My tiny kitchen: long overdue Episode 4

Today's ingredient: CHIVES!  

(Because I received a generous delivery of fresh home grown chives)

First, I present stuffed mushrooms.  I made these for a 'Werewolf' party (we played Werewolf, which is just like Mafia) I attended on Halloween weekend.  For ease of transport, I brought the mushrooms caps and filling there, then assembled and baked them, and neglected to photograph the finished product.  Sorry!

Stuffed mushrooms are followed by chicken 'n' chives, baked in my only oven, my toaster oven!

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Gritty old town, 5-6 November

Sophie and I worked in the same building in the states for almost two years before she took a job in Hamburg.  We were actually in the same university from 2003-2007 without knowing it, and didn’t meet until she ‘joined’ me in Houston in 2008.  Equipped with a Laugenbrötchen, a Fanta, and the unused travel days of the Europass from my previous EuroJourney, I boarded the S-Bahn in Mainz and then connected to an ICE (Inter City Express) train in Frankfurt on Saturday morning for our reunion on her home turf.  Punctuality is the German stereotype, but it’s quite common for a train to depart one city on time (9:58am from Frankfurt, for example) but arrive in a city in its route more than half an hour late (14:15 in Hamburg, when scheduled to arrive at 13:41, for example).  Sophie generously came on time because my German comprehension wasn’t good enough to realize we would arrive so late for me to let know before she arrived that she had some extra time. 

Hamburgers are tall.  Sophie had to shrink from her usual ~15 cm over me to get in this shot, and all her friends were taller than her.  On a bridge into Speicherstadt

After stashing my backpack (the small red one, just an overnight trip, after all) in a locker at the station, we wandered the city center.  According to my esteemed guide, Hamburg, is the second largest city in Europe next to Rotterdam.  Water is the theme of the city, both on the earth and above the ground.  The city center features the Alster, a very lake like part of the Elb River, it’s an 8 km walk around it, and the scenery varies from cafes and hotels by Jungfernsteig (literally “ ’maidens’ way”), where families used to parade around their unmarried daughters without explicitly saying they were finding dates for them), to well-insulated kayakers, nimble runners dodging bikers, tourists, and wind-caught willow branches alongside ducks proportionately larger than the southern German ducks as Northern and Southern Europeans , to the American embassy.  The city has an industrial feel that contrasts the combination of ornate Cathedrals of the southern German states and the Roman ruins of Mainz, the people have attitude.  If you like New England, in particular the old and foggy port and fishing towns of Connecticutt (I think Old Lyme), Massachusetts, and Maine, you might like Hamburg.  A Hamburger I met this weekend particularly favors London over all cities, no surprise given the Jurassic harbor machinery we viewed on Saturday night plus Sunday’s fog cover reminding me of Dickensian setting. 

Alster outside Hamburg Dammtor station on Saturday

Same place on Sunday, about the the same time

Just left of the view above, also on Sunday

 My esteemed guide 

American Embassy

The ducks here were big too

 

I prefer cars over maidens on Jungfernsteig.  

Sophie loves to roam on foot, perfect (!), but of course needed less time absorbing the scenery than this newbie here.   Rathaus is like their city hall.  The outside features names of past dignitaries, and someone who my esteemed guide knows has a previous generation relative somewhere among them.  The inside is almost as ornate as some churches, except the stained glass windows feature named portraits of Roman dieties.  I looked directly in front of me after snapping a picture of the Rathaus, and quickly sidestepped out of the view finder of a man less than a meter in front of me, and he reacted with surprise.  Keine Anung, said my guide. 

Rathaus, the fanciest state house I've ever seen

Mars, on the window inside

Rathaus, the fanciest state house I've ever seen

We strolled through some of the ritzier shopping streets before wandering over to Speicherstadt (literally, Storage City).  This district was built in the 1880s-1920s and the previous storage contents within the buildings, labeled as ‘Blocks’ followed by a letter, were as unique and varied as the combination of brick colors and patterns.  Upon crossing one of many iron bridges to Speicherstadt, the street feel quickly changes form commercial and metropolitan to an eerie but beautiful desolation.  If you choose to wander along the right water way, you can come upon a qeue outside the Dungeon, a haunted amusement, and a crowded coffee shop.  We took a break here over a hot fresh waffle and fragrant coffee drinks that had cooled by the time our forgotten then remembered waffle arrived.  These treats warmed our blood and we continued to walk along the harbor, viewing large recreational and utilitarian water vehicles as well as gargantuan, nearly life like shipping machinery.

So far, yet so huge

Our destination was the Empire Riverside Hotel, which features the bar called 20 Up, on the 20^th floor overlooking the harbor.  We realized we were half an early to their opening time, and decided to wander the Reeperbahn, accessible just a block away.  The Reeperbahn is Hamburg’s red light district.  There is an alley where the sights but not the sounds are hidden behind walls where no one under 18 or women can enter.  Unlike Amsterdam, no one is on display in the windows, but it was still too early in the evening for certain entrepreneurs to populate the streets.  Sex shops, costume shops, theatres, pubs, currywurst and döner stands mingle to satisfy gastronomic and entertainment needs of the clientele.  (Yes, it’s safe for two women to wander around there and absorb the sights out of morbid curiosity.) 

Angels, perfect angels

On the Reeperbahn

View of the harbor and some lighting behind me in 20 Up

After the harbor machinery and colorful Reeperbahn zoos, we arrived at 6pm on the dot at the entrance of 20 Up, where they had not yet opened the doors to the crowd that packed the hallway so densely that those of us deposited from the elevator into the crowd near the bar’s door could not politely make our way to the back of the line.  Within minutes, the doors opened, and people scrambled to check their coats (required) and claim one of the non-reserved seats.  The price of the view is included in your cocktail.  Tip: If the alcohol free cocktails cost 9 Euro, you should pay the extra two to replace half of that juice with something more flammable and keep enjoying the view J

We picked up our belongings at station, took a trip to drop them off at Sophie’s flat and pick up a döner (kebap) sandwich (or cheese sandwich for the vegetarian), and ate and walked our way to Sternschanze, or ‘Schanze’, the dirty, vibrant, and affordable district of eats and drinks.  We changed our choice of pub after protesters against consumerism dressed in black with black hoodies began running off with the tables and benches of the pizzeria despite the line of white-helmeted police. 

A building occupied by Leftists, or 'Linkers' in German (Links = Left)

Demonstrating against our Western heritage

 The look of Schanze in the day time is no surprise if you’ve seen it the night before.  One can return here to one of many Portugesische restaurants to load up on a full breakfast and a nice strong galao (Portugese coffee).  We loaded up, and the instinctual activity was to keep strolling through the city, significantly foggier than yesterday until night fall and the arrival of my train.  If you like to swim in leaves, this is the perfect time of year to visit Hamburg.

A water tower turned into a hotel

All red bicycles

 

Jews were gathered here for deportation

Debt of Hamburg rises by 23 Euro per second

Japanese garden in Planten und Blumen, for your wandering pleasure near Dammtor station

Her favorite season

Deutschkurs!

The semester starter last week, on 24th Oct.  In Germany, we have Winter and Summer semesters.  The Summer semester starts in the beginning of April, and the exams for most classes wrap up at the beginning of August.  The Winter semester begins in October, with most exams wrapping up at the end of February.  So, classes started last week, I was on vacation, so I started this week.

This class is for Ph.D. students and is appropriately handled for those of us who have irregular schedules and don't coordinate with each other; it's held in the evenings from 6-8pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, you can join at any time, and you can participate as actively as you want.  Our lecturer, Mr. B., is a gentleman probably between 65 and 70 with a few inches of longish white hair encircling his head.  It's a basic level course, but he speaks German to the class the entire time.  During the last three months, I've absorbed German like a sponge... like a sponge in my shower before I put a third of a bottle of Rohrfrei (literally "pipe free", as in free the pipe) in it three weeks ago.  For a "basic" level course, it's quite challenging.  People have joined the class at significantly different levels.  I probably fall halfway on the scale.  Some students are already able to hold a conversation and ask questions in German, and they are probably the ones benefiting the most at the moment.  I welcome the challenge of total immersion and follow along as best as I can, but the endurance of my attention doesn't quite match the length and speed of the class.  It would be nice if we took breaks to practice with each other during the class time.  I met a beautiful chemical engineering student from Iraq who has been here one month and seems to feel constantly behind.  Just under twenty people attended tonight's class, while twelve attended Monday's class.  When my mind wanders because I can't keep up with his lecture, I wonder if my colleagues' smiles are for amusement at his conversation with himself or at amusement of lack of understanding, or both

I actually do learn a lot from Mr. B.'s conversation with himself.  On Monday, he handed out a worksheet with a diagram of a man and numbered lines drawn to different body parts.  We went through them one by one, and identified about half of them during the class before moving on to an exercise on conjunctions.  One of the most common ways an foreigner (Auslander) gives him/herself away is by confusing genders and the gendered articles 'die', der', and 'das'.  Sometimes one can apply phonetic rules (most monosyllabic nouns that end in multiple consonants are masculine), but of course those have exceptions, or guess based on the meaning of the word, like words for mother, father, breast, etc.  If you don't know the gender of the word, there's a good chance you'll choose the wrong singular article from die/der/das, and choose the wrong plural ending.  For just about every body part, Mr. B. conversed about it for 5-10 minutes, why the word for hair is neuter, for example, how to say the one hair on his held he held up, how to correctly describe the other three hairs he thinks he has, etc.  I then tuned in and out as he went around the class and poked fun of the different accents of the students and their countries of origin, especially Great Britain (I love the name Gross Britannien) and China, and those students poked back Mr. B. smirked at them.  I haven't given myself away yet...let's see what I can do to keep it that way :-)

Tonight we learned how to describe times, among other things.  In German, the in order in which you say a number between 20 and 99 is reversed from English.  For example, 26 is 'sechs und zwanzig', literally six and twenty.  Now that we've got that down, draw a face clock, and draw a vertical line down the middle.  If the minutes are less than thirty, then the minutes, then 'nach', then the hour.  6:10 literally becomes ten after six.  If the minutes are more than thirty, then say the minutes, then 'vor', then the next hour.  6:40 literally becomes twenty before seven.  6:30 becomes halb seben - half seven.  If you're within 5 minutes of the half hour, then you adapt nach and vor relative to that, e.g. 6:26 becomes vier nach halb seben - four before half seven.  The quarter (viertel) gets confusing: for 6:15, you can say either viertel nach seks, or viertel seben.  6:45 can be viertel vor seben, drei viertel seben, or ein viertel vor seben.  Got it??  Sure, that's a lot, but we actually have similar options in English.  Of course, you can speak the hour followed by the minutes like we do, which is what the announcements at the train station, airport, and on the radio give, but that is not normal conversational speech here.

Stay tuned for a quiz!