I'm very thankful for...

Howdy Dear Reader,

In honour of my very first Thanksgiving, I have decided to break with the traditional of writing different forms of German greeting (though not enough to dispel with the British spellings of things). Despite American Thanksgiving having been last Thursday, the dinner was moved to Saturday, in order to give our chefs time to cook all the mountain of food that we enjoyed. According to our trivia quiz on Thanksgiving (I'm pleased to say that the Americans did well but the rest of us internationals had no idea what was going on), all the food that is traditionally eaten is native to America - turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce...

In order to help the internationals understand what we were celebrating, our American friends told us the story of Thanksgiving. From memory of what they said, Thanksgiving is a festival which celebrates a feast that occured in the first winter of the European's arrival in America (in the year 1621). The pilgrims were struggling to find enough food, so the native Indians gave them enough excess food to enjoy a feast together for three days. Every year they celebrate this feast in order to show their thankfulness to the Indians, although the message has changed slightly over the years to 'forget' the Indian contribution and instead to be thankful to God for providing food.

Despite arriving a little late, there was still plenty of food to go around - so much so that my friend's flat is now covered in bowls of half-started dishes, much like after Christmas Day lunch through into Boxing Day. On my arrival, a container of corn was thrust in my direction with the instruction to take some out. Not knowing what this symbolised, I carefully selected three pieces. This was wise, as it turned out to be the number of things we had to tell the fellow members of our Konstanz Family what we were thankful for this year. Being told to go first also posed a small problem but I decided to stick to the situation - I'm very thankful for... (1) good friends; (2) being able to come to Konstanz; and (3) being served up a delicious dinner. It seemed that this was the right direction to go in, as many others also followed suit and while a few decided to be thankful for some stranger things - such as their bike - it seemed that the feeling was very much about acknowledging how lucky we all were to be in Germany, getting to travel and being cooked delicious food!

One of my favorite new food discoveries was that of the Pumpkin Pie. Although my sister and I have previously tried to make this delicacy, it was certainly better having been cooked by someone who knew what she was aiming for! Baked with fresh pumpkin from her 'Jack-o-Lantern', it tasted scrumptious and I am very much looking forward to eating the left over slice currently sat in my fridge.

Glühwein Drinking

Bhüeti Dear Reader,

Over the last two days I have been discovering the joys of Glühwein (mulled wine) – the traditional drink of choice at German Weihnachtsmärkte (Christmas markets).

Last night, a few friends and I hopped on a bus to the first night of the Weihnachtsmarkt Am See Konstanz. Our first port of call down by the harbour? One of the many Glühwein stands to get our first taste of Advent. Having got our hands round wonderfully warm and beautifully decorated mugs, we then wandered along being tempted by the many different offers of food along the way. In the interest of my stomach and sampling German market food, I went for a Bratwurst covered in Senf (Mustard) served straight off the grill. Unfortunately we arrived too late to see all of the non-food stands, so I shall have to return back in the daytime.

Tonight, I went to a friend’s house with a few friends and, having managed to drink a bottle cheap Glühwein, we decided to try to make our own version. Using a red wine as our basis, we then added tangerines – both segments and peel – as well as Zimt (cinnamon) and cloves. It turned into more of an English mulled wine, which is less sweet than the Glühwein we were attempting to make but equally yummy. Apparently my limited knowledge of wine stretches to be able to mull a good brew…

Wrapping Up Warmly

Zawas Dear Reader,

Today I have spent another lovely couple of hours in the Altstadt of Konstanz with with two of my law friends at the Voglhaus. I was delighted to find Linzertorte back in the cake display again and was also most excited to discover that the Voglhaus has now moved to a winter drinks menu. I happily slurped on the warm non-alcoholic Voglhaus Punsch – apple and cranberry juice mixed with chai, lemon and, I think, cinnamon. It was simply delicious and was described by my friend as “the taste of Christmas”. We wrapped up warmly in blankets to drink our drinks on the street, listening to a busker playing a strange stringed instrument unlike any I have ever seen before.

When it got too chilly to stay still, we wandered through the Altstadt to the habour – where the Christmas market will take place. Already the little huts are being set up, with hints of their contents only displayed by decoration on the outside. Though very empty today, I cannot wait for it to be up and running properly; I think I will have to find plenty of excuses to pay visits - surely one must try the drinks at every hut before the market is over, right?

We also spotted the beginnings of some Christmas decorations. The narrower streets appear to be favouring the paper-lantern-like star, which lights up at night, and is suspended on its own between the buildings. I’m intrigued to see what the next few weeks will bring, and I hope that Konstanz will become a festive winter wonderland, but do I dare to wish for light snow-dusting on the top? It seems that from this weekend until I go home, my German Christmas experience has begun...

Kant und Kipferl

Hoi Dear Reader,

Right now it is only the end of Saturday but if last night and today were anything to go by, this should be one of my nicest weekends within Konstanz of meeting up with friends and generally relaxing. Having had a wonderfully long lie-in - a welcome change after the slightly insomniac tendencies that have appeared in the last week or so - I headed off to uni for the Tag der Geistewisschenschaften's Geistes Slam. Based on the idea of a poetry slam, various important people were invited from the humanities faculties to make an eight minute speech and convince the audience that their subject was the most interesting! We were treated to talks on Immanuel Kant, the Ancient World, the Aramaic Language, Telephone Sex and Colloquialisms within German. I'll admit the talk on colloquialisms went over my head, not being a native German speaker, and this led to my level of understanding being equivalent to a small child as I could not recognise what the true meaning of the saying was! Luckily my tandem partner and her boyfriend were willing to translate various obscure bits for me, so I could attempt to laugh along with everyone else.

On my return home, I discovered that my kitchen had been transformed into a festive bakery, with delicious smells coming from the oven and tasty looking cookies on every single surface. I have no idea how long they had all been baking for, but I joined them for the final 6 hours. Although I have not yet managed to ascertain why so much was made, I do hope that at least some of the 15 biscuit tins or so will be made available for those of us who live in the flat with them. I managed successfully to take on the role of honorary child, as I had never seen many of these German Christmas biscuits before, and my Mitbewohner and their friends were very happy to name them for me, as well as let me try the broken ones and even treat me to the occasional story behind them, as well as letting me 'clean' both the icing and chocolate bowls - sugar heaven! One of my Mitbewohner has agreed to teach me how to bake Kipferl, which is a very traditional Christmas cookie and comes originally from Austria. It seems this traditional has also spread to Germany over the years, and I am very glad that it has as they are yummy and (hopefully) very easy to make.

Tomorrow I am headed back to Voglhaus for tea and cake with some English friends - I wonder if their baking will be as good as ours today...

It's All Fun and Games

Gute Nacht Dear Reader!

I have just got home from a lovely evening of playing games with my tandem language parter and her wonderful friends. My tandem partner and I meet up every now and again for her to teach me German and me to teach her English (although my English speaking skills were called into question tonight when I tried to call a triangle a three-corner). Our conversations vary wildly in topic and language, so I always look forward to our meetings. I am slowly discovering fluency in Denglisch (a mixture of Deutsch and English), with some of my favourite Denglisch words being 'geschnitzelt', i.e. to have eaten schnitzel, and also 'gewent', i.e. to have gone somewhere. Tonight I went to her flat in the Paradies area of Konstanz (far more southern and nearer the centre from where I live) and was introduced to her very friendly Haustier Kaninchen (house rabbit), who was called Lotto. Lotto seemed to want to be the star of the show and once he got used to the idea of there being a large group of people in his home, decided he would make the most of it by getting the maximum attention, being fed the occasional grape, trying to steal the board game pieces and generally running around madly.

All too soon it was time to go home, and on my bus journey back saw my very first Christmas tree of the year - a huge traditional Tannenbaum outside Lago (the main shopping centre) covered in little white lights. Usually I bemoan the start of Christmas being too early and that decorations should only be put up in December, but this year I am prepared to indulge given that my end of term is not until the 22/12! Already my Mitbewohner (house mates) have bought supplies for Christmas baking, and I am excitedly awaiting my trip to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) next week when it opens. I admit I am in love with the lead up to Christmas and I hope that this year I can do all the things I am usually too busy to do, such as going to see a Nativity, attending a Carol Concert and bake yuletide delicacies (of which there seem to be many here, though no mince pies spotted as of yet...).

On a side note, I do not really recommend watching Der Vorleser (The Reader) before 10am when you are half asleep. For those who have seen it, I am referring in particular to the scenes in which Michael is young...For those who have not seen it, I recommend waiting until later in the day to view, as it is a very good film (Kate Winslet got her Oscar for it) and stays fairly true to the original book's plot line by Bernhard Schlink.

Bonbons in Bonn

Juten Tach Dear Reader,

This weekend I went to visit a good friend of mine in Bonn, who is currently studying at the Universität Bonn. I had an absolutely wonderful time and cannot wait to return in the summertime, and will hopefully make it over to see Köln (Cologne), as well as other friends who are studying much more northwards than I am!

We had a very hectic Saturday, which thoroughly exhausted us for the rest of the weekend. We munched on Nordsee for lunch, which impressively served up Fish & Chips in typical British style, complete with open-top cone! We walked over to see the main university building. The building is the formed Electors’ Schloss (castle) and is absolutely stunning when the winter sun shined, just highlighting the vibrant yellow colour.

We then wandered along the side of the Rhine (far larger than in Konstanz) to go down to the Bundesviertal, which is the former government district. We stumbled across a signposted walk, the Weg der Demokratie (the Path of Democracy), which we followed to have a stare at the various government buildings, dating from when Bonn was the capital city from 1949 to 1999. As a result, many of the buildings are very modern, while others were seemingly ‘borrowed’ from various academic institutions. Rather than bore you with photos of it all, here is a photo of the Deutscher Bundestag, which was only finished around the time the Bundestag relocated back to Berlin again.

In need of a sugar boost, we caught the U-Bahn (underground) to the Haribo Shop in Bad Godesberg, one of the southern districts. The Haribo shop blew my mind a little bit – so many different sweeties, many of which I had never seen. The slight crazed look of the people in the shop was also a surprise; desperately loading boxes on boxes of Haribo into their trolleys, or fighting with small children over the pick-n-mix. Unfortunately I was limited by how much I could physically carry, so settled for some Christmas themed Haribo to share with my family and a packet of Salz Brezeln to try, in the spirit of its German-ness.

Having indulged our senses, including trying some sour fizzy bear tongues, we were going to spend the evening in. However, my friend’s Columbian Mitbewohner (housemate) had other plans for us, especially after I was willing to try his Grandma’s toasted ants. They were surprisingly tasty, and led to an extended evening in a local pub trying Kölsch, the traditional beer of Köln.

Following our unplanned lie-in, I decided to go it alone to visit the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland on the Museumsmeile, which is a museum of divided Germany. The exhibition starts with the Nazi time, and traces the history right through to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so thus the reunification of Germany. I especially enjoyed the layout of lining up the DDR (East Germany) and BRD (West Germany) in terms of time, so that you could see what was going in both halves at the same time. I happily spent many hours (pretty much the whole afternoon) learning about one of my favourite periods of history, and could probably have spent many more there if I had the time. In the evening we went to a lovely Vietnamese restaurant and had a wonderful evening chatting with my friend and one of her classmates. I think that my friend may well be returning there many times for the rest of the year!

On Monday, I wandered through the Altstadt to visit the Beethoven Haus, which was the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven. The floorboards were all amazing creaky, giving the house a lot of character. I noted with interest the change in spelling of Beethoven on the music scores, ranging through from the Ludwig being Louis, and van Beethoven being von Beethofen. The array of hearing trumpets was also amusing of various lengths, as well as getting to see lots of old instruments and family paintings.

Bonn really is very proud of their townsman and this is one of my particular favourite statues of him.

CERN

Salut Dear Reader,

Yesterday I went on the eight hour round trip to visit CERN in Geneva, at the opposite end of Switzerland. Despite the long journey, it was totally worth it, if only to indulge my inner geek for a little while.

CERN is the name of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (the original name, which fitted with the abbreviation, was later changed) and it is the home of the Large Hadron Collider, which graced the news with tales of forming black holes and blowing up parts of France and Switzerland. Having determined from our guide, Ricardo – who was essentially a real-life Leonard from the Big Bang Theory (he also watches the programme and finds it funny!) – that we would be safe and no black holes would be formed, we went on with the tour and passed through various restricted area signs and warnings about radiation…

Our first stop was the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR), which is very much the baby of the CERN family, as it actually fitted in a room above ground. Here Ricardo told us the theory of electromagnetism and banging teeny-tiny particles together. We asked what seemed like hundreds of questions over the tour and Ricardo admitted he liked our group for being so engaged. We felt so proud – we loved him too – and his passion about his work was plainly obvious for all to see, as well as generally being a nice chap, unafraid to admit that physicists do have a geeky image, but also know how to have fun (with new computers mainly…). From the feedback from the other group, we definitely got the better deal and it did make the trip.

We then went into one of the old control rooms, which Ricardo himself described as being like the deck of the Starship Enterprise (yay, vaguely Trekkie reference), as well as later admitting that if I attempted to speak in Klingon, there probably would be a group around to converse with.

Following that we went to look at the Linear Accelerator (linear because it goes in a straight line, rather than bending any corners) -LINAC. Apparently this is important for generating sufficient speed and energy of the relevant small particles (nowadays, commonly protons), which is sourced from the little bottle of hydrogen you can see below.

For those that were worried there was some huge dangerous source of crazy elements, do not fear – this little bottle is going to last a very, very long time.

Then we headed to the Computer Control Centre, where we were shown the first computer that created the internet. What was great was that there was a sticker on the mainframe essentially saying do not turn this computer off – imagine if they had, there would no longer be internet, or at least not as a know it today. Maybe I am my father's daughter after all...

Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the Large Hadron Collider, though that probably is to be expected, given how much the LHC is worth and the very relaxed nature of the tours (not at all like the UN Buildings, where passports and special ID were a must), however we did go into an exhibition before the tour and see a simulated version – so here is a picture to feel like you were there too!

Also just to prove that the physicists do have a sense of humour, we spotted this on the way out…

http://computer-animal-shelter.web.cern.ch/computer-animal-shelter/index.shtml