Young Man, There’s No Need To Feel Down…

Walked home for lunch today, past the construction site for the Climate Change education center.  The construction guys were listening to the Village People.  Definitely not something you would see hear in the US.

Pictures and stories from Stuttgart

I travelled to Stuttgart a couple weeks ago (right before I got sick) and while I didn’t take too many pictures, I did take a couple in the Schlossgarten, or the big park that runs down the center of downtown.   Here is the first view, it was a beautiful hot sunny day:

But, if you are a typical German, how would you spend such a beautiful day?  In your Speedo, of course:

Stuttgart was a great city to visit, although it is in a valley and it felt very closed in after being on the coast for so long.  There were beautiful old museums, houses, churches and castles, and much of them were centered around this long, well-maintained park.  Of course, half of them or more are currently being refurbished, so taking pictures was not too easy.  When I disembarked the train in Stuttgart, I first saw the ‘Gosch Sylt’ Fish House, which is the famous seafood restaurant that has locations all over Sylt–two in little List alone.  Then I turned the corner and saw a Starbucks…so I sort of had the feeling that I was not anywhere unique (not that I didn’t hit the Starbucks at least twice a day during my trip). 

The State Museum had an amazing collection of paintings and sculpture, although much of the museum is under renovation and I didn’t get to see many of the modern pieces I so looked forward to seeing in person.  But I saw some beautiful Klee pieces that I had never even seen pictures of before, and two Picassos, plus a number of other works I loved.  I bought some postcards, but have no scanner at the moment so I can’t share.  I also did a lot of shopping in Stuttgart, as they had a great bookstore with shelves and shelves of English books, a newstand with most of my favorite magazines in English, and a great running store so I finally was able to buy new running shoes. 

I went to an Irish pub one night, and it turned out the guy sitting next to me had just moved to Germany from Havelock (town next to Morehead City in NC) four months ago, and was also visiting Stuttgart for the weekend.  It was nice to be able to share the ups and downs of the move, and talk ‘American’ English for a while, rather than having to enunciate and not use slang as I have to do with the Germans.  I was asked to introduce the band, who were a funny bunch of Brits.  The bar-tenders (who were mostly Irishmen) said they loved it when Americans drank there because they were such good tippers.  The Germans usually tip about 5%, while the Americans will tip 25+% most of the time.  It is good that our reputation is not entirely negative among Europeans…  In addition to getting my Irish bar fix, I also met a friend from the US for lunch and we had amazing Thai food.  My friend lived in Thailand for a while, so our interactions with the waitress were a bizarre mix of English, Thai and German which probably was enough to give anyone listening a headache.  That evening when I arrived back at the hotel I got into a conversation with the valet, who was from the Dominican Republic, and got to practice my Spanish a bit since I can speak Spanish better than German.  So, while I saw a lot of German sites I actually did not interact with Germans very much on the trip.

I do have a few more pictures, but they are on my phone so it may be a while before I master enough German to follow the instructions…

Finally, the sun…

Yay!  The sun came out today, accompanied by actual warmth.  Of course, not until our field trip was over, but summer-ish weather should stick around a bit so I am happy. 

We walked along the northern tip of the island at the beginning of our field trip, so I have now stood at the northern-most tip of Germany.  This is the local tourist boat, going out into the inlet to look for seals and harbor porpoises.  We saw some seals on a little sand island in the middle of the harbor, but they were too far away to hear or photograph.  They are smart enough to stay away from people. 

Here are some of the students looking at the mussel beds.  The mussel beds here are being invaded by the Pacific oyster, which is of some ecological concern because it is a non-native species and it appears to be replacing the mussel rather than co-existing with it.

This picture shows a number of invasive species:  Sargassum, the Pacific oyster, and the slipper limpet (latin name Crepidula fornicata because one slipper limpet lives on top of another on top of another in a pile, and it looks like they are mating). 

Here you can see the mud flats below the nice sandy beach in Konigshafen, where much research has been done by scientists from the laboratory at which I work.  The students collected oysters on the field trip, then ate them for dinner.

Here comes the sun…

Good news!  It is supposed to warm up.  A little.  I actually have been wearing a sweater around lately, it has been cold enough for that to be necessary.  I’m helping to teach a class on analyzing food webs this week, so even though I am now healthy I am still not updating too consistently.  I will take my camera on our field trip tomorrow, though, and hopefully have some new pictures to post soon.

Wild Life?

Tonight I went to my first German party, which was a graduation party for two students from the lab.  So it was a marine scientist party and really, about the same as those I went to in the US, only I had no idea what people were saying.  I can pick up some words in German now, and I understand if people are speaking in past or present tense, but that is about it.  But I stayed for four and a half hours, so I am pretty proud of myself.  Of course, everyone can speak English and so I did socialize, but not in big group conversations (I would just listen, and every once in a while someone would lean in and tell me what was being discussed).

Probably the highlight of the night, and if you know how much I love rodent sightings you understand that I mean this as no insult to the party or its attendants, was that I saw my first hedgehog!  I at first thought it was a large, fat rat, but then I realized it had no tail and also did not so much scurry as waddle.  Unfortunately, hedgehog faces are kind of like possum faces and therefore I wasn’t completely overcome with excitement, but hedgehogs ARE way cuter and also less ornery than possums.  They actually look a lot like the hedgehog toys I am always buying for the dog.

Funny on Obama Website

So, my friend Nancy in Sweden had mentioned to me that she met some Americans in her town by joining a group of ‘[Presidential Candidate's Name] Supporters Abroad’.  So, I wondered if there were any events for Obama relatively nearby in Denmark or Germany.  I entered my location, and then picked ‘events within 100 km’ which I thought was being generous in terms of how far I was willing to travel.  I was not too surprised to find no events, but the website gave me the option to expand my search to 200 km, so I selected that option just out of curiosity rather than willingness to travel that far.  No events.  ‘Expand your search to 400 km?’  Sure.  No events.

Now I was kind of hooked, and we went up to 800 km.  No events.  (Okay, this is getting kind of silly…Obama is actually speaking in Berlin soon, and I know of groups near the military bases.) 

1600 km.  No events.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Finally, the Obama website informed me that there are no Obama events, ever, within 52000 km of List, Germany.  This is AMAZING, because the circumference of the globe is less than 40,100 km.  Apparently the campaign is quite inactive.

Oh Dear God Its Raining Again

And I am still sick.  This is getting old.  To top it off, my parents claim that the weather in Seattle has been heavenly for the past 10 days.  No wonder my years of Seattle nurture aren’t saving me from becoming slightly batty due to, oh, a month of rain and wind and low-6Os temperatures.

In my only news for the day, I am moving tomorrow…but not far.  In fact, my new apartment will share a wall with my old apartment.  But for less money per month, I will now have TWO rooms, a bigger bed, and a little kitchen to myself.  Yay!

Cough cough cough…

Still sick, although I have my appetite back.  I haven’t missed out on much (other than running, and going to the festival taking place all weekend across the street) because it has been a pretty blah week weather-wise here.  In the low 60s, lots of winds and lots of rain, especially in the morning and early afternoon.  Not too summery feeling, even for someone raised in western Washington! 

Being sick away from home (or in a new, not-homey, home) is a bummer…no couch to curl up on, no English garabage tv to curl up in front of, no pets to snuggle with.  I spent most of the weekend doing low-energy chores and otherwise reading (Robinson Crusoe…surprisingly interesting, surprisingly good…and ‘American Short Story Masterpieces’) and watching some Weeds episodes from season 3.  I put myself on a very limited I-Tunes budget, and this month’s allotment went to a season of Weeds and 2 Frontline episodes.   

Last night I tried to go to bed early, since it was Sunday and I am sick and blah blah blah, and I was almost asleep when suddenly I thought I was back in Carteret County–it sounded like there were bombs dropping next to the apartment building.  (For those of you not aware, there are bomb ranges for the military in Carteret County, and it is not unusual to hear bombing going on day and night.)  After the first ‘bomb’, there were more weird loud noises, at irregular intervals, and I finally got up went into the hallway.  I really couldn’t tell what side of the building the noise was coming from, and finally I went to the front door.  There were fireworks at the festival across the street.  In America, this would be done on the Saturday of the festival, but here it is done on Sunday I guess.  I am not a big fireworks fan, but I did watch the rest of the show because clearly I wasn’t going to be sleeping until it was over.

The only advantage of my cold thus far is that it did save me from some embarassment last week.  I was at a talk given by some master’s students who participated in an ecology project in an international program, and their presentations were in English.  Sat through, trying to time my coughing and nose-blowing to coincide with pauses in the talk.  Finally, at the end, when we Americans might begin clapping, I turned and buried my head in my elbow and coughed.  Thank God, because otherwise I would have been the lone idiot clapping while all the Germans signalled their approval by rapping their knuckles on the table.  The room was filled with knocking.  Well, now I know.  I don’t understand, but I know what to do.

Alive, just sick

I’m still alive, I’ve just had a crummy cough/cold/ear-ache/sneezing/achy suite of symptoms all week.   All writing effort has been focused on work and not blogging.

Hopefully this weekend will be the end of it, and I’ll write next week!

Mixed Smoke Signals

There was a funny story today on BBC radio.  The Netherlands has joined the trend of forbidding smoking in public places, but apparently this applies specifically to tobacco.  So the famed coffee shops of Amsterdam et al. claim that the ban will not affect their business.  However, the new law means that no longer can you mix your cannabis with tobacco.  Thus, people are ‘forced’ to smoke only pure cannabis.  This is increasing use of water pipes (or bongs, the BBC helpfully translates).  Dutch authorities acknowledge that this whole situation is ‘not a perfect solution’ but have decided that tobacco is the larger public health problem (duh).  Of course, since I am allergic to marijuana smoke (and severely enough that I haven’t even tried to see how I react to actually smoking it or otherwise consuming it), this means that it is now probably even more dangerous for me to go near a coffee shop in The Netherlands. 

Shockingly, I haven’t seen much coverage of this interesting issue in the American press.