Visit to Köln

Last weekend, our excursion was to visit Köln, where the professor who is hosting Jay lives when he is not at the university.  It is about an hour away by train.  He and his partner took us on an excursion to the Drachenfels (Dragon's rock), which is an old castle ruin at the top of a hill and a modern castle (built by some rich guy in the 19th century) about midway up.  It was about 30 minutes from Köln (at least without traffic) near Bonn in the Siebengebirge area. Of course there is a story about a dragon living there, perhaps the one that Siegfried battled.   We didn't encounter it, though there is a small reptile zoo on the mountain that might have the dragon or one of its descendents.  It was a great way to see the fall colors here, which we have so little of in California.

We were lazy and took the cog railway up, but we did walk partway down.  Of course, being with Germans, we had to have a bit of kuchen at the top (and of course, there was a restaurant there, just waiting to serve us).

Here are some pictures from the trip (taken with my cell phone, so excuse the quality)

The fall colors on the hillside

The path down the mountain

The ruin at the top

The more modern castle at midmountain

We all then went out for dinner (first discovering that German traffic on a weekend can be similar to the Bay Area) with another couple, where the husband is doing a sabbatical in the same institute. He has the strongest Canadian accent I have ever encountered -- you can tell within 1 minute that he is Canadian.  

The next day we wandered around a bit, visiting the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, which is an anthropological museum that was originally based on the collection of Herr Rautenstrauch-Joest. They take a different tack than most such museums, where they combine items on the same theme from different cultures to show how things are similar and different across the world -- at this time (it apparently changes all the time), it was "daily life", so we got greeting customs, clothing, weddings, funerals and beliefs about the afterlife. I thought the best exhibit (not part of this daily life theme) was about prejudice against black people (from a German culture perspective).  Some of it was showing really embarrassing old Hollywood movies, but they also showed a old German children's book called "Ten little negroes", that apparently is similar in content to our "10 little monkeys", though what the little negroes do is somewhat more negative.  And lots of "Aunt Jemima" type ads, but for German products, so very different uses of the idea of a black person symbolizing something important about the product.  The museum is also very upfront about the abuses perpetrated by visitors to the cultures they showcase, including missionaries and anthropologists.  Well worth a couple of hours.

Afterwords, of course, we met our friends for another Kuchen at their favorite cafe, and headed for the train station.

On return, I thought "now would be a good time to do laundry", but of course, this is Germany, and laundromats are closed on Sunday.  One really has to plan ahead.  Instead I roasted a chicken (because the oven works well here and because I had planned ahead for that) and we had a very nice, perhaps close to traditionally German, dinner.

Settling in

Obviously, I've gotten busy enough that I haven't found time to post.  This weekend we went to Köln, which I will cover in another post (with pictures I hope).

First, I promised some pictures of our apartment.  Here we go:

The kitchen.  You can see that we are pretty much settled in at this point -- using up all the available counter space

The living area.  A nice lamp for when I want to knit 

(though since we can't stream any shows or movies, and there is no English language TV, 

I don't spend much time knitting).

The bedroom.  Typical German coverlet.

My routine (which has me doing lots of walking) involves pilates (at home -- I haven't found a studio that will take me for only a month since everything requires a membership here, and I don't know if I would be able to understand the instructor, especially when holding a strenuous pose), going to the grocery, butcher, vegetable stand and baker every day (while I am trying out various grocery stores, the main one I use is close to the primary bakery I use, but the butcher and vegetable stand are in the other direction, though close to each other), cooking dinner, going to the wine store, going to the laundromat (about 1km away) 2 times a week, german lessons for 2 hours twice a week, german homework, writing this blog (obviously not daily :-), and walking in the nearby woods.

Apparently my German is getting better, as more people are willing to talk to me, not just about the carrots I am buying, and I get understood more easily.  But trying to get a refund for the money eaten by the laundry machines was a challenge. It ate 4 Euro in the washer and 1 Euro in the dryer before I figured out the secret. (you put your stuff in the machine, adjust the settings,  go to a central panel, put in money, get soap if it is a washing machine, go back to your machine, and hit start.  All within a short period of time, which was the ultimate cause of my problems.) I convinced the attendant to give me a refund for the washer money, but it was just too hard to explain what I did wrong for the dryer.   I've also been communicating with our landlady in German, about burned out lights and installing a wifi repeater, of all things, and she seems to understand what I say.

My kitchen here is better appointed than the previous ones -- I have a whisk!  Do you know how much easier it is to make salad dressing with a whisk? and sharp knives! they make all sorts of things easier -- but it's interesting what I miss.  The microwave is right now a bigger deal than the lack of laundry facilities.  I still have to take a lot of shortcuts here, since I don't have a complete kitchen, and a lot of those are best handled in the microwave.  And there are even a few microwaveable dinner items that one can buy in German supermarkets, which would be nice to make on a busy day.

A few random observations on German culture
    - I had a horrible time finding beer in the supermarket today.  There was a long aisle of liquor, from wine to gin, but no beer.  Then I found a bunch of beer bottles by the large fruit juice and soda bottles, but after careful reading, I discovered that all of them were "alkoholfrei" -- non alcoholic beer -- except for the Radlers, which are a combination of lemonade and beer (like an alcoholic Arnold Palmer), which apparently the Germans don't consider alcoholic.  I finally found the beer (in large bottles, not six-packs) where the bottled water was.  
   - I wanted to buy a small container of mayonnaise.  The smallest I could find was a tube (like the tubes of tomato paste you can find at Whole Foods).  I opened it today, and the tube has a star tip, like a frosting tip.  I think it's to make cute mayonnaise decorations on composed salads or deviled eggs.
   - Now that I am competent enough to have conversations with the butcher rather than just grab packages from the supermarket case, I am impressed with both the quality of the meat here (especially the pork, which I seldom buy at home, but which Jay loves) and with how cheap meat is.  Lots of the produce is more expensive here than California (and definitely more limited), and eggs are very expensive (perhaps because all the ones I find are free range, apparently this must be a big thing in Germany), but meat is maybe 20% cheaper than I am used to paying, with significantly better quality.  Too bad it was this week that the WHO decided to tell us that processed meat and red meat are bad for us -- I am turning into quite a carnivore.

Back in Duisburg

Yes, we thought our last trip to Duisburg would be the final one, but we are back again, for a month.  We have a few mini-vacations planned, so there will be some things to blog about.

We arrived yesterday.  Managed to stay awake till 9pm, so I think we will get on the timezone quickly.  We did that by walking all over everywhere -- I got over 20,000 steps on my fitbit.  To the grocery store, downtown to buy Jay an umbrella (he lost his in Italy, but he only wanted a "good German umbrella" -- the US ones weren't sturdy enough for him.  Given the cost of German umbrellas, they better be sturdy, and he better not lose this one), and to stock up on wine at our favorite wine store (the owner recognized us, and knew exactly what wines to show us -- of the five wines we tried, we bought three of them).  

We are in yet another "vacation apartment".  This one is in a duplex; it's the upper floor of one half of the duplex with our landlady living below us.  It is the largest yet, with a completely separate living room.  It's also much brighter, both from good lighting and two skylights.  I think I will be able to see to knit and read here in the evenings.  It also has a dishwasher (which Jay likes). The downsides are that there is no microwave oven, no freezer in the refrigerator, no washing machine and the nearest laundromat is a long walk, and the wifi is very slow.  We weren't supposed to have wifi at all, but that was a deal killer for me, so we are (with permission) camping on the landlady's very slow wifi.  We are seriously considering buying her a new router.  Especially in the evening, when she is using it, it feels like we must be using an old modem or something.  We can't stream netflix or amazon, which was our primary TV experience, since there isn't any english-language TV here.  Here are some pictures of our cosy abode.

[Well, I tried to upload the pictures, but google won't cooperate.  I think it may have something to do with the poor wifi -- it's trying to save my phone data, since I am on roaming, but I have unlimited (albeit slow) data here, so it's not the right thing to do.  Maybe tomorrow I will add some pictures of the apartment.]

Apparently it is this part of Duisburg's turn to be torn up.  Not only have we found at least 4 streets that are so torn up you have to detour around them, the supermarket that I have finally learned the layout for (the Edeka) is being renovated and is closed for most of the duration of our stay (and probably will have a completely different store layout, so I'll still not be able to find anything).  

I'll be continuing my German studies while I am here.  I will have the same teacher, but this time she will come to my apartment for lessons.  Maybe we will even go out in the "real world" and learn some practical skills.  

So for me this trip will consist of german lessons, shopping, doing laundry and vacations -- perhaps I will get some hiking in.  Hopefully there will be interesting things to blog about.