Small Statue, Big Stream

Crowds around the Manneken Pis

One of the not-to-be-missed sights of Brussels is a small statue on an unremarkable corner several blocks away from the lovely historic square.  His name is Manneken Pis and he’s a small, naked, bronze boy peeing into a fountain.  I’m not entirely sure why this attracts so terribly much attention, as Europe is full of naked statues of all descriptions, but supposedly it captures the irreverent joy de vivre of the Belgian people, a trait of which they seem justifiably proud.  I bet you didn’t know, for example, that the Smurfs were originally Belgian.

"But I just had to go, Officer!"

So the little peeing boy attracts a crowd of tourists at all hours of the day and night, as you can see in the picture.  It’s tradition that he gets dressed up in costumes donated by different countries or groups.  The day I was there, he was wearing military garb to commemorate the anniversary of some Belgian corps.  In the shop across the way, you can see what he looks like unclothed, and buy any number of versions to take home with you.  A particularly popular one features a corkscrew extending off the front.

Take home your very own Belgian Peeing Boy

The current statue is almost 400 years old, replacing an even older stone version.  There are an abundance of legends explaining it, all of which seem entirely improbable to me (a two-year-old saved the city by dousing a canon fuse with his pee?).  Anyway, it gives the tourists in Brussels something to do, and the merchants something to sell, and a museum a collection of costumes to take care of.

In the spirit of fairness, since 1987 there has been a small naked peeing girl statue, Jeanneke Pis, several hundred meters away, which the tour guide took us to see on Sunday morning, but she doesn’t get nearly the attention.  Maybe she prefers it that way.

Or you can have him in chocolate, if you prefer

 

Only in Belgium?

On the table next to the bed in my hotel room in Brussels. The room smelled the way you might expect a room with an ashtray to smell. But other than that, I had a good weekend and will post more pictures soon. Incidentally, the two official languages of Belgium are French and Flemish. What does it say that the no smoking sign is in English and German?

 

I’ve got a ticket to ride (to Brussels)

With ads like these posted everywhere, how could I not?  Thalys, the high-speed Belgian train system, sped up their routes recently and has been running a huge campaign to advertise the fact.  Everywhere I turn in Aachen, I’m reminded that I’m only an hour from Brussels and 2.5 hours from Paris.  So today instead of going home I’m off for a weekend in Brussels.  They’ve got a couple of really good art museums, and the Atomium, which I’m fantastically excited about, and I guess I’ll get there and see what else.  Despite the advertising, I’m not actually taking a Thalys train.  You have to book way in advance to get the low rates, and I didn’t make these plans until last weekend, so I’m actually taking an ICE high-speed German train, which takes 1 hour and 11 minutes to get to Brussels, but I think I can live with the extra three minutes.  I’ll be back Sunday evening with lots of pictures!

 

So very, very dangerous

If you don’t read German, I’ll tell you that the big letters on this sign spell out Factory Sales.  I trust I don’t have to translate the Lindt part.

Last night I met Lance and Anne for dinner.  Lance and I started our PhDs at Northwestern together, and he started a postdoc in Aachen just about the same time I moved  to Cologne, but this is the first time we’ve actually gotten together in Germany.  They took me to a traditional German place in a tiny little medieval building near the cathedral.  The food was good and it was very atmospheric.  Besides swapping European travel stories, we got talking about things to do in Aachen and the Lindt factory outlet came up.

I should mention here that I’m not actually a big chocolate person.  I certainly don’t dislike it, but given my druthers, I would generally take gummy bears, or a cookie, or a Snickers bar over solid chocolate.  Maybe this is why I’ve been in Aachen for almost three weeks and didn’t get to the Lindt store until today, even though I’ve known about it since last summer.  I knew it was somewhere near my office, but after last night’s conversation, I looked it up and realized that it was only a five minute walk straight up the road.

So that’s where I went after work today.  It really is attached to the factory, and has all the astonishing deals that you expect to find in an outlet and so rarely do these days (ahem, Haribo store in Bonn).  They have factory seconds and overstock and stuff that’s nearing the expiration date and seasonal products for past seasons.  There was a little bit of Christmas stuff left that had been marked way, way down to make room for the Easter stuff that looked like it would be arriving any moment.  I had a very, very hard time walking away from two big chocolate Santas and a reindeer for only 1 Euro, but I decided bringing Christmas chocolate to my friends that I’ll see in Seattle in a couple weeks was just a little too tacky.  I did pay 50 cents for a hanging metal ball filled with some kind of Christmas chocolates, originally labeled as 4.90 Euro.  I also managed to walk away from a five-pack of bars with raspberry quark filling in the most charming green and white wrappers, but it was brutal.

In the end, I spent 15 Euros and came home with twelve full sized chocolate bars, a package of hot chocolate mix, and a couple Christmas baubles.  For kicks, I added up all the retail prices marked on the packages, and it came to 39.40.  What a bargain!  And no, I am not going to eat it all myself.  Just most of it.  And really, I need to eat it if I’m going to go back and buy more.  Now, the only question is, tonight do I start with milk chocolate with pistachios in a lemon mousse filling refined with saffron,  or one filled with pecans in a mascarpone creme and a touch of sea salt?

 

Katharinenkirmes, Stadt Blankenberg

These are some pictures from November that I set aside for the blog and then never got around to posting.  Markus, Karen and I went to Stadt Blankenberg one Saturday afternoon to see their medieval market.  The current incarnation of the market is less than ten years old, but the roots date back to 1248, when the archbishop granted the local Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria permission to hold a Kirmes (fair) during this period.  The church, incidentally, is still there, although it had to be rebuilt after burning to the ground in 1983.  According to the publicity, this is the oldest market in Germany.  It is also the only thing allowed to be open in Germany on the last Sunday before Advent, which is a religious holiday, but the market predates the holiday, and so gets to stay.  The market itself was basically a smaller version of the one I went to with Sharon and Stefan last spring, but the setting in the old town made it worthwhile.  We actually ran into Stefan, who was in costume collecting fees at the back entrance.  For the first time possibly in the event’s 761 year history, the weather was fantastic, so Markus and Karen and I walked through the country outside the city walls, enjoying one of the last mild days of the fall.  We saw goats, and a beautiful sunset, and a lot of old apple trees with mistletoe growing in them.  I had no idea mistletoe was a parasite.  Cool!  And a little creepy…  Imagine if something like that affected people…

Medieval Dancing

Cool door

City walls

Sieg Valley at sunset, and an apple tree with clumps of mistletoe

Watching the sunset

 

So much cuteness!

I got to meet Peidong and Zhenglei’s new baby this afternoon.  She’s so beautiful, and it was great to see my friends again too.  Jiahe was very obliging, and slept quietly in my arms the entire time I was there, so I was able to catch up nicely with her parents.  Peidong just sent me this photo.  If only they weren’t moving to the other side of the city next month!

Amber and Jiahe - one week old

 

Wacky German News Stories: Frostbite Edition

Man torches car battling frost

Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:40pm EST

BERLIN (Reuters) – A 76-year-old German man trying to thaw out his car incinerated it instead when he decided to speed things up by putting a blow heater under the hood.

“He burned the vehicle out completely,” said a spokesman for police in the western city of Hildesheim. Police said the man left the heater on next to the frozen windshield washer tank and returned indoors. Shortly afterwards he heard two explosions and returned to find the car ablaze.

He alerted fire services, who arrived in time to prevent the flames from destroying his house. Including charring of the building, total damages were estimated at 40,000 euros ($56,240).

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Steve Addison)

Link to original article here.

 

In Which Amber learns a new German expression, and gives directions again

I learned a new expression in German today.  It was the result of my getting kind of dissed in a meeting this morning, but since they were conducting the meeting in German, I didn’t realize why my name had come up and had to piece it together from the apology I got afterwards and the indignation of my boss.  Anyway, it didn’t have anything to do with me personally, so I’m not offended even in retrospect.  And it gave Ulrike a chance to say that she needed to go pluck a chicken with the offending party.  Apparently the German version of “I have a bone to pick with her,” is “Ich muss mit ihr ein Hünchen rupfen.”  I must pluck a chicken with her.  How awesome is that.  Although really, having a bone to pick?  What does that even mean?

Also, in light of yesterday’s post, I have a story from my train ride home tonight.  I got on the S-Bahn in at the main train station in Cologne and sat down across from a wood nymph with ivy in her hair, green tights, and a green, star-shaped wand sticking out of her purse.  (Karneval culminates in two weeks, and the parties are in full swing.)  The nymph asked me if the train was going to be stopping at Deutz.  “Deutz?”  I asked, uncertain if I’d heard her correctly.  She nodded.  Yes, I said.  It’s been awhile since I’ve gone this way, she said.  I nodded knowingly and thought about telling her that it was “die nexte Station” but instead just turned on my iPod.  I’m still getting used to this being helpful thing.  Maybe next time I will volunteer more information.

One final news item:  I encountered a ticket inspector for the first time ever on the very short bus ride from the Porz-Wahn train station to my apartment.  Turns out my train ticket from Aachen is good on the bus as well.  I was never sure about that.   Good to know.  Good to know.

 

In Which Amber Finally Gives Directions

I could also have titled this post “Five Beds in Two Weeks” which is what tonight brings the total up to.  It’s hard to believe that two weeks ago I was in Chicago with Joe and Barley.  Since then, I’ve spent a few nights in my apartment in Cologne, and and the rest spread between three different apartments here in Aachen.  After the one last week in the Bahnhofsviertel, I moved to a place in the Frankenberger Viertel, so named because of Burg Frankenberg, the ruins of a castle in the little park nearby.  This time I got a street both lovely and historic, lined with stately old town homes, although the other place was bigger, slightly closer to work, had a TV that I could figure out, and carpeted, so in the end it was rather a wash.  Tonight I moved into an apartment in the university guest house, which I have until the end of February.  This place is very sterile and echo-y, with no rug, carpet, TV, radio, oven, toaster, microwave, or internet cord (I went back to my office and stole the one off my desk because I couldn’t stand the thought of a night here alone, and anyway Joe was expecting me for a Skype date).  I kind of miss the little ceramic angel in the ash try at the last place (the room wasn’t actually smoky or I wouldn’t be saying that).

But back to the minor triumph of my day.  On my way to the bus this morning, I stopped in the little park to look at the castle.  As I was turning to go, a man on a cell phone in a car rolled down his window and motioned for me to come over.  Cue sinking feeling in stomach.  Even if I were to understand his question, I don’t know where anything is in this city.  Can you tell me, he asks, where is Bismark Street?  Wait a minute!  That sounds vaguely familiar.  The place where I had been staying was on Bismark Street!  And… looking around, to verify that there was the apartment, just over there across the intersection…  In a complete but inelegant German sentence, I inform him that this street right here is the Bismarkstraße.    My first time helping a German with directions, and it was to inform him that he was already on the street he was looking for.  I didn’t say it with a lot of conviction, and I’m not sure he believed me, but he thanked me and drove off,  leaving me to walk to the bus stop celebrating the small victories in life.

 

TMS, MSE, and Me

The professional organization that I belong to is called The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, or TMS.  They’re having a contest where they asked members to put together short videos on what the organization means to them.  They’ll be played, and the winners announced at the 2010 annual meeting in Seattle.  The first prize is $2010.  I put together an entry, with help from my friend Markus, who is also going to be at the meeting.  There are nine entries total, and they are all posted on YouTube.  You can find mine by following the link below.  Part of the judging is going to be based on the number of views, ratings and comments that the entries get before February 1st.  So please watch my video!  You can see what I do at DLR, and maybe help finance Joe’s trip to Europe in May.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75AqjDZh9Uk