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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Istanbul photos

All the photos are up on Facebook, but here are a few highlights:

Liz and Brian on Istiklal Street

Blue Mosque

Aya Sofia

Inside the Blue Mosque

The Basilica Cistern

On the boat tour

Galata Bridge

View of the old city from Galata Tower

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:

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.

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.

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.