meh" is a better goat noise, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus.)

Snow Day

2009-01-05T14:03:00.001-08:00

We don't talk to Germans very often. Apart from ordering Milchkaffees in cafes, we stick to our own kind. No nationalistic high horse here -by "our kind", I mean us. There's nothing like living with your officemate to narrow your social field, and that's without mentioning that "roommate" and "coworker" our not our primary relationships. In any case, I am feeling triumphant because today I talked to Real German People.

At the conference I went to before Christmas, I met a graduate student who was also based out of Bonn. He invited me to his thesis defense, so I trudged through the snow this morning to hear his talk. Unfortunately, his advisor had a bit more trouble with the elements, so 15 minutes after the start time, I was still chatting with his mother at the back of the seminar room. In the end everyone arrived and the talk went well. The audience was divided in two parts, with one group expected to understand everything (committee, a postdoc, a few grad students) and one group for whom the expectations were much lower (his mother, sister, girlfriend, sister's boyfriend, and me.) In the latter case, we had different excuses; as we all waited outside during the closed-door part of the defense, his mother commented that in every sentence she understood a few words when the German popped up around the math. In my case the situation was similar, but with the popping up bits reversed. I was chagrined to realize that this conversation in the lobby was the most extensive German conversation I've had in months.

When we arrived, I had fairly ambitious plans for my language development, and some combination of circumstance and inertia has done a serious number on them. For a while there was a language class at MPI, but that seems to have dissolved. I've been reading some, but this doesn't do much for oral fluency. The frustrating thing is that there's just not that much opportunity to practice German. This sounds ridiculous, but the difficulty is that a productive work life here is not consistent with a concerted effort to seek out immersive language environments, and none are presenting themselves. (We're back to that officemate/housemate theme again.) If my only goal were to learn German, I'm sure I could find more opportunities to chat, but being mathematically productive doesn't seem particularly consistent with a hunt for linguistic extracurriculars. After four months I would say my comprehension is better than when I arrived, but I doubt my speaking has improved at all. I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I think this situation is crying out for some reform on my part.

(End of frustrated rant)

The pictures today are a bit random, although the snow speaks for itself. In picture 2, you should consider the mystery fruit an identification challenge. The third picture is the most interesting one. Shortly after arriving, we noticed cryptic notations like 20*C+M+B*07 on doorways and walls around town. I would have assumed they were marking the gas lines, but Rick Steves via my favorite reference librarian revealed otherwise. The letters are the initials of the three kings, sandwiched between the four-digit year. Supposedly Epiphany is celebrated by roving bands of kids singing for money, and the doorways of the generous are marked accordingly. I haven't actually seen or heard said bands, but apparently they found someone home in our building a few days early.

Happy Sylvester

2008-12-31T11:48:00.000-08:00

We seriously questioned whether we'd gotten the day wrong when the bells started to ring at midnight yesterday. They rang for long enough that we had time to turn on a laptop, check the date, and confirm that it was 12:06 on December 31. We hadn't missed the new year starting, but you wouldn't have known it from the bells.

Today is officially "Sylvester" and it seems to be a big deal here. All the shops closed at 2:00, which was a bit awkward to learn at 1:47. We wanted to buy a small hand mixer to avoid beating egg whites by hand, but apparently the Germans prefer hand blenders to hand mixers. For 60 Euros you can by a blender with a mixer attachment, but we were looking for something that didn't need to handle ice cubes. (Target.com advertises at least 4 hand mixers for $14.99.) This situation is especially difficult when you have only 13 minutes to make a purchase.

There are a lot of parties advertised for tonight, so our guess as to why the streets were so empty all afternoon is that everyone went home to take a preparatory nap. Anyone so inclined gets a bit of extra time this year; there's a leap second tonight, so the last minute of 2008 will be 61 seconds. We saw some fireworks last night (contributing to our confusion) and we're hoping for a good show disply. Happy New Year!

Addendum: the pics don't do justice to the barrage of fireworks. Apparently everyone and his Oma was setting off the kind of rockets you can only buy on reservations in the U.S. Since our big window points towards the river and the tree had helpfully defoliated itself in November, we had quite a show.

Ciao, Sicilia

2008-12-28T03:56:00.000-08:00

One of the features of our trip that I unexpectedly enjoyed the most was seeing the scenery as we drove around the island. Sicily defied my sense of scale, evolving from sea to mountain, farmland to ruin, over a few kilometers, not tens or hundreds of miles. To one side of the road would be the water, a hazy island in the distance, and puffy cumulus dotting a blue sky. Then I'd turn out the other window and see patchwork farmland spreading across a green valley under storm clouds. Lemon orchards alternated with vineyards until suddenly there was a peak jutting up, white crag on one side backed by a green hillside sloping down gently to the other. The landscape was simultaneously lush and stark, adjectives I've never put together before. We saw flocks of sheep grazing between the grapevines and then land so studded with jagged rocks that it was hard to believe anything but grass could survive. Olive groves were carpeted with bright yellow flowers, and giant cacti clumped at the base of reddish cliffs. We saw no streams or rivers, but a lot of sky. On any given hilltop, you were as likely to see a crumbling ruin as an antenna tower or satellite dish, and the stone foundations could have been fifty or five hundred years old.

The scenery was striking enough to prompt a constant stream of commentary, but the tranquility was undercut by the uniformly atrocious driving. There were lots of views from the road that I would have loved to have pictures of, but there was not a single shoulder where I would have felt safe stopping for a shot. I'm willing to pass judgment here: Sicilian driving is not just different; it's bad. Rather than trying to paint a complete picture, I'll offer an off-road example which demonstrates the pervasive attitude towards safety. When we stopped for gas on the outskirts of Palermo, the station attendant put his lit cigarette in the ashtray on the gas pump before coming over to ask whether we wanted diesel or benzina.

Palermo itself had a sort of crumbling charm that I would have liked to see more of. We spent a few hours wandering around the day after Christmas, and nearly everything was closed. We even had trouble finding a place to get cappuccini, which was an Italian first for us. Downtown was decorated with Christmas lights strung across each road, stars on the buildings, and signs reading "Auguri" nearly everywhere. Tiny alleys ran off to each side, twisting into paths more like ramps under balconies almost touching above. Most of the buildings facing the street had grand facades that looked like they'd seen better days, elaborate friezes side by side with broken plaster. Piazzas with statues, palms, and fountains were tucked away every few blocks, and every church had its elaborate Nativity scene, huge altar painting, and gaudy chandeliers. We even had a local guide for a while, a stray dog that apparently really liked Keli. We were amused by her failure to shake him until he started barking and snapping at the flower vendor who approached us. Then we were less amused, but still couldn't shake him. We finally ducked into a wine bar built into the fifteenth-century Greek Gate, and the dog gave his best effort to join us there as well. When barred from entering, he sat outside giving us puppy dog eyes for a while -this phrase exists for a reason. Finally he gave up, which merely meant laying down for a nap on the step outside. In the end, we outlasted him, but it took us a full Italian dinner to do so.

Today we were back in Bonn, where the high was 28 degrees. It was sunny, but not with the same conviction as the Italian sun. We wore gloves, did not eat on a patio, and tried to think about math. All in all, I think I prefer vacation.

Buon Natale!

2008-12-24T08:47:00.000-08:00

Our fairly random choice to stay near Trapani was received yesterday with skepticism just short of derision. Trapani, we were told, has streets which are "parallela," but not much else. The only feature of our corner of Sicily which the Barberas seemed to approve of was the ancient hilltop city of Erice. Trapani has nothing, we were told, but Erice: that's worth seeing.

Since we tend to do what we're told, we set out for Erice immediately after breakfast and lunch (for some members of the party, this was the same meal.) We're getting more used to Sicilian driving, which seems to revolve around the principle that there is no road is too narrow and no oncoming traffic too close to preclude passing. It was interesting to learn that this applies even to blind curves snaking up the side of a mountain. When we finally made it, however Erice turned out to be one of the most stunning places I've ever seen. The city is thousands of years old, and we went expecting a few ruins and a good view. Instead, we found a castle, an amazing view, and an actual functioning town perched 25oo feet above modern Trapani. The "streets" are the narrowest things I've ever seen a motor vehicle on -at one point I had to step into a doorway to avoid being eviscerated by the mirror of a tiny Fiat. The view is breathtaking, towards inland Sicily in one direction and looking out over the Mediterranean in the other. The town itself is a twisty maze of side passages and hidden stairs; even the main streets look like alleys. We passed four churches in a two minute walk through the centro, and the only one which was open had a floor tiled in the floral ceramic designs on the pottery in the last post. Although we'd been advised to visit on a sunny day, the textured clouds and nearly tourist-free streets gave the whole place an almost spooky feel that kept us exploring for several hours.

Learning from previous mistakes, we made our way down the mountain with a packet of ricotta pastries from an Erice pasticcheria, and we stopped at a pescheria in Trapani for 2 kilos of shrimp for our Christmas Eve dinner. We actually intended to stop for much less than 2 kilos, but it was all or nothing once the octopus got vetoed. I hesitated at the prospect of shelling and deveining that many tiny shrimp, but Tony volunteered Nick for the task and the purchase was made. Once home, Nick and Anthony shelled shrimp for nearly two hours, but as far as I'm concerned, their efforts were worth it. We had shrimp grilled on skewers, tossed with pasta, and steamed over the fire. Right about the time the shrimp were consumed, the coals on the patio grills were finally hot and even, so we rummaged through the kitchen for other things to grill. The decision to grill some pears was a good one; the decision to put some leaves on the fire to see what happened was not as wise, but luckily most of the smoke stayed outside.

Currently the four of us are listening to the Nutcracker, playing on our laptops, and waiting for midnight and our trek to one of the smallest churches I've ever seen. We're having a wonderful trip, but our thoughts are certainly with the friends and family we don't get to see this year. We'll be logged on to Skype a lot tonight and tomorrow, so feel free to give us a call or an email to set up a time. If we don't get to chat, though, have a wonderful Christmas, wherever you are!

A dog named Spike-a

2008-12-23T15:29:00.000-08:00

Today was a serious adventure rustling the far branches of the family tree. I'll let Tony post his impressions separately, but I wanted to put up a few pictures of our visit to Sciacca to meet the Italian relatives. Their hospitality was wonderful, and after 9 hours with Anthony providing the only bilingual link in the conversational chain, it feels like I've known these people forever. The third picture, left to right, shows Franco, Keli, Nick, Sylvana, Lucio, Giacoma, Anthony, and me, and the man behind the camera was Giacoma's husband Alfonso. (Spike-a was outside for the photo shoot.)

I won't deny that the afternoon had its awkward moments: Keli's extended "conversation" with Franco; my re-gifting the chocolates we'd brought to Franco when we moved to Giacoma's apartment; and Nick's failure to convince Giacoma that he spoke Spanish all come to mind. Overall, however, we were impressed by the warmth with which we were welcomed and entertained. My recommendation: if you have any unclaimed Italian relatives, track them down and present yourself on their doorstep. In addition to a having a memorable afternoon, you won't need to eat for a week.

Marsala

2008-12-22T12:00:00.000-08:00

Based on today's outing, Marsala seems to beat Trapani in the scenery department. We had a cloudless blue backdrop to set off the skyline -even the satellite dishes and TV antennae look dramatic against that shade, but I've spared you the picture I took attempting to make this case. After a leisurely morning nibbling gingerbread crepes on the patio, we spent the afternoon exploring Marsala. We found a bold outpost of anti-siesta activists willing to dispense cappuccino at 2:30, and to support them in their principled stand, we also bought some of their ricotta-filled pastries. Now, post-dinner and with no oven, the conversation has circled around to why we didn't buy a few spares to bring home.

In addition to the scenery and snacks, we also found one of the more unusual creches I've ever come across. If you look closely at the picture above, you'll notice that the sixth-century ruins are inhabited by a population of plastic Nativity figures. I've never before seen an archeological site used quite this way, but until yesterday I'd never seen a supermarket selling a duck with the head on, either. Or a lemon the size of a mango, but that mystery, at least is solved.

In Sicilia

2008-12-21T12:59:00.000-08:00

It's not perfect here. Really. I mean, it could be in the 70's instead of the 60's, and the water pressure in the shower could be better. There's probably something else that's less than ideal, but I'm not sure what.

Nick, Keli, Anthony, and I met up in Frankfurt yesterday, and after a not-too-long stopover in Rome (in contrast to the one scheduled for our return trip next weekend) we landed in Palermo. We picked up our rental car and set out for Trapani around 9:45, and despite our best efforts at getting lost, we managed to find ourselves at the correct address in on the unlit and unmarked road before midnight.

As we drove in last night we could see jagged pale cliffs to the side of the road, the occasional palm tree under a streetlight, and a dense spray of stars above. Our villa was cosy when we finally arrived, but the advantage of arriving at night is the utter surprise of what you wake up to. The shutters in our bedroom work so well that it seemed the rooster was confused and the birds were chirping in the middle of the night, but when I joined Keli for tea on the patio, I suddenly believed I was on a Mediterranean island. The house is in the middle of an olive grove, a description which seems to apply to most of Sicily. There's an orange tree right outside, and some pepper plants and a tree which has lemons the size of mangoes. We found a palm tree that might be growing dates behind the house, near the shopping cart loaded up with firewood by the basketball court. I'm guessing this is not a traditional Sicilian layout, but what do I know?

Our drive into Trapani proper was occasionally hair-raising, but we made it downtown with no real drama. We had lunch in a small cafe, and we're fairly sure it was for our benefit when they turned off the news and put on country covers of Christmas hits. After lunch we stocked up on essentials like spinach and ricotta ravioli, racing the clock before the siesta hour hit. Nearly every building we've seen the is the same sandy shade, but it was like a sand-toned ghost town once 2:00 came around. Every store closed, and the streets were completely deserted. On the drive home, we had the road to ourselves.

We took a second trip out later in the afternoon, but returned with plenty of time for the serious business of making dinner. After preparing a large roasting pan of onions, carrots, and fennel, we learned that the oven here is broken. This was a bit of a disappointment, because our provisioning had also included supplies to bake cookies, bread, and a Christmas pie. Not ready to concede, Nick and Anthony made a valiant effort to bake cookies in the wood burning oven, but as you can see from the picture above, it wasn't a total success. We weren't smoked out of the house, though, so it wasn't a total failure, either. Our plan was to do a lot of cooking here, but this seems like Fate is sending a pretty clear message that we should buy some cannoli instead. Who am I to argue?

Invite me for dinner

2008-12-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

We had the afternoon off from talks today, so I had a chance to stroll around downtown Heidelberg in the daylight. Having made it out of Building 368, I can see why the word "picturesque" shows up when people describe Heidelberg. I can say with some real civic pride that Bonn's Christmas market is more impressive than Heidelberg's, but on the other hand, in Bonn I often caught stray thoughts about mobs popping into my head, and there's something relaxing about not having to worry about being trampled. I wasn't able to sample all the goodies, but I did a quick quality check on the Gluhwein here, and it passes muster. The cinnamon stars, too, and I have a good feeling about the stollen.

There's a big church in the middle of the old town, and just as I stepped in the organ began playing Corelli's Christmas Concerto for some sort of Advent service. The setting was amazing, with a red and white gothic ceiling lit mostly by candlelight, and I sat down for the service. Liturgical vocabulary is not the most diverse, so I was optimistic about my chances of understanding the readings/homily. As far as I can tell, the latter was largely about burning witches. In particular, it was about some man who traveled around Germany in the late 1500's burning witches wherever he went. I'm assuming that the latter half of the sermon repudiated this, but to be honest, I didn't catch that part.

I also had a chance to hike up to the castle, which offers a spectacular view. (So it's a shame that my camera was back at the hotel.... oops.) You pay more the deeper you penetrate the complex; the garden is free, but for 3 Euros you get access to the courtyard, the German Apothecary Museum, and the Grosse Fass. That last one, as I once memorably learned, means "big keg", so I was a little underwhelmed by this attraction until I saw it. Actually, I'd probably give it billing on the sign, too. You have to pay another 4 Euros for a guided tour of the inside, and since I was low on pocket change, I stuck to the outer section. It felt a little like snooping around someone's house at a dinner party, poking into the corners but having to avoid the main rooms. Still, the GAM had an impressive preserved alligator, and the collection of dried beetles made me appreciate living in the age of Advil. By the way, in case anyone's thinking about inviting me to a dinner party, I promise I won't root through your cupboards and coat closet when I say I'm using the bathroom. Really.

As a final note, one thing I find perplexing about Heidelberg is not the profusion of felt reindeer antlers. If expressing holiday sentiment via headgear is your thing, this seems like as good a way to do it as any. No, what I find odd is the large numbers of bunny ears that also seem to be in circulation. Do Heidelbergers participate in a cult of the Christmas Bunny, or is this too much like South Park come to life? I would be extremely interested in any explanations for this...

Building 368

2008-12-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

I'm reporting from a knot theory conference in Heidelberg -can you think of a better way to kick off the holidays? I'd heard Heidelberg described as both a charming must-see and a debased tourist trap, but to be honest, I've gotten neither of these impressions from the inside of Seminar Room 432, Building 368. Note, it's not Gavelots Hall or Alumbucks Center, but simply "Building 368". The campus in general has that "Building 368" feel to it, mostly tall concrete edifices with large window arrays, circa 1970 or so. And of course, giant numbers stenciled on the side for identification. As someone with a soft spot for quads and fake old buildings, it's odd to have Europe come up short in the old building department. It's not that I think I actually work better when there are more towers around, but rather that some transference effect kicks in and glamour-by-association makes working seem more fun. Do you think the alchemists would ever have discovered the Philosopher's Stone in Building 368? (On second thought, maybe that analogy is more apt than I'm entirely happy with...) In any case, I've seen a few European universities in this mold, and they always disappoint me a bit. Not everything needs to look like Cambridge, though; I'd settle for a mix of Cambridge and I.M. Pei, if pressed. Guilt follows on disappointment, as I wonder if my academic castles can only be supported by tuition inching annually closer to the California state debt. Is my architectural preference an implicit vote for exclusionary education? I don't lose much sleep over this, and won't unless I end up as a dean someday, but I wonder how much an inspiring backdrop is worth. Maybe MasterCard has it right, and a gabled hall is priceless.

Oh baloney!

2008-12-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

And I would like to draw everyone's attention to a little ditty called "Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener." I realize it is not about baloney. But it is about meat.

So, have we lost posting privileges yet, guys? :)

Baloney Again

2008-12-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

In honor of Joan and Anthony's recent trip to Bologna, I would like to draw everyone's attention to a Mark Knopfler song called Baloney Again on the album Sailing to Philadelphia. Merry Christmas.

Baloney II

2008-12-08T05:01:00.001-08:00

This is cheating a bit to coast on last weekend's trip for a second entry, but I wanted to post a few more pictures and endorse the only bookshop I've ever seen with a wine bar, salumeria, and cheese shop. It was even called "Eataly". If only the books hadn't all been in Italian...

Baloney!

2008-12-08T04:38:00.000-08:00

We gave Blind Booking a second shot, and this time pay/click/wait was followed by a ticket to Bologna for the weekend. According to Wikipedia, Bologna has 37 miles of arcades, so we prepared ourselves for pinball and House of the Dead II (Tony's pick). Strangely, we found neither, but I will say that if you're planning to spend a rainy weekend walking around an old city, it's awfully obliging when the residents have spent the last few centuries covering the sidewalks. The arcades are a mix of old and new, some with frescoed ceilings and carved capitals on the pillars, and others made from utterly unromantic blocks of concrete. The overall effect is really distinctive -I feel confident that if someone dropped me in a new neighborhood in Bologna in 20 years, I'd still be able to identify the city. You'll have to take my word for it, though; most the views down twisty pillared streets that charmed us in person didn't make for very good pictures.

(Editorial note: Early on someone noted, "Your blog is all about food," so we tried to rein in the detailed gastronomical reports, but this is Italy and I really can't help myself. )

Our most memorable dinner in Bologna was the first evening, in a restaurant whose decor made it clear that the owners had never even flirted with vegetarianism. In the first room I had to suppress the impulse to duck; the swinging hams and clusters of trotters were actually hanging well above head-height, but the canopy of suspended pork gave the whole room a sort of funhouse feeling. Our dining room was decked out in slaughterhouse-chic. This may not be a category you're familiar with, but I don't know what else to call an array of meat hooks dangling from a track in the ceiling. There was no menu available, so like everyone else, we had a wooden platter piled with prosciutto, mortadella, lardo, local parmesan, mozzarella, and two types of salami. The waitress offered us "something local" to wash it down with, and the accompaniment was a basket of bread with ham baked into it. I think I would happily eat there every Friday for the rest of the year if I could.

One sense in which living in Germany is poor training for a visit to Italy is that cultural differences manifest themselves in the traffic patterns. Not only have I gotten used to waiting -not just for cross-traffic to stop but also for the little green man to beckon- before I step from the curb, but my instincts now associate zebra stripes with inviolable right-of-passage. Italian drivers do not share that impression.

Unless you've seen him, you have no idea how disturbing the moose is.

2008-11-29T15:21:00.000-08:00

For the benefit of all those Stateside, I waited to post these pics until after Thanksgiving. I'm not claiming no one's seen a wink of tinsel in the U.S. yet, but there's often some hesititation about breaking out the candy canes before the turkey. Here, however, we learned that America has no monopoly on Christmas commercialization. In fact, I would claim they kick off the Christmas season even earlier here -Christmas carols may have been playing in the mall last week, but I'm fairly certain they didn't show up until after Halloween. We saw our first Christmas garlands in late October, and it's only picked up since then.

Last weekend the Christmas market officially opened here. I knew German towns had Christmas markets, but I assumed that meant you could buy ornaments and maybe a sausage or some mulled wine. Having now had a week to get used to the extravaganza that's taken over downtown, I would have to say I'm a fan. Tony and I were working at MPI pretty late this weekend, but it's hard to feel to sorry for yourself when you can step out the door and choose among sausage, steak, baked potatoes, kabobs, roasted chesnuts, Gluehwein, hot mead, poffertjes, waffles, candied nuts, crab sandwiches, stollen, licorice, crepes, baked apples, pizza, Dampfnudeln, and a mixed drink called "Hot Heidi". In addition to the Ferris wheel you can see above, there are also some small carnival rides and an ice skating rink in the middle of the square. The stands selling ornaments, Schmuck, and candles close around 21:00, but the ones running as bars are open until almost midnight every night. The moose and deer in the pictures serenade the crowds -their jaws move and it's a sort of singing-bass-with-antlers effect that I find a bit unnerving.

Lest anyone think that it's all wholesome family fun over here, I can also report that x-rated Advent calenders are also available. We went to a department store to select ours, choosing chocolate over Legos, pictures, or soccer trading cards, but another option involved a picture of nearly naked men with feathery white angel wings. I'm not sure what was behind the little doors on that one...

Happy Fakesgiving!

2008-11-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

Germanwings is a discount airline that flies out of the Cologne/Bonn airport. We took a Germanwings flight to Dresden a few weeks ago to visit Nick and Keli, and it was effortless as air travel gets these days -no lines, and we didn't even have to take off our shoes for security. Since getting back to Bonn we'd been working pretty hard, so we decided to treat ourselves to a minibreak, and Germanwings' "Blind Booking" offer seemed like a great way to do this.

When booking blindly, you get a list of 8 or 9 cities in Europe, pick dates, click "buy"...and then you find out where you're going. The prices are cheap; for roughly 100 Euros total, we were guaranteed two roundtrip tickets from Bonn to one of Barcelona, Leipzig, Lisbon, Rome, Dresden, Budapest, Vienna, or Bologna. We picked our dates, typed in the credit card number, clicked "buy," and our destination was...

...Dresden!

Although no Rome, Dresden has provided a fun couple of days. It's always good to see Nick & Keli, and the four of us enjoyed an early Thanksgiving dinner last night, complete with the traditional mixed fowl leg roast. My personal feeling is that goose and duck have been seriously underutilized as a base for cranberry sauce. We also did our part to keep the American economy chugging along by catching up on The Office via iTunes. It will be a little strange when Thursday is business as usual, but maybe we can get a turkey Doener for lunch or something. Happy Thanksgiving!

Addendum:

It turns out that Dresden was the perfect place to have ended up for reasons beyond the company. Last night, when our plane was still in Koeln an hour past our scheduled departure from Dresden, it was great to be able to call Nick & Keli and tell them we were coming back for another night. Also, I'm starting to get some insight into what justifies the "discount" part of discount airline. Apparently one of the features is that they don't have any staff at the airport after 9:00 pm, whether or not there are flights still waiting. A very nice Lufthansa agent called Germanwings and changed our tickets to today, but there wasn't a single maroon uniform to be found in the whole airport. We're scheduled to leave in about two hours, but the weather looks like Picture 1, only more so. Maybe we'll stay a bit longer after all...

Thirsty?

2008-11-16T14:14:00.000-08:00

In high school I remember being told that soda was cheaper than water. I think this observation was made at a fair, or at some event where concessions were being sold out of a trailer hooked up to a generator, a tap, and tank of Coke. I've heard things like this echoed since then, usually as a prelude to complaints about corn syrup insidiously creeping into our Oreos, Triscuits, cookies, bread, rice, pasta, apples, carrots, and broccoli. (I like bashing corn syrup and factory food as much as anyone living in the Bay Area, but occasionally you need a new topic.) In any case, this statement about beverage cost was offered as a commentary on industrial production rather than change-in-the-pocket pricing, because in the U.S., a glass of water is free.

(If my chronology is correct, I was probably told that "pop" was cheaper than water.)

Last fall I watched an entertaining showdown between a barista and a customer in a Palo Alto coffee shop. The barista explained that store policy was not to give away water: like any ex-Hookah-shop-turned-cafe, they would prefer to sell their beverages. This was met with a lecture on the California law that apparently requires water provided free to any customer who asks. I don't honestly know if this is true, but it's certainly the mentality that I'm used to. It's also the single thing about the U.S. that I miss the most.

(Yeah, yeah, people/family/friends...I miss all of you, too. Um, it's just that I don't consider you "things". --Whew, I'm off the hook... )

I knew that water fountains would vanish from my life this year, although I admit this total absence still came as a surprise when we first joined a gym. In general I've tried to take a "when in Rome" attitude towards most things here, but I find it really hard to let go of free tap water in a restaurant. One of the first new words we absorbed was "Leitungswasser," and for a while we had a fairly good track record of getting tap water at the table. When it doesn't come automatically, though, there's the question of how to request it. The formulation I've used the most is something like, "Is it possible to get a glass of tap water?" One waitress actually answered that of course it was possible -here she mimed turning on taps- but that she wouldn't give me any. (Is this some sort of delayed reaction to being forced to ask, "May I go to the bathroom?" in elementary school?)

Tony pointed out recently that my continued attempts to request water are a departure from the aforementioned WIR policy. He wasn't being critical, but it's true that this is an example of my importing/enforcing American expectations in a way I generally try to avoid. I think one of the things I find frustrating is that I never buy water in the U.S. I think we're extraordinarily lucky to have "free" potable tap water when so much of the world doesn't, and from an ecological point of view I think that bottled water is somewhat problematic. I'm used to feeling good about my exclusive consumption of tap water, but here I find my various principle are colliding.

Since Tony's comment, I've been trying to avoid asking for Leitungswasser, but this has its own problems. In a land of Wurst and Haenchen, I get thirsty when I eat. And, in fact, soda is cheaper than water. I don't like soda that much, but water is cheaper than juice. Despite having a lot of great fruit in the market, the Germans seem to confuse juice with a product made from diamonds and platinum. This leaves me two options: the first is to pay a lot for a beverage, but honestly, I'd rather spend that money on dessert. The other choice is to do as the Germans do and just buy a beer. Beer is by far the cheapest beverage on any menu. In fact, a glass of beer is often the single cheapest item on the entire menu, even in a coffee shop. I would not be surprised if our gym sold Koelsch from behind the counter for significantly less than the Gatorade.

I'm still working out the details of how to feel culturally aware and not too thirsty. Sometimes this involves a Koelsch, and I'm sure I'll sometimes slip and beg for tap water. In the meantime, though, I'll continue to stick my head under the bathroom tap and slurp. Internationally sophisticated, yes?

Singing for Salami

2008-11-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

Happy St. Martin's Day! In our language class last week we read excerpts about St. Martin from a kids' book (reading level a bit lower than Das Piraten Schwein, which will reprise some day). Apparently Martin was an exemplary knight, and the people of Tours wanted him to become their bishop. Martin was the shy and retiring type, however, so he hid in a barn as the Tourists roamed the streets with lanterns in search of him. The civic-minded geese in the barn chose to side with the townspeople, and they "schnatterten" (could I make that word up?) so loudly that he was found. In honor of the geese's (?) contribution, the Germans eat their descendants every Martinstag. Our teacher went on to explain that children go door to door with lanterns and sing Martinslieder in return for candy. I think I was the only one in the class disappointed that we didn't get to sing any Martinslieder.

In Bonn, apparently, Martinstag is also celebrated with a bonfire. (Bonnfire?) Our gym looks out over the Marktplatz, so I had a great view when they first lit the fire. The square was packed with kids holding homemade lanterns in all different shapes and styles, and most baby carriages had some sort of lantern hanging off as well. I didn't have my camera with me, though, and preferring candy to flame, the crowd had voted by foot by the time I got back.By that point groups of kids were roaming from shop to shop, sort of like Trick-or-Treating down Broadway in New York. To be honest, they didn't seem to have to do much singing to get their sugar -showing up with a lantern was usually enough.

There's a big department store on the Cathedral Square which has a fancy food section in the basement, and lantern-bearing children were being directed down to the chocolate counter for their reward. I was shopping for dinner (chicken, sadly, not goose) when I heard a strong musical effort being put forth at the other end of the food section. Sure enough, five girls had chosen to ignore the shepherding and sing in front of the meat counter. (One of the meat counters -this is Germany.) When they got to the end of the song, the attendant applauded and asked how many slices of salami they wanted.

I was sort of hoping that someone would come sing Martinslieder to me, but so far the doorbell has been silent. On the other hand, I don't have any spectacular treats to offer, and we do live on the fifth floor. Frankly, I feel like I deserve a bonbon every time I climb the stairs to go home, so maybe I can't blame the kids when there's richer pickings on the other side of the river.

Pirouetting Pachyderm

2008-11-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

Tony's favorite aftershave has been off the shelves in the US for several years, and the last time he was able to find it was in the Copenhagen airport two years ago. Today, with some time to kill before our flight back to Bonn, we wandered into the Dresden airport duty free shop and found it was on sale there. Anth picked up two bottles, and when we went to pay, the clerk asked if we'd meant to pick up two bottles of the same thing. It seemed quite reasonable to me to explain briefly why we were stocking up....

-Pause, for a moment, and consider how you would feel if you saw an elephant trying to perform a ballet dance. Or, perhaps, a beagle making crepes, or a llama trying to type. Now consider what expression might cross your face-

...and you have some idea what kind of a reception my attempted explanation elicited. I honestly thought I was creating coherent German sentences, but evidently she did not agree. I don't think I have ever prompted a look of such stunned incomprehension, and I'm including every calculus student I've taught when I make this assessment.

Eastern charms

2008-11-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

Arriving in Dresden last week, Anth and I wondered aloud how many Stasi holdouts were spying on us: after all, we were in the EAST now. This sense of place intensified as we traveled to Prague with Nick and Keli. Crossing the border, I immediately started analyzing whether the villages we passed seemed more authentically tiny and neglected, fairy-tale charming in a particularly Czech way, less Disneyfied, or in fact, completely indistinguishable from their German counterparts. There was a more visible industrial presence: was this from the days of glorifying the worker, or was it a sign of the post-1989 market economy boom? Although this continent certainly has an edge up on the US in terms of ancient history, it's the Cold War legacy that distinguishes Eastern Europe from the West, and history on that scale exists in America, too. I'm not particularly interested in 1950s Americana, but for some reason, the Commie legacy is hard for me to ignore here. I have the sense sometimes that my exposure to Europe is broad, but very shallow: I've visited a lot of countries, but I don't have a deep cultural knowledge of any of them, and this lack of real insight increases the temptation to view everything through an historical overlay.

Even when not dwelling on history, there were a number of things that made it very clear I had returned to the East. For starters, nothing makes me feel better about my German than seeing signs in Czech. Also, the cloud of doohickies floating above all printed text reminded me distinctly of our time in Hungary. In search of dinner on Thursday, we paused to look at a menu in a restaurant window....and couldn't decipher a thing. We did pick up a few Czech words while we were there: hrzny, procim, ano, sestre, infrastruktury. (The meaning of "hrzny" is still a bit of a mystery, but it was one of the finalists for "most consonants in a row".) Also, Eastern European translations have a special charm: we're not sure what "shrub" is, but none of us was bold enough to order the drink made from milk + OJ + shrub. The language street goes both ways, though; a sign titled "Railway English" helpfully offered the Czech translation for "You are standing on my shoe."

Despite my claims of fixation on local history, we failed to make it to the recently-opened Communist Museum. For the most part we just enjoyed strolling around the city, which is really lovely. The skyline is fantastic -it actually looks like it does on the postcards- and just wandering around the streets in the old town filled the days well. The one exception to our pleasant aimlessness was a trip to the American consulate. Anthony needed to get pages added to his passport, and happily, we found we could vote there as well. We still couldn't vote for state propositions, and there's a chance the ballots won't arrive in time, but there was something satisfyingly simple about writing a name on a line -no chads to let hang or Diebold touchscreens to puzzle through. It felt like we were in a little corner of America when we voted: for authenticity, the Citizen Services office came equipped with a water fountain.

can't vote

2008-10-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

It appears as though we won't be able to vote in the upcoming election. Our ballots, which should have been forwarded to us here in Germany, have not arrived. Once it became clear to us that we were unlikely to get them in time we contacted federal voting services. We were told that we could submit a separate application to vote from abroad, but only for the presidential election. That's better than nothing, but there are several interesting propositions on the ballot in California (our permanent address is in Palo Alto) while the presidential race in the state is not really up in the air. So we emailed the California state voting office. They told us to call during business hours to talk to someone. Joan called, and got an answering machine. The answering machine was "full", so she was not allowed to leave a message, but was informed that she could press 0 to speak to a person. Pressing 0, it turns out, hangs up the phone. In the intervening two days it appears that the deadline to apply for federal voting appears to have passed.

It's been easy to follow the election from abroad, but I'm feeling a bit far away as the election approaches; not voting doesn't help. So, those of you who can, please vote.

In particular, I would like to request that Joe vote in my place in Texas. Joe, you can't vote twice, so I suppose you'll have to forgo voting according to your own preferences this time around.

In pleasant news, we're in Dresden right now visiting Nick and Keli. I went with Nick to one of his biophysics group meetings today, which was pretty interesting. One thing I took from the presentation is that some regions of a cell membrane are blue, while other parts are red. The presenter is modeling the blue/red distributions in the cell (there seem to be different amounts of blue and red depending on which slide the presenter puts up.) Actually sometimes I find it hard to get away from election coverage.

Tomorrow the four of us are going to Prague, and we'll come back here on Saturday. Sunday, I suspect, will be spent putting up more light fixtures in Nick and Keli's poorly-lit (but charming) apartment.

Perils of online translation

2008-10-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

A quickie:

I knew that one shouldn't really trust online translation programs, but this was driving home again today. I have a pair of Ecco shoes whose soles are almost gone, and I wanted to ask someone at the Ecco store how I could get them repaired. I thought I could muddle through asking this in German, but I wanted to prep, just in case. I typed, "Do you know where I could get these fixed?" into an online translation program. The answer came back, "Wissen Sie irgendwo, das ich sie bestochen bekommen konnte?" All well and good, I knew most of the words, but I wasn't sure about "bestochen". Apparently "fixed" was the problem, as the site was prompting me to ask where I could be my shoes bribed. I'm lucky they didn't go with neutered...

H&M&H&M&H&M...

2008-10-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Economist regularly releases a "Big Mac index" which compares the price of a McDonalds' Big Mac in various countries around the world. The theory is that this is a real-world measure of various currencies' purchasing power. It's a stretch, but I think that I can use a similar justification for visiting H&Ms in as many countries as possible this year. I'm nostalgic for my days of commuting once a week to New York, when the H&M on 125th fortified me for the day of math ahead. Palo Alto offers many opportunities to shop for Persian carpets, but no local H&M, so I'm a bit out of practice. However I think every city I've visited since we got to Europe has had at least one, and my main regret is that it's taken me so long to realize that I should feel obligated to check all of them out. Is this my excuse to return to Paris?

So far the Trier store wins the prize for most historic location: the charming pink building with the elaborate crest over the door is the former bishops' residence. Trier saw several centuries of feuding between the civic and Church authorities, when the scorekeeping vehicle seems to have been a running contest to have the tallest tower in town. I wonder if H&M's choosing the bishop's residence instead of City Hall should be seen as a vote for victory or defeat in the contest? Although the Bonn H&M is not nearly so grand, it's conveniently located within a two-minute walk from my office. This could be taken as a sign of deep significance, except that they're moving locations and will soon be almost five minutes away. I prefer to note that in the new location, H&M will be on my route home, rather than requiring a detour towards the train station.

You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Thiesen around here

2008-10-20T10:22:00.001-07:00

After a few weeks of just math -that is what they're paying us for, I suppose- we finally have something to post beyond a discussion of which days the coffee supply ran short at afternoon tea. My parents arrived in Bonn last Thursday, and on Saturday morning we hopped a train to Koblenz, our jumping-off point for a road trip down the Mosel. Tony and I got back to Bonn this morning, and my parents are continuing on to Munich and Rothenburg for a few days.

The weekend had a lot of fun bits, but I think the highlight was a trip to Senheim. As my mom put it, you need the internet to decide to go to Senheim, because it's too small to show up on printed maps. It's a tiny place tucked between Zell and Cochem, which are the bustling metropoli of the region. Z & C, in turn, are bookended between Trier and Koblenz. We spent Saturday night in Trier, which is the oldest city in Germany, and ended up at the decidedly less scenic Europcar lot back in Koblenz this morning. Driving directly, the two cities are about 128 kilometers apart, but if you wind your way along the Mosel as it snakes back and forth, the trip stretches to a 120 mile scenic meander through German wine country. It was a fantastic time of the year to visit the region; the hillsides are carpeted and wallpapered with vineyards, punctuated occasionally by thousand-year-old villages. The grapeleaves are changing colors now, and there's a patchwork of red, yellow, and green terraces clinging to cliffs and spreading out over the flatter hills where the river turns. The harvest is also underway, so every now and then you have to slow to a crawl on the road behind a giant vat overflowing with grapes. The weather alternated between perfectly blue skies and impenetrable fog, each of which has a certain charm as a backdrop to variegated hills.

Among the two dozen or so equally scenic villages, Senheim was our destination because it's the ancestral home. I'll admit I was initially a bit skeptical of my mom's interest in visiting her grandfather's birthplace, especially when she mentioned (1) that it's too small to have a train station, and (2) the bus that runs there doesn't even go once a day. However, the scenery was gorgeous, the wine was tasty, the food was great, the wine was tasty, the relatives (?) we met were nice, and the wine was tasty. What's not to like?

Armed with only my grandmother's maiden name "Thiesen", we may in fact have found family. After checking into our inn, we headed out for a walk around town. Our request for a map was met with a laugh: "This is not a big place," we were told. No map. Just across the road was a memorial which listed Wilhelm and Clemens Thiesen as having died in World War I. A war memorial does/should always make one stop and think, but seeing names that may belong to your relatives adds an extra frisson. My mom thinks one of them was her grandfather's brother.

Up the hill from the memorial is Senheim's church, which still has its original tower from the 1300's. Inside the church we found a vellum-paged book with a list of the war dead from the parish. The dates in the register ranged from 1880 to 1945, and included other Thiesens, although my great-grandfather moved to America in 1925. Immediately behind the church was a walled graveyward butting up against a vineyard behind the town. It seemed to have only recent graves, so we tried asking an old woman who was tending one of the stones if there was an older cemetary. I explained the family connection to Thiesen, and she nodded and said something to the effect of, "We've got lots of Thiesens." She then gave some suggestions for how we should find said Thiesens, but since we didn't feel like bothering the mayor, we decided to just explore a bit more.

After some wandering, we found ourselves at the other end of the village in front of a display case full of wine bottles labeled "Thiesen Erbes & Roos". The building looked like a small warehouse (a picturesque warehouse, naturally), but the sign said "Klingeln Sie, bitte!" so we klingelted the bell and a Herr Thiesen opened the door. The next half hour was a mix of fun and awkwardness -it's not obvious what to do when strangers show up on your doorstep and announce that they might be related to you, but Mr. Thiesen handled things pretty well: "Would you like some wine?" As we sipped his (very tasty) Riesling, my mom tried to outline the connection. She explained that her grandfather had been a butcher, and then added the supplementary information that his father had been a winemaker. Mr. Thiesen shook his head, "Everyone here is a winemaker." He elaborated that he's also a wine grower and a wine drinker, just to round things out. We never really determined if he was a distant cousin or some other concrete relation, but I like the idea that my peeps have been producing such tasty Spaetlese on the Mosel for the last century.

I was surprised at how much I liked Senheim; I've never traced family history past the Atlantic, which cuts things off pretty uniformly in the 1920's. Since it's hard to pin details down at such a remove, I wouldn't have anticipated that I would get such a kick out of this tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Scenic nowhere, but still. I think the fact that it's so small enhanced the experience; there's no chance that I missed the neighborhood my ancestors lived in, or that they walked down different streets from the ones I saw. As we drove back to Koblenz this morning, we passed another slew of charming villages, each with its steeple and a cluster of tasting rooms on the riverfront. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the wine at any of them, and perhaps I could have found equally tasty headcheese a few miles down the river, but I'm really happy that the nonexistent dot on the map we stopped in was Senheim.

Coffee & Credits

2008-10-10T01:42:00.000-07:00

Things have been sort of quiet since we got back from our trip, but yesterday afternoon we took an excursion to Koeln for a visit to IKEA. We are now officially IKEA Family members, an option I would certainly have jumped upon if it had ever been offered to me before. In return for agreeing to get mail and text messages from the giant blue box, we get discounts and a free cup of coffee every time we visit the store. I acknowledge that from a strict financial-computation point of view, the 12 Euro pp. roundtrip ticket to travel between Bonn and IKEA Godorf is not really cancelled by the free cup of coffee, yet somehow I still felt like I was getting a bargain.

We decided to take advantage of our trip to the big city with a visit to a movie theater showing films in English. We had already learned that you get assigned seats when you go to a German theater, but last night we found that at least you get charged less when your assigned seat is three and a half fee from the screen. It was probably a good thing we didn't need to read the German subtitles -it would have been like watching a tennis match to try and scan back and forth quickly enough from that angle. We've been to two movies since we got here, and last night confirmed that it was no fluke at Mamma Mia! that the theater stayed full through the credits. Then, one might have suspected that everyone wanted to be serenaded by yet one more Abba song, but last night there was no such excuse. I liked Burn after Reading, but frankly, the landscape shots at the end were not worth sticking around for. Seated front and center, though, it wasn't really an option to sneak out discretely.

Back in Bonn

2008-10-06T14:52:00.001-07:00

We had a great time traveling with Ryan and Kim Hill last week. The four of us covered a lot of ground, hitting Rothenburg, Munich, Salzburg, Paris, and Amsterdam in 7 days. Ryan and Tony did an excellent job keeping all of us alive on the Autobahn -apparently "no speed limit" really means no speed limit. We had to slow down a bit when we toured through the Alps, channeling our inner Heidis. (OK, I don't honestly know if Tony has an inner Heidi, but if he did...) Oktoberfest was quite an experience, and I will definitely try to get my hands on a dirndl if I ever go back. After a quick jaunt to Austria we took a night train to Paris and settled in a for a few days in "our" apartment in Montmartre. This may brand me a shallow person, but from a tempting collection of great art (van Gogh, Monet, Pisarro, Cezanne, Degas, daVinci ) and great architecture (Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower), I would still select the Parisian croissants as a highlight of the trip. And the escargot. And maybe the duck breast in peppercorn sauce. After Paris we beat the Belgian train strike in time to slip up to Amsterdam before making our ways back to Germany. Assuming they didn't get stuck in Heathrow for seven hours (again), Ryan and Kim should be back in Texas by now. R & K, thanks for a great trip!

Happy Klangwelle!

2008-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

There's a statue of Beethoven, Bonn's favorite son, in the church square outside our office. For the last few days Ludwig has been surrounded by an increasingly mysterious arrangement of pipes, fencing, sandbags, and electrical cables. Since we're leaving town tomorrow it wasn't clear we'd even make it to the punchline, but luckily for us, Klangwelle happens to be a Friday night event, not a weekend one.

We got an email today recommending that we close our windows, and I now understand why. The square started filling up with people as it got dark tonight, so we went down to check out the show. By the time we found a place where we could see, there was a huge (3+ stories tall) fan of water spraying into the air to be used as a projection screen. On the screen they were showing ...commercials. We watched ads for a few minutes and then the shot changed to two TV anchor types welcoming us to Klangwelle-2008. We couldn't catch much of what they said, but it did involve the phrase "70,000 liters of water". Coming from (and planning to return to) drought-stricken Palo Alto, we realized this was a show we wouldn't have too many chances to see. Suddenly the sandbags around the square made a bit more sense.

After a minute or so, the picture changed to scenes of a symphony playing and something symphonic (Beethoven, maybe?) boomed across the square. This lasted only briefly before the screen of water changed into dancing jets illuminated by different colors of light. It was a bit like a 3-D version of the iTunes feature that generates screen designs to match your music, or maybe like living inside a screen saver or a fireworks display. Take a moment to follow this link and click on "Galerie" if you want some idea of the scale: www.klangwelle-bonn.de . Streams of water 6 or 7 stories tall shot into the air, glowing red and yellow and shot through with green lasers. At this point it wouldn't really have been possible to even skirt the edges of the square back to MPI without getting wet. This piece was followed by one where green lasers beamed across the area like the scene from Entrapment. Eventually the water screen came back to show part of a 3 Tenors performance, and then for the grand finale, Ode to Joy was accompanied by gouts of fire. Big ones.

(1 hour plus later...)

Apparently I spoke too soon with the phrase "grand finale," as the Rock & Pop portion of the show comes after intermission. This became clear when Billy Joel informed us (loudly) that he didn't start the fire. By the time I was outside and could see again, the last lines of the song were scrolling down the "screen" and the label "Rock & Pop" was outlined in green. This time they alternated between the light/water dance and projecting excerpts from music videos. Actually, they also put in some German soccer highlights and a quick clip of the wall coming down, so together with some A-Ha, Genesis, Abba, and the "Beat It!" video, and they covered all the highlights of the last few decades. Picture the crowd waving lighters to an anthem, and then imitate that with 50 foot jets of red water to get an idea of the artistic style. Also worth noting: Amy Winehouse looks even scarier projected onto a three story water fan than she does on a 15 inch TV.

I can't really do justice to Act III, except to note that the theme was "Rheinish/Deutsche (something)". Yes, there was singing along; yes, there was swaying; and yes, there was a German rendition of Loch Lamond.

post-prandial procrastination post

2008-09-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

At long last, Deutsche Bank has kindly given us the money we gave them. This is good news, as it's much easier to spend money you have than money that someone owes you -I think this particular fact might have been mentioned on Wall Street recently? In the last week and a half we've received a lot of mail from them: 2 debit cards, 1 credit card, 1 savings account card, 1 online banking password, 2 debit card passwords, a sheet of online banking transaction numbers, 2 overdraft notices, a credit card password, a savings account password, and a credit card service charge. Today, for the first time, we actually benefitted from having opened all those envelopes. With reason to believe our accounts were finally in good standing, our mission was to see if the debit cards worked, but the goal was to test this theory on purchases small enough that we could cover them with the cash in our pockets if they didn't. Sadly, the local crepe stand (which often gets the cash from our pockets) doesn't accept EC cards, so we had to look elsewhere. We headed to the fancy department store and wielded our cards successfully to emerge with one mangosteen and a bag of gummy bears.

I had read that the mangosteen is supposedly the best fruit on the planet, but they only became legal in the U.S. recently so I've never had a chance to try one. At only 98 Euro cents per mangosteen, this felt like the perfect occasion. After cutting open the fruit, there seemed to be a small white pit surrounded by a thick pinkish part and a thin outer skin. I scooped out a bit of the pink stuff, tasted it, and promptly spit it out. Across the table, Tony was doing the same thing. Apparently the small white pod in the center is the fruit, and we'd just sampled the (very bitter) rind. The 98 cents seemed like a bit more of a luxury purchase once we realized the edible part was about the size of an almond, but it was pretty tasty. The gummy bears aren't bad either.

Wir sind nach Koeln gefahren (we went to Cologne.)

2008-09-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

We'd been planning to go to Cologne sometime later this week, but on a bit of a whim we decided to go yesterday. It's pretty easy to travel between Bonn and Cologne- the Ubahn/Sbahn lines run between the two cities at least once an hour from early in the morning until late late at night- so despite a late departure we were there by about 1 in the afternoon. We actually would have been there earlier had we not been stalled by folk dancing and men in Lederhosen near the train station in Bonn. That's what tends to happen when you come across dancing men dressed like that, you get stalled.

The first item on the agenda when we arrived was lunch (Emily, I know how much you like the food commentary.) Being Sunday not too much was open, so we went to the first busy restaurant we could find near the Cathedral. The waiter immediately asked us if we wanted two Koelsch beers. Joan said, "no thanks." He gave us a confused and slightly stern look, and sure enough a minute later we each had one in front of us. The food, when it came an hour later, turned out to be pretty good.

We then went across the square to the Roman-German museum, which has a new kingdom Egyptian exhibit going right now. The permanent display of Roman ruins and trinkets is really quite impressive, too. The highlight for both of us was probably a huge stone mosaic from around 300 A.D. that was part of a ballroom in a wealthy Cologne home; it has over a million tiles and has been remarkably well-preserved. After the museum we walked around the Cathedral a bit and then found a suitable spot for "kaffeetrinken," which is a German verb for stopping in at a cafe for a cup of coffee and perhaps a nice piece of cake.

We'd looked up the address of an English-language theater just outside the center of town and with little else open we decided to take a walk and see what was playing. About half way there we noticed a sequence of arrows on the ground pointing to a "5D theater." Now, Joan knows quite a bit about 3D things, and 4D things are often discussed in the seminars we sit through, but neither one of us has explored much about the 5D world, in a theater or otherwise. But we followed the arrows, and sure enough arrived at the advertised 5D theater. Assuming we interpreted the sign out front correctly, here's how you'd get the 5D experience:

Dimensions 1 and 2 just come from the screen, as in all movie theaters.

Dimension 3 is accessed via theater-provided 3D glasses.

Dimension 4, in an exciting twist, is experienced via "sensory seats." From the picture out front, I would have to guess more like a space shuttle launch seat and less like a massage chair.

But Dimension 5 took the cake. The theater has a "Duft System," which, like all Duft systems, sends a variety of smells your way.

You will be sad, no doubt, to hear that we didn't go seefeelsmell either "Alien Invasion" or "Hanted House," but we hadn't heard anything about them yet. If family or friends get a chance to check either of them out at a local 5D theater, let us know. Neither one seems to have been reviewed in the most recent New Yorker.

It turned out there wasn't anything interesting playing at the English language theater, either, and everything else was closed, so we took the subway back to Bonn in time for a picnic dinner. And after dinner we decided to brave the German movie theater. German theaters, like those of most Western European countries, dub virtually everything, so it's a real adventure to sit through one when you don't understand much. It's probably also wise to choose a movie with potential language difficulties in mind, and in our case this meant buying tickets for "Mamma Mia!" The ticket purchasing process was an experience already- apparently in Germany you buy tickets for particular seats in the theater, like at a major league baseball game, although there's no price difference for different seats here and we weren't given a choice. They must have had trouble with foreign visitors sitting freely in the past, because the employee was very careful in his instructions to us. There were at least 6 other people in the theater. I know, because we were seated right next to, right in front of, and right behind all of them.

Mamma Mia is a musical, and the songs were not dubbed. This was great for two reasons:

1) It was easier to follow the movie because at least some of the plot was carried by the songs. Actually, I don't think there wasn't much plot, but the English helped keep me focused.

2) The German language and environment enhanced my enjoyment of this particular movie. Mamma Mia is actually pretty awkward at times, (see: Pierce Brosnan) and I took comfort in watching a musical scene, sung in English, from a Hollywood movie, and chalking up the awkwardness to the quirkiness of German humor.

Joan in particular likes the idea of a life set to music, so all in all I would say it turned out to be a fine way to end the day.

Sausage Fest

2008-09-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

My first exposure to authentic German culture came long before we moved here. Growing up, the annual parish fundraiser was Sausage Fest. As the T-shirts would tell you, it was a Bavarian festival of food, family, and fun. My favorite edition T-shirt (circa 1989?) was the one with a cartoon of Herr and Frau Wurst, dressed in lederhosen and a dirndl, respectively, doing a polka together. Actually, I'm just guessing that it was a polka, but that was certainly one of the musical styles wafting from the gym-turned-Biergarten on Friday evening.

Sausage Fest is a big deal in the Tri-Cities. In fact, after the boat races and the county fair, it's the largest event of the year. (Granted, Sausage Fest pleads no contest to the boat races' anthropological distinction, but Kennewick Man is not an annual find.) Anyway, where else can you find polka-ing sausages? Performances by choirs, Maypole troupes, tap dancers, big bands, and 10-year-olds taking Hula lessons? A giant parachute to eat under (except for the year that gale force winds lifted one of the set-up guys off the ground and broke his rib)? Plywood huts, painted to look half-timbered, selling funnel cakes, corn, pie, and curly fries? Time-honored games like the Lollipop Tree, Poptoss, and the fishing one that everyone wanted to work at? Bingo for nearly 36 hours straight? In elementary school, we'd get let out at noon on Sausage Fest Friday, and I have fond memories of my time as a child laborer, shucking corn in the September sun until I got my free corn ticket.

With Sausage Fest firmly established as a major cultural event, you can imagine my surprise when I got to college and my description was greeted with smirks and suppressed laughter. "You don't understand," I would insist, "It sounds cheesy -OK, it is cheesy- but everyone looks forward to Sausage Fest!" It took a while before I learned that outside of a corner of Washington, the phrase "Sausage Fest" doesn't immediately suggest wholesome faux-Bavarian family entertainment.

I'm going to stand up for my roots, though, and proudly announce that this is Sausage Fest weekend. At this point you've missed the middle school dance, but the Biergarten is open until late tonight. You still have plenty of time to buy a crocheted toilet paper roll cover at the craft market, or get your face painted in the third grade classroom. The pie stand is well-stocked, and if you're lucky you can win a plastic ring, or maybe even a glow-in-the-dark set of vampire teeth, at one of the game booths. To be honest, I've been a bit disappointed that the real Germany doesn't offer corn and funnel cakes as freely as I'd been led to expect. Maybe it's just that we're not in Bavaria? We're heading to Oktoberfest next weekend, so I'll see how that measures up.

Things I've learned this week

2008-09-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

1. "Puten" is the German word for turkey, not chicken -it's not just that German chickens are extra large. They were right by the chicken hearts, rather than next to the calf lung or duck livers, though, so I think this was a mistake anyone could make.

2. Some online game called DOG is the unofficial national game of Switzerland*. (Brian, that's for you.)

3. There's a reason that it's Swiss banking, not German banking, with the international reputation. Two weeks and two days after opening an account, and one week and four days after depositing our first salary check, our account now has a balance of minus one hundred Euros. Also, the online banking system seems to involve submitting an online request for a carrier pigeon. If you can correctly guess the pigeon's favorite type of grain, it will allow you to attach a message before it returning to the Deutsche Bank coop. This system may explain our current situation.

4. The defect of a boundary disc depends on the choice of preferred Reeb chords, not simply the defect of the region in the complement of the graph.

5. Auf Deutsch, you uses a different preposition to travel to countries with an article* (e.g. the USA) than to countries with no article (e.g. England).

6. Brown sugar does not exist in Germany.

Das Piraten-schwein

2008-09-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

Not too much new to report so far this week. We've got some visitors and travel in a little under two weeks, so we've made a definite effort to spend time working at the office.

Other than yelling at Deutsche Bank (long story and growing longer by the day) we haven't had all that much contact with the outside German world; that's one of the downsides of having our office in the annex across the plaza from the main MPI office. Joan's giving a talk later this week, though, and we have our first group language class on Friday.

We did, however, go to the book store today. Joan is reading "Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen,"

a German translation of a shockingly popular American teenage vampire romance novel. The paranthetical (s) in the title is a play on words- "Bis" means "until", but "Biss" means "bite." Joan has asked me not to publicly address the question of whether she has or has not read the English language version of this book or its three sequels. This is a real step up from "Der kleine Hobbit," her preparatory novel from the summer.

It's a little harder for me to pick a book out given that I had no preparatory novel and don't yet speak any German (although I'm now good at "ich moechte ein Laugenbretzel, bitte," which, when accompanied with a Euro, seems to produce a pretzel.) Still, I left the store with a fine-looking selection from the 7-10 year old section: "Das Piratenschwein," by Cornelia Funke (illustrations by Kirsten Meyer) Joan and a small dictionary spent part of a coffee shop evening helping me get started. Here's the story so far as I've translated it:

Everyone in the Schmetterlingsinsel knows the Fat Sven and his boat with the green sail.

Sven lives with Pit, his Schiffsjungen, in a small hutt on the beach. (something about fruit.)

But man cannot live on fruit alone. So above there hangs a sign: ISLAND TRANSPORT. Pit has written it. Fat Sven has, full of admiration, seen it and growled,

"Thunderplumps (?), Boy, but those are a devilish hard words that you wrote."

The two really have enough to do. Even when it so stormed that the anguish crept on the beach, they sailed away and brought coconuts from one island to another, rum barrels or chests full of Doerrfish. And in the evenings they brushed back in their hut and laid themselves in their hammocks. It was a peaceful life and it pleased them.

Actually, now that I have the computer accessible it appears that when I wrote "anguish" in the previous paragraph I actually should have written "jellyfish." Anyway, next time I have between two and five hours to devote to German reading, perhaps I'll update you on the exciting developments from pages 3 through 4.

Puetzchens Markt

2008-09-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

We clearly arrived at a fun time of year from the point of view of local festivities, and they've been escalating each week. While we definitely enjoyed Buergerfest Beuel last weekend, part of the fun was the cheese factor and the pinch-me-we're-here excitement of being abroad. We particularly enjoyed anything that we could label as distinctly German, whether or not that was accurate. (I stand by my assessment that the entire ox roasting on a spit is not what one finds in the typical American neighborhood block party. Keli, the picture?) However, Puetzchens Markt, which was today's outing, was an event by any standard. We'd been seeing signs for weeks, and as we walked home Thursday night, we could see a huge Ferris wheel lit up on the horizon. My Beuel pride is kicking in, because this is apparently a major annual carnival that once again is located on the "Right side of the Rhein". (That's actually the Beuel motto -clearly they don't object to north-as-up.) There were thousands of people there, and not stepping on the little kids took some effort. I'm told that there's a German cultural taboo against mowing down children in order to get to the stuffed apple pancake stand, so we did our best to be respectful of the local customs. There's something exciting about watching your very own potato pancakes coalesce in a vat of bubbling oil, but I can't actually imagine eating the entire stack that passed for a minimal portion. If anyone worried about the global oil shortage is looking for something else to burn, wringing out one of these pancakes could power a small city for a week or two. Naturally, they were delicious.

In addition to lots of snack stands, rides, and sideshow games, there was also a side market for what, frankly, must be the lowest rung of the carnival community. That's right, the infomercial demo people. In the top right picture you can see a man demonstrating a chopping tool to a rapt crowd. Lest you think we're just imposing American expectations on what counts as entertainment, I assure you that there was actually a sandwich board proclaiming "TV WERBUNG!" in front of the booth. "Werbung" is a word we learned early, because MTV flashes it across the screen every time they transition from a music video to an add for a ringtone based on some other music video. It's also reassuring to know we could get such good value for our money in Infomercial Alley, since the cup of water Anth is sipping in the picture cost $2.86 at yesterday's exchange rate. We watched BBC's unfolding coverage of Lehmen Bros.'s tanking last night, though, so when Wall Street opens in 20 minutes or so, that cup of water could be $6.

The layout on this post is not aesthetically satisfactory, but I'm not sure how to put the pictures anywhere besides in a clump at the top. I'll work on this in the future, but spending any more time tinkering now would be such flagrant procrastination that even I can't justify it.

rain

2008-09-13T01:46:00.000-07:00

It's raining here today, and despite the wetness some local bank has arranged for several employees (I hope they're getting paid) to walk around outside in bank mascot outfits. Their mascot, as far as I can tell, is some sort of red balloon; the outfit covers the person from the top of the knee to several feet above the head. They must be able to see out from the inside, but I didn't notice an eyehole so it's not clear how, though there are armholes. They're not moving very much. They certainly can't talk to anyone. At least they're staying dry in there (I hope.)

I don't know that there's anything particularly German about these balloons- I'm mostly relieved that I don't currently have to apply for jobs like that. Hopefully that will continue to be the case.

It's also clear that we need to start posting pictures here- these outfits need to be seen to be believed.

LHC turned on!

2008-09-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

The large Hadron collider is up and running in Switzerland as of sometime in the past 48 hours! The physical apparatus mostly consists of a 17 mile-long tubular track sitting a few hundred feet underground. Some huge number of protons will spend their time racing around the track at close to the speed of light- hopefully they'll smash into each other and create a whole lot of energy. From Einstein we learn that a whole lot of energy is a little bit of mass, and perhaps the little bit of mass created by the LHC will briefly take the form of some interesting particles that we've never observed experimentally. Brian Greene had a nice op-ed in the NY times today briefly describing a few of the things physicists are hoping to (or not to) observe in the next couple of years.

In thinking about the LHC I'm immediately struck by what a huge undertaking building it must have been (it took over a decade and billions of dollars to complete.) And although it's run by CERN (which is a European organization) this monstrous thing is the result of a fundamentally international cooperation of thousands of scientists and engineers. One of the great things about science and mathematics is that you can really manage to forget where everyone is from sometimes- you're all after the same things, after all.

(I stopped writing that paragraph in order to eat dinner, and upon returning I can't help but note that despite this international diversity all of the people I've had some sort of mathematical collaboration with have been American or Canadian males in their late twenties and early thirties.)

There are some downsides to spending time at an international place like MPI or a math department. For example, today Joan informed me that from now on she will be taking the stairs up and down from our office, at least on days when she hasn't gone for a run or to the gym. That last part about the run and gym was supposed to make me think that taking the stairs would be a choice made in the name of health (and a reasonable one at that.) But I think I know the truth, which is that Joan doesn't want to take the elevator because the elevator smells. Exactly of whom the elevator smells remains for the moment a scientific mystery. Also, when we solve this mystery of science, I will almost surely not inform anyone via blog.

By the way, Joan claims she flunked on German today. I think next week we'll start taking a class.

Word of the day: Matjeswoche- it translates as "Herring week," as far as we can tell. We were watching German "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and there was a question whose answer was Matjeswoche. Needless to say a translation of the question is way beyond us.

Please, the bill to entrap!

2008-09-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite shows on MTV here is "Deutsche Stunde," when they play American music videos with German subtitles. "Hollaback Girl" rolls off the tongue a bit differently than "Ich bin keine Maedel von die (something) Reihe". I would be sort of entertained (horrified?) to hear how I translate. In particular, it would be educational (horrifying?) to have an English playback of whatever we'd said in German, babelfish style. In general these transactions have gone fairly smoothly, but we did buy a raw sausage instead of a salami for lunch today. Also, even a very clever babelfish might have been nonplussed by Tony's response in Hungarian to the confused German waiter. Most of the people we've run into here seem to speak some English, but they're also quite willing to let us make a stab at German. In fact, we tend to stick to German, at least until things get sticky. For example, when we went back to Deutsche Bank, we explained auf Deutsch that we had a new account and hadn't yet received our cards. We continued, saying we wanted to deposit our salary checks and withdraw some cash. When the cashier said the checks hadn't cleared yet, we persisted in German, explaining calmly that Max Planck said we could cash our checks even if we didn't have an account. It wasn't until she said we couldn't access them for 10 days that we reverted to English. It's a much more effective language for us to panic in. (To all concerned parents: we've been assured all will be worked out by tomorrow.) If anyone's curious, there seems to be about one place in Bonn where travelers' checks are accepted. If you happen to be in our fair city, having deposited your previously-cashable salary, before you have access to your bank account, when your domestic bank card is rejected by the ATM machine, I recommend buying some gummy bears from the Galeria department store downtown. At the second-floor service counter the nice lady is willing to trade your otherwise-useless travelers' check for some nice crisp Euros and a bag of gummy bears. This does mean you miss a chance to shop at Gummi Paradies by the train station, but there's always another day.

Back to the grind

2008-09-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

Nick and Keli left for Dresden about midday today after spending a very pleasant long weekend here in Bonn. It's such a coup de fortuna that they're here in Germany at the same time as us.

Last night we went out to a German restaurant for dinner. Joan and Keli each took home several awards- Joan won "most adventurous order" and "fattiest bloodsausage," but she could not complete the trifecta after her dish lost a close battle with Keli's in the "is it meat?" division.

Joan looked to be running away with all the awards early on before Keli's charming, "Mine's really good but just not my favorite," comment cemented her place on the podium. The Licata brothers' choice of roast chicken, resp. Schnitzel might have been worth a consolation ribbon, but both brothers were penalized two points when the the Malzbeir they greatly enjoyed over the course of dinner turned out to be non-alcoholic.

Joan and I spent the afternoon in the office before coming home to meet another one of our friends (Harry) for dinner. Harry and new wife Meg moved to the Bay area just in time for us to leave, and Harry was in Germany giving a talk at a different MaxPlanckInstitue (which apparently he liked enough that he's mentioned applying for a job there.) The irony of the possibility that two of her famous friends might come to Palo Alto while we're in Germany and move to Germany when we come back to Palo Alto is a bit much for Joan to take, I think.

So, Meg, time to flex some of your new-found wifemuscle and restrict his applications to a 10 mile radius of 220 palo alto ave, apt. 104, palo alto, ca 94301.

Word of the day: Ohrwurm: literally it means "earworm" (is that a word?). Practically, it's the

German noun for a piece of a song stuck in your head.

More of problem when you watch German music videos over dinner than is ideal, I think this weekend's guests would agree.

Burgerfest Beuel

2008-09-08T00:52:00.000-07:00

Burgerfest Beuel did not disappoint. In celebration of this major civic event, the shops were open on a Sunday! Some of the shops. For a few hours. Additionally, venders selling motorcycles, sweaters, window coverings, and paella joined the usual Wurst-merchants and crepe stands. We were collectively disappointed in Keli's decision not to get her face painted -we'd picked out a nice tiger pattern, but she bailed under pressure. However, the highlight of the day came from musical entertainment. There were five stages for performers ranging from "Still Collins" (Genesis tribute band) to what we think was a comic in sequined drag. We're sure about the latter part, but since we didn't understand anything, it's hard to say if he was any good. We wandered for a few hours, but when 80's Special played on the Bridge Stage, we had not choice but to settle in and enjoy the show. You wouldn't think that there would be more than one 80's cover band in the area, but there was a bit of awkwardness when they were introduced by the wrong name. The singer in pink fishnets corrected the MC, though, and the show went on. Featured songs included Van Halen (Yuump! Yuump!), the Dirty Dancing duet, "99 Luftballon", the Breakfast Club theme, "Take On Me", and a few random Christian rock hits. Maybe they made the charts here? The street was blocked off to create a beer garden, and following the principle of "When in Rome", we had drink in the summer sun. (Actually, fall sun; Palo Alto weather lead us astray, but more on that another time.) I'd heard of the German propensity for mixing beer with Sprite ("Radler") and Fanta ("Alster"), and knowing the Licata boys' propensity for manly beer consumption, it should come as no surprise that these have made it into the beverage rotation. Yesterday, however, the featured beverage -as indicated by the waitresses' T-shirts, no less- was a mixture of Hefeweizen and grapefruit juice. It was surprisingly good, and together with the remarkable soundtrack, gave the afternoon sort of a Spring Weekend feel.

Right now we're all relaxing a bit before dinner after walking around a park for a few hours this afternoon. Let the record reflect that Nick did not mistake the heron we saw for a seal. I'm ready for a break, since Keli and I powered the paddle boat around the lake after Nick and Anthony explained that their inefficiency was because their feet were too big for the pedals. Once off the lake, it was disappointing not to have any bread to feed to the inquisitive ducks, swans, geese, or koi. We had no real regrets about not being able to feed the rat. It's time to put my feet up for a bit and enjoy the best of German television. MTV is showing "Girls of the Playboy Mansion" -Hef's new girlfriend is from Texas, and you can kind of hear the drawl under the dubbing.

2008-09-07T02:10:00.000-07:00

Nick and Keli are visiting us this weekend, and it's been a lot of fun to hang out with the Ossis. Yesterday we wandered around Bonn buying salami and bedding -all the things one needs to stock up on before Sunday shuts down all commercial opportunities. I'd also like to encourage everyone to stick pins into any Bank of America voodoo objects lying around. Despite carefully and repeatedly informing them that we would be abroad for a year, the folks at BofA shut down our accounts. So, spit in the soup and stab away. I think Keli's with me on this...as I write this, she's looking for some pins for the U Michigan credit union.

For me, the highlight of the day came on our way back from dinner. As the four of us strolled through the streets of Beuel, a gaggle of girls poured out of a doorway to ask if we spoke English. Newspapers might give you the impression that Americans aren't so popular abroad, but apparently no one had told that to these girls. They were having a birthday party and were tickled pink to have real Americans ("echte!") to practice their English on. Actually, they were all wearing pink, too. I don't know if this was uniform for the party or if that's just what seventh-graders wear on a Saturday night. They asked us where we were from, and "Texas" was a serious crowd-pleaser. There were definitely some squeals of "Cowboy!" among the giggling. (There was a lot of giggling.) They also asked whether we were married or siblings, a dichotomy that posed less of a problem for Anth and me than for Keli and Nick. The (self-appointed?) spokesgirl told us that she got a 1 in English, but she was also happy to point out which of her friends only got a 6. Eventually we contintued on our way without signing any autographs, but it's good to have fans.

2008-09-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

Joan, I can see you updating this blog right now during the seminar. It's true that you know what a link is, but you should really be paying more attention.

Fast food

2008-09-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

The MPI is conveniently located within a block or so of McDonald's, Pizza Hut, 2 Starbucks, and a Subway. It's also across the square from a Nordsee, and even though my lunch may have had herring from Norway, onions from Poland, and cucumber from Spain, I bit into my Matjes Baguette and felt like I was having an authentic cultural experience. In fact, herring is currently a nose ahead of sausage for the food I've eaten most since we arrived. Despite this, there's no mistaking the fact that we're in the land of the Wurst. I wasn't surprised to find that sausage is a popular street food here, but the packaging isn't what I'd have expected: a round roll skewered with a sausage three times the diameter. I actually far prefer this to a fluffy hot dog bun, or even a tasty Spike's roll, but there's a certain geometric mismatch in this case when it looks like the sausage has outgrown its roll. Other snacking highlights include an amazing smoked herring we got at the Markt yesterday. If anyone is planning to visit, I can't tell you what tourist attractions are on the must-see list, but I don't think you'll leave disappointed if you have some of this herring.

We've only had one sit-down restaurant dinner, but we were clearly either in Germany or in Leavenworth. (If you don't know Leavenworth, don't lose any sleep.) The waiter wasn't wearing lederhosen, but that's probably only because he has too much Rhenish pride to indulge in such Bavarian foolery. Along with a good meal, our outing provided some motivation for me to encourage Tony to learn German: although my linguistic skills were sufficient to request ketchup on my husband's behalf, I couldn't successfully defend myself from the withering scorn of the waiter. Apparently Germans don't do ketchup. Or doggie bags. I was ultimately indulged with a piece of foil, but I got my own share of withering scorn in return for this request. I'm perfectly happy to shoulder the scorn I earn, but I'm not sure I want two portions.

Sept. 4

2008-09-04T03:38:00.000-07:00

Slowly but surely we're getting settled. Each day this week we've had at least one basic setup task to knock off, and the yesterday's task involved getting a bank account and depositing some traveler's checks. We decided to use Deutsche Bank because

1) BB Bank has too many B's, and

2) we were advised to use Deutsche Bank.

As it was conducted in English, the account setup was slightly less interesting than some of the earlier tasks of the week (see: getting registered as a Bonn resident.) In fact, I would have to say that setting up a DB account here was less confusing than setting up a BofA account in Palo Alto or New Haven. A few noteworthy comparisons:

1) in Palo Alto we had to put money into our account in order to create it (or at least in order to avoid some sort of fee.) Here, they would not let us put money in the account right away- we have to wait three days first. Thinking about it now, I would have to say that so far the German bank account hasn't been very useful yet.

2) In Palo Alto, we were issued a temporary debit card immediately, and permanent blue/silver cards (no color choice) followed in the mail about a week later. In Germany, we were not issued any sort of temporary card (which is probably a good thing as we might have tried to use it.) For our permanent cards, however, we were given a wide selection of card-front pictures from which to choose. Joan was allowed to choose for both of us, and the bank employee suggested that perhaps she might choose a picture of something German. So we have debit cards with a picture of some building in Berlin coming in the mail later this week.

Our secret plan was to deposit a few traveler's checks and then immediately withdraw some cash, which we could then use to buy food. We couldn't make the deposit, which would have been okay except that Deutsche Bank wouldn't even change our traveler's checks. A little stand at the train station was willing to, however, but they charged us a hefty 6.50 Euro fee on a 200 Euro check. Joan, who had insisted on purchasing these useless traveler's checks to begin with, was not amused (but we both needed food and really needed to get rid of the traveler's checks.) "It's worse than playing blackjack," was her take on the situation. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, "I didn't know Joan played blackjack!" Well, not only has Joan played Blackjack before, she's a blackjack player of some distinction (distinctly bad.) One day on our honeymoon in St. Martin we went into a casino on the way back from a beach on the Dutch side of the Island. There was a $5 blackjack table in the casino, and I suggested that she learn how to play using a $20 bill we had with us. The dealer took less than a two minutes to deal her 4 hands, all of which she lost. "It's like burning money!" she said with some amazement. So when she says that changing traveler's checks is worse than playing blackjack, that means she thinks that it's worse than like burning money.

We thought about it though and the blackjack comment isn't actually correct. I think a random blackjack hand has about a 48% chance of winning. So betting our entire 200 Euro traveler's check on one hand of blackjack would have had an expected yield of (.52)0 + (.48)400 = 192

Euros, for a loss of 8 Euros; we only lost 6.5 at the train station. So if you're ever at a casino and you're choosing between "change the traveler's check" and "blackjack," now you know which one to choose.

2008-09-02T01:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our first day of work, or at least our first day with access cards to the Max Planck Institute. We'd been told that MPI was located above a department store, but our (shared) office is in an annex around the corner, and a more accurate description would be to say that we're embedded in a department store. We have a corner office, with more windows than I'll probably ever have again unless I win a Fields Medal. The view to my left is into the ladies' tops and mens' underwear sections of the store. (Wehmeyer is having a special on black cardigans at the moment.) The next window looks into an unused storage room; we get a lot of natural light, since the storage room has great skylights. The window across from me looks out onto a foyer with a glass wall facing the street. The next building over (which we can see through the foyer through our window) is the Bonn Toursit Info office; it would be shallow of me to say I enjoy waving my access card and entering the building while the cattle-like tourists wander aimlessly around and moo. So I won't say that. It would also be a bit easier to be smug if I had any idea how to get anyplace. The Zentrum isn't that bit, but it's a warren of twisty lanes and alleys; our current navigational technique is to walk in ever-larger spirals until we find what we want. Picture a lab mouse in a maze, but one of the ones raised on a diet of candy and beer that never learns how to run a faster time to get to the cheese. Navigational incompetence aside, we successfully became residents of Bonn today; it was an interesting exercise to try and complete the Anmeldung Formular before our number came up on the screen. Filling out forms is never that much fun, but it usually doesn't feel like a race against the clock. We had to leave a few things blank -were we Abblg. or Maennn.? Abbreviations are not helpful when each line on the form already requires a few passes through the dictionary. In the end, the only problem was that they were temporarily out of stock of the Welcome-to-Bonn goody bags, but luckily we can come back on October 1 to pick one up.

2008-08-31T06:16:00.001-07:00

One more thing: it's hard to believe that a people as technologically advanced as the Germans have failed to realize the superiority of the *fitted* bottom sheet.

Local Festivities

2008-08-31T06:05:00.000-07:00

I imagine everyone has been eagerly awaiting our report on the Beuel Schiffervereinfest, and I'm happy to confirm the event was quite a success. What, this wasn't marked on your calendar? Such an oversight. We slept through the beginning of the Fest, but there's nothing like the gentle strains of a tuba wafting in your window to remind you that you're missing a party. I hadn't actually planned to end my nap with a few polka tunes, but this was probably lack of vision on my part. We live in Beuel, across the river from the Zentrum district of Bonn, and apparently the neighborhood decided to throw a party last night to welcome us. The live music lasted well into the evening, and although we couldn't join in the German choruses with the rest of the crowd, we did enjoy their rendition of "Ring of Fire" --Johnny Cash would have been proud.

It may seem egotistical to suggest that the party last night was thrown expressly in our honor, but our encounter on the way home today provides supporting evidence for this theory. As we turned onto our block a women stopped a few feet away and waited for us to approach. Then, with an American accent, she asked, "Do you live here?"

us: "Yes"

her: "Oh, we've heard all about you!"

us, apprehensively: "We just moved here on Friday."

her: "Maybe we haven't heard about you then. But we'll being seeing lots of you!"

So maybe last night's party was actually for our impersonatees, but we did see posters for next weekend's Buergerfest Beuel --that must be the one for us.

Saturday Aug. 30

2008-08-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's my attempt at posting. We arrived in Bonn yesterday, finally getting to our apartment at around 2 in the afternoon. By 3 we both needed a nap, which brought up an important question: how long should you let yourself sleep when you're trying to adjust to local time? Joan was concerned that a long nap at 3 would have us up all night, but I had no such concerns. I think she said she slept some, got up in the evening, and then went to sleep again around 9, but I'm not really sure- I slept pretty soundly until about 5 this morning.

We had an early breakfast, played scrabble (Joan 1 Anthony 0) and walked over the bridge into the center of town. The Max Planck Institute is about a 20 minute walk from our rave loft, so I'd have to say we lucked out with our living location. There's some sort of Beethoven music festival going on for the next few weeks and there's at least one outdoor concert this afternoon, so we'll probably trek back there after lunch. Beethoven was born in Bonn, and this is a Beethoven festival, so, natueralich, the group this afternoon is playing Vivaldi.

Walking around town was interesting, but in truth the main adventures today have involved the TV. This morning, for instance, a German children's program provided us our first glimpse of Joan's growing German competence. The TV show hostess described the rules to some sort of game- it looked the contestants were about to play musical chairs, except each seat had a cracker on it. Joan said, "I think they have to eat the crackers and then whistle." Sure enough, we then watched the contestants sit down on a chair, quickly eat a cracker, and then try to whistle before moving on to the next chair and repeating. There were no winners, sadly. I guess it's tough to whistle after eating a cracker.

In German music video news, you'll be relieved to know that "Ver schwenden meine zeit" and "Wenn ich eine Junge waer" are both seeing airtime.

One of the goals for tomorrow is to figure out which channels show Bundesliga games- I anticipate that watching soccer on Sundays will be my best chance for German language training. Okay, time to see if I can figure out how to post this.