German Bayram

One of the most important Turkish holidays 'celebrates' the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son.  People sacrifice goats and sheep and eat and visit family and shops are closed and things shut down, so in general it is a good time to get out of town.  I went to Germany to visit Alette and her family.  It was great!

On Thursday I went with Alette to her school, a public, German, 5-12th grade school.  It was weird to see such a wide range of ages in the halls.  Students take chemistry a few hours a week starting in the 8th grade. If they are science track kids they take more hours, but it is still a spiral plan where students discover the material at different levels.  I got to see an 11th grade class of non-science track kids (physics refugees as Alette calls them) working on the structure of glucose and a 12th grade class also looking at biomolecules.  They spend a lot more time doing organic chemistry than I am used to, but the kids learn the stuff more deeply for working it out on their own.

Alette's classroom and lab.  You can see the swing down gas and electricity from the ceiling which turns the classroom into a lab. 

 I also got to go to an 8th grade English class.  The teacher gave the students 10 minutes to think up questions for me while he showed me the textbook they are using.  They were in a unit on America and had read about the Grand Canyon and New York City.  They asked all of the usual questions, where I live, what I do, if I like Germany.  They asked if I spoke German, I replied 'nine' which confused them, but then they laughed.  Then I said I was trying to learn Turkish, and since languages were hard for me, one language at a time was all I could manage.  There was a Turkish student in the class, so I said 'gunaydin' to him and we moved on.  One student was quite persistent in trying to find out how old I am.  I told her the same thing I tell my chemistry students, I have as many years as strontium has protons.  They have just started taking chemistry so I knew she would have the resources to figure it out if she wanted to pursue it.  They asked if I had been to the Grand Canyon, which I have not, and to New York which I have.  They asked if I had been to a deli in NY and I said I had and that my favorite thing to get at a deli is a bagel with cream cheese.  Of course I said this because that is what their textbook says you can get at a New York deli.  I could tell they were delighted to find out that their textbook wasn't lying to them.  I'll leave that realization for someone else to uncover in a few more years.  Overall they were very respectful and interested, their English was very good and I had a good time talking with them.

Alette was meeting with some students after school who were preparing for a chemistry competition so I hung out in the prep room, studying my German periodic table and checking email on the school computer.  I was surprised to find that the y and the z were switched on the German keyboard.  I guess they don't use the y so much and have exiled it to the corner.  English must get its ys from French instead of German...

It was very interesting to get to see a German school and have the opportunity to talk with Alette about the German school system.  Her school has students from 5th grade to 12th grade on the same campus and it was weird to see such a range of ages together.  They teach many subjects at the same time using a spiral curriculum.  For instance, students start taking 2 hours a week of chemistry in 8th grade and will take at least 2 hours a week for the next 5 years.  If they are science track students that number will increase in 11th and 12th grades, but by the time they finish, they have had 10 hours total, more chemistry than an American student would have even if you count 8th grade physical science as chemistry, unless the student takes AP chemistry.  They have a much stronger emphasis on organic chemistry, where in America we focus on physical chemistry. They also have a discovery style where the information is not presented, but uncovered by the students.  The pace seems very slow to me, but I guess the students learn the material very well.  They  must be very efficient since they finish school before lunch almost every day.  I asked Alette what the students do in the afternoon. She said they have music, sports, jobs, homework, all the regular things, but perhaps they are more relaxed about these things.

After school we went for a quick walking tour of Stuttgart's historic old town center.  It was very nice and the weather was perfect.

Kaiser Maximillain II - savior of Stutgart

Alette doesn't teach on Friday, so we got to be home when Niels' 2nd grade class came by.  His teacher takes the whole class on a walk around the town to see where everyone lives and get a sense of where things are in the town.  It seems like a really cool idea.  If a kid needs help, he knows where some friendly houses are and if he wants a play date, he knows where to go.  Both Niels and Debora walk to and from school which I think is really cool and I asked Alette about it.  She says all the kids do it and they learn independence very early.  She doesn't think the streets are any less dangerous than they are in California, except that there are more folks out walking.  Kids are taught what to do if a stranger approaches them.

Niels' 2nd grade class and Mr. Mole

Kids start learning English in elementary school, but it starts out pretty basic.  Alette told me they knew the Mr. Mole song and she asked the teacher to have them sing it to me while they were eating their cup cakes and drinking their apfelschooler.  I have found a video of it and posted it below, but in case you want to sing along, here are the lyrics:

I am not a rat or a cat on a mat.

I am not a hare or a bear in a lair.

I am not a dog or a frog on a log.

I am Mr. Mole and I live in a hole.  

After the kids left and we cleaned up, we went grocery shopping.  It was weird to go to Real, a store I know in Turkey, but in Germany.  The Christmas decorations were right next to the Halloween candy and there was a huge pork sausage section.  It made me wonder if I could work in Germany...I bought several pork products and candy items that I can't find in Istanbul and of course salt and vinegar potato chips.  Besides these treasures, my favorite part was the bottle return machine.  Many glass bottles have a deposit on them and you can get credit for returning them by feeding them through this machine and it tallies up your returns and gives you a receipt that you take up to the register when you check out which counts against your total.

The bottle return machine at the Real in Wanweill

When the Debora got home we picked Soren up from preschool and Neils up from piano lesson, we went to the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart.  It was a good day to be inside a museum as it was getting colder and cloudier and it was a really good museum.

Mercedes-Benz Museum

The museum was an instant hit with Soren when he found the horse on a skateboard.  

We started by taking the elevator to the top of the museum with our audio guides and we worked our way down the museum and forward in time.  Everything was very nicely laid out and signed.  I was impressed with the collection of vehicles (original, restored, or replicated) but I guess one should expect high quality from a Mercedes-Benz museum.

A 1885 Daimler, the first motorcycle, 8mph maximum

1899 Benz Dos-a-Dos, powered by the contra engine, the first opposed piston engine, 22mph max

There were many interesting fact presented at the museum, but one that struck my fancy was that before the infrastructure of gas stations was established, motorists would get the their fuel from the chemist (pharmacy) in each town they visited.  This was back when pharmacists did actual chemistry and presumably had the hydrocarbons on hand as solvents.  I wonder if they had to order extra...I does draw attention to the parallels now regarding the lack of infrastructure for electric or plug in hybrid cars or hydrogen fuel cell cars. If you build the cars, the infrastructure will come, but it might start out very slowly.

The first car with the brand name Mercedes.  Emil Jellinek, a cusomer of Daimler and then a car salesman, pressured Daimler to build an car with an especially powerful engine and name it after his daugther, Mercedes. 1898  

The Mercedes.

I was also impressed with the forthrightness with which the museum addressed its involvement with the Nazis and WWII as shown in the following panels.

We got home in time for a light dinner and to make plans for Saturday.  Snow was on the forecast and the question was if we should still go to Strasbourg, France, as planned.  If we got all the way there and it was slushy it could be quite miserable, on the other hand, anywhere we went would be the same, so why not take the chance.  This brings up the question of why my friends who live in Europe are so eager to leave their countries when I visit them.  I went to the Netherlands to visit Steven and Kim and they immediately take me to Germany, not once but twice in two days.  I go to Germany to visit Alette and her family takes me to France.  It turned out well in both cases, I just don't know if all Europeans secretly believe that the next country over is better, or if I am just an excuse to visit somewhere just a little farther away that they wouldn't take themselves to on their own.

We drove about 2 hours to Strasbourg and went directly to the Notre-Dame Cathedral.  Unfortunately we got there during the astronomical clock demonstration and video, so we missed that, but the building was still spectacular.  It did call to mind some comparisons to all the mosques I have been seeing since I have lived in Turkey.  The most striking features are more similar than disparate.  Both tend to be very large, old, stone buildings.  The are oriented with specific directions in mind and they have fancy doors.  Two of the most obvious differences are the lack of face/body depictions in mosques and the availability of seating in a church.  An interesting contrast is that in order to show respect in a church, one uncovers their head, but the exact opposite in a mosque.  Odd that the same god should have such different preferences.

One of the entrances to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg, France.

The requisite organ picture for my Tims.

After visiting the inside of the church we climbed up seemingly endless steps to the platform on top of it.  From there we had a fairly spectacular view of the town even though the day was pretty crummy.  I am not sure you can tell from this picture, but there was a clear divide between the old part of town and the more modern part.

The view from the platform on top of the cathedral.

After the cathedral we went to have lunch.  Flammekuche or tarte flambee is a specialty of the Alsace region and a favorite of Mathais.  The guide book describes it as a 'Fine pastry, a blend of fresh cream and fromage blanc, finely sliced onions, bacon cubes, all cooked in a very hot wood fired oven.'  The six of us ate six of them, and since three of us were rather small, I think the adults may have had to shoulder a greater burden.  It is a good thing they were delicious.

Flammekuche or tarte flambee is a specialty of the Alsace region

After lunch we took a city tour by canal boat.  We each had our own audio guide and there were even special kid friendly ones in several languages.  The snow was melting on the glass of the boat, so pictures from it didn't turn out that well and of course there was too much information that I don't remember any of it, but it was a good tour and well worth it.  

It was easier to see out of the boat than this picture suggests, but pictures didn't come out well. 

After the tour, we revisited our favorite sites on foot.  Here is the family waiting to watch the next tour boat go through the locks.  Please note the really cool head sock that Debora and Neils are wearing. 

This is a view of the Petite France area of town taken from one of the many bridges that cross the canals.  

No trip to France would be complete without croissants and we picked some up for a late dinner when we returned home.

On Sunday we woke up to about 10cm of snow on the ground.  It had snowed on Saturday and more during the night.  This was an unusually early snow and there were warnings on the radio suggesting that people avoid the woods because since the leaves were still on the trees, they were holding on to more snow, and therefore were heavier than they would be with the same level of snow fall later in the year.  It was partly this and partly my love of chocolate factories that helped me decide on the city tour rather than the nature tour for Sunday's itinerary.  The snow over the beautiful fall colors was a sight I had never seen before and was quite stunning.  The roads were all clear and we had no problems traveling between cities.

The fall colors under the frosting of snow make for a spectacular view.  

Our first stop was the Ritter-Sport factory in Waldenbuch.  I had always assumed that Ritter and Sport were two different people who teamed up to make chocolate, but you know that assume means.  Ritter was a guy who liked chocolate before it was popular and set out to change that.  His major inovation was to change the shape of the bar.  Long skinny bars break in gentlemen's pockets when they are going to or doing sporty things and everyone knows that a broken chocolate bar is just no good.  Ritter worked out that using the same amount of chocolate, but putting it in a square shape, would allow sports men to have their chocolate unbroken until the fateful moment when they broke it on purpose.  So the Sport part of Ritter-Sport refers to the shape.  It seemed to me that they pretty much had squares on the brain as you can see in the picture of the head quarters building.  They even had an entire art gallery devoted to pictures of squares (we didn't go in).

The headquarters and factory for the Ritter Sport chocolate company.

During the war, chocolate was hard to come by, so they turned to different sweets like Fondant-Praline shown on the left.  They also worked out how to make filled chocolate to stretch the chocolate they had farther.  

The company has a good relationship with the cocoa farmers and has improved working conditions for them.  They had a very good video and Alette arranged for the English version of it to be shown between regular movie show times just for me.  The best part of the museum was the gift shop and like the Jelly Belly factory, they have their own equivalent of the 'belly flop' chocolate that are perfectly fine for eating, but are missing something (like they didn't fill completely) or were miss labeled or were otherwise not for retail sale.  I think I walked out of there with 4 kilos of chocolate, including a meter of minis, which I wish had more variety, but the concept is still very cool.

Artsy shot on our way to the next stop on the tour.  

After lunch at the factory we went to a Hundretwasser house in Plochingen. I had seen other things by this guy in Vienna and I appreciate public art with a sense of humor and I like colorful houses and outside decorations so it was a good stop.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser

Hundretwasser the architect, designed this apartment building in southwest Germany.

Our last major stop for the day was the town of Esslingen, which has more of the typical half timbered architecture and quaint streets and buildings.  We got there just in time to hear the glockenspiel play at 3pm, which was cool.  We walked around the town and through the church and then up to the fortress above the town which was interesting because we climbed another seemingly endless stair case which was built into the wall of the fort and in one straight line, so you could see how far you had come and how much farther you needed to go.

The old part of town, Esslingen, Germany

Public art. (-:

The view of the town from the top of the fortress.

From there we dropped Alette off at the train station to go to a conference and then I was dropped off at the airport for an evening flight back to istanbul.  It was a lovely trip, with many components and just the right amount of seeing, doing and being.  If I keep up the pattern and visit again in 4 years, Debora will be a teenager, Niels will be in middle school and Soren will be 9.  Crazy.  I am very grateful to have friends all over the world who open their houses and their lives for me to invade for a few days.