Other European Pleasures:

Please believe me when I say I don’t generally practice or enjoy food photography (obvious exception: food blog/cookbook genres). I might even go so far as to say I generally dislike it pretty seriously—like a taunting postcard: “Hey! Look how great life is in the food-burgeoning first-world!! Catch ya later!”

That said, I did a little food photography.

Two things that seem to me to dominate the confectionery scene of Heidelberg are (obviously) chocolate and (perhaps obviously? It seems like a Thing here) gummies, the latter of which contains an important subculture I want to write about because I think it’s the best: licorice. Or, auf Deutsch, Lakritz. But only black licorice is really interesting because it totally divides the room and, in my experience, most Americans don’t like it. We have Twizzlers, sure, but I don’t think they even sell salted licorice in the States, and probably because it is so weird. Weirdly awesome!!!

While regarding the unpopularity of licorice, it quickly comes to mind, too, that its sinister associative web has been massively expanding ever since the advent of Candy Land’s 1980s edition, in which the villain, Lord Licorice, is named after and, of course, made of it. While doing my homework on the subject of Candy Land, I came across a few other facts (Wikipedia, naturally) that have brought me up to date:

“Before the 2004 version, there were colored spaces marked with a dot. A player who lands on such a space is stuck (all cards drawn are ignored) until a card is drawn of the same color as the square. In the 2004 version, dot spaces were replaced with licorice spaces that prompt the player landing on it to simply lose his or her next turn.”

(In my search for Lord Licorice’s picture, I came to someone else’s blog in which 2 different writers (a poster and then a commenter) confess to having had crushes on Lord Licorice. Funny—I thought about this and the only desire I remember experiencing in relation to the characters of Candy Land was the desire to be Princess Lolly, but considering the patently Freudian schematics of the game, this is perhaps just as creepy, amounts to exactly the same thing.)

So this is all pretty compelling, right. People totally hate it, it’s got a bad U.S. rep. The original intention of this posting was to write about this general disagreeability of licorice, to share my positive experience with it and its European-approved pleasures, post some pictures, and to redeem licorice from the sad, albeit small, pile of American Confectionery Rejects.

But unfortunately that cannot be the case. After having eaten nearly all the licorice you see pictured here, plus more in my zeal to taste (probieren) and experience a wide variety to photograph and recommend to you, I found out, in my untimely research, that licorice is poisonous.

Kind of. While it should also be noted that licorice claims a handful of health benefits, particularly within traditional Chinese medicine and herbalism, it seems that its excessive consumption (that includes the candy, and certainly describes its presence in my diet the past 3 weeks) is toxic to the liver and the cardiovascular system, and may produce hypertension and “oedema.” Wiki: The European Commission 2008 report suggested that “people should not consume any more than 100mg of glycyrrhizic acid a day, for it can raise blood pressure or cause muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, headaches or swelling, and lower testosterone levels in men.” Hmm. Whoops—apparently Haribo has an advisory with regard to moderation as well, but I suppose it’s entirely possible that my limited knowledge of the German language could have obscured that information.

So none of this really explains the popularity of licorice in Europe, and I’m unable to be its advocate and champion after all. We still have the vilified herbaceous member of the Plant Kingdom (Helichrysum Petiolare) and its unlikable translation into the world of (U.S.) confectioneries, as well as its subsequent personification as the would-be-ejected, swarthy, anarchistic outsider of the resplendent Candy Land. This is sort of cool, actually, because that might make Candy Land the most widely proliferated contemporary fable. For if your experience is the same as mine and your palate has failed to sense danger in its peculiar flavor, your DNA may be working its way out of the gene pool. And/or Candy Land functions as a grim and practical warning of what the Wikipedia describes here: “Comparative studies of pregnant women suggest that liquorice can also adversely affect both IQ and behaviour traits of offspring.”

Off topic but FYI—in the 2002 revision of Candy Land the character Plumpy was removed entirely. What is going on??

Unfinished Business in Weimar: a Tourist's Guilt

The University of Heidelberg international exchange program that sponsored the first Tour Bus Ride of my life has since sponsored my second—this past weekend we went to Weimar and it occurred to me to lie about how it went. Something like, “Weimar?! Are you kidding?? It’s was so amazing, I mean there’s so much art and history there, how could I have gone and *not* have had the most enriching experience of my life??”

But to be honest, the day began badly the night before we left. We were out with a friend who was also going on the trip, and we came to the belated realization that the buses leaving the Studentenwohnheim (where we live) for downtown (where the tour bus would depart) didn’t start running early enough on a Saturday to get us there on time. Another round of drinks became a subject for debate—it was only a little after midnight, but the bus was leaving at 6a.m. after all—and we laughed and laughed at the hilarity of making willfully bad decisions; said oh why not!!

…A few hours later, with still-in-the-making, vague-like headaches, we got up and walked to downtown from our place, setting out at 5:15 a.m. into the unanticipated steady rain of October; of incredibly poor planning, of increasing regret.

It’s useful to look at a map to know exactly how ridiculous this “day trip” was, but it might suffice to say that the bus ride took 4 hours, each way. We arrived a bit after 10am and went to the Stadt Kirche first. It is the site of Johann Herder's grave and a pretty cool church in baroque style. Then we traipsed around a little bit after a tour guide rendered inaudible by the rain; we broke away from the group for a coffee here (in the rain), a sandwich there (rain, headache), and finally decided to leave behind the embarrassment of traveling with a pack of 40-something students and go our own way.

Opting to see the Goethe house first, we got lost twice trying to get there. When we finally arrived to purchase tickets, they were time-stamped, would not admit us until an hour later. So during that hour we bought impractically big and non-collapsible umbrellas with hooked handles and, again, coffee (rain/headache).

Once we made it inside, the Goethe house was quite cool. Several weeks ago when I was in California visiting my parents, I read an article about an old European tradition, which was to place a used shoe under the floorboards of a house (preferably near the doorway or under a window) as it was being built. It was believed that as the likeness of the person’s foot was retained by the shoe, so was their spirit, which could ward off any evil spirits that might try to enter the house. This occurred to me at Goethe’s house, seeing all the things he used each day—in particular, of course, his books. There is something really awesome and hard to explain about seeing the stuff of someone’s life, which is, well, not quite so basely ordinary as my own (headache, coffee, hooked umbrella), but some approximation of what a person is, rather than a larger-than-life, literary-plus-everything-else figure. It just seems so funny that he slept in such a little bed. A twin size! Cute. (I wish I had pictures here but cameras weren’t allowed in the museum. The above is a picture of the map pamphlet they gave me at the door.)

After finishing at the Goethe house we were extremely pressed for time. The tour bus was leaving at 5 p.m.! This should definitely have instilled some kind of urgency—and it did! But we were hungry. So we stopped for a quick pizza, which was really tasty, and we wondered what to do with our estimated remaining 1.25 hours, pizza time subtracted. What to do with our wet clothes on the bus, what time would we get back? What would we do the next day? Owning a German Sheppard—nationalism, or not? How much of this town is real, how much reproduction? How inconvenient are cobble stones when you’re in a hurry? Do we even like this? Etc.

Our original plan had been to go to the Bauhaus for most of the day, but with so little time remaining it seemed less than worthwhile to try. So after pizza, we went to the Stadt museum instead—it turned out, of course, to have already closed. Then, frustrated, we photographed anything we could see of interest on our walk back to the bus—relatively a lot, but it wasn’t really how we had imagined our site-seeing.

So Weimar was, in short, a bust. Or at length, a confluence of things, like a bus full of tourists trying to take a day trip to a far-off city, incredibly bad weather, my quotidian and constant need for food and caffeine, an utter lack of navigational skills, my insane failure to exercise a little carpe diem. We had a total of 6 and a half hours to spend in a city that not only contains Goethe’s house but Schiller’s, too, as well as the Bauhaus, Rathaus, a Schloss, the Schloss museum, the State museum, a museum of ancient and early history, the Neuer art museum, the Nietzsche archives, etc. etc.

The reason I’m choosing to write this post is mainly because Tourist Guilt is something I often feel—that I should be seeing and doing more, that I’m wasting the opportunity to experience something important, that I haven’t properly prepared for the trip or fortified myself with historical fact, etc. Anyway I’m sharing this really for no other purpose than to admit it: I have traveled as idiot and I apologize to history.

But also I think the magnitude and preciousness of History and Art is way too much. It’s impossibly serious and while I, too, enjoy and consider important History and Art, I’ll go ahead and say that, under frantic constraints of time, the pair becomes a compulsory drag. Weirdly it’s the same way I feel sometimes about Nature. Overwhelmed by having to express constant awe and fixation, trying to rush to a summit—! But anyway, this brings me to extolling and coveting, on behalf of all Americans, the German Urlaub, an annual, mandatory-for-all, 6 weeks paid vacation. That would fix some of this problem, no?? And I’m also reminded that I’m not just passing through, which is lucky and great! I’m staying through at least February, and (much better) plans for our return trip to Weimar are in the making.

Chutes and Ladders, Back to Undergrad:

Today was my first day of class at Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet (a.k.a. University of Heidelberg) at the Max Weber Haus, which is where all the international students are annexed until their German improves. It’s actually really great—nice building, small classes, and a very cool instructor. Monday through Friday I have class beginning at 9am, and it somehow feels impossibly early. We have a short pause (pronounced pow-sah) at 10:30—everyone else smokes a cigarette and I make a break for the nearest doppio macchiato—and finish at 12:30pm. It’s quite intense, but it’s actually nice to have the imposition of rigor and someplace I really must be each day (yesterday I signed a mandatory contract that states I will attend all classes, and if not I have to email to tell the instructor exactly why; if I’m sick more than 3 days I need a doctor’s note…or else…). Admittedly the whole being treated like adjudicated youth thing is a little claustrophobic-making—there are so many places I’d like to travel and I’ve got a passport and a brand new Deutsche Bahn card that I’m dying to use. But considering how much money I would have spent for a similar class in the U.S. that I could easily skip as often as I’d like ($3,600), I think I can tough it out and get good at German on Max Weber’s terms.

I will say, though, taking this class has me feeling like undergrad was a lifetime ago, has me feeling a little old. And today it was actually a little closer to sheer embarrassment by my age, an intense desire to conceal it; I hadn’t experienced this before in my lifetime and it sort of sucked. I expect this is a milestone of some kind. But anyway here’s the anecdote:

During class we were paired up with a partner to interview him/her—ask questions about his/her life, accumulate data, relay to class in broken German. I interviewed a very nice guy from Tunisia who is in Germany to study engineering. We talked for several minutes and covered significant ground—he apparently has a lot of pets (a number of cats, a dog, a bird, a fish) and enjoys fussball spielen and listening to haus musik. Then it occurs to me I have no idea how old this person is…between 22 and 32? Who knows. He tells me he’s 18, then asks how old I am. I sheepishly admit to being an extremely late language bloomer at the age of 24, and uneasily register the confusion and embarrassment on his face.

"You’re 24?? Eine frau! Bist du married??"

"haha, uhh. No. No I’m not."

Exceptionally long awkward silence. Even by my standards.

Can I get another pow-sah, please? I think I'll have one of those cigarettes after all.

Apartment Tourism:

This post is mainly for my parents, who were curious about taking a Skype tour of the apartment but couldn’t get their video function to work :)

Other than the photographic lie of tidy living (I cleaned for about an hour before the apartment photo session; I am a slob.), the pictures pretty much speak for themselves—in particular those (much anticipated, yes??) of the bathroom (where no amount of cleaning helps). The place isn’t so bad otherwise, though, even if it’s small and “L” shaped. It came fully furnished, so the occupant’s task seems obvious: cover up the many, many hideous white surfaces as fast as possible, and use lots of color. This is part of my anti-(eventual) Seasonal Affective Disorder campaign—supplemented by some vitamin D3 tablets my dad gave me before I left. It may seem a little premature since, as you can see in the other pictures, the weather in Heidelberg has been really great. But I'm not about to be hoodwinked by a little Indian summer; I've watched enough German World War II movies (for e.g. Brecht’s Mother Courage) for it to seem perfectly reasonable to expect about the worst weather planet Earth has to offer. Living in Seattle for undergraduate, I realized about 3 years too late that I should probably have had some plan of action against the rain/darkness in any of the numerous apartments I inhabited—like buying a bed frame or at least a box spring, saying “no” to a gray duvet, replacing my brown metal folding “desk chair,” etc. So anyway, all that’s to explain the aesthetic going on here, including the sort of awful, sort of awesome, but definitely shimmery green curtains.

And, the very last picture is of the view out our window--12th floor looking out at a low mountain and a construction zone.

Sculpture > personal (art/history) + Heidelberg

When I was planning my trip to Europe with my sister last year, I asked a professor of mine from UC Davis what he recommended I see while in Paris. He gave some great suggestions, including a Moroccan restaurant that makes amazing couscous, a bakery that makes amazing pastry, and a number of must-see paintings that, unfortunately, I didn’t see, lost as I was in the Louvre. Next time, maybe? Anyway this same professor, teaching a class on Realism (poetry/painting) made a really memorable joke about sculpture, that it’s "the thing you accidentally back up into while you’re trying to look at a great painting." Haha…and in the Louvre painting galleries, I saw what he meant and could more or less agree. But the thing that left the greatest impression on me last year in the Louvre was actually the Venus de Milo—another excessively reproduced yet completely awesome-in-person surprise of the trip. Seeing it, I really experienced the inexpressible art thing about it, maybe even something like its aura.

But actually I’ve always liked sculpture a lot and even dabble with it (albeit very inexpertly) from time to time. So when I came across a really strange sculpture garden near the footbridge over the Neckar on the path going into town, it almost immediately became my favorite thing in Heidelberg. It’s got a cool, post-industrial, rummaged-parts aesthetic that’s a little bit eerie and dystopian, like Things Built with Remains of Abandoned Civilization as genre. Tall grass has grown into an old shopping cart and around the base of "Fantasie UFO 2," and ivy between the wheel spokes of old bike tires; various plants and scrap metal fill a keeled-over phone booth. I also really appreciate how the cranes from a nearby construction site hang in the air over the sculptures—the city in process and constant rebuilding gives funny context to the appropriated, anthropomorphized junk used in the sculpture garden. It is so great!

On a nice day I brought my camera on a run and took some pictures: