Holiday Update

We had a white Christmas this year! There was still some snow left over on the ground from the previous storms and Christmas night it started snowing again. Since then the snow has mostly melted with some flurries occasionally and frosts in the mornings.

V's mother and sister flew in Christmas day and are visiting now. After Christmas we had T's birthday, then we went to the Luebeck Christmas Market on Tuesday. Ran some other odds and ends and today I just got back from firing off a few early fireworks with T and V's sister.

Tomorrow the plan is that V and I catch a morning flight to Palma, Spain!

More Snow

From Thursday morning it has snowed intermittently up until this morning (Monday). This also happens to be the shortest day of the year (sunrise at 8:38 am, sunset at 3:56pm Central European Time, so after this point the days will start getting longer again!!! (tomorrow is one second longer according to Weather Underground)). With the overcast sky and low sun angle it only feels like a few minutes of daylight. It has been in the negative single digits (Celsius) for the last few days, but the next few days are supposed to get above freezing. The weather has caused quite a few problems across Europe (BBC news link and here).



Yesterday, T and I walked into town. It was very windy, blowing off of the lake. The water seemed to be warmer than the air so a think fog was forming over the lake and blowing off as ice dust. My beard has been getting frost and icicles frozen onto it when I go outside. Again, it feels more like upstate New York this year.

GEZ

Another living-in-Germany task is done ... I think. This is another one of those things that is very strange for Americans. Here there is a fee that has to be paid, about 18 euros a month, for having a TV and/or a radio ... ??? Also, since 2007 you have to pay the fee if you have a computer with internet access that could be used to watch video or listen to internet radio. I know I am being a foreigner, but taxing means of communication doesn't seem right to me. We have also heard stories that they can be very aggressive about the GEZ tax, going door to door and demanding to see your TV ... I've heard that Britain also has something like this, a TV police, so maybe it is a pan-European thing. Anyway, for a year we didn't have a TV or a radio or even a home internet connection so we didn't pay the tax and that was fine with me. I really dislike having too much TV around kids. It is addictive for both the kids (mindless, effortless entertainment) and parents (free child care) and in general very unhealthy. However, back when we were having so much trouble with the kids at school, several people suggested that TV would be a way to expose the kids to German language in a passive way and that it might help them learn to speak to other kids faster. I fell for it and we got a TV (as a gift to us actually). We also have a car now and it is obvious to any radio police that happen to walk by that there is a radio in it. So, I knew that we were supposed to register with the GEZ and pay the TV/radio fee, but how do we actually do that? V mentioned a website (gez.de) so I went over it and with the help of a colleague we are now registered (I think) and will get a quarterly bill in the mail so that we are as completely legal as possible.

Snow

It has been snowing here since Thursday morning. The snow is starting to pile up. It is not deep (by upstate NY standards) but people here are talking about it and that it is the most snow the area has had in many years.

School Christmas Market

This year we came for (and were invited to) the school's Christmas market. M really planned ahead for this one. She reserved a booth, planned to make "snicker doodle" cookies (which Germans seem to not be aware of but love them once they try them) and asked V to buy the ingredients for them. The night before they cooked tray after tray and M organized them into little bags tied with ribbon to sell for one euro each. She made an entry into her notebook for each bag and marked off how many she needed to sell to pay V back for the ingredients (5 euros total, so 5 bags), beyond that was profit and she had 26 bags total. She didn't stop there! She kept the broken cookies and put them in an open bag as free samples so people could taste the cookies and get hooked. She also had a basket of little slips of card paper that had the ingredients written on them that she would give to each person (in case they might have allergies to the ingredients) and she had her tool box to organize the money in. She practiced making change for different amounts the night before. She also had a sign that said they were one euro, so people knew what they were getting into. To top it off she had a small wreath decoration with a candle to make it more Christmas like and a bakers hat to wear.


Picture from before she put on the hat.

T on the other hand had a platform where he set up an MP3 player with speakers to play music to dance to and hope people would donate money. That didn't go so well, so he packed up and went over to M's booth and subcontracted. M is very quiet at school so T held up bags to extol to passersby. Together they sold all 26 bags which left her with 21 euros of profit! She also, I learned, already has plans for reinvestment. She wants to use the profit to buy seeds to plant for a garden next spring and already has her plot reserved at the school. Then she can sell the produce. I am amazed.

Also, snow started falling in the morning and it snowed all day in Selent. It looked nice in an "Hansel and Gretel" kind-of-way on the timber frame thatch roofed houses in town. T and I walked around town a bit and snapped some photos.

Amber and Gingerbread

On Sunday morning, T and I drove up to the Baltic coast and walked up and down the beach. It was cold and windy, but it was good to get out for a bit and walk next to the ocean. We looked for amber just for fun; we didn't really expect to find any. There was a guy on top of some cliffs that had a sail-wing out and every now and then he would take off into the air and glide around. It looked like fun, but he must have been freezing up in the wind. Around 2pm we got back in the car to warm up and headed back.

Sunday night M and I started putting together a gingerbread house. We connected the sides with melted sugar (which I wouldn't let M do because I was worried she might get burned, sure enough I got burns on two of my fingers). Now we have the bread frame together and she can decorate it with frosting and candy.

M&M visit from the states

Saint Nicholas Day

Today, Dec. 6th, is a holiday in central to eastern Europe, St. Nicholas Day. I was clueless but V remembered. Kids put a boot outside the door to be filled with candy. We leave our shoes out on the stairs leading to our apartment anyway, so we put some candy and two small gifts out there for the kids to find this morning. They were suprised, "whaaat ... wow," because they didn't expect it at all, not realizing that it was a holiday here in Germany.

The Real Thanksgiving

December is here!

November is a cold, wet dark month here in N. Germany, always overcast and raining. I feel like, and it is essentially true that, I haven't seen the sun for weeks. Even Germans tell me it is the most depressing month. Right on cue, on this morning of December 1st the clouds have broken up a bit and there is blue sky visible. Plus December has Christmas markets and a chance of snow. I can hear a flock of birds chattering away outside; even they seem happier that it is December now.

Swiss voters ban minarets

There was very disappointing news from Switzerland today of discrimination against Muslims. A ban on building minarets has passed. Currently there are 400,000 Muslims in Switzerland and only 4 minarets, while church steeples are everywhere. This follows a French ban on headscarves and a German controversy on building mosques. This goes to the root of something that really bothers me about Europe. Europeans see themselves as liberal, egalitarian and democratic, but immigrant populations, particularly Muslims, are expected to become culturally European rather than maintain a distinct cultural identity. I have heard Germans tell me that they don't like Turks, for example, because they are arrogant (which is extremely ironic coming from a German) and don't want to "integrate." (And yes, I can hear the comments coming, I know Americans can be arrogant, we have our own historical problems, and are as anti-Muslim as anyone, but that doesn't mean I don't have a valid point.) There seems to be trouble in Europe of seeing ethnicity as separate from the country you are living in (e.g. you can be "Irish" and "American,"or "Jewish" and "Canadian," ... but in Europe there is emphasis on "becoming" either Irish or American exclusively--as a metaphor).

A while back I talked to a group of Germans about this (and I apologized before hand that I do not want to be telling them what they should do, and that I understand this is for German citizens to decide, but I do want to ask this question) and asked, why not take a traditional Turkish holiday and celebrate it in Germany, as a gesture to accept Turkish immigrants, and their culture, into Germany. Like it or not, Turkish culture is a part of Germany now, why not be open and accepting of it rather than adversarial and trying to stamp it out? My suggestion didn't go over too well and they looked as if I had asked them to do something strange that would normally never be considered--"but this is Germany." Then they discussed it some more and said perhaps it would be OK to adopt some "harmless" Turkish holiday as a gesture (it's hard for me to understand how one could be harmful).

Unfortunately, as much as Europeans like to say they are more sophisticated than Americans regarding cultural differences, there is a great deal of xenophobia in Europe and I don't see the general acceptance of European Muslims happening anytime soon.

Thanksgiving

We have postponed thanksgiving a bit again this year. However yesterday I did take V shopping in a large, new (to us) grocery store while the kids were in school and she fixed a roast chicken, with stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes and sweet corn for supper! Today we also kept to the Black Friday shopping tradition by getting some Christmas presents while the kids were in school.

1989

Before November 2009 ends I wanted to mention what I remembered 20 years ago. Back in high school I planned with a friend of mine to visit Germany when we graduated and we talked about traveling to Berlin, surrounded by communist East Germany. I don't remember noticing any news reports about the growing demonstrations from Leipzig in East Germany. But I clearly remember a night in November of the news reports and video of crowds of people crossing from East Germany, climbing onto the wall, then the wall being sledgehammered. The morning after the first news report I bought a newspaper before going to school and read the paper when I could at school. I remember wondering if Germany would become unified again or if the Soviets would invade and crack down, and if that would finally escalate into WWIII. I had no idea that it would spread so quickly and a short while later, spring 1990, I was reading a newspaper before class that announced Lithuania succeeding from the Soviet Union. Then of course the Soviet Union collapsed not long after that and the cold war ended. I was amazed; the powerful Soviet Union, our biggest threat, was gone so quickly. I have heard Europeans criticize this, that it all happened too quickly and didn't give time for people to adjust and so on. But I can't help thinking how glad I was that, after having the threat of total destruction from nuclear war hanging over us my entire life, the war was finally over. With that kind of threat the best thing we could do was end it as soon as possible and the worst thing we could do is end up in that kind of situation again.

German Chowder

In the grocery stores here it is hard to find some things we are used to cooking with (okra, some spices, ground turkey, black beans, ...) and there are other things we are not used to. One vegetable that seems to be commonly used here is celeriac (a variety of celery plant that has small stems but large round roots, the celery roots are sold in the store and used for cooking). In English when we say celery we think of the stems of the plant, but in Germany "Sellerie" (pronounced zellery) means the root by default. To mean the stalks specifically you have add "Stangen" (~rods/poles) to it, "Stangensellerie". Another thing that is common are leeks, which of course I know of but have never used in cooking before. The store makes up soup bundles of half a celeriac, with two carrots, and a leek (and occasionally also a parsnip), wrapped together in a rubber band. Back when V was last in the US I bought a German soup bundle to try something with it. What I made has evolved in a few more tries into a kind of bacon chowder, which is very good (also V's opinion). Usually when I make a chowder in the US I use a lot of fennel and potatoes, but here I essentially substituted celeriac for those two ingredients. I will try to put a recipe together here, but I am not sure of all the amounts so I will use x's and either use what seems right or later I may edit and add more specific amounts.

Ingredients:
1/2 celeriac root
2 carrots
1 leek
1 liter whole milk
50-75 grams butter
x cubed/chopped bacon
a small can (8 oz?) of sweet corn nibblets
3-4 handfuls corn flour
a medium bundle of fresh parsley
2 hot (cayenne style) peppers
a few potatoes
some more water

I peeled and finely cubed the celeriac, chopped up the leek, peeled and finely chopped the carrots (first by thinly french slicing them then cross chopping), and put them in a pot (gallon sized?) with a liter of whole milk and butter, the chopped bacon and corn. I started heating this slowly and keep stirring regularly. While that's heating I finely chop up the parsley leaves and dump them in. Turn up the heat a little more and stir everything well. Then chop up two hot peppers and add (I prefer to use fresh hot peppers but they are hard to find here, we have some pickled ones in a jar and I have been using those). Turn up the heat a little more, stir well. Along the way I usually add some more water to increase the volume, and I add a few hand-fulls of corn flour to thicken everything up. I stir it really well with each bit of flour so it doesn't clump and/or burn to the bottom. Each time I have made this I ended up peeling and adding some chopped potatoes to top it off, which can't hurt. The key is to take your time and spend a long time cooking it, heating very slowly, chopping finely, and keeping it stirred almost constantly until it is bubbling. Also, don't eat it right away but give time for the flavor to mix and get into the vegetables. Often it tastes better heated up the next day after cooking. In the end it should be very thick and creamy with some light spicy flavor.

Daytrip to S. Denmark

I've been very busy at work and haven't been spending much time with the kids and realized not long ago that we have been living in Europe a year and a half and the kids have still not been to another country in Europe (other than a brief stop in London traveling between the US and Germany, which doesn't really count). So I promised myself, that we would do more traveling together and to begin I would offer to drive them to Denmark on Saturday. (Plus, after weeks of overcast sky and on/off rain the sun finally came out on Friday.) When I mentioned it to them Friday they both eagerly accepted and wanted to do a "road trip." The next morning M had a daybag packed and ready to go; T is a little slower getting into motion in the mornings but he also threw some things together and hopped in the car. V stayed home with L for the day. We drove west and connected to the German autobahn network (no speed limit!). Then headed north to Denmark. The kids wanted to see how fast the car could go on the autobahn. We got it up to 130 km/hr (the recommended/advised speed limit), and some people were still flying past us, but I had a feeling parts of the car would start flying off or the engine would shake apart if we took the little car any faster. We crossed a huge bridge spanning the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal (shipping canal between the Baltic and Atlantic North Sea). Eventually we crossed the border into Denmark and pulled off at Padborg (a town I had been to on the train line, and I knew where an ATM was). Once we crossed the border it was very dark and foggy.



We parked and walked to the ATM, I took out some Danish Krone (Denmark doesn't use the euro yet). Then we went back to the car and pulled into a gas station. The nozzle didn't fit into the tank of what I thought was gas (I don't think it was diesel either, that was clearly marked at a different spot, perhaps it was kerosene? --good thing I didn't put that in the engine!), so I tried the next one and it fit, but then I had to pay and press a button before it would turn on, ... finally figured out how to fill the tank with gas, then we got a snack at a bakery.



Then got back on the road and headed west. One problem with driving in Denmark was I have no idea what the general speed limits are. So I tried to get behind people and follow them. It seems like outside of towns it is something like ~100 km/hr and inside towns ~60 km/hr, which is a bit faster than in Germany. We passed a car that had crashed off the road and that was a highlight for the kids, the back of the car was sticking up in the air from its angle on the bank.



We passed lots of rustic houses (thatched roofs, timber frame) farm buildings, and churches.



All in all it was very similar to Schleswig-Holstein Germany, which is not surprising. The kids got to hear Danish being spoken, and they commented that people were quieter here then in Germany. We made it as far as Tønder (Tondern in German), ate a late lunch, then it was time to head back. On the way back I stopped at a shopping center outside of Kiel and let the kids run around the stores for a while, by the time we finally got back home it was well after dark.

Car is running again

So, the oil light kept coming on, I smelled oil burning, and sure-enough the car was leaking oil. We stopped to check and put more oil in. V pulled the dipstick out and the entire tube around it had broken off and came loose. This of course lead to jokes about her not touching anything connected to the engine again (especially after her "fixing" the radiator in our apartment on Easter Sunday 2008), but driving over teeth rattling cobblestones every day at 50 km/hr on the way to school probably did it. So we put the car in the shop to get it replaced and V and the kids went back to taking the indirect bus route to school and back. There was a series of miss-communications about when the car would be ready. "They needed to order a part; it would be ready tomorrow, ..." Tomorrow: "they needed to order a different part, it would be ready at 4pm ...". 4pm: "It's not ready, come back tomorrow ..." I'm not blaming them, the combination of V's and my German and their English could have lead to anything happening, but the dipstick tube did get replaced by the next weekend. The bolts had sheared off and rather than drilling and using a reverse-thread extractor to remove them, they just welded the new parts on. But this was not the end of the story. After replacing the dipstick tube the oil pressure switch was leaking oil (which we only noticed later after getting the car back). It was right next to where they had welded and a gasket was clearly bent on the switch where the oil was leaking out. We took it back and they replaced it for free, immediately. Now we have the car back and everything seems to be fine.

GETonline

I wanted to mention a website (GETonline) that lets people set climate goals and energy use parameters and the program calculates the best (minimal cost to the economy) way to meet the goals, if possible, by phasing in and out certain sources of energy (oil, solar, nuclear, ...) at different times over a century. Of course it is far simpler than reality, but I think it is a great way to present a feel for the dynamics of what is a very complex system.

From playing with it a general pattern seems to be, if there is no energy policy then coal use will predominate in the future (it is cheap and plentiful); if there is a non-trivial energy policy, solar is likely to predominate in the future.

M's tooth

M lost her first tooth Saturday night! She was worried because it was taking so long, but we told her it is normal in our family and our teeth are stronger because they grow slower. She can't wait to tell her friends at school.

Smoked Herring

Back from Sweden, off to Austria

No time now -- heading to the airport. Will update as soon as things settle down.

...

In Sweden I was too busy for much sightseeing. Also, the sun came up late and went down early. I was only able to snap a few photos of the sunset from in front of my hotel before it got dark. (BTW- I stayed at the Hotel Charlotte. The rooms are arranged in an octagon with a spiral staircase in the center.)

Halloween

M's birthday

V is back!

I picked V and L up at the airport last night. I took L for a walk early this morning, before sunrise, and she was very excited about all the new smells. We walked about a mile but I think she did 10 by running back and forth on the trail in front of me.

The rail construction is continuing and now our main route to town is closed off. There is a pedestrian/bike underpass that is now a pile of steel rebar and concrete rubble as they prepare to replace the bridge for the additional line.

Updates

Sorry guys. Now I am very, very behind on the blog updates. I have been in continuous rounds of deadlines and work travel without much time to come up for air. On the bright side, things are going well at work and at home, but I won't get a real break till mid November.

In the news, a new rail track is being laid. The old one is still there and in use, but next to it they have graded and widened the bank and are now dumping and smoothing out gravel and sand. The new line is for a faster link between Kiel and Luebeck without any stops.

T went sailing with his class in the Baltic and loved it. They took out a schooner. He got to help unfurl the sails, steer the wheel, crawl out on the netting below the bowspirit, explore the engine room, and so on. From his description it sounds like they were within sight of land and rounded some point, where they could see a different lighthouse, before heading back.

I went to Freiburg (SW Germany near France/Switzerland) on a work trip a few weeks ago. It is called the gateway to the black forest (loosely translated). It was a nice town and had mountains around it with dark spruce trees covering them. I was very impressed with the waitresses in the restaurants; we were an international group and they could take orders effortlessly in English, German, French and the menus also had Italian (but we didn't try that one). There was a botanical garden in town that had a tulip poplar from the southern US. It was odd to realize I hadn't seen one in a long time and that it looked so nice to see one.

And now, V has flown back to the US for a week to help her mother with renovations, take care of some odds and ends, and bring back T's dog L. So I have been taking care of the kids on my own this week. The kids are out on fall break right now. Thankfully our apartment is very close to where I work so I can run back and fourth during the day to check on things and fix meals. Right after V gets back it is M's birthday, then I have to go to Uppsala, Sweden (work trip), then back for Halloween, then off to Vienna, Austria (another work trip). Then I get a break.

Pirate Talk

I've been way behind on posts in the last month (i.e. very busy at work) and have been getting some requests to update things. So let's start back up with yesterday. Yesterday (Sep. 19) was the international talk like a pirate day (link). Somehow M found out about this (I suspect V) and was very excited. She made pirate day presents for each of us and gave us all bandannas to wear. She even made up pirate names for each of us and wrote them on little slips of paper at our places at the table. I was "Dread Pirate Flint" and V was "Mad Bess Flint." We had a pirate breakfast including authentic lobscouse (link). We drew slips of paper to see which one had the black spot on it (that person had to clear the table) but I drew it and said it was more like guidelines really.

In other news. The kids are doing well in the new school year. I've been getting more driving practice in exploring the area around here and have noticed that Germans in general are very impatient drivers (like NE cities in the US, they beep if you don't pull out fast enough and commonly tailgate very close) and there is some strange custom of parking in the middle of the road. In one extreme example, a group of three motorcycles parked in the lane on a country road and were standing around talking, they could have easily pulled off the road but didn't seem inclined to. I saw them on the way out and about 20 minutes later coming back in the same spot, where several people had to cross lanes to pass around them. Also, it has been very dry lately. The lake water levels have been dropping and on one, the Schoehsee, there are new islands appearing where it is shallow.

(P.S. - To be fair to German drivers, everything is relative. Here they complain about French and Italian drivers (sorry guys) and so on. Coming from the opposite end, after a couple weeks of Cairo and Addis Ababa traffic, Rome seemed to contain the politest drivers ever... )

Dropped the kids off at school!

Finally, the successful culmination of a year of preparation! I was able to take the kids to a school they enjoy learning at and pick them up with a German drivers license and our own car.

Dragon Boat Racing

The organization where I work put together a dragon boat racing team for an event in nearby Bad Malente. We had one day to practice with the boats the day before the race, and we had a very international team, with Germany, India, France, China and of course the US represented. We even had a Chinese drummer to beat out the rhythm in the front of the boat (who had been in a dragon race boat in China before). The first day we practiced in cold rain. The trick was coordinating so we didn't bump into each other with the paddles because we were sitting so close together, with one row paddling on the right and one row on the left. The directions were barked out in German, which I made a couple of mistakes with and messed up the paddeling on my side. At one point I felt like I knew what it was like to be paddling for a viking ship. On the day of the race the weather cleared up a bit and to add to the strageness of being in a Chinese sport in Germany a Punk-Scottish band was playing modern Celtic music at the festival. There were a couple of professional teams that came in, but we didn't do bad and placed in with most of the other teams present. The first time we completed the distance in 1:09 and the second time in 1:02 (I think the distance was 200 meters, but I'm not completely sure).

V's birthday

Night Festival

Wildschwein

There is a park someone mentioned to us in nearby Bad Malente that has wild pigs. T and I drove over there early one morning and had a look. There was a fenced in area with a gate you have to go through to get in. One boar came running right over to us. They were very tame and we could get up close to see them rooting around. There were also elk in a large enclosure (not exactly wapiti, but elk-like. I not sure exactly what species.)

Eleventy-First Birthday!

It's a Tolkein reference. We had a cake for my birthday this year, which is 111 years old (started in 1898, the birthday not the cake), a curious number and a very respectable age. No, I'm not insane. I guess there are only four or five people out there that know the trick to explain this.

Pirates in our Backyard

Piracy, it's not just for Somalia anymore. Apparently a ship was hijacked in our own backyard according to this news article (Russia's navy deployed, ship hijacked in Baltic).

The Great Ladybug Invasion

V alerted me to this news article. Earlier I posted (here and here) about the unusual numbers of ladybugs near the coast. Now millions have made it to coastal England (link).

Long Barrow

T wanted to do something special so early in the morning on Saturday we hopped in the car and drove to where there was a bronze age long barrow (Langbett auf Deutsch, literally "long bed").





Then, after we got back, we all took the train to Hamburg to see a large outdoor store "Globetrotters." Among the highlights, they had an indoor leaf cutter ant nest, a plexiglas climbing wall (overlooking the street four stories below), and a "thermal room" complete with ice-block furniture where you can try on winter coats and see how well they keep heat from escaping with an infrared camera!




We were all wore out by the end of the day.

Photos from 7/31

Here are some camera phone (V's) photos from our road trip.

Test Drive

Today we all piled into the car and went for a drive--what else could we have done. First we did the route to the kids school, then picked up some groceries in Selent (for the first time we can carry them back in a car!), then headed north toward the coast. We ran into a military base and had to make a detour, but then found a place next to the ocean where we could park. There was an amazing amount of ladybugs where we stopped. They were all over the cars, plants, ground, and in a couple spots covered the ground in solid ladybug piles. I'd never seen anything like it. We took a short walk along the beach. It was very rocky and had all kinds of interesting rocks. I even tried some flintknapping. There were sandy cliffs overhanging the beach and at one point they were riddeled with, apparently, holes for swallow nests. Then headed back.


View Driving around Ploen in a larger map

We have a car!

Finally, I own a car that is registered, has new plates, inspection stickers and is fully road legal (to the best of my knowledge) in Germany!

I met K early this morning to sign the rest of the papers transferring ownership and a quick run by a dealer to get a light replaced, her last task to fix up the car for us. Then she was kind enough to go along with me to the registration office to finish all the paperwork and get the new registration and ownership papers, then to a license plate office to get new plates, then back to the registration office to finish the inspection stickers for the new plates. (Here when you buy a car if the exhaust and car inspection has not expired it transfers to the new owner for the remainder of the term, rather than doing it over again.) It all went really quickly, just a few hours, especially with a car to drive around between things rather than doing it all on foot and taking all day as I've had to do before. Then I took over and drove K to her job to drop her off and then drove the car back home. As soon as I got back I took V for a short ride around the block; the first time I've driven her in a car in the Old World. She is putting seat covers on and installing the child seat and booster seat now for the kids then I will take them for a short ride.

kiva

http://www.kiva.org/

I just wanted to mention this website. It allows people to make micro-loans to people who otherwise would not have access to credit for, for example, buying tools and resources to start a business in third world countries. I think this is a much better idea than simple charity, which (if it's not immediately needed for saving lives) ends up making people economically dependent rather than independent. I have traveled in Africa and have seen first hand how some people work hard year after year (Jinjimana's in Marsabit, Kenya) to try to build economic independence, and also the charity/hand-out mentality that other people can have. Morally, I would be more comfortable with kiva if it allowed loaners to get a (small) return on their investment (yes, I have read Atlas Shrugged), but I understand why they don't have it set up this way (US bureaucracy) and it is a step in the right direction. Just a small amount for a westerner can be a huge amount in many countries and allow people to move over the hump.

I told my kids about this today and we came up with this example together, if you could cut firewood and make $10 selling each log would you do it. Yes. OK, cut down that tree. I can't. You need an axe right? But an axe costs $50 and you don't have the money for it. If someone loaned you $50 and you bought an axe and cut down 5 trees to pay them back, then you have a way to make money after that. This is a simple example but it illustrates how small loans can make a huge difference in the right situation.

Obama and Professor Gates

I saw the news headlines (e.g. BBC) about a Harvard professor being arrested and President Obama making some comments about it, but I didn't read the actual articles until later when V mentioned the arrest of a black professor at his own home and the media attention it was getting. I put two and two together and wondered if it could have been professor Gates. Sure enough, it was!!! His picture was right on the news site photos being led out of his house by the cops. I have met Prof. Gates before (and at one point he knew me by name, but I doubt he remembers who I am now) and have nothing bad to say about him. I don't agree with him 100% politically, but I think he is an intelligent and thoughtful person that has done great things. I'm not saying that neither he nor the cop might have overreacted, but I can appreciate what it is like coming back from a long trip and having to break into my own house (yes, this has happened to me before) and, from what I can gather from the media, it seems wrong to me that he was arrested after showing that he was the owner of the house and because he was disturbing the peace ... in his own home?

Getting the plates, part 1

I spent all of Thursday morning walking around town trying to figure out how to get plates for the car. The guy at the insurance office told me that this was what I was supposed to do next and told me approximately where to go on the other side of town. When I get to the building where they have license plates advertised, and walk in, there is a film crew set up with a camera on a tripod pointed at the woman at the front counter. All the plate making equipment is in view behind the counter and a woman is in front of me in the line. They film her handing over the paperwork and asking for the plates and the woman behind the counter makes the plates right there. There are metal blocks and the metal blank that she put in a press to form the numbers, then she runs it through a machine that paints it, puts stickers on it and goes from a blank sheet of metal to a finished license plate in minutes. The woman ordering the plates had two children with her that were quiet in the back of the room out of camera view. At one point one of the kids runs up to her and tries to pull himself up on the counter to see whats going on. I have the feeling it messed up what the people filming wanted. After she is done the person next to the camera is saying something to me; I have no idea what; it was too fast and unfamiliar for me to follow. So anyway they are all looking at me expectantly so I step up to the counter and give my best shot, handing over the form and saying "Ich habe das fuer ein Auto Schild" (I have this/that for a car plate). She looks slightly confused and rattles off a long polite sounding sentence that I can't make sense of so I reluctanly say "Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie Englisch" (excuse me, do you speak english)? She rolls her eyes and has to ask the people with the camera how to say "registration office" in English, at which point they let out a sigh; I think I didn't work out for them either. Anyway, apparently first I have to get another piece of paper from the car registration office before I get the plates, and she tells me it is in the next building down the road.

I find the building, walk in, and right in front of the front door is a booth with a sign over it that says "information." I walk up and hand the man sitting there my papers for the car from the insurance guy. I cut straight to the point and tell him "Ich spreche Englisch." He doesn't speak any english, but there is a problem with the paperwork. He points to a checkbox that is blank and a checkbox that is checked on the form. "Das ist falsch ... problem ..." and so on. Apparently the check boxes need to be interchanged. I point to his pen and mime scribbling out one and checking the other. He understands and seems very unhappy with this prospect and tells me I have to get another form. Just to be clear I point to the name of the insurance company on the letterhead and ask "Ich gehe zu" (I go to). "Genau" (exactly) he says.

So I walk back to the insurance office on the other side of town. I think it was at this point when it started raining. Anyway, I get there, ring the bell, he lets me in, and I explain what happened. He looks confused, looks at my paperwork again, and says that there is nothing wrong with it and that the correct checkboxes are checked. ... more later.

We have car insurance now!

We are a step closer toward getting the car. We went back to the insurance office that we first visited in April and completed all the paperwork for the car (insurance rates depend on the type and age of the car) and set up the monthly payments. The insurance is now active. After a year the rate will go down a lot and I will be off of my first year probation period (according to Germany I am a first time driver). The insurance rep gave us a sheet with a code on it to take to the plate office to get the plates.

Last Week of School

Wakeup Band

Fourth, Biker fest.

Family back

V and the kids arrived in Hamburg late Wednesday. We made it home just before 11pm but the kids were up long after midnight (jet lag). M ran the last part from the train station to the apartment, pulling her suitcase behind her, saying "I'm just so excited to be back home."

Midnight Twilight

Drive to Kalifornia

More Oystercatchers

The Spagettery

Stalking the wild Oystercatcher

Last weekend I heard a loud "pip" "pip" near work that was different from the birds I normally hear. So I crept down to the edge of the lake and there were a pair of Oystercatchers! I didn't realize they lived around here. At one point I was easing slowly through the bushes with my camera to get a shot of them.

What kind of duck is this?

I took this picture last week. There are a pair of these ducks in Ploen. They were also here last summer.

Drive to the Baltic

The Sunday before last I drove the car north all the way to the Baltic. I got lunch there in Hohwacht (High Watch) then drove to the highest point in Schleswig-Holstein. It is a low hill near the coast that has a TV tower built on it.


The Baltic at Hohwacht.


View from the tower on the highest "mountain." That's the Baltic in the distance.

Shell settles Nigeria deaths case

This was the top story on the BBC website this morning (link).

Ever since hearing about the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 I have boycotted Shell. I am proud to say that I have not spent one penny at any Shell station in the 13 years since. At times this was inconvinient and I almost ran out of gas a few times trying to find a non-Shell station, once while in New Zealand. Shell seems to be almost everywhere around the world.

The news this morning was that they made a $15.5 million out-of-court settlement in a case accusing it of human rights abuses in Nigeria in 1995. Specifically, "The lawsuit alleged that Shell officials helped to supply Nigerian police with weapons," ... "Shell participated in security sweeps in parts of Ogoniland and hired government troops that shot at villagers," ... "Shell helped the government capture and hang Ken Saro-Wiwa and several of his colleagues."

However, in the settlement Shell denied any wrongdoing, which does not incline me to break my boycott any decade soon.

EU adopts 'Blue Card'

I have been following this off and on for the last six months and just now found some news links that the EU blue card program has been approved.

This is modeled on the US green card program, to bring skilled immigrants to the EU for jobs. Some key provisions are it allows more rights for immigrant workers, including the ability to work in any EU state, and it allows spouses to work. Currently, with my work visa, I am only allowed to work at the institute where I am currently employed, and V can't work without applying for special, case by case, temporary permission. I am going to keep a close eye on how this blue card program develops and see if it makes sense for me to apply for it so I could have more job mobility and V could get a regular job.

A foggy morning

There weather has turned colder and rainy in the last few days, but today it seems like the clouds have disappeared and there was a fog over the lakes.


The lily pads are up and will start blooming soon.


Here is a grebe's nest. They used one of the recently fallen trees to place the nest. These grebes are fun to watch when they are "fishing." They disappear under the water and can come back up a long ways off from where they went under. They must fly under water.


This is a coot's nest near the edge of the lake. I saw some coot chicks in Munich and they look nothing like what you would expect, except for the gray bodies. They have reddish heads and a hint of yellow around their necks, and ridiculously large feet.

More driving practice

Yesterday I drove the car (that we don't actually own yet) around some more with K to get more practice driving in Germany. While I drove she pointed out what rules I had broken, by my request, so I could learn what I am expected to do. It is impossible to look at all the signs, lights and paint patterns and sift out what is important and what to ignore, while driving an unfamiliar stick-shift, without practice. Particularly for me. Maybe it is because I grew up, and learned to drive, out in the country with hardly any signs, but for some reason it is not always obvious to me, with an unthinking glance, what signs are meant for guiding traffic and what are extra, like advertisements for businesses or where to get gas and things, even back in the US. Also, I tend to take sign directions literally, which can create problems in the US (the sign says turn right at the next intersection, when they really mean this intersection), but so far I haven't run into any literal/implied problems with signs here. I spend most of my time just trying to drive safely and not run over anyone or crash into cars; the signs, directions and rules are secondary for me.

Overall it went well. One thing to keep in mind, the bicyclers are very dangerous here for people used to driving in the US. They are much bolder and will come up quickly from behind you and blaze through an intersection while you are turning, which means you also have to glance behind you when turning right, to look for a possible bike passing you on the right (kind of like looking behind you for cars while driving in upstate New York, if you actually stop at a four way stop the car behind you assumes you have broken down and will immediately pull off into the emergency lane to pass you on the right, which has resulted in several near collisions for me while driving in NY, even if I had a right turn signal on).

One event stuck in my mind more than the others. While driving I was talking with K about German and American stereotypes. A lot of our stereotypes about Germany are wrong, and derive from growing up with old WWII movies, which Germans have worked hard to distance themselves from. Germans can have very romantic (in the sense of romanticism) ideals, try to be close to what they define as "nature," "enjoy life" again according to their definition, dislike guns and violence, and things like that. My mother noticed it and mentioned while she was visiting last December, that it was funny to her to see a German and an American walking together to work (two of my coworkers) and overhear that the American wanted to take the direct route to work, while the German wanted to take the longer route by the lake (the opposite expectation based on stereotypes). However, one stereotype is absolutely true, Germans love rules. On my first visit to Germany, and Europe, in 2002, apart from the language the thing that first stood out to me most was how people waited for a light to cross roads, even if there were no cars coming. Germans seem to feel like rules are "good," have a beneficial reason and are very trusting of authority. (Which, frankly, is scary given German's history.) Germany is also remarkably homogeneous in terms of national consensus on what these rules should be (and very bad about recognizing individual needs/differences, which creates problems when you come from a different culture, but that is another story). Germans also like to, or feel compelled to, point out what the rules are and loudly identify to the world when someone breaks them. While driving yesterday I accidentally turned down a dead end road that had an additional special sign that means only people that live on the road are supposed to drive there. I went down, turned around, and when coming back to drive out several little girls ran out of a yard to the road, some across the road to the other side, and yelled at me about what the driving rules were. It didn't bother me at the time, but it has been puzzling me since. They wouldn't drive for another 10 years, yet they somehow already knew these obscure rules. Also, normally children at this age are very shy and polite in Germany, but these girls boldly ran up, surrounded the car and were yelling. Lastly, this is what made them happy...? ...what they wanted to do? Perhaps identifying rule breakers acts as a release valve in Germany; it is the one socially prescribed time when you can approach a stranger and rudely yell at them, emboldened by the feeling that an entire nation of millions, minus one, are behind you.

By the way, I drove from our hometown all the way to the town where the kids are going to school, to practice the route. I did it in only 20 minutes! It takes V and the kids 3 hours to get back from school each day using the indirect bus route, and is expensive. I think (hope) getting this car will really help living here.

More Wind

There have been a couple more instances of strong winds in the last few weeks (since the roof came off our neighbors apartment building on May 8th). In one a couple weeks ago another big willow tree crashed into the lake near where I work. Then, last Saturday there was a burst of strong winds across the lakes and several boats capsized. They brought out several fire department trucks along with two fire department speed boats and raced across the lake pulling people out of the water. There were two ambulances that came and they carried some young children back to them (from the boat out on the lake) but they seemed to be OK.

We have a rosemary plant on our balcony that keeps getting blown over by the wind. This latest time the dish under it (to catch water) was blown away completely and I still haven't found it.

M visit in Hamburg

M is in Germany now on a book tour. Last night he was in Hamburg so I went down there after work and saw his reading and later we went for supper and walked around Hamburg.

Back from Vacation

Last week I went for a long train trip. Here if you buy tickets ahead of time they can be very cheap (29 euros) plus buying them with a bahn-card can get an additional 25% off. With V and the kids off to the US and with a huge multi-year project with my previous job finally finished, I booked a round trip through Prague and Munich. One of my motivations for this was to see some mountains. I grew up in the mountains, but for over a year now I have been in the plains around the Baltic with brief visits to other areas that don't have any mountains. It is strange, but I can feel missing seeing at least some kind of mountain for so long. Also, I have heard a lot about Prague (Praha, Czech Republic) and have never been to the Czech Republic (it is still hard for me not to accidentally call it Czechoslovakia) so I booked a route through there.

As it happens, on the way out there was a brief stop for a change of trains in Berlin. I have also never been to Berlin, but there wasn't time to really see anything. Nonetheless, I ran outside of the train station quickly and snapped photos of two landmarks from a distance.


The Berlin station is very large, with train platforms on multiple levels.






Here is the iconic Fernsehturm, taken with a zoom from just outside the station.


And here is the dome of the Reichstag building, also with a zoom from outside the station.

After Berlin the train route went south and crossed the Czech-German border just past Desden. The region around the border is called Saxon Switzerland or Czech Switzerland, depending which side you are on, and has some cliffs near the Elbe river.



(...will add more...)

Challenge to human gene patents

The ACLU and PUBPAT filed a lawsuit yesterday (PUBPAT link, ACLU link) to overturn patenting human genes and alleles. This is something I am completely in support of. It is ludicrous to patent something that is naturally occurring and to be able to prevent health care and research on something that is naturally occurring.

Road Test

I went to Eutin today (by train) to test drive a car that we might buy. It is the first time I have driven a car in well over a year, the first time driving a stick shift in many, many years, and the first time driving in the Old World in my entire life. Fortunately I didn't wreck or run over anyone, I practiced for a while outside of town, then drove around some in town to get used to the signs and right of ways, and I ended up driving all the way back to Ploen! I think I can do this! Along the way there were some beautiful yellow rape seed fields which are blooming at this time of year here.


The Car


Me driving


A Field (drive-by shot out the window)


A German in their natural habitat (she actually owns the car).

More Destruction

Actually there is another place in town that was damaged by the storm. It is also by the lake. I saw it this morning while biking and went back to snap some photos.


I'm glad I wasn't sitting in that bench.