EuroLIfe: Day 203

German Pastries...

...are delicious. There are just no two ways about it. And, as it turns out, there's a shop around the corner that makes their own fresh pastries every morning. Somehow, it took us a few months to find this place, but find it we did--and there's been no looking back. (Just as my parents; during their visit, most of their breakfasts came from our little corner shop!)

I realize that a person should limit her pastry intake, but here's the problem: It takes, on average, 90 seconds to get from the door of my apartment to the corner store. It's a little store, and the pastry counter is right up front, and there's never a line, so it takes about 60 seconds to make your selection, pay and get out of there. 90 seconds back, and we're talking about a 4 minute trip. 4 minutes of your morning, and you have freshly baked pastries.


Now, since I have developed a coffee aversion during this pregnancy, I drink tea in the morning. And tea, as you may know, requires a few minutes to steep. Actually, it takes about 3-5 minutes. And 4 minutes is really exactly between 3 and 5 minutes. And a person has to do SOMETHING while her tea steeps, don't you think? So we get pastries a lot :)

The selection you see in the photo was from a week or so ago. (These were not all mine, I assure you!) There's a strudel, which is kind of like a crumb cake, an apple-strawberry pocket, and a Berliner (Jelly donut). All are rather delicious. They also make their own croissants, both plain and of the chocolate variety, and muffins...the list goes on.

All of this brings us to this morning. As anybody who has ever lived with me can attest, I do not wake up well. I am what the Germans call a "Morgenmuffel", which is to say I am not a morning person. In Jena, this has been a bit easier because I am free to sleep until 9 or 9:30, and then laze around for awhile before I get started with my day. (I do realize that all of this is about to come to a crashing halt come July.) I love my sleep, and I always wake up wishing it were not quite time to wake up.

Add to that my recent pregnancy symptoms, and mornings have not gone well for me of late. I just can't sleep, and I NEVER have trouble sleeping. If I'm not up using the bathroom or drinking water (a terribly vicious cycle), I am trying to find a position in which (a) my hips don't feel like they're broken and (b) I can breathe. I can manage one or the other, but it's hard to get both at the same time. And, of course, the baby does some form of martial arts while I'm trying to sleep, which I really love but which can be a bit distracting.

All that to say, last night was a very bad night, so I decided to try to sleep in a bit this morning (or, more accurately, lay around a bit.) Michael got up to start his day, and after a while he came back in...with a cup of hot tea and a delicious pastry breakfast! My favorite, even: half a strudel and half of this delicious pastry filled with Nutella and something like vanilla pudding.

It was an absolutely wonderful way to start the day.

EuroLife: Day 200

The weather is absolutely gorgeous today, and has been rather Spring-like for most of the past week. I love it! I particularly like living in a hinter-haus now that the flowers are in bloom. We don't actually have our own yard, but it usually feels like we do. Somebody has planted the flowers that fill the courtyard, and somebody is clearly taking care of them, but we very rarely see other people out there!

The are directly in front of our windows has not been used for any gardens, so I'm hoping the clear it up at bit and plant some flowers of our own as well. Anyway, I thought I would share some pictures of the current view from our apartment!

From our living room (which is, of course, also our kitchen and dining room :)

The above picture is too small, I'm afraid. What you can't see is that behind the hedges, the courtyard is filled with rows and rows of red tulips!

And from our bedroom ( a peek at the tulips) :

Eurolife: Day 196

Tonight, Micheal and I began a new tradition--though it will probably be a short-lived one. I'm due on July 9th, which is in about 11 weeks and coming fast. While walking around town the other day, I saw a restaurant that I've been meaning to try for months now, and I realized that we'd better get around to trying it one of these days while we can! So, from now on, we have a weekly night out (a "date night," if you will :) and the plan is to check out the city while we can.

Today's selection was the Kartoffelhaus No.1. (It's the only Kartoffelhaus that I know of, but seeing as they designate it "no.1" I thought it worth mentioning.) This "potato house" is a restaurant in a nice open square downtown, and I had read good reviews online. Then some friends were talking about it after church on Sunday, so we figured we'd give it a shot. True to me genes, I love potatoes, so a potato house sounded pretty good to me.

The weather was fantastic today, and it doesn't get dark until sometime after 9pm these days so we were able to eat outside. I just love eating outside--that's a practice that was deeply ingrained in my by my mother--and as I said, the location of this place is quite nice. So, it was a lovely dinner!

Since I've not been posting very many pictures recently, and almost no uniquely German pictures, I decided to take pictures of our meals :)




Michael ordered what was basically a plate of 3 kinds of meat with potatoes. Among the meats was a small rack of ribs which looked just delicious, and which tasted pretty good. (The sauce on them was a strange German barbecue-like concoction.) The potatoes, however, were really delicious. It was very hard for me not to just eat all of Michael's potatoes once I tried them.



I got a big old baked potato filled with mushrooms, something that we think was probably chicken, and a cream sauce. It was actually very good, apart from the texture of the stuff that we think was probably chicken. Still, on the whole I really enjoyed my meal (and a few bites of Michael's.)

Ooh, and I decided to branch out and try a beverage that I'd seen advertised at all sorts of bars and restaurants but not yet tried, called a Zitrone (or "Lemon.") I had tried the "bitter lemon" recently, and I'm really determined to just keep ordering new things in the hopes of discovering something delicious. So, I got my Zitrone and it looked just like bubbly water...and it was basically a Sprite :) It was not quite as sweet, and it was apparently made on the premises, but it was not exactly the exotic endeavor that I thought it would be!

And true to German fashion, it cost (a) significantly more than Michael's beer and (b) about half the price of my meal.

After dinner, we walked around town and got some delicious Italian ice cream. Tonight was definitely one of those nights when I just love living in a little European city. Occasionally it will just hit me that we live in Germany--you'd think I'd have figured this out by now--and sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes it's a bad thing. Today it was, and is, a very good thing!

One more thing: Michael and I are now eminently more reachable than we have been. Instead of calling a number here in Germany, you can now call us through a US number! You call a regular US number, and our laptop here in Jena rings through Skype. Even better, when we're offline, the calls are forwarded to our home phone here! The number is just like any other number, so you can call it from a cell phone or landline at no extra charge. Skype is really very cool, and I am very impressed with the state of technology these days. Anyway, if you would like the number, shoot me an email. I accidentally deleted quite a few of my email contacts recently while cleaning out my mailbox!

EuroLife: Day 192 Update!

Just a quick note about cilantro; I should have checked this out before I wrote. There's a reason the Germans and the British call cilantro "coriander"...that's what it is! If wikipedia can be trusted, the coriander plant has two culinary uses: the seeds can be dried and used as a spice, or the leaves can be eaten. The flavors are pretty different, but both are common uses. For some reason, in the States we have elected to give the leaves a name of their own, rather than call them coriander. So, here I was chastising those crazy Europeans for confusing cilantro with coriander and it turns out their approach makes a lot more sense than ours!

That said, the Germans have no idea what Cheddar cheese is. Ours tasted more like "American Cheese Product" than cheddar. It was a sad discovery. And, for the record, those were for sure not Thai peppers. They were far milder than jalapenos, so now I have no idea what they could be. Still open to suggestions :)

EuroLife: Day 192

Joy of Joys!

Anybody who spent any time with us over our recent US visit knows how badly we have missed Mexican food. We basically started eating salsa as we got off the plane and continued until they had to pry the salsa out of our hands and put us on the plane back to Germany. (This might be a slight exaggeration, but I assure you it is only a slight one.) I have tried, and tried, and tried to find a way to make Mexican food here, but I have been stymied at every turn! No amount of creativity can produce Mexican food without at least some of the following: cilantro, reasonably hot peppers, cheddar cheese, tortillas or tortilla chips. We had managed to track down the last two, but the rest--the really crucial ingredients--had proven themselves unattainable.

Until now.

It began in South Bend, actually, where I learned from friends that the Germans (and the British) call cilantro "coriander." (You can imagine my confusion, as we call something else "coriander.") I actually did see cilantro once during our first week here, but it was called "Mexican parsley"...and I never saw it again.

Anyway, a few days ago in Tegut (our grocery store) I saw a big table of fresh herbs for sale. As I had many a time, I set out to find cilantro. Part of the trouble is that the Germans just love parsley, and there are a few varieties and they dominate the herb-table. As cilantro aficionados know, cilantro looks just like parsley, so it blends in all too well. Fortunately, instead of looking for "mexicanische peterseille"or "cilantro", I now knew to look for "koriandar."And I found it. And I gasped, did a little dance, and started to look for more, grabbing pot after pot thinking that I would buy every available cilantro plant in the store. After settling down a bit, I decided to buy two and trust that the good people of Germany will surely not offer this just this one time and then take it away from me. (I sure hope I'm right about that.) So off I went, feeling as proud of those two plants as I've ever been of anything.

On the way home, I stopped by a little outdoor market looking, once more, for jalapenos. No luck there, but I did see a little package of short-ish, skinny red peppers. I asked the woman how hot they were and she gave me a funny look and said "hot...normal hot..." Despite the less-than helpful answer, I bought and practically skipped home to show Michael.

At this point, we were pretty delighted with our prospects. So delighted, even, that we decided to invite Timo (a friend) over for a genuine Mexican dinner on Sunday. We figured we could buy black beans (available, as we have learned, only at the local Chinese Imports store), tortillas (available at our grocery store if you look long enough), and some acceptable cheese like gouda and make black bean and rice quesadillas with our homemade salsa. Even if the peppers weren't hot enough, at least we had cilantro!

Then, this afternoon, things got even better than I could have hoped for. As I was making my way over to find some tortilla chips, I noticed a flash of orange. Dark orange squares, neatly arranged in a nicely packaged little line. Stamped proudly on the package was a British flag. "It can't be," I thought...but it was. Cheddar cheese. Real cheddar cheese! Now you have to understand, I have checked every cheese section of every grocery store in town. The best I could find was a grated cheese mix with 10% cheddar, and that's only at a very far away and otherwise uninteresting grocery store. But today, in a special section nowhere near the rest of the cheeses, I found cheddar. Words cannot express the hope I feel this evening as I rethink our Mexican food prospects for the coming years.

Two more things worth noting--and I know this is getting long! First, we have not yet tried them, but I think the peppers will be more than hot enough. They are unlabeled apart from a "Thailand" sticker, so I did some googling to try to find out just what it was that we had on our hands. (If anyone recognizes them, let me know what they are! I put the pen in the picture for perspective.) My best guess now is, not surprisingly, that they are "Thai peppers." If so, we are going to have to find some way to de-seed them without dying. They are incredibly hot; as in, jalapenos-don't-even-count-as-hot-compared-to-them hot. They are the reason that "mild" Thai food, at a good Thai restaurant, is never really mild. I'm hoping I'm wrong about this, and that there are a nice, jalapeno like pepper. We'll let you know.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that Mexican food will probably never play the role in our diets here that it did back in South Bend. Back then, beans & rice with salsa was a staple, either in quesadillas or just on a plate. They were cheap, delicious, and super easy. Here, in addition to the necessary ingredient scavenger hunt, it is decidedly NOT cheap. And it's not as easy, since we can only buy dried black beans. It was about 2 Euros for 8 slices of cheddar cheese. More strikingly, it was nearly 4 Euros for the tortillas. 4 Euros! For about 12 tortillas.

All that said, I am rather happy about our recent success. I hope this wasn't terribly boring for those of you who can just jet out for Mexican whenever you feel like it...but next time you do, think of us!

EuroLife: Day 189

Our Little Ninja

Every four weeks, I get an ultrasound of our little guy. This is not typical, even in Germany, but apparently the blood flow to my uterus is a little on the low side, so they want to check-in from time to time to make sure he's growing enough. It turns out he is; in the four weeks I spent in the States, he more than doubled in size! I know these measurements are not super accurate, but they have him at nearly 3 pounds already, so nobody's really worried about this blood-flow business :)

Still, they have to get a doppler measurement of the blood flow, and they need to get a sufficiently long series of uninterrupted waves across the screen so that they can do a printout for their records. Yesterday, this was problematic. The doctor had the doppler pressed against my side, and the waves were flashing across the screen, but she kept sort of sighing, fidgeting, or chuckling and clearing the screen to try again. Finally, after a few minutes, she let out this exasperating groan. "He just keeps kicking!" she said. "There's nothing wrong with the baby, and I can see that this measurement is fine, but I really need a printout and he keeps kicking the doppler! He doesn't like it."

Now, at this point I need to pause and apologize to our faithful reader and friend Matt Traut. Matt doesn't believe in ascribing intentional states to babies before they get a grip on the whole language business; he's fallen for this particular pitfall of contemporary analytic philosophy and will not be dissuaded. Nevertheless, I have to tell you the doctor was right. He really doesn't seem to like being poked, pressed, or otherwise cramped. (Or he loves it, and thinks it's a game to kick back--you choose :) When I try to sit with my arms on my belly, like when I'm reading, he kicks my arm over and over again until I move it. If Michael lays his arm across my stomach or side, same thing--the persistent internal punching. So I was not surprised when he attacked the doppler, but I was impressed that he was able to disrupt the whole process so well at his age. After that, it got even more difficult for a while because not only was he kicking, but I was laughing--neither of which helped. Still, in the end she got the reading she needed and he got a little workout.

When she finished taking his measurements, I asked if we could see his face. (Because they do these so regularly now, they're rather perfunctory--faces, after all, don't really need to be measured like skulls and femurs do.) She tried, but the best we could get was a half-profile of sorts. Still, it was totally worth it because he was sucking his thumb! That was really incredible to see. It's very fun to think of him in there hanging-out, sucking his thumb, and attacking would-be crampers of his space.

So there you have it. A totally self-indulgent pregnancy post. And I don't even have a picture to share! I will post a new pregnancy profile soon, but I really didn't feel like having my picture taken this evening so that will have to wait.

Instead, I will post a great picture from our visit with my family. Yesterday was my brother-in-law Will's birthday, so this is sort of a happy birthday post, but also just a picture I'd like to share. I'm not sure I know anyone who laughs as hard, or as contagiously, as Will does. It's awesome. There is nothing quite so satisfying as making Will laugh, and we all try to do it whenever possible.

Michael took the cake this time. There's this dirty joke involving poor English to Japanese translation and the Purdue Chicken slogan. (Some of you surely know the joke; the rest are on your own. I will not repeat it here.) Michael, out of the blue, decided to share this joke with Will. The result can be seen in the picture above. I will have you know that Michael told this joke well within earshot of my mother, which scandalized me but seemed to make her laugh (which further scandalized me.) In any case, I leave you with the photo.

Happy Birthday Will!

EuroLife: Day 186

The first time Michael saw this little bag sitting on our assigned seats in the airplane, he said "Well, that's a little disconcerting..." He was right. Delta only gives these babies out to passengers who are planning on spending entirely too much time in the air. They are actually quite handy, and contain ear plugs and an eye mask as well as a variety of odds and ends like a toothbrush, some hand lotion, a headset...and I can't remember what else. Still, they are reserved only for us "long haul" travelers, and I'd be happy not to have to see one again for a while.

We'll start writing about Germany again soon, but first I thought I'd write about our return to Germany. All in all, it took 20 hours to get from the door of my parents house in NY to the door of our apartment in Jena. (Incidentally, I am of the position that it should never take 20 hours to get home from your parents' house.)

We made excellent time getting to the airport. There were no lines, and the international terminal is quite small, so we had 3 hours or so to wait for our plane, though they boarded an hour before the scheduled departure so it was really only 2 hours. When they announced that our flight was boarding, I heard them tell a flight attendant that they would be using the "people mover." It was an odd sort of vehicle--somewhere between a bus and a train-car on wheels--and it "moved" us people out to where the plane was parked. Then we sat there, in the people mover, for quite some time. And we sat there. And we wondered why the people mover was no longer moving the people, but simply containing them. At last, they let us on the plane (after raising the people-mover to the proper height--I'm telling you, it's an odd vehicle.)

Once on the plane, we had to wait for a second people-mover trip to go get the rest of the passengers. Then we began to taxi, and heard the following announcement: "Due to the fog outside, there is a build-up on the runway. We have not yet been assigned a number, but we are anticipating at least an hour of taxi-ing before takeoff." There were some groans, but not too many. Then, about an hour later, we got the really bad news: We still had not been assigned a position in the take-off line. We were not facing the right direction, and only planes that are facing the right direction get assigned a number. ("Why," I thought, "don't you just turn the plane around? And why exactly are you telling us this?") Still, judging from the captain's count, there were 36 or 37 planes ahead of us...planes that had been assigned positions in line. We should expect "an hour to an hour and 50 minutes" of additional taxi time. Then people started to groan. I asked for some water, and the flight attendant brought a bottle for Michael and I--hidden behind her back! I guess she didn't want to start some water demand riot. They did eventually give us all water, and they got the TVs working so it actually wasn't that bad.

The flight was fine once it took off. The Delta 757s have individual TV screens with about 20 movies to choose from--as well as TV shows and games--all of which are available for free and on demand. It makes a HUGE difference on an 8 hour flight. We slept some, watched some TV, watched some movies, and as I said, it really wasn't bad.

We had purchased our train tickets weeks ago and, fortunately, there were about 3 hours between our scheduled arrival and the departure of our train. Because our plane was 2 hours late, we were quite happy about this and made it to our train with time to spare. Once on the train, things got tricky. It very quickly became clear, through some announcements in German that Michael was diligent enough to pay attention to, that the train was not stopping at the station at which we were scheduled to transfer. A fellow passenger said that there was construction, but that we could transfer somewhere else and take an alternate train. We did so, but our tickets were only for the specified lines, so we were a little worried. Eventually, the conductor came by and took our tickets. He looked at them, and looked at them, and finally said "Ah, I'm sorry, but this are not valid." Michael, prepared for this, gave him a detailed explanation of what had happened, and why we had no other options, etc. He smiled politely and said "Yes, I understand, but these tickets aren't good because they were for yesterday."

Fortunately, Michael laughed. I booked these tickets. I was SURE I booked them for the right day. However, I booked them for the day of our flight home, and it was on overnight flight. The thing about overnight flights is that they carry you from one day clear into another one. Train tickets for the one day are not very useful on the next. So, we paid the (full, on-the-train) fare for two new tickets, and I sat there wondering how Michael could find this so very funny.

After that, things went quite smoothly :) We transferred once more, new tickets in hand, and arrived at Jena. We took a cab home and fell into our apartment at 5pm Jena time, or 11 am NY time. (We had left the day before at 3pm NY time.) We dropped our bags off, and set out for the grocery store because nothing is open on Sunday, and we had no food. I think the walking was good, though, because it kept us awake!

One last story: Michael went to bed at around 8. I went to bed at 9, after falling asleep in the bathtub and deciding that that was probably not super safe. I fell asleep immediately, and woke up in what I was sure was the middle of the night, feeling quite rested. I checked the clock, and it was 10pm. I went back to sleep, and woke up again certain that the night was nearly over only to find that it was 1am. Again at 1:30, then at 3 where I stayed awake until about 3:30 (and Michael disappeared for a midnight snack.) Finally, sometime after 3:30, I fell into a super deep sleep and could barely get up for church at 9am.

I spent the day trying to stay awake, and now that it's nearing bedtime, I'm beginning to pick-up speed again! I've never had jet lag quite this bad, and I'm not sure why. It's very strange. I'm sure it will be better soon, but it's a funny feeling!

So that's our "long haul" travel story.

I hope this post wasn't too grumbly. I should say, we had an absolutely wonderful trip home! We had a great visit with both of our families and between Girls Week 2008 (hosted by my wonderfully agreeable parents) and our South Bend trip, we were able to see quite a few of our friends. It was hard to leave, but only because it was so nice to see everyone. So on the whole, we don't really have anything worth complaining about. It was just a very long trip.