26 June 2016

1) It's been super hot. Granted, it hasn't been Las Vegas hot (115F, 46C), or even LA hot (105F, 40C) but with the humidity, it's been pretty miserable.  However, we've found that when it gets hot, we just move down into the cellar (which is mostly underground, like a US daylight basement.) It's at least 10C cooler down there.

Plus we did a very american thing and I bought two rolling air conditioners. They get here Monday. I'm told that De'Longhi is the Whirlpool of Europe. Maybe since they're Italian they'll come in red.

2) One of the cool things about southern Germany (or at least Karlsruhe) is the absolutely stunning thunder and lightning storms. The other night, it woke us up at around 2:am. There was lightning every 2-3 seconds, and the thunder "rumble" never stopped. It just went on and on for 10 minutes. I sat in front of the back door and watched it.  Amazing.

The downside, of course, is the flash flooding.  I hear the Alb river down in Ettlingen flooded that night, washed out the tram station and flooded part of the city and a bunch of businesses.

If you ever get a chance to come to this part of Germany, Ettlingen is amazing. We lived there for 3 months in a temporary flat. We still go to the Saturday market in the city center when we can.  There's a soup vendor there that makes amazing gulaschsuppe.

3) Germany treats drivers like adults.  Many of the rules/laws/etc. assume that people are rational and can figure out how to do things like enter an intersection with no signage without crashing. In the states, it all seems to be stop signs.  Here, it's all yields.  Then again, where there are stoplights, there are usually also signs, for use when the stoplights are out, and in many places,the stoplights are turned off at a certain hour.

4) I've mentioned the playgrounds here.  They're wonderful.  They remind me of the playgrounds in the US when I was a kid. There, you could CLIMB.  And fall and  break your arm, but you'd be more careful next time.  Now, the playgrounds in the US (at least in my experience) are safe and CRAZY BORING.

5) Lipton onion soup mix is like powdered gold. We're about to run out and we're not sure how we'll survive.

We use it for meatloaf and dips.

6) I've started making my own sausage.  I don't grind it, but it's easy here to get ground pork/beef and then I can season it and make american style sausage for breakfast (and for biscuits and gravy.)

Trying to get my sausage to taste close to this.

7) There are SO MANY eis places here (ice cream.)  Obviously, the lines in the summer are a bit long, but totally worth it.

8) Our company (www.gameforge.com) had our summer party at a lake in Weingarten on Friday.  Being pretty far from the ocean, I gather that the best way to beat the heat here is to go to the lake.

Granted, it didn't look as spectacular as this.

9) I had Käsewurst (cheese sausage) at the party.  It tasted just like Polska Kielbasa (literally "polish sausage") that we could get in the US. Now, I'm desperate to find the German name of the stuff so I can buy it (and it's non-cheese version.)  It might be called Käsekrainer...  If any german/american friends can help me figure out what to buy, I'd appreciate it.

16 Jun 2016: Autobahn Edition

We drove across most of Germany this week, west to east; In total about 800 km. I had a chance to experience quite a lot of southern Germany's autobahn.

I've been told that the autobahn where you can drive fast doesn't really exist anymore.  I'd say that if there wasn't constant construction, well more than half of the drive would have been the "real" autobahn.

Here are my experiences driving cross country in Germany (and accidentally in Austria)

• Amazing roads.  The quality of the roads was impressive.  Rarely did I find anything even as small as an asphalt patch.  Perhaps the constant construction is the reason.

• SO MANY SIGNS.  One of the things that was clear about the autobahn was that it's well regulated.  Within the space of a kilometer, there could be signs limting you to 100 kph, then 80 kph, then 60 kph, then a slightly narrow road, then back to 80, then 100, then unrestricted. And so..

• It takes much more focus than I expected. Trying to maintain the right speed, especially when sharing the road with trucks, slow cars and fast cars is draining.  I drove nearly 5 hours Wednesday.

• Driving here means using the left lane only for passing.  Granted, it is supposed to be that way in most places in the US, but here, it's REALLY important. Mostly because of the > 100k euro cars.

• Cars driving  really fast come upon you very quickly; many going well over 200 kph  (124 kph)  (as far as I could guess) Getting out of the way is pretty imperative.

• High end cars seem to have a built in 'flashing light' circuit. I suspect it's automatic and probably called the "cheap car lights".  Even if I wasn't in the left lane, more than one car just flashed their lights constantly warning me not to move over. As far as I can tell, it's for warning people who drive lowly VWs not to move into the left lane and get in the way of their SL 500s

• There is a general recommended top speed of 130 kph (80mph), but it doesn't seem to be enforced. Having said that, I've read that if you are in an accident faster than 130 kph (like at 200 kph), you could be in really big trouble, legally, financially, and of course, crashing at 200kph is rough.

• Driving fast isn't that awesome, TBH. At a certain point, it just feels normal. Having said that, going 60 kph after 140 kph seems stupid slow.  I can't imagine driving on US roads again.

• I sorta accidentally drove into Austria. Not a big deal, except that you need an 87 euro vignette to drive on the Autobahn in Austria.

Umm.  The road was lined with Austrians.

• Some of the autobahn was controlled by variable speed systems that didn't seem very effective. I'm not sure anyone even paid attention. 

• I didn't see a single highway patrol car (or whatever passes for one  here), but I believe there were lots of speed cameras. I guess I'll find out in a couple of weeks.

11 Jun 2016: Things I expected to find, but haven’t (yet).

1) There are not as many knights walking around as I expected.

2) I have not yet found a werewolf to bite me,

nor have I run across any vampires.

As far as I know. If you know one, let me know.



3) Fairies are much harder to find than you'd expect. I can neither confirm nor deny that I found one in a circle of mushrooms at midnight.

4) So many birds! At any given time, there are maybe 15 or more birds in our yard.  Lots of blackbirds.

5) We have an owl that I hear all the time. It seems to live in the eaves of one of the nearby apartment buildings. It hoots all the time. However, I haven’t yet had an Owl deliver my mail.

6) I have not yet found a Frenchman with a twirly moustache. Not even in France.

7) I grew up watching Pippi Longstocking. I guess I expected to find more red headed Swedish girls with odd side-pony tails.

8) Most disappointing: I have yet to find any huts with chicken legs.

I think Baba Yaga probably isn’t currently touring Europe.











Bonus) Toilet Seat Wall from Bauhaus (local DIY place.)

03 June 2016

1. The only reasonable solution I've found for the lack of window screens is velcro-on or double sided tape-on screening that you put on the inside, in front of the window (ours open in.) You can get custom screens, but I'm not putting custom screens on our rental house.

2. We have four trash cans: garbage, textiles, paper and compostables. There are very different pickup periods. The only weekly pickup is the compostable can. The garbage can (which is tiny) only gets picked up every other week, paper once a month and we've never used the textiles one. Not even sure why we have it.

For the first time ever, we now have a little compost pail in the kitchen. And three trash cans.

To recycle bottles, we had to find community recycle containers, and there was one for green one for clear and one for brown glass.

Plastic bottles go back to the store, and there's an automatic machine that takes them, reads the bar code, and refunds you for it. You can also put a whole crate of bottles on a conveyor below and it takes them all.

You get a piece of paper at the end that works like credit to buy more stuff.


There's also a battery recycling station near the house. Pretty cool.



3. We locked ourselves out of our house the other day. The front door locks (that I've used), require a key on both sides of the door to lock/unlock it. Turn it a full revolution, and it sets the deadbolt. Turn it TWO revolutions, and it sets these other bolts up and down our door. Feels very secure. Is this common?

Turns out when you leave a key on the inside of the door, and close it, you can't use a key on the outside to unlock it. And since the door latches every time you close it...

The locksmith used a thick piece of plastic and opened the door in minutes. Cost me 100 Euros.

4. We have a car now. Putting gas in it is very much like in the US, but you pump first, then go inside to pay. In the US, you typically need to pay first.


Oh and Gas is 3x as much as in the US.