USA!

Apologies to our numerous readers (hee-hee!) for the long interval between updates. We've been busy. After 9 months in Germany we took a much anticipated trip to North America. We'll update you on our trip and then we hope to retroactively update you on what went on with us in May and June.

We flew to Minneapolis June 22 and I (Betsy) got to attend my future sister-in-law's bridal shower before heading up to Montreal a day later. I rejoined my colleagues from Tuebingen and beyond for a week-long Geochemistry conference. It was a great meeting and I made a lot of great connections with people in my field and presented my newer work. I did not see much of Montreal, but I did get a chance to visit my good friend Liz from Mount Holyoke, her boyfriend Pete, and her parents near Burlington, VT after the conference. I have many good memories of them all from college days.

German colleagues in Montreal

Beer, with HOPS!! in VT

Joe meanwhile flew out to Colorado to reconnect with folks from the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) where he is still employed. He also caught up with a lot of colleagues we knew socially, as well as friends from salsa dancing and the Unitarian Universalist group we were a part of. Joe and I both took every opportunity to drink microbrewed ales, especially those loaded with hops. German beer is awfully light on hops for our taste.

Fire retardant in Boulder.

Paul & Katherine +1 at SoSun.

We convened back in Minnesota before heading down to Iowa in the middle of a heat wave. We stopped in the quaint town of Lanesboro, MN to celebrate our 1st anniversary by renting a tandem bike. I am a bit surprised we made it to year 2 after taking out such a contraption in that heat! We spent the rest of the week with Joe's 96-year-old grandma in Manning, IA. We played a lot of "Rummy Cube" and Joe flew the Red Baron Triplane kite he acquired in Boulder. That guy just loves wind!

The Germans are coming!

We returned to Minnesota in time for a reunion barbecue with my 3 good friends from high school. Laura and Sam got married in May, and Julie and Dave introduced little Dave to the world last December, so our group is now 12 with Mitch and Michelle's 3 kids Isaiah, Ethan and Elisa. Joe had a blast jumping on the trampoline with the boys.

Joe and the boys.

Wedded Bliss!

In addition to dealing with silly stuff like updating our bank accounts, we helped my dad build a fence at his vineyard. Sadly, I am now covered in poison ivy. The highlight of our trip was my brother Andy's wedding to his soulmate Amanda.

Our new fence.

our new apartment in Poltringen

Our backyard

OK.  I have been enjoying our new place in too much to write a blog post –my apologies to all our readers. 

…so as you know, we just moved.  Our new place is in Poltringen.  And our new apartment is soooo much better than the old one!  Amazingly it is about 15km upstream of the apartment we used to live.  And unlike stream’s open-sewer-likeness at the old place, it is rather lovely at our new place.  Check out this picture of the stream and our backyard.

 

We also live 2 houses away from a castle.  It is not Neuschwanstein, but it does have a mote!  Here is the view of the castle from our back deck.

Our neighborhood castle

 In fact we live within 5km of 2 other castles and one hill-top church, all of which also have great views as we have checked out in the last 2 weeks.

So we are now 10km west from Betsy’s building, and it is a nearly flat bike ride, a key selling point.  That means we are deep in Schwabish country, which is the local, traditional culture.  Within a few days of moving in, I was being taught some local Schwäbish words.  And we have noticed a big difference in the service we get at the local bakery --the people are so friendly here, unlike the “big” town of Tübingen.

We are much more in touch with the local happenings.  Like the recent Maibaum (May pole) festivities, seen in this picture.

This past Saturday we went to a play in the neighboring village (Oberndorf) –which is less than 2miles away, and we walked there.  It happened to be titled “Frau Schwab and Miss Smith”, which was a comparison of Schwäbish and American culture.  We got about half of the jokes, and most of the play was in German or Schwäbish.  …so Germans think that Americans are superficial and somewhat vulgar, but they still retain a lot of affinity for us.

Maibaum (May pole)

And halfway between Oberndorf and Poltringen is where I usually play bagpipes.  I am sure that people in both villages can hear me.  Those that have come across me practicing have been indifferent or very receptive.  I chose the location because 1) I shouldn’t disturb anyone, and 2) it is very picturesque –I am among wheat and canola (rape seed) fields.

wheat field over the Nekar (Tubingen) valley

 So today I was working on our deck, and while thinking about off shore wind turbines, this was my view.

Today's view of our backyard

That is right there are horses in our back yard!  And check out those clouds.  Later in the day there was a proper storm right over us.  I have a modest weather station, and I was so excited for the stormy weather.

And before I finish this blogpost, check out this picture, which is a relic of WWII style military. 

bridge capacity for trucks and tanks

Reisen mit Eltern, Teil 2: Rheintal

Our second mini-trip with my parents during their visit was to the Rhine Valley. While in Bavaria, we experienced German beer culture, and in the Rhine Valley we got to experience German wine culture.

Slumping tower of Heidelberg Castle

Prior to their trip, my parents expressed an interest in the Rhine Valley based on hearing relatives relate their experiences of river cruises up and down the romantic Rhine. We obliged them, but first we made a stopover in Heidelberg. I remember stopping in this university town along the Neckar River (same river as Tübingen) as a teenager on my first trip to Germany, and so I was eager to see it with older eyes. We packed a picnic lunch and hiked/took the funicular to the castle looming over town. We had a gorgeous view and our picnic was the envy of the other tourists. We spent a while longer wandering through old town, which dates back only a few hundred years, and ended our afternoon by traversing the "Philosophenweg" (Philosopher's path) - a path incised on the hillside and framed by stone walls - it was a famous place for professors to walk and talk (who has time for that now?).

Mäuseturm through grapevines

Rüdesheim, a wine-growing town on the Rhine, was recommended to us by a colleague. We arrived in the rain hungry after our hike in Heidelberg. The food was bland compared to the culinary highlights of Bavaria, but the wine was excellent! The next day my parents boarded the "Seilbahn" (chairlift) to the top of the wine hills and the "Niederwalderdenkmal" (monument commemorating a German-French war). We hiked along the sloping wine hills in the rain, with views of the Mäuseturm (Mouse Tower), a famous toll-station of the Middle Rhine in the Middle Ages. My parents boarded a second "Seilbahn" down to the adjacent wine village of Assmanhausen, and we met them at the bottom. We caught a ferry back to Rüdesheim and continued our journey North to Koblenz by car.

Cruising the Rhine

The wine excitement didn't stop there, because we stayed two nights at a family-run in and winery of sorts located on the Moselle River just upstream of it's confluence with Rhine in Koblenz. Joe and I got to try the wine and it was delicious. The next day we hopped onto a historic paddle boat for a day-long boat ride to Rudesheim and back. There is a castle about every two miles on this stretch of river, so we spent the day viewing castles from the boat deck while sipping Rhine wine. A nice repose after all of the hiking we'd done. The highlight for most Germans was the famous Lorelei Rock of lore. I actually thought the boat would tip as we went past it because all of the Germans moved to the Lorelei side.

We ended our second trip with a stop in the spa town of Bad Kreuznach, where we took a relaxing dip in some healing spa waters. It was good we got that little bit of relaxation in, because once we got back to Tübingen we were fully focused on moving into our new apartment. We expected help from my parents, of course, in exchange for all the travel planning. Up next: Joe's account of our new apartment.

Reisen mit Eltern, Teil 1: Bayern

During the last two weeks of April we had a visit from my (Betsy's) parents from Minnesota. It was their first trip to Germany and I had two shorter 4-day trips planned, punctuated by time in Tübingen, and followed by them getting to help us move to a new, permanent apartment. Here is a recap of our first trip.

Mom at Kloster Bebenhausen

We got ready for the parental visit by joining our local carshare program, "TeilAuto". Joe and I took a car to the airport one Sunday morning to "practice" driving on the Autobahn with a manual transmission. The big day came and things went mostly smoothly picking up my parents from the airport in Stuttgart. The first two days we stayed in Tübingen to get them acclimated to the time change, give them a chance to see town, and for me to finish up some unavoidable work obligations. We took a nice trip to our local Kloster Bebenhausen (former monastery) followed by my parent's first "Kaffee und Küchen" (coffee and cake). They loved it.

View over Neuschwanstein

We couldn't resist taking a detour to Schloss Neuschwanstein, possibly the most famous castle in the world, on our way to Munich. Joe and I had both been to crazy Ludwig's digs as teenagers (separately, of course), but it was fun to go back. We had a lovely day in Munich that alternated between seeing the famous churches, drinking coffee, watching the Glockenspiel, drinking beer, a bit of shopping and walking along the river, more coffee. Finally we tired and hopped on a streetcar and saw everything that way with our public transport day pass. It was kind of awesome. We ended the day with Schweinshaxen (pork knuckle) at the Schneiderweisse Brewhouse our friends Chris and Rachel tipped us onto. We got our fill of "Hopfenweisse", one of the few hoppy beers we've found in Deutschland, and took a 6-er for the road.

Famous Nazi camp greeting

We stopped off in Dachau for a more reflective day at the memorial. We learned a lot through our guided tour with a German historian of the "1968 generation", or the generation that began to talk about the Holocaust and question their parents' active or passive role in it. I had not known before that it was mostly a camp for political prisoners, and was not one of the "death camps" that were later established at places like Auschwitz. It was a good experience to put the pieces of history together in terms of events and situations that led to the founding of these types of camps.

View of Rothenburg from wall

We then headed toward Franconia, the region in Northern Bavaria. We spent the night at a wonderful family-run brewery hotel, where I taught my family to play an Italian card game (much to their dismay). We had a great time and finished our tour with a trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a gorgeous, medieval walled city on the Tauber River. I'd heard it's quite touristy, but since it's not high tourist time yet it didn't feel so overrun. We climbed to the top of the Rathaus (town hall) bell tower for a beautiful view of the region, circumnavigated part of the city in the wall itself, and ended the day by poking around a 700-year old "Fachwerkhaus" (Half-timbered house) that had never been renovated. Once again I am thankful to be alive now and not in the middle ages!

3 countries, 3 days: Bodensee Bike Tour

Our route around the Bodensee

We just returned from our first successful overnight bike trip. We've been threatening to do this for awhile, and I've been dreaming about bike trips since I gave up owning a car 6 years ago. So, we chose Easter weekend to head down to the Bodensee, or Lake Constance to English speakers, in southern Germany. Most of March was Gorgeous (yes, capital "G") weather around here, but when I finally had days off it was back to winter/early spring. Nevertheless, I was overjoyed to be out of the lab for a weekend.
 

My rainboots frame Joe on a swingset.

We headed down to the Bodensee early Saturday morning and started our ride from Radolfzeil (I can't pronounce it either) toward the town of Konstanz. The kilometers ticked by easily and we toured around the island Reichenau as a detour. Turns out most of the fruit and veggies labeled "from our region" ("aus unser Region") in the grocery store come from here. We made it into Constance/Konstanz, situated so it straddles one of the fingers of the Bodensee, for lunch. During lunch it began to rain, so we crossed into Switzerland and booked it for the last 30 kilometers to the little town where we'd booked a room. We arrived at the Haus St. Michal in Dozwil and quickly realized we were in an isolated Catholic stronghold on Easter weekend. We were staying in a guesthouse run by nuns, where the rest of the guests were practicing Catholics, and it was across the street from the church in a mostly Catholic town. We had to walk to the second hotel in town to get our meals, but the dining room's opening hours were scheduled around Mass. Then we decided to watch the only potentially interesting movie in the guest house's common room: "Luther", in German, about the life of Martin Luther and the birth of Protestantism. Talk about awkward.

2012-2013 "Set" in Bregenz

Well, things couldn't get much worse, so when we woke up to snow we took it in stride. We also took it as a sign to get out of town as soon as possible. We biked through the next few towns until we were quite cold, and finally found a little harbor cafe with a fireplace to drink hot chocolate and wait out the storm. It was worth the wait, because then the day turned quite beautiful. Still cool, but sunny. We had a few unplanned detours but eventually crossed the border again, this time into Austria. We stayed in the lovely town of Bregenz, with a backdrop of mountains and the foreground being a lot of tourist dollars pumped into making it quite an artsy and appealing town. The town hosts theater productions with a 2-year run, where the set is actually built out into the water. There is also a "3 Countries" marathon. Sounds cool, but not cool enough to convince me that I need to run a marathon.

Common view on Bodensee: vineyards

Finally, today we hopped on our bikes and crossed back into Germany, which I have to say was my favorite part. We detoured into the picturesque island town of Lindau. The beautiful old town was unpretentiously rimmed by an old lighthouse tower and a lion statue protecting the harbor. We biked on through a string of quaint towns punctuated by vineyards, finally ending up in Friedrichshafen in our "home" state of Baden-Wuerttemburg. We hopped aboard a train with our bikes, and with just one transfer, 35 euros and 2.5 hours of riding we made it home again.

Betsy & Joe @ Bodensee

Well, I'm sure you're thinking we had a terrible time with the weather and all, but in fact all 160 km were rather enjoyable. Because we only had three days we didn't circumnavigate the whole lake, so we'll have to come back and finish up at some point. And, now we now how much we as a couple can and want to bike in a day. There are plenty of great bike routes left to explore, so let us know if you're up for it (we mean you, Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob, Chris and Rachel, Megan and Kevin, Liz and Pete...).

Ritter Sport: knights on shining bicycles

(Joe's recap of our weekend)

Today we rode our bikes to the Ritter Sport chocolate factory and museum in Waldenbuch, which is about halfway between Stuttgart and Tübingen.  The weather was perfect, sunny and warm, but not too warm – we didn’t want to get too sweaty riding up the several hills on the 18km route.  We went with 2 of Betsy’s lab colleagues –Jamie, a Canadian visiting for 7 weeks, and Aude another post-doc from France (whose oven I recently helped to hook up).

We were like the proverbial kids in the candy shop, and we bought A LOT of chocolate.  Although more than half will be gifts.  For instance, Betsy’s colleagues made it clear that she should bring back something for the group, so they will have to share a 2 kg variety pack (4.4 lbs) –I think that should satisfy them, at least for a few days.  We also got our own Ritter Sport expansion pack for Settlers of Catan!  After a quick dinner, we played; Betsy beat me, and handily.

To add to (or compensate for) our chocolate expedition, Betsy & I have been swimming regularly with a “competitive swimming” group at the university.  We happened on them quite by accident.  There was a misprint for free swim time at the pool, and when we showed up on the pool deck, ready to swim, they were concerned that we were just there to play.   As it turns out this is the type of swimming we have been looking for since moving to Germany.  Unlike what Betsy described in “Schwimm, shwamm, ist geschwommen” on the November 13, 2011 post, this group knows how to lap swim.  The pool is small, 3 lanes and only 20 m long, but the group manages to accomplish a serious 1.5 hour workout with 3 or 4 people per lane.

While we don’t have pictures of it, yet, there is a parachute flying club that uses the hill between our apartment and the university.  They take off from the top of the grassy hill and fly into the wind.  They only manage a ground speed of walking pace, but manage to get up to 100’ above the ground.  We aren’t the only people to watch in amusement.

Frühling (Spring!)

 (an update from Joe)

This is the second Sunday in a row that it has rained.  That being said, spring has been very nice here.  The last two weeks have been mostly sunny and warm.  Three times this week, for the entire afternoon, I left all the windows in our apartment open.

Last Sunday we spent the rainy day at a local hot spring bath.  We went by local train with our American friends (Chris & Rachel).  As you can imagine it was a good time.  There was an indoor pool and 3 outdoor pools of varying temperatures.  We spent a lot of time in the hot pool, and between the steam and clouds we could see the ruins of an ancient castle.  After we had soaked for a few hours, we had lunch in the pool complex.  As usual, where there is food there is beer –so we had our obligatory wheat beer.

Betsy & I joke about the beer in Germany all tasting the same.  So I helped Chris brew a batch of IPA beer, because our wives love hoppy beer.  It took about 3 weeks of brewing, but we had our first taste this Friday – it is wonderful!  We really miss the micro-breweries of the Colorado Front Range, especially Avery, which is known for its very hoppy beers.  However since we can make our own beer now, the sting of leaving Boulder’s beer scene behind is lessened.

Besides satisfying our beer needs, we have satisfied our other fundamental needs, namely shelter.  We have signed a contract for a new apartment.  It is a great apartment – lots of south-facing windows.  It has a south-facing balcony, which overlooks a garden and a stream, and there is a small horse pasture on the other side.  It is 10 km west of the Betsy’s building, but the bike paths are all flat, so the ride should be easy.  However Betsy is suddenly interested in “Rollers” (mopeds or scooters in English), as she isn’t sure she will want to bike 20 km every day.  It just so happens that Betsy’s new German driver’s license allows her to drive Rollers, as well as cars and small tractors.

We have been to a few parties lately.  Yesterday we attended a spring garden party, and in honor of an Irish tradition, many people wore green.  And I arrive in my kilt, and played a few tunes on the bagpipes – the Germans were a very receptive audience.  And as a follow-up to our last post about board games, Betsy organized a board game night with her colleagues.  We played two versions of Settlers of Catan.  For a snack I cooked up half of a paper grocery sack of pop corn, which was also a big hit.  Earlier this week we tasted the “young wine” at a seasonal restaurant ("Besen") – in the fall we had “new wine” just after the grapes were harvested.