I can’t remember when I last saw somebody pay cash in a Californian supermarket. Must have either been in the eighties (although I wasn’t there to witness it) or a child buying a candy bar or something. One pays with credit cards and that is that. Regardless, in the few instances that somebody actually desires to pay with cash (me, on occasion, I have to admit) the sum seems to always be something like $4.26 or $10.01, in short, something that will put a heck of a lot of small coins in your wallet unless you have a 1 cent piece. As a rule, one never has 1 cent coins unless a) one is abroad or b) pays with credit card or c) one’s spouse has in excess of 10 of them for some unfathomable reason. That’s when the little jars with 1 cent coins by the register come in handy. Leave the one you get paying that $9.99 total with a $10 bill – take one in the above $4.26 or $10.01 situation. Love it. Convenient, logical at no cost, basically (well, the occasional cent). Total win-win.

Here cards are used as well, but a lot less. Merchants hate credit cards because of the fees but bank cards are used reasonably frequently although I manage to mangle up my pin basically every other time having to re-input under the glaring stares of the shoppers behind me who view my behavior as an deliberate plot to willfully waste their time.

A cent piece in need of a jar.
(c) Tina Baumgartner

Rummaging through the wallet and pulling out 23 one cent pieces and a similar number of 2 and 5 cent pieces to come up with €1.89 for two packages of gummibears is, however, completely accepted and does not elicit any type of stares and glances (other than from me). It is what the diligent German Hausfrau does to lighten the coin burden of her wallet and it is also considered a public service as it supplies the cashiers with the small change direly needed in case a schmuck like me shows up and pays a 10.01€ Euro bill with a tenner note and a Euro piece for 99 cents in change.

Just today I was in line behind a guy (not particularly cute, if you should wonder) in a 10.01 € type situation and after some unsuccessful rummaging by him I took out my wallet and handed him a cent. He basically couldn’t believe his luck. Nobody, it seems, had ever offered him a 1 cent piece in a situation like this. The cashier had a similar incredulous facial expression leading to my conclusion that most likely nobody has ever offered anybody else a 1 cent piece in the history of modern German retailing.

Which brings me back to the jar – the logical, mutually beneficial, practically cost-free solution to all our cent problems (or most of them). Can we just adopt the jar here, please?

I was about to suggest this to the cashier but stopped myself suddenly realizing that being such a smart-ass bringing in those American habits would – in one fell swoop – destroy, in fact obliterate, any good will I just created by my 1 cent gesture.

Let the rummaging continue!

Trying to be a good expat

I am an American citizen, actually a fairly recent American citizen but still and therefore I am an expat here in German, just as much as I was an expat in the US (I am, of course, a German citizen as well). So basically wherever I live I am an expat. Kind of an intriguing idea, actually.

So anyway, while being an American expat living in Germany I am trying to be a good citizen and my opportunity arrived recently in form of a fat old envelope containing my absentee ballots for the November election.

Man, that’s intimidating stuff! It comes with an 80 page (you read that right!) instruction and explanation booklet presenting arguments for and against all the propositions, statements from all of the people who want to be elected and all is very well laid out and all of that but it’s still 80 – eight – zero pages of stuff to read and process.

Now I always tell geek-boy that there are two things I am sure as hell am not namely lazy and dumb and two graduate degrees should be ample prove of that – but this is taxing. Seriously. Here I am sitting on a Saturday evening, dinner in oven awaiting guests trying to figure out the pros and cons of another Indian casino in California that is not, like all the others, on tribal land. Great source of revenue for the state? Huge nuisance to the residents (for sure), dangerous precedent potentially bringing a casino to a neighborhood near us some time soon (don’t worry, says geek-husband, too many Indians in our neighborhood, they don’t gamble)?

And how about that health insurance thingy, more oversight, always a good idea, but then, maybe too much is bad and conflicting agencies trying to do the same thing and getting into each other’s way. Whom can one trust , the nurses association or the California OBGYN society (made that up, any resemblance with real organizations like that is purely a coincidence)?

I think I need to go to the kitchen, the food needs attention and that trumps, for right now, good citizenship. But the clock is ticking and so I better make up my mind, pronto.

Weird Stuff

“Tank & Cut” – not the new innovation in service, if you ask me
(C) Tina Baumgarter

Every once in a while here in Germany I come across something that makes me stop in my tracks and stare – maybe even with an unbecomingly open mouth and an overall slightly brain-dead expression. The first such occasion happened fairly soon after we arrived here. I left the hardware store (what else) and my eye fell on the gas station across the street where I realized that a hair dresser – of all things – was trying to create a symbiotic relationship with the gas station. All under the idiotic and completely wrong slogan “tank & cut”. To understand the degree of idiocy you must know that “tanken” means to gas up in German. Now I can’t make up my mind whether I find it weirder that somebody uses English in their slogan for a German hairdressing service without bothering to check with somebody who actually speaks the language with a certain degree of fluency whether what they are saying actually makes any sense or the fact that somebody seems to think that there is indeed a certain logic to getting a haircut while gassing up, or before or after. Just imaging the following conversation:

“Oh, honey, now that we are here at the gas station I’ll go and get a quick perm.”

“Why, darling, what a great idea, I think I get a trim as well.”

Makes perfect sense, now, doesn’t it.

The latest such weird moment happened the day before yesterday. I went to a toy store with geek-boy to buy play-doh (what we need that for is a blog for another day) and while there we had fun looking at all the stuff on sale. A rather large section had lots of model train related products (at absurd prices I might add) including the usual trains and tracks plus all the little houses, trees and people to decorate the scene. All very cute and ever so detailed and – actually – a wee bit obsessive to me. I stared in disbelief at tiny plastic flowers, pets, intricate trees, firemen, retirees, kids, families in single and multipack when my eyes came to rest on a selection of nudists some quite overweight.

Nudists for your model train! You never knew what you missed.
(c) Tina Baumgartner

I am no prude, seriously, but a selection of nudists for your model train landscape?. There is something really weird about this. More disconcerting even a selection called “bathroom stories” depicting, well, just that. I’ll spare you the picture I took but it more than borders on the tasteless, weird and possibly even kinky.

So on we went, though selections of My Little Pony, board games, Pokemon cards and stuffed animals to pay for our play-doh. Problem is I really can’t unsee the stuff I saw in the ever so harmless sounding model train section.

Weekend Trip Recap

Once in a while one encounters a place that is such a perfect embodiment of an idea that it almost seems unreal, like the place is trying to mock itself by shamelessly overdoing it.

This weekend we visited such a place – and I am not just speaking of Ludwig’s castle Neuschwanstein but the whole area around it called Allgaeu.  It is rolling hills and happy cows, churches, fountains made from hollowed out tree trunks and free-ranging chickens, farm houses where each son of the family learned a different trade and so they all band together, bring their friends and build their own houses (to code, not just some artsy-fartsy shacks).  It is a place where villages are old and build around the churches, the home of amazing bakery products and meat-and-potato/dumpling dishes like you wouldn’t believe it.  This is where the streets are full of cow shit and nobody minds and of profuse flower pots on each and every balcony.  This is where – if one were to believe in such things – one would want to be reincarnated as a cat on such a farm.

Behind the rolling hills far enough away not to cast too much of a shadow rise the raggedy Alps providing a dramatic backdrop to all that absurd idyll.  This were geek-boy decided that he liked rural and could live in such a place (I let that one go) and geek-husband declared that this was ridiculously idyllic (no mention of moving there, I think he realizes that high-speed Internet access is not up to expectations).

We hiked for hours and finally ended up at the famous castle. It is amazing – and a bit of a let down at the same time.  Here we were on a grey mid-October day and the place was crawling with tourists.  I can’t even imagine what this looks like on a sunny July day.  They might have to close the road to walk up because there are so many people. Of course, I understand and of course I can’t judge because we were tourists, too, and of course the place is otherworldly somehow but in the end I enjoyed the villages cum cow shit and the rolling hills with raggedy mountains towering over them more.  Maybe we have to go back in like late November, maybe then one gets the castle without the crowds and a bit more of an idea of how it must have all felt when Ludwig was frolicking around there (I assume he was frolicking, I mean, why wouldn’t he).

So, today a few pictures which because of the grey skies – being the worst for a photographer – don’t do reality justice.

 

More Neuschwanstein on a grey October day
(c) Tina Baumgartner

Neushwanstein on a grey October day
(c) Tina Baumgartner

Can’t even call it a village – no street names, just house numbers
(c) Tina Baumgartner

Across he border in Austria – just as idyllic
(c) Tina Baumgartner

Happy Allgaeu cow in evening light.
(c) Tina Baumgartner

historic and idyllic
(c) Tina Baumgartner

pretty art deco details on the local pharmacy
(c) Tina Baumgartner

Tourist on the Marienbruecke, on a grey October day, more kept storming on until there was hardly any moving anymore
(c) Tina Baumgartner

this is how I want to be reincarnated
(c) Tina Baumgartner

 

Weekend Trip

So we are doing a weekend trip – California style.  As opposed to any self-respecting German who would leave work a little early – which means like 11 am because a regular Friday generally already ends plenty early – we will leave late and arrive late thanks to phone calls with, well, California.  (it is amazing what a change of location does to perspective, in California I used to be annoyed about the world pretty much being shut down by the time I got to my desk and now I am think “why the hell can’t they get up a bit earlier in California on a Friday if they want to speak to the rest of the world, its Friday evening here, hello, Friday evening, weekend, time off!!  Why can’t that 8:30 am conference call be at like 7:30 am?  Isn’t Silicon Valley supposedly always working!!)

King Ludwig’s Princess – oops, Prince castle.
Source: wiki

Its a short drive by US standards, less than 100 miles to a little town close to Fuessen.  Claim to fame: crazy King Ludwig’s fairy tale castle, Neuschwanstein.  The model for every Disney castle there ever was and is to come.  It is an absurd place, beautiful in its overdoneness, with this amazing location just on the border between the foothills and the Alps, archetypical for every little girl’s princess dreams (or at least those who do have princess dreams, I can’t remember any but maybe I am in denial).

I wanted to visit this place, I don’t know why, maybe because it will make me feel more like an American tourist than a local.  Maybe because this is the real deal, copied many times over, but it looks unreal itself.  Who knows, maybe just to get away for the weekend because I know if we stay here there will be cleaning and working and not much fun to be had.  I am determined to have a little fun, once in a while, even if my naive dreams of an easier and simpler life in Germany are all but shattered by now  between early morning calls to APAC and evening calls to California and geek-boy coming home from school so darn early.

Princess castle, here we come!

I am getting my mojo back

German guaca – came out alright

To get my cooking mojo back I made guacamole.  What better to get one’s Californian cooking mojo back than guaca with the possible exception of California roll? (which is a bit ambitious but I did find a source of nori and I brought Wasabi from California – and I found it here – but making the rice just right will be a lot of hassle if I remember correctly)

It came out rather decent, really, and the question was: will the chips be any good? And I am happy to report that they were and the whole thing tasted just fine, in fact, tasted totally California.  To offset this exotic cuisine we had bread dumplings with chanterelle creme sauce and bacon for main course and now I am indecently stuffed and can’t possible write any more.

But the signs are good that the cooking mojo might come back!

 

 

The Art of Cooking

Something really strange is happening: I can’t cook anymore. I mean, I guess I can still cook but it is not easy and natural anymore. Back home in California it has – at times – been hard to think of something to prepare and I remember frantic searches on the Internet and leafing through cook books just to come up with nothing and then ending up preparing pasta. But I also remember times when we needed dinner and nobody had gone shopping and I just opened the fridge and the freezer and grabbed some stuff and came up with a dinner that everybody – including picky “I hate veggies” geek boy liked. In my blissful memory the latter scenario is much more frequent than the former.

Another day another Schnitzel (c) Tina Baumgartner

And now I am stuck in scenario 1 – pasta with meat sauce. It is literally all I can ever come up with, well there is Schnitzel and sandwiches – but sandwiches don’t count as cooking, really. I wreck my brain to think of what I prepared at home in California and I draw a blank. Pasta? Schnitzel? I know there was other stuff, and it wasn’t sushi because we go out for sushi. Maybe it was fajitas, that must be it and fajitas is really not much of an option here, but then fajitas were prepared every other week at best. So what is different, what turned me into this unimaginative non-cook?

I can only speculate. The kitchen is tiny, I mean “bump into each other when turning around” tiny. Just a few minutes ago I felt like yelling at geek-boy to get the hell out of the darn kitchen because between his dad and myself there simply wasn’t enough space for a third person.

I also don’t have the provisions I have in California where I have stuff in the pantry and the freezer, where I actually have a pantry and a freeze which deserve the names.

Then there is all that German food that I am all of a sudden apparently expected by the world to prepare. I go to the store and find “Sauerbraten” spices (Sauerbraten is a special kind of German roast that is marinated in wine and/or vinegar overnight to make it slightly sour. It is eaten with Knoedel). I haven’t made a Sauerbraten in like – ever, literally and since I moved to the US I made Knoedel once. I mean, seriously, Sauerbraten spices?? The flip side is that I can’t find the stuff I need for survival. Today I was trying to find Tapatio – no luck, neither did I get Tajin, my favorite spicy, limey Mexican spice – and soy sauces comes in tiny bottles.

Of course, one can argue that it is possible to cook without Tajin and maybe it is indeed. I am about to find out.