Irrational Exuberance

Two things that I’ve observed:

1. The world no longer hates Americans, they just think we’re stupid. And who can blame them, we elected W, not once, but twice! And if a person who speaks American English seems to have an I.Q. score of more than about 27, it’s assumed they’re actually Canadian.

2. Marketing campaigns in Europe are all about exuberance.

Here’s the problem: 

Europeans love the idea of exuberance + Americans are annoying for their exuberance = We really want to be exuberant, but only if no one is looking. It’s so…silly, whilst we’re trying to look so…sophisticated.

Coconuts?

I came across this heap of things on one of my morning runs. At first I thought it was rocks, then I decided they were rutabagas, but Art Vandelay tells me they are sugar beets, not coconuts. They are apparently grown in cooler climates and are piled in the field to dry. The tops and root ends have been cut off. I’ve been seeing fields of what I guessed were kale, and wondering why they were planted so late in the year, but they must be sugar beets. Maybe, like winter wheat, the plants get a good start in the fall, then start growing again in the spring. I pulled one of the suspected kale plants to see if it was a root vegetable, but there was no bulb growth yet. Because the leaves are so large, I’m guessing that the plants must put their energy into large leaves that gather fuel quickly, which allows the plants to survive winter and restart quickly in the spring to produce these sugary blobs.

My Morning Run

Today is a national holiday – All Saints Day – so I had time for a longer run this morning and will soon head out for a day hike. I really like living here in Germany, but I miss my run buddies and want them to see my new running route. It’s not as hilly as their routes, but very pleasant in its own way.

I Has Opel

It’s funny, I think my English has deteriorated since I’ve been in Germany. Certainly not because of all the German I’m speaking, but because I’m constantly simplifying my sentences for everyone around me. I should make an effort not to do that…

But here’s my new car. It’s a 2008 Opel Corsa with a built in bike rack that pulls out from the back bumper. It’s very practical and fuel efficient. I’m guessing that it will cost somewhere between $80-$90 to fill the tank. No wonder I haven’t seen a pick up or SUV since I left the U.S.

Anyone care to name it?

Overconsumption

This was my shopping list for Saturday:

• Car
• Toaster
• Washer
• Dryer
• Coffee grinder
• Microwave
• Blow dryer
• Vacuum cleaner
• Running Shoes

I bought everything but the car and the running shoes in about 35 minutes at one store, then paid with a debit card. No muss, no fuss. It felt like one of those old game shows where they gave contestants $1,000 and 60 seconds to fill their shopping cart.

I probably have a lot in common with people who are in a witness protection program; one day they’re in their nice, comfortable home with a full junk drawer and wheezing coffee maker, the next thing they know they’re living out of a duffel bag and wishing for clean socks.

The Upside to Dreary Weather

 

 

Fine droplets of moisture from the morning’s heavy fog made this spider web look like a Halloween prop.

Office View

My office window looks out on a field of brilliant yellow sunflowers. We’ve had heavy fog and frost in the morning here, but week by week the blooms continue to open and provide us a splash of color in an otherwise gray morning. How ironic that I moved from Kansas, the sunflower state, to an office halfway around the world overlooking a field of sunflowers.

Intrepid

This is Julie. She’s from Georgia. We started our new jobs on the same day and I’m constantly amazed at her courage. She’ll hop in the car or on a bus or a train and go anywhere. She’s not reckless – actually she’s well organized and well informed – but she just doesn’t let uncertainty slow her down. On the day we took this photo, she had hopped on a bus from Erlangen to Herzo, then hopped in my car for a trip …somewhere. We hadn’t really agreed on what we were going to do and when I picked her up I had misplaced the addresses for IKEA and another destination. So we navigated to IKEA without our sat-nav, then to Nuremberg for a little window shopping and dinner at an outdoor cafe. Since then we’ve been to Koln and she joined my brutal German spin class. While everyone else was unfolding their sweaty bodies from the spin bikes, she was sprinting the mile to the bus station.

I think she’s going to have a very interesting life.

High Security

I’ve done my best not to poke fun at our cultural differences, but I can’t help commenting on the care with which everything is locked up here in Germany. We have a small room mate sized refrigerator in our office and even it’s locked. There is a security desk at the entrance to the building, a badge scanner beyond the security desk, locks on my office door, then a lock on the fridge, which probably offers a full cubic foot of food storage space. But it’s built so that it can be neither opened nor closed without a key, all for the security of one carton of milk for our coffee.

This week I’ve really met my match with a clothes washer. It’s in the apartment building next to my hotel and accessible only via the locked door to the apartment building, then in a locked room. Both washer and dryer have these padlocked electricity boxes that accept not coins, but tokens, which are sold down the street at the hotel front desk. They’re much more secure than real coins.  And the electricity box is placed so high on the wall that I had to climb on top of the washer to feed my tokens in.  This is all in an upper middle class neighborhood where I don’t think the middle aged residents are going to put much effort in to stealing laundry tokens. But I am relieved to know that the local rabble will have to really work to steal my undies.

Stella

FedEx freed my cross bike from the greedy clutches of German customs last week and the local bike shop reassembled it for me in time for my regular Sunday ride. I’m sure they don’t see many cross bikes and even though our language differences limited conversation, we were on the same page from the moment I dragged the box in the door. The mechanic had a box cutter ready before I even set the box down and we tore into it like kids at Christmas. They indicated they’d have it ready on Friday, but when I went by to pick it up they couldn’t take my credit card or debit card.  Hard to believe, but they sent me out the door with the bike, somehow knowing that I’d be back the next day with cash. Thanks for shipping my ride, Rick!

But wait, there’s more. I headed out for a cold exploratory ride on Sunday morning, almost entirely on paved or gravel bike trails, going from one tiny village to another and hoping I could find my way back. Just outside Hammerbach, estimated population 23, I passed a couple of women on a two lane track through a field. Their golden retriever, Stella, started following me so I stopped to let them catch the dog. It turned out that they were American, which was pretty darned exciting since I don’t speak German yet. So we stood right there in the field and chatted like old friends for probably a half hour. We’re getting together, along with their husbands, for drinks and sushi on Friday. So maybe this is what it means to be an ex-pat.