Obama is coming to town

This is the latest hot topic in town: President Obama is visiting our state of Baden-Württemberg.

He will attend the 60th anniversary celebration of NATO in nearby towns later on this week. The NATO summit will be held in Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany (two towns linked by a bridge across the Rhine), and in Baden-Baden, Germany. The distance between Strasbourg and Karlsruhe is approximately 80 km and that between Baden-Baden and Karlsruhe is approximately 40 km.

Some of Gabriel's schoolmates live in the Strasbourg area, and won't be going to school later on this week because of the anticipated chaos (traffic detour, heightened security, and anticipated massive demonstrations).

Besides the raucous demonstrators, NATO leaders can also expect a warm welcome:

Königstuhl

I collaborate with a few physicists at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik in Heidelberg on a small project. I try to visit the institute at least once a month given its close proximity (50 km).

After a fruitful meeting with my MPIK colleagues today, one of the graduate students suggested that I might want to stop by Königstuhl (literally "the king's seat") on my drive back to Karlsruhe on this gorgeous Spring day.

MPIK is about half-way up on a hill in the Naturpark-Neckartal-Odenwald. Its sister institute, Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie is at the top of the 567-m high Königstuhl mountain. The drive from MPIK to Königstuhl took less than 10 minutes, but some of the roads scaling the hill are single-lane and windy. Once I reached the lookout area at Königstuhl, I was awed by the breathtaking view of Heidelberg and the Neckar river instantly. I strolled around for about 15 minutes before returning to Karlsruhe.

For tourists without access to a car, they can take the tramway (Heidelberger Bergbahn) from the old town of Heidelberg to Königstuhl (and the Heidelberg castle is the first stop of this tramway).

Happy Birthday, Gabriel!

Yesterday was Gabriel's 8th birthday. We had a rather low key celebration because it was a school day and he had homework to do. My, it's hard to be 8, isn't it? Despite this, he was a happy little guy as you can see in the photo below. Once he finished his homework and practiced his violin, he was in Lego heaven. Alan also spent some uninterrupted quality time with the children in the evening.



Last night, I prepared his favorite meal of noodle soup, gyoza and salad for dinner with non-dairy eis for dessert (Alan made a special trip to the bio specialty store). We also took him out for his official birthday dinner on Saturday night and had birthday eis (instead of a birthday cake) on Sunday. We might take the kids out for a special outing at the Technik Museum Sinsheim this Saturday because the weather is starting to get much warmer.

It's hard to believe that our little guy is 8 years old already, and that he'll be a tween very soon. He's growing up to be quite an inquisitive young man who is able to think independently. We're very proud of him and it will be interesting to see what he does with his life as he gets older.

Kloster Maulbronn

The kids were getting restless this morning, and we decided to take a Stadtmobil out for a drive. Since this part of Germany is so scenic and so rich in history, even a short drive can be quite a fulfilling experience.

We went down Autobahn-8 (which goes along the northern edge of Schwarzwald - Black Forest - shown as the green patch at the bottom of the map), cut into the Stromberg-Heuchelberg Natural Park (the green patch in the upper right corner), stopped in Maulbronn (more later) before heading back to Karlsruhe. The ride was beautiful, particularly on the return leg during which we passed a number of idyllic towns and open fields amid vineyards on the hills nearby. This loop could be done in about 90 minutes without stopping.

Maulbronn is a small town. Its main attraction is Kloster Maulbronn (Maulbronn Abbey), a well-preserved monastery from the 12th century and one of the thirty three UNESCO World Heritage sites in Germany. Johannes Kepler, the great astronomer and mathematician, was once a student at the monastic school.

Visitors are welcomed by a vast open space once stepped inside the Maulbronn compound. Here are the pictures of the front gate and the wall, followed by a few structures of the monastery compound.




We bought the tickets (6€ for adults, 3€ for kids) to get inside the complex shown in the last two pictures here. The layout of this complex can be found here. We walked around its cloister, visited the adjacent halls (sans furniture) and the magnificent klosterkirche (church). It gave me a similar feeling of walking inside a small college in Oxford.


Before we drove back to Karlsruhe, the kids spent some time at a playground outside the complex. All in all it has been a fun day.

Bochum

I attended the European Nuclear Physics Conference in Bochum earlier this week. I left Karlsruhe on an ICE train at 6 o'clock on Monday morning and arrived at the conference site, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), about three and a half hours later.

Bochum is part of the industrial sprawl in Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr area), and was a major coal-mining center in Germany up to about three decades ago. Nowadays it sports the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum (DBM, German Mining Museum) as its main tourist attraction during the day and the daily Starlight Express musical at night.

RUB was the first new university in Germany after World War II. To my eyes, most of the buildings on campus have identical architecture. Here you see the "yellow block" of buildings; then there are the identical green, blue and red blocks....you get the idea. The plenary talks were held in the Audimax, and most of the other talks were held in Hörsaalzentrum Ost (HZO, Lecture Hall Center East, but there is no Lecture Hall Center West on campus!). You know you are in a mining town as the lecture hall number increases as one descends to the lower floors in HZO. The conference was a typical physics conference: plenary talks, topical sessions and a poster session. I learned quite a bit more about the future physics program in Europe at this conference.


Right across from the Audimax is the Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, or the Art Collection of RUB. It has a good collection of Roman artifacts, and modern works by masters such as Gerhard Richter. Andreas Gursky's picture of the university is also on display. Gursky is an architecture and landscape photographer, and is one of my favorite (here is his picture of the neutrino detector SuperKamiokande in Japan).

Mines are not unfamiliar to me as I had to spend quite some time in a nickel mine, 6800-feet deep, in Sudbury, Canada during the early years of SNO. But I visited the DBM anyway. The museum's turquoise-colored headframe is clearly visible from downtown Bochum (less than a kilometer away).

After browsing a number of displays at the museum, I took the underground tour. Instead of a dark and wet "cage" (such as the one at the Creighton mine in Sudbury), DBM visitors descend into the mine in a well-lit elevator. Once (20m) underground, the visitors are welcomed by a network of drifts. The drifts here are much lower and narrower than those at Creighton, and my head almost bumped into the overhead pipes and cables on a few occasions. Since this is not a working mine, the air is not really mucky. The machineries that are used to extract coal is certainly different from those for ores. For example, there are a few giant wheel cutters that are used to "shave" coal from the wall.

The museum also has a collection of pewter steins on display, some of those are from the 15th century.



The gourmet area of the town is called Bermudadreieck (Bermuda Triangle). On my second night here, my German colleagues told me about a rather new American restaurant that is mentioned in the guidebook. Peter P. opened his guidebook and showed me a quarter-page culinary description of the Hooters (in Deutsch and English). Apparently my German colleagues had never heard of this restaurant chain, and I had to fill in the description on the service and the attire of the waitresses. At the end we went to a Mexican restaurant and enjoyed our time of pouring a frozen block of margarita from a narrow-neck carafe (the German idea of a pitcher of frozen margarita, I guess).

The conference would not finish until Friday, but I left Bochum on Thursday evening (just home in time to celebrate Jocelyn's 6th birthday).

Happy Birthday, Jocelyn!

Jocelyn, our little princess, turned 6 today! She was so excited. She had actually started the count down to her birthday last month. She would turn the pages of Gabriel's calendar and look longingly at the slot for March 20th. It's hard to believe that our baby has turned into such a bright, thoughtful and artistic little girl. Time really does go by quickly, doesn't it?

Jocelyn's kindergarten class takes birthdays very seriously. So to celebrate the occasion, I made some strawberry filled croissants for her to take to school and share with her classmates. When I picked her up from school this afternoon, she walked out with a huge grin on her face. She then proceeded to tell me about her class's birthday ritual of dancing, singing and eating. Jocelyn's teacher, Miss Julie, also made an adorable hat for her to wear. And boy did she wear it - she didn't take it off all day (as you can see in the photo below)! She had quite a morning.

Since the weather in Karlsruhe has been beautiful, I decided to take the kids to the play area at the Schlossgarten. Okay so the temperature was in the high 40's, but at least it was sunny. We had a nice picnic lunch, and afterwards I turned the kids loose. We practically had the entire park to ourselves, since it was a weekday and it really wasn't all that warm. The kids enjoyed the fact that they didn't have to wait or take turns for anything. They got tired after running around for a couple of hours. Jocelyn immediately asked for her birthday presents upon returning to our flat, so then she spent the next couple of hours opening and playing with her new toys. Here is a photo of Jocelyn holding up the Legos Racer set that her grandparents sent her.



Once Alan got home, we decided to go out for dinner. We let the little princess choose and she decided that she wanted to have...schnitzel! Jocelyn has become quite a fan of the schnitzel ever since we've been living here in Deutschland. After a hearty dinner, she also had some eis for dessert.

Jocelyn was beaming the entire day, up until she fell asleep tonight. You can tell that Little Miss Jocelyn had the perfect day.

Hot pot in Stuttgart

We strolled around Königstraße in Stuttgart after visiting the Porsche Museum. Even though it is getting warmer, Glenda was craving for a hot-pot dinner. We used to have a few hot-pot dinners per year back in the US: either cooking at home or going to our favorite hot-pot restaurant in Union City.

Obviously we didn't bring our portable stove to Germany with us. But we recalled from our previous trips to Stuttgart that some Chinese restaurants serve hot pots. We found a 14.95€ all-you-can-eat (kids at reduced price), and it was completely packed with diners (which was a good indicator of the quality, I suppose). We had a great meal before returning to Karlsruhe.

Here are the pictures of the double-broth pot and our first (out of many) plates of food.

Porsche Museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen

In late January our neighbor in Oakland alerted us about the opening of the brand new Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. The weather was fair today and we traveled to the museum using (once again) the hugely discounted Baden-Württemberg tickets from Deutsche Bahn (1 day travel for 5 persons on regional trains within BW for 28€, including local city transportation). The journey to the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof took slightly less than an hour, and after waiting for about 15 minutes for a local tram, we were at the museum approximately an hour and a half after we left Karlsruhe.

The museum is really easy to get to by public transportation. The tram stop is right outside the museum's main entrance. Of course, the visitor parking lot was filled with Mercedes-Benzs, Porsches and BMWs (hey, this is Deutschland); but they were all eclipsed by a white Lamborghini Diablo with a Swiss license plate. It must have costed the owner a fortune to drive the 6-litre V12 machine to the museum (even though Zürich is only 200 or so kilometers away from Stuttgart).

The front entrance is certainly not as grand as that of the Mercedes-Benz Museum across town. In fact, the design of Porsche Museum appears to give the least amount of floor space to the ground floor. The museum cramps the ticket office, audio-gadget pick-up, a cafeteria, cloak room, gift shop, a coffee bar (which also serves as a viewing area of the shop where older Porsches are restored). I suspect the front area would get chaotic once the tourists begin arriving in droves this summer.

After we purchased the tickets (8€ per adults, kids under 14 are free), Gabriel and Jocelyn wanted to have lunch. The cafeteria on the ground floor, Boxenstopp, offers pub fare at reasonable prices. The kids had a hearty Wiener schnitzel. We later found out that there is a restaurant in the museum, but we were not prepared to have the ultimate Porsche experience of 40€ for a steak in any case.



Here are a few more pictures Glenda took at the museum (Jocelyn likes the 917 "pink pig", primarily for its color). More pictures can be found here.



The museum is smaller than the M-B Museum, and we finished browsing through after a couple of hours. But Gabriel loves the car here more than those at the M-B Museum and didn't want to leave.

Our impression? The museum is well worth a visit. But I enjoyed the M-B Museum more. The displays, particularly the ones on the mechanical designs, are not as informative as those at M-B. Also a visit to the M-B Museum is a tour of the automobile history, and the Porsche's history is not as rich as its rival across town.

Winnenden

A shooting rampage left many dead in Winnenden, a town about 100 km (60 miles) from Karlsruhe, yesterday. Many flags are flown at half-staff around Germany today.

The principal at Gabriel's and Jocelyn's school issued the parents a letter. He assured us that the security measures at the school are appropriate, and urged us to help making sure that no one in the school community is isolated. Our school is the only one in the state of Baden-Württemberg that has hired a security company to control its entrance (since the beginning of the school year, albeit one of the last campuses in the European Schools system to do so).

Buy a car NOW!

The hottest topic in the coffee room these days is cars. The German stimulus plan has revived (at least temporarily) the auto industry. The automobile part of the 50b€ plan goes like this: you give up your nine-plus-year-old car, buy a new car and get a 2500€ "scrapping bonus" (Abwrackprämie) from the government. A lot of dealers are also offering steep discount (15% or more is not uncommon, particularly if you pay cash). This means one can get a new car for about 75 to 80% of the ticket price from a year ago. This stimulus plan is so popular that car sales boomed to an unexpected ten-year high (over 400,000 new car orders since the plan kicked in, or 0.5% of the German population is getting a new car). One of the IT support engineers here was so worry about this program running out money that he decided to scrap his decade-old Audi A3 for a BMW 1-series.

The logical question to ask is whether this plan also spurs the market for nine-plus-year-old used cars as well (say you buy a piece of scrap metal for 10€ from Poland, drive it back to get a 2500€ discount for a new car)? Nein, the bureaucrats have already thought about this, and all trade-ins have to be registered in Germany for at least a year.

It's tax time

We received the latest batch of forwarded mail from our neighbors a few days ago. With the myriad of tax forms in the batch, we can tell it is tax time. For the last little while, I have been reading up on the US taxation rules. The US Internal Revenue Service's publications are horribly complicated, but I found this very useful article that focuses on taxation for people on sabbatical leaves.

We got Intuits' tax software TurboTax via internet download. A handsome discount was offered when we connected to the Intuit's website through Fidelity, which holds my (and most University of California employees') retirement portfolio. I suppose the discount was the consolation for checking my plummeting retirement portfolio balance.

There are several tax advantages for going on sabbatical for less than a year. First, I (as an exchange academic) don't have to pay any tax in Germany due to the US-German tax treaty. One can also deduct certain un-reimbursed expenses incurred during the sabbatical as job-related travel expenses:

• Lodging: my portion of the rent in Germany is deductible
  
• Meals: 50% of the federal meals and incidental expenses (M&IE) per diem rate
  
• Transportation: my cost to travel to and from Germany, and my commuting cost (i.e. my monthly tram pass) are deductible

Needless to say, these deductions lower our taxes – a welcoming relief during this economic climate.

Easter break

The kids get two weeks off during the Easter season. This will be their final long break before summer. So we decided to go a little further to Wien (Vienna), Austria. We finished all our bookings today.

Trains take longer and cost about the same, so we will fly. Air Berlin, a semi-low-cost airline, offers 29€ one-way Frankfurt-Wien ticket. But by the time all the fees (fuel surcharge and a handling fee) are tallied, each ticket would cost over 100€. At least they are not charging for using the toilet in flight (yet). We booked our ticket on Lufthansa, which charged us 99€ per round-trip ticket (all inclusive).

There are plenty of apartments for temporary rentals. One just has to type in "Vienna apartments" in Google and there are many reasonably priced apartments on offer. They are certainly cheaper than renting a hotel room for four. We found a 3-room (i.e. 2 bedroom) apartment in the fourth district (Wieden) for the week of our visit.

Klassenreise

We received a notice from Gabriel's school today. Gabriel's class, along with the Grade 2 classes in the French and German sections will be spending 4 days (3 nights) at Château du Liebfrauenberg, about 60 km away in France, in May. The cost, including transport, is 170€ (despite the grandiose "château", it is really a hostel). I thought it is a great idea, but Glenda is understandably a bit nervous about it. My first overnight trip sans parents was at about the same age; I was a Cub Scout then (and we had to stuff everything in a backpack, not a suitcase with rollers).

Did they get in?

So we mailed Gabriel's and Jocelyn's application for enrollment at our neighborhood school in the next school year. Thanks to the USeless Postal Service (USPS), their package only got to a post office a couple of miles from the Oakland Unified School District. According to the OUSD website, the school assignment notices would have been mailed out two days ago. Our neighbor forwards our mail to us once a month, which means we probably would not find out the kids' assignment for weeks if we were to wait for the forwarded mail. I emailed Mr. B. at OUSD (who graciously printed out our electronic versions and used them for the application) and he told us that the kids got back into the neighborhood school. The problem we have now is to find a way to register them at the school, in person, in April.

Köln (Day 4) - Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Burger King and journey back to Karlsruhe

We were booked on the direct train to Karlsruhe at 1 PM, which meant we could squeeze another museum visit in the morning. After breakfast I took the luggage to the main train station and stored it at one of the automatic storage kiosks. Then we checked out from the hotel and walked to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, about half way between our hotel and the train station. The MuseumsCard that we purchased yesterday was still valid for this visit today.

Jocelyn really enjoys pre-Impressionist art much more than those from the more recent movements, and the WRM offers plenty of art to her liking. She just kept asking Glenda to snap photos of those works that she liked (in vielen Museen ist das Fotografieren ohne Blitz erlaubt).

Gabriel was more interested in the microscope, telescope and nautical compass from the 17th/18th centuries shown here. There is large Lochbildkamera (pin-hole camera), pointed at the Dom, in front of this showcase. He took a peep and asked why the image of the Dom was upside down. I told him that I would show him why with a camera lens when we get home. There is now a movement to take analog photos with plastic toy cameras (which do have lenses) and homemade primitive pinhole cameras. I have been playing with a light-leaking Holga for a few years (a couple of my own favorites are here and here), and perhaps I should start a pinhole project with Gabriel upon our return to the Bay Area.

We stayed at the WRM for about an hour before leaving for the train station. Given the time constraint we did not want to explore other fatty opportunities before deciding on takeouts at Burger King. I ordered the food (which came to 16€) and paid with a 50€ bill. The "team member" gave me the change: two fives, a ten, and about 4€ in coins; closed the till and turned around immediately to fetch the food. That's 10€ short! Two minutes later she came back with no food, and I showed her the change. She didn't seem too bothered, and started looking for something. Another two minutes later, she found a mag-strip card by another cash register, swiped her machine repeatedly for another minute, and locked up the machine (too many failed attempts to open a cash register would do it). Then she left to find the shift manager, who swiped the machine, closed out the register, took the change I left laying by the register (to show that it was short) and walked away! OK, so they had to count the cash in the till to make sure that they were running a surplus, but why did they have to take my change? If they took their time to count the till, I would be short-changed for 50€ (and without any food) because we had to catch the train. Fortunately, we did leave ourselves with about 15 minutes of wiggle room, and we had a few minutes to spare by the time the manager finally returned with the correct change and the team member with the food. They seemed to handle this so professionally that I am sure there were countless of unfortunate victims before me. I know shortchanging is rampant in Italy, but wasn't expecting it in Germany. I was wrong.

Our journey back to Karlsruhe was uneventful until we were a few tram stops from home. All the sudden, I realized that I left my scarf on the overhead luggage rack on the train. My bad...Glenda knitted that scarf and is my favorite. As soon as we got home, I filed a "lost and found" ticket on the Deutsche Bahn site. Hopefully I will recover it.