Yesterday the world was supposed to end. Or at least the Mayans thought so. And the Hannover Indians decided to run with that theme for last night's game against the Ice Pirates (Eispiraten) of Crimmitschau. (I have never heard of Crimmitschau, and I'm told there's not much to do there except be an Ice Pirate fan.) They had new jerseys for the occasion. On the back was a picture of the Hannover Rathaus with fireballs descending on it from the sky. The zamboni had "the end of the world" written on it in tape, and little kids dressed in plastic haz-mat suits were skating around to pick up the pucks. Even with the time zone difference (I figured that noon Mayan time would be about 7pm here), by the start of the hockey game we all still existed, which was reason enough to try and win a hockey game. They did, by the way. After a slow start, the Indians won 4 to 3.
The most exciting play of the game, though, was performed by me. That's right - me. The second period had just ended and our friend Kent and I (Kent is a Canadian, PE teacher, and former Indians player who was formerly known as Kent Todd, Ice Hockey God) went to get beers. I walked back to the stands, a cup in each hand. Heading for the bleachers, right along the edge of the rink, I stepped around a man who was standing in front of the stairs. I had, however, stepped on to the place where the zamboni rolls out and drags some ice onto the floor. My left foot slipped. I wobbled, then recovered, then the right foot slipped. I felt myself going down, slowly, and lifted both hands over my head, hoping to save the beers, if not my dignity. They sloshed forward, then backward, and as my butt hit the floor they each let out a small frothy splash (landing on my hat and my sleeve), and stayed largely intact.
Kent grabbed me under the armpits and helped me up after safely setting his beers aside, and the first aid guys ran over to ask if I was ok. I was absolutely ok, and told Brian confidently that yes, I had fallen on my backside like a klutz, but I hardly spilled any beer. He beamed with pride. I think we even high fived. I wonder if anyone got it on camera - we could have had an instant replay, except the Indians don't have a sophisticated enough scoreboard for that.
The world did not end last night. I did not spill the beer. And if Armageddon ever comes during a second-league hockey game in Germany, I want to be riding in the zamboni.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Monday, December 17, 2012
Wishing for peace
Most of the time my posts are light, happy reading, with a little reflection mixed in. At least that's how I intend them to be. But sometimes we have to get a little more serious and after Friday's school shooting in Connecticut, now is the right time for that.
Living outside of the U.S. makes me wonder more why these things happen in our country. There are plenty of unstable, even violent people in the rest of the world, but they don't become mass murderers. What is it about our culture that makes these things happen?
It's awful that people died needlessly on Friday. But civilians also die needlessly in countries that are at war, and kids die in homocides in American cities all the time. Why is there no public outcry for them? Maybe it's because places we believed to be the most peaceful are shattered by violence.
In a time of year when we sing about peace on earth, peace was shattered at Sandy Hook school, as it has been in places with equally idyllic names like Columbine, Aurora, and Red Lake.
So today I am featuring an essay by my much respected and even more adored guest blogger Brian McCarthy. He says it all better than I can.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The tragedy in Connecticut has America reeling. It has me reeling. The question is, for how long? After all of the commentators, politicians, and Facebookers are done sending out their hugs, thoughts, and prayers, what will happen? My guess is that things, as they do in our fast-paced, digitized world,
will go back to a normalcy of sorts. Perhaps more tragic than this one event is that events like this have become normal to occur ever few years in the United States, for ours is a culture that glorifies violence, war, and guns.
I don’t know who will ever read this, but I know for some casting an aspersion like that about America might make some recoil in patriotic disbelief. Having spent an increasing amount of time living, and working among non-Americans over the last few years, what I have just said will come as no surprise to them. The only thing they seem to be unable to comprehend is why so many of my
countrymen can’t comprehend that this endemic violence in America is a problem and that it would be in our best interest to change.
Of course America is also a land of blame. Oh sure, we bask in the mythology of the concept of growing up in a country that celebrates individuality and pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, but a deeper reflection on that narrative will prove that to be somewhat inaccurate for most of the 310-plus million American citizens. So, who to blame over this violent culture of ours?
Certainly our politicians can take a part of it, and blaming them does make us feel good. The narrative about gridlock in Washington, and politicians being out of touch is also one that fills our 24-hour, bite-sized, dumbed down news cycle, and it is perpetuated by politicians on both sides of the aisle to our disdain, or ourdelight (depending upon who is in front of the camera, and what channel they are on). If we narrow down the discussion simply to our obsession with guns (never mind the desire to expand the American Empire by military means under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy), then there is enough blame for all of them to share. Some of our elected officials take the stance of publicly supporting our violent culture, by standing by gun lobby groups, and espousing
the greatness of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution (never mind that the rationale for the 2nd Amendment and what gun lovers currently use the 2nd Amendment for are fairly well removed from one another). The other group of politicians, choose to say nothing about guns, fearful that taking a stand against guns would be seen as unpatriotic, or make them look less courageous then their gun-defending counterparts, ultimately losing their places in power.
What about the rest of us, though? Our love of violence is celebrated in so many parts of our American society. The National Football League, our favorite weekend diversion during the fall and winter, begins many of its telecasts with triumphalist music that evokes feelings of an army marching off to war. Militarized robots posture during commercial breaks while the music plays, never mind the connotation that the game itself has (see George Carlin’s baseball vs. football comedy sketch). The NFL starts its season each year with warplanes flying over individual stadiums, to continue our obsessive militarism. I cannot understand how it could be just innocent fun, linking these destructive machines that are designed to kill to what used to be just a game. Yet like the Romans of old, the mob loves a violent spectacle to forget about their own reality, and they get it each Sunday.
What of our love of violence in some of our other favorite distractions? Film, television, video games, and music all have strong, popular elements that allow us to gawk and revel in the demise and death of people on a regular basis. Americans generally have a love of the free market—after all we love freedom—and yet parents want to blame the media and society for these products. Yet if
demand were removed for these products, then supply would wither.
Perhaps it also comes from a crisis of masculinity. Americans associate with what it takes to be a man as being strong. And for us, strength that we most value is of a physical nature. We see our heroes as strong men, who often are holding guns. Indeed some of the people commenting on the Connecticut tragedy have lamented the fact that there wasn’t one strong “good Samaritan with a gun” to march in to that school like Gary Cooper, or John Wayne and solve the problem that community was powerless to stop.
What we as Americans don’t see as strength are the virtues of strong men like Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Jesus Christ. Certainly we all agree that they did good things during their time on Earth, and those lessons are good to teach in elementary school. Yet when faced with a true personal crisis, do Americans teach their children to face it as they would have?
I don’t have any answers. Just questions, really. Those that know me have seen my passion when coaching the violent game of football, and know my love of a film that centers on an outlaw hero that comes to rescue the town. I grew up in a culture where I learned to be an individual, to be powerful, to avoid appearing weak, and thus to always be “strong.” I have been homophobic, and racist at
times in my life to avoid appearing weak in front of others. When I was young, I wanted to join the military and I have also wanted to work as a policeman, before finding my calling as a teacher. In recent years I have also strongly considered purchasing a gun.
For those that know me well, however, and those people are few and far between, these thoughts probably won’t come as a surprise. I am trying to find my way as an American in a much larger world. What I am learning is that business as usual for America, a land that I do confess to loving, cannot be an option. We need people of all walks of life in our country to find a true strength, and a true courage that cannot be replicated by holding a firearm or imposing one’s physical will on another. The children and teachers that died in this tragedy need to be memorialized not by speeches, but by action. My thoughts and prayers are not with them, primarily, but with us. I pray that we,
as Americans, have the courage to speak up and out against this violence, and all of the violence that is so pervasive in our culture, and work toward building a culture and a society that allows us to love and care for one another, above all other things.
Living outside of the U.S. makes me wonder more why these things happen in our country. There are plenty of unstable, even violent people in the rest of the world, but they don't become mass murderers. What is it about our culture that makes these things happen?
It's awful that people died needlessly on Friday. But civilians also die needlessly in countries that are at war, and kids die in homocides in American cities all the time. Why is there no public outcry for them? Maybe it's because places we believed to be the most peaceful are shattered by violence.
In a time of year when we sing about peace on earth, peace was shattered at Sandy Hook school, as it has been in places with equally idyllic names like Columbine, Aurora, and Red Lake.
So today I am featuring an essay by my much respected and even more adored guest blogger Brian McCarthy. He says it all better than I can.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The tragedy in Connecticut has America reeling. It has me reeling. The question is, for how long? After all of the commentators, politicians, and Facebookers are done sending out their hugs, thoughts, and prayers, what will happen? My guess is that things, as they do in our fast-paced, digitized world,
will go back to a normalcy of sorts. Perhaps more tragic than this one event is that events like this have become normal to occur ever few years in the United States, for ours is a culture that glorifies violence, war, and guns.
I don’t know who will ever read this, but I know for some casting an aspersion like that about America might make some recoil in patriotic disbelief. Having spent an increasing amount of time living, and working among non-Americans over the last few years, what I have just said will come as no surprise to them. The only thing they seem to be unable to comprehend is why so many of my
countrymen can’t comprehend that this endemic violence in America is a problem and that it would be in our best interest to change.
Of course America is also a land of blame. Oh sure, we bask in the mythology of the concept of growing up in a country that celebrates individuality and pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, but a deeper reflection on that narrative will prove that to be somewhat inaccurate for most of the 310-plus million American citizens. So, who to blame over this violent culture of ours?
Certainly our politicians can take a part of it, and blaming them does make us feel good. The narrative about gridlock in Washington, and politicians being out of touch is also one that fills our 24-hour, bite-sized, dumbed down news cycle, and it is perpetuated by politicians on both sides of the aisle to our disdain, or ourdelight (depending upon who is in front of the camera, and what channel they are on). If we narrow down the discussion simply to our obsession with guns (never mind the desire to expand the American Empire by military means under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy), then there is enough blame for all of them to share. Some of our elected officials take the stance of publicly supporting our violent culture, by standing by gun lobby groups, and espousing
the greatness of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution (never mind that the rationale for the 2nd Amendment and what gun lovers currently use the 2nd Amendment for are fairly well removed from one another). The other group of politicians, choose to say nothing about guns, fearful that taking a stand against guns would be seen as unpatriotic, or make them look less courageous then their gun-defending counterparts, ultimately losing their places in power.
What about the rest of us, though? Our love of violence is celebrated in so many parts of our American society. The National Football League, our favorite weekend diversion during the fall and winter, begins many of its telecasts with triumphalist music that evokes feelings of an army marching off to war. Militarized robots posture during commercial breaks while the music plays, never mind the connotation that the game itself has (see George Carlin’s baseball vs. football comedy sketch). The NFL starts its season each year with warplanes flying over individual stadiums, to continue our obsessive militarism. I cannot understand how it could be just innocent fun, linking these destructive machines that are designed to kill to what used to be just a game. Yet like the Romans of old, the mob loves a violent spectacle to forget about their own reality, and they get it each Sunday.
What of our love of violence in some of our other favorite distractions? Film, television, video games, and music all have strong, popular elements that allow us to gawk and revel in the demise and death of people on a regular basis. Americans generally have a love of the free market—after all we love freedom—and yet parents want to blame the media and society for these products. Yet if
demand were removed for these products, then supply would wither.
Perhaps it also comes from a crisis of masculinity. Americans associate with what it takes to be a man as being strong. And for us, strength that we most value is of a physical nature. We see our heroes as strong men, who often are holding guns. Indeed some of the people commenting on the Connecticut tragedy have lamented the fact that there wasn’t one strong “good Samaritan with a gun” to march in to that school like Gary Cooper, or John Wayne and solve the problem that community was powerless to stop.
What we as Americans don’t see as strength are the virtues of strong men like Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Jesus Christ. Certainly we all agree that they did good things during their time on Earth, and those lessons are good to teach in elementary school. Yet when faced with a true personal crisis, do Americans teach their children to face it as they would have?
I don’t have any answers. Just questions, really. Those that know me have seen my passion when coaching the violent game of football, and know my love of a film that centers on an outlaw hero that comes to rescue the town. I grew up in a culture where I learned to be an individual, to be powerful, to avoid appearing weak, and thus to always be “strong.” I have been homophobic, and racist at
times in my life to avoid appearing weak in front of others. When I was young, I wanted to join the military and I have also wanted to work as a policeman, before finding my calling as a teacher. In recent years I have also strongly considered purchasing a gun.
For those that know me well, however, and those people are few and far between, these thoughts probably won’t come as a surprise. I am trying to find my way as an American in a much larger world. What I am learning is that business as usual for America, a land that I do confess to loving, cannot be an option. We need people of all walks of life in our country to find a true strength, and a true courage that cannot be replicated by holding a firearm or imposing one’s physical will on another. The children and teachers that died in this tragedy need to be memorialized not by speeches, but by action. My thoughts and prayers are not with them, primarily, but with us. I pray that we,
as Americans, have the courage to speak up and out against this violence, and all of the violence that is so pervasive in our culture, and work toward building a culture and a society that allows us to love and care for one another, above all other things.
Weihnachtsmarkt in Braunschweig - that's a mouthful
I am a big nerd for the Christmas market. I like the lights, the smells, the festive atmosphere... And since most cities in Germany have them, it seemed important to visit a market outside of Hannover too. Some people are bigger Christmas market nerds than I am. Tourists come to Germany this time of year to do a tour of markets in several cities. You can pick them out because they are wearing antler headbands or speaking loudly in English.
On Thursday, Kaska, Serena, and I went to the Christmas market in Braunschweig. Try to say Braunschweig Weihnachtsmarkt three times fast, you'll either
sound really silly or or someone will say "gesundheit" because they
think you just sneezed.
We picked that city because it's not far away and we'd heard that the market there is a nice one. What we discovered is that most of Braunschweig looks like this:
We got off the train and wondered what huge mistake we had made coming to this place. It was like where bad 1960s architecture goes to die. Here's my favorite one - a Deutsche Bank ad saying "save with us" that looks like it should be a cheap Florida motel:
But then, the skies opened up and the Christmas angels started to sing. We entered the Altstadt.
It was like a little island of beauty, Christmas cheer, and sausages in the middle of a mid-century wasteland.
Braunschweig is known as the lion city, because it was the medieval capital of Saxony, which was ruled by Henry the Lion. Back then it was known as a big and important. Now it's known as ugly. It's also known as the city in Germany with the greatest number of Polish people. Kaska felt right at home.
The old city was mostly destroyed during World War 2, so a lot of the buildings you see in the photos below are reconstructions.
That was my outlet last week for my Christmas market nerdiness.
On Thursday, Kaska, Serena, and I went to the Christmas market in Braunschweig. Try to say Braunschweig Weihnachtsmarkt three times fast, you'll either
sound really silly or or someone will say "gesundheit" because they
think you just sneezed.We picked that city because it's not far away and we'd heard that the market there is a nice one. What we discovered is that most of Braunschweig looks like this:
We got off the train and wondered what huge mistake we had made coming to this place. It was like where bad 1960s architecture goes to die. Here's my favorite one - a Deutsche Bank ad saying "save with us" that looks like it should be a cheap Florida motel:
But then, the skies opened up and the Christmas angels started to sing. We entered the Altstadt.
It was like a little island of beauty, Christmas cheer, and sausages in the middle of a mid-century wasteland.
The old city was mostly destroyed during World War 2, so a lot of the buildings you see in the photos below are reconstructions.
 |
| Fair food, German style |
 |
| At the Braunschweig Weihnachtsmarkt they have apple Gluhwein, served with a cinnamon stick. Serena looks a little less happy than Kaska and I because she can't drink any - she's got a baby on the way. |
 |
| The sausage man, hard at work. Note the massive bottles of mayo, ketchup, and mustard hanging from the ceiling. |
That was my outlet last week for my Christmas market nerdiness.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Tea medicine
In German class on Tuesday, our teacher sent us all home early. He was sick with a cold, maybe a fever too. We told him we hoped he felt better soon, then one of my classmates asked if he'd been drinking fennel tea.
I like tea. The nice thing about being a tea drinker in Germany is that it's one thing I do that doesn't seem weird to Germans. Things that puzzle them are my poor command of the language, crossing the street on red lights, wearing sweatpants occasionally to the grocery store, spitting sometimes while I run, wearing bright colors, sometimes leaving home without a scarf, and buying a Christmas tree three weeks before Christmas. Americans mostly just find it strange that I don't drink coffee, and dig out an old bag of Lipton from the bottom of a drawer if I ask. At least in Germany no one bats an eye when you order tea.
Germans have a huge variety of teas. They also seem to have a lot of faith in the medicinal properties of teas. Here are some examples:
Nettle tea is a pain reliever, diuretic, and helps clear mucus from the lungs (that's where that spitting part comes in).
Fennel tea is used for colds and digestive problems.
Rose hip tea is good for the immune system and the urinary tract.
Drink chamomile for insomnia and linden tea for stress relief.
Lemon balm tea (Melissa in German) is good for cold sores.
Peppermint tea helps digestion and toothaches.
You can't buy aspirin or cold medicine in Germany without going to the pharmacy, but you can buy all the tea you want at the drugstore. In case you don't believe me, I even took a picture to show you how many kinds there are. Keep in mind that this is a place where you can only buy one brand of peanut butter:
You'd think with all of these teas, Germans would have powerful immune systems, fueled by a steady stream of anti-oxidants. That's not the case. I am not sure whether Germans get sick more or less than Americans, but they take it more seriously when they do. This is good for me, since my meager income is determined by which teachers have called in sick, whether they are German or not. I do have a theory that because Americans eat more artificial crap as children, their immune systems are a little tougher. While the German kids had yogurt and muesli, the Americans had Cheetos and Cap'n Crunch.
Of course, Americans will come to work with a fever in order to save their days off. They feel miserable, spreading their germs around, and people think it's noble. Germans think it's crazy. They also have universal health care and jobs that don't limit sick time. In most jobs if you are gone for three days, you need a doctor's note in order to stay home any longer. If you are sick often, the employer can require the doctor's note on the second day. But there's no set number of days you can miss and you get paid for staying home.
Back to the teas, I've tried a lot of them. But really I enjoy a strong black tea best of all. So no nettles or fennel tea needed here. I have eaten my share of artificial colors and flavors and I'm feeling fine.
I like tea. The nice thing about being a tea drinker in Germany is that it's one thing I do that doesn't seem weird to Germans. Things that puzzle them are my poor command of the language, crossing the street on red lights, wearing sweatpants occasionally to the grocery store, spitting sometimes while I run, wearing bright colors, sometimes leaving home without a scarf, and buying a Christmas tree three weeks before Christmas. Americans mostly just find it strange that I don't drink coffee, and dig out an old bag of Lipton from the bottom of a drawer if I ask. At least in Germany no one bats an eye when you order tea.
Germans have a huge variety of teas. They also seem to have a lot of faith in the medicinal properties of teas. Here are some examples:
Nettle tea is a pain reliever, diuretic, and helps clear mucus from the lungs (that's where that spitting part comes in).
Fennel tea is used for colds and digestive problems.
Rose hip tea is good for the immune system and the urinary tract.
Drink chamomile for insomnia and linden tea for stress relief.
Lemon balm tea (Melissa in German) is good for cold sores.
Peppermint tea helps digestion and toothaches.
You can't buy aspirin or cold medicine in Germany without going to the pharmacy, but you can buy all the tea you want at the drugstore. In case you don't believe me, I even took a picture to show you how many kinds there are. Keep in mind that this is a place where you can only buy one brand of peanut butter:
You'd think with all of these teas, Germans would have powerful immune systems, fueled by a steady stream of anti-oxidants. That's not the case. I am not sure whether Germans get sick more or less than Americans, but they take it more seriously when they do. This is good for me, since my meager income is determined by which teachers have called in sick, whether they are German or not. I do have a theory that because Americans eat more artificial crap as children, their immune systems are a little tougher. While the German kids had yogurt and muesli, the Americans had Cheetos and Cap'n Crunch.
Of course, Americans will come to work with a fever in order to save their days off. They feel miserable, spreading their germs around, and people think it's noble. Germans think it's crazy. They also have universal health care and jobs that don't limit sick time. In most jobs if you are gone for three days, you need a doctor's note in order to stay home any longer. If you are sick often, the employer can require the doctor's note on the second day. But there's no set number of days you can miss and you get paid for staying home.
Back to the teas, I've tried a lot of them. But really I enjoy a strong black tea best of all. So no nettles or fennel tea needed here. I have eaten my share of artificial colors and flavors and I'm feeling fine.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Snow in Hannover
It has been snowing here off and on all week. In the tradition of non-extreme German weather, it snows lightly for a few hours, then stops, then starts again. It's pretty.
Since we never got more than a dusting last year, this snow in Hannover is a new experience for me. Here are some observations:
People on the street sometimes use their umbrellas when it is snowing. This seems silly to me. I guess it's not so different than using an umbrella in the rain, except that it takes something like 10 snowflakes to equal the moisture in one raindrop. How wet are you really going to get?
Riding a bike in the snow is tricky. My bike has skinny tires and went pretty fast when it was newer and cleaner. Now I use it to get around town. Riding that bike in the snow is like winter driving in a rear wheel drive compact car. It slips and slides more than I'd like, but when I get a called in to cover teach at 7:30 in the morning, I don't have time to walk. I'm getting to be a better snow bike rider, and it's still more fun than snow driving, even in a front wheel drive car.
Germans may not get the amount of snow that we are used to in the Midwest, but they have all the gear. The kids at school wear their full-body puffy snowsuits and everyone seems to have some serious boots on... They might be a little too serious for 3 inches of fluff. It is fun to be around kids when the snow starts to fall. I gave the 5th graders a 2 minute looking-out-the-window break on Wednesday just to watch it. Sadly, snowball throwing for grades 6 and up was forbidden today over the loudspeaker.
The poor children of Hannover have no hills to sled down. It is just too flat here. Instead, they pull each other, or their parents pull them, down the street or along the lake on their wooden sleds. Maybe they don't know what they are missing.
I took a few snowy pictures for you on my walk to school this morning:
Soon, the weather will warm up and it will all turn to slush. That is part of what makes snow in Hannover special; you have to enjoy it because it won't be on the ground until March. The thaw will make riding my bike will get a lot easier. If I was really talented, I could do it while holding an umbrella.
Since we never got more than a dusting last year, this snow in Hannover is a new experience for me. Here are some observations:
People on the street sometimes use their umbrellas when it is snowing. This seems silly to me. I guess it's not so different than using an umbrella in the rain, except that it takes something like 10 snowflakes to equal the moisture in one raindrop. How wet are you really going to get?
Riding a bike in the snow is tricky. My bike has skinny tires and went pretty fast when it was newer and cleaner. Now I use it to get around town. Riding that bike in the snow is like winter driving in a rear wheel drive compact car. It slips and slides more than I'd like, but when I get a called in to cover teach at 7:30 in the morning, I don't have time to walk. I'm getting to be a better snow bike rider, and it's still more fun than snow driving, even in a front wheel drive car.
Germans may not get the amount of snow that we are used to in the Midwest, but they have all the gear. The kids at school wear their full-body puffy snowsuits and everyone seems to have some serious boots on... They might be a little too serious for 3 inches of fluff. It is fun to be around kids when the snow starts to fall. I gave the 5th graders a 2 minute looking-out-the-window break on Wednesday just to watch it. Sadly, snowball throwing for grades 6 and up was forbidden today over the loudspeaker.
The poor children of Hannover have no hills to sled down. It is just too flat here. Instead, they pull each other, or their parents pull them, down the street or along the lake on their wooden sleds. Maybe they don't know what they are missing.
I took a few snowy pictures for you on my walk to school this morning:
Soon, the weather will warm up and it will all turn to slush. That is part of what makes snow in Hannover special; you have to enjoy it because it won't be on the ground until March. The thaw will make riding my bike will get a lot easier. If I was really talented, I could do it while holding an umbrella.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Dear Christmas Man...
It's snowing in Hannover. There are fluffy white flakes falling with their extra layer of quiet. I don't know if we'll have a white Christmas or not, but we are having a white Advent. Germany loves Advent. The clerks in stores and bakeries wish you a happy second Advent weekend and Advent wreaths are marked down to half-off at the flower shop on our street. Everyone has bought theirs already.
For Catholics, Advent is not a happy, sparkly, fun time. It's when you wear dark purple and sing dreary songs about waiting solemnly for Jesus. Germany's secular version of Advent, though, is about the Christmas market, or Weihnachtsmarkt. Each town in Germany has its own - clusters of wooden stalls selling crafts and gifts and candied almonds and sausages. It is the only German festival I can think of that has no role for beer. The main star of the market is Gluhwein - a hot, sweet, spiced red wine that you can buy with or without an additional shot of booze. There's also hot chocolate and apple cider, ditto on the extra shot.
We went to the market in Hannover with our crew of teacher friends on Friday night. Here are some photos:
The Christmas market is a good place to buy gifts to send back home, things they wouldn't know to ask for. I usually don't ask for anything for Christmas, because that would make it way too easy for the gift buyer. I need to challenge their creativity, and I don't need more stuff. Any stuff I acquire will one day need to be packed up and moved somewhere else. But, when pressed, I did produce a list for my siblings of things I cannot buy for myself. It goes something like this:
An expat Christmas list
Dear Santa (Lieber Weihnachtsmann),
I have been very good this year. Please bring me vanilla extract, ranch dressing packets, hot sauce, chocolate chips, and snack size Ziploc bags. I hope that you can make it up all the stairs to our apartment, since we don't have a chimney. Maybe you could just park your sleigh on the balcony instead.
Love, Julia
St Nikolaus was already here. He came on Thursday to put chocolate in all the kids' shoes. In Germany, Santa Claus is the Weihnachtsmann, which means Christmas Man in German. I imagine him as sort of a Nordic superhero, flying by with a furry cape and a big W on his chest. He'd be the German version of this guy on the right, which means he'd have the W and wear a long scarf around his neck that would flap in the breeze.
Brian and I are excited about the snow. It beats all the rain we had this time last year that made me feel like wearing dark purple and being gloomy. Plus, we have Minnesota-worthy snow gear to wear. We even bought a Christmas tree yesterday and wheeled it home on a bike.
So have a Gluhwein and let it snow, Hannover. Happy second Advent Sunday.
For Catholics, Advent is not a happy, sparkly, fun time. It's when you wear dark purple and sing dreary songs about waiting solemnly for Jesus. Germany's secular version of Advent, though, is about the Christmas market, or Weihnachtsmarkt. Each town in Germany has its own - clusters of wooden stalls selling crafts and gifts and candied almonds and sausages. It is the only German festival I can think of that has no role for beer. The main star of the market is Gluhwein - a hot, sweet, spiced red wine that you can buy with or without an additional shot of booze. There's also hot chocolate and apple cider, ditto on the extra shot.
We went to the market in Hannover with our crew of teacher friends on Friday night. Here are some photos:
 |
| Andrew and Katja |
 |
 |
| In the Finnish village part of the Hannover market, you can eat these little fried fish, head and tails included. There are also reindeer sandwiches and salmon smoking on wooden planks beside a big fire. |
The Christmas market is a good place to buy gifts to send back home, things they wouldn't know to ask for. I usually don't ask for anything for Christmas, because that would make it way too easy for the gift buyer. I need to challenge their creativity, and I don't need more stuff. Any stuff I acquire will one day need to be packed up and moved somewhere else. But, when pressed, I did produce a list for my siblings of things I cannot buy for myself. It goes something like this:
An expat Christmas list
Dear Santa (Lieber Weihnachtsmann),
I have been very good this year. Please bring me vanilla extract, ranch dressing packets, hot sauce, chocolate chips, and snack size Ziploc bags. I hope that you can make it up all the stairs to our apartment, since we don't have a chimney. Maybe you could just park your sleigh on the balcony instead.
Love, Julia
St Nikolaus was already here. He came on Thursday to put chocolate in all the kids' shoes. In Germany, Santa Claus is the Weihnachtsmann, which means Christmas Man in German. I imagine him as sort of a Nordic superhero, flying by with a furry cape and a big W on his chest. He'd be the German version of this guy on the right, which means he'd have the W and wear a long scarf around his neck that would flap in the breeze. Brian and I are excited about the snow. It beats all the rain we had this time last year that made me feel like wearing dark purple and being gloomy. Plus, we have Minnesota-worthy snow gear to wear. We even bought a Christmas tree yesterday and wheeled it home on a bike.
So have a Gluhwein and let it snow, Hannover. Happy second Advent Sunday.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
The Fighting Unicorns
Most of my posts are about me. But not this one. Today I am writing about the Fighting Unicorns of the International School Hannover Region. They are not jousting or fencing team. They do not play dungeons and dragons together while wearing Medieval era costumes.
(brief tangent: when we lived in St Paul there was a group of people that would do that every Saturday morning in Como Park. There's a name for it: Live Action Role Play or LARP. It's a whole subculture. They dressed in their Rennaisance festival outfits and had swords and shields and such. Brian and I often saw them while we sped by on our bikes, dressed in spandex. Who do you think looked funnier?)
The Unicorns are a group of teachers from the school, plus a couple of their friends, who play football (translation: soccer) in the gym on Monday afternoons. The name sounds like it was chosen for a bunch of six year old girls, which they are not, so you should know the story behind it. The reason they chose the name is that the ISHR mascot is the Mustang. On the wall of the school gym is a big painting of a white mustang that looks like it was made by one of the kids. It looks sort of like a unicorn. So the name is a jab at the school and at how its school sports teams generally lack any sort of ferocity.
The players have varying levels of fitness and flexibility, ranging in age from 26 to 36. Brian was at first not interested in joining them. He started out thinking that soccer was an ok game in which he had no interest. Then a few years ago, he decided it was kind of fun to watch on TV. Once we moved here he took a little more interest in watching it but had no desire to play. Peer pressure is a funny thing though, and with that plus no other outlet for organized sports, he started to join the group and play on Mondays. It wasn't pretty at first (so I'm told) but he picked up the game pretty fast and now is a solid member of the Unicorn defense.
On Saturday, the lads (that's a football term) played outside teams for the first time. They were in a football tournament with various club teams from around Hannover, all of which had more players, uniforms and coaches, were about 25 years old and had done this sort of thing before. The Unicorns were scrappy, however, and meaner than the other guys. I was not there, but Brian tells me that there was trash talking in English and the mild-mannered math teacher knocked over a guy twice his size. They were the underdogs. They ended up finishing 4th out of 8 teams.
Here are the Fighting Unicorns:
The defensive squad sported handlebar mustaches to intimidate the
competition and also to look like convicts from the late 1970s.
Their legs might still be aching, but their pride is intact.
(brief tangent: when we lived in St Paul there was a group of people that would do that every Saturday morning in Como Park. There's a name for it: Live Action Role Play or LARP. It's a whole subculture. They dressed in their Rennaisance festival outfits and had swords and shields and such. Brian and I often saw them while we sped by on our bikes, dressed in spandex. Who do you think looked funnier?)
The Unicorns are a group of teachers from the school, plus a couple of their friends, who play football (translation: soccer) in the gym on Monday afternoons. The name sounds like it was chosen for a bunch of six year old girls, which they are not, so you should know the story behind it. The reason they chose the name is that the ISHR mascot is the Mustang. On the wall of the school gym is a big painting of a white mustang that looks like it was made by one of the kids. It looks sort of like a unicorn. So the name is a jab at the school and at how its school sports teams generally lack any sort of ferocity.
The players have varying levels of fitness and flexibility, ranging in age from 26 to 36. Brian was at first not interested in joining them. He started out thinking that soccer was an ok game in which he had no interest. Then a few years ago, he decided it was kind of fun to watch on TV. Once we moved here he took a little more interest in watching it but had no desire to play. Peer pressure is a funny thing though, and with that plus no other outlet for organized sports, he started to join the group and play on Mondays. It wasn't pretty at first (so I'm told) but he picked up the game pretty fast and now is a solid member of the Unicorn defense.
On Saturday, the lads (that's a football term) played outside teams for the first time. They were in a football tournament with various club teams from around Hannover, all of which had more players, uniforms and coaches, were about 25 years old and had done this sort of thing before. The Unicorns were scrappy, however, and meaner than the other guys. I was not there, but Brian tells me that there was trash talking in English and the mild-mannered math teacher knocked over a guy twice his size. They were the underdogs. They ended up finishing 4th out of 8 teams.
Here are the Fighting Unicorns:
Their legs might still be aching, but their pride is intact.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
German schools
I made a reference the other day to students working on their university degrees until middle age. That was not entirely untrue. I felt like I'd maybe posted something about the school system before, so I started flipping through my old posts. Remember when I wrote about the old people in the swimming pool and my first Hannover Indians hockey game? Oh the memories. Anyway, I don't think I wrote about education before and if I can't remember then you can't either. Here we go.
The school system here is tough for foreigners to understand. It starts with Kindergarten, then Grundschule, which is elementary school. All the kids go to Grundschule until 4th grade. At that point the class splits up.
Kids who have the potential to go to university go on to Gymnasium. Unfortunately for them, it is not an all day PE class. It's more of a classic academic, college-prep experience. After 12th grade (used to be 13th), they take a big final exam and can go to university from there.
Then there's a group of 4th graders that goes to Hauptschule. Hauptschule is kind of like technical school. The students study there until 10th grade and then move on to more specific training in something like sales, secretarial skills, nursing, etc. That takes about 2 more years.
The last group of 4th graders goes to Realschule... as in real life school. They stay there until 10th grade and learn a trade, then do an apprenticeship or go to vocational school or just start working.
There's also a Gesamtschule, which combines all three. This sounds more like an American-style high school, where some classes have everyone together and some are advanced, regular, remedial, etc.
For your enlightenment, I have included a diagram:
Got it? I hope so, because I am still a little confused.
I have mixed feelings about this system. How are you supposed to know when a kid is 10 years old whether he/she will be college material? What about the late bloomers? The kids with rough childhoods? The ones who eventually figure it out? In some states in Germany the parents make that decision. In others, the teachers decide. Then if the parents don't like the teacher's decision, they can try to get it changed but it takes a lot of work. Or they can send their kids to private school, if they have the money, that is.
This system serves the German economy very well. There are people trained for all sorts of jobs that need to be done. Students finish school with a marketable skill that they can use to get a job. That doesn't always happen for us liberal arts grads. And if you are smart and motivated, you can get a university education for free, or almost free. No student is prevented from going to college because they can't afford it, and they aren't burdened with tons of debt after graduation.
One thing this system does is maintains a social structure that makes me a little uncomfortable. You can pretty much tell by the time a kid is 12 years old what sort of socio-economic future he or she will have. They are even split up neatly into three categories. What about being an entrepreneur and pulling yourself up by those boot straps?... but wait, that's the American dream, not the German one. This is not a culture that praises a lot of risk-taking. There's a lot of stability in the way things work here, and I think the Germans like it that way.
The German school system is in the process of changing, or at least that's what I've heard. I am not sure what those changes will mean. If there is a school with all day PE class, though, I think a lot of kids will sign up for that.
The school system here is tough for foreigners to understand. It starts with Kindergarten, then Grundschule, which is elementary school. All the kids go to Grundschule until 4th grade. At that point the class splits up.
Kids who have the potential to go to university go on to Gymnasium. Unfortunately for them, it is not an all day PE class. It's more of a classic academic, college-prep experience. After 12th grade (used to be 13th), they take a big final exam and can go to university from there.
Then there's a group of 4th graders that goes to Hauptschule. Hauptschule is kind of like technical school. The students study there until 10th grade and then move on to more specific training in something like sales, secretarial skills, nursing, etc. That takes about 2 more years.
The last group of 4th graders goes to Realschule... as in real life school. They stay there until 10th grade and learn a trade, then do an apprenticeship or go to vocational school or just start working.
There's also a Gesamtschule, which combines all three. This sounds more like an American-style high school, where some classes have everyone together and some are advanced, regular, remedial, etc.
For your enlightenment, I have included a diagram:
I have mixed feelings about this system. How are you supposed to know when a kid is 10 years old whether he/she will be college material? What about the late bloomers? The kids with rough childhoods? The ones who eventually figure it out? In some states in Germany the parents make that decision. In others, the teachers decide. Then if the parents don't like the teacher's decision, they can try to get it changed but it takes a lot of work. Or they can send their kids to private school, if they have the money, that is.
This system serves the German economy very well. There are people trained for all sorts of jobs that need to be done. Students finish school with a marketable skill that they can use to get a job. That doesn't always happen for us liberal arts grads. And if you are smart and motivated, you can get a university education for free, or almost free. No student is prevented from going to college because they can't afford it, and they aren't burdened with tons of debt after graduation.
One thing this system does is maintains a social structure that makes me a little uncomfortable. You can pretty much tell by the time a kid is 12 years old what sort of socio-economic future he or she will have. They are even split up neatly into three categories. What about being an entrepreneur and pulling yourself up by those boot straps?... but wait, that's the American dream, not the German one. This is not a culture that praises a lot of risk-taking. There's a lot of stability in the way things work here, and I think the Germans like it that way.
The German school system is in the process of changing, or at least that's what I've heard. I am not sure what those changes will mean. If there is a school with all day PE class, though, I think a lot of kids will sign up for that.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Is Germany too civilized?
Thanksgiving is over, I am not going anywhere interesting, and now it's time to write about the mundane stuff that interests a foreigner like me. As familiar as a lot of things are in German culture - Christmas traditions, potato chips, Coca Cola, bad pop music - sometimes I realize how it's a little more civilized than what I am used to. Maybe too much.
In Germany there is universal health care, low unemployment, and shops that are closed on Sundays. People wait for the light to turn green before crossing the street and might publicly chastise you for riding your bike on the left-side-of-the-rod sidewalk. Busses run on time and the passengers buy tickets even though they are seldom checked. Sounds good, right? As we live here longer, I keep noticing little things that happen in a highly-organized, law-abiding society that would never work in a lot of places, including my homeland (which is still civilized, if slightly less law-abiding).
Hannover, like many other cities in Germany, has free bookshelves. In addition to the public library system, there are bookshelves out in public areas where passers-by can take a book home, bring it back later, or donate their old books. Here's some info from a 2011 AP article featured in The Guardian :
Associated Press= COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — Take a book, leave a book. In the birthplace of the printing press, public bookshelves are popping up across the nation on street corners, city squares and suburban supermarkets.
In these free-for-all libraries, people can grab whatever they want to read, and leave behind anything they want for others. There's no need to register, no due date, and you can take or give as many as you want.
"This project is aimed at everyone who likes to read — without regard to age or education. It is open for everybody," Michael Aubermann, one of the organizers of the free book exchange in the city of Cologne, told The Associated Press.
The public book shelves, which are usually financed by donations and cared for by local volunteer groups, have popped up independently of each other in many cities across Germany including Berlin, Hannover and Bonn, and also in suburbs and villages.
Cool idea, right? Way to make literacy accessible to everyone. Until somebody steals all the books. Except that doesn't happen. Really. People actually bring the books back or replace them with other titles. Except for my friend Kaska's mom, who is Polish, and took a couple of books home to Poland with the explanation of "at least I will USE them". In the U.S., the books would not always come back, even in a nice neighborhood. They'd turn up at someone's house or a used book store. But in Germany, that's not a problem.
Here's another example: public apple trees. One of the semi-country roads where Brian and I like to ride bikes is lined with apple trees. On weekend mornings in the fall, we would see people drive up to those trees in their cars, pull out their apple picker poles, and help themselves to the apples. The trees were so close to the road that they had to belong to the city. And people were openly picking them, for free. Brian and I were both amazed. "What is this place (this is the dialogue of us talking to ourselves), the land of milk, honey, and applesauce?"
But then maybe it goes too far. I learned in German class last week that in Germany, it is illegal to wash your own car in your driveway or the street. If you do and the police catch you, the fine is 500 euros! These people are serious about not washing your own car. The explanation that my teacher gave, and what I read online (translation = it must be true) is that the soapy, dirty, oily water can get in the gutters and go down into the sewer system. And no one wants that. Except, doesn't that happen when you go to the car wash too? Doesn't that happen when it rains? Is the rest of the world drinking contaminated water because they wash their own cars? Maybe this law a way to ensure that car washes stay in business.
As a foreigner, maybe I have the best of both worlds. I appreciate that busses run on time and you can borrow books off the street (not that I can read any of them, but it's a nice idea). I also know enough to realize that some rules are not really necessary, and that car washing is not the world's major source of water pollution. I do sometimes cross the street on a red light, to the disapproving looks of old ladies waiting on the corner. And next year, maybe I'll get an apple picker.
In Germany there is universal health care, low unemployment, and shops that are closed on Sundays. People wait for the light to turn green before crossing the street and might publicly chastise you for riding your bike on the left-side-of-the-rod sidewalk. Busses run on time and the passengers buy tickets even though they are seldom checked. Sounds good, right? As we live here longer, I keep noticing little things that happen in a highly-organized, law-abiding society that would never work in a lot of places, including my homeland (which is still civilized, if slightly less law-abiding).
Hannover, like many other cities in Germany, has free bookshelves. In addition to the public library system, there are bookshelves out in public areas where passers-by can take a book home, bring it back later, or donate their old books. Here's some info from a 2011 AP article featured in The Guardian :
Associated Press= COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — Take a book, leave a book. In the birthplace of the printing press, public bookshelves are popping up across the nation on street corners, city squares and suburban supermarkets.
In these free-for-all libraries, people can grab whatever they want to read, and leave behind anything they want for others. There's no need to register, no due date, and you can take or give as many as you want.
"This project is aimed at everyone who likes to read — without regard to age or education. It is open for everybody," Michael Aubermann, one of the organizers of the free book exchange in the city of Cologne, told The Associated Press.
The public book shelves, which are usually financed by donations and cared for by local volunteer groups, have popped up independently of each other in many cities across Germany including Berlin, Hannover and Bonn, and also in suburbs and villages.
 |
| Public bookshelf in Hannover |
Cool idea, right? Way to make literacy accessible to everyone. Until somebody steals all the books. Except that doesn't happen. Really. People actually bring the books back or replace them with other titles. Except for my friend Kaska's mom, who is Polish, and took a couple of books home to Poland with the explanation of "at least I will USE them". In the U.S., the books would not always come back, even in a nice neighborhood. They'd turn up at someone's house or a used book store. But in Germany, that's not a problem.
Here's another example: public apple trees. One of the semi-country roads where Brian and I like to ride bikes is lined with apple trees. On weekend mornings in the fall, we would see people drive up to those trees in their cars, pull out their apple picker poles, and help themselves to the apples. The trees were so close to the road that they had to belong to the city. And people were openly picking them, for free. Brian and I were both amazed. "What is this place (this is the dialogue of us talking to ourselves), the land of milk, honey, and applesauce?"
But then maybe it goes too far. I learned in German class last week that in Germany, it is illegal to wash your own car in your driveway or the street. If you do and the police catch you, the fine is 500 euros! These people are serious about not washing your own car. The explanation that my teacher gave, and what I read online (translation = it must be true) is that the soapy, dirty, oily water can get in the gutters and go down into the sewer system. And no one wants that. Except, doesn't that happen when you go to the car wash too? Doesn't that happen when it rains? Is the rest of the world drinking contaminated water because they wash their own cars? Maybe this law a way to ensure that car washes stay in business.
As a foreigner, maybe I have the best of both worlds. I appreciate that busses run on time and you can borrow books off the street (not that I can read any of them, but it's a nice idea). I also know enough to realize that some rules are not really necessary, and that car washing is not the world's major source of water pollution. I do sometimes cross the street on a red light, to the disapproving looks of old ladies waiting on the corner. And next year, maybe I'll get an apple picker.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Turkey recovery
The floors are mopped, the oven's cleaned, the fridge is packed with leftovers. There are empty bottles and a turkey carcass on the balcony, and there's a splatter of wine on the wall. It was a good party. I won't bore you by talking about how chunks of sweet potato stuck to my broom this morning, but I will give you some highlights of our three part extravaganza.
1. Turkey Bowl, Hannover edition - 16 players showed up to the unnamed grassy park full of mole-holes. The Indians wore red and the Pilgrims wore black. Some coaching from the North Americans, some frustration from the Europeans, some running in circles by the Australians... and they got the hang of it and had a good time. Final results? The Indians won the first game, probably, and the Pilgrims seemed to win the second game but no one is really sure. Here are some photos of the event, which I took in the first half before running (literally) home to put the turkey in the oven.
2. Food. Lots of it. Lots of people to eat it too. The happy, local, free-running hippie turkey was 6.7 kilos, which is almost 15 lbs. I had to put it in diagonally and its ankle bones still touched the wall of the oven. And it was delicious. So was the turkey that Brian cooked on the grill. So were the 58 side dishes that our guests brought. We managed to fit everyone - cozy but relatively comfortable - into the living room to eat. It felt like a real holiday because there was an obscene amount of food, multiple conversations, too many desserts, a baby to pass around, a happy food coma after dinner and football playing in the other room. True, the guests were not related to me, but they were so excited to be a part of the feast (who thought that sweet potatoes were exotic?) that it felt pretty special.
3. Party. What in our minds would be a separate and distinct part of the evening didn't really turn out that way. We'd planned to put food away by that point, move tables around and turn up the music. None of that really happened. About 15 more people came and the feast continued as they ate the food that was still out from dinner. We did manage to turn up the music and people seemed to have a good time, even if we were all too full to have a crazy, wild party.
And that was Thanksgiving. We are left with enough food for a week and enough wine bottles to last until spring. Now I just need to find some paint to fix that stain on the wall.
1. Turkey Bowl, Hannover edition - 16 players showed up to the unnamed grassy park full of mole-holes. The Indians wore red and the Pilgrims wore black. Some coaching from the North Americans, some frustration from the Europeans, some running in circles by the Australians... and they got the hang of it and had a good time. Final results? The Indians won the first game, probably, and the Pilgrims seemed to win the second game but no one is really sure. Here are some photos of the event, which I took in the first half before running (literally) home to put the turkey in the oven.
2. Food. Lots of it. Lots of people to eat it too. The happy, local, free-running hippie turkey was 6.7 kilos, which is almost 15 lbs. I had to put it in diagonally and its ankle bones still touched the wall of the oven. And it was delicious. So was the turkey that Brian cooked on the grill. So were the 58 side dishes that our guests brought. We managed to fit everyone - cozy but relatively comfortable - into the living room to eat. It felt like a real holiday because there was an obscene amount of food, multiple conversations, too many desserts, a baby to pass around, a happy food coma after dinner and football playing in the other room. True, the guests were not related to me, but they were so excited to be a part of the feast (who thought that sweet potatoes were exotic?) that it felt pretty special.
3. Party. What in our minds would be a separate and distinct part of the evening didn't really turn out that way. We'd planned to put food away by that point, move tables around and turn up the music. None of that really happened. About 15 more people came and the feast continued as they ate the food that was still out from dinner. We did manage to turn up the music and people seemed to have a good time, even if we were all too full to have a crazy, wild party.
And that was Thanksgiving. We are left with enough food for a week and enough wine bottles to last until spring. Now I just need to find some paint to fix that stain on the wall.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Turkey week
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving for most of you. In Hannover, however, tomorrow is Thursday. Never fear, we would not let a year go by without giving thanks, so Brian and I are hosting a three-part Thanksgiving extravaganza on Saturday.
Part one is a flag (American) football game in the spirit of the classic Turkey Bowl. Brian and his high school friends started their Turkey Bowl tradition when they were about 15, and it survives today. The Turkey Bowl - Hannover edition will be slightly different. First of all, most players think that football is a game with 2 goalies and a round ball that you kick around the pitch. I might be able to throw a pass better than some of them (catching might be another story). The game will take place in a park that we found - it has a big grassy area with the added challenge of tons of mole holes. It will be part football game and part obstacle course. Hopefully there won't be any major injuries. But in case there are, as you loyal readers know, I am capable of calling emergency services by dialing 112.
Part two is Thanksgiving dinner. We tried to keep the group manageable, based on the size of our apartment and more importantly the size of our oven. That didn't really work. Our head count for dinner is now at 20. I know, 20 people, 2 bedroom apartment, midget-sized oven? Never fear. Several of our guests have never had a Thanksgiving dinner before, and none of them are related to us, so there are no traditions to uphold and no in-laws to impress. Our guests are of the following nationalities:
10 Americans (including our friends Ed's parents, who are visiting fresh off the plane from California, bringing our Californian total to 4 of 10 Americans. I didn't know they could celebrate Thanksgiving in California - it's too warm.)
6 Germans (including one half Dutch, half German)
2 Australians (Very excited about turkey and sweet potatoes)
2 Englanders
1 Pole
Dishes that people are planning to bring include spring rolls, courgette (I believe that's a zucchini) and Lancashire cheese casserole, and some kind of Polish "salad" including eggs, pickles, and a bucket of mayonnaise. There are also stuffing and mashed potato reinforcements coming.
I've gone to about three different grocery stores to get the stuff I need (you can't find cranberries just anywhere), and am planning a trip to 2 farmers' markets also. One of those market trips is to pick up the turkey. In accordance with our new meat-eating standards, I've ordered a whole, fresh turkey from a local poultry farm where the animals are fed with no antibiotics, raised in open stalls, and slaughtered on-site when they are fully grown. So the happy hippie turkey is running around freely, maybe even as I write this, gobbling its gourmet food, going to the turkey spa for massages, hanging out with its turkey friends, until maybe tomorrow someone will chop its head off and get it ready for our table. That might not be entirely true, but I do know that at least this turkey can walk, because it weighs about 6 kilos (13 lbs or so). If it was bigger than that, it would not fit in the oven. We've also ordered a breast and two legs that Brian will cook on our grill, which is a charcoal Weber proudly assembled in Illinois. If that's not enough, we can always order pizza.
Here are photos of the Hoikkado pumpkins I am cooking in our oven so that I can scoop them out and make pumpkin pie.
There's no Libby's canned pumpkin here. No pre-made crust, and no Crisco either. I feel more pilgrim-like making these things from scratch, though I did have my mom mail over some gravy mix because the last thing I want to do with 20 hungry people crammed in my apartment is worry about flour lumps in my gravy.
Part 3 is the party. We've invited basically everyone we know to come over after dinner for drinks and general merry-making. I have planned very little for this part of the evening - I figure it will just sort of happen.
So enjoy your busy travel day, Americans. And your family turkey dinners. I do miss family holidays. Ours in Hannover might not be traditional but we have plenty to be thankful for, including the fact that we have made enough friends here to create a crowded, happy Thanksgiving gathering here on Saturday.
Part one is a flag (American) football game in the spirit of the classic Turkey Bowl. Brian and his high school friends started their Turkey Bowl tradition when they were about 15, and it survives today. The Turkey Bowl - Hannover edition will be slightly different. First of all, most players think that football is a game with 2 goalies and a round ball that you kick around the pitch. I might be able to throw a pass better than some of them (catching might be another story). The game will take place in a park that we found - it has a big grassy area with the added challenge of tons of mole holes. It will be part football game and part obstacle course. Hopefully there won't be any major injuries. But in case there are, as you loyal readers know, I am capable of calling emergency services by dialing 112.
Part two is Thanksgiving dinner. We tried to keep the group manageable, based on the size of our apartment and more importantly the size of our oven. That didn't really work. Our head count for dinner is now at 20. I know, 20 people, 2 bedroom apartment, midget-sized oven? Never fear. Several of our guests have never had a Thanksgiving dinner before, and none of them are related to us, so there are no traditions to uphold and no in-laws to impress. Our guests are of the following nationalities:
10 Americans (including our friends Ed's parents, who are visiting fresh off the plane from California, bringing our Californian total to 4 of 10 Americans. I didn't know they could celebrate Thanksgiving in California - it's too warm.)
6 Germans (including one half Dutch, half German)
2 Australians (Very excited about turkey and sweet potatoes)
2 Englanders
1 Pole
Dishes that people are planning to bring include spring rolls, courgette (I believe that's a zucchini) and Lancashire cheese casserole, and some kind of Polish "salad" including eggs, pickles, and a bucket of mayonnaise. There are also stuffing and mashed potato reinforcements coming.
I've gone to about three different grocery stores to get the stuff I need (you can't find cranberries just anywhere), and am planning a trip to 2 farmers' markets also. One of those market trips is to pick up the turkey. In accordance with our new meat-eating standards, I've ordered a whole, fresh turkey from a local poultry farm where the animals are fed with no antibiotics, raised in open stalls, and slaughtered on-site when they are fully grown. So the happy hippie turkey is running around freely, maybe even as I write this, gobbling its gourmet food, going to the turkey spa for massages, hanging out with its turkey friends, until maybe tomorrow someone will chop its head off and get it ready for our table. That might not be entirely true, but I do know that at least this turkey can walk, because it weighs about 6 kilos (13 lbs or so). If it was bigger than that, it would not fit in the oven. We've also ordered a breast and two legs that Brian will cook on our grill, which is a charcoal Weber proudly assembled in Illinois. If that's not enough, we can always order pizza.
Here are photos of the Hoikkado pumpkins I am cooking in our oven so that I can scoop them out and make pumpkin pie.
There's no Libby's canned pumpkin here. No pre-made crust, and no Crisco either. I feel more pilgrim-like making these things from scratch, though I did have my mom mail over some gravy mix because the last thing I want to do with 20 hungry people crammed in my apartment is worry about flour lumps in my gravy.
Part 3 is the party. We've invited basically everyone we know to come over after dinner for drinks and general merry-making. I have planned very little for this part of the evening - I figure it will just sort of happen.
So enjoy your busy travel day, Americans. And your family turkey dinners. I do miss family holidays. Ours in Hannover might not be traditional but we have plenty to be thankful for, including the fact that we have made enough friends here to create a crowded, happy Thanksgiving gathering here on Saturday.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Weekend in Kiel
Sometimes I think that my life has become pretty normal
since moving to Germany. There’s a comfortable rhythm to the day-to-day in
Hannover that occasionally makes room for a cool vacation. Then it’s back to
the usual. And then I find myself hanging out with a bunch of Eastern Europeans at
a Cameroonian party in the far north of Germany, and wonder how in the world I
got there.
I spent the weekend in Kiel. My Polish friend Kaska lived
there before moving to Hannover and wanted to go back for a visit. She invited
me along. I don’t think I realized until we got there that it would also be a
German language immersion weekend for me; except none of the people that we
spent time with are actually German. Kaska used to coordinate programming for
international students at the university in Kiel, so a lot of her friends
were/are students who worked in that office. We stayed with Sasha and Taras,
who are Russian and Ukranian, respectively. The rest of the crew from various
former Soviet countries. They all speak to each other in German, usually. Except for the occasional English break with
Kaska, I had to keep up. And I did surprisingly ok. It was a little exhausting
and I know I missed out on some jokes, but I generally understood what was
going on and didn’t talk too much. When I did, they were really patient with my
elementary school vocabulary. It was more consecutive hours of listening and
speaking German than I’ve ever had to do before.
Kiel is not an attractive town, but it has a nice personality.
That’s what you’d say if it were a person, anyway. There’s no Old City or beautiful church or
castle to look at. But there’s a big working harbor and a lot of seagulls. Kiel
is located on the Baltic Sea, near the channel that connects the North and
Baltic Seas, and from Kiel you can take a ferry to Oslo, Norway or Gotteburg,
Sweden. There is a big shipyard there too, and a lot of crazy cold weather
surfers who drive around in VW busses. On Saturday, Kaska, Sasha, Taras, and I
went to the beach to walk around. The town we went to is called Kalifornien,
which everyone thinks is pretty funny. If they really wanted you to think you
were in California, they’d have to spell it right, and make the sun come out,
and raise the temperature by about 30 degrees. But it’s good for a laugh
anyway. The ocean was so calm there that my first glimpse of the Baltic Sea
reminded me more of one of the Great Lakes than of an ocean.
It has something to do with islands that act as breakwaters and ocean currents
and such. Here are a couple of photos (you can always click on them to make them bigger):
 |
| Along the harbor in Kiel. Sasha is the tall one, Kaska is the small one, and Taras is the guy. |
Then there was the Cameroonian party. Cultural nights are one
of the programs sponsored by the international student office where Kaska used
to work. We happened to be in town during Cameroonian night. Kaska was a bit
like a returning celebrity, but the Cameroonians were definitely the center of
attention. They had come to Kiel from universities all over Germany to have a
traditional dance performance and fashion show and a play and of course a dance
party. I had not been to a college party since, well, college. I know it sounds
like I am waaay to old, until you realize that people in Germany go to school
for a long, long time. College is basically free and the government even gives
you money for your living expenses while you study (more on the German education system coming up in another post).
Kaska has a legendary friend who studied for something like 59
semesters. I don’t think that’s common, but it is impressive. He was not at the
party, unfortunately. The Ukranians, the
Germans, the Cameroonians, however, were there, all well over 21, dancing in the university
cafeteria. And then it was 3am. Funny how these things happen.
Now it's back to laundry, groceries, homework and German class. The normal routine has resumed here. Next weekend, though, I will be celebrating Thanksgiving with some Australians and Germans and a couple of people from California... the real one.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Saint Martin's Day
It turns out that Germans do have a day when kids go from house to house asking for candy. But it's not Halloween, it's St Martin's Day. On Sunday night, we saw kids walking around with paper lanterns on long sticks, lit from the inside by candles (Hannover's firefighters may have been busy that night, too. No, I did not call them).
It was Martinstag, which celebrates the feast day of St. Martin. Traditionally, German children make paper lanterns, light them up, and walk from house to house, singing. The owners of the house are supposed to give them candy. It's a Catholic holiday, but one that the Protestants have adopted too (since they don't have as much fun).
St. Martin was a knight in Roman times, who is famous for cutting his cloak in half in order to share it with a beggar who was cold. The holiday also coincides with harvest time here, so there is a traditional family meal of goose or pork also.
Also happening on November 11th, starting at 11:11am, is carnival. This happens, again, mostly in Catholic towns where people have fun. But Hannover tries a little, and you can find more on Hannover carnival on my friend Kaska's blog.
I am a little confused about why carnival happens in November AND in February. I get the Mardi Gras/last day before fasting/Lent is about to start carnival. But November? The Germans are obviously not celebrating Armistice day on November 11th, which didn't work out so well for them in the end. As far as I can understand, it's the pre-game for the real carnival season. It's when the people who plan carnival events get together and, as carnival people must like to do, have a parade. What happens after that? They probably go to a bar in their funny hats to drink beer and do their planning, maybe while eating green cabbage and pork. I have no idea whether that's correct but this is Germany, so it's a pretty good guess.
So even though there's not a lot of trick-or-treating in Germany, at least the kids have a chance to horde candy. It just requires singing, crafts, and a little fire safety.
It was Martinstag, which celebrates the feast day of St. Martin. Traditionally, German children make paper lanterns, light them up, and walk from house to house, singing. The owners of the house are supposed to give them candy. It's a Catholic holiday, but one that the Protestants have adopted too (since they don't have as much fun).
St. Martin was a knight in Roman times, who is famous for cutting his cloak in half in order to share it with a beggar who was cold. The holiday also coincides with harvest time here, so there is a traditional family meal of goose or pork also.
Also happening on November 11th, starting at 11:11am, is carnival. This happens, again, mostly in Catholic towns where people have fun. But Hannover tries a little, and you can find more on Hannover carnival on my friend Kaska's blog.
I am a little confused about why carnival happens in November AND in February. I get the Mardi Gras/last day before fasting/Lent is about to start carnival. But November? The Germans are obviously not celebrating Armistice day on November 11th, which didn't work out so well for them in the end. As far as I can understand, it's the pre-game for the real carnival season. It's when the people who plan carnival events get together and, as carnival people must like to do, have a parade. What happens after that? They probably go to a bar in their funny hats to drink beer and do their planning, maybe while eating green cabbage and pork. I have no idea whether that's correct but this is Germany, so it's a pretty good guess.
So even though there's not a lot of trick-or-treating in Germany, at least the kids have a chance to horde candy. It just requires singing, crafts, and a little fire safety.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Fire??
I had another German-language adventure Saturday evening. I called the fire department.
When I looked out our living room window at around 5pm, I saw big flames through the window of an otherwise dark apartment across the street. They kept burning for a few minutes and weren't getting any smaller, and it looked like they were too large and too high off the floor to be coming from a fireplace or anything contained. Besides, who would have a huge fireplace in an apartment?
I called Brian over to tell me I was not imaging things, and he, too saw the flames. He said something like "yeah they look big. Do you want to call 112? Maybe you should watch them for a few minutes first." 112 is the emergency phone number, just like 911 in the US. It occurred to me that, since we're the apartment I was looking at is on the top floor, just like ours, I might be the only person who could see the fire. So I waited, and the flames kept burning and leaping. I couldn't tell whether they were getting bigger but they weren't getting smaller. Finally I decided that if my place was potentially on fire, I'd want the neighbors to do something about it. So I called 112.
I explained what was going on and they sent the fire trucks. Because our street is now under construction and half closed, the trucks took over the whole street and people stopped on the sidewalk to watch. There were flashing lights and guys in helmets and stretchers at the ready. I was hoping I wasn't wrong but had a sinking feeling that maybe I had overreacted. They sent a fireman up in the cherry-picker part of the truck to look in the apartment window, and two other guys to go inside the building. Five minutes later, the cherry picker started to come down. One of the firemen on the sidewalk told me that the building was not on fire - it was in fact a fireplace.
Was I embarrassed? Sure, I had made a huge production out of nothing. Sure, I had probably cost the city of Hannover some money, and messed up traffic by bringing the fire trucks that blocked off the street. I was hoping that the firemen would be less angry with me because I am a foreigner. They obviously don't have fireplaces where I come from, right?
But let's focus on the positive - I know that my language skills are good enough to contact emergency services. I am absolutely scared of talking on the phone in German and I overcame my fear in the interest of public safety. Plus, I created some excitement in the neighborhood and gave the firemen something to do. They were probably sitting around the fire department watching soccer on TV. Maybe this means I am becoming better integrated into the community here. I not only use the library and the public swimming pool, I also contact emergency services when needed... or not needed. Who knew a 5th floor apartment would have a huge fireplace halfway up the wall? I, certainly, did not.
When I looked out our living room window at around 5pm, I saw big flames through the window of an otherwise dark apartment across the street. They kept burning for a few minutes and weren't getting any smaller, and it looked like they were too large and too high off the floor to be coming from a fireplace or anything contained. Besides, who would have a huge fireplace in an apartment?
I called Brian over to tell me I was not imaging things, and he, too saw the flames. He said something like "yeah they look big. Do you want to call 112? Maybe you should watch them for a few minutes first." 112 is the emergency phone number, just like 911 in the US. It occurred to me that, since we're the apartment I was looking at is on the top floor, just like ours, I might be the only person who could see the fire. So I waited, and the flames kept burning and leaping. I couldn't tell whether they were getting bigger but they weren't getting smaller. Finally I decided that if my place was potentially on fire, I'd want the neighbors to do something about it. So I called 112.
I explained what was going on and they sent the fire trucks. Because our street is now under construction and half closed, the trucks took over the whole street and people stopped on the sidewalk to watch. There were flashing lights and guys in helmets and stretchers at the ready. I was hoping I wasn't wrong but had a sinking feeling that maybe I had overreacted. They sent a fireman up in the cherry-picker part of the truck to look in the apartment window, and two other guys to go inside the building. Five minutes later, the cherry picker started to come down. One of the firemen on the sidewalk told me that the building was not on fire - it was in fact a fireplace.
Was I embarrassed? Sure, I had made a huge production out of nothing. Sure, I had probably cost the city of Hannover some money, and messed up traffic by bringing the fire trucks that blocked off the street. I was hoping that the firemen would be less angry with me because I am a foreigner. They obviously don't have fireplaces where I come from, right?
But let's focus on the positive - I know that my language skills are good enough to contact emergency services. I am absolutely scared of talking on the phone in German and I overcame my fear in the interest of public safety. Plus, I created some excitement in the neighborhood and gave the firemen something to do. They were probably sitting around the fire department watching soccer on TV. Maybe this means I am becoming better integrated into the community here. I not only use the library and the public swimming pool, I also contact emergency services when needed... or not needed. Who knew a 5th floor apartment would have a huge fireplace halfway up the wall? I, certainly, did not.
Friday, November 9, 2012
The votes are in
The election speech was a bit anti-climactic, but in a good way. On Tuesday we had a little in-class party to celebrate the Muslim holiday (it was called Bayrim in Turkey, but has a few different names) that happened during our fall break. When we have a party in German class it means people bring food and we eat it. I had my brought my always-popular chocolate chip cookies. My teacher, Holger, took a bite and asked it there was marzipan in them. It was so ridiculous I was not offended.
As we ate cake and chips and drank Ibrahim's home made cherry wine, Holger asked me to talk about the elections. I did my best first-grade summary, avoided discussing the electoral college, and generally made sense. The other students in my class like to say things like, "yay, Obama," even though I am pretty sure they don't know anything about him. They don't need to either, but if Polish and Middle Eastern immigrants to Germany could vote in U.S. elections, it would be a landslide.
Non-Americans also have no qualms about asking who you voted for. In the U.S. it's a semi-private issue for anyone who does not slap a bumper sticker on their car. It's like asking whether you dye your hair or how you got that big scar on your face. Most people I have met here just come right out and ask.
My American friend Serena was recently stopped for buying the wrong kind of ticket on the tram. The security guy whose job it is to be mean and bust people without tickets asked her, once he figured out where she was from, "Romney or Obama?". She said "Obama," which must have been the right answer, because he let her go without a fine. If she'd said "Romney," it might have cost her forty euros. Or maybe he was just messing with her.
It's not my first presidential election abroad. I was in Chile in 2000 during Bush - Gore recount. That was more difficult to explain, though I could express myself a lot better in Spanish than I can now in German.
Maybe during the elections here next year, I will ask all the Germans I know who they will be voting for. That's what they deserve for thinking I'd put marzipan in chocolate chip cookies.
As we ate cake and chips and drank Ibrahim's home made cherry wine, Holger asked me to talk about the elections. I did my best first-grade summary, avoided discussing the electoral college, and generally made sense. The other students in my class like to say things like, "yay, Obama," even though I am pretty sure they don't know anything about him. They don't need to either, but if Polish and Middle Eastern immigrants to Germany could vote in U.S. elections, it would be a landslide.
Non-Americans also have no qualms about asking who you voted for. In the U.S. it's a semi-private issue for anyone who does not slap a bumper sticker on their car. It's like asking whether you dye your hair or how you got that big scar on your face. Most people I have met here just come right out and ask.
My American friend Serena was recently stopped for buying the wrong kind of ticket on the tram. The security guy whose job it is to be mean and bust people without tickets asked her, once he figured out where she was from, "Romney or Obama?". She said "Obama," which must have been the right answer, because he let her go without a fine. If she'd said "Romney," it might have cost her forty euros. Or maybe he was just messing with her.
It's not my first presidential election abroad. I was in Chile in 2000 during Bush - Gore recount. That was more difficult to explain, though I could express myself a lot better in Spanish than I can now in German.
Maybe during the elections here next year, I will ask all the Germans I know who they will be voting for. That's what they deserve for thinking I'd put marzipan in chocolate chip cookies.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Election Day
For all of you walking around with your round red "I voted" stickers, know that I've beat you to it. I voted weeks ago, and no one gave me a sticker at all.
It's good I've gotten that out of the way, because now I need to worry how to explain the election process in German. My German teacher, who is into politics and likes to ask me about Obama, told me that I need to give a speech about the U.S. election during Wednesday's class. Everyone in the class has to do a speech sometime soon, it's just that they get to choose their topics and mine was dictated to me. They get to talk about things like what to see in Hamburg, or how holidays are celebrated in Iran. I have to talk about the electoral college.
Asking me to talk about election politics in German is like asking a first-grader to talk about evolution. I can just imagine my nephew Jaden, my closest first-grade relation, giving a presentation on this topic.
JJ, tell us about natural selection.
"No."
Come on, please? I know you know a lot about it.
"Well, it's good."
Why is it good?
"Some animals, they are still alive and have babies. Some don't."
The end. Let's go play with Legos.
This is the level of eloquence I can achieve in advanced beginner German.
I've made some notes about how I can explain things like military spending and health insurance mandates in German. Considering that none of my classmates have more advanced German vocabularies than I do, I am trying to boil these ideas down to first grade words that we already know. They may not really care about the election anyway, and they won't laugh at me if I screw up. We have a lot of patience with each other. So I shouldn't worry about how to say 'economic stimulus' in German, right?
I will let you know how things go. Until then, take a lesson from a first grader and wear that sticker proudly on your shirt (or your forehead, or the back of your hand) today.
It's good I've gotten that out of the way, because now I need to worry how to explain the election process in German. My German teacher, who is into politics and likes to ask me about Obama, told me that I need to give a speech about the U.S. election during Wednesday's class. Everyone in the class has to do a speech sometime soon, it's just that they get to choose their topics and mine was dictated to me. They get to talk about things like what to see in Hamburg, or how holidays are celebrated in Iran. I have to talk about the electoral college.
Asking me to talk about election politics in German is like asking a first-grader to talk about evolution. I can just imagine my nephew Jaden, my closest first-grade relation, giving a presentation on this topic.
JJ, tell us about natural selection.
"No."
Come on, please? I know you know a lot about it.
"Well, it's good."
Why is it good?
"Some animals, they are still alive and have babies. Some don't."
The end. Let's go play with Legos.
This is the level of eloquence I can achieve in advanced beginner German.
I've made some notes about how I can explain things like military spending and health insurance mandates in German. Considering that none of my classmates have more advanced German vocabularies than I do, I am trying to boil these ideas down to first grade words that we already know. They may not really care about the election anyway, and they won't laugh at me if I screw up. We have a lot of patience with each other. So I shouldn't worry about how to say 'economic stimulus' in German, right?
I will let you know how things go. Until then, take a lesson from a first grader and wear that sticker proudly on your shirt (or your forehead, or the back of your hand) today.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Weird German dairy products - part 2
Next up in the dairy adventure is quark. I think a quark in English is some kind of nano particle. I never went far enough in science to know any more than that, but in German it's a dairy food.
Quark is a soft cheese native to central Europe and especially popular in Germany. It's used as a spread on bread, baked into cakes and pastries, and rubbed on sore knees. That's right, sore knees. As technologically advanced as the Germans are, they have some goofy home remedies. One of my cross country runners had issues with sore knees. A coach from her other running club advised her to rub quark all over her knees before going to bed, cover them in plastic wrap, and leave the quark on until morning (more on German home remedies and witch-doctoring to come in an upcoming post).
I bought cream-quark once early on in our German experience, thinking it was yogurt because the picture on the label looked yogurt-like. This is how you make decisions when you have no language skills. It's all about pictures and guesswork. What I encountered was some kind of pastey pudding-cheese, a little rich to eat with a spoon. I haven't bought it since, but for this experiment I tried regular (not creamy) quark with herb flavoring, on bread. It was good - kind of like a thick sour cream or a thin cream cheese. Brian had some too. We rate it as a 4 on the taste scale and a 3 on the would-you-buy-it-again scale. At least we will probably finish this one, unlike the kefir which is still lingering, unwanted, in our fridge.
Now for the final taste test: Milchreis (milk rice). I think that this is something like rice pudding. That doesn't help me much because I have only had rice pudding a few times. It was always overshadowed on dessert menus by superior deserts like cake and ice cream. Milk rice is often served in a cup or a little tub. I decided to skip the plain milchreis for being too plain (and potentially gross) and the chocolate flavored milchreis for being too chocolatey (and potentially masking the true milchreis flavor), and instead chose the cinnamon flavored milchreis. The package says it can be eaten warm or cold, so I try both.
Its sweet, creamy, custard-y, with little grains of rice in there too. I actually like it better before I mix the cinnamon part in, and I prefer it cold to warm. Not bad. The verdict on Milchreis? 3 on the taste scale - as in it's ok but I can think of many more exciting deserts. And on the buy- it- again scale, probably also a 3.
That concludes our weird dairy product taste test. Drinkable yogurt is the winner. Drinkable Kefir is the loser. It's only a taste test. The medicinal properties of quark and other dairy foods are yet undetermined.
Quark is a soft cheese native to central Europe and especially popular in Germany. It's used as a spread on bread, baked into cakes and pastries, and rubbed on sore knees. That's right, sore knees. As technologically advanced as the Germans are, they have some goofy home remedies. One of my cross country runners had issues with sore knees. A coach from her other running club advised her to rub quark all over her knees before going to bed, cover them in plastic wrap, and leave the quark on until morning (more on German home remedies and witch-doctoring to come in an upcoming post).
I bought cream-quark once early on in our German experience, thinking it was yogurt because the picture on the label looked yogurt-like. This is how you make decisions when you have no language skills. It's all about pictures and guesswork. What I encountered was some kind of pastey pudding-cheese, a little rich to eat with a spoon. I haven't bought it since, but for this experiment I tried regular (not creamy) quark with herb flavoring, on bread. It was good - kind of like a thick sour cream or a thin cream cheese. Brian had some too. We rate it as a 4 on the taste scale and a 3 on the would-you-buy-it-again scale. At least we will probably finish this one, unlike the kefir which is still lingering, unwanted, in our fridge.
Now for the final taste test: Milchreis (milk rice). I think that this is something like rice pudding. That doesn't help me much because I have only had rice pudding a few times. It was always overshadowed on dessert menus by superior deserts like cake and ice cream. Milk rice is often served in a cup or a little tub. I decided to skip the plain milchreis for being too plain (and potentially gross) and the chocolate flavored milchreis for being too chocolatey (and potentially masking the true milchreis flavor), and instead chose the cinnamon flavored milchreis. The package says it can be eaten warm or cold, so I try both.
Its sweet, creamy, custard-y, with little grains of rice in there too. I actually like it better before I mix the cinnamon part in, and I prefer it cold to warm. Not bad. The verdict on Milchreis? 3 on the taste scale - as in it's ok but I can think of many more exciting deserts. And on the buy- it- again scale, probably also a 3.
That concludes our weird dairy product taste test. Drinkable yogurt is the winner. Drinkable Kefir is the loser. It's only a taste test. The medicinal properties of quark and other dairy foods are yet undetermined.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Weird German dairy products - part 1
Grocery shopping is a good allegory for our adapting to life in Germany. When we first got here, I spent at least an hour at a time walking the aisles, trying to read labels, wondering what things were. Then I figured out which things were most similar to foods I was used to, and just bought those. The next step was to try out just a few new German foods that looked tasty. Now I am tired of being clueless about what's on the shelves, and have decided to try out all of the strange dairy products that I see. So you get to be a witness to my weird German dairy product taste test and investigation. Here are some of the foods that I will sample:
The rating scale will go like this:
1. Taste: 0 = bleeeaaggh! 1= eeewww. 2 = hhrrmmmh. 3 = mmm hmmm. 4 = ooooh. 5 = yummmm!
2. Would you have it again? 1= Not on my life 2 = Maybe, if the store was out of everything else 3 = possibly 4 = I would 5 = yes, every single day.
Part 1: Kefir and similar things
Before I eat/drink the kefir, I do a little research.
Kefir is a fermented milk product that comes from Russia originally. It's like yogurt, except it has yeast in addition to bacteria cultures in it. It's usually drinkable and can be plain or flavored. Apparently you can buy it in the U.S. too but I've never tried.
So I open up my tub of kefir and eat some. It's strawberry flavored, a little more tangy than yogurt, but not bad. It's a little like yogurt mixed with sour cream. Then I look at the label and realize I am eating cream-Kefir. It is 26% fat. So before negating all positive effects of my run this morning, I stop. I give the cream kefir a 3 on the taste scale and a 3 on the "would you have it again?" scale.
Next, the drinkable Kefir.
It comes in a big half liter tub, which will be a bad thing if I don't like it. And I don't. It tastes like buttermilk but thicker and more sour. It's not disgsuting, but it tastes like it's way past the expiration date. I give it a 1 on the taste scale and a 2 on the buy-ability scale. It's still in the fridge because I feel guilty about wasting it. Maybe if I mix it with some yogurt it would be better...
And finally, the drinkable yogurt. It's peach-passion fruit flavored. It's delicious. I'm cheating a little because I've had it a couple of times and knew I would like it, but after kefir I figured I deserve that. It gets a 4.5 on the taste scale and a 4 on the buy-ability scale. Who needs to make a smoothie when you can have a half-liter of this stuff?
That concludes part one of the investigation. Is life really so dull that I need to consume unfamiliar milk products and tell you about it? I prefer to think of it as cultural enrichment. (Go ahead and make your yogurt culture jokes now. You know you want to.)
Coming soon: Quark and milchreis.
The rating scale will go like this:
1. Taste: 0 = bleeeaaggh! 1= eeewww. 2 = hhrrmmmh. 3 = mmm hmmm. 4 = ooooh. 5 = yummmm!
2. Would you have it again? 1= Not on my life 2 = Maybe, if the store was out of everything else 3 = possibly 4 = I would 5 = yes, every single day.
Part 1: Kefir and similar things
Before I eat/drink the kefir, I do a little research.
Kefir is a fermented milk product that comes from Russia originally. It's like yogurt, except it has yeast in addition to bacteria cultures in it. It's usually drinkable and can be plain or flavored. Apparently you can buy it in the U.S. too but I've never tried.
So I open up my tub of kefir and eat some. It's strawberry flavored, a little more tangy than yogurt, but not bad. It's a little like yogurt mixed with sour cream. Then I look at the label and realize I am eating cream-Kefir. It is 26% fat. So before negating all positive effects of my run this morning, I stop. I give the cream kefir a 3 on the taste scale and a 3 on the "would you have it again?" scale.
Next, the drinkable Kefir.
It comes in a big half liter tub, which will be a bad thing if I don't like it. And I don't. It tastes like buttermilk but thicker and more sour. It's not disgsuting, but it tastes like it's way past the expiration date. I give it a 1 on the taste scale and a 2 on the buy-ability scale. It's still in the fridge because I feel guilty about wasting it. Maybe if I mix it with some yogurt it would be better...
And finally, the drinkable yogurt. It's peach-passion fruit flavored. It's delicious. I'm cheating a little because I've had it a couple of times and knew I would like it, but after kefir I figured I deserve that. It gets a 4.5 on the taste scale and a 4 on the buy-ability scale. Who needs to make a smoothie when you can have a half-liter of this stuff?
That concludes part one of the investigation. Is life really so dull that I need to consume unfamiliar milk products and tell you about it? I prefer to think of it as cultural enrichment. (Go ahead and make your yogurt culture jokes now. You know you want to.)
Coming soon: Quark and milchreis.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Hannover Halloween, sort of
It's hard to follow up on the posts about Istanbul and get back to the day to day here in Hannover. We got back into town a few days before Halloween, happy to sleep in a softer bed and dreaming of views from the hills of Istanbul.
Does Halloween exist in Germany? Yes and no. People know what it is, but it's regarded as an imported-novelty holiday. You can find a few paper plates with pumpkins on them, and a few kid-sized costumes in stores, and the occasional jack-o-lantern in a window. When people do dress up for Halloween, it's usually as something gory and scary. Fake blood is a must.
The last few days made me miss the parade of kids in costume showing up at our door on Halloween night, the Halloween parties we've thrown in the past, and the cardboard gravestones we used to put in the front yard. We have most of those party decorations up in our apartment, but no one was knocking on our door Wednesday night. Brian and I did some searching and managed to buy a few pumpkins and gourds the other day. I carved one little one - it turned out to have an Oscar the Grouch kind of face.
So we had to be content with watching scary movies and eating from our skeleton plates. Allegedly, German kids do sometimes go trick-or-treating, but I didn't see any and none were apparently interested in hiking it up the stairs to our apartment.
In the stores there have been Christmas decorations and candies out for weeks already. Here there are no buffer holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving. Except in our house. We are planning an all day Thanksgiving extravaganza that will test the people-holding and potato-mashing capacity of our apartment.
In a real gory and scary Halloween event, a dead body was found in the Maschsee yesterday. It was a woman who was decapitated and last seen alive on Saturday. I guess Hannover is not as quiet and safe as I thought. When that stuff happens in real life, super hero costumes seem like a good idea to me.
Does Halloween exist in Germany? Yes and no. People know what it is, but it's regarded as an imported-novelty holiday. You can find a few paper plates with pumpkins on them, and a few kid-sized costumes in stores, and the occasional jack-o-lantern in a window. When people do dress up for Halloween, it's usually as something gory and scary. Fake blood is a must.
So we had to be content with watching scary movies and eating from our skeleton plates. Allegedly, German kids do sometimes go trick-or-treating, but I didn't see any and none were apparently interested in hiking it up the stairs to our apartment.
In the stores there have been Christmas decorations and candies out for weeks already. Here there are no buffer holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving. Except in our house. We are planning an all day Thanksgiving extravaganza that will test the people-holding and potato-mashing capacity of our apartment.
In a real gory and scary Halloween event, a dead body was found in the Maschsee yesterday. It was a woman who was decapitated and last seen alive on Saturday. I guess Hannover is not as quiet and safe as I thought. When that stuff happens in real life, super hero costumes seem like a good idea to me.
Istanbul photos
All the photos are up on Facebook, but here are a few highlights:
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| Liz and Brian on Istiklal Street |
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| Blue Mosque |
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| Aya Sofia |
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| Inside the Blue Mosque |
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| The Basilica Cistern |
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| On the boat tour |
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| Galata Bridge |
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| View of the old city from Galata Tower |
Friday, October 26, 2012
Istanbul - days 3 and 4
Day 3 was the day of boat rides, and the day we went to Asia for an evening out.
First, Brian and I took a boat tour on the Bosphorus. In case you need a little geography refresher, Istanbul is a city on two continents, with the Bosphorus strait dividing the European and Asian sides. I am not a geography teacher, I am just married to one, so here's a map that might help you:
In order to get to the Bosphorus from our hotel, you have to
walk down Istiklal street, around the Galata Tower, and down to the Galata
Bridge. The bridge is busy not only with pedestrians and chestnut vendors, but
with fishermen. They stand along the rail, their backs to the slow-moving
traffic, and bait their hooks with small silverly (sometimes bloody) fish kept
in plastic tubs on the ground. We had to pause a few times as we passed by to
give a fisherman room to cast. I wonder how many oblivious tourists are hooked
each year as they cross the bridge.
On the other side is the dock where you can catch the boats, and it swarms with people walking quickly, slowly, weaving in and out, stopping at ATMs, selling little toys and sesame-covered bread rings. The man finding passengers for the tour boats calls out “Bosporo Bosporo Bosporo” over and over again. On the other side of the bridge is the old city. This is how we walked to get to the Blue Mosque and the elusive cistern on day 2, and how we would walk in search of the Great Bazaar on day 4.
After our boat ride and a nap at the hotel (all that walking around had caught up with us), we met up with our intrepid tour guide Liz. We ate some Chinese food, and then we went to Asia. That's right, we took a ferry to Asia in order to find somewhere to drink beers. First we got on a Dolmush, which is a kind of shared taxi mini-bus. We took that down to the ferry terminal and took a boat across the Bosphorous to Karakoy.
We ended up at a place called the Corner Bar, listening to what we later determined was a Turkish rock cover band. We figured since most people in the place were singing along, either these guys with Ataturk style mustaches and hipster outfits were really famous, or were playing someone else's songs. We didn't know the difference. Then we hopped on a Dolmush that drove all the way back across the bridges to our side of town.
First, Brian and I took a boat tour on the Bosphorus. In case you need a little geography refresher, Istanbul is a city on two continents, with the Bosphorus strait dividing the European and Asian sides. I am not a geography teacher, I am just married to one, so here's a map that might help you:
The boat ride was windy, sort of dramatically so since we
cruised past palaces and mosques and colorful, crowded apartment buildings
several stories tall and at least a century old. I tried adding to the drama by
wrapping a scarf around my head (for the wind, not for modesty this time) and
wearing the big sunglasses that I bought on Istiklal street for 10 lira (around
$5). They are Prada sunglasses, if you believe the logo printed on them, which
of course I do. I have this sunglass issue – I lose them, break them, leave
them at home, need to buy new ones in unlikely places. My sunglasses all seem
to have stories lately. These ones will known as my Jackie Onassis-on-the-Bosphorus-look
sunglasses forever, or at least until I leave them somewhere or they break. So
Brian and I sat on the top deck getting windblown, watching container ships and
small highway traffic on the bridge overhead, trying to match what we saw with
the map in our borrowed guidebook until we gave up.
On the other side is the dock where you can catch the boats, and it swarms with people walking quickly, slowly, weaving in and out, stopping at ATMs, selling little toys and sesame-covered bread rings. The man finding passengers for the tour boats calls out “Bosporo Bosporo Bosporo” over and over again. On the other side of the bridge is the old city. This is how we walked to get to the Blue Mosque and the elusive cistern on day 2, and how we would walk in search of the Great Bazaar on day 4.
After our boat ride and a nap at the hotel (all that walking around had caught up with us), we met up with our intrepid tour guide Liz. We ate some Chinese food, and then we went to Asia. That's right, we took a ferry to Asia in order to find somewhere to drink beers. First we got on a Dolmush, which is a kind of shared taxi mini-bus. We took that down to the ferry terminal and took a boat across the Bosphorous to Karakoy.
We ended up at a place called the Corner Bar, listening to what we later determined was a Turkish rock cover band. We figured since most people in the place were singing along, either these guys with Ataturk style mustaches and hipster outfits were really famous, or were playing someone else's songs. We didn't know the difference. Then we hopped on a Dolmush that drove all the way back across the bridges to our side of town.
Thursday (day 4) was Bayram, which is the Turkish version of the Islamic
holiday which celebrates Abraham’s willingness to
sacrifice his son Isaac. The holiday weekend started Wednesday, and continues until at least
Monday. We felt like it was a Sunday
too. There was less traffic, many shops were closed, and we were moving slower
as a result of the late night described above. We caught up with Liz and wandered back down to the old
city, pausing for a casting fisherman along the way. We were trying to find the
Grand Bazaar, which is supposed to be the world’s largest indoor market place.
Unfortunately, it too was closed, or at least we assumed it was since the
streets around it were all deserted. Instead we took to slow wandering back
down the hills and in and out of tourist shops. Things to buy in Turkey include
candies, spices, baklava, ceramics, scarves, olive oil, and little brightly
colored dancing donkeys that play their own music. We ended up at a café with
walls covered in newspaper and huge picture of Nicolas Cage on the wall. Then
we ate tapas on the second floor of a restaurant (we had tired of kabobs by
then) while watching people on the street below and feeling pretty tired.
Early this morning we left Istanbul. In the darkness just
before 7am, a taxi driver spotted us on the street with our suitcases, flashed
his lights, hit the brakes, reversed uphill on a major street to pick us up. It
was pretty cool. If he had missed us, there were three other taxis approaching
to offer us a ride.
I like Istanbul. Brian described it as a "Southwest Asian/Mediterranean/Middle Eastern San Francisco," which is an apt a description as I can think of.
Even though I’ve had my fill of crowds for
a little while, I’d go back. I’d like to see the rest of Turkey too. Until
then, I will check out the one of the Turkish bakeries I’ve seen in Hannover,
read up a little on Istanbul history, go through all my photos, and I probably wrap a scarf around my head and put on those Prada sunglasses.
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About Me
- Julia
- Thanks for coming to my blog. It started as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, and now has become an ongoing project. I'm an American living in Germany and trying to travel whenever I can. I write about my experiences as an expatriate (the interesting ones and the embarrassing ones), and about my travels. There are some recurring characters in this blog, particularly my husband Brian and several of our friends. The title comes from the idea that living in a foreign country means making a lot of mistakes. So the things you used to do easily you now have to try over and over again. Hopefully, like me, you can laugh at how idiotic it feels. If you have happened upon my blog, then welcome. Knowing that people are reading what I write makes me keep going. Feel free to write comments or suggestions for future posts.