Things I Learned from Europe

I still think about living in Europe.  All the time.  Right after we came back to the United States, most of my memories were about little things - missing my bike (vs. driving in a car everywhere), remembering American cucumbers (and how they really don't taste good to me anymore), having mixed feelings about everything being in English (easier, but also...way more boring).  Now I've transitioned a little bit and recently have been thinking about bigger personality/life-changing lessons I think I got from living in Germany and Denmark for five years.

Just sitting here on a Saturday morning, here are a few:

* Getting a deep, mind-exploding realization of how big the world is, how many many people (and entire lives) there are, and how I'm just one tiny tiny tiny tiny microscopic person.  It helped me grow a little bit out of some self-centeredness and/or self-importance that was still hanging on from adolescence.  It made me realize that even the biggest of my "life goals" I had before would still mean nothing.  That the world is like an infinite universe, and my little family is actually my world.

* The vast majority of people in the world are good -- 99%.  No matter where you go.  People are good.  We all share the same experiences, broadly speaking.  We all feel the same emotions.  Empathy and kindness are the default.  

* Stuff is dumb.  It's all so incredibly dumb - also, annoying to deal with.  Doing is the only thing that really means anything.  

* Quality is not dumb, though.  If you have to have some stuff, only have what you absolutely need and then only have the nicest one you can get.  Take pride in beautiful things - but only because they're beautiful, not because you want things.

* Time is the only thing I'll ever really own and, maybe counter-intuitively(?), the only way to use it well is to limit what you do with it and take it slow.  How else can I explain this?....  The best way to use your time is to not feel like you have to keep track of how you're using your time?  That there's never anything else more important than what you're doing right this moment?  

* Hygge.  A word without a direct translation.  Relaxation, calm, coziness, quiet, slow, warm and long intimate conversations, candles, a friend playing the guitar while everyone listens quietly, simple food, singing old songs around a fire, discussing abstract ideas with a cup of tea, sitting on a porch and listening to birds, running under a bus stop shelter and watching the rain, seeing the shadows of branches on your window -- these aren't pointless, silly, time-wasting activities.  These are the things that are everything.

Stralsund and Rügen

One day in May 2012, we took Paul's family a couple hours to the east to see the white cliffs on the island of Rügen and have a half day in the coastal city of Stralsund.

It's good I'm writing about this because these aren't really places that your average tourist would have ever heard about (and so I may have forgotten about them in the future), but in Germany (particularly former East Germany), they're pretty well known as holiday destinations.

Rügen especially, with its small national park protecting its chalk cliffs, was very popular, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century, as a place to "take the air" and visit the seaside.  Maybe comb the beach for some of that ubiquitous Baltic amber always washing up on shore.

And for us, living so much in the city with no car, getting out to see forests and beaches and a serious lack of concrete was just a wonderful relief.

We made our way back to the mainland and Stralsund for the express purpose of seeing the new Ozeaneum aquarium.  Because, I mean, Paul and the whole marine biology thing and Paul's brother and his whole marine biology thing.  It was just going to happen.

And really, if you randomly find yourself in Mecklenburg-Pomerania, you should go see the Ozeaneum.  It's fancy.

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I'm counting down the days until my third anniversary of living in Europe by recapping trips that I never got around to highlighting.  You can see the list of trips (and links to them as they are written) here.

Lübeck: Because Marzipan

Our first trip to Lübeck, another Northern German city near(ish) to where we used to live, was actually in February, before Italy 2012, but apparently I just never got around to writing about it.  We went again in May 2012 with Paul's family but I have no pictures from that trip!  

This is all just an apology mostly to Paul's family that my post about Lübeck only has us in the pictures.  So...sorry Paul's family...  but maybe seeing these ones will help you remember things.

ANYWAY, we went to Lübeck, a city famous for a couple things.  It has seven incredibly tall church spires, is a UNESCO World Heritage site for having really nicely preserved examples of Brick Gothic architecture and just being ...super old, and for inventing marzipan* (which, if you have spent any time in northish Europe around Christmas, you get that this is a big deal).  

Holsten Tor, one of the old city gates, is on the German 2-Euro coin

Would you like some marzipan peaches?  Or marzipan potatoes?  Or marzipan carrots?  Perhaps to make some marzipan stew?  And on and on and on...

Well, since we were in the land of marzipan, we had to buy some.  So we bought an amount proportional to how much we actually enjoy eating marzipan...

So, the real great parts of Lübeck then, to us at least, aren't so much sugary-almond-paste-related but rather more old-old-churches and old-old streets related.

What's so surprising is that Lübeck suffered from a lot of bombing raids in WWII and even though some of the big churches were completely gutted, the spires all stayed up...as unstable as they were.  You can still see a lot of lean on many of those towers and the steel supports that have been added since the 40s to keep them up.  In one church, there was a great memorial to the destruction of the bombings and violence of WWII where they left the main tower bell exactly in the same place it fell and shattered after a raid.

Finally, Lübeck is famous for its little gangs or medieval side-streets that still can be explored.  They all wind back into inner courtyards where, a lot of time, you come across little gardens surrounded by tiny, awesome houses.  I wish I had more pictures of what the hidden inner-workings of the gangs looked like, but we felt too bad taking pictures of what were essentially people's front yards.

But that didn't stop us from taking pictures of entrances!

My final story from Lübeck comes from the second time we ate at the Schiffergesellschaft (say it.  I dare you.) - a restaurant/pub built in 1401.  I told Paul to order anything from the menu and I'd share it, completely trusting his sanity.  Imagine my horror when he said that he wanted the Aale in Gelee.

What. the. heck.

I just gasped and practically yelled, "WHAT?!  Nooooooo. What?  Really?! ....noooooooo..." and he was like, "Yeah!  Sounds good!"  And since I had told him I would share anything he chose, I was totally cool with it (That is not at all the truth, I don't even know why I typed that lie.)

After the waitress left I was like, "Paul!  Do you know what Gelee is?!  It's ASPIC!  Eels in ASPIC!" and then I watched as the color drained from his face.  Because he had thought it was eels and some kind of fruit jelly (gelee/jelly)!  And darn it but that waitress totally did bring Paul exactly what the menu said - Eels in Aspic, nicely preserved in a little french canning jar.

And he actually ate the entire thing.  (I. did. not. eat. one. bite.)  I think at that point it was all about preserving his honor.

So, that's the end of my Lübeck review and since we ended with the Schiffergesellschaft restaurant, I will leave you with this final restaurant ad from our visit.

You're very welcome.

*So, the story goes that there was this really bad famine and the only food the people had was a bunch of sugar and almonds (oh no! how horrible!  Actually... I can think of a much worse situation than having huge amounts of sugar laying around but...we'll just go on).  So, someone figured out how to make sugary almond paste that could be shaped and dyed to look like loaves of bread.  Everyone loved it way more than real bread.  And they lived happily ever after.

But also...marzipan was more likely invented in Persia hundreds of years earlier so....yep.


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I'm counting down the days until my third anniversary of living in Europe by recapping trips that I never got around to highlighting.  You can see the list of trips (and links to them as they are written) here.

Countdown to Three

In a little over a month, I will hit my three-year anniversary of living in Europe.  (say whaaa?)

In honor of that notable fact, I would like to make a goal here to get on top of a travel post backlog that has been building up since Italy 2012.

So, we'll go chronologically-ish and geographically-ish (and hopefully I don't forget anything...I'll try at least...) and I'll post bits and pieces on:

Germany
* Luebeck
* Stralsund and Ruegen
* Leipzig
* The Black Forest and Rothenburg ob der Tauber
* Neuschwanstein Castle and environs
* Munich
* Saxony Road Trip (quite a few places, actually.  Bautzen, Dresden, Seiffen, Annaberg-Bucholtz, Freiberg, Wittenberg... )
* Bremen


Greece
* Athens and Cape Sounion

Denmark
* Langeland
* Roskilde and Soro
* Copenhagen
* Aero
* Helsingoer
* Bornholm

Portugal
* Lisbon
* Sintra
* Belem

France
* Paris
* Versailles

Scotland
* Edinburgh
* Glen Lyon
* Oban
* Skye One, Two, and Three

Norway
*Bergen and environs

Italy, the second time around
* Pisa

Spain
* Seville
* Zahara
* Granada
* Cordoba


Holy...

Uhm...hm...Maybe I'll be a little forgiving with that deadline.

Also, I'm reeeeeally not going to go back and put in all the correct accents and Scandinavian letters on everything.  This is a travel log emergency, we don't have time for that stuff just at the list stage!

Dive In!

Yes, I know.  This is weird.  I never, EVER post anything on the blog.  Heidi does such a great job of it, I really can't hope to compete.  But I just got to do something cool that Heidi didn't do.  To be fair, she wasn't offered the choice of doing it (although I have my doubts whether she would want to...).

This "something" was a commercial diving course which will allow me to SCUBA dive as part of my work.  It was one of the most exhausting, cold, and WET things I have ever done in my life.  And also one of the most rewarding and fun.

Want to know more?  Then suit up, make sure your gear is working, and enjoy the pictorial journey.
And remember: don't forget to breathe!

Week 1: Kjelst, Denmark (10-14 February)

Setting up the equipment for our first dives in freezing (literally, FREEZING) cold water

Getting the diver dressed

Tending the line (and enjoying one of the rare moments when it wasn't raining or hailing)

My turn to go in.  Yes, the gear does make you look sexy, but know this:
it comes with the price of a seriously sore back the next day

Please don't let it be as cold as last time!

Evenings were spent practicing other skills, like tying knots.
We would eventually have to tie all the knots underwater.
Wearing 5 mm-thick gloves.  Blindfolded.  Yeup.

On the last day in Kjelst, the sun came out.  It was glorious.

Week 2: Hemmoor, Germany (March 23-27)

Diving in Hemmoor was awesome for several reasons.  First, and most importantly, the water was much warmer:
a balmy 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) .  Second, look at that view from the dock!

Monitoring communications during the dive.  We used these cool helmets that had microphones in them so that we could talk to the people on the surface.  Came in handy sometimes.

Here is the helmet in action

In addition to the helmet, we also always had a rope connected to us so that we could be found (or pulled back) if we got into any trouble.  Luckily, that was never needed except during our rescue drills.

Looking at your own bubbles rise to the surface is a pretty special thing

Week 3: Fredericia, Denmark (April 7-11)

Our last dive site was near the bridge that connects the island where Heidi and I live to the mainland of Europe

One of our tasks we had to complete underwater was to sketch something to scale.  Not an easy task when you A) can't draw to begin with, B) are wearing thick, neoprene gloves, C) can only see a few feet in front of you at any time, and D) keep dropping the board and have to swim down to get it

One of my favorite tasks was photographing the animals growing on the piers.  Here are some sea squirts, sea anemones, and assorted other hydrozoans

And a green crab

Our final exam involved doing a little underwater carpentry.  Here you see our tool basket, complete with saw, hammer, chisel, clamp, and ruler.  Notice how the wood floats.  Usually, that isn't a problem.  But when you are trying to work with the dang stuff underwater...it's a problem.

But despite the wood's best efforts to escape from us, we all managed to
complete our "Greek Crosses" and pass our final exam!

A great course with some great people.  Thanks for diving in!

Since "The Change"

In America we always say "When the Wall Fell."  But, in Germany, at least in Rostock, it's "The Change."

Appropriately put.

This last weekend, Paul came across some historical photos in Der Spiegel from the Rostock altstadt, our old neighborhood, in 1989. (Though, really, the black and white thew me off.  My first guess was that they were from 1950.)

So, here was our old street in the old city, right before "The Change" happened:

And here it is twenty years later:

A lot changed after The Change...but I'm glad they kept the cobblestone streets.

2013: A Retrospective

Eiffel Tower (duh), September 2013

Silvester is upon us again and though I bravely and humbly admit that this year has not been one of particular blogging prowess, I couldn't not do the year in review.  Take it sort of like an apology (sorry, Dad...).

So, generally, I could split up the year pretty broadly and call it good.  If I did, it would look like this:

Spring ~ Moved to Denmark and everything was weird again...

Summer ~ Please let me finish this thesis acceptably....

Fall ~ We're just going to call this period "The Stupid Time."  I don't really want to talk about it (but if you ask me about it, I can talk about it for a looooong time so...best to just move along.)

Winter ~ EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY!  DAGNABBIT! 

But, let's be frank, that just sounds really vague and cryptic and weird.  So, without further ado, I give you the usual format.

***

January

Mostly we just finished up all our moving-from-Germany arrangements.  I basically wrapped up my teaching at the University of Rostock and Paul basically packed up his entire lab.  

February

A house-cooling party where it was surprisingly more difficult than I thought it would be to fob off  various refrigerated condiments on our guests.  Oh, and we moved to Denmark.

March

Began our Danish courses and wondered if we'd ever see the sun again?

April

Masters coursework, new lab setting-up, Danish classes.  We went to a concert where the Odense Symphony played The Beatles; it was kind of the highlight of the year at that point.  That isn't to say our year wasn't good but more to say it was a really, really awesome concert.

May

By now you may be thinking, "But wait, I thought you guys traveled, like, every month?"  Well, see, residency permits were expensive, moving was expensive, Denmark in general is expensive, tuition is(was) expensive.  So, you get the idea.  But in May we forked out the crazy train fare to go to Copenhagen for my birthday (and for a new passport...and new expensive residency permit...).

Copenhagen was awesome!  I like Copenhagen and the canal boats and the castles and that one Mexican restaurant we found that almost made us cry with joy (we're severely deprived).  I especially like saying Copenhagen the Danish way:  KOObenHAWen.  Saying it all the way there and back on the train. Super annoyingly.

June

We saw the sun again (too...too much sun...) and went to the biggest bonfire I've ever seen.  Also, when I look at the calendar, it's completely blank except for the words "FINISH YOUR DARN ANALYSES!"   So...that was that time.

July

July was prrrrrretty much the same.  Paul had a doctor's appointment on the 30th at 1:15pm, too.  That was literally the only thing noted on our calendar.  High times.  Oh, but I did get my Masters in GIS, so that was a huge relief!

August

WE WENT SOMEWHERE!  TO LISBON!   Finally!

Lisbon was a pretty great long weekend and I will forever and ever dream of the salted cod, Bacalau (which, when prepared...not salty?), and the shellfish stews and the Pasteis de Belem...  We ate good food there.  After being in sad expensive-food Danish wasteland for eight months, it was a kind of "release the hounds!" situation for us.  Also, if ever in Lisbon, there's this one, particular gelatto place... Also, go to Sintra.  ALSO, Lisbon was part of the most recent season of "The Amazing Race" so, I'm pretty much fulfilled.

September

Paris, folks.  We went to Paris for our 5th anniversary.  And now that we've been to the "Big Three" (Paris, Rome, London)...I think Paris won?  I know!  But, to be fair, maybe we need to try London not in mid-January.  Also, Versailles is huge.  Also, I maintain that my old ipod got pick-pocketed (Paul has his doubts) and I see it as a right of passage to be celebrated.

October

I took Paul to Helsingoer for his birthday.  It's the "real" Hamlet castle.  We could see Sweden.  It was cool.  Also, I went to a family Halloween party as Pippi Longstocking and didn't realize that was about the Scandinavian equivalent of going to an American little girl birthday party as Princess Disney-Fill-In-The-Blank.  Wide, wide-eyed, whispering ("Mama, it's Pippi!") little kids all night long.

November

Paul went to Australia and saw a marsupial we didn't know existed (quokkas).  I spent the month mostly being jealous.  Also, Thanksgiving was real exciting because we could find a turkey!

December

 We went back to Rostock for the Christmas Market and to visit our "German mom," Ute.  It was real weird to walk by aquahaus, but also kind of nice and homey to be in the city again. We got our hot sheep cheese pita sandwich things and bratwurst fix.  And, of course, there was our first Danish Christmas where we tried risalamande (and decided to never eat anything else ever again) and roasted up a good ol' northern European-style duck.

***

Onward.

2012  /// 2011

German Juices

I will miss:

Cherry Juice

Currant Juice

Raspberry Juice

Various-Random-and-Mysterious-Tropical-Fruits-With-Spanish-Names Juice

I will not miss:

Banana Juice

Beet Juice

(No, I will not miss those one bit)

Public Service Announcement

Heeeeeeeey.

Sooooooooooooo

We're moving to Denmark?  I mean, like, we are currently in the actual process of actually moving to actual Denmark?

Aaaaaaand, I'm taking this Lidar class?  And it's super interesting while simultaneously being super time consuming, as most interesting things tend to be.

Soooooo there's just not going to be much going on here for a bit  (maybe for a month or so?).  Thought you might want to know.

In other news, we took one final Germany trip a few days ago so I could go see this...

It's even more beautiful in person.  Also?  He's wearing a green suit?!  I had no idea.

Because, as you may recall, this particular painting holds a place of some importance in my life.

Seeing that painting at the Hamburg Kunsthalle along with serendipitously discovering that we could see The Hobbit in english (?!) just down the street made the day trip a good way to round out our German sightseeing.  I got 19th century romantic art galleries. Paul got hairy, short people with slight British accents.  Everyone was happy.

The next time you hear from us, we will most likely be freaking out in a new language.  

Bis bald!

2012: A Retrospective

Bastai Bridge, south of Dresden.  October 2012

Happy Silvester/New Year from Rostock!  We hope you all ate a jelly-filled donut and watched this (don't worry, it goes into English right after the introduction)--as per German tradition.  We had the opportunity to watch all the fireworks across Rostock from eighteen floors up which was a perfect end to a really spectacular year.

Without further ado, I present the year in review with links to old blog posts and facebook photo albums.

***

January

I finally returned to my beloved London and dragged Paul around on a half marathon walk each day from Kensington to Canary Wharf, Shepherd's Bush to Waterloo.  

We also bought our giant map of Germany and put our first four black dots on the places we'd been already.  

February

We had a housewarming party where our map was plastered with post-it note suggestions from new friends of where to visit in Germany.  The rest of the time we spent saving up a little money for a big trip to...

March

... ITALY!

Rome: Day one,  Days two and three 

Siena: Day four 

Florence: Days five and six

Ravenna: Day seven

Venice: Days eight and nine

April

April was another savings month and we mostly puttered around town, working on experiments and a master's degree.

May

Paul's parents, brother, sister, and brother-in-law came to visit us and Germany.  We saw Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Berlin, Leipzig, the Black Forest, Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, Neuschwanstein and the Alps, and Munich.  (Whoa)  The pictures are not yet edited, but that's an early goal for 2013.  Stay tuned.

June

Athens.  Holy moly.  I loved this trip like a Greek guard loves giant pom pom shoes.

And we took a trip to scope out Denmark.

And I went to my sister's wedding in Utah (see below).

Four countries in four weeks.  Boom.

Wedding Proof

July

Paul went to Canada and ate poutine.  I stayed at home and ate macaroni and cheese.

August

We went swimming in the Baltic and saw naked people.  We also saw the third of the three palaces of Mecklenburg.  More black dots for the map!

September

Four years and a ride on an old train.

October

Paul's birthday, his schmancy trip to Washington D.C., and our last-minute road trip to his old stomping grounds in Saxony.

November

Well, we may have had a cancelled trip to Paris but that just means that we're moving to Denmark for three years.  And, as an additional upside, we took our Paris train tickets and traded them in for a quick trip to see Bremen.

December

We ate our fill of "hot sheep cheese" and corn on the cob at the Weinachtsmarkt during our last German Christmas.  

At the end of the year, we counted the dots on our Germany map.  On January 1 we had four.  

On December 31st?   44

***

Here's to our 2012 and the upcoming 2013 where the Hunn invasion will continue in Nordic lands.

Merry Christmas, from the Hunns

Christmas Market on Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin

It's our second German Christmas and all we can think about is how much we're going to miss them in the future.  The kinderpunsch, the schokofrucht, the thueringer bratwurst, heissen schafskaese--oh man!  Or, just walking around the Gendarmenmarkt Christmas Market in Berlin and seeing that gorgeous Tannenbaum in front of the German Cathedral.  The advent concerts at our big, old Marienkirche every weekend leading up to Christmas--listening to brass ensembles and women's choirs, or singing along to Christmas songs that I've never heard before, but now love...  So much to love!  So much to miss!

Since the final days of our last Christmas in Germany are here then, this will be the last post I do for a while.  We really need to focus our energy on squeezing every drop of Christmas out of the atmosphere here as possible.  So it's off to buy our Christmas goose and enjoy every church concert we can get to!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Caspar David Friedrich and Me

Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog (1818),  Caspar David Friedrich

Here's a story:

Once upon a time, I was in college.  And I loved college.  I loved it so much.  I loved everything about college.  Especially thinking.  I loved that it was my job to think, to listen to what others thought, and then to think about that, and afterwards, just walk around and think some more.

And, during this time, I fell in love with Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Deeply.   Every night I would grab my book of Emerson essays -- "Nature" "Self-Reliance" "The American Scholar" "The Poet" -- and just walk and walk and walk while reading and reading and reading.

On the cover of that book was this painting -- Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog -- which perfectly captured the Romantic, Transcendental philosophy I was so in love with.  It was a philosophy about finding Truth (capital T) in nature and about being True (capital T) to yourself.  About figuring out who you really were and bravely choosing to be it, even if everyone around you thought you were crazy or wrong.  About learning to be alone and about learning to question the crowd.

I loved Transcendentalism.  I still do.  And I loved that painting.

And I went into a PhD program vowing to write a dissertation about how much I loved Transcendentalism and that painting.

***

Six years later, I've unexpectedly found myself living one hour away from a small city named Greifswald where there is a statue of the artist Caspar David Friedrich.  He was born there and he painted there.  When Paul's family was visiting us, we visited the chalk cliffs on the nearby island of Ruegen, which was the setting for many of his early works.

Chalk Cliffs on Ruegen (1818), Caspar David Friedrich

A couple months later, I found myself in Dresden, where Caspar David Friedrich had moved to later in life to paint.  And, just a few miles outside of the city, we visited a national park, known for its strange stone formations.   We drove up a mountain and set off on a hike, at one point looking out across a valley of stone pillars and I realized where I was.  I was standing where the wanderer stood in that painting.  

I had become the wanderer above the sea of fog--the symbol chosen by historians to represent the philosophy I loved.

***

There has never been a day when I've regretted leaving my PhD program.  I knew when I was leaving that it wasn't the experience I had been looking for or needed.  I didn't love the Emerson or Transcendentalists of my advisers in Boston because they taught them as played-out, boring, old, irrelevant white men as opposed to the hip, new trends in the field like transnationalism (which, hey, is interesting, but not my thing).  Well, they may have been old white men, but dag nabbit, they were my old white men and I loved them!

So, with that in mind, I'm so grateful I randomly ended up where Caspar David Friedrich was born and painted his Romantic worldview because it's reminded me, after I thought that all the spark and joy I got out of Transcendentalism had been crushed by cynical English professors, that I still love thinking like that wanderer above the sea of fog.  I still love reading Emerson and Thoreau and Whitman and Peabody and Hawthorne.  I still love thinking.

So thank you, Caspar David Friedrich, for your paintings.  And thank you, Mecklenburg-Pomerania and Saxony, for inspiring him and me.

Woman Before the Rising Sun (1820) Caspar David Friedrich