Frankfurt am Main

In spite of Frankfurt am Main's proximity to Karlsruhe, we had not visited this financial center in continental Europe until today. Perhaps it is because we think that we can visit this city any time easily. (BTW, I still haven't visited Alcatraz after living in the Bay Area for over a decade).

We bought a Schönes-Wochenende ("Beautiful Weekend") train ticket, which is valid for unlimited train travel within Germany for a group of up to 5 passengers in a day for 37€. The only restriction is that travel on the fast Inter-City trains is not permitted with this ticket. Even on the slow regional trains, which stop at nearly all the towns along the way, the journey took less than 2.5 hours.

After a quick dim-sum lunch at a restaurant across the train station, we took the U-bahn (subway) to Römer square, the center of the old town. Here are a few pictures of the old town area.



We took the U-Bahn to the Museumsufer ("Museum Embankment") along Main. Here are a couple pictures of the skyscrapers from the nearby Untermain Brücke (the "Over the Main Bridge"). This is the metropolitan enclave in Germany.


We visited Städel Museum on the embankment. It is holding a special exhibition on Michelangelo's work. This exhibition shows works that are believed to be genuine work by Michelangelo himself, alongside those by his pupils and other copiers. One could never positively identify Michelanglo's works because he didn't sign them. Thus, experts could only provide educated guesses. I suppose it is pretty risky to buy Michelangelo's work (even if you can afford it), as you can never be assured of its authenticity.

We strolled around this museum for some time before walking to the Willy-Brandt-Platz where the European Central Bank is. We walked along Main, and there were stages for aspiring musicians to perform, stalls selling (authentic) Frankfurter sausages, and beer stalls where you can get a few pints. All of these are for the opening day of the week-long Turnfest, the Gymnastic Festival (...hmm...what do the last two have to do with gymnastics?)

Here are two pictures of the kids and the ECB building taken at the plaza before we returned to the train station for the journey back to Karlsruhe.

Colloquium and Nachsitzung

I gave a colloquium at Universität Karlsruhe (TH) today. The university and Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, which hosts my sabbatical, are due to merge into Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The seed to merge was sowed back in 2006 when the institutions made a joint proposal, and was selected by the German government, to become one of the first three elite universities in Germany.

There are two cultural differences for colloquia here:

1. The audience does not clap before or after the talk. They knock on the armrest or the table (or other hard surfaces) instead. This is also true for giving informal seminars.
2. The host will take the speaker out for drinks and dinner afterwards. Others in the faculty will also join. The name for this informal get-together/discussion session is called the Nachsitzung (literally means "after session").

Cheapest gas in town

I was surfing radio stations while driving to Heidelberg for a meeting today. I picked up the American Forces Network. (There is a base in Heidelberg).

Gasoline at the US base apparently costs $2.66 per gallon for unleaded, which converts to less than 0.50€ per litre. The price is around 1.30€ per litre outside the base. I suppose this is a reflection on how much gasoline is taxed in Germany.

Other announcements include the exchange rate ($1 = 0.69€...yikes), a wine tasting course for those who want to learn more about German wine, and tickets for an upcoming ZZ Top concert can be purchased at the USO office in town. How about the Rod Stewart concert in June?

A wacky fellow

Pictures are worth a thousand words. (We were near Église Saint-Michel in Luxembourg).

Luxembourg

Luxembourg (the city and the country) is just a stone's throw away from Trier. When we were planning for this week-long trip, we decided that we would make a detour to Luxembourg on our way back to Karlsruhe. We are glad that we did.

Traveling within the EU is really a joy. Here you see we are crossing the Luxembourg border on the Autobahn. There was no immigration and customs to deal with.

Luxembourg is a small country - less than half a million people living in a land of less than 15% of the San Francsico Bay Area. But the cost of living appeared to be very high to us. After we parked the car near Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Luxembourg city, we walked to the nearby town center for lunch. Most of the open air cafes were open, but the prices were high; 30+€ for a prix fixe was not unusual. We ended up at the Golden Arches instead, but it was still 20+% more expensive than in Germany.

We walked around the Ville Haute, the "high city" where the old town core is, after lunch. The picture on the left below shows part of the the Casemates Bock, which is a network of underground fortifications. Unfortunately we could not get inside to navigate as it had been under renovation for many months.


But the view of Ville Basse (the "low city") from above is gorgeous:


After a short break at a pastry cafe across the Grand Ducal Palace (and we watched the changing of the guard in front of this parliament building), we wanted to drive down to Ville Basse for a tour. We did have an interesting tour as our GPS had a difficult time pinning down our location. It was not really a reception problem; the device could not differentiate the windy roads at different altitude well when we were driving down the hills.

Our drive back along a scenic route was enjoyable. We cut through two natural parks (Saar-Hünsruck and Pfälzer Wald), then along the "wine alley" after passing through Pfälzer Wald:

Karl-Marx-Haus

When we visited Köln in February, we stayed at an apartment that was a few steps from the editorial office of Karl Marx's former newspaper Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung. Our hotel in Trier is around the corner from Karl-Marx-Haus, the house where he was born.

We visited this museum before we hit the road in the morning. It has nice displays of Marx's life and work, but not a lot of his artifacts are shown. This is because much of his accumulated papers were destroyed when Nazi confiscated the building for its own use as a printing house in the 1930s.

It is tacky, but we couldn't resist. We bought a bottle of Karl-Marx red wine as souvenir. The grapes supposedly came from the surrounding area.

Trier

We left Münster for Trier after breakfast this morning. About three hours later, we arrived in the oldest city in Germany.

Before any sightseeing we had to buy a new memory card for Glenda's digital camera. The existing one went kaput and all the digital pictures from Münster were lost. Fortunately, Alan-the-dinosaur had been snapping black and white pictures with his film camera; so the memory will not be completely lost.



Our first stop was Porto Nigra, the Roman city gate that was built in the second century, and the Simeonstift, a Catholic Stift that was built on to the Roman gate in the eleventh century. The gate is simply magnificent. The Stift is now the city museum and has a good collection of artifacts from the city. The remains of the old Roman city wall is showcased in the basement of the museum.

After a nice nourishment (spaghettieis - ice cream pressed into noodle shape with strawberry puree as the sauce), we continued our sightseeing in the old town. Wondering around the Hauptmarkt (main market) we happened on Judengasse, which was the alley that led to the Jewish quarter for centuries (middle picture). Well, it is now an alley of pubs.


One interesting building (right picture) is the Dreikönigshaus (the Three Magi House), which was built in the thirteen century. The window on the right was the entrance to the house in those days as people had to defend their houses. There is now a cafe on the ground floor, and of course, customers no longer need to climb into the building with the help of a ladder.

The Trierer Dom, home of the Holy Tunic (which is not on public display), and the neighboring Liebfrauenkirche, which is connected to the Dom by a narrow passage and is one of the first Gothic churches in Germany, were closed because of the new bishop's pontifical mass the next day. We lingered outside the square outside before heading to the Basilika and the Kurfürstliche Palais.









Based on the restaurant reviews on the internet, Sushi Trier is an exceptional sushi restaurant. The restaurant is not too far from our hotel and we decided to give it a try. Glad that we did. The sushi was indeed very good, perhaps the best we have had in Europe so far.

Münster Altstadt, Burg Versicher, Burg Lüdinghausen, Schloss Nordkirchen

I didn't have to give any lecture today as it was a public holiday (Ascension Day). Thus, we went sightseeing in Münster, the bicycle capital of Germany.

Our first stop after breakfast was the Altstadt (old town). True to its name, Münster, which means cathedral in German (and not the cheese, which originates from the Alsace region of France), there are quite a few grand churches in Altstadt. But the old town was in chaos this morning: hundreds of cars parked in open spaces near the churches while their owners were at mass, then a large number of trucks, vans and huge Warsteiner mobile stalls juggling for space in preparation for the Eurovision-hung-over-party-cum-music-fest, aka Eurocityfest, in the following three days.

But we battled our way through the crowds coming out of churches and the Warsteiner beer kegs and saw a few spots: the town hall where the Treaty of Münster (part of Peace of Westphalia) was finalized, St. Paulus Dom, Lambertikirche, and Clemenskirche.

After lunch at an open air cafe, we returned to our hotel to pick up our car and went south for a tour of the Wasserburgen ("castles on water" literally). Our first stop Burg Vischering is less than 30 minutes away. After spending some time at its museum to learn more about knights, we went to the nearby Burg Lüdinghausen, followed by Schloß Nordkirchen. We actually didn't enter the ground of the Schloß as it was getting late (and I had to return to Münster for a conference call with my North American colleagues), but it certainly looks magnificent from the outside.

Heading to Münsterland

I am giving a condensed version of my lecture series at Münster University this week. There will be two lectures tomorrow afternoon, two on Wednesday afternoon, none on Thursday (because the Ascension Day - 40 days after Jesus' resurrection from the dead - is a German public holiday), and the last one on Friday morning.

We decided to drive instead of taking the train, as we planned to visit Trier and Luxembourg on our way back. We took out an Audi A3 from Stadtmobil for this week-long trip (which sounded like a splurge, but the weekly rental rate is only 10€ more than a VW Golf or Beetle while the gas-included mileage charge is identical).

We left Karlsruhe as soon as Gabriel finished his violin lesson around 16:30. The drive up the Rhein valley was magnificent. I must say that I am very impressed with the scenery and the condition of the Autobahn. The north-south corridor along the Rhein valley is lined with trees and our eyes were treated with colorful rolling fields (and not strip malls or factory outlets).

There are rest areas (marked as "P" as in parking) every few kilometers. But most of the "P" areas have picnic tables, but not washroom facilities. One needs to look for areas that have a "WC" sign for those.

The auto service stations appear to be more sparse in Germany than in North America. Some of these Autohöfe have fast food restaurants and convenient stores. The WCs at these Autohöfe usually costs ~0,50€. But if you save the receipt (yes, after you inserted money to unlock the turnstile to the WC, a receipt is issued), its face value (i.e. the entrance fee to the WC) can be used against any purchase at this Autohof. What does this mean? Use the WC before you buy any consumables will cost you nothing for the usage!

The drive to Münster, including a brief dinner stop at Burger King just north of Siegen, was about 4.5 hours.

Spring cleaning

We have begun packing for our return! It is getting warmer each day and we have spent some time packing our winter clothing into suitcases. The kids have outgrown their winter clothing, and that means we won't be bringing most of those home.

Since we have access to a car today, I dropped off the outgrown clothing at a kleiderspende (cloth donation) box nearby.

Gabriel's overnight trip

Gabriel's class left for their 4-day, 3-night class trip to France today. The original departure time from the school was 8:30 AM. Here are the email excerpts from the class' room parent.

1:04 PM CEST:
I just wanted to let you know that the children didn't leave school until 11.45 due to a problem with the bus being stuck in traffic and not arriving at school on time.

So the children will not get to Liebfrauenberg for a while (should arrive 1.30 p.m. or there abouts).

Sigh...it was a French bus company that the school hired. Then came a temporary relief:

1:44 PM CEST:
I have just heard from Frau Marmillot that the children have arrived safely and everything is ok!! They are now going to go and have some lunch!!!

Everything is fine.

But the weather got stormy in Karlsruhe (but the class is in France....). Later in the evening, we got a summary of the day:

9:07 PM CEST:
The children are all in bed. It seems they had some nice weather this afternoon, and have been out walking which is GREAT news !!

Everything is fine.

When the bus finally arrived this morning, it seemed that there were some problems with the luggage (there was not enough room in the bus for it!). But do not panic! - after they got back from their walk this afternoon, everything had arrived!! They didnt need anything from their bags before then anyway, so all was fine.

So the French bus company sent le petit autobus? Last, but not least, a reminder from the room parent about the parents' outing (sans kids) tomorrow night:

We will meet at 7.00 p.m. at Europaplatz in front of the T-Com shop on the corner (opposite "s.oliver"). Look forward to seeing you there.

Too bad that Glenda and I will miss this, since the kindergarten class, and hence Jocelyn, did not go on an overnight trip.

Muttertag

We had to go to the town center to buy a few items for Gabriel's overnight class trip next week. The town center was flooded with shoppers today, and there were even a few more flower stands in anticipation of the soaring floral sales before Muttertag (Mother's Day) tomorrow.

I made a mental note that it is correct to say Muttertagsgeschenk (Mother's Day present) but not Muttertagsgift, as gift means poison in German.

Deutsch

Gotta love the German language. I saw this 31-letter word on the cover of a work-related report:

Erdmagnetfeldkompensationsystem (earth magnetic field compensation system)

which was developed after the Erdmagnetfeldmessung (earth magnetic field measurement). There is no need to worry about that pesky hyphen in German. In fact, I think Germans are "hyphen-phobic", as evidenced in a recent court ruling about hyphenated names (doubles such as A-B are OK, triples such as A-B-C are not).

Booking the return trip

Our Aufenthaltserlaubnis (residence permit) will expire on July 31, and we are required to leave Germany by this date unless we apply for an extension. Time really flies; we have to start planning our return to the US already.

First, the bad news. Glenda's, Gabriel's and Jocelyn's air tickets were redeemed from air miles. When we got the tickets last June, we could book the outbound flight to Germany, but we could not book the return seats for this July or August because the flight schedules and seats were not released then. When I inquired for the return seats for late July or early August recently, I was told that all the seats that were allocated for air mile redemption on United were solidly booked. Even if there were seats, I was told that we could not claim them with the existing tickets because of the "one-year rule(s)". For tickets purchased with real cash, such as mine, the validity is one year from the first day of travel. For air-mile ticket, it is one year from its date of issue. The air mile tickets were issued last June for a departure date two months later, which means they cannot be used for travel after the academic year at the kids' school ends in July. Sneaky airlines. For my ticket, I have to pay a $250 change fee to get a seat.

Then, the good news. This means we can choose any day we want to leave as we have to buy the tickets. There are lots of seats left on the flights, just no additional seats for air-mile redemption. The tickets are a lot cheaper than they were a year ago. The amount I paid for my ticket last year, plus the hefty change fee, is about the same as two roundtrip tickets between Frankfurt and San Francisco now. So other than the spent air miles, we would actually save real cash by buying the tickets now than having bought a ticket last year and pay a change fee of $250 per ticket afterwards.

Why buy a roundtrip ticket if we are simply returning to the US? A one-way ticket actually costs three times as much (not less!) as a roundtrip ticket. My speculation is that the airlines have a statistical model to predict how many seats would not be claimed on a flight, which allow them to oversell the available seats. By pricing the one-way ticket at three times that of a roundtrip ticket, travelers on a one-way journey would purchase a roundtrip ticket and let the return leg expires. This would then reduce the possibility of oversold seats on the return flight (and the chance for the airlines to ask for volunteers to give up their seats for a compensation).

Our return flight to the US is on July 31, the last valid day of our residence permit. We will miss Germany.

Our loot from Schwetzingen

Just a quick post about the loot we brought back from Schwetzingen. Most of the produce that you buy at the supermarkets here are grown in other European countries like Spain, Italy or Greece. But because spring is the ideal time to splash out on the more expensive types of locally grown produce, we decided to buy two cartons of bright red erdbeeren (strawberries). We also bought a total of two kilograms of weiss spargel (white asparagus) - one kilogram of the grade A type and one kilogram of a slightly inferior (but still delicious) grade. We just couldn't resist the siren call of the vegetable and produce stands - they were on nearly every corner at Schwetzingen.

The children devoured most of the sweet, juicy strawberries though Alan and I managed to eat a few as well. I wish you could smell their divine fragrance through the internet, but here is a photo just to tease you.

And here is a picture of the children posing with a few stalks of asparagus. They used to be repulsed by the thought of even eating any, but now they have become big fans. Of course they won't eat the asparagus unless it's drowning in hollandaise sauce, but hey, it's an improvement. So as you can see, we've been dining well for the past few days.

Schloss Schwetzingen

After a relaxing (i.e. long) lunch, we moseyed our way to the Schwetzingen Castle and gardens. The exterior of the palace itself didn't seem to be too spectacular, in fact it was smaller than we expected . We later found out that the palace was initially constructed to serve as a hunting lodge, which would explain its size (or lack thereof). So we decided to forgo the schloss tour and just purchased tickets to walk around the palace gardens.

We walked through the entrance to find an enormous garden full of floral goodness. The garden was separated into carefully manicured sections, each containing rich colorful blooms, lush green plants and gorgeous water fountains. We had just started to walk around when we were caught in the middle of a deluge. The rain fell pretty heavily for about 10 minutes before it stopped completely. We've become accustomed to these mini storms that seem to just come and go in an instant. Here is a photo of some of the flower beds near the entrance, each bloom adding to the riot of colors.


Here is a close up of possibly the most perfect tulip I've ever seen in my life.

You have to hand it to the Germans - they really know how to design gardens well.

There was also a music hall where Mozart is said to have performed, but unfortunately we couldn't find it. However, we did see a random peacock wandering around one section of the garden. The little guy wouldn't turn around for me, but here is a picture of his tail feathers.

All of the fountains in the garden were really quite beautiful, though this one was particularly lovely.

As we continued on our walk we saw some well pruned mazes, more fountains, more flowers and more statues. At the end of our adventure, we came upon a tranquil lake where several families had stopped to rest. We were quite tired as well. Since it was starting to get late, we decided to walk back to town to take the next train back to Karlsruhe. Here are a few more of the photos that we took in the garden.

Spargelfest in Schwetzingen

I saw on the internet that there would be a Spargelfest in Schwetzingen, the (self-proclaimed) Asparagus Capital of the World. This title is perhaps too grand, but this area is famous for its locally grown spargel (white asparagus). This is the spargel season and we have seen people selling them at stalls in Karlsruhe for about two to three weeks now. So we decided to take a slow regional train (as there is no fast train to this quaint little town) for this 40-min, 60-km trek. The town center is only a short walk from the train station.

Along the way, it did not look like the asparagus festival was on today; and it was not. All the cafes, pubs and restaurants had set up their outdoor seating, but we did not see any food stalls in the main plaza, which would indicate a festival. (Upon returning home, I checked the information on the web again, and it showed that the Spargelfest was on May 3-4 LAST year). On our trip to Christmas last December, I missed the dates by a couple of days. And I missed by a whole year this time. No matter! This is the asparagus season, and we were sure that we would have an enjoyable day here in Schwetzingen.

We found an outdoor table at Kaffeehaus, a brewhouse on the main plaza. The kids each ordered a cheese burger (which is not common in Germany), and Glenda and I ordered two different spargel dishes: an omelette with spargel and a Black Forest spargel plate:


It took a long time for the dishes to arrive primarily because the spargel were cooked until the hard stalk turned tender. The higher grade spargel takes longer to reach tenderness (as they usually have thicker stalks). But it was well worth the wait. The spargel had a sweeter and more tender taste than the green variety, and the well-prepared (read: not so thick) hollandaise sauce really complemented the taste.

The kids were upset for the long wait:


So we let them have an ice-cream cup. That was the justification for the adults to have some desserts as well. Glenda and I each ordered an apfelstrudel, and it was excellent (even better than the ones we sampled in Vienna last month).

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Schloß Schwetzingen (Schwetzingen Castle) before taking a regional train back to Karlsruhe.

Botanischer Garten Karlsruhe

Next to the university campus and the Schloßgarten in Karlsruhe is the municipal botanical garden. The weather was great this morning, and I decided to take a walk there.

When I got to the garden around 10 AM in the morning, there were very few visitors. Despite the budget entrance fee (free), Karlsruhers opted for shopping activities on the main strip in town center. It is hard to tell from the frenetic shoppers that Germany is in the midst of a deep recession. The mood does not appear to be as gloomy as that in the nearby town Pforzheim, described in this recent New York Times article.

The city has done a superb job on the botanical garden. Beds of flowers line the path that goes around the central ground. I particularly enjoy the tulips. Here are a few pictures I took this morning: