It Wasn't the Jetlag ...

It took us a week, but we finally figured our why we were feeling sluggish. Turns out the instant coffee packets we bought and drank several mornings (look, you can only buy so many espressos) were decaffeinated. I was expecting to see the word ohne (without) somewhere on the package, but the word for decaffeinated is actually entkoffeiniert. Then again, I had trouble remembering the German word for "yes" yesterday, this despite passing a PhD foreign language exam in German (more than a decade ago ...), so it's not like I have any German instincts. But really Jeanine, in my defense, the dense history article I had to translate for the exam about socialists in New York in 1920 didn't contain dialogue with the word "yes" ... Our his and her language sessions start next week.

We never would have discovered our error if the (otherwise delicious) Gaststätte Loretto, where we were eating with Betty and Ella and Eric and Jessica (whose apartment we are taking over), had not hilariously and proudly included the decaf packet along with its so-called "decaf cappuccino." Even Betty's German hit the wall trying to convey the idea of an actual decaf espresso shot.

In any event, I've been making up for the caffeine deficiency via the Dream Machine 2000 in Eric's lab. I thought 90 Euro cents was a good deal, but here the espressos are as strong as you can make them and 25 cents! And given that it's a computer science lab, of course they rigged up an IPad and wrote an app that tallies each addict's tab. If you look close enough you can see the two columns with little icons for espresso and latte:

So life is good. We were able to seamlessly transfer Eric and Jessica's internet (we think), we've found the requisite good Turkish fast food, and we finally pulled the trigger on a gym. (Clever Fit was decidedly less clever with fees when we brought along a German speaker.) And Joe and Betty continue to educate us on Swabian food. Last night it was Maultaschen--giant meat-filled dumplings--made by Ella's genuine German grandparents:

Ella's seen Maultaschen many times but still seemed surprised (well ok every time she sees the camera her smile fades ...):

Ok back to talking Croatia with our new Croatian friend Matt in the communal kitchen (love the dorm living). Then back to our The Killing marathon.

Our First Expedition

Today Jeanine and I and Betty and Ella (Betty and Joe's super cute 6-month-old) made an expedition (as my great-aunt Rhoda used to say, and she knew expeditions, having been to Nepal in 1931), to Lichtenstein Castle, a 19th-century structure built by the nephew of the King of Württemberg. I rather like the culture of excursions in Swabia; although the people are all sporty, they don't seem to like to exert themselves too much -- in contrast to the outdoor culture in, say, Utah. So after the tour it was time for lunch (though being the middle afternoon, around these parts the occasion really called for cake), followed by a mini walk around the grounds. Recovering from frostbite and on one of the longest hiatuses from running in 5 years, I think I'll aim for more such excursions. And perhaps we'll join Easy Sports Fitness, the name of which perfectly captures the aesthetic. (It's either Easy Sports Fitness or Clever Fit. I mean, is there a gym in Europe without the cheesy English name? Today on the drive through Reutlingen we passed one called McFit.)

Regardless, I don't think today's expedition, topped off with Schweinebraten, burned off much of Joe's famous Käsespätzle mit Zwiebeln (see below) combined with Nuremberg sausages, the closest I've seen here to the iconic American breakfast link (unfortunately I didn't have a camera to do justice to the combination). Importantly, I think we served to bridge cultures at this dinner. The director of Jeanine's lab and his wife are about as fun and worldly as any people can be, having lived and taught in the States and Korea and Switzerland, but even they still suffer from the stereotype that Americans don't have good beer (imagining that Sam Adams is the height of our craft). So it's not surprising that I was served a beer, Zwiefalter Exclusiv, that brags about doing away with hop bitterness. As if German Pils are bitter!

First Images from Germany

No need to write much: these pictures pretty much sum up why I'm going to like it here (Jeanine is going to, also, but for perhaps more pragmatic reasons like the quality of the virtual reality, etc.). We're at the Guest Haus at the Max Plank Institute for now, until we move into our apartment in ten days or so, but we already have a German bank account and even know where to get good Indian food (thanks Betty for guiding us through our first few days in Tubingen).

In the interest of sparing you cliches I do NOT include a picture of any German beer (yet).

90 Euro cents for an espresso 14 steps from our room:

 

Biathlon was on 2 of 9 channels today: 

The view from our room at the Max Plank, very European Institute-like:

Winter

I’ve been thinking a lot about winter this winter. We've had fantastic snow and unusual cold in Salt Lake after no winter last year, and I enjoyed the luxury of being able to ski nearly every day for a month. I even read this book:

Gopnik is a fantastic writer, and somehow here he makes five cobbled-together lectures-turned-essays touching on everything from the birth of romantic winter in Europe to arctic exploration to the history of hockey work beautifully. It's worth reading, especially given that embracing winter has practically become a political cause. The atmospheric scientist who writes the Wasatch Weather Weenies blog reports, "Mountain Dell sits in the crosshairs for climate change, but there's enough variability in the system that there will still be some good years ahead. Take advantage when you can." So I intend to.

Ah winter, he waxes poetically in the spirit of Gopnik. A time for freakishly wonderful urban blizzards (like the ones people who grow up on the I-95 megalopolis experience) that lead to skiing in random parks and dorky pictures. And icicles as big as houses.

 And perfect conditions at the ski-club-groomed Nordic area

And man weekends at a cabin in Midway with Jason and John 

[Thankfully no photo provided]

And skiing amidst moose in a timeless wilderness (photo credit: Katie)

And … filthy unhealthy inversions?

Before and After:

And your car stupidly buried in a parking lot at the U for three days because you didn't take the blizzard predictions seriously?

And frostbite?

[Thankfully no photo provided]

Yup, that’s right, frostbite. It seems that all those years living in Minnesota did not in fact make me immune to the cold, and that in fact standing around teaching 5-year-olds to ski in single-digit weather IS cold, and that doing races with start temperatures of 0 degrees is colder still. And to paraphrase Obama, faux-toughness is not wisdom. I’m not exactly sure how it happened -- I’ve had some ill-fitting boots [which indeed contributed, but was it the downhill, skating or classic?; they all seemed to hurt this year] and so I’m not sure what day exactly the red-every-day-from-being-crammed-and-cold toes turned black. But the podiatrist confirmed it about a week ago. He didn’t exactly say “thou shalt not ski again this year” -- and for the most part, the damage is already done -- but he shut me down for now and encouraged me to route for warm weather in the Alps in the coming weeks (of course I refused to tell him that I would be standing in the woods in the snow at the Nordic World Championships for fear of what he would say to that). 

So I guess I should be careful when I ask for unceasing, unadulterated winter. But it was fun while it lasted. Every time I ski with Jeanine I feel incredibly lucky (and I would even if she wasn’t now kicking ass on skate skis), and I loved getting Brian and Katie hooked as well (when she wasn’t too busy chasing moose). I also made some racing progress (skip ahead to next paragraph to avoid boring ski results), or at least learned that I’m a much better classic skier than skater (as it’s much closer to running). This year I moved out of the wonderfully weak 35-39 age group (in which I could flirt with skate-race medals) and entered the 40-44 Group of Death. But whereas in the two skate races I could get in this year I finished 10th out of 13 of 7th out of 11, in a classic race (first since 1992), I finished 4th out of 8. Still, I did improve my skating relative to the Olympians, coming in only 40% slower than Billy Demong as opposed to about my norm of 50% the past couple seasons.

If you’re reading this on the East Coast and imagine that it’s always either snowing or sunny with blue skies in the West, like something out of a Coors commercial, you should Google “Salt Lake City inversions.” Before we moved, we had no idea how bad it can be out here -- really, air quality worse than Beijing’s a couple days? -- and man I wish I could take every anti-environmental lawmaker in the US House who whines about excessive enforcement of the Clean Air Act and force them to spend a couple days breathing our air during an inversion. Which does not make me an environmental angel, needless to say. I wrote the first draft of this post on a plane, and I bet I fly a lot more – and thus leave a larger carbon footprint – than the Verizon Truck guy, who, after 30 minutes idling on a 40-degree day, including sitting down with his latte in the coffee shop where I was working [part of our friend Sheila’s and my ongoing project to find the best SLC coffeehouses], became the first-ever victim of a Hoff citizen’s inversion intervention (a successful one, I might note). Look, all I ask for is a little ironic self-awareness of environmental impact, and perhaps merely an effort to carpool on red-air days, rather than this guy’s remarkable ignorance, given how much the media here covers the inversions, or true scorched-earthism. Why doesn’t some sociologist at the U study the mind-set of people who idle during inversions? 

So what else should I report? Jeanine had a work trip to DC, so I tagged along (we managed to get out the day of the rare Salt Lake ice storm, after a mere three-hour delay). I’m not sure it was worth the small fortune (my that's a lot for parker rolls, not matter how good they are), but the tasting menu at CityZen was a pretty spectacular way to celebrate Mom’s 75th Birthday, with Gene and Dina as well.

Because Jeanine was in grant duress most of January and too busy to look up, Sheila and Jason kindly hosted a going-away party so we could finally see everyone (thanks!). Put another way, I just pressed “post” on this entry from Tubingen, where we have safely arrived and already found the internet in the kitchen area at the Max Plank GuestHouse. We'll talk to you after we sleep a while ... In the meantime, take it from me: don’t skimp on socks or ski boots. Please excuse typos here ... off for our first guided walk of the MPI (and spellcheck is now in German). 

We're Finally Back to 1912!

Ok I rarely real-time blog something, but just a few thoughts on the inaugural address before my brain gets polluted by the jumble of reactions in the blogosphere. The speech was MUCH better than I could have expected (which probably means it will get panned). Just like TR in 1912, Obama defended both markets and the welfare state and, even more importantly, linked them (if too subtly) by noting that social insurance frees people to take risks. By today's standards of political-economy discussion, amazing. It was also quite 1912 to note that markets require rules. Fair enough, even if that sounds a bit too much like the simple anti-trust rhetoric of a hundred years ago: I wish he had tried to explain the concept of an externality to idiot nation: sometimes all of us playing by the rules and pursuing profit still harms society (and the environment). The most remarkable phrase Obama used was when he stressed that only "collective action" could solve our biggest problems. I can't believe he had the guts to say that instead of something much blander like "the need to join together" -- I wish they had flashed to Boehner's face at that moment. It was also great that he pointed out that excessive inequality harms not only individuals but the aggregate economy, but, as I frequently complain, I wish he would have explained HOW this is the case ... why not provide an example of a 20-something trapped with too much debt and high rents/home prices who therefore can't purchase very much, which drags profits down for myriad companies? [In the interest of the exchange of competing ideas, you might enjoy reading Paul Krugman's recent skeptical post on the Keynesian consumption function, a good summary of the critique of my assumptions here). And what a historic moment for the gay rights movement: the comments about all love being equal were better than anyone could have hoped for, and the reference to the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City (about which most social conservatives were probably clueless)** -- and rhetorically/historically elevating them to the level of Seneca Falls and Selma  -- was remarkable. Wow. Thank you Obama for sticking it to climate change denialialsts (even if you should have added the phrase "human-induced"), and for supporting government-sponsored research. And finally, it's remarkable the extent to which the ghost of the midcentury theologian Reinhold Neibuhr continues to float over Obama. The president's comments about the need to take imperfect action, the results of which won't be seen for a generation (and which will need to be continued and revised by the next generation) were pure Neibuhr. All in all, it was nice to see the president surprise on the upside. It's been a while. Ok, back to my blissful post-election political hiatus.

** Jeanine and I have decided that we would love the data on what percentage of Americans could identify Obama's Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall references. Those of us who teach the U.S. History survey to freshman put the number who know all three at about 5% ...).

That's It

As my office-mate Jim says (well OK, I say it more now), "that's it." As in, that's all folks. J'ai fini. I'm in Salt Lake now, and once I grade an enormous virtual pile of papers, I'm on sabbatical and counting down to Germany. Sure, I'm looking forward to starting a new main research project, and dusting off a couple of little ones, and I have the usual sabbatical goals like finally cleaning up my computer's files, learning how to work the streaming Netflix, getting my German beyond its present "beer please," and watching every episode of The Inbetweeners. But mostly, I just plan to become this guy. I have no idea who he is, but he's definitely an inspiration.

And speaking of gratuitous pictures of skiers, our friend Sean always gives me grief for reading Men's Journal. So I felt wonderfully vindicated when I saw that Kris Freeman, who might be in the best shape of any male in America,

has finished 4th in World Championship races (despite having diabetes), and has modeled on the cover of Outside to boot,

Still brushes up on his manliness by reading MJ.

Brian: do not let Katie read this entry.

Important Updates

1) My college roommate Jason suggests that Alexander von Humboldt looks more like Bill O'Reilly than George C. Scott. (I don't see it. Any thoughts?) 2) Forget about three podiums in two weekends -- how about five podiums in three weekends!? Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins won the two-person sprint Friday outside of the Parliament in Quebec (a historic first for the US), and Randall won the individual sprint Saturday. This is getting serious. We're talking societal tipping point here. She's got to make Sportscenter's Top Ten Plays of the weekend ... Finally, 3) bad news on the roundabout statue front (see two entries below). Despite my fervent lobbying, your Arts and Humanities Advisory Board is not going through with a recommendation to the city commission of the knife-through-the-bread design. In the spirit of excessive deliberative democracy, and apparently fearing some sort of backlash if we spent $170,000 on a copper loaf of bread, the committee decided to re-open the bidding process for another 90 days so that we can have more designs to chose from. But I fear the mob if the people have to wait that much longer for their art.