Venice

Venice was never on the top ten list of places in the world I wanted to visit. It seemed too touristy and crowded, too cliche. But we were looking for something to do on the long Pentecost holiday weekend in Germany, and we just happened to come across cheap tickets to Venice. The plane ride is only an hour long, so... oh heck, why not?
I was prepared to find a bunch of pushy, theatrical, Italian salespeople on top of thousands of wealthy northern Europeans and Asian tourists with big cameras, fanny packs, and sun hats - a kind of Disney World atmosphere. As usual, all of my expectations turned out to be misled. Most of the tourists were Italians. The restaurateurs and shop keepers were reserved and pleasant to interact with. Though there were a lot of people there, we managed to spend much of our time walking down empty alleys between buildings that led to little plazas where five or six streets converged. There was a peacefulness I didn't expect to find, and sometimes even an eerie emptiness. Luckily Alfredo knew where we were at all times. His sense of direction was uncanny as we navigated through winding streets that changed names every block, and many of which dead ended abruptly in to water or brick walls. According to the guide book, even locals get turned around regularly.
Highlights of the trip included a three-hour lunch at a great restaurant just north of Saint Mark's Square. Four delicious courses and one bottle of wine later, we went happily on our way, stumbling around the sunny, narrow streets. Of course, Alfredo still had no problem navigating.
Highlight #2: attending mass at Saint Mark's Basilica. It was beautiful (the mass and the basilica). Unfortunately photography is prohibited inside, but my camera "accidentally" turned itself on while resting casually in my lap, so I have a movie of the basilica ceiling with a beautiful chorus in the background... (see it here in our trip photos)
Highlight #3: getting up at the crack of dawn to enjoy a sunrise breakfast on the other side of the island. It was a glorious morning, and we took a boat down the grand canal. The photos show just how excited Alfredo was to be awake at that time of day, though he later admitted that it was nice.
The entire trip was fabulous. And now we've been home for barely long enough to digest that experience before we head off to explore the Norwegian fjords...tonight!

Springtime

Alfredo's mom had a conference in Paris in mid-April, and she was able to come for a quick weekend visit afterward. That turned in to a 9-day visit thanks to the volcano in Iceland. She couldn't escape this continent for over a week, but in the meantime it gave us a good excuse to get out participate in some local tourism (photos). We went to the cities of Mainz and Heidelberg, saw castles, cathedrals, and picturesque cobblestone streets; we sampled the local cuisine, lounged at open-air cafes, and of course did some shopping. And walking through a castle wasn't the only thing that made the week seem like a fairy tale: Alfredo came home early every day (ie 6pm), we ate dinner at a reasonable hour (9pm), someone else volunteered to do the dishes, and it was warm and sunny every day...
Now that May is here, it's a different story. Cold and rainy. Not just most of the time, but all of the time. Quite similar to January, February, and and March, except there's no more snow involved. On the brighter side though, the indoor weather has helped my study habits. I started a German class on two nights a week, and I discovered within the first 10 minutes on the first day that it was a few notches above my current skill level. There are only 4 other people in the class, so the 'sit in the back and avoid eye contact with the teacher' strategy doesn't cut it here, either... I love the challenge and I'm really enjoying myself so far.
In other news, Alfredo and I decided we should take advantage of the two national holidays coming up, because after that there are no more "free" days until Christmas. Our decision: a long weekend in Venice this month, and then a June expedition to the Fjords on Norway's west coast, where we hope to catch a glimpse of the midnight sun. This should result in some good stories...and pictures.

Soggy Situation

Things are going well here. We've finally got a fully-furnished apartment, and now we're attending to the finer details. However the decoration process has come to a temporary halt because it makes me nervous to put any nails or screws in the walls. Yesterday our drill hit a hollow space which we did not expect to encounter in these very solid German walls. Unfortunately, it wasn't just any hollow space, but one that produced a small stream of water that trickled down the bedroom wall. And not just any water, but water that was on its way from the upstairs apartment's toilet down to the sewer. A plumber came, chiseled a hole in the wall to get a better view of the pipe, put a temporary patch on it, and said he'll come back next week with the proper equipment to remove larger chunks of wall, cut the pipe and replace a section of it, and re-build the wall. He will also bring a handy device that senses where it's safe to put a nail or screw.

Honey, We're Home!!

I have had 12 different addresses since 2002. That's a lot of moving. A lot of packing and unpacking, sleeping on air mattresses, cots, floors, futons, "real" beds of varying size and quality, cooking gourmet meals with a butter knife and hotpot, sharing things, borrowing things, losing things. A lot of settling in without getting too comfortable, because it's never the end. So, here we go again... and why not start with the track record as a nostalgic drum roll:
Seminole Dr, Fremont
Holden Hall, MSU
Wilson Hall, MSU
Beau Jardin, Lansing
Snyder Rd, East Lansing
Durand St, East Lansing
Random Rd, Cleveland
N 19th Ave, Phoenix
Trappers Cove, Lansing
Falltorstrasse, Wixhausen
Fabrikstrasse, Pfungstadt
AND FINALLY: Frankfurter Lanstrasse, Darmstadt! At last, we're here! And miraculously, the internet got here before we did, so it's an even more joyful transition. I've been to the German version of IKEA twice already, hauling huge sacks full of plates, garbage cans, rugs, bathroom accessories, etc. on the bus across town. The first time was in the pouring rain; the second time I realized I could just check the forecast on the INTERNET:) before going. So things are coming along. I even got my residence visa (an extremely unpleasant experience, only successful because Alfredo came with me and nobody can resist his sleepy eyes and charmingly calm silence). Tomorrow we're getting a washer and dryer, and Thursday we're renting a moving van and heading to Frankfurt to pick up a bed, TV, kitchen appliances, a grill for the patio, and all the other things we could never dream of lugging around on public transportation. It should be fun. Alfredo is driving because of course it's a stick shift, and I'm navigating. Luckily my parents got us a EuroMap chip for the GPS for Christmas, so there's no need to rely on my superbly gifted sense of [mis]direction.

A weekend in Paris

Paris was like a dream. The architecture was amazing, the food was fabulous, and the opera outstanding. I was hoping for all those things, and they didn't disappoint. But it was a wonderful weekend for other reasons too - aspects that took me by surprise. I was impressed by the outward kindness and hospitality of the French...expecting an air of aloofness, instead I found warmth. I was also reminded that good company makes all the difference. I savored that aspect even more now that I've been starved for social interaction in a rather closed society and deprived of my usual means of communication. There was never a dull moment in this group (German, Italian, Iranian, Uruguayan, USAan). The highlight of the trip was arriving at the opera 20 minutes early (a triumphant first as our opera trips go) only to find out that it was the wrong opera house. What ensued was an exhilarating, frantic race to the other side of town in rush hour traffic. The spectacle was complete with a cab jumping curbs, riding in the bus lane, and weaving through traffic like you weave through the sea of people in a crowded mall. The cab driver was great though. He even managed to point out some of the important architectural points in the city along the way. We took lots of photos to help tell the rest of the story...

Though Paris was a dream, getting home was a nightmare. Half way through the comfortable four-hour ride, I was sleeping peacefully when the train stopped. We were told to get out and board a different train. It wouldn't have been much of an inconvenience, except that the other train was already full! I had to stand for the second half of the ride even though I had a seat reservation (unfortunately so did the guy who was already sitting in my seat). It was an outrage. I would have minded less if we hadn't stayed at a piano bar the previous night until it closed. All I wanted to do was sleep. When Alfredo met me at the Wixhausen train station (he came back a day early to work), I was glad the worst part of the trip was over. Well, that was a premature assumption. The sole bus that connects our "temporary home" to Darmstadt stops at midnight, and we got to the bus stop at 12:30. Standing outside, exhausted, in the freezing cold on a lonely street in the middle of nowhere was unpleasantly frightening (mostly related to the risk of freezing to death). But by some series of miracles, Alfredo found the number for a 24-hour hotline posted on the bus schedule to report problems with the public transportation. The guy who answered happened to speak English and was willing to call us a cab...

Good News:Bad News

Good news: we just found an apartment. It's cute, clean, bright, partially furnished, and one of few apartments in Germany with kitchen appliances and light fixtures already installed. It's in the same town as our other dream apartment [still crying over that one] and I think we'll be very happy there. Alfredo especially likes that it has a fireplace. He was drooling over visions of steak sizzling on an open fire, the way they do it back home in Uruguay. That's a feasible idea since the fire place is in the kitchen, which is also the dining room and living room. Yes, it's a small apartment, but we're going to make it in to a nice home. I can't wait to move in!
Bad news: We can't move in until April 1. The guy we're subleasing from right now comes back this week at some mysteriously ambiguous point in time which Alfredo defines (without concern) as "a few days before the end of the month...I think..." Which means some time between now and Friday, but we're not really sure. So after a semi-frantic scouring of the housing market (now my specialty) I found a great short-term vacation rental that happens to be available from now until the end of March. It's a beautiful place, and wonderfully large - a separate kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and a bedroom. We're already planning a party for this weekend to put all that space to good use, and to celebrate the fact that we no longer live in Wixhausen. The downside is that it's in a suburb very poorly connected by public transit (>1hr for Alfredo to get to the lab) and we'll have to go yet another month without internet (ahhhhhh!!!!!). But we'll survive. At least we know where we're sleeping every night this week, which is a luxurious assurance I am thankful to have.

The Verdict

Our dream apartment went to somebody else. At least we were prepared for that after hearing stories from Alfredo's office mates about how hard it is for foreigners to get apartments here. Even the German girl in the office complained that her Russian husband's last name made their search difficult. It's annoying, but let's not pretend there aren't cookies that crumble like this in the US too (usually under more politically-correct pretenses, of course). So now it's back to the drawing board. Our search has become somewhat frantic because we the guy we're subleasing from returns from his vacation in one week. And in a twist of irony, we just turned down an offer to rent an apartment that is newly-remodeled, completely furnished, a good price, and 1/4 mile from the lab. It sounds like a dream, right? Actually, Alfredo and I decided that living in Wixhausen is more like a nightmare. Our friends from Poland (Alfredo's office mate and his wife) think we're crazy for having turned it down. It would have been a safe and comfortable option, but Alfredo likes flying by the seat of his pants, living freely and dangerously. And somehow he's convinced me to want to do the same. So we don't know where we'll be living in a week. No big deal :)

In other news:

- On Saturday we went to Bamberg (a city in Bavaria, 2 hours East of here) to meet up with our friends Christine and Sebastian, a German couple who recently returned to the Land of Beer and Sauerkraut after finishing their PhDs at MSU and Yale, respectively. They've been long-time members of our 'Opera Gang' (bi-annual opera outings organized by Alfredo's former roommate Giuseppe) and the running club (foot-racing excursions across Michigan and Europe, organized by Christine herself - including Alfredo's trip to the Berlin Marathon). Bamberg has a unique and fascinating history [wikipedia synopsis] and fabulous architecture that was not destroyed during the war because of the town's juxtaposition to an artillery factory. We had a good time catching up with Christine and Sebastian, and they even brought a friend with them who was born and raised in Bamberg - she showed us some really sweet stuff around town [photos] like a palace, a cathedral (containing the tomb of the only pope not buried in Rome), and a great restaurant serving regional specialties like smoked beer.

- On Sunday, I gave Alfredo a wedding ring for Valentine's Day. It was a great surprise because we don't even get each other Christmas and birthday presents, let alone gifts on other obscure holidays. Why a wedding ring? Well, several weeks after we were married, Alfredo's ring "mysteriously disappeared right off his hand" while he was pacing the halls of the Cyclotron, deep in thought at 4 in the morning. It was never found. So we ordered another one, which arrived the day before Thanksgiving. Lucky for him, the story of the lost ring didn't even have to come out to the whole extended family. Fast forward six weeks to the day of his dissertation defense, also known as the day before we handed in the keys to our apartment and flew to Germany. Alfredo got out of the shower and realized he had no ring on. We looked in the garbage, the sink, the toilet, the cabinets, the floor...nothing. It was never found. He was really sad, and on top of that he was insulted that I didn't even seem upset over either of the lost rings. My advice in general is not to marry someone unless you are prepared to deal rationally and constructively with situations you know are highly probable given the other's track record. I explained that I'm not mad, but I'm also not financially irresponsible. No more wedding rings for you. That was not said without empathy though, since I lost a beautiful birthstone ring my mom gave me for my 16th birthday and I still feel bad about it 10 years later. So in Darmstadt the other day I found the perfect compromise - something that looks very much like his original ring(s) but with a price tag an order of magnitude lower. Even though it's a different metal and not engraved on the inside, it's a win-win situation: Alfredo is happy to have a ring again, and next month when it mysteriously vanishes nobody will have to feel bad...

Our episode of House Hunters

There are a number of reasons why we're anxious to find an apartment, not least of which is to have [an internet connection!!! and] someplace to call our own. Finally. It's more or less the first big joint decision of our married life, and it's going to be somewhat difficult, I perceive, given that we both have an extraordinary inclination for indecisiveness. Here's our dilemma (quadri-lemma?)

Apartment #1 is a large 2-bedroom apt in the attic level of a large house in a nice neighborhood of Greisheim, Southwest of Darmstadt. Positives: Guest bedroom, large living/dining room, really cool angles because of the sloping attic wall/ceiling. Beautiful large garden and yard for hosting barbecues. Negatives: Distance from GSI. We would need to buy a car because public transport would take ~1hr. Also, the angle of the wall/ceiling in the bathroom slopes so steeply over the tub that it might only be possible to bathe while sitting or laying in the tub..

Apartment #2 is a small 1-br/studio apt in a commercial building in a fashionable district of downtown Darmstadt. Positives: Near a lot of shops, restaurants, etc. The large window in the living room looks over a main street to a nice big park. The whole inside of the apt was just remodeled. Negatives: It's very small.

Apartment #3 is a large 1-br apt in a house (duplex) in a beautiful residential district just south of Darmstadt - lots of old German architecture, iron gates, ivy, trees, landscaping. Positives: beautiful location, and it's a fully-furnished apartment. Negatives: living room has a putrid shade of green (1970's) carpeting. The kitchen appliances also appear to be from the 1970s. Though the tram stop is only a block away and it stops right at the GSI shuttle, the entire trip from home to work would be about 45min-1hr. Or we could get a car.

Apartment #4 is a mid-size 1-br apartment in Downtown Arheilgen (city between Darmstadt and Wixhausen). Arheilgen isn't big, but there are plenty of shops and restaurants, etc in the downtown, which looks like a nice place. Easy access to trams that go to all the surrounding cities, and it is within two blocks of the GSI shuttle stop. Positives: Just re-modeled, "large" kitchen, fabulous location. It was a difficult decision, but we really want this one. Negatives: 10 other people are looking at it too. The game goes like this: of the people who say they want to rent it, the real estate agent will weed out a few, then present his "selection" to the landlord who picks the lucky winner. It's not an equal opportunity selection process, and we've been told that foreigners have a disadvantage. So, we told the real estate agent today that we want the apartment, and now we just have to wait...

Highlights of the First Weeks

1. Day trip to Frankfurt (photos)
4. The smell of fresh-baked croissants every morning (goodbye skinni jeans, our front door opens IN TO a bakery).
2. My trip to the US Consulate (name change for my passport). It could have been worse, but the unique mix of American and German red tape was especially annoying. Luckily the line for Americans was empty, so I wasn't late even after they sent me back to the subway station to pay a guy in a portable kiosk trailer 6 bucks to hold on to my cell phone because there are no electronics allowed on the consulate premise. Then I was scolded for filling out the wrong application - "applying in person" - because I should have filled out the one entitled"applying by mail". But the best part was that the official passport photos that I taken at the US post office in Lansing were "incorrectly proportioned", and "no smiling is allowed". My bad.
3. Laundry. Of course there is nowhere in Wixhausen to do laundry. So on a snowy Saturday afternoon, we lugged huge shopping bags full of dirty laundry with us on the train to Darmstadt. It's supposed to be a fairly painless process once you get there - just drop it off and pick it up a few hours later, all clean and nicely folded. Well, we walked in to the place just as it was closing (sorry miss, you're not in the land of 24-hour service anymore...things close at 3pm on Saturday). I burst in to tears because every piece of clothing I had packed was dirty, and the two precious bath towels that we went all the way to Frankfurt to buy were also in the mix. Alfredo helped console me with a trip to the nearest bakery (espresso + cheesecake) and a shopping spree to get more towels and clothes to tide us over until Monday...

Welcome to Germany

This town is different than I thought it would be. All the physicists at MSU complained about how SMALL and BORING it is, with such emphasis on those words that I came to imagine a few small huts in the middle of an empty field with a dirt road going through it and nothing else. Now I see that it was a very different kind of small and boring they were talking about. The population is about 3000 here in Wixhausen (northern suburb of Darmstadt), and houses line the narrow streets in an arrangement that makes me feel like a rat in a maze. They have an eerie uniformity: all 3 stories tall, white, and all are spaced 5 feet from their neighbors in grassless, fenced-in yards. The problem is not that it's a small town, it just has too few resources for its size. There is a convenience store, a few small restaurants, bakeries, and drug stores, and a train station. The apartment we're subleasing for now is very convenient. It's connected to a bakery, just across the street from the train station, and a short distance from the GSI lab. It's an apartment with strange proportions. There are four equal-sized rooms, bisected by an open corridor that contains the staircase to the landlord's front door. I've never lived in a place where the living room and the bathroom are the same size. Don't be jealous though. The shower inside our opulent bathroom is a 3-foot by 3-foot box. Alfredo and I had to use t-shirts to dry ourselves off after our first few showers because there is nowhere in this town to buy towels.
Everything is smaller here. Showers, ovens, refrigerators (2.5'x3' including the freezer!), cars, everything. The biggest bag of rice I can find in the supermarket is the size of a large coffee mug. The single bed in our apartment measures 35 inches wide. Our first night was heavenly because we were exhausted and had been sleeping on the floor for a month, followed by a night in economy class airline seats. The second night was less comfortable, so we decided to move to the living room and give the pull-out couch a try. Drooling over the thought of being able to both lie down on our backs, on something other than the floor, we opened it up only to discover that the couch pulls out to a width of 40in. It's a little better than the bed, so we've been sleeping there ever since. I can't wait to get an apartment of our own and buy a new mattress...please tell me they're available in king size here!