First Day of School

Today was my first day at the University of Stuttgart.  The classes seem like they will be very good; I am really looking forward to the rest of the semester.  There are about 40 students in my group, and we will take 6 core courses together this winter semester (mid-October to mid-February).  Most of my fellow students came straight from undergraduate degrees, but about a half dozen have 1 or 2 years of work experience.  This means that I am about a decade older than everyone.

On the first day of school, it is customary for the new student to get a "Schultüte" or "Zuckertüte", as seen in this picture.  The translation is school cone or sugar sack.  I think they are usually filled with candy, toys, pencils, etc.  Furthermore I think this is only for kindergartners, which is too bad for me.

Spouses in Germany

Last month I said that I would write about what spouses do while in Germany.  And finally I am getting to that.  Some spouses of other post-doctoral researchers leave Germany early, others find part time jobs.  For me I was trying to work remotely for NREL, however that didn’t go too well –a large part of the problem is “out of site, out of mind” and I have been out of site for a year; plus I have been traded to my 3 manager in less than a year, so not much work was coming my way.  Therefore I am going back to school.  Tomorrow I will start classes at the University of Stuttgart, in an all English Masters degree program in the field of Computational Mechanical Engineering.  This will give me something to engage in while in Germany.  …and the surely the subject of future blog posts.

But there have been some other things that have occupied my time in the last few months.

Apartment renovations:  Calking bathtub, painting window frames, install better lighting.  Left picture is what one window frame looked like before repairing and painting.
I have a modest weather station, and I have been writing programs and building some instruments for it.  Right picture is me investigating the circuit of a humidity sensor.

I have also taken several long bike rides. And those are worthy of their own blog post…

Schloss Lichtenstein

Today Betsy & I went to another romantic castle –Schloss (“Castle”) Lichtenstein, which is only 30km from Tübingen.  It was a great half-day trip.  It has been rainy and cloudy for the last week, but today the clouds cleared and we had spectacular views of the fall colors.  The guided tour was very friendly.  And surprisingly it was in English, because everyone in our small group spoke English.

After the castle, we visited a nearby cave.  The Swäbish Alb, is a limestone plateau and the foothills of the Alps.  This limestone makes for dramatic white cliffs above the valleys and allows for some caves.  The cave we went into was large –about 300m in length and having 5 large rooms.  For a few years one of the royals, for which Castle Lichtenstein was built, lived in the cave.  The caves inspired the book Lichtenstein, which in turn inspired the local Duke to build the castle in the romantic style during the 1840s.  This is about the same time as Berg Hohenzollern and Neuschwanstein, and many other fairy-tale castles in Germany.

Erntezeit!

It's harvest time in Germany. These are three of the four self-serve pumpkin (Kürbis) stands I pass on my bike ride home from work. In two weeks we'll have a harvest celebration in our town (read: beer garden).

We're just back from a long weekend in Barcelona. Joe will post pictures and text soon. 

Differences between Germany & America

I have been struggling what to say about differences between Germany and the USA, which I said I would write about.  There are so many, and many are obvious --And when compared with the diversity inside the US, many observations about Germany seem insignificant.

During our visit to America in Jun & July, I was reminded that the USA is a big place.  Everything is scaled up; the cars are bigger, and houses are bigger  --refrigerators, shopping carts, isles in the grocery store, grocery stores themselves, farms, etc. are all bigger.  And yes, on average the people are bigger.

As Betsy & I traveled around North America, it made clear that the US is not a train country (except for freight trains).  The train and public transport system in Germany is great; we use them frequently for local and long-distance travel.  For example, by train it takes 5.5hrs from Stuttgart to Hamburg (southwest to northwest), which is a little faster than driving.  For comparison the drive from Denver to Chicago will take about 16hr (Amtrak will take over 18hrs, and is only once per day), but it is only 4hrs for a flight (including security & waiting) and there are dozens per day.

Another difference that became clear when traveling around the US (especially Iowa) is that in Germany everyone lives in a city or village.  Even farmers live in town, and they travel to their farms, instead of living on the farm and being surrounded by their acreage.  Therefore it is not uncommon to smell livestock in villages, like ours.  In our immediate area, the distance between villages is never more than 5km (3miles).  There are lots of consequences that come from this living arrangement --the public transportation works better, people walk more between places, and you can always tell the time from the tolling of the local church bells.  When we first moved to Germany the bells would keep us awake at night, but now it just part of the sound of life in Germany.

US check-out lines

As mentioned the refrigerators are small, at around 4cu.ft., they are dorm-like.  This contributes to my frequent grocery store visits.  Going to the store is usually an adventure, and not just for trying to read the food package labels; the part that I dread is the check-out.  Check-out lines are combat shopping.  If you are not a friend, then you are at best a nuisance.  Nothing makes this clearer than when a new check-out line opens in the store (usually there are a total of 2 or 3 check-out lines, and only 1 or 2 being used).  When a new clerk arrives to open a second line, there is a rush to be first, and there is no courtesy to those who have been waiting longer.  In this case there are two differences between the US and Germany: 1) Americans check-outs are numerous and efficient (the bagger who packs up everything helps, and so does the counter space after the scanner), and 2) In the US this type of cutting in line is strongly frowned upon, and can earn the cheater a scolding.

Food in Germany, and Beer

Backyard cookout

The last two entries were about by our adventures on the Neckar River and biking, and this is all about food.  As I am our household’s chef, this is a daily topic for me.  Two weekends ago we had a cookout in our back yard.  We bought a €8- grill (~$10).

After the meal we made s’mores --yes, marshmallows are available here.  However most food that claims to be American are generally bad.  For example "MCENNEDY American Way" marshmallows, "Barney’s Best" peanut butter with their kitschy statue of liberty and stars & stripes inspired packaging, are worse than their worst quality counterparts in the US.  …although the caramel popcorn is good; it is a much lighter caramel coating, than the US version.

Party at our apartment; pulled pork was the menu

A month ago we made 3kg of pulled pork, from the spices Gabe sent us.  One of the highlights was to go to a butcher and order the specific cut.  We cooked it all night, and served it to a few friends.  For all the pork in this country, it is surprising that pulled pork is not more common.

The grocery stores have a strong bias toward local and seasonal fruits.  It has been fun to eat our way through the summer.  Last week I made a wild plumb reduction to serve with pork chops.  Then this week, we had left over sauce with roasted pumpkin.  We bought the pumpkin at an honor-system roadside stand –put money in the box, take the produce home.

Nearly all Americans believe that Germany has the best beer in the world.  This is not true.  The “best beer in the world” is very subjective.  Germany’s beer is for the most part still governed by the “Reinheitsgebot” i.e. Bavarian/German Beer Purity Law, which is from around 1500AD.  This makes German beer very consistent, as they are only allowed to use water, barley, and hops (original law was 300 years before Pasteur, so yeast was added to the law later).  Even the wheat beer, which is not governed by Reinheitsgebot's ingredients list is very consistent.  It is very hard to find diversity in German beer.  While Belgium, England-Scotland-Ireland, and the US (the thousands of microbrewers, not the few mega brewers) have a wide variety which can better satisfy most tastes.  We really miss IPAs and porters.

Besides beer there are lots of schnapps and Most (apple wine, often served at seasonally opened restaurants), but these are not much better than garage experiments in brewing.  But it must say that when someone gets tired of all the alcohol, it seems that every brewery also has an alcohol-free beer.

This Week's Bike Rides

On Wednesday I rode to the source of the Neckar River (Neckarquelle).  It took around 5hrs to get to there.  Since I still had 5hrs of daylight left, I rode back.  That made the total 210km (130miles).

Here is a picture of Betsy with a castle covered in clouds and mist near Beuren, which is the location of the thermal bath we went to today.  It is about 30miles away, but we took about 3 hours getting there, because the bike route was hard to follow, and we took several wrong turns.  We spent 2hrs at the the bath, which is similar to a roman bath; there were different temperature pools and sauna rooms, plus rooms for just lounging.  There were dry and wet saunas, and several scented saunas --vanilla & salt were two that we went in.  The final thing we did was going into a 36C (97F) pool with 20 different stations, each squirting water or air jets for massaging (back, foot, shoulders, etc.)  Every 45sec we had to switch to the next station --there was a big countdown clock above the pool for everyone to watch.