Letters from Frau Dietz

Spring has sprung

2012-03-20T15:44:00.006+01:00

In the interest of blogging openness and transparency: that bee is dead. But I do promise I didn't put it there.

Well, isn't this lovely? The sun is out, the birds are singing and I keep finding myself flinging open windows and doors and enjoying the lovely fresh spring air (and shutting them all again ten minutes later when I realise how cold it is). We're still being subjected to grey days and the odd bursting raincloud round these parts, but it seems the end of winter is in sight. And as far as I'm concerned, oh how the signs of spring are welcome: winter may not have been bitterly cold all the way through, but boy was it long, grey and boring. Now we have the odd pink bud trying to make itself known on my side of town; but on the other (fancy) side, the park is a lovely carpet of purple and yellow that's just begging to be skipped through. And skip through it I would, if I was (a) over there more often and (b) wasn't hobbling around like an old lady for the second time in a matter of weeks. Me and my poor laptop are both feeling our age a bit at the moment, and that, combined with a sudden explosion of work, other interesting/terrifically dull projects, spontaneous (ish) adventure and the confusion of potentially exciting future plans has meant that I haven't tended to my blog for some time.

In between all the dull day-to-day things, however, there's been lots of lovely fun, such as a 36-hour Ryanair roundtrip to Cambridge for the utterly beautiful wedding of my very oldest friend (by which I mean I've known her since we were three; not that she's 103). The ceremony was a wonderfully happy and moving mix of British, Colombian and Sri Lankan traditions, and I got to see some lovely people who I've not seen for a very long time and spend half a day stocking up on tea bags, poking around second-hand bookshops and gorging myself on slow-cooked lamb. I also had a good wander around Cambridge, where I've not been since I was 7 or 8 rather nonchalant years old, and on which visit I proposed to a dashing Argentinian friend of my brother's. On this visit, less distracted by older men, I was able to appreciate just what a very lovely town Cambridge is. Yes, a town filled with thousands of bespectacled, be-bicycled students wearing long scarves and serious expressions having intense, clever conversations over tall coffees and intelligent cake, and indeed on that day a town rather overcast with grey clouds and drizzle, but a very lovely old town all the same.

Cambridge, during my three hour hunt for a pub that no-one had heard of, but was extremely lovely once I found it; one that has officially received the Frau Dietz stamp of approval

Downing College (I think).

I do love England.

Other March highlights so far? Well, on Sunday, B and I took the S-Bahn over to Frankfurt to watch my wonderfully-talented friends Gabby Young and Other Animals playing at the Union Halle as part of the Women of the World Festival. We made a point of missing Frida Gold, who they were supporting, because (a) none of us had ever heard of her and (b) once she started, she sounded awful. She even played a really bad cover version of Gold by Spandau Ballet. Twice. Anyhow, Gabby and her band were both musically and visually as spectacular as ever, but I only took completely rubbish photos in which you can't see anything except for the odd streak of bright red hair, so have none to share. Luckily a nice lady from HR1 was there taking photos of them and she very kindly tweeted me a link to some proper pictures the following day. Thank you nice lady from HR1, though I have no idea how you knew how to find me and am a bit frightened by that.

For those of you who expect more talk of food from this blog, well, I've recently - and I'm not sure why - been spending a lot of time cooking mediterranean lunch dishes that involve baked eggs. I have been therefore delighted to discover that I like not only frittata, but also a good hearty tian too.

My First Frittata, by Frau Dietz (involving potatoes, onion and red pepper). Quite proud.

I am looking forward to a bit more fun and games over the coming weeks, too, including a visit from two of my favourite people in the world who I am VERY EXCITED ABOUT SEEING; a nice rare steak in celebration of my birthday next week (33: yikes); and another high-speed trip to the UK to celebrate the marriage of two more of my favourite people in the world. Oh I do love a good wedding. Unfortunately, in between all the fun things going on there are going to be lots of boring, slightly stressful things as well, so me neglecting my blog is probably not about to change. I do, however, have a couple of food-related items to share over the next week or so, one of which comes with my sincere apologies to the Blogger Stammtisch crew: the tardiness of my "Food" post for this month's roundtable (five days late and counting) is approximately 30% my fault and 1,000% that of my laptop)(have I mentioned that maths isn't my strongpoint?).

In the meantime, if you're an English-speaking expat blogger in Germany then I'd recommend having a think about heading over to Expat Bloggers In Germany, where the first rumblings of planning for WEBMU 2012 (the annual expat bloggers meetup) have been occurring. I had the greatest time meeting lots of fantastic folk last year in Köln, and would highly recommend getting involved in this years antics if you aren't already.

I conclude with another lovely picture of flowers from not-my-side of town, this time without the dead bee. I hope it's lovely and sunny wherever you are, too.

Was it something I said?

2012-03-03T09:06:00.000+01:00

I have, in recent months, dedicated a considerable amount of time to trying to ~~capture~~ make friends with a little fluffy-earled dazzler who hops about happily on our surrounding rooftops, occasionally stopping to soak up the sunshine (above) and not infrequently popping by ours to dig around in the pots on the balcony. S/he has even ventured into our flat on one, presumably accidental, occasion, and his or her enthusiastic reception towards the hazlenuts I've been part-burying in a plantpot had been leading me to believe we might finally be approaching the status of Best Friends (see below). In light of the fact that I have just been presented with an impressively large pile of rather less savoury-looking nuts on one of our balcony chairs, however, I'm not sure my feelings are being reciprocated. Thoughts?

Clicketty clacketty clicketty... silence

2012-03-01T16:01:00.004+01:00

On my daily expat-blog-checking rounds yesterday morning I discovered to my great excitement that, having nearly tried to take an old typewriter to dinner a few weeks ago, I've been featured on Click Clack Gorilla's Dumpster Find of the Week. I'm still regretting not having lugged the lovely typewriter home, but hurrah for me for having at least managed to take a photograph of it in all its proud yet somehow mournful, streetlamp-lit glory. And also for not having wrecked my back by carrying something that heavy all the way up the hill and 99 steps home. (Though I have rendered myself temporarily immobile since then simply by sitting down and watching a film. Is there no justice?)

Hurrah too, and rather more deservedly so, for Click Clack Gorilla herself, who almost two weeks ago now brought an utterly gorgeous Mini Gorilla into the world. And not without considerable effort: Nikki's today posted a refreshingly honest account of the birth (which went from home birth to hospital birth to c-section) that makes for a jaw-dropping and emotional read. I'd highly recommend popping over for a look.

Anyway, to celebrate our individual successes (which are, admittedly, of somewhat disparate levels), here's a video of Mrs Gorilla Lady and her band, Black Diamond Express Train to Hell, playing a right cracker of a set over in Mainz a mere two weeks before their sixth member arrived on the scene. This is how to do pregnant, folks.

Frau Dietz's Guide To Enjoying Karneval. By Frau Dietz.

2012-02-27T13:38:00.001+01:00

"HELLLLAAAAAAUUUU!" ... oh, do be quiet.

It seemed as if I'd only just become accustomed to the idea that not only had 2011 been and gone but that January had flown by too when all of a sudden it was Karneval week. I totally failed to blog (almost) anything about it last year, so I thought I'd better make the effort to say a little something about it this time.

Karneval is one of those events that people either absolutely love or completely detest: you're either wildly enthusiastic about, or hugely upset at the prospect of, tens of thousands of highly excitable people celebrating various Catholic, pagan and political traditions by dressing up in "hilarious" costumes and cavorting drunkenly for an entire week down every last cobblestoned alleyway in Mainz (I've not been to any of the Wiesbaden parades or parties but I dare say they're a little more conservative). I must be one of very few that really sits on the fence about it: I'm not exactly passionate about getting crushed by crowds of drunken revellers and/or sliding through through their vomit, but I do love a spot of fancy dress and a bit of freestyle dancing in the street; plus the Dietzens have a long Karneval-based tradition, and who am I to tell my German family to put on the kettle, plump up the cushions and spend an evening on the sofa instead?

The Annual Dietz Saturday Karneval Party took place this year at ours, and was attended by various visiting Dietzens plus their spouses and friends. We ate vast quantities of slowly-roasted pork, drank a glass or two of booze, got dressed up as a small band of rather unattractive-looking dead people (you may note an ongoing theme in my choice of fancy dress: I'm enthusiastic yet somewhat unimaginative) and before we knew what was happening, found ourselves on the other side of the river in a tiny, smoky, sweaty student club dancing away to De La Soul till the very small hours of Sunday morning.

Yes, I actually Ebayed a wedding dress. Shame on me.

These days, however, staying up till 5.30am rather takes its toll on Frau "call me Grandma" Dietz, and after a somewhat painful Sunday involving two completely hangover-inappropriate films, a much-needed bloody mary and a stagger to the shop for Haribo in which we followed two sheiks and a drunken Stormtrooper across the road, B and I entirely ruled out the possibility of attending the Rosenmontag parade the following day.

And yet at noon on Monday, ground down by peer pressure, I found myself standing in the middle of Mainz, clutching a sausage and a beer, blinking sorely in the bright sunlight (not in the full outfit, mind; day 2 I went Casual Zombie). But do you know, I'm jolly glad I went: it was the best fun I've had in ages, and certainly the best fun I've had at Karneval thus far.

Our small band of five, looking even less alive than we had 36 hours previously, found a fantastic spot to watch the activity, a spot where the crowd was enthusiastic enough to create a terrific atmosphere yet thin enough to provide a decent view of the floats and amazing costumes marching by without me wanting to kill anybody. Throughout the afternoon we accumulated a good stash of sweets, frisbees and lemon-scented handwipes (though not as good a stash as the family next to us who, through sheer determination and, on occasion, brute force, managed to fill two rucksacks and a cardboard box); had an argument about whether blacking oneself constitutes being racist or not (apparently if one does it on Karneval it doesn't count); and soaked up the sunshine on the first truly beautiful day we'd had in weeks.

Size-wise not one of the more impressive floats, perhaps, but probably my favourite member of this year's Rosenmontag procession.

Post-parade organised chaos.

Much as all this is terrific fun, I'm going to have to admit that it's not actually the parades or the getting hit in the face by handfuls of sweets that really does it for me at Karneval. What I'm actually a fan of is the casual mixing of the bizarre with the commonplace that you get everywhere you care to look, if you're looking in the right places. I love, for example, a portly monk indulging in a beer and a cigarette on a street corner. I love a pair of tigers making out in a doorway. I love a cow driving past on a scooter. What could be more pleasing than popping into a cafe and reemerging to find one's friends have started a kickabout with a nun? Only perhaps turning a street corner to discover a group of pirates playing Whitney Houston full blast from their balcony with an impromptu gathering of 150 people in fancy dress dancing away in Memoriam below. I'm also a big fan of the marching bands that wander around the city for hours after the parades have finished, and the small, bobbing crowds of dishevelled dancers with smiling faces that follow them wherever they go.

I also love how German all this partying is, from the intensity with which Having A Good Time is embraced, to the casual yet orderly way in which 150 drunk people dancing to Whitney Houston will happily, smoothly dance out of the way to allow a group of Guantanamo-orange chaps with rubbish-clearing devices go about their business.

Spot the pirate party.

I suppose what I'm saying is that although, theoretically speaking, I'm both keen and not-so-keen on Karneval in equal measures, I seem to have worked out how to do it in a way that I find incredibly pleasing: that is, without getting crushed by crowds of drunken students or being vomited on by one of The Village People; but instead by revelling in the comedy and the bizarre and by doing lots of dancing about with a lot of awfully happy people as the sun sets over a very messy city. I'm just extremely grateful it only happens once a year.

I'll leave you with one invaluable Karneval tip. Should you ever find yourself on the wrong side of a square with several hundred partygoers between you and your desired destination, there's only one way to cross it: take a deep breath and do the congo.

Where did January go?

2012-02-02T11:29:00.001+01:00

Having failed to blog about all sorts things I got up to last year that I'd really wanted to write about, I have an enthusiastically half-written "where did 2011 go?" sort of a blog post in my drafts. However, with February already on the scene my nostalgic musings about 2011 suddenly appear a little - like whichever Apple product it was that you got for Christmas - out of date.

It seems that the dust caused by last year screeching to an almighty halt four weeks ago had barely settled before February turned up, all trumpets and fanfares, pointing sternly at my new psychology textbook whilst blowing raspberries in my face. I just don't know where January went. Well I do: it was spent swimming frantically up and down a chlorinated lane full of old men in baggy swimming trunks, working hard, reading hard, mending things, creating heavenly vegetarian feasts in the kitchen, admiring newly upholstered chairs, hanging out with friends, hanging out with family, meeting my new tandem partner (also called Frau Dietz: brilliant) and trying to fill in a fifteen-page employment form. It's just, well, rather like the twelve months that vanished before it, I don't feel like I have anything to show for it. Having said that, I'm currently tucking into my brand new psychology course book and every time my eyes pass over the words "computer model" and "statistic" I'm aware of another small cluster of my brain cells popping like bubble wrap... so if nothing else, I'll have a few more wrinkles to as proof of my diligence by the time this month comes to a close.

It's a shame about the 2011 review blogpost really, because it included some lovely photos of beaches with white sands and twinkling lagoons; a picture of a nice plump apple strudel; and a video of 30,000 (give or take) Mainz 05 fans singing You'll Never Walk Alone which would raise the hairs on the backs of the necks of even the most unemotional and disinterested sports' fan. And the hackles of any single Liverpool fan, come to think of it. Or Celtic fan, for that matter. Anyhow, given that it's -11 here today I think I'll share a couple of photos of idyllic Cretian beaches anyway. Close your eyes, block out the frostbite and soldier on, folks: it'll be springtime before we know it.

Elafonisi beach, southwestern Crete

Sweetwater beach: our brief resting spot during an adventurous 36-hour cashpoint-finding challenge.

An Ongoing Battle...

2012-01-15T20:36:00.005+01:00

At the end of March, I'll have been living in Germany for two years. Two whole years. I'm not sure how far along I thought I'd have got with learning the language in that time, and I haven't even mentioned how I've been getting along with it since the summer, when I was attempting to tackle advanced language classes at the same time as bashing out a 4,000 word psychology project. I have to say, with the ever-useful benefit of hindsight, that trying to attend to two such challenging academic tasks simultaneously was a bit of a mistake. As was skipping a whole level of German classes.

This time last year, I was on a right rollercoaster of a ride with my intermediate (B1 level) German classes: one minute I was riding the high of mastering a brain-scrambling grammatical complexity; the next, wallowing into utter despair over a less than perfectly excecuted telephone conversation. But it was around that time that B and I started to talk a bit more (rather rudimentary) German around the house; and by March I was feeling much more confident with my spoken German, having even spent a couple of evenings with friends during which I was able to understand and at times contribute to (without being laughed at) an astoundingly large percentage of the German conversation. Such evenings were - and still are - accompanied by an internal English monologue along the lines of, “Good grief I understood that! I understood it! I can't believe it! I understood it! Yes, I'm still following them... yep, still got it... nope - nope, now hang on, I’ve lost it, rubbish, I’ve absolutely no idea what they are talking about... oh gods they're all laughing, what are they laughing about? QUICK! LAUGH! LAUGH!" etc. Though because of the amount of concentration that's required such occasions can be incredibly intense and exhausting, I made it through them unscathed and proud and these ones in particular marked a defining moment in the improvement of my German linguistic capabilities. After 11 months of intensive learning I was finally feeling pretty good about having made some clear progress.

This coincided with a change of pace in class: after spending weeks focussing on a string of ever more challenging grammatical constructions – climaxing with the conjunctive passive – we moved away from the fundamental building blocks of the language and wandered into an altogether more playful - yes really, German can be playful - grammatical area. I love being able to mess around with language, and it was at this point that I realised that not having been able to do so with German was precisely what I’d been finding so frustrating. However now, with a number of hardcore essential grammatical elements out of the way, we could have a bit of fun.

German really is an incredibly tightly structured language, which is where my greatest difficulty with it continues to lie: you really have to know where you’re going with your sentence when you start it. As anyone who knows me will probably agree (particularly those who have been on the receiving end of one of my answerphone messages), managing to keep talking in the direction in which I've set out is not really my forté. I very rarely begin speaking knowing exactly how a sentence is going to start, let alone end; there are tangents aplenty and I usually have to mentally bracket whatever I started talking about in order to return to it ten minutes, half an hour or a bottle of Riesling later. The way in which I tend to express myself just isn't possible in German. So it was exceptionally freeing to discover I could play around with it in other ways. An example?

Der Drache, der durch die Straßen jede Dienstag mit einem Cheeseburger lief, hatte grüne Ohren.

The dragon, who walked through the streets every Tuesday with a cheeseburger, had green ears.

Der durch die Straße jede Dienstag mit einem Cheeseburger laufende Drache hatte grüne Ohren.

The walking-through-the-streets-every-Tuesday-with-a-cheeseburger-dragon had green ears.

Yes! I'm allowed to construct fabulously lengthy adjectives! (And I really, really hope I got that right. I am of course entirely open to being ~~publicly humiliated~~ corrected.) I was in my element at such a discovery and it meant, in conjunction with my newfound confidence in speaking German, that although I continued (and continue still) to struggle with a number of grammatical elements that I'm sure other people find incredibly straightforward, and though I still made (and continue to make) a plethora of basic mistakes, it seemed I had well and truly got the hang of what the German language was all about and well and truly lost my fear.

I can't recommend two of these books highly enough: Basic German and Intermediate German are absolutely first class for those German-learners who speak English as their first language.

Fast forward a few months and, well, I can't help feeling I've taken a few giant steps back. It all seemed so promising, though: at the end of my B1 course (the first half of intermediate classes), my fantastic teacher (and now friend) suggested that, since the B2 classes were at a time that wouldn't work for me, I skip them and head straight for the advanced class – the big C1. Though I felt truly underqualified to do so - a feeling affirmed when my brand spanking new copy of Übungsgrammatik für Fortgeschrittene (Grammar for Advanced Students) arrived in the post and I asked B what Fortgeschrittene meant (“advanced students”) - I was enormously flattered by her confidence in me and turned up for my first lesson feeling more excited than nervous.

Well, if the hop from beginners (A2) to intermediate (B1) had felt like a big one, leapfrogging over B2 to C1 was, well, "challenging" isn't quite the word. The aim of the school I attended was to prepare students to apply for and succeed, linguistically speaking, at university (as opposed to, for example, the local adult learning institution, where the key goal is to assist integration into German life). There was heavy concentration on grammar, therefore, before spoken skills really came into focus, and unfortunately for me that's what, it turns out, the B2 classes were all about. The classes I'd so eagerly leapfrogged over. So where I happily embraced, and did well at, tasks that involved writing and comprehension (both reading and listening) at C1 level, my speaking ability went precisely nowhere. All my classmates babbled away to each other with confidence and panache, and I sat around feeling pretty stupid. And I therefore never really spoke, was never really encouraged to, and though all my other language skills improved tenfold, verbally I still felt like a four year old at a convention for quantum physicists.

And then, at the same time I was getting into writing German essays about experiments on chimpanzees and deciphering graphs to do with drugging in sports, so my psychology course started hotting up. It demanded a great deal of my attention, and German-learning - though I only missed two classes - was forced take second place. I finished the course, however, and not too shabbily at all. In completing C1.1 I was extremely proud of my progress, as was my husband, but I was rather embarrassed and slightly ashamed about how the limitations of my spoken German.

And I still am. Six months on, I haven't taken another German class since – for several reasons, but largely due to the fact that I didn’t think I was good enough to continue – and I'm feeling a bit stuck. B and I go through phases of speaking only German at home - but they're just that, phases. Aside from those occasions and the times when we're with my in-laws or German friends, most of my life - my work, my study and, ashamedly, most of my socialising - is carried out in my mother tongue. And so I feel like I've been going steadily backwards, even though I'm doing bits and pieces to keep it going: B and I have had some brilliant ideas, such as me reading an article from the Spiegel during the day that we discuss when he gets home at night. I listen to German radio and read German magazines; I've watched rather a lot of Lena - Liebe Meines Lebens (a seriously tacky but very easy-to-follow soap - think Sunset Beach... without the turkey baster). I nearly have a tandem partner; and I'm hoping to start classes again in a couple of months. But at present, my German-speaking life is mostly restricted to me stuttering and stammering in shops and at the telephone and spending a lot of time feeling extremely frustrated. I realise I hold high expectations for myself, rather too high, perhaps - after all, I've not even been here two years - but I can't help feeling like I should be very, very much better than I am. I've been here nearly two years, after all.

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This post was my second for the Expat Bloggers' Roundtable, and is posted with apologies to a lovely lady called Karen who wrote me a lovely email MONTHS ago asking me to share my experiences of C1 German study. You can read more posts from my fellow roundtablers by following the links below... happy reading!

Frau Dietz and The Germans

2011-12-15T20:07:00.002+01:00

No, I've not formed a girlband. I've in fact been invited to join a brand spanking new Blogger Stammtisch (blogging roundtable) by the ever forward-thinking Andrew of Grounded Traveler. This month, on our first go at collectively blogging on the same topic, our theme is interacting with locals.

Trying to work out what on earth I was going to write about, I started considering what I've learned about the people of Germany since moving here a year and eight months ago. I came up with all manner of things and realised that many of my preconceptions about Germany had been crushed through my interactions with Wiesbadeners and the Mainzers across the river. Here are five of my rather more superficial evaluations of the Germans, some of which may affirm their stereotype a little and some of which come as a surprise, but all of which are of course (disclaimer alert) vastly sweeping generalisations based on my geographically limited experience of Germany during my time as an expat here so far...

German festival-goers at this years Mainzer Karneval. (This image also illustrates to my point about Germans not being shy about what's under their Lederhosen.)

...the Germans love to party

Despite their reputation as a strict, cerebral, humourless people, I've quickly learned that the Germans in fact know how to have a seriously good time. Aside from the three German weddings I've been to, at none of which I was permitted to go to bed before the sun came up and the birds started singing, clear evidence of this can be found in the German calendar of events. I'm talking festivals: in Germany there are summer festivals, winter festivals; Easter festivals, Christmas festivals; festivals for beer, festivals for wine, festivals for pumpkins, apples and cheese. Parties in market places, parties on the streets, parties in castles, parks and on small patches of pavement outside shops. During the riotous final week of Karneval, millions of Germans (probably) all over the country do an absolutely terrific job of showing the rest of the world how to have a rollicking good time. You name it, there's a German festival for it, and there's probably a special kind of booze to go with it, too.

...the Germans aren't shy about getting their bits out

It doesn't seem like the locals here (and abroad, if my trip to Crete was anything to go by) need much of an excuse to take their clothes off. I'm not just talking about the enthusiastic abandon with which trips to the gynaecologist are embraced, nor the simple pleasure of wandering around starkers at the sauna: at my local pool, not only is topless sunbathing allowed (though presumably discouraged at this time of year for fear of icicles, etc) but there's also a nudist area for getting one's bits out for a good sunning, should one so wish.

I like to think it does everybody an awful lot of good: I've never enjoyed a more empowered air of relaxation than on a Tuesday at Wiesbaden's Kaiser-Friedrich Thermal Baths (Tuesday being ladies' day, though there's often some poor young chap on duty who has to strip half-naked to fan the air out of the Finnish sauna once an hour). I've half a mind to lobby for compulsory trips to the sauna for the teenage girls of the UK in order that they learn very much earlier than I did that real, happy women come in all manner of marvellous shapes and sizes and that every single one of them, accepting themselves for who they are, is absolutely gorgeous in their own unique way. And that absolutely no-one in real life is a flawless, cellulite-and-wrinkle-free size 0. Especially not after two hours in a steam room.

...the Germans and I have a very different idea about personal space

I was brought up in a culture in which strangers are pretty uncomfortable about snuggling up to each other on the bus. We'll do it if we have to, with almightily strong upper lips, but we're awfully keen not to enjoy it. I like to think I'm a pretty relaxed and friendly sort of a person, but I do have a not-unreasonable-sized area directly around my person that I'm not entirely comfortable with having penetrated by strangers in unnecessary situations (ie I'll put up with a tall chap forcing their arm across my face on the Tube if I must, but I don't want to feel the hot breath of an unfamiliar pensioner in the parcel collection queue at the post office.) Personal space is, generally speaking, infrequently invaded territory in the UK, but not so here in Germany. I find myself regularly being spooned at almost-empty bus stops, queueing at the bakery, whilst attempting to alight a train (credit to Resident on Earth for that turn of phrase). I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it per say, it's just I can't seem to get used to it, and everywhere I go there seems to be someone standing a little to close to comfort.

My current favourite personal space incident here didn't actually involve me directly. In late spring of this year, B and I took to a large grassy area by the river at Schierstein for an Sunday afternoon lounging with the weekend papers. We were, bar a large, semi-naked lady sunning herself on a small blanket, the only people as far as the eye could see. I watched an attractive and well-to-do-looking couple amble hand-in-hand along the banks of the Rhine before they wandered onto the grass to find a spot to sit and canoodle in the sunshine. They had almost had the whole park to choose from, and where did they choose to set up their afternoon love nest? Literally 5 metres away from the large, semi-naked woman. If anyone has an explanation for such behaviour, I'd love to hear it.

This isn't an England-Germany sporting event, it's a Mainz 05-Stuttgart one. But it is football.

...the Germans don't go wild about playing the English at football

This one was a bit of a shock to me, and I can tell you, boy did it hurt when I found out (during the World Cup last year). It turns out that the Germans don't consider England to be their arch nemesis on the football pitch. I know!! Though they anticipate, with great eagerness and excitement, playing what they consider to be 'classic' games against my national team, their biggest rivals are in fact the Dutch - and boy do they love to hate them (and not just on the football pitch). Thus what we English consider to be a fierce, long-running sporting rivalry with the nation who's our historical enemy turns out to be one that's entirely one-sided. In fact, the Germans don't even seem to know that the English feel this way and as result, it feels to me that we're the drunk uncle trying to dance with the hot young bridesmaid at a wedding: it's embarrassing, and just a little bit pathetic. Oh well, at least we've still got the French.

Beautiful Hessen.

...the Germans love the great outdoors. And what they love even more is to be fully equipped for it

Jack Wolfskin is now one of the top three outdoor manufacturers in Europe (so say the Spiegel) and in this part of the country at least, you can see why: that little paw print logo is everywhere. At this time of year, if someone's not strutting down the high street in a coat made from 84 stoats and a spatchcocked fox then you can be sure they're kitted out in gear that'll see them through a week sleeping rough in the Alps. And let's face it, when one's popping out to do one's Christmas shopping in this climate, its important to be prepared for all eventualities with a mountain-tested-for-light-and-warmth Texapore trekking jacket with kinetic-stretch inserts, Nanuk Dynamic fleece panels and system zips. And of course a good strong pair of Activate Pants.

I could go on, but I've a wine to drink and I don't seem to have enough photos to illustrate my points as it is. Please peruse the links below for other posts on this topic from our Blogger Stammtisch, and hey! if you're an expat living in Germany, what have you learned about the locals since you've been here?

p.s. I know, I know, this isn't a Friendly Friday. Life's been a bit busy of late: my expat interviews will be back in the new year.

B's Bieradventkalender Beer #1: Altenmünster Winterbier

2011-12-02T12:00:00.016+01:00

There will unfortunately be no Friendly Friday today as I have, frankly, failed to get myself together this week, however I would instead like to introduce you to my husband B, who is making his blogging debut with the following review of his first Frau Dietz Bieradventskalender™ beer: the Altenmünster Winterbier.

"'Winterbier' hardly needs translating, and such a name really says it all: it's an earthy-brown, very smooth and tangy beer ideal for a cold winter's night!

The Altenmünster beers all come in traditional, solid brown bottles with a ceramic swing top that should make a distinctive “plop” sound when you open it - if not, then it’s not fresh. It should never be drunk from a bottle: when you pour it in a glass, you will see the clear, dark brown colour under a fine, cream-coloured beer foam which will remain for a good while. The beer smells hoppy and tangy but the best part is the taste: full-bodied, malty and surprisingly fresh for a dark beer. It leaves a nice, slightly bitter aftertaste that comes with a hint of liquorice.

This is a wonderful beer that I would like to recommend to all who miss the stronger ale beers that you can't get hold of here in Germany. It’d be perfect after a long, wintery walk in the forest and would go down really well alongside hearty German food like Rindergulasch (beef goulash). There are only two downsides to my current favourite beer: when you buy a box, you feel the weight of these fancy bottles; and it’s only available at this time of year."

Altenmünster Winterbier:
5,5 % Alcohol
0.5 Litres for 0.89 Euro (plus Pfand) at REWE

How to make a real man really happy*

2011-12-01T10:26:00.003+01:00

B and I recently had a short, inspired (and possibly beer-fuelled) discussion about what a terrific thing a beer advent calendar might be. Not one to let an opportunity to get creative and earn wife points slide, I thought I'd just, well, make one. I started shopping for unfamiliar-looking beers and hid them around the flat; I then rooted out a cardboard box in the cellar, covered it in fancy paper, scribbled on it with fancy pens, and hey presto! The Frau Dietz Bieradventskalender™ was born.

Bottle number one was wrenched through its window this morning with the excitement of a small boy opening a bicycle-shaped parcel on Christmas day. And hurrah for B, for it was his current favourite seasonal beer, Altenmünster Winterbier, of which our local supermarket (Rewe, for those interested) only seems to stock about ten bottles at any given time. I thought I'd post his review of it, and of any other of the Frau Dietz Bieradventskalender™ beers that B considers to be recommendable, throughout the rest of the month.

I can't say I thought I was in need of any additional wife points at present, but I certainly appear to have earned some with this.

*blog post title by B.

Frau Dietz Eats: Salsify and meatball ragout

2011-11-29T14:42:00.003+01:00

I love eyeing up the vegetable boxes at my local supermarket: they fairly consistently contain produce that is entirely unfamiliar to me. Yet though, since I've been here, I've discovered and experimented with one or two - Swiss chard (Mangold) and kohlrabi spring to mind - I've been inexcusably bad at trying out anything else. At this time of year there are all sorts of peculiar-looking root vegetables around, and on Saturday I finally got round to trying one out.

The Schwarzwurzel (above) is a long, thin, faintly parsnip-like root which B was absolutely no use whatsoever in helping to identify. A quick online search revealed that it was in fact salsify, a vegetable who's name I've seen pop up on various London menus and British food blogs over the last couple of years but had always imagined to in fact be a green and stringy sort of affair (much like how I once imagined the anchovy. True story.). However, neither "Schwarzwurzel" nor "salsify" continued to mean anything to my husband at all: it was only when I pointed at a pictured of some cooked in a white sauce that he came over all glazed-eyed and dreamy on me and began reminiscing about eating it as a child (again) - though it only ever came out of a jar. The challenge was, therefore, on: salsify for dinner it would be. Enter Schwarzwurzel-Ragout.

Well. It would be, in my opinion, something of an understatement to say that salsify ragout is worth giving a go. A German ragout is not tomato-based like the French kind that springs to mind; from my experience it tends to be very smooth, creamy and generally-speaking rather luxurious. This one certainly continues in that tradition. Salsify, B and I agreed, has the look of a woody stalk of white asparagus when peeled but when cooked, has the texture and taste of a kohlrabi-celeriac hybrid: it's fresh yet earthy and exceedingly moreish. B confirmed that much as he adored the jarred stuff as a small boy, this rather-more-recently-out-of-the-ground-root was in another league altogether.

I'd never heard of Storzenieren before but it's apparently a dish local to where I now live, coming from across the river in Rheinland-Pfalz. I plucked this recipe from a book my mother-in-law gave me on my birthday this year, Die Echte Deutsche Küche ("The Real German kitchen"), a fab book - in German - containing a huge range of regional recipes and ingredient-related information from all over the country. I'd highly recommend it, salsify and the recipe that follows.

Ingredients (serves 4 - see my recipe notes below)

White vinegar
2 tbsp flour
800g salsify
1 lemon (around 4-5 tbsp lemon juice)
Salt
Pinch of sugar
4 large boiled potatoes
250g sausagemeat (in Germany: Bratwurst filling, known as Kalbsbrät)
1 tbsp butter
150g cream
Freshly ground white pepper
Freshly ground nutmeg
Approx. 20g chervil or flat-leafed parsley.

Method

1. Stir a glug of vinegar and a tablespoon of the flour into a large bowl of cold water. Wash, scrub and peel the salsify (which can be done with a normal vegetable peeler), slice it diagonally into chunks and put it straight into the bowl of water (this keeps it white: it did otherwise appear to start turning brown immediately).
2. When you've prepared all the salsify, take it back out of the bowl, give it a quick rinse and put it in a pan, covering it with ¼ litre of lightly-salted water, 3 tbsp of lemon juice and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and leave to cook for 20 minutes.
3. In the meantime, peel the potatoes and cut them first into thick slices, then each slice into finger-sized chunks. Roll the sausagemeat between your palms to create small meatballs.
4. Drain the salsify, reserving its cooking liquid, and leave it to dry. Melt the butter in a large pan and stir in your other tablespoon of flour over a low heat. Add the cream and the water from cooking the salsify and stir constantly until it begins to gently bubble. Season with salt, white pepper, nutmeg and lemon juice.
5. Add the salsify, potato pieces and meatballs to the sauce, mix together carefully and leave to cook on a low heat, covered, for 10 minutes. Wash, dry and finely chop the herbs, mix into the ragout and check for seasoning.

Frau Dietz's recipe notes:
1. I used pork sausage filling (squeezed out of a couple of Bratwürst) on account of the fact that on this side of the Channel at least, it's not so easy to find ethically-produced veal. That's not to say I never eat it, I just try to make the right choice from time to time!
2. I'm wheat intolerant: corn starch (Speisestärke) did the job perfectly in place of the flour. That's not to say I never eat wheat... etc.
3. German recipes are extremely fond of pre-boiled potatoes, and it's the norm to peel them after cooking them and not before. You should give it a go: it's a very efficient way of doing it and, when you're me, both entertaining and messy to boot.
4. I halved the recipe for the two of us but that produced virtually no sauce and I had to make more before I added the meatballs and vegetables: if you're going to halve the recipe I'd do so for the main ingredients but keep the measurements for the sauce as they are.

Friendly Friday: Letters Home

2011-11-17T21:33:00.004+01:00

Oh my hat, I have NO idea where my life is going. Forward, happily, and hopefully in the general direction of world domination, but I mean, SO VERY QUICKLY. The last week has disappeared in a swirl of umlauts and parentheses and (for those who follow me on Twitter) trying to coax the squirrel back onto the balcony with some aged hazelnuts. I've had no time to post about the things I thought were worth posting about two weeks ago, and I hope by the time we get to the next Friendly Friday that I'll have had time to share a classic German soup recipe and talk about my night at the Coface Stadium in Mainz.

Anyway, we're not here to discuss potatoes in broth or confusing football chants, we're here to be entertained by Ian of Letters Home, whose letters home had entertained me long before I was entertained by him in real life at the expat bloggers meetup in Cologne. Not that he remembers.

Ian in Squamish, BC, the town where he was born

Name: Ian
From: I was born in Canada in a town half way between Vancouver and Whistler, BC and brought home to an even smaller village 7 miles south... in a banana box in the back seat, so they tell me
Now in: Hamburg
Since: Mid '97
Because: I came to Germany via Quebec and Hong Kong, where I met the German woman I married. Six months before our daughter was born we were looking around for somewhere to go and decided on Germany to allow my wife to go back to her teaching job, and me to get to know her side of life.

Righty ho then Ian, for those unfamiliar with you and your blog, please would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am a bundle of energy and can be found on a bicycle at any time of the day or night. In winter I escape to the Alps for skiing. To satisfy the craving of going fast over something slippery but having somehow ended up hundreds of miles from the nearest thing you can call a hill, I skate a lot, too. With all that energy, I sometimes have to tell myself to sit still. Then after sitting still for a while - usually reading, listening to music, watching a movie, baking bread, making dinner, hanging out with the family - I have to kick myself in the butt or I won't get moving again.

Skating? As in skateboarding or rollerskating? I can envison you doing both, and yet neither.

I mean ice-skating! Is there any other kind? OK, I also have a pair of inline skates and go out for a roll in those once in a while in summer. I've never been on a skateboard in my life.

And skiing… oh! How I love it, oh! How I never go. What’s the white stuff like in Germany?

Haven't done enough of it to give you a thorough response. We usually go to St Anton in Austria for the long runs and good snow late in the year, plus it's reasonably affordable for what you get. Just a short train ride south of Munich, Garmisch-Partenkirchen would be a great place if it weren't for the fact that its layout makes it very inconvenient to get from one part of the mountain to the other. Furthermore, the best terrain - the long runs they use for World Cup races, for example - is all on the lowest part of the mountain, and so the snow is rarely that good - at least it hasn't been when I've been there. But just down the tracks and on the same ticket is Zugspitze - Germany's highest mountain - which I skied for the first time last year. What its runs lack in length is made up for in snow quality and sheer grandeur of setting. The view from up there on a sunny day is stunning. As a railway fan, I also like the long ride up through the tunnel in the cog railway.

There are one or two people I know (myself included) who’d rather like that too. But let's move away from the breathtaking scenery and fresh air and back north to Hamburg. Riayn shared her impressions of the city back in the spring: what do you make of it?

Depends on my mood and the time of year. It has a deep cultural life with a lot of art exhibits, concerts and plays happening, but it's not so big that it takes ages to get out in the countryside, which I crave. At times, though, I wish it were a little less provincial in atmosphere. That might sound funny seeing as how it's an international port city, but you go to a major capital like Paris, London, New York... you feel the energy of the place and the people and the mix of cultures so much more. At the same time I guess I like Hamburg for the trade-off that offers: I don't think I'd like to live in either of those places for very long. Too hectic, not my pace at all.

Ian in action (during the "sitting still" part of his day).

How or why do you think Hamburg has retained a “provincial” feel despite being an international port?

By provincial I don't mean hill-billy or hayseed, just through-and-through German. What I like about many cities in North America and the three cities I mentioned is the strong ethnic presence, the way they've formed distinct neighbourhoods with their own feel to them. Hamburg has a few spots where you might run into a few more Turkish people, but that's it.

How else does life in Germany compare with your previous lives in other countries?

It's hard to compare life in Germany with that of Hong Kong, Western Canada and Quebec. All four places are so completely different from each other, and all were experienced at very different times in my life.

Germany is a great place to raise a family. Parents get a break with time off, there's good day-care from the earliest of ages, and the schools are good - at least the ones my daughter has attended have been. So moving here when we did was a good idea. We have enough time off work to be able to enjoy life, instead of constantly feeling you have to make sacrifices for the sake of job and career. That time has allowed us to take some memorable, long holidays that I doubt we would have been able to enjoy were we still living in Hong Kong.

And having been here for well over a decade now, do you feel an affinity with the German people?

For someone who's lived here so long, this is going to sound rather sad, but with rare exceptions I don't feel much affinity toward the Germans. Having been met with so many blank stares or downright hostility through various misunderstandings, I quickly realised that they don't understand my humour and recoil at my usual approach, so I learned to hide or blunt that part of my personality. They do have a sense of humour, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't mesh with mine at all, so I don't bother with it.

I also find their manner of treating others in public to be repellant and, having been the public object of derision on several occasions over the years, it hardens you and makes it difficult to warm to them in general. This applies mainly to the over-50 crowd, but you can get it an any level: the way they'll bark at you for anything they perceive as being not the way things should be done around here. I mean, really. Getting told off by some guy at an Aldi store because I didn't replace the Schlagsahne carton back where it belongs?

There's also a lot of take here, but very little give: they'll never admit they're wrong if they think they can get away with it. A Chinese friend once remarked that while the Chinese may be obsessed about making money, the Germans are obsessed with obtaining and holding on to power. Maybe that's why they are constantly putting down others and don't admit to mistakes: the jockeying for power and place in society promotes the former, and doesn't allow the latter.

Where do you think such an obsession with power would come from?

I'd be talking through my hat if I tried to answer that question!

Ian obsessing with an old Canadian dollar bill (the 19954 edition he grew up with) at a bar in Whistler

Ha! For me, this perceived public rudeness and lack of manners is partly so astounding because it’s in contrast to life in England, where things are for the most part absolutely the opposite, sometimes to ridiculous extremes. (Not in London, mind.) Might this be also partly true for you? I don’t know how politely people operate in public in Hong Kong and Canada…

I think the word ‘perceived’ is pretty important there. Maybe I gloss over the things about Canada I didn't like and overplay those that I don't about Gemany? But things are more relaxed in Canada, people are more willing to cut you some slack and to just mind their own business.

Talking of minding one’s own business, we’re both here because we write about ourselves and our lives on the internet. Why do you do it?

I blog because I'm always late for everything. Let's face it, blogging's popularity peaked around late 2005, before Facebook and Twitter came along and diluted the critical mass. I keep it going because it's a challenge to write something personal yet - you hope - still relevant to anyone out there. That's one reason why I don't post every day, and why I stay off Twitter except on rare occasions. Nobody needs to know I've just woken up, my opinion of the weather, my annoyance at a stain on my pants.

Once one starts sharing things on Twitter, I agree that it's hard to stop. There's a line! Finally, you appear to mourn – as I do – the end of the hand-written letter. For you, does blogging go in any way towards filling the gaping hole left by hand-writing a letter? In fact, do you still write letters?

I don't write letters any more - how sad! But blogging does fill the void somehow. You can also throw in the pictures so easily too, so maybe there's an improvement on the old way of communicating.

Do you know, I hadn't thought of that. One up for the blogging!

Ian in Hamburg: you've been a delight to interview, thank you so much for taking part. Everybody else: please visit Ian at his blog, Letters Home; you could also hover around waiting for him to accidentally say something on Twitter.

Friendly Friday is having next week off, but it'll be back on the first Friday of December - DECEMBER!! - and I hope to see you all there. Wrap up warm, folks, and have a lovely weekend.

Friendly Friday: Grounded Traveler

2011-11-11T08:52:00.006+01:00

Good grief, I finally have a moment to put finger to keyboard. This has been quite a week - I apparently needn't have worried about what I was going to do on my time off between semesters. I'm not complaining about having work to do, obviously, but it does distract me from things like blogging about football matches, my (successful) hunt for bovine kidney fat and spending a hungover Saturday having my German corrected by 8 year old children.

Happily, however, I do have time for Friendly Friday - just! I must apologise to today's interviewee for only just managing to hit the "publish" button now. So without further ado then, I would like to introduce you to Andrew of Grounded Traveler, with whom I wandered the streets of Cologne's gay quarter on the WEBMU weekend last month. I've been following his blog for some time so it was fab to finally meet the man himself. And off we go...

Andrew at Platform 9¾ of Kings Cross Station, London. (Seems to have got his trolley stuck.)

Name: Andrew
About: A man of many many interests. I love how things work and how they are connected. I am interested in how things related to each other. Cause and effect and all that rot. I also find the idea of fear and how it affects someone interesting. I have given it quite a bit of non-academic thought while dealing with panic and anxiety for years
From: I grew up in North Carolina in the south east of the US. I went to university at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg,Virginia, a small university town in the mountains of Virginia
Now in: Freiburg
Since: 1 November 2007

So then Andrew, what brought you to Germany?

I was sick of living the life I had in the US. This is somewhat literal. I have suffered from panic attacks on an off for ten years now. Each time I was able to get over them by planning an extended trip to Europe. I had just finished my master's degree and was already planning to try to live abroad. I always enjoyed travel and was happier abroad than at home. Driving was one of the triggers for anxiety, so the idea of living without a car was appealing. I took a job with a friend of mine for one year. This gave me time to save and get some more tech skills. Then I just booked a boat ticket (yeah, fear of flying another of my anxieties) sold my car and put stuff in storage and just came over. I didn't really know anyone. I had no plan or job. I started applying everywhere in Germany. I ended up taking a job in Freiburg and have been here since.

And why Germany in particular?

I had started with German in high school so this is where I had traveled the most. I had a whole list of places to go if I couldn't find work here.

Ah. Sounds like a sensible decision, then! So, what’s Freiburg like?

It isn't so much different than the places I came from. It is in the south of the country and a university town nestled against the hills of the Black Forest.

I haven’t yet visited it - or its surrounding region, but it's high on my list: I have merely gawped at the breathtaking beauty of the Black Forest through the generous upstairs windows of the Black Forest trainline (the Schwarzwaldbahn)(link in German). Anyway, you’ve been here four years now (happy anniversary!): what have you found most challenging about life here in that time?

The speed of things. Germany is a very stable place and while things are “efficient,” they can be painfully slow. Ask anyone how long it takes to get internet hooked up (answer: about 3 months). Appointments are normal for nearly anything, but are almost always in the middle of the day (who needs work?) and can be many weeks out. This is all doubly true with dealing with workers around the house like electricians.

I have to defend all the builders we’ve had around our flat as they've all been extraordinarily punctual and efficient, but I totally sympathise about the internet - getting that sorted is extraordinarily painful. Is there anything in the way that the Germans function on a day to day basis that you admire?

There is something of a sense that society as a whole matters. It can be a challenge to the individualistic American in me. Though when rules are set up to maintain things as a society such as health care and economic stability at the cost of individual flexibility there is something about that that is admirable.

Where do you think this comes from? Do you think it’s a longing for security that stems from Germany’s "recent" past - by which I mean their experience with unstable democracy and liberalism after the first world war and the resulting strikes, inflation and the rise of extreme parties?

No, I think it is deeper than that. I once read that the longing for security is part of why the history is like it is. If you want to tie it history I would look further back than the obvious last 100 years. I would look to the Roman invasions or maybe more "modern" at the 1600s and the 30 years war. Times of turmoil like that make a desire for order and safety.

The 30 years war - that's a good point - I read somewhere that a third of the German population was killed during that time so in comparison, I suppose, their suffering during the second world war was, in an albeit very different way, to a lesser degree. (Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?) But back to your experiences in Germany today: what else pleases you about life here?

Not having to drive everywhere. I like being able to get to so much of the continent with the train. I enjoy the food and markets with so much fresh stuff. I quite enjoy the idea of being an expat. There is something comforting to me about being an outsider to an extent, even though I integrate pretty well.

The Martinstor, Freiburg, built at the beginning of the 13th century and apparently still in pretty good nick.

This idea of finding comfort in being an 'official' outsider as an expat is one that's cropped up in more than one Friendly Friday to date. Where do you think this feeling is grounded?

I didn't fit in with the US which was odd as I grew up there. I don't fully fit in Germany either, but this is ok because I am not supposed to. There is comfort in this acceptance that I am not required to fit in. And although I do fit pretty well here any oddities can be linked back to that "not supposed to.“

That makes absolute sense. You say you feel you have integrated well into German society: what steps would you recommend that other expatriates take in order to help them integrate into a new and unfamiliar community (and I mean integrate as opposed to assimilate or simply exist there)?

Make contacts in the community. This can be anything from recognizing and talking to the checkout people at the local supermarket to getting involved in local clubs. Of course the more friends native that country you have the closer you will integrate. I spend a lot of time with expats and I find it ok. For example, I know the guy at the bike shop. I know the Italian guy who runs the laundromat. It makes walking around a small city like Freiburg kind of nice because you get recognized and talked to. Especially in Germany routine is important, so going to the same shop every week will let you know the people there. The pasta place knows me and my order. I go into Burger King regularly enough that one of the women there has started giving me 10% discount.

Haha - I'm hope that I'm on the verge of getting a discount at my local Schnitzel place ;) I absolutely agree that befriending "natives", joining clubs and getting to know people locally are all key in helping one to slip into a normal life abroad, but talking of communities, let's touch on online ones: for those who haven't visited your site before, who do you blog for, and what do you blog about?

My audience is, I hope, people interested in living abroad. Not only to be in the culture, but also to travel and see more of the world. This is what I blog about as well. The German culture as I see it as an Auslander (foreigner). Its oddities as well as its richness. The second half is about travels that I have done around Europe. “Putting down roots and still seeing the world” is the blog tagline, so I hope I keep close to that.

And I believe you do! As well as the themes of travel and local culture that you cover, you also talk a lot about the fears that these have helped you overcome. Do you still have fears that hinder you in your day to day life or have you, if not overcome them, then learned how to cope?

Cope is a good word. The fears are still here. And while they don't nessicarily prevent me from doing things, still make me hesitate a lot. Some days much stronger than others. I learned a number of techniques in therapy for the panic attacks that work fairly well for for generalized fear. Certainly moving abroad helped a lot. Getting out of the stress I was in and the situations that triggered the fear, like driving for example, has helped me get a breather from that aspect and sort out things in my head that were some of the underlying cause. I don't think it is specific to Germany, just being away. For the first year or so I had to work so hard to just live, eat, talk in another culture that I didn't really have energy for fear.

One of my prime fears was that of flight. I moved to Europe on a ship. I started flying again after 10 years just last September about the time I met the woman that became my wife. She has helped me as well to get through a lot of fears.

Andrew on his first flight in ten years... what a grin!

It sounds like you have come a very long way since your boat ride over here four years ago and it's fascinating to learn about what has helped you to cope with your fears and anxieties. Plus you clearly have a wonderful wife! Are there other ways in which you feel you've changed since you arrived here?

I am finally understanding what is actually important to me. I also am understanding where my own problems and shortcomings end and where the situation or environment begins. Building a life up from near scratch again lets you kind of see what is actually important and gives and opportunity to recognize pure habit.

No argument from me on that one: I absolutely agree. Can you put any of these new understandings down to life in Germany in particular, or is it just having started a fresh life somewhere new?

I think for me it was just starting a life somewhere else. In hindsight I might have been better off in England rather than Germany to relieve the extra aspect of language from all of the personal development, but I do like being here. And secretly I like that that language is difficult sometimes. Just sometimes I wish all the noise would stop and they would just speak clearly. ;)

Haha I know the feeling! However, I think if you get fed up of things moving slowly in this country then I think you should thank your lucky stars you didn't end up in the UK!

Andrew thank you very so much for joining in on my Friendly Friday antics and talking so candidly about your experiences, it was fab to have you take part.

You can (and should!) visit Andrew at his blog, Grounded Traveler; on Facebook; and you can also follow him on Twitter. Next week's Friendly Friday I shall be chatting with the brilliantly funny Ian (no pressure Ian) of Letters Home To You, and I highly recommend you pop by for that. I promise it won't be quite so late next week!

I am now going to put down my laptop and spend the rest of my evening with Robert De Niro, a bottle of Riesling and a large bowl of mashed potatoes. Presuming it's as miserable outside with you all as it is with me, I wish you a warm and cosy evening too, and a lovely weekend!

Friendly Friday: An American in Cologne

2011-11-04T14:00:00.113+01:00

At the expat bloggers meetup in Köln (Cologne) two weekends ago, I had the great pleasure of eating my roast pork and drinking my Kölsh alongside the lovely Wendi, also known as Texanborncologne. Throughout our meal we chatted at length about all things expat and blog-like, enthused a great about German food and drink (and less so about learning the language), and we've just gone and done it all over again for the first Friendly Friday in a jolly long time. Oh, how I've missed it! Off we go...

Wendi (right) with friend from her German class. Presumably not in their German class.

From: Just outside of Dallas, Texas, but lived in Orlando, Florida for 5 years prior to coming to Germany.

Now in: Köln

Since: July 2010

So then Wendi, first things first: what brought you to Germany?

I met my Köln-born husband while on a business trip three years ago and after a whirlwind one-year romance with much international travel, we married in Florida and stayed two years in the Sunshine State. We got pregnant almost immediately after getting married and spent most of my maternity leave in Köln with his family. Once we got back to the States we realized that talking with Oma and Opa (Grannie and Grampa) through Skype just wasn’t the same and realized we wanted our child to really get to know them. My parents are not around any longer and the rest of my family was already in Texas anyway. We thought about it for all of maybe two weeks before I quit my job and make the leap. We spent another few weeks selling everything in the house and garage, getting my older daughter (then 10 years old) ready for the idea, and trying think too often about how crazy insane we were being. Of course, our whole relationship had been built on leaps of faith so it just felt right.

And so here you are now, almost a year and a half into your new life in Köln, home of one exquisite gothic cathedral and serious rival to Mainz in the Karneval-celebration stakes (although I believe Köln consider their main rival to actually be Düsseldorf). With Karneval season - the "fifth season", which lasts from 11 November till Ash Wednesday - nearly upon us, tell us, what do you make of the whole thing?

Karneval is one of my favorite times of the year now, but the Karneval I think of is at the tail end of the season – early spring, late winter: I guess I save up for the weeklong celebration (which starts the Thursday before Ash Wednesday): businesses close, kids are out of school and for a week the entire city seems to go insane. Yes, of course, there’s the getting drunk by 10am and parties going all night long but there are also parades every single day and my kids came home last year with literally bags and bags of toys and candy (I reminded my daughter of this when she was disappointed about Halloween). I love the fact that at any time of the day during that week people are roaming the city in costume and you only look out of place when you’re in “normal” clothes. If you’ve never been, I would say it’s definitely something you should experience at least once.

I would say that too: I never got round to blogging about more than just my costume this year but I had the most brilliant time at the Mainzer Karneval. Crazy antics aside though, how does life here compare with your previous life in the US?

The biggest thing for me is how I can actually live here without a car. In both Orlando and Texas I would be unable to work, to shop, to LIVE without a vehicle. I haven’t driven once since being here and I don’t miss it at all.

The other thing that always stands out to me is the difference in work culture. Perhaps it’s just my experience but in the U.S. almost the entirety of my social life was built around my work – partially because I tended to work much longer hours. Here I find that people go to work – and work really hard while they are there – but then at the end of the workday, starting around 4:30pm, they actually leave. And work doesn’t tend to figure into the evenings or the weekends. I’m actually encouraged to take my full allotment of holiday days as well. I feel I actually have a home life and a separate work life.

The concept of a good balance between home and work is something that comes as a bit of a shock to many of the expats I know: it seems the Germans have really got the hang of it! Is there anything though that you’ve really found challenging in moving to a foreign country?

Language. It’s a horror for me. I’m constantly running around constructing German sentences in my head yet I am still trying to get over the whole speaking barrier. I am fine when out with people I don’t know but have a horrible time switching over to German with those I started out speaking English to. If I had it to do over again I would have started studying in earnest the moment I met my husband and would have started speaking German as soon as I got here. As it is, I’m in a constant state of studying and feel I’ll never quite get the hang of it.

You’re not alone! I’ve found it really hard to switch to speaking German with those people I started out speaking English with; and with my husband, well we built our whole relationship in English, so speaking German with him has been like getting to know a whole new person! What has the transition been like for your daughter (now 11)?

After the first 6 months something switched in her head and all of a sudden the German started flowing. She made the decision she was tired of not understanding and that she wanted to have friends and almost overnight it seemed she was speaking fluent Deutsch. Once that happened she started integrating very quickly and now has a few really good girlfriends that she spends most of her time with. Her German was good enough to get her into Gymnasium (the German equivalent of a grammar/high school) and she seems to be doing okay there, but does need a bit of extra help with homework and such, mainly because of vocabulary and making sure that she understands the question meanings. I try to help as much as I can but it’s like the blind leading someone who only needs glasses, if that makes sense. She does still speak longingly of American junk food at times and hated how Halloween was a bit of a letdown this year, but in all she’s doing fantastic.

Wendi's son and daughter enjoying their first German snow

It sounds like the two of you are getting along here just fine, then!

I like Germany. My husband asks me all the time why I like it here so well, as he’s actually aching to go back to the States and to be honest I sometimes have a bit of difficulty explaining the “why”. I like not having a car. I love how everyone sits outside when the weather gets just a tiny bit nice. I love the bread and I love the Kölsch.

As I said in my WEBMU post, sampling one or two Kölsch in Köln absolutely turned me back onto beer-drinking after years of leaving it at the bar, so to speak: drinking it in tiny glasses so that you’re always drinking something fresh and cold makes absolute sense, and it really makes all the difference! So, we’ve established that you rather like your life here. Is there anything you miss about life in the US?

Sometimes I do really miss the overt patriotism of Americans. I hated missing 4^th of July this year, although I certainly tried to celebrate and ended up raiding the Aldi store during their corresponding American week.

Would you say then that you find the Germans to be unpatriotic?

I hate to say I find an entire group of people unpatriotic but maybe I mean that they aren’t as “loud” about it. Sure, you see German flags waving but in the U.S. it seems the American flag is everywhere. And I may get into trouble for saying this, but it seems sometimes that some Germans let the past get in their way – as though they feel un-entitled to pure unbridled patriotism. I do find in Cologne a wild loyalty to their city – but not necessarily to Germany.

I think Germany is still very much dealing with issues of their past and national identity: some Germans say they never should forget the past, others believe it’s time to move on. I believe it was only in the 2006 World Cup that Germany actually started to embrace some sense of national identity by wearing the German flag and being playful with its colours. I guess in terms of national identity, Germany and the US are simply in very different places! How has your view of the America and its national identity changed since you’ve seen it from a German/European perspective?

This is a hard one. While I just said I admired the overt patriotism of America, I also think that at times it clouds the American view of the rest of the world. I think I realize now just how sheltered the majority of Americans are to what goes on outside of the boundaries of the U.S.A. And I think that there’s a bit of a misconception as to how the rest of the world views us (Americans): sadly, I think that most Americans think that the rest of the world (with exceptions, of course) wants to be us, wants to live there, basically loves us to death, thinks we’re the standard upon which the rest of the world is measured J - again, not everyone, but in general. I will certainly stand up and be proud to be an American over here but I do think I now have a broader view and can see (and admit) that we’re not always the best at everything!

I look forward to hearing what the American contingent of the Friendly Friday followers has to say about that! How else has living abroad changed you?

I’m learning to slow down a bit. I don’t constantly feel I’m in a race at work, which is one part of it, but the pace of life just seems slower as well. I had a really hard time when first moving here because all of the stores were closed on Sundays and I felt it made the day almost useless. Over time, though, I find that I’m enjoying my Sundays. It’s truly a forced day of rest. The only things open are bakeries and restaurants so outside of going on a walk or to a park or hanging at home, the next thing to do would be sitting in a café with some Eis or coffee.

In addition, I’m learning patience. Learning German is certainly teaching me that. I have to force myself to slow down, to not expect to know everything at once and to really concentrate to understand or make myself understood a lot of the time. That was hard for me at first and at times still is.

That's been one of the hardest parts for me, too: I'm often so keen to get all my words out that I forget that I'm more likely to be understood if I do it just a little more slowly - and carefully. I suppose I just always have too much to say!

Thank you so much Wendi for letting me interview during what was a very busy week for you! You can follow Wendi on her very entertaining blog, American in Cologne, as well as on her photo blog; you can also find her on Twitter.

Tune in next week for a chat with another expat blogger who I finally met for the first time a fortnight ago: the terribly prolific Andrew of Grounded Traveler. In the meantime, I'm off to watch Mainz 05 play Stuttgart this evening, so if I manage to take any half-decent photos (we've got tickets for the standing area; I'm five foot three)(and a half) I'll post them over the weekend alongside a rundown of my first ever trip to a German football match. A happy Friday to you all!

Frau Dietz Eats: eggs in mustard sauce with mashed potatoes

2011-11-04T11:43:00.000+01:00

I know what you’re thinking. Boiled eggs + mustard + mashed potatoes = NO. I have to admit that before giving it a try, I was of much the same opinion. In fact, I’m still wondering what inspired me to try it at all. But herewith some breaking news from chez Dietz: eggs with mustard sauce and mashed potatoes, if you're not after an evening of haute cuisine, is simply sublime. It ticks many of the right boxes for being an ultimate comfort food, which is odd really, since as far as I know, the German language doesn’t offer an equivalent phrase. A couple of eggs with squishy orange yolks nestled in a heap of mashed potatoes and bathed in mustard sauce is as tasty, warming and delightfully messy meal as you could wish for on a frosty autumn night. It's simple to make, and no trouble at all to consume and digest. You could happily slop it into a bowl and eat it in your pyjamas, curled up on the sofa in front of the telly. You wouldn't even have to have your teeth in.

Not sure this photo really sells it, but it's quite tricky to photograph a plate of yellow food in bad light when you're really, really hungry.

When I announced I was going to give this (alleged) German classic a go, B started hopping up and down wildly with excitement, and immediately began reminiscing about how wonderful his mum's version was when he was a small child. It was, it turns out, his childhood favourite. So, no pressure on my first ever attempt at recreating it, then.

In my subsequent quest to make it to perfection, I followed the recipe to the letter, even (with some suspicion) moving away from my own trusty roux, boiled egg and mashed potato methods and embracing new ones. Well, having done so, I need not have feared a crushing wifely failure: as he licked his plate clean, B announced it was the best eggs with mustard sauce he’d ever eaten. Honestly, The Best Eggs With Mustard Sauce My Husband Had Ever Eaten. Can you imagine? Having used someone else's methods entirely though, I can hardly take any credit for myself, however I did feel mighty pleased with myself all the same. Thanks instead go to the same book that I used to some success in producing the very tasty lentils with Spaetzle and sausage back in the Spring. Küchenschätze: Rezepte für die Seele (available only in German) continues to be my favourite of my small but steadily expanding German cookery book collection.

I urge you to cast your suspicions aside and give this dish a go: it’s a perfect, no-nonsense meal for a cold November evening and, as a bonus, if you happen to have a German husband, you just might make him very happy indeed.

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the mustard sauce:

3 tablespoons of butter

2 even tablespoons of flour

125ml milk

250ml meat stock (I used chicken)

2-3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard (I went for 3)

Salt and pepper

A pinch of allspice

For the mashed potatoes:

1kg starchy potatoes ('mehligkochende', for those based in Germany)

250ml milk

2 tablespoons of butter

Freshly grated nutmeg

In addition:

8 eggs

A small box of cress (I went for parsley).

Method

For the mustard sauce: melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Pour in the cold milk and stir firmly until any lumps have disappeared. Add the stock, bring to the boil and let it cook vigorously for about 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the mustard and season with salt, pepper and allspice. Set to one side and if necessary, reheat shortly before serving.

For the mash: peel the potatoes, cut into large chunks and place in a large saucepan. Cover them with cold water, bring to the boil and allow to bubble over a medium for around 15 minutes, partly covered with a lid. Meanwhile, heat the milk. Drain the cooked potatoes and push them through a potato ricer/crush with a potato masher whilst they're still hot. Stir in the hot milk and butter and season to taste with salt and nutmeg. Keep warm.

For the eggs: prick the eggs and place them in a pan of simmering water on a low heat for 5-6 minutes. Peel and halve them and serve two each per person with a dollop of mash and a generous glug of the mustard sauce. Garnish with the cress.

EDIT: This post has been linked to from My Expat Germany's Food Friday!

A night at the opera

2011-10-31T17:27:00.003+01:00

Until Friday I had, in my otherwise not entirely culturally-arid life, been only twice to the opera. I saw Carmina Burana as a teenager at the Royal Albert Hall, and Cosi Fan Tutte in my twenties at Glyndebourne. And last week, now in my thirties, I was treated to Tosca at the Wiesbaden Opera House. So you could say, though I've now only been to the opera three times in my life, I've at least done it regularly, and in the poshest way possible. From the first two performances I learned that I find a trip to the opera hugely enjoyable, but also that I wouldn't want to do it every day. It's therefore a treat I savour. I also discovered that you don't need to know what everyone's singing about to have a jolly good evening out.

What I learned from seeing Tosca at the Wiesbaden Opera House last Friday night was that it's actually best not to know what they're singing about at all. To set the scene: my father-in-law, in celebration of his eldest daughter's birthday, had very generously invited us all to an evening out at the Wiesbaden Opera House (also known as the Hessisches Staatstheater, or Hessen State Theatre), which was built at the end of the 19th century and is inside, quite simply, exquisite. It may in fact be the most beautiful theatre I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. I took the liberty of taking a few snaps of the bar...

See what I mean? The setting was positively luxurious. The company, of course, was fabulous, though sadly lacking a mini-Dietz, who was arriving as another birthday treat the following morning. And the performance? Well. I have to say that although the whole experience was an enormous treat and the atmosphere, music and the Sekt at half time were all second to none, all in all, this version of Tosca didn't exactly blow me away. Since I wasn't familiar with the story, it was initially rather exciting to discover, upon the curtain rising and the first note being belted out by a small man limping bleeding across the stage, that there were to be subtitles accompanying the performance. Subtitles. At the opera. Who knew?! Following a short investigation, it turns out that it's the norm here, and they were very neatly projected above the stage, line for line, white on black, so that we had some sort of an idea of what was going on. Except I'm not sure they really helped. All that happened was that all those rich and round-vowelled, passionately-projected lines of Italian that I imagined to be deeply poetic and chest-tremblingly moving turned out to be "Do you have a spare key?" "Yes it's on the sideboard" "I painted this lady whilst she wasn't looking" etc. It's also quite exhausting trying to watch what was going on on the stage, read the subtitles 20 metres above it, make mental notes to ask the meaning of words I was unfamiliar with (my German torture vocab isn't up to much, apparently) and then try to combine on-stage action with above-stage subtitle in order to work out what on earth was going on.

And so about half an hour in I gave up trying. Because in my opinion, aside from the fact that my whirring cognitive processes somewhat detracted from an otherwise very comfortable experience, opera shouldn't be enjoyed line for line, it should be enjoyed for its grandiose aurals, extravagant visuals, and the whole over-the-top, escapist, dramatic shebang. The story of Tosca is a fierce one of love, passion, jealousy and death that is hugely dramatic, and if you follow the words too closely (and they've been translated into a less romantic-sounding language, perhaps), somehow when you get to the end of the tale and everyone's either shot in the head and sprawled dramatically stage right or is being kicked somewhat feebly to death stage left, you sort of wonder what the point of it all was. Because in this particular instance, sadly, it wasn't really in the performance itself. To prove my point: the second half of the performance was extraordinarily brief and its end, when it came, was so profoundly limp and anti-climactic that despite the fact that the curtain was drawing across the two lead characters as they lay dead on the floor and everyone else in the audience had started clapping, we still weren't entirely convinced it was over.

Anyhow, just to make sure we're all on clear on this: I may be being a bit rude about it, but I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it. I adored Puccini's score - the orchestra was excellent - and the heaving bosom of Tosca herself was mesmerising. Her solo bit at the end of the first half was also hugely impressive. And of course it was an honour to just be there, all glammed up and seated amongst Wiesbaden's finest (sort of) in such a beautifully ornate auditorium. But still, my favourite moment came at the end of the show after the first curtain call, when heavy red velvet cut off extensive cast from half-filled auditorium, and the audience leaped to their feet and started hurrying towards the doors: when the curtain came back up in expectation of a second round of enthusiastic applause, the poor cast were confronted with several rows of empty seats and a herd of people running for the exits. Admittedly painful to watch (we were still seated and applauding; one or two audience members embarrassedly pretended they were giving a standing ovation), but it rather appealed to my sense of humour.

Tosca done and dusted, we collected our coats from the exquisite cloakroom and wandered happily over to the adjacent Wiesbaden Kurhaus, where we were treated further to a dinner at Käfer's. Well I say we wandered over, but in my staggeringly high heels, to which I am entirely unused, my gait was more that of a lame giraffe ("Do you like my outfit tonight?" I asked my husband; "Well," he said, "I think you look sexier when you can walk"). I'm going to post a proper review of Käfer's another time but shall leave you with a picture of the Kurhaus entrance hall, through which you reach the restaurant; my melt-in-the-mouth glazed calve's cheeks with roasted autumn vegetables and its heavenly accompanying pea and potato mash. I tell you what: after washing all down that with a Riesling or two, I was rather in need of subtitles myself.

Frau Dietz Does Cologne. In the WEBMU style.

2011-10-25T21:04:00.005+02:00

By Friday afternoon, my mind was made up: on Saturday I'd go to Cologne to attend WEBMU, the annual meetup for English-speaking expat bloggers in Germany. And boy, am I pleased I did.

Midmorning, I hitched a lift with Shoegirl (and Mr Shoegirl): we sailed up the Autobahn for 90 minutes and arrived in Cologne shortly before lunch. Before joining the rest of the group, who'd been touring the city and climbing all over the Dom (cathedral), we had a brief amble around to stretch our legs. I remembered the city well from my previous visit in 2008, and mused on how different it felt to me on my first visit, just three years ago - when we camped on the river and I'd never encountered a revolving toilet - but it feels like a lifetime. I tell you what, I do love it here. Anyhow, Mr and Mrs Shoegirl picked up a couple of funny-looking pretzels covered in almonds whilst I admired the Weckmänner, who look a little like gingerbreadmen but are in fact made from sweet dough and furnished with a little clay pipe. They're peculiar to North Rhine-Westphalia (the federal state in which Cologne sits) and surface around this time of year in celebration of the Feast of St Martin.

A casual heap of Weckmänner. The chap on the left clearly had a big night out.

I resisted purchasing one to try, which I naturally regret, and we wandered around to meet our fellow WEBMU attendees at a Lebanese restaurant near the river (Beirut, which I wholeheartedly recommend). The Shoegirls and I made an entrance into the restaurant so quiet and undramatic that nobody realised we were part of the blogging ensemble, thus it wasn't until we'd polished off our flatbreads and fabulous grilled meats that introductions to the rest of the group began. With spouses and children thrown in for good measure, we made up about 30, and I would like to encourage you to have a look at the entertaining rambles of the fellow expat bloggers that I met that day because absolutely everybody I chatted to - or at the very least shook hands with - was lovely, and their blogs really do make for good reading. In alphabetical order, those present were:

American in Cologne

American in Wiesbaden* (Shoegirl)

Cheap as Chips

Counting Time*

Deutschland Über Elvis*

The Regensbloggers*

TQE: That Queer Expatriate

Zurika*.

I desperately hope I haven't missed anybody off (please shout if I have!!): there were so many faces to put names to, and it was impossible to have a good chinwag with everybody there in just one short day. Those bloggers marked with an asterisk you can find out lots more about by having a look at the interviews that they've done with me on Friendly Friday. The rest shall hopefully follow!

After lunch, a handful of us (the rest disappearing for disco naps after a hefty Friday night) strolled over to St Ursula's Church to have a gander at "The Bone Room", an ornate side-room at the back corner of the church decorated with the bones of Ursula's (alleged) 11,000 virginal handmaiden friends. There are gaudily painted busts with skulls in; gaudily painted busts with teeth in; smooth, yellowy bones arranged in decorative patterns surrounding large Latin script (also in bones). There are even skulls wearing (something very much resembling) Mexican wrestling masks. It was quite a sight, but my pictures are rubbish: you can see much better pictures than mine, and read more about the fascinatingly creepy chamber, over at Resident on Earth. We concluded our visit to St Ursula's with an enthusiastic wander around the rest of the church, which turned out to be, though quite beautiful with its cool, pale stone and striking stained glass windows, also filled with Mexican-wrestling skulls and a rather odd carving of a large pigeon and a shower of flying sperm.

A slightly fuzzy picture of some busts and bones.

Mexican wrestling skull.

Skull in a box.

Following a very welcome hot chocolate and cake break, an even smaller group of us ventured forth across the Hohenzollen bridge, famed for the thousands (probably) of "Love Padlocks" fastened to the fence between the pedestrian walkway and the trains.

Couples fasten padlocks to the fence as a symbol of their everlasting love. Which is nice.

On the other side of the Rhine, we climbed 28 floors in a lime green lift to reach the Panorama Platform of the KölnTriangle. It was a highpoint of the day for Frau Dietz (both literally and metaphorically): the view from up there, as the sun set over Cologne at the end of a beautifully clear day, was quite spectacular. From up there you can see the iconic twin spires of the Dom in one direction and in the other, the flat, green plains that surround the city and the peaks of the Siebengebirge ("7 mountains") beyond.

Through the glass on the KölnTriangle viewing platform: the Hohenzollen bridge leading over toward the Dom.

And then, as if by magic, it was time for dinner. We travelled by U-Bahn (half tube, half tram) back to Friesenplatz to dine out Cologne-style at the Päffgen Brewery. It was a brilliant evening in a traditional beer hall, all 30 or so of us crammed along two long tables, sandwiched between enthusiastic locals on all sides. To eat, I for some reason chose a German classic (Krustenbraten, or roast pork, on this occasion marinated in beer, more ham-like and thinly sliced than what I'm accustomed to) over a Cologne classic, but one of the Regensbloggers allowed me a mouthful of his Himmel und Äd ("heaven and earth")(thank you, Regensblogger), a local dish of sautéed black pudding with puréed apples and mashed potatoes. It was, indeed, heavenly, but the blood sausage rich enough that I probably wouldn't have managed a whole plate on my own.

My generous plate of Krustenbraten and Bratkartoffeln (pan-friend potatoes)... surrounded by Kölsch.

And to drink? No, we weren't all on halves of beer; we were enjoying whole (200ml) glasses of Kölsch. The local beer is served in these measly-looking glasses in order that it remains cold and fresh whilst you drink it. And I tell you what, it doesn't half make a difference: I've not really drunk beer for years now, but a glass (or two) of Kölsch put me right back on it. It's delicious. Our energetic waiter, keen to have every seat in his part of the (enormous) restaurant filled - he buys his beer directly from the brewery so has to work hard to sell it all again - strode back and forth, pale and sweaty in his traditional dark blue apron, swinging his Kranz - a circular glass-holder that fits 11 Kölsch in at a time - in one hand, whisking away our empty glasses and replacing them with full ones with the other. And so one can keep drinking cold, crisp and wholly refreshing beer all night long, without a flat-looking half-drunk pint in sight. And that's the way it continues, until you signal defeat by placing your beermat on top of the glass. I'm not sure I saw much of that happening on Saturday night.

After dinner, there was time for the Shoegirls and I to briefly take part in the WEBMU traditional TQEQE (That Queer Expatriate's Queer Expedition) at the Maxbar in Cologne's Bermuda Triangle. Cocktails flowed and expat bloggers sprawled on couches beneath a mirrored ceiling, but before long, and much later than planned, it was time to head home. The three of us trundled around for a bit trying to locate the car before careering smoothly back down the dark, empty Autobahn, arriving home, exhausted and thoroughly pleased with ourselves, at about half past two in the morning.

Big thanks to Resident on Earth, Futile Diatribes and Cheap as Chips for their brilliant hosting skills; and to all the other attendees who made such terrific company during the one day we made it to WEBMU 2011. I just can't believe I've got to wait a whole 'nother year for WEBMU 2012.

I'm back. And I'm ready for action.

2011-10-20T15:03:00.042+02:00

The Shard, in London Bridge, which will be 310m tall and the tallest building in the EU when it's completed next year. I can't say I envy whoever's in that crane.

Well, that's that then. I'm DONE. Exam OVER. And it went considerably better than I was expecting, which is a huge bonus given my incredibly risky last-minute intensive-cramming revision technique. And I now don't have to think about writing another assignment until January, which is terrific news.

I had another truly lovely time in a beautifully cold and sunny London once I'd got my three terrifying hours of hardcore scribbling over and done with. I hung out with my wonderful friends and family; soaked up the sunshine by the river; lounged around with my favourite newspapers; and gorged myself silly on octopus balls and katsu curry at my favourite Japanese/sushi restaurant Tsuru. (Conflict of interest announcement: it's part-owned and run by one of my best friends, but I'd not bother plugging it if hanging out and eating there wasn't one of the most fantastic ways ever to spend lunchtime or indeed an entire evening: trust me, I've visited all three locations and snaffled just about everything on the menu.) I even spent an evening in a pub that had an impossibly cute and fluffy in-house rabbit, Shakir, which is pretty much my idea of paradise. Even if Shakir did sink his cute little bunny rabbit teeth into me. Twice.

Tsuru's salmon skin rolls (fish sustainably sourced; sushi handmade; end result: heaven).

Nasu Dengaku (aubergine and miso): I'd walk all the way to Calais, swim the Channel and jog the final bit up to London for one of these. I'm not sure I'm even joking.

Takoyaki (octopus balls): if you've not tried these, well, frankly, you haven't lived.

Anyway, I'm now back in a beautifully autumnal Hessen and, with no psychology assignments on the cards for some time now, I have a bit more time for blogging. I finally have time to get Friendly Friday back on the go, starting again next week if I get my act together, plus I've got a substantial backlog of German recipes and some pictures of beautiful Crete to share (plus an embarrassing story about me and a Black Snapper). And thanks to a lovely person who's been secretly following my blog and wrote and asked me to share my more recent linguistic experiences, I'm going to write a bit about those too. I even have some very exciting secret blogging plans that I'm putting into action (which is the steep learning curve I've been banging on about if you follow me on Twitter). I hope to dramatically unveil them to rapturous applause within the next four weeks.

But first things first. Fingers and toes crossed (which is making typing a bit tricky), I'm hoping to get to Köln (Cologne) this Saturday in order to involve myself in a small portion of WEBMU, the annual get-together for expat bloggers in Germany. It's my first one and, though I've already been to Köln, I'm more than a little bit overexcited at the prospect of meeting some more of my fellow expat bloggers. Bring it on. And brace yourself, Köln.

Hello Autumn

2011-10-01T14:20:00.004+02:00

Following two gloriously hot and happy weeks in Crete, on Wednesday afternoon B and I landed at Hahn to discover the thick forests and rolling hills of Rheinland-Pfalz were turning from green to golden brown and were bathed in extremely warm late summer sunshine. To find bright blue skies and 27˚ at the end of September was a lovely surprise indeed. From the Autobahn we could see the harvesting of yellow fields of wheat, the air hazy with dust; and when we dived in the supermarket for provisions on the way home I happily noted the green beans and plump, juicy nectarines had been replaced with mounds of rosy apples, bright orange Hokkaido pumpkins and frilly green cabbages. Culinarily speaking, I think this is my favourite time of the year, so such changes signal good times ahead in Frau Dietz's kitchen. Additionally, and contrary to my belief, I've also not missed out on the all too brief Federweißer season.

A bottle of the good stuff.

Federweißer, as I understand it, is ~~young wine pressed from leftover grapes~~ (EDIT: got my facts entirely wrong - and you can read more about the Federweißer-making process at Schiller-Wine) fermented grape juice made from grapes that have ripened early. It's sold in bottles that have very loose-fitting caps that allow the fermentation process to continue whilst it's waiting to be drunk (and prevent the bottle from exploding in the process!) - and allegedly even when it's swooshing around in your belly. This means that aside from being sweet and refreshing it's pretty lethal: Federweißer may taste like gently fizzy and entirely harmless grape juice but, though your first glass probably contains a mere 4% alcohol, the rest of the bottle might well have reached more than 10% by the time you're done. It's a bit of a speciality across the river in Mainz, where they set up stalls around town selling it by the glass or the bottle alongside bags of tangy local apples. A glass of Federweißer alongside a slice or two of Flammkuchen is really rather delicious and, to those of you with access to such delights, I'd highly recommend it. It is, in fact, precisely what I'll be doing this evening.

Anyhow, I've unpacked from my holidays, had a night out with Shoegirl and will now be buckling down to cram for my fast-approaching exam (wish me luck for that. I really, really need it). Therefore although I hope to share a couple of pictures of lovely Crete at some point, I won't be posting much over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I hope you're all on fine form. Did I miss anything?

Frau Dietz Goes On Holibobs. And about time, too.

2011-09-13T22:08:00.001+02:00

The last time I saw any large expanse of water (excluding the Channel, which I've seen really quite regularly over the last 18 months, only from 36,000 feet up) was on our honeymoon in February last year. It looked like this:

The Gulf of Finland... frozen over as far as the eye can see.

I am, therefore, hopping up and down with excitement at the prospect of running off to the Mediterranean for two weeks, which is going to happen at 3am tomorrow. The forecast is currently around 32˚c, dry and sunny. All week.

Think of me, would you, as I sprawl elegantly on the beach, reflecting every last ray of autumn sunshine (I am what is known in polite circles as "an English rose"); and smearing salty water, sand and feta all over my exam revision notes.

I shall report back in a fortnight.

On London (Part II). And on the Loddon.

2011-09-13T09:10:00.000+02:00

I got a bit carried away with that last London post, didn't I. All I had actually wanted to say was just that a couple of weeks ago (or, rather, a month ago now), I went back to England and I had a lovely time.

B and I spent 10 days with my family - not just my folks but also my sister and her family who were visiting from California. It was pretty chaotic: my nearly-5-year-old nephew spent most of the week hopping about in a yellow bird outfit my sister had once worn ("I want to fly"); and my 3-year-old-niece trotted around after Uncle B adoringly, giving him cuddles and then telling him he needed a shave. We ate hunk of roasted meat after hunk of roasted meat (and a vast quantity of Yorkshire pudding with it) and drank gallons of tea and wine with various additional visiting relatives including my fabulous 92 year old grandmother, who continues to be brighter and sharper and better dressed than the rest of us put together.

B and I spent the weekend seeing as many of my friends as possible. Being apart from the people I love is the only thing I regret about leaving the UK and I miss them all dreadfully. We spent an evening drinking heavenly Sybille Kuntz Riesling and snacking on prawn tempura at a friend's (truly excellent) Japanese/sushi restaurant Tsuru before wandering to Hackney (which looked still a little fragile after the riots) to gorge ourselves on a whole butterflied leg of lamb that her girlfriend had deftly barbecued in that nonchalant way that only Australians can deftly barbecue whole butterflied legs of lamb. We lounged about in the Saturday sunshine at Borough Market; and spent the rest of the weekend in various North London pubs drinking ale and Bloody Marys and eating crisps and Scotch eggs (note for those unaware: Germany doesn't really do crisps). We were also treated to a breakfast of home-made vanilla and almond scones; that friend gets extra points. I also had the pleasure of meeting the Wine Rambler, who is not only a veritable wine encyclopaedia but a gentleman with it, by which I mean he didn't choke on his spaghetti when I mentioned how I'm partial to a white wine spritzer.

Scotch eggs: oh, little crispy, porky, eggy ball of joy, how I miss thee.

With apologies to my vegetarian readers: LOOK AT THAT!! IT'S A WHOLE BARBECUED LEG OF LAMB!!

I love my friends. And I love my friends' scones.

We also spent a day with my dad on the bank of the river Loddon, near Basingstoke, attempting to fly-fish for trout. My father has been asking me for years to join him and I can only hope that he wasn't wildly disappointed by the fact that I was so terrified by the line whipping about me as I attempted to cast that my fly-fishing experience lasted all of about 15 seconds; and that all that B managed to catch was his own ear. B and I thus took ourselves off to have a staring match with a herd of cows before settling down in a little hut with a bottle of wine and the weekend papers. My brother-in-law, meanwhile, wandered diligently up and down the river with his rod all day; and my aunt spent most of the afternoon trying to untangle her line from various trees whilst her husband sat with a small picnic and a book as far away from the rest of us as possible. Dad, in the meantime, caught two.

I love cows. The feeling is apparently mutual.

My father in action. (If I'm honest, I thought he looked more war correspondent than angling pro, but what do I know about fishing fashion?)

So, how was it, then, England, this time? Well, apart from food heaven, it was very peculiar being able to understand everyone without having to ask them to repeat themselves three times. And as Resident on Earth so eloquently described, arriving at Heathrow was a bit of an assault to the senses: everything was so incessantly loud and omnipresent. It was only sitting on the 90 minute bus ride home from the airport at Christmas that I appreciated for the first time how much more pleasant it is so live somewhere where you don't understand every word that's being said on public transport. I also kept catching myself rehearsing conversations in German before I approached anyone I didn't know.

I realised that I miss more about England than just my family and friends (for example, existing alongside people who, largely speaking, KNOW HOW TO QUEUE. AND DON'T JUST RUDDY PUSH IN, EVEN IF THEY ARE UNDER MASSIVE TIME PRESSURE BECAUSE THEY'RE DELIVERING HUMAN CELLS IN A SPECIAL SILVER BOX TO SOMEONE WHO'S LIFE DEPENDS ON IT)(we had a bad time at passport control when we got back; good grief I hate Frankfurt airport) but found myself getting hugely irritated by the absence of the little things make the German way of life seem so much more efficient (buses that adhere to their timetables; being able to pay separately in restaurants without the waitress looking at you as if you'd asked for a ticket to the moon) but although some things felt a bit alien to me (like that big flappy money), although I feel I have adjusted to a slightly different way of life, I didn't feel foreign. I'm not sure you can in London. But I suppose that's what surprised me the most: that I feel so totally comfortable and completely settled in two different countries.

Anyway, having departed late from a wet, miserable Heathrow and endured another very bumpy flight back to Frankfurt, B and I arrived to discover that summer had finally made it to Hessen. Better late than never: it was all blue skies, bright sunshine - in fact, 34 degrees at 7 in the evening. Which made it even lovelier to be... home.

Friendly Friday: Zurika

2011-09-02T12:28:00.003+02:00

First things first: a brief and happy update from last Friday's Friendly Friday Excuse Post... Yvonne the cow has been found, and is not being returned to the slaughterhouse from where she escaped.

But now on to what you're presumably really here for: an interview with expat artist and blogger, Julie Galante of Zurika. I've been enjoying Julie's blog for some time now (I believe it was one of her food posts that first drew me there) and I recently very happily discovered her art blog, too. I'm rather envious: I adore drawing/painting/making things but for some reason, over time, such things have all but disappeared from my day to day life. I must really make more of an effort again: getting covered in paint and glue is, as far as I'm concerned, pretty much as fun and satisfying as getting covered in food. Presently, of course, little is more fun and satisfying than interviewing terrific expat bloggers, so I'll stop wittering and get on with that.

Julie and her husband Scott (who also posts on her blog) together doing an extremely good job of working traditional Bavarian dress.

Name: Julie Galante

From: No one place feels like home. I was born in New Jersey but spent most of my childhood in Tennessee (I was a bit of a foreigner there, too)

Now in: Munich

Via: Zurich, Milan, Halle an der Saale (Saxony, east Germany), Berlin, and Bologna

Since: 3½ years

Because: Scott and I have been bouncing around Europe for a while now. We were living in Zurich and decided we wanted to try someplace new; Munich provided the most tempting job/location combination.

So, Julie, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Years ago I started describing myself as an ‘international dilettante.’ I have so many different interests that I never end up doing any one thing for very long. I have degrees in cognitive science, Italian, and business. I’ve taught English at an eastern German university and put together public finance deals in Italy. At the moment I’m mainly focused on making art, writing, and traveling.

In which case, I'm going to dive right in and ask you about your art. What are you working on at the moment?

I have a couple projects going on right now. I am just starting a series of large portraits of women wearing dirndls. I’m in the middle of another portrait series, depicting people posing with bits of modern technology. I also paint several small paintings (30 x 30 cm or smaller) per week, which I call ‘daily paintings’ (since most of them are completed on the same day they are started, painted alla prima if you want to get all fancy about it). Currently my daily paintings are mostly focused on Munich and Oktoberfest scenes. Since Oktoberfest is coming up in a couple of weeks, demand for these paintings is particularly high right now.

You talk a little bit about your paintings of people posing with modern technology on your art blog but can you tell us a little bit more about it here? I’m totally fascinated by them!

For the past year or so I’ve been slumming my way through Europe’s great museums paying special attention to portrait paintings. It’s a genre that hasn’t actually changed much over the past seven or eight centuries. The poses are the same, the people who get depicted are the same. The use of attributes is rather consistent as well. In the context of portraiture, an attribute is an object used to help identify or tell the viewer something about the subject. Writers are depicted with a quill or pen in hand. For self-portraits, artists usually hold a paintbrush or a palette. Saints’ attributes are often the implement of their death.

Mulling all this over, I decided I wanted to create a series of portraits with attributes that were so modern and specific that they place the paintings in no other possible timeframe. At the same time, I wanted to incorporate the conventions that have existed in European portraiture for all these centuries. My hope is that people find the results both thought-provoking and silly. You can see the first several portraits in this series >>here<< (You’re getting a total exclusive here - several of these paintings have never before been seen outside my studio, and that page isn’t visible on my website’s navigation yet.)

Wow - an Friendly Friday art exclusive! Thank you so much for sharing those, we are honoured ☺ and I honestly just love this idea and the series of paintings that have come from it. I have to say though, when I think about art in Germany, Bavaria wouldn't be the first place that sprung to mind as a hotbed of creativity; it would be, naturally, Berlin. As an artist, do you embrace Bavaria’s conservatism or do you feel stifled by it?

Berlin was my first home in Germany, and I think I’ll always identify with it more than I do with Munich. But, if you think about it, my art is actually rather conservative. There’s not all that much figurative painting going on in Berlin these days. Perhaps my work actually fits in better here. Or perhaps I’m being stifled and I just don’t know it yet.

In my travels I often find myself envying the more vibrant, dynamic artistic communities in other cities (like Berlin and Leipzig). I wanted one of my own, so earlier this year I started the Munich Creative Group. It has been surprisingly easy to find and attract smart, creative, interesting people to it. Come back to me in a year or so and we’ll have turned Munich’s art scene on its Kopf (head).

What a great idea. If I've learned one thing about life as an expat, it's that you can't just sit around and hope that things (whatever they are - friends, interest groups) will find you: you have be proactive and make things happen. It would otherwise be all too easy to simply accept that you can't find an outlet for your interests and passions and end up sinking into a small black hole. In what ways would you say living in Munich has influenced your art?

I paint Munich a lot. I paint a lot of European cities in general, but Munich is the one that shows up the most often, because it’s the one I spend the most time in these days. Painting cities helps me see them better. I appreciate the details of the architecture and spaces of a city much more once I’ve painted them. So perhaps my art has influenced my experience of living in this city more than the other way around.

Munich Wienerplatz, 60 x 70 cm, oil on canvas, ©2010 Julie Galante

I suppose whilst we’re here, we should discuss your broader experience of Germany as well. We’ve talked a little about how living in Munich has influenced your art; how else do you think living in Germany the last three and a half years has changed you?

Two words: beer belly. Although technically the Käsespätzle (heavenly egg noodles with cheese) is probably more to blame than the beer. Bavarians definitely don’t want vegetarians to miss out on any calories.

Oh no, no the Germans don't want anyone missing out on calories. I was, however (as I may have mentioned)(once or twice), shocked to discover that in Spring and Summer the Germans produce some lovely light meals as well as the big, hearty, stodgy ones. What preconceptions did you have about Germany that been challenged whilst you’ve been living here?

When I first lived in Germany, it was in the eastern part during the 90s. That was a crash-course in what life was like behind the iron curtain, and how things weren’t necessarily better after it came down. [Ugh, I think this is a fascinating topic, but probably too vast to get into for this interview. I’ll stop now.]

(And unfortunately, though we tried, we really didn’t have time to go into it. Perhaps we’ll do a Frau Dietz/Zurika Iron Curtain special sometime…) What do you most enjoy about living here now?

The fantastic travel opportunities. I can be in one of two dozen countries within a couple hours. More broadly, I really enjoy being foreign. It frees me from feeling pressure to try to be normal. As a kid I used to put a lot of effort in to trying to act the way other people acted, because it was pretty clear to me that I didn’t have the same social instincts that other people had, and I didn’t want anyone to know that. Now I can just blame my foreignness when I do something awkward, and go on about my awkward business.

And my, isn't there a lot of awkwardness. Well there is, certainly, in the world of Frau Dietz. If you enjoy being foreign so much, is there anything you miss about America?

Air conditioning and dirty martinis.

*Snigger*. This feels like it's suddenly turned into a bit of a quickfire interrogation. So, last one: what do you admire about the Germans?

Their faith in the kidney warmer.

The what?!

The Nierenwärmer. It’s an article of clothing, possibly unique to the German-speaking world. The Germans are convinced that one can avoid illness by keeping one’s kidneys toasty warm. Isn’t that adorable?

I had no idea my poor kidneys were cold. *Adds Nierenwärmer to basket*.

Thank you thank you, Julie, for taking part in a Friendly Friday and particularly for sharing your brand new series of portraits with us. You can find Julie all over the interweb: on her travel/expat blog, Zurika, her art blog, Flogging The Muse, the Julie Galante Facebook group... and twice on Twitter, for art and travel. Phew!

Friendly Friday is now, I'm afraid, going on another short hiatus due to a few rather busy upcoming weeks: first, my final psychology assignment of this course (EXCITING), Mini Dietz's wedding (EXCITING!!), two weeks lounging about in the Mediterranean sun (EXCITING!!!) and popping back to London for an exam (not so exciting). If we're lucky, I might fit in an interview whilst cramming, otherwise Friendly Friday will be back in about six weeks. Sorry about that. On the plus side, I do have a couple of crackers lined up for when it's back. And if there's an expat in Germany you'd like to see interviewed on Friendly Friday in future, please email me your requests! Happy weekends, all ☺

Photography credit: all images by Julie Galante

On London (Or, A Trip Home: Part I)

2011-09-01T11:49:00.002+02:00

Rush hour on Shoreditch High Street.

By the time I left the UK last March, my relationship with London was not exactly a happy one: less love-hate, more... hate. Yes yes, I'm familiar with Johnson's proposal that if you're tired of London, you're tired of life: well, I was mostly just tired of spending 2 hours a weekday with my head squashed between swaying, suited armpits on the hot hot hot stuffy hideous stinky sweaty Tube listening to the tinny thumping of 120 iPods and the rustling of free newspapers; and spending the 8-10 hours in between working myself into the ground alongside a collection of mentally unbalanced lunatics (hello if any of you are reading) in an bright orange office with limited natural light. Life in London may be filled with glorious opportunities but it is simultaneously exhausting and expensive: there's a never-ending schedule of things to do, places to go, people to see. I found that by spending so much time earning the money I needed to embrace the opportunities London had to offer, I ended up having no time in which to do them.

Thus, by the time I left, though there were things about it I knew I'd miss (mostly Sunday walks on Hampstead Heath followed by afternoons reading newspapers in the pub with a warm Scotch Egg and mustard and a pint of cider) I'd well and truly fallen out with London. As a result, my visits back there since have been, and certainly to begin with, really not about London itself: I focused on seeing my family and friends, gorging myself on dim sum and sushi and then getting the hell back out of town as quickly as our pitiful public transport system made possible. But over the course of my 18 months here in green and gentle Hessen, a little perspective has proven to be a wonderful thing and over the course of time, so my rather aggressive feelings towards The Big Smoke have gradually softened.

Round about this time last year, on a visit to London for an exam, I suddenly realised I felt like a bit of a tourist. The big flappy money looked all funny and I got confused sorting through the odd-shaped coins; I repeatedly attempted to alight from buses on the wrong side (the right side); and I couldn't cross the roads for trying to work out which direction the traffic was coming from (although I must admit I have that problem pretty much everywhere). My friends all thought I was mad for (a) waiting for the little green man to help me cross streets and (b) expecting buses to adhere to their timetables. My exam building was located in area of the City of London that I'd never previously visited, and I discovered I rather enjoyed wandering around it. I quietly sat in a park under a leafless tree eating a Marks & Spencer rare roast beef and horseradish sandwich. I gazed up at the enormous, grey buildings around me. I watched the filthy pigeons. I watched other people watching the filthy pigeons. And I enjoyed every second, until I realised I'd been enjoying myself so much, I'd made myself late for my exam.

But as I watched those people around me, I had a small but slightly overwhelming thought. Hang on, I thought. I miss this. I miss these people who I have never seen before and won't ever see again. I miss you, cheeky chappy with the wide, shiny, purple tie, carefully coiffed fashion-mullet and mobile phone shop name tag attached wonkily to your lapel. I miss you, middle-aged woman with badly-fitting trouser-suit, bright blue eyeshadow and crumbs from your home-made lunch on your chin. And I miss you, park benches with little commemorative plates on and double-decker buses and shouty black cab drivers and cyclists paying no attention to traffic lights. It was a revelation: I missed something about London other than my friends and my family and raw fish!

And so in this way, and I must emphasise, very gradually, my feelings about London changed. First, yes, it was the people: the incessantly grumpy yet inherently cheerful, shockingly rude yet unerringly polite, beautifully diverse London people. I came to note what I'd never fully appreciated before, that despite the grumbling and elbowing and general irritation, they know exactly how to negotiated their travel on public transport in the most efficient way possible (by which I mean escalator/platform/train-packing etiquette and a proper ruddy queuing system, none of which - NONE OF WHICH - exist over here). Then in April this year, I observed upon departure that I actually missed the lovely little pocket of London in which I last lived: its grubby little gentrified high street rammed with barely-moving traffic and lined with "local" versions of enormous supermarkets that are one-by-one pushing out the genuinely local independent shops. And on this most recent trip back, a couple of weeks ago now, I came to understand that actually, I missed London as a whole: it's sprawling, dirty, vibrant whole.

But let's not confuse "miss" with "love": there are plenty of things about life there that still drive me up the wall, and there are a number of things that truly frustrate me now I've lived here and seen them executed in a - dare I say it - far more efficient way. (For example the enormous fuss that's made when you want to split the bill: in Germany it's the norm and takes no time at all; ask to pay separately in the UK and they look at you like you've just requested to sleep with their mother.) However, I am starting to think that London and I might have made friends: feeling removed from my old life, no longer a little blond plankton being swept along helplessly in a vast ocean of faceless commuters, I found on this last trip I could step back and enjoy being there.

Which you might think, in light of the fact that I arrived a day or two after the August riots, a bit funny. In fact, the unrest contributed hugely to this warm fuzzy feeling I now (sort of) get when I think of the UK's capital: having watched the mayhem and burning buildings, online, from afar; seeing my hometown wounded and distressed, I felt a strong urge to be back there. So it was in fact a good moment to return. From the moment a woman climbed on the bus at Heathrow and asked the driver if it was running the full route to Croydon (only two days before engulfed in flames and declared "a war zone") and he said yes love, in that warm, friendly, London cab-drivery way that makes you feel safe and full of hope for humanity, I was aware of a genuinely tangible sense of We'll All In This Together that I've felt in London only once before. During the aftermath of the London bombings in July 2005, as the shock of the events had begun to subside, you could sense people collectively picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and pulling together to show the rest of the world what they were made of. And millions of people, millions of people - millions of people so ethnically and religiously diverse - coming together to display such strength and unity? That's what I really love about London.

Friendly Saturday: Heidelbergerin

2011-08-27T19:07:00.000+02:00

Hello one and all and welcome to the world's first Friendly Saturday. (Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?) Despite the temperature plunging from 32˚ to 19˚ overnight, thanks to the unrelenting humidity it still feels incredibly warm here. And it's about to get even warmer... as I have one hot blogger for you today: introducing Heidelbergerin, who blogs just up the road from me in the beautiful town of, you guessed it, Heidelberg.

Heidelbergerin enjoying a wine with Mr Heidelbergerin. How cute are they?!

Name: Heidelbergerin

From: Born and raised in rural Iowa, went to university in Chicago, and then lived and worked in Boston for six years

Now in: Heidelberg.

Since: As of next month we’ll have been here 5 years

Interests: Food, travel, music, embroidery, first names, learning to sew a bit...

…hang on a minute, Heidelbergerin… what do you mean, “first names”?

It’s kind of a dorky hobby but I’m very interested in what people name their children in different places and during different periods of time, the origins of the names, and how they come in and go out of fashion. Usually when I go to a new country my big souvenir is a name dictionary from that country. Shortly, I plan to have up a new blog just for name stuff. This topic pops up on my blog once a year when I compare the most popular names in Germany vs the US.

Wow – I had no idea there was such a hobby! So what names are hot Germany right now?

Depends on the source - unfortunately Germany doesn't collect official name statistics so it's just done by hobbyists. I usually use beliebte-vornamen.de and their data says Leon and Mia were the most popular names in 2010. Both are popular in some other European countries too so they're not especially German!

They don’t sound traditionally German, you’re right - bring back Fritz and Gunther, I say. But I appear to have digressed before we've even got started. So... first things second: how did you come to be here in Heidelberg?

My husband is a scientist. He got his PhD in Boston and then needed a post-doctoral position. Generally, for a post-doc it’s not really a normal job application process, but one looks around at individual labs (at universities) and applies to a few they think are doing interesting work, then asks if they can work there. In the end it came down to moving to Germany or staying in Boston, and we decided to shake things up a bit. In the end this may be a slightly dangerous move career-wise, but it was such a good move life-experience-wise.

I spent a day in Heidelberg early last year on a Dietz Family Excursion: As a university town, I remember it being young and lively and additionally very pretty indeed, but my memories of the day are largely coloured by the small breakdown I had in a café while trying to answer follow-up questions from our waitress about the hot chocolate I’d ordered - not a single Dietz came to my rescue. There may have been tears. Tell us, how is it to live there?

Heidelberg is a very nice place to live – first of all, you can’t beat the natural setting with the river valley opening onto the plain and the green, forested hills. It also has some of the best weather in Germany, especially in the spring – a season I think I never appreciated as much in the past as I do here. There’s a huge American presence so if you need to find an English-speaking doctor or something, there’s usually an option. Heidelberg can start to feel small, conservative, expensive, and stuffy, especially if you’ve lived in a city before – but Mannheim is only a 15-minute S-Bahn (train) ride away and it has a much bigger variety of shops and restaurants, everything is cheaper, and everyone just seems a little more laid-back.

It’s great to have another town closeby so you can reap the benefits of both – I would make similar comments about where I am, with the lively university town of Mainz just across the river to counterbalance beautiful old Wiesbaden's, er, "calm". What else do you appreciate about your German lifestyle?

Germany feels much more relaxed to me than the US. It’s less flashy. I feel less pressure to consume and spend. Stores are closed on Sunday and this gives you an excuse to just sit back and do as little as you want. I’ve been sick a couple of times and I’m glad it was taken care of quickly and simply by insurance and not dragged out with months of notices from the insurance company trying to get out of the charges (this happened to me in the US). I like the respect for family and vacation time that allows people to not work themselves to death, combined with the proximity to lots of different countries to explore. All of this, and the country is just beautiful, too.

Heidelberg by night.

And it really is beautiful – I honestly had no idea just how beautiful before I visited the area I now live in. I always just imagined Germany somehow being… well, certainly not with a lot of rolling hills, green forests and glistening rivers. What preconceptions about Germany have you had challenged since you moved here?

I think the only big negative preconceptions about Germans that I had before coming here were that they were very closed people and that Germany was really bureaucratic. Well, the second one is true, and I don’t have much else to say about that! The first one is a bit harder to pin down. I think they are quite closed, but not to the extent that I expected. I find the Germans who are the most willing to make friends with foreigners are the ones who are married to foreigners, the children of one foreign parent, or who have spent more than a year in other countries (which country doesn’t seem to matter).

I guess that makes sense. Certainly I have fewer German friends here than I do other nationalities but for me, I put it down to the fact that my German hasn’t been up to scratch for making them! What other preconceptions did you have?

I expected Germans to be liberal in the way we use the word in the US – in favor of social systems to help people, health care coverage for everybody, and tolerant of different kinds of people. What I didn’t really realize is that the social safety net here is not some progressive thing, it’s their tradition. Being what we think of as liberal is actually just a way to be conservative here.

As for tolerance, I was disappointed. My first big shock in that regard was one day in class in Mainz when I was pretty new (when I arrived, I did a master’s program in epidemiology). A fellow student - a very educated, curious female doctor - said to me, “There’s a street in Berlin where EVERYTHING is in Turkish – all the signs and the shops and restaurants and everyone speaks Turkish to each other!” I thought she was describing this to me as a cool thing – I was feeling homesick for the kind of city where I could wander off to a Chinatown or K-town or Little Italy or SOMEthing – but immediately I realized from her expression that that wasn’t what she meant. It was a complaint, and she was waiting for my expression of horror. To discover that a young, urban, educated German could find an ethnic neighborhood a Very Bad Thing left me really taken aback. I don’t think this was particularly a preconception I had but just something I didn’t think about before moving: I expected a large town with a great, internationally-respected university to be MUCH more diverse and was pretty shocked at how white it is. It never occurred to me to expect Germany to be so white.

I was shocked about how white it is here, too - and I am genuinely aware of it every day. We do have a lively Turkish quarter in Wiesbaden and it's filled with fab shops and restaurants and I've personally never seen anything of the sort of trouble that's reported to take place in Berlin, where social problems in conjunction with immigration have (allegedly) caused significant issues. [Very quick background for those not up on Germany’s immigration situation: In the 1960s in order to solve Germany’s labour shortage (and as a plus, help out Turkey with their unemployment levels), Germany invited thousands of Turkish people over as “guest workers” for a few years… but were somehow surprised when they tried to send them back early and found many of them had had families and happily settled. 50 years on there are approximately 4 million people of Turkish origin living in Germany (according to Wikipedia) and there's an ongoing debate about immigration and integration which was inflamed last year with the publishing of a book by Thilo Sarrazin in which he blamed the inferior genes of the Turkish people for the decline of German society. Angela Merkel didn't approve of the book but nevertheless declared that multi-culturalism in Germany had failed. In the midst of this ongoing debate today, Germany is also contemplating trying to resolve the problem of its shrivelling population by getting some foreign skilled professionals in. End of German immigration briefing.] So... Heidelbergerin, have you come across much intolerance of this kind in your five years here?

The attitude comes up sometimes, but of course there are also plenty of Germans who aren’t intolerant. I guess my big surprise is just that you can find it among young and highly educated people which would be an unusual demographic in which to find intolerant attitudes in the US. I think it’s just cultural difference. German society is very orderly and trusting (for example – how rarely bus tickets are checked). In order to maintain it this way, everyone in society needs to believe that everyone else thinks the same way they do about the rules and how things should be. I think when people come in from other cultures and don’t seem to fully integrate, people are afraid those foreigners might not see things the way they do or follow their rules. Then they worry that it will undermine their trusting, orderly society. American society has forever been a patchwork of people from different places. It isn’t very trusting and orderly at all, except in rural areas – where you can still find plenty of negative attitudes toward non-integration. We expect people to learn functional English but if immigrants set up their own neighborhoods, I think most of us care more about what new, interesting thing they are contributing to our society (dim sum!!) than whether they’re becoming just like us.

Mmm... dim sum. It’s obvious that you have great respect for many aspects of how German society functions. What else do you admire about the Germans?

Their loyalty to their friends is very admirable, though on the down side it prevents them from making new ones. I admire their clean, low-crime society. I admire they way they care about each other through social programs despite not seeming to care about each other much as individuals. I love that they are horrified at the idea of someone being bankrupted just for getting sick, or someone getting their insurance taken away right when they need it most – at the stressful time of losing ones job.

Do you feel an affinity with Germany, the people and their culture? Does your own culture back in the US feel a bit alien now when you visit?

I actually had a strange experience in Berlin four years ago. While visiting the Reichstag building, the tour guide showed us a sculpture in the courtyard which said “Der Bevoelkerung” – “to the population” – and she explained that it was meant to include everyone living in Germany, including foreigners. I suddenly felt a strange wave of patriotism wash over me – patriotism toward Germany. Of course in daily life a lot of Germans might not agree with the sculpture’s sentiment but I don’t think I could have felt the way I did if I didn’t feel some kind of affinity toward Germany. We have picked up some German habits. When I go to the US and see people breaking rules in public, I have to stifle the urge to tell them to stop.

Haha that's hilarious. I haven't gone that far, but as I think I've said before I have awful trouble crossing roads now without the help of the little green man. Talking of crossing roads, have you traveled about much whilst you’ve been here? What have been your highlights?

In Germany, my favorites have been the atmosphere in Berlin, the vineyards in the Mosel Valley, the little wine-making towns in the Pfalz, the booze forest near Ottenhoefen in the Schwarzwald, the churches in Nuremberg, the half-timber house details in Goslar, the big cliffs and little towns in the Rhine Valley, the tea and china on the North Sea, the painted houses in the Alps. Outside of Germany: the sense of history in Rome, the food and beer and views in Prague, the pubs and ruins and landscapes in England, Scotland, and Wales, the incredible natural setting of Stockholm, the pannekoeken (Dutch pancakes) in the Netherlands, the Istrian coast in Croatia, and last but definitely not least the incredibly friendly people in Ireland! My biggest piece of advice for those who have been in Germany for a while - but still feel like they don’t know any German - is to travel to another country where you really can’t read a thing – like Hungary (unless you’re Hungarian). When you come back German is like an old friend!

And I'm sure it's happy to have you home! ☺

Thank you, lovely Heidelbergerin, for a fab interview. It's amazing the variety of topics we manage to cover in these things. If you would like to read further about Heidelbergerin's adventures (or learn more about first names!) then please do visit her blog. You can also follow her on Twitter and, just you check out how modern we are today, Google Plus, where she's CNHeidelberg.

Next week's interview will be with the hugely talented, Munich-based Julie Galante who blogs about her expat life over at Zurika. Yippee!! In the meantime, I hope you all have wonderful weekends, wherever you are. Me? I'm off for a cold bath.

Photo credit: all images by Heidelbergerin

Just call me Unreliable Dietz.

2011-08-26T17:38:00.002+02:00

Due to circumstances of the fun, surprising and massively unforeseen kind, Frau Heidelbergerin's (yay!) Friendly Friday is postponed until tomorrow (which is particularly annoying since I was working on it at 5 o'clock this morning when I couldn't sleep). And by tomorrow I do mean tomorrow, not "in two months" like what happened with Papa Scott. Apologies.

In the meantime, why don't you kick back, have a nice cup of tea/Pina Colada and read about Yvonne the cow, who's made a daring escape from a German abattoir and is very much on the run. I think I love her.

What's for supper?

2011-08-24T20:23:00.055+02:00

Well, since you asked, it's this fine fellow: locally grown, steamed for 13 minutes and slathered in butter and salt flakes.

Again.

The trouble with me and seasonal eating is, as soon as something first makes its annual appearance I get totally overexcited and consume it day and night for the duration of it's availability. That does at least prevent me, however, from wishing away the weeks until the next fruit or veg comes into season: last year, corn on the cob was a fantastic distraction from the eagerly awaited pumpkins. This year, however, those big orange balls of joy have turned up early. I'd feel very wrong tucking into one in August - this week's very humid 34˚c is definitely not pumpkin-eating weather - so, more than happily, I'm sticking with my sweetcorn.

Hello, yellow friend... and a very swift goodbye *smacks lips*

A night at the 36th annual Rheingau Wine Festival

2011-08-22T12:05:00.002+02:00

"Wine is the finest embodiment of the spirit of nature. That's why it is celebrated anew every year in Wiesbaden."

Leaflet for the 2010 Rheingau Wine Festival

Saturday evening at the Rheingau wine festival

I think I've mentioned before that the Germans know how to party; well, they also know how to drink. I can't really imagine an admission-free, 9-day wine festival taking place in your average UK town centre: set up 100 stalls offering over 1,000 inexpensive wines on Sutton High Street and I imagine a national state of emergency would be declared after about 45 minutes. During the course of Saturday night at the Rheingau Wine Festival, however, I counted precisely 2 policeman and they weren't breaking up a scuffle or trying to manage crowds; they were chatting casually with a wine producer, presumably discussing wine. (We did also spot a couple of casualties, but they were grey-haired chaps in good spirits who'd probably been there since opening time and they were being gently pushed homewards without too much difficulty. Albeit one on a stretcher.)

A few more words from last year's promotional leaflet (I didn't get hold of one this year):

"If you leave the car at home... your visit to the Rheingau Wine Festival promises to be a relaxed and unforgettable experience."

Well, lucky for us B and I don't have a car, besides which the wine festival is walking distance from our flat, so on Saturday evening we wandered into town to catch up with some friends - including Shoegirl and Otomcio - over a bottle of Riesling (or two).

For someone who knows very little indeed about wine in general, in the last year I've learned an awful lot about the German white (and not just how to pronounce Gewürztraminer). Of course I still feel like a complete idiot in the company of knowledgeable sorts like the Wine Rambler, who I had the pleasure of meeting whilst I was in London last week (more on that trip to come), but my hugely enthusiastic father-in-law is doing a fine job of trying to educate me, and a good thing too when we live in one of Germany's 13 wine regions.

My taste has changed quite dramatically since I arrived here: when we sampled wines for our wedding at the end of 2009, I was concerned that the white we decided upon would be too full of flavour for me and my British counterparts. I need not have worried, it went down a storm, but my point is that I've gone from finding a dry Riesling too sweet (it was Peter Jacob Kühn's 2008 Classic - heavenly, though his bottles have now pretty much doubled in price since he won himself a contract with Deutsche Bahn last year*) to being a sucker for the late season wines that are sweet enough to give you a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. Anyhow, I'm not going to try and describe any of the wines I had on Saturday night because I'll only sound like a fool: I'll simply say I really am spoilt to be living here. My favourite of the evening was this, from one of my father-in-law's favourite wineries, Weingut Künstler, conveniently the only bottle I remembered to photograph:

It's white, and it's wine: it's white wine! And only about 9€ a pop.

I only took a couple of photos on Saturday night and they're mostly of our party looking a bit worse for wear (heavily pregnant friend excluded), so I'm going to cheat with the rest of my pictures: when I came to write this post I found another post from last years festival hiding in my drafts, so I'm going to steal a couple of pictures from that instead.

A half-full glass of Classic 2008 and a glass of something else, both from Peter Jakob Kühn.

My father-in-law bought this for me last year because he thought I'd like the bottle. I did. And I also very much liked what was in it.

There's not only wine available at the wine festival (though you'd struggle to find beer), there's lots of live music too and the food on offer is marvellous: huge slabs of pork stuffed with a handful of melt-in-the-mouth onions into a fluffy white bap; vast plates of mozzarella, cold meats, fruit and olives; pretzels as big as your head. And if you're willing to queue for half an hour at the most popular stand of all, you can pick up a generously-sized paper bag full of freshly-sliced and deep-fried salty, crunchy potato crisps drenched in a heavily garlicky yoghurt sauce. Heaven.

Small snack with your beverage, ma'am?

Last year on our five visits to the festival (it runs for nine days; I decided that an enthusiastic attendance was key to integrating into life here) we did a much better job of wandering around and sampling local wines from a variety of producers: this year, we sat with our friends, enjoyed the warm weather and buzzing atmosphere and people-watched contentedly from the same spot all evening. I do regret not having had a good wander around to see what was on offer this year but after returning to our flat for a danceathon with some friends (and a selection of interesting hats) that went on well into the early hours of Sunday morning, there was no way we were making it back there yesterday afternoon. Still, it's not like we have to wait a whole 364 days till we can do it again: there's another wine festival across the river starting next week. Although at this point, I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that.

*to learn a little bit more about Peter Jakob Kühn's biodynamic winery have a look at the Wine Rambler's review of the 2007 Oestricher Doosberg.

Sca-sca-scaffolding.

2011-08-20T17:44:00.000+02:00

Don't be distracted by the heavenly blue sky. LOOK WHAT'S OUTSIDE OUR RUDDY WINDOW!!

Yesterday morning we woke to an awful lot of banging outside our flat. It sounded, first of all, happily distant (four floors down), but it quickly grew louder (three floors down) and louder (two floors down) and more and more annoying (the floor beneath us) until it became really very irritating indeed (level with our flat). Wandering into the living room I then noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a couple of (not entirely unsightly) topless men outside our living room window, hammering proudly away at their impressively speedily erected scaffolding.

I was briefly enchanted by the cage with which they had wrapped around the steel platforms and ladder, which I presume is there in order to prevent unruly Germans hauling themselves up the side of our building in the middle of the night, but this morning I was mainly thoroughly put out that they have (partially) wrecked our beautiful view. It's all very well and good someone wanting to clamber up onto our roof - I suppose there's good reason for it - but it would have been nice if someone had told us I wasn't going to be able to dance around the living room to Boney M during the coming days/weeks/months should the mood take me. Well, not without an audience.

Friendly Friday: No Apathy Allowed

2011-08-05T15:12:00.003+02:00

Well, there vanishes yet another week of my life spent staring at a heap of books, attempting to write an assignment about something genuinely fascinating that I can't quite get my head round. Wretched education.

I thought I'd allow myself a vaguely well-deserved break in order to welcome to Friendly Friday the lovely Mandi of No Apathy Allowed, who I have been stalking for just over a year now. Mandi's been blogging for just about six years, if I've done my maths correctly, and her blog is filled with tales of her adventures in New York, Hamburg, Bremen and now Berlin; her stories frequently complimented by her truly gorgeous photographs. I have to admit I'm more than slightly envious of her camera skills. Anyway... on with the show!

Mandi demonstrating a distinct lack of apathy in sunny Scotland.

Who: Mandi

About: Public health geek. Runner. Photographer. Traveler. Social activist. Coffee fanatic. Book lover

From: Originally from Seattle, but spent about 6 years in New York before coming to Germany, so as much of a New Yorker as a Seattle-ite

Now in: originally moved to Hamburg, now splits her time between Bremen and Berlin

Since: 2008

Welcome to Friendly Friday, Mandi ☺ First things first: what brought you to Germany?

My German partner (known on my blog as mein Schatz) (honey/sweetie) and I met while we were both living in New York. Two years later, after his contract was up, he returned back home to Germany to start a new position. We decided to give a trans-Atlantic relationship a go, and were personally responsible for keeping the Air Emirates route between New York and Hamburg financially afloat. Lucky for us, after two years of traveling back and forth, I received a pretty sweet fellowship that set me up to join mein Schatz in Hamburg and conduct independent research for more than a year. With a generous stipend, language lessons, and lots of travel within Germany, that fellowship was just the ticket I was looking for to make my move abroad. It was a great way for me to settle into German culture, get my foot in the door career-wise, and of course, be with mein Schatz. I’ve been here ever since!

And 'here', these days, is Berlin, right?

Bremen is where I’m working on my PhD and spend the better part of the workweek. But Berlin is where I consider home and where I share a fabulous apartment with mein Schatz.

But you originally arrived in Hamburg…?

After spending two years in Hamburg, my fellowship was over and I began looking for PhD programs within Germany. There were only a few in my field, and unfortunately, none of them were in Hamburg. Bremen, however, is only about an hour away and offered me a nice doctoral fellowship. So last September, I began splitting my time between the two Hansestädte. Then this past spring, mein Schatz’s job took him to Berlin, and my weekend commute increased from one hour to three.

Mandi's first German home: Hamburg (although presumably she didn't live aboard this little dazzler)

Crumbs: I love travelling by train, but that's quite a journey to make every week! Having said that, as far as train rides go, Deutsche Bahn have an excellent reputation - well, outside Germany, and particularly in the UK, where our public transport is absolutely dire. As a frequent traveller, would you say it's well-deserved reputation?

Well, coming from the US, it’s hard not to have a totally skewed perspective on the situation. Compared to Amtrak - which only runs a handful of routes, is usually expensive, doesn’t take seat reservations, and is certainly not set up to efficiently move people from one city to another –Deutsche Bahn is a dream. There’s a train to just about anywhere you could imagine going, they run regularly, and they’re generally on time. Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s always so ideal. I’ve certainly endured more than my fair share of delays (especially on Sunday evenings), strikes, lost reservations, and overcrowded trains – but on the whole, I think it all balances itself out.

Even though the number of breakdowns I've experienced is entirely disproportionate to the number of journeys I've been on, I have to say I just love long-distance train travel here. Everything's always so clean and comfortable; I will never tire of the compartments and dining cars; and I'm a total sucker for little things like the in-carriage screens that tell you what time you'll arrive at the next stop and how fast the train's going. But Frau Train Geek digresses... you’ve been here three years now: how are you finding it?

I have to say that I feel pretty at home in Germany and I really enjoy my life here. In Bremen, I have a lovely little office and fun colleagues who don’t mind listening to me speak German with an American accent. In Berlin, mein Schatz and I are currently settling into a new apartment, which means we’re spending a lot of time looking for good deals on antique furniture, since we now have 20 more square meters to furnish than when we lived in Hamburg.

It's amazing how many metres you get for your money here - we're still haven't finished furnishing ours! How does life in Hamburg compare with that in Bremen and Berlin?

Hamburg, I think, will always hold a special place in my heart. That’s where I learned German, got a feel for the culture, and started feeling at home. The city is beautiful and has a gorgeous harbor, which reminds me of Seattle. In my mind, Hamburg will always be what I measure the rest of Germany against. Bremen, on the other hand, is the smallest city I’ve ever lived in during my adult life, and it kind of feels that way. But to be fair, I spend most of my time in Bremen working, so I’m sure I haven’t quite discovered all its treasures yet. Whereas Hamburg reminds me of life in Seattle, Berlin energizes me like New York did. There is simply so much life and culture in Berlin, and I love taking advantage of it all I can.

I bet, and I'm most envious: having moved from huge, sprawling, buzzing London to little old Wiesbaden, I really miss that sense of Things Going On. What have you been getting up to in Berlin?

Back in May, we went to a friend of a friend’s art exhibition. And just recently, there was a Fotomarathon, which had us running all over the city photographing according to specific themes. (Snooker in Berlin and TQE also participated). Also, we’re constantly going to concerts because there are so many great venues and performances going on all the time – from Digitalism at the Astra Kulturhaus at 3 a.m. (now that required some extra caffeine) to Morissey’s over-before-dark show at the Zitadelle.

The Mauerpark, Prenzlauer Berg, occupies an area previously enclosed by the Berlin wall - one strip of which remains as a monument.

Wow. Well, I think we've got Alphaville playing this weekend ;) It seems that everything I hear or read about Berlin these days is around how wealthy folk moving to now-fashionable areas are pushing out the artists and creatives; how the city that was once so edgy, alternative and ultra cool is turning into a tourist playground. From your personal experience, are there still plenty of underground cultural/artistic goings on?

I have heard from artist friends, that while Berlin is certainly inspiring for their art, it’s more difficult to make a living from it here than other places (like New York). You literally trip over artists and installations in Berlin, so to stay on the cutting edge of the art scene, some believe Leipzig is where the real action is at, rather than Berlin. I, of course, can’t speak personally too much to the topic, but I pretty much assume that if I’ve heard about an event, it’s probably not underground anymore.

Leipzig, huh? Well, you heard it here first. Or at least, I did. So, aside from all the fab things you get to get up to in Berlin, what else do you find pleasing about life in Germany?

There’s so much that I enjoy about living In Germany… I enjoy living car free and having access to an efficient countrywide train system that lets me travel almost anywhere I want to. I enjoy the fact that every city of reasonable size has a functioning public transportation system that people actually make us of. I also like that no one here seriously debates whether everyone deserves to have healthcare or not, it is simply a given. Oh, and I love the saunas in the winter too.

Saunas in the winter, and SO many outdoor pools for the summer. Heaven! So what do you find most challenging about life in a foreign country?

Of course, living in a foreign culture presents its challenges. At the beginning, it was mostly about the language, so that’s what I spent a lot of my time thinking about. These days, it’s rather coming to the realization that there will always be some things I’m just never going to understand about German culture, and that that’s okay.

Oh, go on then… such as..?

Like the formal ‘Sie’ and informal ‘du’. I mean, I get it grammatically, like when, where, and with whom I should use the two, but it’s the hierarchy and separation inherent in addressing someone formally or informally that doesn’t make much sense to me. This separateness is so embedded in German culture (less so in the younger generations, of course), just like my wanting to be familiar and call everyone by their first name is so embedded in American culture. So I’ve come to peace with simply respecting the way it is, without necessarily truly understanding it.

At the other end of Mandi's 3 hour commute from Berlin lies lovely Bremen.

I understand where you're coming from there: though there may of course be differences between working sectors, for me, having worked for so long in the UK in offices where we would all call each other by our first names - even as a minion addressing the Director-General - it still sounds funny to hear B referring to his boss as "Herr X". But if there are some things about living in Germany that you have learned to accept, are there other things that you have adapted to - or that have changed you?

Through the process of learning German, which is the first foreign language that I’ve had to figure out, I’ve definitely become more patient with myself and more tolerant of my mistakes. I realized there was just no way I was going to be able to learn and improve without just putting myself totally out there, mistakes and all. Not a small feat for a perfectionist!

From one perfectionist to another, boy do I understand that! It wasn't until I stopped worrying about mis-declining an ending and just went for it that my German really started to improved. And I continue to pity the poor people who are subjected to me butchering their language. Along the same theme of change, one final question: as an American, has living in Europe altered the way in which you perceive the States?

Obama was elected during my first year in Germany. Healthcare reform also took place while I’ve been here. I’ve always been politically and socially active, and even more so during the Bush years. So now it’s hard to be so far removed when I still feel so responsible and still want to have a voice in the discussions over what’s happening at home. But at the same time, I’m thankful for the distance and the perspective it offers. I’m thankful that I’m not immersed in the poisonous atmosphere of US politics. While it’s totally frustrating to see my home country divided over issues that make no sense to anyone in Europe, I also think that maybe as an American living abroad, that’s what I can contribute to the conversation – a fresh perspective of how it could be, of what we can still become.

And what a wonderfully positive note on which to end. Mandi, thank you so much for taking the time to take part in Friendly Friday, and if your commute day is Friday, may you have a lovely trip back to Berlin today!

You can follow Mandi's north German adventures on her blog of course, as well as on Twitter; and you can admire more of her beautiful photos on Flickr. Meanwhile, Friendly Friday is going on a short hiatus whilst I nip to London (I love that I won't pause to write this assignment, but I will break for a holiday. Got my priorities right there.) So anyway, things might go a bit quiet here for the next couple of weeks but Friendly Friday shall return on 19th August. Until then... may the sun shine for you all this weekend ☺

EDIT (AUGUST 17): There's been no way I could have had a chance to do a Friendly Friday whilst I've been in London so the next interview will be the 26th August instead!

Photo credit: all images by Mandi at No Apathy Allowed

Friendly Friday: Deutschland über Elvis

2011-07-29T17:15:00.002+02:00

Hello one and all (both of you) and welcome once again to Friendly Friday, and what better way to celebrate what has turned out to be a beautifully sunny Friday than with the Honourable Husband, writer of the incomparable Deutschland über Elvis. He's a witty, wry chap who describes himself as "stateless, rootless, godless and gay" and has a perspective on life, sense of humour and way with words that I just adore. With a brief warning and heartfelt apology to my mother regarding the two incidents of the f-word that appear in the following discussion, let us proceed with this week's interview.

The Honourable Husband relaxing in style at Castel Fragsburg, Merano, Not Germany.

Who: The Honourable Husband

From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but calls Australia home

Now in: Munich, "on the genteel right bank of the Isar. Bogenhausen is so bourgeois that you can scarcely hear the Schubert over the rustle of antimacassars"

Since: 2007

Why: “It’s kind of a long story” – read on…

Let's start at the very beginning, sir: you've lived in the US, Australia, Japan and now you're in Europe. But where are you really, truly, originally from?

I was born in McKeesport, a Monongahela Valley steel town just upstream from Pittsburgh. Deer Hunter territory. Different immigrant groups clustered in each small city, and McKeesport was home to a community of Carpatho-Rusyns. They labored as factory fodder for the mills; my father was a steelworker for most of his life.

And so how did you come to end up all the way over here?

My now husband and I met when I was transferred to Tokyo in 2000. We lived together for a number of years, before my employer posted me to New York. In spite of Master Right’s charm, education and employability, we couldn’t get him a US visa, and certainly couldn’t do so on the strength of our relationship.

So, if we wanted to live together, we had to do so in a country that recognized civil unions for immigration purposes. I deliberately sought a job in the EU or Canada, so I could get a visa and sponsor a spouse. He did the same from Japan. Like the redoubtable Snooker, or the adventurous Mike, a gay or lesbian American who falls in love with a foreigner is destined to become an exile.

Exile has turned out better than “home”. My job is great, my life is rewarding, Munich is a joy to live in, and we are spared the hell of US health care. And there’s the little matter of not turning on the TV to hear gay people like me vilified by ultra-Christian nutcases. When I hear leading Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential election talk about how they want to wind back my rights, I feel I’m better off out of the whole mess.

Munich: home to the Costume and Rifleman's Parade that takes place during Oktoberfest.

But would the recent decision to legalise gay marriage in New York not have changed things for you?

No. The federal government controls the really important things which affect a couple’s life — tax, pensions, and importantly, spousal immigration. Without the last of those, it wouldn’t have helped our case.

Hm(ph). In terms of gay and lesbian rights, Germany is seen as being progressive – there are several high profile politicians who are openly gay, including the Foreign Secretary (Guido Westewelle). Yet the so-called Homo-Ehe ("same-sex marriage") does not give couples the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples, and the marriage of a same-sex couple who have married elsewhere is not recognised here either. So, how progressive do you think Germany really is? And how is it reflected for you in your daily life?

Let me answer the last question first, Frau Dietz. That answer is cash. I can’t claim a tax deduction for a dependent spouse, as I would were we a straight couple. It doesn’t cause us huge hardship, but it’s the principle. Governments are happy to grant gay rights unless they involve actual money.

In this sense, governments tend to be cautious about recognizing gay marriages from abroad, which might cost some real dosh. By contrast, recognizing a civil union is cheap.

What to say about the Foreign Minister? Forgive me if I view his success with a cynical eye. Queers tend to get further in politics when they play outside the mainstream. Bob Brown, the leader of the Australian Greens, is comparable to Guido Westerwelle — he leads a minority party which holds the balance of power. He didn’t rise through the ranks of a political machine.

Let’s just say that our pal Guido wouldn’t be Foreign Minister if he were a member of the SPD (the Social Democratic Party). Or, God forbid, the CDU (the Christian Democratic Union).

And let’s not forget that Westerwelle isn’t some radical faerie homo activist. He’s a free-market libertarian, and actually quite conservative. His campaign to wipe unions off the face of the earth sends chills up my spine. He wants to keep the working class in its place — as two-fifths of the Village People.

Cheap shot, HH!

That was a gay joke, not a homophobic one.

Hahaha... on which note, then, let us move from gay rights to religion: Germany is a country in which religion doesn’t seem to me to play a very big public role – politicians, for example, keep it as a personal matter. However Germany is still not a secular state: religion is taught in schools, in Bavaria there are crosses in classrooms, if you’re in the church then you have to pay tax unless you decide to get out, in which case you have to pay to do that as well. How do you view Germany in this context?

This plays into the bigger question of progressive vs. conservative, which you just raised.

In my job (which I don’t blog about, for dooce reasons) I get to see a lot of data on the social structure and values of countries around the world.

Compared to other European nations, Germany is actually quite a conservative place. Respectable, secure, middle class, stable, orderly—many Germans pursue such a life, and with good reason. Much horrendous instability and destruction lay in living memory.

These values, which we can label conservative in the best possible sense, often lead to good outcomes. A strong work ethic, respect for education, awesome self-discipline, and a work-life balance that leaves time for family and community. (It can lead to bad outcomes, too, but that might be a conversation for another time.)

I view the embrace of religion in Germany more as cultural conservatism than an expression of a deeply-held belief. Do you want to be buried in the churchyard with your ancestors? Then you need to pay the church tax. Let’s overlook the fact that your day-to-day life contains countless mortal sins.

In places like the USA, religious conservatism isn’t cultural so much as… well, the grandiosity of the mentally ill. Not so in Germany, though the Catholics of southern Bavaria give them a run for their money.

HH discovers a life-sized Easter display at a Bavarian church. And all this time I thought Easter was about a bunny rabbit and a basket of chocolate eggs.

The topic of religion - amongst all manner of other subjects - is not embraced infrequently in your blog. Which leads me to my next, rather less heavy question: why do you blog?

My husband asks the same question. Being Japanese, he draws a strict line between public and private. He views all this blabber about oneself as distasteful. It’s one of the reasons I keep the blog anonymous.

I blog simply because I love writing. I used to be a copywriter, before I got kicked into what is laughingly called “management”. The skill of writing, to the modest degree I possess it, is a pleasure to exercise.

And being a grumpy old man, I have plenty to grumble about. Blogging is a way to yell at kids to get off your lawn, when you don’t have a lawn and there are no kids about. It’s not really about an audience.

Just as well, because readership is only about 60 a day (mainly out of India, from searches that include the term “fuck”).

I admit it's rather gratuitous of me to add the photo (even if it is only of a signpost for a small Austrian town), but I do urge you to visit the post HH has just linked to: it's one of my favourite things on the whole internet.

To use your kind words, the handful of people who have developed a “blog crush” on Deutschland über Elvis have become firm friends, online and off. That’s the greatest reward, I think.

Oh shhh! Shhh!! I’m still cringing horribly about saying the words “blog crush”. All I can offer in my defence is that this time last week I may have had a glass of wine in one hand. And come to think of it, it might also be just about time for one now.

Thank you very, very much indeed, Mr Honourable Husband sir, for subjecting yourself to a probing from Frau Dietz (or 'a Dietzing', as it shall henceforth be known, all credit to you for that one). Any further questions? Please fire away in the comments. You can visit HH at Deutschland über Elvis or press that ‘follow’ button on Twitter. Or of course you can find him by googling the f-word.

Next week on Friendly Friday we shall be entertained by the lovely Berlin-based Mandi of No Apathy Allowed. Please visit her blog, browse her beautiful photos, and report back next week. And have a lovely weekend!

Photo credit: all images curtesy of Deutschland über Elvis.

My 7 Links: The Best of Frau Dietz's Letters

2011-07-23T12:21:00.000+02:00

If there was a favourite photo category, I think this shot of Mini Dietz's birthday cake might win it.

The lovely Laurel of Expat in Germany this week nominated me to take part in the Tripbase 7 links blogging project, which sounds suspiciously like one of those chain letters that used to arrive in the post when I was 11, but bear with me. Its aim is in fact to unite bloggers around the world whilst giving them a chance to reflect on their blogging past: we have to pick posts of our own that fulfil each of 7 different categories... and share them. I was chuffed to bits that Laurel nominated me and of course fully embraced the idea of having to self-indulgently rummage through all my old posts to remind myself what I've been banging on about for the last 18 months. (Not much, apparently.) I've done that bit; now I'm at the sharing stage. So here we go...

1. Well, would you believe it, my most popular post (according to the ever-thrilling Blogger stats page) is my little ramble on the humble German cabbage. It includes a very, very tasty recipe for Sauerkraut with apple juice and bacon, and if you haven't seen it, it's apparently worth a look!

2. It didn't take me long to cheat with the rules of this here game, but I just couldn't choose between two contenders for my most beautiful post: it's all about the photos, and I absolutely loved a picture I posted last autumn of the forest that starts just a few minutes walk from our flat, all golds and reds and and crunchy leaves; but nor can I resist the little chap with the best ears in Rhineland-Pfalz, either.

♥♥♥

3. I try to steer clear of controversy (on my blog, at least!), and would suggest that my most controversial post is actually a rant that occurred at the end of a frustrating day interacting with rude people on packed public transport; was a little, um, aggressive; and is - and will remain - very much unpublished. So I think I'll nominate my post on last year's trip to Rome, because although it didn't receive a single comment, I'm the only person I know whose given the city a second chance... and still didn't like it.

4. I'm not sure whether my most helpful post is supposed to have been a helpful post by me or one that was helpful to me, but I'm going with the latter. Back in January, I tapped out a few words sharing feelings of general winter misery and distress at a particularly bad patch with German grammar, and in response came all sorts of lovely comments - not just hints and tips for battling with adjectival endings but also commiserations and understanding, because other people were feeling just the same. I love this little online expat community. So the post I'm nominating for this category is Doing The Winter Funk. Thanks all :)

5. I suppose it would be doing another cheat if I selected my Sauerkraut post for a second time, I do really consider it to be my post of most surprising success. I'll try and keep to the rules, however, and vote for something else: this one's a post I wrote following my first trip to our local farmers' market in March. I didn't really say an awful lot, I just posted a couple of pictures of some vegetables, admitted to it having taken me almost a year to get there, and the crowd went wild! (Sort of.)

6. As for my post that deserved more attention, well, I'm afraid I'm totally stuck on this one. I don't really feel like that about any of my posts... most of the time I'm surprised they get any attention at all! I suppose I'm going to have to really double-nominate on this one - I really couldn't believe no-one had a go at me for saying Rome was rubbish.

Ok, ok... not ALL of Rome is rubbish.

7. Finally, my post that I'm most proud of... and I'm going to cheat again. What I'm most proud of is Friendly Friday, the interviews I do with other Germany-based expats. First off, I was really proud that there was such a lovely response to my original idea; I'm also proud that everyone I've asked so far has been so happy to be involved; and I'm even prouder that it's getting more and more popular as the weeks go by. I have to admit it's been a steep and challenging learning curve for me, having never having done anything like it before; it's all been rather trial and error; and I've often thought I've missed great opportunities by not asking the right questions. But like I say, it's a learning curve. It also takes up far more of my time than it should - especially for something that doesn't earn me pennies! However, I've loved every second of spreading the word about expat blogs that I love, and there have been some great insights into expat life and some brilliant stories along the way (Click Clack Gorilla's priceless linguistic fail leaps to mind). And best of all, I have plenty more blogs to explore!

Well, there we are, those were my 7 links for the 7 Links Blogging Project. I hope I won't get minus marks for not quite sticking to the rules. I've now nominated the following five bloggers to take part, so keep an eye on their blogs for their version of this very post:

Somewhere Between Facebook And Flickr Sits Fiona
Resident On Earth
Counting Time
Munich Ami
...and one more, yet to confirm!