Travel adventure: playing Hausfrau in Germany

We are going to spend a month in Germany this fall.  Mr. R-T has a fellowship that will have him working in a lab at the University of Duisberg for a month, and I plan to go along (this is much more interesting than his work trips to Columbus, OH or Schenectady, NY).  I'll be working on becoming a competent German conversationalist, biking and hiking in the local woods, and shopping at Markt's, Bakerei's and the like. And in my spare time, maybe do a little Open Source coding. We expect to be able to spend Friday - Sunday each weekend touristing.

I'm working on building up my German vocabulary and grammar. (I spoke semi-competent German as a child, but with the grammatical skills and vocabulary of an eight year old -- not too useful as an adult.).  I've found two sites on the web: livemocha.com, which enables you to pracice speaking and writing with your work reviewed by native speakers, and duolingo.com, which is a great vocabulary builder (and also teaches a reasonable amount of grammar).  I also went through the entire Rosetta Stone German series.  I'm still not particular competent, and also absolutely freeze when I have to freely generate German sentences, but I'm working on it.

I'm just getting started thinking about these weekends; not sure whether to spend them visiting parts of Germany or to go to Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen and the like.

So here's a shout out to the collective wisdom of those of you who read this blog.

1. Do you know of other sites on the web that are useful for learning a language (specifically German).  I especially could use more speaking and pronunciation practice.
2. If you were living in northwestern Germany, where would you go for a 3-day weekend?  Why?
3. What quintessentially German activities should I make sure I get a chance to do?  I mean more or less everyday things, not go to Okobertfest or the like. 

Why are cars so seductive?

I made a commitment to do as little travel by car as I can (as I described in a previous post). This is, of course, for things like daily errands -- I live in a world where public transportation for long distance travel (other than airplanes, which are arguably worse than cars in terms of greenhouse gases) is just not practical.  It's turning out to be harder than I thought.

Here have been some of my excuses recently:

• I have too much stuff to carry.  This was for weekly grocery shopping (4-5 heavy bags) and for leaving and picking up things at the dry cleaners.  Maybe the first could be somewhat solved with panniers, but I haven't gone that far.  I have no idea how people carry most dry cleaning very far either walking or on a bike.  I suspect the answer is not have clothes that need dry cleaning.  The major grocery shopping trip isn't too bad, as I only go once a week.
• I need to bring home things that need refrigeration, and if I go by bike, they will melt/spoil (this was for a grocery trip that only involved quantities that would fit in my backpack).  I suppose I need to invest in some sort of insulated container, but I'm not yet convinced that these happen often enough to make that worthwhile.
• I don't have time.  This happens more than I thought it would.  My retired life isn't completely non-clock-driven.  Sometimes I really do need to get to the next appointment quickly.  This week it had to do with an appointment with other people (I barely got back from my bike ride in time to drive as it was).  I probably could plan better to not have back-to-back commitments, but my use of other transportation should be enjoyable, not a source of stress, right?
• What, bike/walk to the gym at 5:30am?  Are you crazy?  (Actually, I don't bike to the gym even when I go at other hours).  This is probably my biggest weakness.  It just feels like it makes the exercise take too much time (it would probably add 40 minutes to each session).  OK, I admit it.  I'm a wimp here. 
• It's cold/it's raining/it's too hot.  I haven't used this excuse too much, but that's because we are in the Season of Perfect Weather.  But I expect it to come up.  
• It's dark/it will be dark when I come home.  This hasn't been an issue much because of daylight savings time, but it will be in the winter.  I do not like to bike even on our suburban roads after dark (I have good, but not great, lights on my bike)
• I have a flat tire/bike not working/can't find my helmet.  Hasn't happened yet, but it will, I suppose.

What brings this up is that I realized that I haven't used my bike for errands at all this week (I did use it twice last week -- both times to meet friends).  Why is it so hard to use something other than the car?  I know people -- in the US -- who don't have cars.  I don't think that their surroundings are more "compact" than mine (it's easier to walk or use a bike when the distances are small), but they aren't seduced by the notion that a car is justifiable "this one time", because they don't have that option.  And they have the busy lives typical of non-retired people.  Even though I commuted by bike (part of the time) to my last job, I would never have considered going "car free" when I was a working person.

This is really making me question my commitment to a minimal-car lifestyle.  Has anyone reading this made the switch?  What gave you the inspiration to work through these issues?  Or how did you make these problems go away?

  

Getting back to (the new) normal

OK, I know, I fell off the blogging wagon.  I definitely need more discipline here.

My excuse is that I was gone for a week to my son's wedding (though that doesn't explain why it took me a month to get back to this blog -- procrastination, I guess).  I haven't discussed the wedding here, as a wedding is really not relevant to being retired (unless you think that planning for larger wedding expenses than you predicted should be part of retirement planning :-).  But it was a beautiful wedding and we had a great time. Marrying off a child is an important milestone; it definitely makes you think of your child as an adult more than before.

Before the wedding, which was on the East Coast, we went to New York City to take in a few shows, eat in nice restaurants, and do normal touristy things. This is definitely something we want to do regularly in retirement.  We went to see "Book of Mormon" (which was good, but not as good as the hype) and "Mathilda" (which was excellent -- definitely better than the hype, but then there wasn't much hype around it).  I came away with at least three more shows I want to see this season. (For those wondering which shows caught my eye, they are: "Kinky Boots", which got lots of Tony nominations; "Anne", a one woman show about Anne Richards, the larger than life Democratic governor of Texas;  and "Pippin", which is nominated for Best Revival and apparently is practically a Cirque du Soleil-style show.) We also love museums, walking in Central Park, visiting less well known tourist attractions, and just soaking up the New York ambiance.  I am very glad that I don't live in New York, but it really is a great place to visit.  I hope we can arrange things to visit at least once a year, for a long as I can handle cross country plane trips.

Once we came back, I started getting more seriously retired.  While I still have a large number of things on my "must-do" list, given the time constraints of dealing with the various administrative retirement-y things and the wedding, I wasn't taking on even one-day projects.  I now have more of a routine (I have a hiking day and a biking day, and I've moved a bunch of my regular errands into the weekday to free up more weekend time; I go to lunch with someone at least twice a week), but I am also taking on more garden and cooking projects.  I've been making jam and artisan bread (soup is up next); my very small garden is in full flourish -- we are having salads using lettuce from the garden every night, my green onions are just about ready, and I can see small tomatoes on the tomato plants (so maybe cherry tomatoes in July; that would be fantastic).  I didn't plant enough of the sugar snap peas; so far they just generate enough pods that I can snack on peas each afternoon, but not enough for a meal, even for just two of us.

While I think that the specific things I spend my time on will change a lot ----I'm right now exploring things that I haven't had time to do recently; I'm sure I'll get my fill of baking and cooking -- what I am enjoying most is that much of my day is driven by activities I select.  I still have errands to do -- dry cleaners, laundry, bill paying, trying to sell some furniture we are no longer using -- but I am able to make sure that my day is more than 50% things that I am actively looking forward to. That definitely wasn't true of my work life, where a lot of my work was driven by deadlines, but it's my model of an ideal retirement.