October Highs and Lows

HIGHS

• walking with M from his mum's place to the Grabkapelle Rotenberg.


• meeting my Schwiegermutter in Tübingen for a nice 10 km walk to the Neuer Botanische Garten and seeing the geographical center of Baden-Württemberg.
  


• I can't really explain this one publicly, but Udo, this has to do with your email and phone call and what you've asked me to do! I'm thrilled to continue this project and I'll have it finished by the time I return to Wisconsin. J


• deciding on a new cooking plan - to cook one new recipe each week (we otherwise keep slipping back to our usual favorites). However...(see Low #3)


• taking a nice drive with M through the Schwarzwald on a beautiful Sunday afternoon to find fall colors (of which there were basically none - leaves went from green to dried-up this year) and not getting into a single accident with the maniacal motorcyclists darting in and out of all lanes, passing in curves, and speeding.


• our weekend in Breisach and a side trip to Gunsbach, a town in the Elsass where Albert Schweitzer lived when he wasn't in Africa.

• 

  Gunsbach, France



• applying for a freelance translation job. I have no idea if I'll hear from them because it wasn't a position or project being advertised, but I saw a need and it feels pretty good and productive to have an updated resume.


• Remembering last year's pretty fall colors.

  

  This pretty little bush is right outside our kitchen window.

LOWS

• failing at trying to add an image gallery into a Blogger post to make my posts shorter and leave the photos only for those who want to click on and see them. Apparently this is not possible with Blogger...??


• downloading Picasa thinking I could put a few photos into a folder and make a link from my blog, and watching Picasa scan every file on my computer looking for photos and sucking them into itself. I didn't realize Google now owns Picasa and therefore can gain access to all my photos in my computer's memory. Uninstalled Picasa. I don't have any sketchy photos, but I want to decide which photos leave my computer and when.


• trying a new recipe with all the right ingredients - potatoes, ground beef & pork, kohlrabi, onions, Pfifferlinge (chanterelles) - and it was not good. Unfortunately the sauce was mainly soy sauce, which overwhelmed every other delicious taste in the dish.


• grabbing a towel to smack a fly with vengeance worthy of the Wrath of Khan only to slam my hand into the corner of a wall, sheer off a chunk of skin that still hasn't healed yet, and bruise my knuckle. And I missed the damn fly.


• spotting a large spider on a wall in the basement, cringing but ignoring it, and then on the way past it again seeing it scurry inside its hiding place - one of my winter boots!


• realizing I need new winter boots.

Fun Quotes of the Month

"I hate donkeys." ~M

"It would be easier if she spread her legs more." ~M*

  *He was commenting on a woman on TV trying to balance while kneeling on an exercise ball and only realized what 

   he'd said after I shot him a wry look.

B: "Do you consider yourself a Swabian?"

M: "Oh, absolutely. And I'm even proud of it sometimes." 

After choking down a disappointing new meal:

 B: "We can't keep making the same meals all the time!" 

 M: "Oh yes, we can. We absolutely can."

"I can speak proper German, but I'm Swabian nonetheless."  ~M


B: "Oh my God, I just read an article...Do you know what they do with the body when a person dies on a flight?!"

M: "Well, sure. They put 'em in first class and cover 'em up with a blanket."

B: "Oh. My. God. That's exactly what I just read. What the...?!"

Scotland: Isle of Mull

I'm cheating a little bit with this post because we haven't been to Scotland recently. Our last trip there was in 2010, and before that we were there in 2007 and 2006 (the year we got married). However since we are considering another trip there next year, I wanted to reminisce a bit.

As I've written before, we got married on the Isle of Mull at Glengorm Castle in 2006. It was a beautiful clear day and so we had the ceremony outside on the lawn next to the castle. We had no guests at the wedding except for our two witnesses - M's mother's cousin from Edinburgh and his Austrian wife, who drove across Scotland and took the ferry from Oban to the island for the ceremony.

We stayed in a room in the castle, and this was the view from one of our windows:

M's ancestors on his mother's side were Scottish (McDougal), and he wore the clan tartan - and wore it well, I must say!

The next summer we returned to Scotland with my two children and M's mother for an unforgetable two weeks. We spent a week on the Isle of Mull in a rustic self-catering cottage on the castle grounds, followed by a week in the highlands. While on Mull M's mother's cousin and his wife (K & B) joined us for a few days and we explored as much of the island as we had time for.

This is Sorne cottage, and we stayed in the half closest to the camera.
It sleeps six, but since we were already five, K & B pitched a tent in the yard.

living room of Sorne cottage

Tobermory

Northern coastline of Mull with mainland Scotland
in the background

Tobermory from the hill above

My son touches the ocean for the first time

In 2010 my son decided not to join us, so it was M, his mother, my daughter, and I who spent two weeks on the isle. The weeks were filled with hikes, shopping in Tobermory and cooking in the cottage, pony trekking - an unforgetable beach ride for my daughter and me - more hikes, tons of photography, a boat trip to the isle of Iona, where Christianity came to Scotland with Saint Columba, and Staffa, an island inhabited only by a population of adorable Puffins and other wild birds.

Duart Castle on Mull

the abbey on Iona

waterfall on a hike from Tobermory

Tobermory

Puffin

Isle of Staffa - basalt cliffs

These sheep were queuing up at an open gate. We are not sure
what that was all about.

"Hamish. Hamish! Get back here right NOW and pick up your coat!"

Mull is a small island with roughly 2800 inhabitants and a coastline of 300 miles. There are three castles on the island, one of which is open for tours (Duart - seen in the film Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones). Glengorm is privately owned and a B&B with self-catering cottages as well. Torosay Castle used to be open for tours and we saw it in 2008, but it was sold in 2012 and is now privately owned and closed to the public.

There is much more of Scotland still to see, but we keep coming back to Mull. If you like vacations consisting of being close to nature, hiking, biking, running, or riding, don't need constant action and aren't daunted by fickle weather, I can highly recommend a week or two on Mull. There are plenty of tourists there in the summer, but we had our peace and quiet, especially while hiking.

Don't miss the Glengorm Coffee Shop for lunch, where you'll find their own lamb, beef, and produce on the menu. Check opening times, because the drive out there from Tobermory is several miles on a windy single-track dirt road which can be full of potholes. After lunch take a hike out to the coast.

"Yeah, you with the camera...take another step closer."

We are on the verge of booking our stay on Mull for next year, and I'm already getting excited. Our only remaining question is whether we'll stay for one week or two.

Weekend in Breisach

Last weekend M, his mother, and I drove (and you know who did the driving!) to Breisach on the Rhein to 1.) visit relatives and 2.) pop into France to see the Albert-Schweitzer-Haus in Gunsbach. This was a wonderful trip!

Breisach is a border town in the Baden region of Baden-Württemberg. To get there we drove through the Black Forest into the Rhein valley. Just across the Rhein to the west is the Elsass/Alsace area of France with the Vogesen Mountains beyond, and to the east and north is the Kaiserstuhl, one of the well-known wine regions of Germany. It is not far from Freiburg in Germany or Colmar in France. The town's history begins with a Celtic prince who had his seat on the volcanic hill upon which the cathedral now stands, then the Romans had a castle there (ca. 260 A.D.), and finally the Staufer (House of Hohenstaufen) founded the town in about the 11th century. It has always been an important town for crossing over the Rhein between Germany and France.

Breisach with Kaiserstuhl in the background

The relatives we visited are M's father's cousin (Helga) and her husband, children, and grandchildren, whom I have never met and M has not seen for about 15 years. As long as I have known M I have heard about "the Breisach clan" - mainly about M's uncle and aunt, who have since passed away - how warm and welcoming they are/were, how much fun the families had together when they visited, and so on. M learned from his great uncle how important it is never to waste food (he had been a prisoner in a Russian camp at the end of WWII), and he said no matter how busy his great aunt was, she always made time for the kids and put up with all their shenanigans without scolding.

The whole family - from the oldest (83) to the youngest grandchild (10, I think) and his two brothers (12 and 14) - were so warm, kind, interesting, and hospitable! Really genuine, caring people. One of the reasons I was looking forward to meeting them is that Helga is from the Sudetenland, as was M's father, and since she was 11 when the more than three million Sudeten Germans were forced to leave the only homes they'd ever known and relocate to Germany (1945-1948), she remembers her family's situation and journey. I asked if she would share her memories with me, and she did. I can't tell you how many times I got Gänsehaut (goose bumps) during her story, and I felt very honored that she was willing to talk with me about her past.

Helga also guided us through Breisach's Münster (Cathedral), which sits atop the hill overlooking the town of Breisach and the Rhein. A church visit is always in order when my Schwiegermutter and I travel together, especially when someone familiar with the church and its history can tell us about it. The magnificent carved wooden high altar is quite a sight.

High altar - carved from linden wood

On Saturday the three of us drove into France to Gunsbach in the Elsass, where Albert Schweitzer grew up and had a home. His rooms in the house have been turned into a small museum and we joined a small tour led by a young woman with a beautiful French accent as she spoke German. I became interested in Albert Schweitzer's life and work about a year ago when I met a now-retired doctor who worked with Schweitzer at his hospital in Lambarene, Gabon in the 1960s. Taking a tour through Schweitzer's former home and walking the Albert-Schweitzer-Weg on the hill above Gunsbach was quite a treat for me.

Albert Schweitzer Haus

Schweitzer's writing desk

Schweitzer was an accomplished organist.
This organ was a gift to him from the Paris Bach Society
and was delivered to his hospital by canoe!

Schweitzer monument on a hill above Gunsbach

Gunsbach - view from the Albert-Schweitzer-Weg

I thought the highlight of this trip was going to be the stop in Gunsbach - and I am very glad we did that! - but honestly it was spending time every day from Friday to Sunday with M's extended family. I loved listening to M and his mum sharing memories with the rest of them and I never once felt out of connection or like a fifth wheel being the only stranger in the bunch. They welcomed me whole-heartedly, and I hope it won't be too long before we see them again. I think I got on the grandsons' good side right away because I had baked Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies to bring for Helga, and she gave some to the boys when they arrived on Saturday afternoon. The first thing they said to me after a handshake and proper greeting was, "Danke für die Kekse!" (Thank you for the cookies!) I even earned bonus points for including some without nuts. They weren't shy at all meeting their mother's second cousin (M), whom they'd never met before, and his strange American wife. We had a great conversation with these three boys during dinner on Saturday - they discussed computers with M, and my Schwiegermutter and I taught them some differences between US-English and proper English! :-)

It was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend with great people, I didn't have any serious language issues, and I learned plenty! We look forward to our next trip to Breisach and the Elsass.

The Liebster Award

I've been nominated for the Liebster Award (danke, Bev at Confuzzledom!). Don't get too excited, M - there's no monitary prize that accompanies this award. Feel free to take me out to dinner to celebrate, though!  ;-)

Quoting from another nominee whose blog I read, Dubliner in Deutschland: "A Liebster Award is a way for smaller blogs to get some recognition in the blogging sphere. It's also a little like chain mail - someone nominates you and at least 4 others, and they each answer questions made up by the initiator and then nominate at least 5 more bloggers in turn sending them new questions to answer and on and on it goes around the internet world! Liebster actually comes from the German word for 'beloved'."

Although I never could stand chain mail and always threw caution to the wind and tempted fate as I tossed the letter into the trash, I think this Liebster Award is a nice idea within the blogger community. So here we go...

Confuzzledom's Questions and my Answers:

1. What is the best book you've read so far in 2014?

I love questions about reading! Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is my favorite of the year, though one I'm reading now, die Zarentochter, is fixing to challenge it.

2. What is your favourite food to eat in autumn/winter?

Well...I don't like pumpkin at all, though it seems Germans love it as much as the springtime weißer Spargel. I'd have to go with anything in the "Wild" category - venison or wild boar, typically. Alternatively Lamb Stew.

Kitzrücken - yum!

3. Where was the last place you travelled to?

The last place that required more than an hour's drive was a fabulous trip to Vienna with my Schwiegermutter, and if I waited until Monday to post this, I could say it was France (the Elsass/Alsace).

4. What is your favourite snack food?

Leftover Schnitzel, string cheese (in Wisconsin), yogurt, Jacob's cream crackers with butter or cheese or even plain, ice cream, cheese and apples, bagel and cream cheese, clementines, Emmentaler cheese... Oh wait. Just one favorite? Then cheese.

5. If you could learn any language (and were guaranteed to actually manage it), which would it be?

Italian. If I could throw in a second one it would be Swahili.


Now for my nominations:

Sara at A Different Piece of Sky (though she's on holiday at the moment - no rush!)
Claire at World Traveler in Training
Around the Wherever
Traveling Hopefully
Courtney at Welcome to Germerica


And my 5 to 10 questions:

1. What is your next planned travel destination?
2. In what way/s do you see your home country differently than before you became an expat?
3. Which book that you've read still sticks in your mind as one that left a deep impression on you?
4. What are two of your favorite natural scents or smells (so no perfume or cologne)?
5. What is the funniest thing someone has said to you lately? (provide context if needed)
6. When you look to your right as you're reading this, what do you see?
7. What would you tell your 15-year-old self if you could send a message back in time?

The trouble with planning ahead

I've been traveling overseas since 1986, though my trips only became relatively frequent in 2000. The first time I flew internationally (that was back when there was still a smoking section in the back of the plane!) I thought air travel was FABULOUS! The feeling of taking off, landing in a different country just nine hours later, soaring above the clouds... It was like magic. I've hated flying just a little bit more each time after that, aided by several airplane disaster movies and some article I read that explained that the two most dangerous times during a flight are...you guessed it - take off and landing. Now I hold my breath and squeeze my arm rests into squishy limpness during both phases, trying to convince myself of what everyone else says - that I have a better chance of surviving this flight than the drive from the airport to my parents' house.

Yep, I hate flying. It's not the crying babies (I'd cry too, if it wouldn't make me look like a dork), it's not the food (I've cooked and eaten worse at home than what I've been served in coach), it's not the incredibly annoying other passengers ("Can I put my Bloody Mary on your tray during this turbulence since my tray is filled up with my laptop?"), it's not the horrific ick in the bathrooms or the fact that I can't sleep on planes (not even in business class). It's mainly that I never took physics in school and can't wrap my brain around how this steel beast can actually defy logic and fly rather than plummeting to the earth or ocean floor because the wind shifted.

I unpried my fists from my armrests long enough to shoot a picture of clouds
during one of my favorite moves - the sharp turn.

But hey, when you're an expat, you gotta go back every now and then. This June while I was chatting with a friend in Wisconsin about the World Cup soccer game going on, I decided on a whim to consider booking a trip back to Wisconsin to see my friends and family. The last time I was there was August 2013. I got the green light from M - though believe it or not he is not the type who gets fired up about his wife being gone for a stretch of time (and it's not just about having to fold his own laundry) - and booked a two-week trip for November.

I chose November to avoid this.
(That's my daughter's car in my parents' driveway, Feb. 2013)

I always book trips months - even up to a year -  in advance because I like to get my plans in the calendar and I think prices are usually cheaper months in advance rather than last minute. I suck at spontaneity anyway. I always have.

In June there was not much talk about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and there were no major strikes going on in the train and plane world in Germany. Fast forward to today, and I'm starting to think that maybe I should embrace last-minute travel after all. My mom asked me yesterday if I'm going to wear a mask on the plane. I probably won't, since doing so won't keep the plane in flight anyway. And doesn't everyone have to remove the masks to eat? So...during those 20 minutes of dinner, do the spores or droplets just hang out in the bathrooms waiting for us all to put our masks back on?  We are exposed to all kinds of deadly filth on planes, and I have to say I'm not more worried about Ebola than other diseases people bring on board. As I understand it, this strain of Ebola is not yet airborne anyway, which makes masks useless.

And then there are the strikes in Germany. I haven't actually been keeping track, but I think the train engineers have striked (struck?) three times in the last 3 weeks and Lufthansa pilots have been on strike twice in two weeks, including right now. They started with the short-stretch flights, but I read last night that the long-haul pilots will walk out today. Of course each individual strike is short term and won't last until November, but since the engineers and pilots seem to be playing leap-frog with their strikes (Thursday pilots, Friday through Sunday engineers, Monday short-flight pilots, Tuesday long-flight pilots...), heaven knows whose turn it will be when it's my time to fly back or return. When I fly home, I'll be flying from Chicago to Frankfurt with my daughter and then we're taking the train from there to Stuttgart. So I'm already wondering whether hitch-hiking is a viable option.

If I could have foreseen what is going on these days I would not have booked a trip back to Wisconsin in November. But this trip is about spending time with friends and family without any other obligations, stocking up on affordable clothes (everything except for Nutella and Gummibärchen is cheaper in the U.S.), and getting my hair trimmed (for a "trim" I pay at least €40/$50 here, and that's just not ok). It will be nice to be in Wisconsin to visit my kids and family and have some girlfriend time, but I'm already dreading the actual travel. 

Here's hoping the flights will be tolerable, the pilots will be well-rested, and the unions will schedule their strikes around my travel plans.