Krawatten and Crevetten, Mistakes with German

I went to lunch with a coworker today to a place we frequent in Baden. The restaurant usually has 4 daily menu items. Menu 2 is always a pizza, and I order the pizza 80% of the time I visit.

Today was a Rucola pizza with Crevetten. Rucola is similar to dandelion greens. Typically the Swiss will fully cook the pizza, take it out of the oven, and then throw a pile of these greens on top. It is tolerable but definately not my favorite.

Crevetten (Shrimp) on the other hand, I can't stand on pizza. Crevetten is a Swiss German word. The high german word is Garnele. Looking at Crevetten I would bet it has French roots somewhere.

Anyway, I wanted to order the pizza menu without Crevetten.

In German a W is pronounced like a V in English. Now, my German has been broken since I returned from Berlin. I am recovering from overusage of my German brain muscle. So knowing that I ordered my pizza without Krawatten, which to a non-native German speaker with a heavy Midwestern accents sounds a lot like Crevetten. My lunch guest turned to me and said 'you want you pizza without Krawatten?!' Immediately the waitress started laughing as well.

I laughed too, and replied 'well, of course I don't want any Krawatten, and I don't want any Crevettens either.'

It's not often that you place a pizza order and ask for them to hold the neckties. But you know, neckties just aren't to my liking with mozerella cheese.

Reichstag Am Abend

Reichstag Building, Berlin Germany

Conceptually I go the picture I wanted. Not quite as sharp of an image as I would have liked though.

I blame the sharpness problem on using Canon's liveview feature which lets you use the screen on the back of the Canon 40D SLR like a point and shoot to frame your shot. Only problem is when you use the Liveview feature in disables the autofocus. The way around that is to be sure to focus on your subject before you enable live view, or manually focus while live view is enabled. I forgot to check the focus because I was lazy, tired and it was dark.

Still in turned out good enough for a blog post.

Shirts From The Gap Not Good In Airports

I got a special delivery from home a few weeks back from my Mother. She had sent a few things from the US with my wife including a few casual button down shirts from The Gap. The short sleeved shirts have been getting a lot of use in the hot weather here.

I do have one grip though. It seems that The Gap is now sewing security devices into the shirts. They are sewing the same RFID theft prevention devices that were traditional used for things like CDs, DVDs and computer software inside the shirts in a band of cloth ribbon.

The problem occurs when one forgets about this tag and doesn't cut it out of the inside seam of the shirt.

We'll today, I realized I had forgotten, as I was trying to go through several metal detectors. The first was at the Reichstag Building (German Parliment building) in Berlin. The Second was at the Berlin airport as I was trying to come home from a weekend trip. I hadn't yet come across a pair of siccors so I already new I was in for a good search at the airport. I got what expected.

Sometimes I am amazed at how far US stores will go to prevent theft. I have not done a formal survey, but if feels like there are much fewer theft devices here. I know that there are anti-theft RFID tags on electronics, but I see them much less frequently on clothing in Europe.

Royal Castle, Warsaw Poland

Royal Castle, Warsaw Poland

In all of Warsaw I think one of my favorite spots to photograph is the plaza in front on the Royal Castle. This last trip I had my first chance to try photographing there at night. I love the colors in the buildings and the people that are milling around. It is really a fun spot to setup up a tripod and just hang out taking pictures.

This is one of the better ones from my evening. The square is usually very crowded as it was when I took this picture. However if you use shutter speeds greater than a few seconds, the people walking around disappear in the image. This image was shot with a 4 second exposure at f/14 ISO 200.

Why I Love Warsaw, 2 Pounds of Meat for 15 Bucks

The Officers Special At Podwale Piwna Kompania, Warsaw Poland.

I love eating in Warsaw. Podwale Piwna Kompania in old town is one of my favorite spots. In what other city in Europe can you get close to a kilo of meat for 15 US dollars.

The beauty is in Poland a kilo of meat is a serving for one. This dish included pork, chicken, beef, liver, sausage, and blood sausage.

I enjoyed my dinner, but I surely didn't clean my plate.

Photography: Warsaw Poland, My New Favorite Place

This week I am doing some traveling to Warsaw. I brought my photo gear with me as I usually do. Last night after all of my work was done I headed out to the old town to for a small photography outing. I setup shop right in front of the royal palace where to my surpise about a dozen other photographers were also honing their trade. It appeared that it might have been a photography class from the local university.

The more time I spend in Warsaw, the more it becomes one of my favorite locations to photograph. There is such a neat collection of things to photograph here. The people are interesting, the history is interesting, and the colors are really amazing.

I hope I have some treasures on my memory card, but I won't know for sure until I get back home and load everything into lightroom. Until then. I will just have to wait, and so will you. I'll post some images when I get home.

Swiss Timeliness

A co-worker of mine is in the process of moving into a new apartment. He is still getting used to the scale of things in Switzerland. The fact that everything is small, and close and the quality of public transportation.

He was trying to figure out how long it would take him to get to the office from his new apartment and after looking at the bus schedule from the closest stop he found the bus should take around 14 minutes. Having not used much Swiss public transport yet, he thought that 14 minutes was wishful thinking.

We'll he decided to time the trip on a test run to see how long it would take. And, as it turns out his gut feeling about the 14 minutes was right. It did take longer. 6 seconds longer to be exact.

Water Lily

I have been in a bit of a creative slump lately. I think it has to do with the weather. The last couple of weekends have been gray and colder than it should be for mid summer. That means I haven't been very inspired to take out the camera.

I finally had a brief moment of motivation when I spotted some water lilies not far from our apartment in a small pond.

I went home, packed up the camera gear including tripod and headed back to the spot. I didn't spend too much time. Maybe twenty minutes taking about 40 pictures. I think the above is the best of the lot.

Crime On the Rise, About Time

Public Drunk, Arrested in Baden

So its time for my bi-annual posting about crime in Baden. About once every six months there is usually a major event in front of our apartment. Tonight was the night.

As I finished dinner I found my wife looking over the railing at something going on in the plaza below our apartment. Nothing too much, an ambulance and what looked like two drunk guys wandering, or should I say stumbling through the streets.

The medics looked like they were just checking them out when one guy got a little too unruly. A cop on the scene quickly cuffed the guy and he was swept away in a police SUV a couple of minutes later.

Although I wouldn't call it high action, I am glad that this is about as exciting as it gets in Baden.

Well, now another 6 months until the next 'Big Event'.

Rainbow Over Baden

Rainbow over Baden

There was a storm around sunset on Friday evening. Just as the storm was ending the sun broke through the clouds and gave us a magnificent show. There was a beautiful rainbow for about 15 minutes. At one point the sun was so strong there was a double rainbow.

This is the second time in the two years we have been her that we have been able to see a rainbow from our balcony.

Frozen Foods

I spotted this restaurant on a bike ride a couple of weeks ago. I snapped a picture with my camera phone and didn't know what I might do with the picture.

Since this weekend was a little boring and wet, I thought this was a good time.

Not sure I'd want to eat and this place.

If you actually translate the German it doesn't sound as good as you might think.

Restaurant of Exhilarating Specialties.

Friends help Friends Make Pav Bhaji

When I used to live in Richmond on occasion we would make Indian food at home. Nothing spectacular. Sometimes just some Samosas from the local ethnic grocery store along with a frozen Alou Saag or Palak Paneer from the freezer section. Very rarely we would cook Pav Bhaji.

I haven't made Indian food since we moved to Switzerland for a couple of reasons. First of all I hadn't really found a good Asian grocery store in Baden. There are a few, but the selection tilts heavily towards all things Thai.

Second, and more importantly I lost my recipe from a friend and ran out of Pav Bhaji Masala.

Enter, international network of friends.

I got in touch with a friend from Richmond who had given me the original recipe. I asked him for it one day after he had invited us over for a meal. When I received the invitation I was excited about trying some real home cooked Indian food. I insisted that we go early and he give us a cooking lessons so we could try it at home.

He sent methe recipe via e-mail a few weeks ago. One down, one to go. All I needed now as a little Bhaji Masala.

Enter a co-worker and friend from work. He lives in the UK, and travels between just outside of London and our office here. I was talking to him about my Indian spices dilemma and being Indian himself he told me that he and his family would often go to East London to shop in the ethnic district for Indian specialties. He offered to pick me up some spices. I of course couldn't turn that offer down.

Last night we took the final step. Going to the grocery store and getting all the veggies to make a great Pav Bhaji.

It took about an hour to make the meal. If you decide to use all of the spices in the recipe it comes out pretty hot. After the meal I felt like a furnace. I was radiating heat like you wouldn't believe. I was burning up, but the food was so good. Next time I'll hold back a bit on the spices and see what happens.

What also interests me is the fact that Pav Bhaji is considered 'fast food' in India. As I understand it is really kind of a second tier food. I might equate it with running out to a hot dog cart to grab something to eat in New York or Chicago. Nonetheless. It is a great, easy to cook vegetarian dish if you are looking for something to try at home.

Three Gorges Project In China: Media Blitz

My parents-in-law recently took a trip to China. When my wife returned from her trip to the US she brought back with her a few souvenirs that the in-laws had purchased for us.

I received a book on the Three Gorges Project. It is an well constructed glossy photo book interspersed with quips about the dams construction, size, and immense power generation capabilities.

Reading the Chinese English made me chuckle. The translations reminded me of my days in college when I used to work with several Chinese graduate students. Some times they would ask me to read something they had written just to check the grammar. Reading this book really took me back to that time when I was looking over their papers.

As an example, I would like to quote a single..., yes SINGLE, sentence from the book.

The project change the masterpiece of nature the splendor Three Gorges, the water level in the gorges is rose to 175m, and form a huge reservoir with 39.3 billion m3 water; what is under the water is the history track of the Chinese civilization; it also submerged 2.8 thousand hectare plantation, orchard and woodland, which distributed over 21 countries in Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality; the whole project will resettled millions of people and cost astronomical financing.

What a truly original and fantastic grammatical structure.

It is interesting to read the book for another reason as well. The writing has a feeling of such biasness. You can tell this book is a sales tool, used to promote the huge benefits of the project. The fact that displacing millions of people is a good thing. The fact that the project will greatly reduce pollution and smog.

Yes the damn may be more environmentally friendly that a coal fire power plant in terms of carbon emissions but I think such a huge dam will of course have other environmental impacts. In the large scheme of things, 26 'clean' generators, which probably produce as much power as about 8 traditional power plants aren't going to have too much of an impact when you are talking about servicing a population of over 6 billion.

I don't want that last comment to sound like I don't support clean energy, as I certainly do. It's just interesting the way the book seems to declare that this single dam will change the world.

Its a fun gift, and I'm really happy to have received it.

Missed German Class Today

I had some phone calls and messages about a problem at work this morning just as I was getting ready to head out of the house to my German class. As a result I needed to go in and check how things were going.

It ended up the problems were with things that were not within my direct area responsibility, however the problems directly affected my things.

With todays complex IT systems one little problem can have a huge cascading effect. I was thinking how many people were mobilized today as a result of our little problem. I'm sure it was alot. I had 5 people mobilized, and there were three other applications down as well.

Assuming each application owner had about 5 people working on the problem that would mean we may have spent about 7.5 man days resolving the issue between the 3 teams.

Breakfast Food for Dinner

I really like breakfast. I like breakfast so much that sometimes I like to make traditional breakfast foods for dinner. Tonight I am making ham & eggs. I've also been known to enjoy French toast, pancakes at the usual dinner hour.

I think my wife used to think I was a little strange for doing this, but you know what, I like it. I like the taste. I like that breakfast food, still for the most part tastes American here in Switzerland. That is more than I can say for steaks, hamburgers, sausages and Chinese food.

So tonight, ham & eggs! Why?! Because I can!

Fixing My Bike And Work Around the Apartment

Last year my commuter bike was slightly vandalized. Someone had stolen a few screws that rendered the bike effectively useless. The brakes no longer worked, and the seat wouldn't stay up so I parked it in storage and haven't ridden it since.

On recent trips to the hardware store I have been buying one or two parts at a time to get it back in working shape. You see this bike is a perfect commuter bike. I got the bike when I was about 14 and have had it every since. It is old, somewhat rusty, and looks it age, but it has a rack, a comfortably riding position, and until it was vandalized, I assumed it was so ugly that it wouldn't really be a target for thieves.

Because of my emotional attachment to the hunk of junk, I just can get rid of it. This weekend when I was hat the Jumbo I bought the final pieces to get it back up and running. A new set of brakes, brake levers, and brake cables. The parts weren't nearly as expensive as I had envisioned. It cost me about 45 USD to get everything.

After about 2 hours of work this morning the bike looks to be in working order. I worked on the bike outside on the terrace under our awning. There has been a light drizzle all afternoon so I haven't had a chance to take it out for a proper test ride, but maybe there will be time for that tomorrow.

I did some other cleaning around the apartment as well. I cleaned the kitchen, washed the floors, and did some laundry. Oh, and did I mention I got rid of the Christmas tree!?!

We always seem to miss the Christmas tree removal service because we are on holiday. This year same story, we missed the service so I did a number on the tree by taking all of the branches off with a pocket knife but I still had the trunk. It would have made a good wooden festivus pole actually. So the trunk has been on our terrace since January. I came across a small saw when I was looking for something so I finally took the time to cut up the trunk and get ride of it.

My wife had given me a deadline of getting ride of the tree by August 29th when my parents come for a visit, so I am glad I can check that one off the 'Honey Do' list.

Insomnia

It seems about once a month I have a night where I really don't get much sleep. Luckily this month, it was last night. I say luckily only because it wasn't a work night so I didn't really mind that I was dragging a bit today.

I watched a movie last night and didn't really feel that tired, but when I looked at the clock it was about 1:00 am. I watched Into The Wild, which ended up being longer than I had planned. I read the book back when it came out and I really enjoyed the book so I figured I would catch up on the movie.

After the film I tried to go to sleep but I just couldn't fall a sleep. I think the warm weather, and the fact that our apartment gets hot and stays hot in the evenings had a lot to do with it.

I ended up getting up about 7:00 in the morning because I am not the kind of person that can sleep in. So, I was dragging most of the day, and actually took a nice hour and a half nap this afternoon.

I'm glad that it is now 10:30 pm and I feel really tired. I don't think I'll have much trouble sleeping tonight.

Ohne Topf ? (Without The Pot)

I went to the weekend market this morning to buy some flowers for a bare spot in our planters. I had pulled out a plant, a dying pine, a couple of weeks back. The hole disparately needed to be filled with some vegetation but I just hadn't had time to get around to it.

This morning I made a effort to get up early to go to the market. It is sad that I had to make an effort, because the market is literally right outside my front door.

That is another story though.

So I found my usually plant seller that I like and I bought a few things. I am not a British gardener, so I don't know the Latin names, so I'm not going to post them. I'm just a bad gardener, so I'm not even going to post the common names. Generally because I don't know the names. When I shop for plants, I look, I ask if it is full sun or shade, then I point, and buy.

One question they ask here when you make a purchase if is you would like the pot or not. I think that is a great question. How many times would I plant a garden in the US, and in the aftermath you have a pile of plastic pots laying around, destine for a landfill somewhere.

Here if you go with the no pot option, they pull the root ball out of the pot, and wrap the root ball in a piece of newspaper. It looks kind of like the way a carry out resturant in the US might wrap a burrito to go. You get home, plant your plants, and there aren't a million guilt inducing pots laying around, just a couple of thin pieces of damp paper.

From a business sense I'm sure it is good for the garden center as well. They can reuse the pots for next season. It is nice to see that some societies don't have the same 'use it & throw it away' mentality that we have come to accept in the US.

Ride to Regensberg with a Stop for Cherries

This past weekend I met a friend for a bike ride. He lives not to far from me in Ennetbaden just up the valley. It is about 10 minutes by bike. We didn't really now where we wanted to ride too, but I had a vague idea that I would like to head in the direction of Regensberg.

Regensberg is a small town on the Lagern mountain. Its small, medevil village. The buildings wrapping around a cozy central courtyard. On the ride up the valley the village comes into view, and you can see the small tower and chapel towering above the houses.



View Larger Map

As we approached the bottom of the climb to the town my friend spotted a cherry tree on the of the road in a farmers field. He suggested we stop and pick some cherries and take a short break. The cherries were such a deep, deep red, their sweetness was like nothing I had ever had in my life. They tasted like candy. That was one experience I don't think I'll ever forget it.

We finished up to Regensberg and walked around a bit and enjoyed some of the views. I would have liked to have stayed a little longer but I had to get back to meet some friends so my visit and exploration of the village was cut short.

I will definitely be headed back to check it out again.

The Office Without AC

Every summer I seem to post at least once about the lack of AC in our office. AC does not seem to be a standard feature in most building and apartments in Switzerland despite the fact that it can get hot. Both yesterday and today were about 30 c (86 F) and at that temperature with out AC the conference rooms can get darn hot.

This hot season usually lasts about 6 weeks. The worst being the last 2 week so July and the first two weeks of August.

I have a theory that the only reason Europeans take most of their vacation in August is because they can't stand the smell of the office during that time.

While I don't want to wish my summer away, I will be happy when the heat streak is over.