Eau de Cologne

In early July I went to Cologne (Köln) for a work trip. Joe was supposed to join me, but had to make an emergency trip to Alaska. So, I was left to explore the city on my own, and with help of Sebastian, my brother's friend who is from the region.

Cologne is famous for 5 things, in my estimation, listed in the order I experienced them: beer, the Cathedral, cologne, Karneval, and being a major Roman settlement.

Kölsch coaster

As part of my work meeting we went out to a brewery for dinner. The beer that is famous in Cologne is Kolch, a rather light beer served in 0.2-0.3 L portions (small by German standards). Servers carry special baskets of beer, and when yours is empty you automatically get another and a mark on your coaster indicating how many you have received. My solution to stop this process was to not finish my last beer. In fact, the appropriate action is covering your glass with the coaster.

View of Cathedral spires.

After my meeting, I met with Sebastian and we climbed to the top of the Cathedral (“Dom”). We timed our visit perfectly, because we were in the belfry for the noon ringing. The views of town and the Rhein were great – although it looked a bit different from the style of wood-beam building I am used to in the south. We later went on a tour and learned that it took 800 years to complete the cathedral, which is evident from the different types of stone used at different stages. The cathedral houses relics of the three wise men, which has made it am important pilgrimage site. The cathedral was thronged with tourists when we visited; but only twice as many per day as visited in the Middle Ages.

Cologne (the fragrance) takes its name from the city, and there are two companies that claim to have pioneered the first cologne recipe (still used today, of course). Both occupy prominent buildings in the city’s center, and generally seem to be oblivious to the other’s presence. Well, whatever the technical definition of cologne is and who made it first, I’m pretty sure Cleopatra used something to make her smell nice millennia earlier.

Party on the riverfront

Cologne is probably the biggest party scene in Germany during Karneval season. You've seen the pictures of parades for the equivalent "Fasnet" in our region, but apparently Cologne celebrates on a much larger scale. Although it was not Karneval season, I did experience the city's party personality through the "Kölner Lichter", the summer fireworks festival. The riverfront was thronged with people and boats enjoying bands, food and beer, and awaiting an evening fireworks display.

The day I left I visited the Roman museum in the city. During building projects over the centuries, a lot of finds have been made beneath the current city. Some of the grandest include tile mosaics. Apparently one hosted a dinner of international leaders, including President Clinton. I still can't believe even world leaders were allowed to walk on it. There was a lot of other interesting stuff in the museum, but I really liked the pitcher and cup sets, complete with an inscription that said something like, "to your health!" I could imagine something similar for sale at World Market - so I guess we haven't changed so much from Roman times.

Roman wine service.

Life in a small town

Today was a big day in our little town.  Our volunteer fire department (Freiwillige Feuerwehr) had an open house. But it was more than just a chance to check out the fire trucks - it seemed to be some opportunity for public education, especially aimed at kids. Of course, the adults came as well, but the constant flow of beer probably helped more for that.

A firefighter helps to nail the wheels onto a child's woodblock firetruck (above). I stuck to the papercrafts and assembled a paper firetruck. I also got a children's coloring book with Funki the fire rescue dog (German version of Smoky?). A little silly, but I actually learn a lot of vocabulary from kid's books.

The rescue ladder from Tübingen was in our town for the day, and people had the chance to take a ride. Unfortunately we were next in line when they had to stop.

There is nothing like a grease fire to draw a crowd. I think this was one of the "public education" aspects of the day.

Here is the youth volunteer fire brigade putting out a fire. They had a bit of trouble to aim the hoses, but managed it in the end.

And finally, the fire department showed off their "jaws of life": the cutter tool and the expander tool (which I didn't know existed), to "rescue" our poor neighbor boy from this car. It was a hot day and he was in that car for a good half hour.

Just another slow Sunday in our small town.

Alles in Ordnung bringen

Lately I have been on an organizational kick. It started with work, really. I realized that most of my German co-workers are really organized, and consistently able to get stuff done on or ahead of time. While I am definitely not someone you would call disorganized, working around people who have their personal and professional lives tracked in spreadsheets, neatly typed weekly plans and elaborate calendars makes me feel that I'm way out in two-standard-deviation-land in a bell-shaped distribution of organization.

When we first moved to Germany our whole lives changed, and getting through each day took so much energy. I could only manage the bare minimum in terms of staying on top of our personal accounts, insurance, etc. I often felt like my projects and management of students at work was "by the seat of my pants" instead of really being in control of what I did each day. But this year I have been able to expend a bit more energy on "the front end" to get organized at work, which has paid off in terms of research productivity.

Neatly organized files. Well, as neat as it gets with the metal shelving that came with our apartment.

I'd been putting off doing the same thing at home, though. Things finally hit a critical point when I realized I had no idea if we had ever paid our electrical bill since we moved into our new apartment in May 2012. All of our bills were stuck in to a few folders, not ordered in anyway, and I knew that I had to organize them to figure out what had actually been paid.

One of the reasons I've been putting off organizing our paperwork is because the German filing system is different. I had a filing cabinet at home in the US, and easily accessed everything in the hanging files. But German put their files into big binders, and papers are punched with 2 not 3 holes. I've been resistant to adopting this system, but in the end I had no choice, because we can't get American-style file folders here, and definitely not 3-hole punch binders.

So one Saturday morning while Joe was on a long bike ride I went around the corner to the "Papier Kittel", our local stationary store and post office, that is open on average 3 hours/day. I bought a big "Ordner" folder and went home to start filing. Then I realized that all our bank statements needed to be filed, but these are on a special paper about 1/3 the size (and yes, we are required to print the statements off at a special printer at the bank or they will mail them to us for a fee). So back I went for a special small "Bank Ordner". I went back one more time for file separators and the shop owner joked with me that there is a German expression equivalent to "Good things come in threes."

The end result is that I got all our files organized, and figured out we had paid our electric bill. But the whole process has been very empowering. For the first time I am really on top of our lives here, and we're actually planning out all our travel for the rest of the year. Germans plan everything so far in advance, and we've found that we need to do this as well to get good deals on flights/trains/hotels. This becomes quite important when you have 6 weeks of paid vacation (enviable to Americans, I know). Bring on the 2-week vacation on the Turkish Riviera: this weekend's reward for being organized and scoring an early bird special on a vacation package!

Hochwasser

The confluence at Passau, before and during flooding.

Last weekend, we were stuck inside due to consistent, heavy rain. Total rainfall in our valley was nearly 4 inches in 48 hours, and we saw the little creek in our backyard swell, and flood the llama barn just upstream as well as the backyard of the Mill. Fortunately, it passed quickly and there was no major damage.

The water in the Ammer, our little creek, dumped into the Neckar in Tübingen and eventually into the Rhine. Our region also feeds the Danube, and there were heavy rains in Bavaria that persisted after ours stopped. The results was that many towns on the Danube flooded.

We watched TV coverage of the flooding intensely, because so many of the places we went through on our 8-day bike ride in April were flooded. The town of Passau, famous for its confluence of three rivers, was underwater, with water levels higher than anything experienced since the middle ages. We stood at the very tip and I made a panoramic just two months ago.

A panorama from the point (center) of the Passau island, April 2013.

Joe's aunt and uncle Barbara and David were in Europe for a few weeks and they stopped by Tübingen to spend a day with us, just before the heavy rains started. We watched the University students race their "Stockerkahn" boats around the Neckar Island in town, with the losing boat tasked with drinking half a liter of cod liver oil. This is quite an old tradition. Fortunately, the race preceded the high water. Barbara and David were planning to spend a few days in Prague, but got turned back by a flooded Autobahn. They did finally make it to Prague for a day or so after the high water on the river Vltava had passed.

Now we are starting to have more regular warm weather, but thunderstorms may keep us inside later this afternoon.

May in Germany

Well it has been a few weeks since the last blog, so maybe it is time.  …or because Betsy is away, I will write a story about our spring.  Or since May Day eve.

 Wednesday 1 May is May Day (traditional Spring fest) and Labor Day in Germany (commemorating the Haymarket deaths in Chicago –for some reason the US has Labor Day at the end of summer), and the evening before our village raised a May Pole.

Maibaum ("May Tree") in our village

And on May Day we went to a picnic at a little hut between our village an the next.

May Day or Labor Day picnic & party

On the way back Betsy ran through a field of dandy lions (or “Lions Teeth” in the literal German translation).

Field of dandy lions

During the last week we ate dinner out side on our deck.

Dinner at home

This past Sunday we went for a ride to one of our local castles for lunch.

Apple juice at our local castle

 And then we rode through the rapeseed (canola oil) fields on the way back.

riding through fields of rapeseed (canola oil)

Train Ride: Saturday 13 April

After a week in Vienna, we left by train.

The view from the train was fantastic; here are a couple of pictures we saw in Austria and Bavaria.

Austria

Southern Bavaria

On average one hour on the train was worth a day of riding.  It was like a rewind on our trip.  Here is a map of both our bike and train rides.  Blue is the Danube River and red is the train route.

Trip across Europe (blue=bike; red=train)

Bike trip with overnight stops

So we passed the time reading/working, drinking a beer, napping (at least for Betsy), and then we were home.

Working,...

...drinking a beer,...

...and napping.

It was very nice to be back home.  When we left it was snowing, and when we returned we were greeted by a full week of beautiful spring-summer weather.

Time in Vienna

While in Vienna, Betsy spent a lot of her time in the conference or working.  So I explored the city.  There is a lot of Vienna to explore, but I always started with the view from our apartment.

View of conference center from apartment

view of wind turbines at sunrise from apartment

Then I took the subway to down town.  One of the main stops is “Stephansplat”, which is the location of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Interior of St. Stephen's Cathedral

I stopped into many other churches, including a Greek Orthodox, which is quite different than most of the Catholic churches.  I also went to a small art gallery and found a painting of a Germanic bagpiper.

German Bagpiper

I also managed to get my bike repaired (chain & gears were worn out).  During the discussion at the bike shops, it was often easier to use English, because the Austrian German was so different.  My impression of Austrian German is that it has the same sound and cadence of standard German, but it is just not standard German.  Nor is it similar to Swiss German, which has a distinct sound and cadence.

We also had a lot of dinners with other people.  Sometimes it was with Rachel in the apartment –the apartment had a steamer and lots of other appliances, so one night I made Knödel (steamed bread dumplings).

Dinner in the apartment with Rachel & Betsy

…sometimes in larger groups.  Like the group dinner for the session Betsy organized.

Dinner with Betsy's session

…and here was a memorable place we went with one of Betsy’s PhD advisors; the restaurant seating area was spread out in an underground maze of cellars.

Restaurant in cellars