Köln (Day 3) - Römisch-Germanisches Museum, dim sum and Museum Ludwig

We woke up to another overcast day this morning. After breakfast at the hotel, we headed to the Römisch-Germanisches Museum, which is right next to Kölner Dom. Köln is the capital of the small province Germania Inferior in the Roman Empire, and we were told that RGM has an impressive collection of artifacts from the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, and the Roman times.

When we visited Bonn a few months ago, we got a Bonn WelcomeCard which entitled us free admission to most public museums in the city. The Köln WelcomeCard, which gives 20% discount to museum admissions, is not much of a deal for museum-goers.

We asked if there was a Familienkarte (family admission) at the RGM ticket counter, and the nice lady offered us a MuseumsCard for approximately 20€. The card is valid for free admission to several public museums for 2 days AND free rides on the local public transport system VRS on the day of issue for two adults and two children. This was exactly what we were looking for, and we purchased one without any hesitation.

We started from the bottom floor of RGM where the Dionysus mosaic (dated 220 AD) is featured. This mosaic was discovered when the Germans were building a bomb shelter nearby. This museum was eventually erected on the walls of the Roman villa at this site. We strolled around the museum for a couple of hours. Roman tombstones were aplenty, including the reconstructed four-storey-high tomb (40 AD) of Poblicius, an officer who decided to show off his fortune. RGM also features a lot of jewelries and potteries as they usually accompany tombstones. But I was particularly impressed by the collection of Roman glassware and glass vessels at this museum.


Glenda was craving for dim sums today. I am not sure why we always hunt for Asian food when we are away in a big city, but we found ourselves at Dim Sum near Neumarkt for lunch. The dim sums were good, on a par with those in the Bay Area or Hong Kong. There are very few Chinese speaking Cantonese in Germany, but the ones we encountered at the restaurant did.

We spent some time around the Neumarkt area. I walked into Foto Gregor, and I was in awe to see all the Leica limited edition cameras, new and used, there. It was a relatively warm day and we had eis at the Neumarkt Gallerie before walking to Museum Ludwig, adjacent to the Dom. Here is Jocelyn in front of the museum. Museum Ludwig features work from more recent art movements: cubism, surrealism...and other more modern avant-garde. It houses a huge collection of Picasso, and the famous Presence of Mind by Magritte. We also found a few pieces by August Macke whose studio we visited during our trip to Bonn several months ago.

We decided not to have another Asian meal for dinner. But there are a lot of restaurants in Altstadt (old town, where our apartment is), so we walked around and settled for Da Pino, an Italian restaurant in the courtyard behind our apartment. After two regular weißbier (and a lot of walking today), I was ready to crash.

Köln (Day 2) - Schokoladen Museum und Farina Haus

On our second day in Köln, we decided to go to the Chocolate Museum and the Farina Haus, home to the world's oldest fragrance company. We started the day with breakfast at the hotel, then took a leisurely walk along the banks of the mighty Rhine River. It was a grey, drizzly day but we've all become accustomed to that since our move to Deutschland.

Our morning walk took us to the Schokoladen Museum.

One of the first things that you notice when you walk into the building is the cafe, which had plenty of cakes and pastries just waiting to be purchased and enjoyed. We decided to forgo the temptation and went to look at the exhibits. The first floor contained displays that informed visitors about cocoa farming, and the steps they must go through before they can become the edible form that we so thoroughly enjoy. The museum also had a greenhouse that contained a simulated rainforest - complete with cacao trees and humidity. As we walked through the museum, we started to smell the waft of paradise. As it turns out, Lindt has a miniature chocolate factory on site. There were lots of machinery on site, each with various windows from which you can observe the chocolate making process. Needless to say, Gabriel was fascinated by the manufacturing equipment while Jocelyn was getting a sugar high just from the scent of all that chocolate. There was also a kind lady who offered wafer cookies that were dipped into a fountain of melted, warm chocolatey goodness.

The rest of the exhibits were devoted to the history of chocolate consumption, starting from the beginning in Central America to modernity and the global hunger chocolate. After spending way too much time in the gift shop, we decided to take a lunch break. Surprisingly, we didn't gorge ourselves on chocolate so we still had an appetite for lunch.

We had walked by a Vietnamese restaurant named Cyclo the night before, and was intrigued. There have usually been a few Chinese and Thai restaurants in most of the German cities that we have visited, but Vietnamese restaurants have been rare. After we got our fill of noodle soups and pho, we decided to take a stroll along Hohestrasse.

After ducking into a few shops, we decided to go to the Farina Haus, the fragrance museum which was the production site of the original Eau de Cologne.

Johann Maria Farina was the creator of the fragrance, which smells surprisingly quite lovely. I was expecting it to smell more heavy and dated, but it's actually quite a light scent with notes of jasmine and bergamot. We took a CD-guided tour through the museum, which started with some background information on the Farina family and a description of what social life was like during that time period. We also learned about the fragrance's famous patrons. Napoleon is said to have used a bottle a day. It was also known as the fragrance of royalty and upper class, society people. There was also a fragrance chamber and a replica of a distiller that would have been used in the creation process.

We were also led to a display that held quite a number of fakes and imitation fragrances. Amongst these was the 4711, which also marketed itself as the original Eau de Cologne. We learned that the maker of 4711 had initially bought the rights to the Farina name (from a Farina was not related to the fragrance maker). But after several court battles with the Farinas, the imitator changed their product's name to 4711. In fact, 4711 is sold in tourist shops all over the city and I was able to spray a little on my wrist and make a comparison. Suffice it to say, the 4711 does indeed smell different...kind of like house cleaning chemicals.

After our tour, we headed back to the hotel to rest up a little before dinner.

Köln (Day 1) - Dom, Dunkin' Donuts and Dreizimmerapartment

We decided about a month ago to visit Köln (Cologne in the English-speaking world) for a few days during the kids' winter break this week.

We had to change train in Mannheim, but the ICE train that we boarded there sped through the Rhine valley, and we were in Köln only two hours after we left Karlsruhe. Gabriel was so excited to see the speed of 300 km/h (186 mph) shown on the announcement screen in the cabin.

It was only noon when we arrived in Köln, and we couldn't check into the hotel yet. But we didn't want to carry our luggage around until check-in later in the afternoon, so we left our luggage at one of automatic "kiosks": put 4€ into the machine (good for 24h of storage), kiosk door opened 40 seconds later, put the luggage into the compartment, pressed a green button, door closed, a ticket was issued, and the luggage was carted away on a conveyor belt behind the door.

As soon as we stepped outside the train station, we were welcomed by the sight of the Kölner Dom. But we were too hungry to hang out at the Dom plaza and went food hunting instead. Glenda saw "beef chow fun" 干炒牛河 on the daily offerings at a Chinese restaurant. That's something she had been craving for, and that's what she had for lunch.

After lunch, we decided to get inside the Dom. This magnificent building is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and was built (over the span of over 600 years) to house the relics of the Magi (the Three Kings). According to witnesses' accounts, relics from three persons were found when the Dreikönigenschrein (the Shrine of the Three Kings) was opened in 1864. We walked inside the church, then headed to its Treasury where countless number of glittering crosiers, monstrance, and other historical items (such as Frankish artifacts from the 5th century) are displayed.

By this time, the kids were yearning for some exercise, and off we climbed the 509 steps to the top of the Dom's south tower. Both kids made it to the top on their own (to my relief). I was a little taken aback by all the graffiti along the staircase and on the viewing platform. Why do people feel the need (or perhaps the rights) to scribble illicitly on this sacred building?

After we descended from the Dom's south tower, we headed to Hohe Straße (literally, High Street) where we found a....Dunkin' Donuts! Dunkin' is not as good as Tim Horton's, but good enough for a Canadian in exile (yours truly). Here you go, a picture of the kids with a walking donut, and our afternoon snack. BTW, the smiley face is called the Kölner and its filling is not as rich as the Berliner.



We decided to check in at the hotel at this point. The hotel should not be far from Dunkin'. Before we found the hotel, we stumbled upon a LEGO boutique shop where one can buy LEGO pieces by bulk (similar to buying bulk at supermarkets). Here you see the LEGO bulk selection and Gabriel's gaze at a display.


We dragged the kids (and myself) out of the LEGO store eventually. After a few more wrong turns, we found the hotel right by the bank of the Rhine. But the dreizimmerapartment (3-room apartment) we reserved, owned by the same hotelier, was in a separate building 200m away. The receptionist checked us in and walked us to the apartment at Heumarkt 48, which is a few steps from the site (Heumarkt 65) where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels maintained the editorial office of their Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung. By the way, a dreizimmerapartment has only two bedrooms in Germany; the living room is counted as a room.

While the kids were crashing on the sofa, I went back to the train station to fetch our luggage. By the time I returned, they were ready to go for dinner. Before we came to Köln, we searched for restaurant reviews at Qype, the European equivalent of Yelp. Glenda was craving for sushi, and we took the U-bahn to a Japanese restaurant on our list (Tobioka). The sushi was much better than what we had anticipated, and was on a par with some of the good sushi restaurants in the Bay Area. I ordered a local Kölsch (and then another one) to go with dinner. I must say I like the weißbier from Bavaria more. Taste and quality aside, the quantity is no comparison: a regular Kölsch comes in a 200 mL glass, and a regular Bavaria weißbier comes in a 500 mL pint (and I am not sure one can order anything smaller than that in München).

Faschings parade, Karlsruhe

As Alan had mentioned in the earlier post, the children and I went to the Faschings parade in Karlsruhe while he headed back to the flat to get a little rest. The start of the parade route was at Marktplatz so we parked ourselves on the sidewalk, directly across from Karstadt (a department store in the city center). After a long wait, the parade finally began. I'm not exactly sure why, but this parade was less enjoyable than the one we had attended in Freiburg. There was less personal interaction between the participants in the parade and the bystanders - perhaps because most of the revelers in the parade were either on floats or riding in trucks. There were also a lot more bystanders in Karlsruhe, which was not unexpected since it is a much bigger city. But because of this, the parade in Karlsruhe just seemed to lack the warm yet crazy/frenetic energy that was evident in the one in Freiburg. Even the children had remarked that there wasn't quite as much to see in the Karlsruhe parade. I suspect that their disappointment stemmed partially from the fact that they weren't able to gather as much candy as they would have liked to, since there was more competition...from adults. But I wasn't too bothered by that - they still have more than enough swag left over from the parade in Freiburg. Here are some photos from Karlsruhe's parade.

Faschingsdienstag

I returned to Karlsruhe just in time for the local carnival festivities on this Faschingsdienstag. Most businesses, other than restaurants, pubs and stalls that sell wursts, are closed in the afternoon when the parade took place. In fact some of the stores were closed on Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) yesterday, and may close on Aschermittwoch (Ash Wednesday) tomorrow. Most schools, such as our kids', are closed this week. This explains why some staff at my lab Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe are taking vacation this week even though the only official time off is this afternoon.

Since the kids have fallen in love with the schnitzel at a nearby pub Lehner's Wirtshaus, that's where we went for lunch. I was so tired by the end of the meal that I had to go home for a nap, while Glenda and the kids headed towards town centre for the carnival festivities...

While I was away...

For the last week I was away in Vancouver (gave a physics seminar at TRIUMF, plus visiting my sister and relatives) and in Edmonton (research meeting at the University of Alberta). It was my first trip on an airplane since our move to Germany last August. I video-chatted with Glenda and the kids nearly every day while I was in North America, but it was still a heavy burden to leave the family in foreign land (albeit a relatively short trip compared to some of my long trips to Sudbury, Canada in the past).

During my absence, Glenda kept the kids busy during their free times with arts and crafts. Here are a few clay creations.

The plane touched down at the Frankfurt airport around 7 AM this morning, and I was home by 9:20 AM. This week is the kids' winter break and they were eager to see me home on this Faschingsdienstag (Shove Tuesday, but literally Carnival Tuesday).

Kids' creations

Some creations from the kids.

Gabriel decided that he wanted to write a song after his violin practice. He grabbed my paper pad, and started composing on its back cardboard.





Jocelyn spent the last couple of weeks stitching this purse. The only help she got from Glenda was the bows and the white buttons you see here. Jocelyn made all the stitches herself.

Körperwelten & Der Zyklus Des Lebens

The latest buzz in the state of Baden-Württemberg are the opening of the new Porsche Museum in Stuttgart and the Körperwelten & Der Zyklus Des Lebens ("The Body Worlds and the Cycle of Life") exhibition in Heidelberg. We plan to visit the futuristic looking museum some time in the not-too-distant future.

Several colleagues have told me about the Body Worlds exhibition, but I don't think the kids are ready for it. This exhibition of "plastinated" human bodies continues to spark controversies on how the bodies were obtained for preservation. The traveling exhibition finally premieres in the hometown of the anatomist who pioneered the technique (it was in the Bay Area a little over a year ago). I heard that the long lines have sprung up an industry of university students and teens providing queuing service to eager tourists (for a fee, of course). I thought people would only pay for a spot for getting an iPhone.

Never mind the recession! It's the start of the carnival season...

Or it was anyway, 2 Sundays ago. I'm aware that this posting is a tad late, but I've been in a time warp since we've been in Germany. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

We went to Freiburg Im Breisgau on the first of February to watch the 75th year anniversary of the carnival parade. This event was held by the Breisgauer Narrenzunft, which is Freiburg's carnival club. We first learned about the parade the last time we were in Freiburg. We were visiting the club's museum and the curator (whom we dragged out of the pub next door) had told us about the event. We weren't really sure what we would see at the parade. But we figured that if it was anything as grotesquely cool as what we saw at the museum, then we'd be in for a real treat. Luckily we weren't wrong.

We stood strategically next to the Münster, which was near the start of the parade route (and next to the TV cameras). From there, 190 guilds stepped out with their members all dressed up in costume.

There were also 60 bands, which walked alongside the guilds.

Now I have to say, this was a festive bunch. You can tell that all of the guild members had a great time marching in the parade, especially the ones that wore masks. The masked carnies were truly uninhibited. I got my hat stolen numerous times, had my hat pulled over my eyes on a few occasions and was kissed twice. Gabriel also proved to be quite a likable target. He also had his hat stolen on many occasions and was also carried off in several instances (he was returned to us every time).

Jocelyn was smart and hid behind me every time she saw some of the rowdier groups coming down the street. Despite our interactions with the carnies, the antics that we endured was nothing compared to those of a young woman who was standing in a group next to us. She was a constant target for the carnies - she even got her face stamped. The paraders handed out candy to the children and even shots of booze to some of the adults. Gabriel and Jocelyn were quite proud of their loot - they both had Ziplock bags that were bursting with treats.

Here is a photo of the kids (in their carnie hats) and me (holding a piping hot glass of glühwein).

The parade started at 1:30 in the afternoon and ended about 3 hours later. Though we had a blast, it started to get cold as the parade went on especially as the sun started to go down. So before we left, we decided to eat some Würste mit brotchen ("Lange Rote auf dem Freiburger Münstermarkt", literally "the long red on the Freiburg Münster Market", which is a 2€, 35-cm long wurst in a bun) to warm us up. We walked back to the Hauptbahnhof after our hearty snack and took the next train back to Karlsruhe.

Visitors

Since we moved to Karlsruhe, we have had a number of friends visiting. Some of them (Peter D., Kazumi T., Hamish R.) are collaborators in the KATRIN experiment that I am working on; some of them are not (Aksel H.). Our latest visitor is Art M., who came as an external reviewer for the Helmholtz Association (which funds KATRIN).

Art and our family went out for dinner tonight. Just like other visitors before him, he peppered Gabriel with science and math questions, while Jocelyn hid shyly behind Glenda. Unlike some of the tougher challenges in the past*, Gabriel sailed through Art's multiplication and division problems.


*Peter D.: (1) Why do Guinness bubbles sink? (2) What is a pantograph (since Gabriel loves trains so much)?
*Aksel H.: (1) About half of our body weight comes from protons, where does the other half come from? (2) You know many languages; do you know C++ (Aksel saw this picture some years ago)?

Driving permit saga...continues

We finally received the bills for extending the 6-month validity of our Californian driver's licenses to a full year in Germany. Both bills were addressed to our residence, but they came about 10 days apart. Mine showed up in the mailbox at our residence, and Glenda's appeared in my mailbox at work (11 km away) ten days later. Glenda never changed her maiden name; thus some of the staff at our residence do not know who "Frau Cheng" is and her mails are sometimes re-directed to the lab's guest service before finding their way to my mailbox at work.

According to the bill, we have a month to dispute the 40€/license fee. So I decided to wait and make the bank transfers** when I make other payments (such as rent) at the beginning of the month. A few days ago, I got two new bills from the licensing office. This time, there is an additional 4€ "Mahngebühr" (reminder fee/fine) per license. So we have a month to dispute the 40€/license fee, but a Mahngebühr is levied two weeks after the bills were issued?

In any case, I paid the fees and the fines without filing a dispute.

**Bank transfer: Almost everything is done by bank transfers here in Germany. I have yet to see a personal or business cheque. The payees give the payers their bank number (bankleitzahl, or BLZ) and their account number (Kontonummer), and then the payers go to the bank or the bank's website to initiate the transfer. When I opened the bank account, I was given a full sheet of randomly generated numbers. During the internet transfers, the central server would ask me to provide a specific "key" from this sheet. This is an extra layer of fraud protection in addition to the password to log into the bank account. Foreigners have to be careful when inputing the payment amount: seventeen Euro and fifty five cents is entered as 17,55 and not 17.55 (comma vs. period).