Yay for the weekend

SO, not much new has happened in the last week, except that I have been spending most of the past couple of days in the sunlight reading in bed, just because I can. I did have another shopping experience today, which I figured I would relate, even if it is not as exciting as it might have been at the beginning. Still, after being here for almost 7 months now, the grocery store is a jungle of german-english deception. OK it's not that bad. Here we go. I have a cook book here that is all in English. Which is good for me when cooking. What is not so great is going shopping for the stuff in the recipes. For example, broccoli rabe. I don't know what that is, but if I went to a grocery store in America, I might find someone who did. Here, I definently won't. They might know the german word for it, but I don't. And I can't even describe it. Today the search was for cumin, coriander, and turmeric. I have a new recipe to try, and I had already ordered the ground beef at the meat counter (which here is called Hackepeter or "hacked peter" and people eat raw on slices of bread. with raw onions on top.) I found coriander (koriander) and even turmeric (kurkuma). I was pretty sure that I remembered cumin being kummel, and there was no other bottle that looked like it could be cumin, so I picked up kummel. Well, I got it home, opened it to smell and see if it was the right one, and it smelled like a rye bagel. And as far as I could remember, rye bagels didn't have cumin seeds in them. But I couldn't remember the word "carraway" and so I started to wonder, maybe there are cumin seeds in a rye bagel, and i just forgot what cumin smells like. I decided to go check here at Rayk's house to be sure, and explained my problem to him. And he said "cumin?" (the english word) I have that in my cabinet. And sure enough. Kreuzkummel. Smelled just like I remembered. The good news is, I can make my recipe now. The bad news is, I have a baggie of ground carraway in my cabinet, and don't know what to do with it.

Otherwise, things here are fine, weather has stayed mild and rainy, and as long as it doesn't flood, it should be a nice spring. Hope you all are well, and I would love to hear from you.

Sommergewinn

Well, this weekend I was in Eisenach with the family of my advising teacher. It was a little stressful because even though she is officially in charge of me, I work a lot more with other teachers, so I don't know her that well. And I don't know her family at all. But everyone was very friendly, and I was really sad when it was time to leave. Eisenach is a very pretty city in Thuringen, which is sort of right in the middle of Germany, and is where the best Bratwurst comes from. Outside of Eisenach is the Wartburg, which is where the Saengerkrieg happened (which is what Wagner's opera Tannhaeuser is based on), where Martin Luther translated the New Testament, and was restored because Goethe thought it should be. It was very cool to be up there and see the old restored buildings, but it was hard not to be distracted by the crowds of tourists. One in particular is worth mentioning. As we were walking back down the hill to the car from the Wartburg, there was a man in front of us, who kept looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching, as he took fistfulls of moss from the wooden railing and shoved them into a grocery bag. It was really wierd. We passed him (it is hard to walk quickly and steal moss at the same time) and we caught up with some of his fellow travelers all walking to the bus. One of them turned around and asked "where is Gottfried?" (or some equally german sounding name), saw the guy, and then said "Oh, he is gathering moss, he's gathering moss" as if there was no more normal activity for this guy to be doing, and sort of like he'd been gathering moss the whole trip. So I of course now have an image of this guy who has a basement full of moss samples from famous sites in Germany, all in plastic grocery bags. Whatever.

We chose this weekend because it was the Sommergewinn, where Herr Winter is banished by Frau Sonne, after a big parade through the city. Included in the parade were scenes from the Saengerkrieg, Martin Luther throwing the ink bottle at the devil, and the ancient Germans who rolled a big fire wheel through the city, that would have been a lot more dangerous if the fire wasn't out of crepe paper. The whole city was also decked out with hand made crepe paper flowers to celebrate the start of spring.

And so far, it seems like it worked! Today has been lovely. I don't mind the occasional rain shower because it melts the snow, and it got up to aorund 70 degrees for the first time since, oh, late october. I am in such a better mood. Which makes me a little sad that I have less than 100 days in Germany now. And am really on my last third of the year here. Now that the weather is nice, it makes it easier to want to stay. But I am looking forward to being home, too.

Hope you all are enjoying some spring weather, and find the time to drop me a line.