US Popularity in CONTINUED Decline Here

As if we Americans could really slide further downhill in the opinion of most Europeans, the current scandal in Germany is that the US nuclear (or newcular) weapons stored in Germany are apparently stored insecurely.  The German government is now demanding their removal.  Happy Monday…

Back from Sweden

It might officially be summer, but as I write this it is nearing the hottest part of the day and the temperature remains below 60° and the winds are about 32 mph.  A good time to report on my trip to Sweden to visit my college roommate Nancy and her significant other, Jonas.  They live in Halmstad, which is on the west coast of Sweden about an hour and a half north of Malmo (which should have two dots over the o, but I am writing this on a French, not Swedish, keyboard.) 

Getting to Sweden was a bit ridiculous, I took five trains and would have had to take more if Nancy hadn’t kindly picked me up in Malmo.  The best was the little train that goes between Niebull, Germany, and Tonder, Denmark.  It is a one-car train, with a driver’s compartment at either end.  It basically is like a two-headed bus that goes on the train tracks back and forth all day between Germany and Denmark.  It slows down for cows that are crossing the tracks to graze in greener pastures. 

When I first arrived in Malmo, Nancy and I had dinner at an Indian restuarant.  Not very Skandinavian, for sure, but SO GOOD and it has been forever since I have had Indian food.  Some Canadian guys tried to pick us up for a fun night out on the town after dinner, but instead we headed north to Halmstad after stopping to check out Malmo’s architectural wonder, the Turning Torso building.

             

Friday, my first full day in Sweden, is a national holiday so that the Swedes can celebrate Midsommar, which is actually the first day of summer.  But in Europe it is called Midsummer, no explanation given.  It is normal for Midsommar to pick flowers, make flower crowns, go to family-type gatherings where kids dance around poles decorated with flowers, eat lots of new potatoes, pickled herring, salmon, and strawberries, and then get wasted.  We did everything except dancing around poles (we did watch others dance around the flower-poles, accompanied by Swedish folksongs and an accordion) and get wasted, although we did drink snaps (Swedish for schnapps) complete with Nancy singing traditional snaps-drinking songs, and have some wine.  But there was no actual drunken-ness. 

  

 

Hosts Nancy and Jonas.  Flower pole in background.

More on the Sweden trip soon!

Off to Sweden!

I didn’t end up getting my haircut.  But it was not the fault of my German, the place that had been recommended to me was closed.  Not just closed for the day, but now a clothing  shop.  (OK, perhaps my German is so bad that I don’t understand ‘clothing shop’ is a cover word for ‘haircuts hidden in dressing rooms.’)  So a haircut is still a needed undertaking.

Yesterday was ‘open house’ at the lab where the public could have a tour and pet marine organisms in touch tanks, etc.  I went on a ‘mud walk’ with a graduate student and some visitors, a family hosting an American exchange student and a woman from Dublin.  We went out at 8 pm and walked through the mudflats, showing the guests the worms, crabs, mussels, oysters and such that live in the seemingly naked mudflats.  Then we stopped to sample some of the local oysters, and the guests pulled out lemons and pepper for the oysters, a loaf of bread, and a nice bottle of German Riesling and we had a sunset picnic on the mudflats.  It was really nice…and this didn’t happen until about 10 pm–that is sunset time here.  Barely.  Really it doesn’t get dark until at least 11.

It was great to meet the American exchange student, she came here at the beginning of last summer speaking absolutely no German, so that was comforting to hear.  She is headed back to the states in three weeks, and we were comparing foods that we missed…Doritos.  Starburst.  BBQ sauce.  It is amazing how easy it is to adjust to missing the big things, but the little things like Doritos can really get you going.

Tomorrow I am off to Sweden for the long weekend to visit my college roommate Nancy.  So hopefully there will be pictures and adventures to add to the blog to make up for my week of silence.

If you happen to run into my dad today, wish him Happy Birthday!

Tomorrow, big adventure

Tomorrow I am going to take advantage of my bosses being in Paris, and I am going to take off an hour during the day and go to get my haircut.  (I could take an hour off anytime, but I always feel guilty taking off during the day even if I am working 12 hour days). 

This will be my first haircut in a foreign language.  I’m a little nervous.  I’ve practiced the words for long, short, front, back, and will pantomime some as well.  I’m still praying that the person who cuts my hair will know more English than I know German.  (Rosetta stone has taught me to say, ‘I need a new ladder, because my ladder is broken.’ but not anything useful like haircut terms.  What is one more likely to do in a foreign country–need a new ladder, or get their haircut?)

 

German views of the US

German politicians slam Bush legacy

Published: 8 Jun 08 15:54 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/12363/

Leading German politicians have strongly criticised President George W Bush’s terms in office ahead of the US leader’s farewell visit to Berlin next week.

A survey of leading German politicians on US President Bush’s legacy by newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten, to be published on Monday, has found that the majority believe Bush has made the world more unsafe.

“The Bush era was not a good one – neither for America nor for those who see themselves as friends of America,” Guido Westerwelle, head of the opposition Liberal Democrats, FDP, was quoted as saying in the survey. Bush opted for one-sided military solutions after the Sept. 11 attacks and caused an erosion of civil liberties, Westerwelle said. The Iraq war weakened the United Nations and Guantanamo Bay is “a disgrace to all the values that America stands for,” he added.

Bush, together with his wife Laura, is to arrive in Berlin for Tuesday for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two are to discuss the upcoming G-8 summit in Japan, the situation in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear program and Africa.

Hans-Ulrich Klose, deputy chairman of Germany’s foreign affairs committee and a Social Democrat said Bush had in no way made the world a better place. “To the contrary: his acts have made a significant contribution to damaging America’s image worldwide,” he said.

Eckart von Klaeden, foreign policy expert from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party said the Iraq war, Guantanamo and the events at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had bolstered Islamists. Jürgen Trittin of the Greens Party said the credibility of democracy in the world had dramatically suffered as a result of Bush’s policies.

In a column for news agency ddp, Karsten Voigt, the German government’s coordinator for US-German relations wrote that both possible successors to Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain, promised a greater readiness to consult allies to solve international problems and to take multilateral institutions more seriously.

 

DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

Windy

It is windy here again, although we haven’t gotten any of the small or large storms that have been hitting the rest of Germany.  I finally gave in and went for a run in the 23 mph winds today because I couldn’t stand another day without exercise. 

I am REALLY boring lately because I am in a push to finish the project section that I am working on.  So I’ve been spending 12 hour days at the computer…and in my few other waking hours running and reading Anna Karenina.  Not much to blog about, but I thought I would let you know I was alive.

My reward for myself for finishing this project section is to take a long weekend trip, so that will provide some excitement eventually.  In the meantime, the big deal of the day was finding ginger ale (actually labelled, ‘American Ginger Ale’) at the store.  So I am drinking my ginger ale while I try to teach my computer model that birds cannot eat and grow without excreting.  In other words, sh** happens, even when you are a bird.  This is what I like about ecology, that it is a very common sense science. 

Words from the boss…

Maybe Germans are known for their work ethic, but when my boss noticed me still at my desk as she was leaving at 5:30 pm, she looked a bit appalled and said “Now, don’t work too hard!”

Beach Weather Weekend

Finally, good weather and a weekend collide…it is in the mid-70s this weekend, so I actually spent some time reading on the beach yesterday.  Not too much time, since I am a red-head.  The water was freezing, and there was also a crazy jellyfish invasion going on, so no swimming.  Some people actually were in the water, but despite my purely northern European genes, cold water swimming is just not my thing.

I’ve been working A LOT, so there isn’t too much exciting to report unless you are really into food web model output.  The biggest excitement of the weekend is that I was walking down the hall of the apartment building yesterday evening and heard english spoken in an American accent!  There is a student group here for a week and one of the students is an exchange student from Tennessee.  He is the first American I have met since arriving in Germany.