good times

How is it that a place cold enough to have White Easters can’t get it together in time to provide us with a White Christmas?  At least it’s not a rainy one either.

Currently spending Christmas with the German’s parents near Stuttgart.  I fully support the practice of opening gifts on the evening of the 24th – none of this waiting overnight nonsense.  Although disappointing that this year we will not be able to make the post-Christmas pilgrimage to Metzingen, home of Hugo Boss, endless outlets, and the largest Chinese population in Germany at any given time.  But traveling to Paris for new years with my favorite cousin should help make up for that. 

Wishing you all a happy holiday!

central planning

I have mentioned before how much I love my bank (in the US – I merely tolerate Deutsche Bank and curse them often for charging annual fees just to maintain my savings account and forcing me to wait for three months before awarding me a check card as I came from a strange, exotic, and untrustworthy land).  But in the US, I belong to the loveliest of credit unions, complete with insanely helpful employees who offer up coffee, lemonade, remember names, and are still emailing and faxing me things in Germany.  Oh, customer service.  How I miss you.

Anyways, as if I needed yet another reason to sing their praises, this year they started a blog.  I have been a part of many conversations around “corporate blogging” and appropriate image and content and I have read my share of awful and boring company blogs.  But this one, I can highly recommend.  Targeting a younger audience (ie: the audience that would actually read blogs) this is entertaining enough to read just for fun.  A healthy balance of practical advice (dealing with finances when moving in with a boyfriend/girlfriend, benefits of a health savings account) and dismissing annoying practical advice (if you’ve paid taxes, rent, bills, and are debt free, go ahead and have a latte!  who cares if $2 per work day = $10 week = $500 year?  You’ve already taken care of the important stuff).

I personally enjoyed his advice on combining finances:

How you spend money as a couple is also tricky. Some couples spend what they each earn. Others do the allowance type thing. Kinda like government…you have communism, dictatorships, democracy, etc. Take your pick.

Our household currently operates under a capitalist system, with clearly defined property rights.  This system was severely tested during the Ironing Revolution, in which one party refused to acknowledge the proven advantage in total output of division of labor.  Negotiations proved unsuccessful, but this  is a rare protectionist policy.  Other than some contributions to public goods and infrastructure (taxed according to income bracket), it is a free market.  Clearly, parents must really love their children to move from this set up into a welfare state.

my favorite things

Yesterday I had dinner with some colleagues from various desert lands (Africa, India, etc).  We had a lovely meal, talked and ate and drank, and left around 11.  At which point, the three of them proceeded to stare in wonderment at the snowfall.  Which is all well and good before you leave the restaurant, or after you arrive at home.  But standing in the middle of Viktualianmarkt going, “look at that church!  no, look at that church!”  “check out this tree!  wait, look at this tree!” for 20 minutes is not my idea of a good time.  I spent a good 18 minutes grumbling to myself about crazy tourists while mentally reviewing any facts I ever knew about frostbite.  But in the end, I had to admit that it was kinda pretty.

When I lived in San Francisco, a friend of mine who lived in the north bay always used to come visit and point out these amazing things in the city that I walked past twice a day without ever registering.  You know, those things you never look at unless both your iPod and your cell phone run out of battery during your daily commute?  They’re kinda nice.

bringing you new lows every day

This morning, there was a man on my train drinking Jack-and-Coke in a can (brought you by Jack Daniels and Coca Cola) at 8.30am.  I had several thoughts on this, mainly:

-  They produce premixed and canned Jack-and-Coke?

- Is this product available in America?  Or is it one of those things like Spezi, that you think could only happen in America, yet only exists in Europe?

The holidays are rapidly approaching, but with crazy amounts of work, lack of qualified workers in my holiday card sweatshop, and shops that only open on Saturday, I sit at home every evening thinking “I’m running out of time!”  While I eat my blueberry crisp and pasta with slow roasted tomatoes.  That preservation of summer produce really pays off.

Part of last weekend’s holiday festivities included a winter concert with a sing-a-long component.  There I was, singing along, minding my own business, when the German interrupts my stirring rendition of “O, Christmas Tree” to say, “It’s BRAHN-ches, not BRAN-ches.”  I am sure few expats must suffer the indignity of having someone correct both your German AND your English.  Few occasions brought more joy than when we met up with my British friend, so they could commiserate over the difficulties of communicating with me.  He’s currently working his way through “Teach Yourself Mandarin”, so I preemptively referred him to this post.

defense wins championships, offense wins wars…

This just in….

AP – After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work–including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule–our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated “The US only had two major victories–Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren’t influenced by head-to-head contests–they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event.”

German Chancellor Adolph Hiter said “Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks.” Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn ’style points’ to enhance Germany’s rankings. Hitler protested “Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces.”

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented “France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2.”

Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.

United States head coach Harry S Truman was criticized by many as having poor taste for scheduling a “politicking” interview during halftime of the German bombing raids over Great Britain.

In that interview, Truman stated, “Any way you look at it, there is going to be a really good military force that gets left out. But when you come right down to it, our head-to-head victory over the Germans has to be the deciding factor.”

A US fan also made the point that “Germany is getting all the style points right now because of their sexy offense, which continues to obliterate weaker opponents and show off their might after the battle is already won. But what about defense?”

In addition to being hilarious, this also reminds me of my latest book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Pollan talks about Fritz Haber as the person with the single greatest effect on our lives today.  Which I found interesting, as I had never heard of Fritz Haber.  In fact, although he was a German chemist and Nobel Prize winner, no one amongst my brief survey of German engineers had any knowledge of him.

His great contribution to mankind was the creation of a process to extract nitrogen, and later synthesize it, leading to the creation of cheap fertilizer and making our current population size what it is.  Pollan estimates the world would only be 60% of it’s current size if Haber had not made his discovery.  That’s like the world population minus China and India.  However, his other great accomplishment was the development of chemical warfare, notably the gases used in concentration camps, and after the war he died in poverty and obscurity.

For you Cal fans, maybe the BCS will one day look into the sad stories of Fritz Haber and Nate Longshore and give them proper credit for their accomplishments.

what would a german do

Weekend brunch used to be my favorite meal, but there is nothing that can compare to a real American breakfast here.  I mean, only buttermilk or blueberry pancakes?  Omelets with spinach, cheese, or mushrooms?  Where is my fennel, Italian sausage, and Fontina omelet?  Where are my lemon ricotta pancakes?  Where is my bottomless coffee?  Despite the challenges, the German and I still take our Sunday paper out for some eggs every now and then.  Of course, my breakfast reading material is limited to the Style, Travel, and Culture sections, plus fashion magazines with more proper nouns than regular.

However, yesterday I discovered the Glamour magazine can still be funny.  In the “Is it okay….” section, where they ask scintillating questions about the appropriateness of big handbags, tights/hose with open-toed shoes, and so forth, they also had a question that read:

Is it okay to leave your meat on your plate when your hostess has forgotten that you are vegetarian?

Reply:

52% – NO

48% – YES

Why does it not surprise me that more than 50% of Germans think being vegetarian is like not liking Camembert and one should just eat it to be polite?  Maybe I should be surprised that it wasn’t higher.