Pillows and pans

When deciding whether to move to Hamburg or Paris we took into consideration all the things one should think about when deciding to switch continents for a few years - which city we thought we'd be happier in, which would provide a higher quality of life, the relative merits of the job offers (or -ahem- theoretical job offers), and the quality of pastries in both cities. We chose Hamburg because it made the most sense in all respects and it just felt right, though it also felt a bit off-kilter to turn down Paris. (We made the right decision, but seriously - how do you turn down Paris?) Regardless, once we decided on Hamburg for all the right reasons, I checked just to make sure it had an Ikea.

I know, what city doesn't have Ikea? But I have an unnatural affection for Ikea, in all its blue and yellow silly Swedish glory. I think it may be because my first-ever non-hand-me-down bed came from there, bunk beds with pink sheets that were the best thing ever when I was seven. I know for many people Ikea is torture - from the giant windowless store with the labyrinthine layout to the cryptic instructions for putting together the furniture once you get home. I love it, all of it, but especially assembling the furniture. (Just ask Zoli, who falls pretty firmly into the torture camp in all respects. He'd rather just make the furniture himself.)


When I investigated the Ikea situation in Hamburg I got two pleasant surprises. First, there are two Ikeas; second, one of the S-bahn lines goes directly to one of them! If there's one thing I love more than Ikea it's public transit. To combine the two, in the process eliminating my least favorite parts of going to Ikea (driving and parking)...be still my heart. As if that weren't enough, it just so happens that our apartment is right on the S-bahn line that goes to Ikea. One of the first weeks we were here I was passed on the sidewalk at the train station by a woman riding her bicycle with a kitchen sink from Ikea under her arm. It's fate, I tell you.

So then why, exactly, did it take me until this week, six months to the day after we arrived in Hamburg, to make it to Ikea? Well, we're renting a furnished apartment; we've been on one income so we have been trying to not spend so much; and we just didn't really need enough to justify a full-on Ikea trip. But finally this past week we reached a critical mass of things we were unable to find elsewhere and decided to go to Ikea.


Aside from being able to take the train there, excessive Ikea ads in the train station and everything being in German, it was much like any other Ikea trip. It seems that here the thing to eat in the cafe is the hot dog rather than the meatballs - I tried to talk Zoli into getting one but he was dead set on getting out of there as quickly as possible. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole trip. Zoli not so much - but he made it out intact, and now (after cooking with our new cast iron pan, sleeping on his new pillow and admiring his fabric for a tool kit) agrees that it was quite successful.


The only things missing were furniture to assemble, a sink and a bicycle on which to carry it. Maybe next time.

More exciting than expected

This week I had the best Monday I think I will ever have. I found out that my postdoctoral fellowship application was funded. I was not expecting this in the least. In fact, I was fully expecting to get the standard letter saying that the foundation had received an exceptional number of qualified applicants and they were terribly sorry to not be able to fund my proposal. The opposite happened - and though I was asked to please be patient (not my strong suit) and refrain from contacting them with questions until I receive my official documents sometime in the next 4 (gah!) weeks, a celebration was definitely in order.


It turns out 3 were actually in order. Zoli took me out to a tapas restaurant in our neighborhood on Monday night to celebrate. Then I went out for beers with people from my lab on Tuesday, including my first-ever games of Kicker (Americans call it fussball - totally backwards, but I guess Kicker is easier to say than Tischfußball), a local obsession at which I am terrible. Awful. Embarassingly inept. (But I got my fellowship!)

On Wednesday I went out with my boss and another postdoc for drinks in a building with an amazing view of our institute and the harbor, not to mention an impressive bar, followed by pool (much better than Kicker). By this point I was thoroughly done with celebrating and just wanted to come home and sit on the couch for goodness sake, which I think officially makes me old.

But still - it's exciting! I will be gainfully employed! The foundation supposedly will pay for German classes! (Not that I can verify this by asking them or anything.) I will get my own special ID card from the foundation! I now know for sure what I'll be doing for the next two years, which is both more exciting and more relieving than I expected. I am very, very pleased that these red brick buildings will be my workplace for the next two years.

Maybe by the end of it I will even be able to play Kicker.

Laufzetteln in the springtime

I can tell it's been a long time since I posted - I found a photo from mid-February today and it was of our street covered in snow. Since my last post it's started to be spring here - it's still tentative, but I saw my first crocuses (croci?) today, the trees outside our balcony are slowly, slowly coming to life and there's a little leftover pot of tulips on our balcony trying their best to grow. So, it's about time I got back to writing! As you can probably tell, life here has been busy. I'm definitely finding it a bit difficult to balance working and all the other fun things I was doing before I started working, like -ahem- writing blog posts and cooking.


I think that things are starting to come back into balance. Last weekend I made cupcakes, which was a good start. This weekend I made cheese and an apple cake, and Zoli finished two cutting boards. So - we're getting back to normal, slowly but surely.


Now that I'm an actual employee at my institute, I have had the joy of experiencing German bureaucracy. Zoli had to go through all of this when we first got here, which was even more overwhelming considering everything else. This past month it was my turn, under less frenzied circumstances and at a workplace where non-Germans are a rarity. (I think there are five of us, total.) When I started doing bench work in the lab one of the first things I had to do was get my Laufzettel signed by various people in the institute, from the guy in the mail room to the librarian to the director of the institute. In some ways it's a nice concept since then people actually see your face and know who you are (theoretically) but it's also a huge pain. It involves wandering all over the building to find everyone, not the easiest task when you're new and don't know where anything is. (If you ever have to do this don't try to find people between 10 and 10:30, that's coffee break time.)

Becoming official required many documents in addition to the Laufzettel, including our seriously unofficial-looking marriage certificate and my doctoral certificate (very important so I'm glad I brought it with me). The most entertaining thing they required was a Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis, essentially a certificate of good conduct from the police, that I had to request from the Einwhonermeldeamt along with my Lohnsteuerkarte (tax card) so I could be paid. Thankfully the woman who waited on us was patient - I even practiced how to say Führungszeugnis before we went and it was still only somewhat comprehensible. But I ultimately got what I needed. I think I might even be in the right tax class.

Aside from the bureaucracy it's always fun starting work in a new lab. Though many techniques are the same, the particulars of how labs do things are quite different. It reminds me a lot of cooking, actually - though different cookbooks will tell you the "right" way to do something, there are many right ways and ultimately how you do something is up to personal experience and preference. At first I find it easiest to do things the way others do in the lab - at least until I get my bearings and am able to decide whether I like my "right" way better. I'm also learning totally new things, which is the most exciting part - I learned how to dissect mosquitoes to get malaria parasites out of their salivary glands, and to look at a blood smear to determine whether red blood cells are infected with malaria parasites. I'm really enjoying working on something infectious-disease related where I still get to take pretty pictures of cells.

This past Monday was the last day in lab for the postdoc I'm replacing before the start of her Mutterschutz. Maternity leave here is pretty impressive, it starts six weeks before your due date, and then you can take up to a year of paid leave with your job guaranteed at the end of it. She was a great person to work with and I'm already missing her in the lab, but we gave her a fun send-off for which I baked sehr amerikanishe cupcakes.


The cupcake craze has not made it to Germany and I don't know that it ever will, but I was able to find cupcake pans and liners so there may yet be hope. After living within walking distance of two fabulous cupcake places in Seattle I've gone through a bit of cupcake withdrawal here. Thankfully I have some good cupcake recipes and this is my go-to for chocolate cupcakes.

My mom got this recipe from a cookbook put out by the Ivyland Fire Company sometime in the 1970s, and it's both easy and fabulous. She always fills them with whipped cream - the filling is optional but highly recommended. This time I added diced, sugared strawberries to the whipped cream - not the usual never-fail chocolate cupcakes but not half bad. And definitely not a failure.


Never-Fail Chocolate Cupcakes
24 cupcakes

2 eggs
2/3 cup cocoa
2/3 cup butter, softened
1 3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup sour milk
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup hot water

Optional filling:
1 pint heavy cream
1/2-1 tsp vanilla extract
granulated sugar
powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350˚ F. Line 24 cupcake tins with paper liners, or grease well.

Put ingredients in bowl in order listed. (I usually sift the cocoa in because it's clumpy - you may want to do the same for the baking soda for the same reason, but they're fine if you don't - see recipe title.) Do not beat until the last item has been added. Then beat well. (I do this with an electric mixer, but I'd bet it would work by hand, too.) Divide batter between cupcake tins. Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool briefly in the pan, then remove and cool on a wire rack (or a plate, or in the pans, they're not that picky - see recipe title).

The cupcakes are great straight-up, but if you're going to fill them, let them cool completely. With a small, sharp knife cut a cone-shaped piece out of the top of each cupcake. Whip the cream for a minute or two, add the sugar and vanilla, then continue whipping until the cream holds fairly firm peaks but doesn't start to clump. (You don't want the cream to be too droopy unless you're serving these immediately.) Fill each cupcake with a large dollop of cream, then put the top back on each cupcake, pressing down slightly so the cream squidges out a bit. Dust the tops with powdered sugar immediately before serving.

(To add strawberries to the filling, I diced maybe a 1/2 pint of strawberries and added 2-3 tsp. sugar and let them sit for about 30 minutes. Instead of adding sugar to the whipped cream, I folded in the strawberries after the cream was whipped and then filled the cupcakes.)