Household appliance #1

I can now say that I have bought a refrigerator. A tiny, adorable, A++ energy efficient European refrigerator. See that empty space down there under the counter? This baby will go there, along with a washing machine. A clothes washing machine. A clothes washing machine that means no more trips to the sketchy laundromat. Woohoo!

How does it feel? It feels like we're moving in five days and we don't have any furniture.* Not to worry, we are going to Ikea tomorrow (and you know how I feel about Ikea), both for some buying and for some pre-buying scouting. Our first piece of furniture is already in the apartment (more on that another time); on Sunday we're picking up furniture we bought from acquaintances who are moving to the US for a few years to do postdocs. (I wish they were moving to Seattle, it would be so nicely symmetric.) Our new apartment will be full soon enough, so at the moment I am enjoying its gorgeously empty state.


I imagine blog posts will be a bit scarce in the coming weeks (I know, as if they haven't been scarce before this - hey, this is two posts in one month!). We will be without phone (whatever) and internet (uh-oh) for a little while, but it will just give us time to find some furniture.

* For the record, this is not a complaint. Moving is a whole hell of a lot easier with no furniture. It's just confusing, and then after the move there's nowhere to sit but the random desk chair you bought and the exercise ball that you refused to deflate for the move because it took so damn long to pump it up after the last move. But still, not complaining.

Birthdays come and gone

Though I've been quiet over here, we've been busy. Between birthday celebrations, apartment hunts and a visit to Paris, May was quite the bustling month. But let's start with the birthdays. This is the year of turning 30, and lucky Zoli got to do it first of the two of us. It seems like quite the milestone, until you think about the birthday of the Hamburg harbor. This year Zoli shared his birthday with the Hafengeburtstag, and when you consider that the harbor celebrated its 820th birthday 30 doesn't seem so bad. It seems downright young, in fact. Which, really, I guess it is.

We celebrated with asparagus (Spargel in German - oh baby is it Spargel season), a nice bottle of wine - and for the first time in ages, I made Zoli a birthday cake. The cake was Zoli's request and, as I like to call it, "Butter Masquerading as Cake." Don't get me wrong, it was quite good, but it was a Lot. Of. Butter. Thankfully we were able to pawn off - ahem - I mean bring the leftovers to our German class.


We also visited the Hafengeburtstag, which not only provided me ample entertainment at work with all the ships coming into the port, but also had the Swiss air force as a special guest this year. Apparently the fighter jets flying so low caused some consternation amongst the citizens of Hamburg, but the day we saw them they were quite fun.


Aside from celebrating, we spent the first two weeks of May going to look at apartments, trying to find a place to live when our lease ends in July. I know I'm out of practice, but this was intense - one open house Zoli went to had over 100 people. We were going to at least one Besichtigung per day (literally an inspection or perambulation), so that was essentially all we were doing. We saw some fabulous apartments, but for most landlords two Americans who won't be here for more than a few years are not the ideal candidates. However, we were ultimately successful and were offered an apartment in a cool old building with an ideal location. Bonus - we were offered it the day before we left for Paris to continue the birthday celebrations, making the trip that much nicer.


So, Paris. Paris was...Paris. Beautiful, grey, sunny...and holy crap there were lots of Americans. It was amazing, really, how much American English we heard in four days. I never really thought about how little English we hear here, American or otherwise, but it was the exact opposite in Paris. In practically every restaurant we visited there was at least one other group of Americans, including two American scientists in the café at the Maison Européenne de la photographie - and yes, I was eavesdropping on their conversation. Basically our trip consisted of lots of walking, visiting with our friend Joseph, some museum-going and of course a good amount of eating (including amazing handmade noodles).

It was relaxing and lovely and I think a pretty good way to celebrate turning 30. Though really, you'd have to ask Zoli.

April in Hamburg

(I know, it's May. Sorry for the accidental hiatus in posts - I blame the weather. It's been nice!)


After what felt like a very, very long winter, spring arrived here with a solid 2+ weeks of sun, including the four-day weekend over Easter, a vacation for almost everyone. People who have lived here for a while were amazed by the weather, and there were many jokes about how this is our summer so we should enjoy it while it's here. (That's alarming, but reinforced by what I remember of my three-week trip to Düsseldorf when I was 16 - it was the end of June and cold and rainy every day.) It was warm enough to go around in a skirt and a t-shirt and not be cold, which was oh so nice.


We did all kinds of things to enjoy the warm weather - rented bicycles and explored new parts of the city, happened upon a street festival and an awesome South Asian grocery store, and on Easter weekend had a lovely picnic in a park on the Außenalster.

We also explored what is apparently a northern German tradition - fires on the night before Easter. I heard two main explanations for the fires - the first is that it's the time to burn all the trimmings from cleaning up the garden; the second was that the fires are lit to burn away the winter ghosts and welcome in the spring ghosts. Either way it's a nice idea, and apparently in smaller communities it's quite fun, but we went to the beach on the Elbe. While it was definitely a cultural experience it wasn't one that I'm itching to repeat. There was a crush of people (mostly teenagers with beer bottles) trying to get down to the beach, and once we were there it was hard to walk without stepping on someone or a fire. It was quite nice looking at all the fires up and down the beach, but the charm was somewhat lost when a flying beer bottle almost hit me in the head. I'm not sure we'll visit the Elbe Osterfeuern again next year.


I ended April with a trip to New York and got to spend some much-needed time with my sisters and mom. And now it's May - I officially start my fellowship tomorrow and we're starting to seriously look for a new apartment, but hopefully I will get back on track with the blogging. In the mean time, I hope you've had at least a bit of nice weather wherever you are.

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.)

Good Germans

Where did January go? I feel sort of silly asking that when we're already hip-deep in February. It seems like we were just traveling, leaving cold and snowy Boston and arriving back in cold and snowy Germany. But no, we've been back from the US for many weeks and are half-way through our fifth month of living in Hamburg.

I've started to categorize our months here with some sort of descriptor, in an attempt to keep track of the time. For example, October was the month of Confusion, what with not understanding anything and getting settled. November was the month of Email due to Zoli being on the boat. Now, looking back, I think January was our month of being Good Germans.

Living here it seems like there's a greater collective consciousness than there is in the US about when one should do certain things. Recycling, for example. We walk our recycling to large metal bins around the corner, which are the recycling facilities for our part of the neighborhood. Good Germans recycle on Saturday and Sunday, such that even though the bins are emptied on Saturday mornings they're chock full by Sunday night. Full to the extent that you have to actively shove your recyclables into the available nooks and crannies and you're guaranteed to have at least two or three other people doing the same thing at the same time.

Bottles for beer, water and soda are redeemable at a machine that's in the back of most grocery stores. Good Germans redeem on Saturday afternoon - the queues in all the grocery stores are enormous with people redeeming shopping carts full of soda, water and beer bottles. It's tedious to stand in line with just the five or six bottles we accumulate at one time, but it can be worth it for the people-watching. One Saturday I was behind a man who redeemed a cart full of beer bottles - I was behind him in line at the register as well, and all he was buying was beer.

Not all Good German activities have to do with the disposal of recyclables. Saturday is shopping day, starting with food shopping and ending with shopping for things - the stores are packed and good luck if you actually want to try something on in a dressing room. On Sundays, Good Germans go for leisurely walks, and then in the late afternoon to a café for Kaffee und Kuchen. If you're an exceptionally Good German you'll go walking in a Fußgängerzone (pedestrian zone) and Schaufensterbummel machen (window shop). My favorite part of being Good Germans is that I learned about many of these activities in my high school German class and thought they were the craziest things ever. It makes sense actually living here (especially since most shops are closed on Sundays), but it doesn't make it any less amusing.

But Being Good Germans is tiring. It's exhausting shopping all day Saturday. Sometimes on Sundays you just want to sit on the couch in comfy pants and watch the snow, rather than walking through it on ice-covered sidewalks, even if your reward is cake. So far February is shaping up to be the month of being Bad Germans - not only did we put our recycling in the (blissfully empty) bins on a Wednesday night, I also redeemed bottles in the grocery store on a Tuesday. Watch out, you never know what we'll do next.