A day-trip through the Black Forest instead

Gabriel was chirpy this morning. His rashes had subsided, and he didn't show any other symptoms that would indicate a scarlet fever infection.

So we took out a car from the car-sharing service and did a driving tour that I had been planning for the right moment.

The trip featured the visit to two historically interesting places, Haigerloch and Burg Hohenzollern, and a drive through the northern part of Schwarzwald along die Schwarzwald-Tälerstraße (the Black Forest Valley Road).

Bodensee trip...cancelled

We received an important email from the room parent of Gabriel's class earlier. There is a confirmed case of scarlet fever in the class.

Before Gabriel went to bed tonight, we noticed that he had rashes in his abdomen (which is consistent with allergies); but he did not have a sore throat or fever, which should precede any rashes in scarlet fever (so we learned on the US Centers for Disease Control and the Mayo Clinic websites).

But we promptly decided to cancel the train ride to Bodensee through the Black Forest. First, we want to be on the safe side and to make sure that it is not scarlet fever. It would not be fun if he feels sick all of a sudden on the Black Forest train. Second, the hotel room in Konstanz had a credit-card hold, and we would be responsible for 80% of the room charge if we didn't cancel prior to the arrival date.

Visiting Bodensee

The weather forecast for this coming weekend looks great.

We will take the Schwarzwaldbahn (Black Forest train) to visit Bodensee (Lake Constance), where we will stay for a night. The train route cuts through the scenic Black Forest.

The train fare is great at 28€ one way for our family of four, but the hotels in the town of Konstanz are nearly sold out and we could only reserve a rather expensive room (but it will be by the pier, I was told).

(Yet another) public holiday

The following is the list of public holidays in our state Baden-Württenburg in the last two months:

April 10: Good Friday.
April 13: Easter Monday
May 1 : Labor Day
May 21 : Ascension day
June 1 : Whit Monday
June 11 : Corpus Christi

Well, it is a public holiday tomorrow, and employees at the research center here are "forced" to take Friday (which is not a holiday) off as the cafeteria and the library (yes, the library) will be closed.

BTW, there are 14 public holidays and 20+ days of paid vacation time in a year for most workers in Germany.

Sommernachtskonzert Schönbrunn - Live!

The Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic) just finished giving their annual open-air Sommernachtskonzert (summer night concert) at Schönbrunn, which we visited back in April. Nearly 100,000 attended this free concert in person.

Even though we are 800 km away from Vienna, we could watch this performance live on TV. Isn't it nice that public broadcast stations show cultural events live during prime time (instead of voting people off a deserted island)?

Karl-Marx RED wine

The bottle of red wine we bought at Karl-Marx-Haus....is sour and has a bitter aftertaste.

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.