one mystery solved...

Well, we're slowly getting settled into the new apartment. I unpacked most of our clothes today and Trey cut up the many cardboard boxes so we can trickle them out to the recycle bin. Things look neater with that stuff gone, but also more empty. There are a number of lights we can't figure out how to turn on- our landlord apparently really loves motion activated lights, so maybe that is making it non-obvious. Trey also discovered why I've been seeing the downstairs neighbors loading up their van with giant flats of eggs and various people coming and going from their apartment with egg cartons. We'd been trying to guess where they were hiding their chickens- in the house? some underground chicken bunker? Turns out the wife's sister has a farm outside of town but brings the eggs here to be sold.

In other news, our village decided to hold a small street festival for our arrival. Okay, it was actually for May Day.

We've been enjoying having a real kitchen again, though our box with silverware WAS the one that didn't make it. Tragically it also contained our mixing bowls, kitchen knives, Joy of Cooking book, and a much cherished 13x9" baking pan (the slidey pan, for those of you in the know). I hold out hope for it's arrival this week.

Finally, the mild congestion that's plagued me throughout the pregnancy has increased dramatically, making it nearly impossible to hear in one ear. It's also possible that this in an allergic reaction to an heretofore un-inhaled German allergen, which seem to be peaking now. I'm afraid the congestion has also allowed a painful ear infection to settle in so that everytime Trey tries to touch me (as he'd have to to get the attention of a now half-deaf wife) I scream "No, my ear!" This SO was not covered in those pregnancy books.

visit to bridget + unpacking fun

I spent most of this week visiting my sister Bridget's family in Ireland. You can read about our travels to the Irish Riviera here. I really must say that I think my comment about the cow smell has been mischaracterized. Most people reading this probably know that we grew up on a farm; I really don't find the smell of manure offensive (I do find the feel of manure squishing around in my boot/shoe offensive), so I wasn't so much complaining that it stank and expressing my wonder that the smell could be so strong from inside the car and without any cows, barns, etc. in view. Otherwise our excursion was very nice- the views were beautiful and the churches we saw were all interesting. Bridget and Orrin were excellent hosts and even 9 month old Silas was remarkably well behaved. He is such a little daredevil, though, no wonder Bridget must resort to creative restraint techniques. Bridget also loaded me down with gifts/loans for surviving Germany and the arrival of the baby (newborn clothes, blankets, a bicycle pump, baking soda, a small roll of imported-from-the-US Tums). Very generous, indeed.

The additional benefit of my visit was that Trey got most of our stuff moved out to the new apartment while I was gone. He was even able to get the internet up and running last night, though the wireless part still eludes him. Still, gold medal husband award for this week. Eight of the 9 boxes we shipped from the States have arrived. Trey only brought 4 of them out to the new place so I've been unpacking those along with the bags and suitcases into which he seems to have, perhaps from quite some distance, thrown our reamaining belongings. The silverware has yet to be seen- I'm really hoping it's in one of the of the other boxes that HAVE arrived, which Trey is bringing out this evening. I've been stubbornly refusing to buy silverware, even though that has meant eating a salad with our hands and using a foil yogurt lid as a make-shift spoon to consume the yogurt. So, I'm certainly not going to give in now!

Only casualties of shipping so far are that the pepper grinder came apart, not breaking, but spilling peppercorns over the rest of the contents of that box and Trey's sharpening stone (which I wrapped in a down comforter in the middle of a box of clothes!) managed to get slightly chipped, but is still very usable. Unpacking has been a bit of a challenge because we don't have hangers or dressers for the clothes- looks like we are headed back to IKEA this weekend. But I am getting the kitchen and bathroom in order, which should go a long way towards making it feel more like home. Trey has a long weekend so I'm hoping we can get some more things in place this weekend and possibly even get to some painting- my hatred for the pink room is growing now that we're here full time.

If this post doesn't bore you, please contact me

At EMBL, we have this Science and Society group that discusses the history, philosophy, ethics and importance of science. They also are funded to put on a seminar series that is very well attended. One of my labmates is really interested in this type of stuff and is one of the primary student organizers of these talks. They take turns leading discussions and I have helped him edit handouts for his turn as discussion leader and he has tried to recruit me to join the group as post-docs are under represented. (This last fact is due to the nature of a "post-doc". The idea being to push your career ahead with the greatest possible productivity. Add this to the fact that most post-docs are starting their families and there is little time for extra-curricular activities.)

Today, I went to my first of these seminars, because my experiments weren't working, I had figured out why they weren't working and it was way too late in the day to start into fixing the problem. Generally, I would expect this to be a group I would be interested in joining. Today, however, I went to a talk by a much lauded philosopher of science and was sorely disappointed. I was very impressed to learn that the speaker held Ph.D.s in both science and philosophy and continued to do science (as much as any professor at a German university does anything). But at the end of the talk, I was left pretty deflated, feeling like we spend all of the time arguing the meaning of words rather than getting down to the rub of the matter.

The thesis of this talk was that it is inappropriate to call the current change in the methods of biological research a "scientific revolution". Specifically, he was arguing that the research that has just been made possible by the human (and other) genome projects is NOT part of a scientific revolution nor is it the death knell for reductionism in biology. It should be pointed out that most biology since 1950 has been very reductionist, especially molecular biology. It is just becoming possible to start to reassemble larger systems and work back up the ladder and try to build the complex from the reduced. This is very clearly necessary if we are to really use the full potential of the human genome project and other recent work.

The speaker was, of course, in front of a really tough audience for this. EMBL is sort of a palace of cell biology and many people there like being there because they feel like they are right at the cutting edge everyday. Researchers who value being on the cutting edge also put some serious weight on being part of a scientific revolution. After the speaker droned on for an hour about how exciting everything is that was in Science and Nature last week but that is still isn't revolutionary, the questions started to fly.

One of the grand old men of cytoskeleton work (and my boss's boss) really was perturbed and really went after this guy. The speaker had argued that the new work really is still molecular biology and not different enough to be a revolution in thinking or technique while the guy from EMBL argued that the thing that is the revolutionary is what we are figuring out, not how we are doing it. EMBL-guy's point was that we are turning the corner toward working out system behavior. In his final comment to this guy he said, "We don't have to cut off the head of molecular biology in order to properly have a revolution." This remark was intended only to illustrate the point, not to poke fun at the speaker, but it was hard not to be tickled that the speaker was French and that perhaps something has to lose its head before a Frenchman will call it a proper revolution.

A different view of civil rights I

In the course of a few weeks at work, I have been officially told some things, unofficially told some things, and noticed a few things about how civil rights work over here. As I learn more, I will probably come back to this topic as it is culturally interesting, I think, to consider how another "free country" decides what rights belong to the individual.

Firearms:
The differences in laws governing firearms, are so different as to hardly be interesting. The "right" to bear arms, basically doesn't exist here. With proper credentials, one can own a couple of guns for hunting purposes and some target shooting. According to my landlord, it takes nearly two years to get the credentials, although I suspect this is a bit of an exageration. If you think requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon is draconian, Germany is not for you. And, for that matter, neither is a lot of Europe.

In talking with my coworkers, it is clear that the idea of even handling a gun makes them uncomfortable. The idea that someone on the street in America could legally carry a concealed handgun seems insane to most Germans. It is also very unlikely in Germany that someone with nefarious intentions on the street is carrying either. One of my labmates who has lived in the States twice told me in no uncertain terms that the possible presence of firearms is one of the things that made him most uncomfortable with life there. His cultural bias is large and, as one might expect, his actual knowlege of firearms is quite low. It is interesting to note that from his perspective, firearm rights are not in anyway philosophically or fundamentally a prerequisite for freedom. He sees his fear and America's obsession as purely cultural, like Mao disagreeing with the Soviets about how to be a real communist.

Identification and the right to have your privacy invaded for no reason:
Identification here is taken very seriously. You must not leave home without it, as any police officer, with NO probable cause, can ask you to identify yourself. I watched this happen on Friday at the train station. There is no ambiguity about what is meant by "identification". The national ID card is the only thing that can satisfy this requirement. That card is basically the first page of the German passport, but laminated individually. I have been issued such a card (sondernausweis), but mine is different from a German citizen's and also not like most foreign worker's. Because I work at EMBL, which isn't technically in Germany, I have a diplomatic sondernausweis and like everyone here, I have to carry it all of the time. Of course, the thing is about 10% too big to go in my wallet. I may have to breakdown and get a European man purse, just to lug the thing around. Apparetnly, a stolen one of these diplomatic sondernausweis is almost as valuable as an American passport.

Furthermore, the police here will occasionally set up random checkpoints on the road and stop cars, again with no probable cause. My coworkers have all been through these things at one time or another. During these stops the police expect you to identify yourself, and also prove that you own the vehicle, that its inspecition is up to date, that the necessary work was performed on the car following the last inspection, and that you have the proper tires on the vehicle for the season. Additionally, everyone in the car must also be able to identify themselves. My American friend here jokes that if you have your dog is in the vehicle, the police will make you prove that you own it, that its shots are up to date and that you paid the dog tax.

This situation causes some difficult situations for people who work up at EMBL who aren't from Germany and therefore have the diplomatic version of the ID. I have been repeatedly warned that if I am stopped in such a situation as described above, to expect to be delayed considerably because my type of diplomatic sondernausweis is rarely seen outside of the capital and hence the police tend to not trust it. I could also carry my passport, but this comes with the dual worry of theft/loss and the possibility of damaging it. An American friend of mine at work was similarly warned and carried his passport and eventually it got pretty dog eared from riding around in his pocket all of the time. As a result he was prevented from re-entering Germany, as they thought the beat up passport had gotten that way because it was stolen and taken apart to change the picture.

So you might wonder why the Germans put up with what at the very least is quite an inconvenience. My labmates love to compare here (Germany) to over there (the States) so I have heard a few opinions on this now. Some say they see it, more or less, like an audit that keeps people honest. Others say that it is necessary since the opening of the iron curtain and because of the free movement now allowed in the EU. They argue that this type of policy is tolerated to make it easier to catch immigrants in the country illegaly, basically trading some privacy for the protection from immigrants leaching off of the strong German economy, which is a little wobbly right now. I don't know how much I buy the former, but judging from the strict requirements for citizenship, it is easy to believe the latter.

Mom, she won't stop touching me:
This is a very touchy area over here and I have been told several different things as to how to respond, say if someone is mugging you. I hadn't even thought of this, but then we had an experience on the bus here that made me consider how I might respond.

Actually paying for a bus ticket is on the honor system and then occasionally these guys with meter maid like duties will get on a bus and check tickets and write 40 Euro tickets to the Schwarzfarhers (black riders, cute hmm?) who don't have the right ticket. As you might imagine, these guys (the bus cops, not the Schwarzfahrers) try to look like everyone else and conceal their identity, otherwise they are easily evaded. (Even incognito, we evaded them once, in a brush with two 40 Euro fines, but that is a story for another post.)

So, I saw one of these bus cops come to the door of a stopped bus and actually physically impede someone from exiting the bus by grabbing his upper arm. While it may be my American prejudice combined with my American hot headedness, I thought this guy looked pretty much like a thug and if he had done this to me, my first impulse would have been to shake free and get the hell out of there. Or if he had grabbed Rachel, I might have just punched him. Notice that I didn't mention that the bus cop ever identified himself to this person, because he didn't. His first action was to make physical contact.

I asked my coworkers, German and otherwise, about this incident. They assured me that it shouldn't work this way but said that occasionally they too have seen the bus cops get pretty aggressive with someone. The Germans also said that Heidelberg is a bit notorious for hiring some pretty scummy guys on short contracts when they decide they have to crack down on the Schwarzfahrers, which I believe was going on that weekend. Most of the time the bus cops are pretty reasonable.

This made me think a little bit and ask my coworkers about how to respond in a situation where you feel your safety may be in danger and I got some interesting advice. Some of them said, "The guy almost certainly will not have a gun, or even a knife, so fight back. Hold on to your stuff. If you don't let go, they will after a minute." I was warned by another colleague that whatever you do, don't do anything that could be made to look like assault. Even if you are being mugged, if no one else sees it, you could be in for a world of hurt in both criminal and civil court if you hurt someone and then can't prove that you were being mugged. Hitting people just isn't allowed.

Which leads to some interesting behavior. Despite what you hear about the Germans being reserved and not prone to outbursts of passion, we have seen some real wild arguments take place in very public places. For instance, a 70 year old fellow gets on the bus and a youngish Turk is sitting in the front seat. The elder says to the younger,"Get out of my #$%&# seat you no good #$%$%& Turk." As you might imagine a yelling match insues which includes phrases that this keyboard doesn't have symbols for (and I don't mean that I need a lot of umlauts). Some of my coworkers feel like the nastiness of such interactions escalates so quickly because no matter what is said, everyone knows that violence will never erupt. It is simply to risky to involve yourself in something like that.

Rooms with a view

I wanted to put up a couple of more pictures to give folks a feeling for the way our apartment is situated in the village.

Looking out the front of our apartment and to the left one sees mostly houses. Around that bend to the left is the Hauptstrasse (main street) and most of the shopping. In the lower left you can see a green tractor with a cart. I have no idea what they were for, but our neighbor has a small Deere and a small Chalmers in addition to an implement I have never seen before.

The view to the right is virtually the same:houses and an occasional stray tractor. Throughout the village the fronts of homes are very close to the street. Notice the small amount of green space in this photo. The Germans seem to prefer to have all of their garden behind the house where they can enjoy privacy. Also the houses are awfully close together, even by the standards of American McMansion subdivisions.

This is the view directly across the street. I put this in to show a couple of things. First, if you look at the horizon, you can see the hill top behind the village. This is the same little string of hills where EMBL and Boxberg sit, but on the other side. My drive to work everyday will take me up over the top of this hill.

I also include this picture to show the old building on the right. There are many such buildings around town that are clearly of a previous construction generation, and most of them, like this one, are integrated with more modern buildings. (By the way, the neighbors in this house have a really beautiful Irish Setter. Look out Scout.)




This picture is the view of the horizon above the old building across the street from us. Where the houses stop, it is all public forest nearly back to Heidelberg. Those whitish trees on the hill side are flowering, but I don't yet know what they are.

more apartment stuff

We spent a good part of this weekend out at our new place- still no internet, though. Curses!

We hauled what seemed to be a fair amount of stuff with us out to the village. Using public transportation probably just made it seem heavier, because it was just enough to make up a comfy bed for us and provide a few essentials in the kitchen. One of Trey's labmates brought over a small selection of tools for us to borrow and then took Trey along on a brief excursion to a home improvement type store. Once Trey returned we got down to work putting together furniture and began to realize how IKEA's furniture can be so darned cheap. The quality isn't really too bad, but the amount of assembly is unreal. Trey chivalrously took the job of putting together the 6 chairs for the dining room and let me do the table. I was not filled with confidence as I listened to him mutter phrases such as "I wonder where these washers were supposed to go?" and "Ah, I think I see the problem now." I didn't actually make any moves to assist him until he was down to the last one and was appalled to see the number of tiny wooden pegs that had to be simultaneously glued in place. The instructions for assembly were also laughable; as IKEA has expanded into so many countries, they've removed most text and made it almost impossible to glean any information from the pictoral guide. One of Trey's labmates described this problem as "I don't really know what action is indicated by a picture of one eye winking at me."

Other fun stuff included scraping painted decorations of kittens off the bathroom windows and removing wall paper from one of the dining room walls that was damaged when the mirrored tiles behind the bar were removed. If you read my previous post, you probably already guessed that this place would've had both these items. I peeled off a little bit of wall paper earlier in the week and found it was easy to remove so wasn't too worried about it, especially since it was only covering a small wall. However, this weekend it became apparent that the quality of the wall varies quite a bit, and so too, did how easy it was to peel off the paper. Trey, acting in what seems to be a typical male way, insisted the job would be easier with a better tool. Then, upon discovering that the work would still be tedious and slow, even with the new tool, just wandered away.

We decided to sleep in the new apartment and found the expand-o mattress to be pretty comfortable, even with it sitting directly on the floor. This far along in the pregnancy, though, I did not find getting out of the bed to be particularly easy. I basically had to roll off the bed and onto the floor, then get on all fours and finally stand up. I'm sure it looked very graceful, though, and not at all like a walrus using tiny flippers to pull itself up on an ice floe.

We'd hoped to get a few things planted in the garden, but it seems that frost is still likely and most people have only planted flowers thus far. We did wander through the garden store and found fairly large rhubarb plants for sale. It was large enough to have 5 or 6 stalks ready for cutting and many smaller ones, but it's not clear whether it'll have enough time to give us much this year. At least it'll be well established next spring and it made us feel better to have a little something in the ground. We did meet our downstairs neighbors and they were quite nice. The wife (they both speak no English) chatted with Trey while he planted the rhubarb and said she expected it grew fast enough that we'd get quite a bit this spring. She also asked Trey what the typical American preparations for rhubarb were. True to form, he knew lots of German food words- cake, dumplings, compote, but not the word for pie- how embarassing!

caution, this post 20% shorter than average

We went to see the OB again today for a second look at the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby. All things associated with that were okay (more on that later) and far less remarkable than the fact that Dr. Klapp has learned English in 2.5 weeks. You may remember us telling some of you about our first visit to this guy and how he apparently didn't speak English which lead to a very difficult situation where Trey was trying to translate for me what this guy was saying. So, imagine our surprise when he sat down at the ultrasound machine and started speaking English, at least 50% better than Trey speaks German (Trey's own estimate, there).

So the baby seems to be doing well, though we did have to do a non-stress (simultaneous monitoring of uterine contractions and fetal heart rate) test to make sure the low amniotic fluid isn't effecting the baby. The test was interrupted 4 times in the first 5 minutes because the baby was so active; the nurse called it "boxing." Everything looked good, but I couldn't help feeling the test was more to ease the doctor's mind than my own. It seems like this system is obsessed with things fitting the average. The doctor gave us an estimate of the weight- just over 5 lbs. Then he actually said "this is 200 grams above the arithmetic mean." Does it really need the be brought to my attention that the baby is 200 grams (that's about 6 ounces) above the average ESTIMATED weight? Then he gave us a summary report for our midwife that included copies of the measurements he'd taken and each one had a little graph showing where they were in comparison to the mean. Cripes! Is this specific to Germany, or is it like this everywhere? Is being average really so great? For my own sanity, I really try not to be constantly comparing myself to other people- no wonder it's a hard habit to break.

At the end of the appointment, the nurse mentioned above, who did a great job communicating on a relatively small vocabulary, handed us this form that we can use to report back to the office after the birth. Her instructions were: "When your baby is..ah...on earth, please send this back here with a picture." Perhaps she is a Scientologist.

This culture is changing me already

I had a new, if slightly gross, cultural experience tonight. After using the toilet, but prior to flushing it, I reached for a tissue on the shelf above to blow my nose, hoping to include it in a single ecologically friendly flush (see, it is changing me already). The roll of tissue bumped the ibuprofin bottle and I watched in paralyzed horror as it plumetted into the drink and floated there. I cursed, the bottle bobbed up and down, and Rachel asked what happened from the other room.

There was a time in my life (6 weeks ago) when, like most men, I might of thought of flushing it. Even in an American toilet, this would be a calculated risk. The worst outcome being the destruction of some portion of a septic system or a flood, the best being the disappearance of the bottle forever and the middle ground being a good rinsing if it didn't go down, making me feel better about the retrieval. German toilets are barely capable of doing their intended job on the intended, so I felt like it was probably a bad idea to even consider pushing the handle fearing that the bottle would lodge just out of site and then cause an overflow.

As these thoughts whizzed by, Rachel was repeating herself and wondering what was going on, so I told her, effectively ending access to the "flush it" option. She immediatly requested a recovery that would leave the bottle intact eliminating plans A-F which all involved stabbing the bottle with one of the many implements on my multi-tool, and then using the rim of the trash can to scrape the bottle off of the blade. (This is the second place where our new home intervened. Apparently, ibuprofin is expensive here...24 for about $6, hence the neccesity for non-destructive retrieval.) So I turned my multi-tool around and went for a more dangerous grab with the pliers, held the bottle above the toilet while I tested my grip and then deposited it in the sink for a good rinsing. I was suspicious that the bottle would have kept the ibuprofin safe from infiltration, but to my surprise they were still dry.

So this really brings up two questions: 1. Will I ever be able to use one of those ibuprofin? 2. How in the hell will I deal with the gross stuff coming out of a new born in 8 weeks? In answer to the first, it just depends on how damn bad the headache gets just as the value of the ibuprofin was sufficient to demand their rescue. The second one is more of a technological matter. I only have the "Leatherman Clip" which is a stripped down multi-tool. Even the fancier Leatherman Wave appears to be illequiped for delicate baby skin and managment of liquids. I guess I better get over to the drawing board and work something up as I can't find anything on the web that looks suitable for diaper changing duty. Maybe it will make me my first million. Men love tools. If it makes a cool ratcheting sound and has a torque meter for tightening the diaper just right, we might sell a few. If it requires special diapers, even better.

(Really, I am not worried about changing baby at all. A couple bad ones and nothing will phase me anymore, just like gutting deer.)

apartment pics

As Trey posted, we got the keys to our new apartment last weekend, but didn't have any furniture so aren't living there yet. Last week I bought several pieces of furniture from IKEA (matresses, sofa, dining room table), which were delivered yesterday. Likely we will need several more items, but hope to get a mix of new and used. Because they didn't give us any idea when the furniture would be delivered beyond "Tuesday," I went out there pretty early in the morning and spent the next nine hours alternately wandering around the place and sitting on the hard tile floor reading. Meanwhile, the baby explored new and exciting ways to kick me uncomfortably. Trey had planned to come out and meet me at the apartment if I didn't call him to say I was on the way back by the end of the workday. So at about 6:45, both he (given a ride by a labmate) and the delivery truck pulled up almost simultaneously. This really made me feel that my day of waiting around had been well spent. At least the furniture arrived. We opened the mattresses (which come tightly rolled and wrapped in plastic and are really combination box spring/mattresses by US standards) and apparently require "72 hours to expand to normal size" and another "48 hours for all odor to dissapate." Trey claimed after he unwrapped one he would actually see it wriggling and growing, rather like those little sponge animals that you free from gelatin capsules by soaking in water. Then since we had some time to kill before our train back to down to Heidelberg, we started assembly of the couch.

Anyway, while I was waiting around for the delivery, I took some pictures of the place empty (sorry how the pictures aren't too great- Trey showed me how to adjust light conditions, guess I should've paid attention). Let me say that there are a lot of things we really like about the apartment- it's a good amount of space for the money, has a nice (already installed, which is not de rigeur here) kitchen and bath by German standards, is in a convenient location, and even has a garden. However, the decor can only be described as "Miami Vice chic." It was much worse before the landlord's stuff- including a floor to ceiling mirrored wardrobe and a 4x4' pencil sketch of David Bowie- was taken. Yet, various evidence of it remains- a room painted pink with 2 thin purple stripes near the ceiling, decals on the toilet, wall paper meant to imitate a black canvas splattered with paint. Where do you even obtain these sorts of things? I'm undecided whether it's worth stripping wallpaper or painting in a rental we'll only have for a couple years. Maybe I'll just see how much energy I have after the baby comes.

Trey also brought the news that due to some vast southwestern Germany modem shortage, we may not have internet access at the new place for a couple more weeks. Since that's almost more important than having a bed, it may be a little longer than we hoped before we can move. We'll see.

It's inescapable, we are like the French

At least so far, I have noticed that the French folks I work with and some of their quirks are more like the Americans than either of us are like the Germans. I have even been asked if I was French once. This is a little humorous to me after the "Freedom Fries" crap that has been emblematic of the recent irritation with all things French from a certain segment of the American political demographic. As a result, I have decided to catalog these in occasional posts.

#1, Carrying a pocket knife. Yes it is true that many of the French at work carry a pocket knife clipped inside their pocket so that it can be seen. They seem to prefer a certain type and I haven't looked into what kind so much. But, my knife in my pocket did cause a guy to ask if I was, by chance, French. The Germans don't do this. I have seen my German labmates open packages with an astounding array of dull metal stuff and they won't accept when I offer to loan them my knife.

#2, Crappy cars and junkyards. You don't see a lot of crappy cars here because if a German's car gets too crappy he would rather take the bus than be seen in it. According to my French labmate, the French will drive a car until it sublimates into nothingness much like many guys in the midwest drive a truck until it is a naked power train with a bed and then hack off the bed and pull it around behind their next crappy truck. The same labmate informed me that I also shouldn't think I will be able to run to a junkyard and get a second set of cheap wheels for my winter tires which is, as it turns out, what a French guy would do in that situation. This was a somewhat difficult thing for him to explain to me as it obviously pained him and he didn't know the word "junkyard". He described to me "the place where they take ruined but still not crappy cars when they have been ruined and you can go and get an important piece for making your car better." He was thrilled to learn the word "junkyard" but also a little dismayed when he learned the literal meaning as he obviously considers such a place full of treasure.

#3, Pain free child birth. Two French coworkers have informed me to expect the German medical system to allow my wife to suffer tremendously during birth. The French have none of the interest in "Natural Birth" that the Germans heavily prefer and like a large number of Americans, don't see any reason to "suffer naturally" when there are many more pleasant options including scheduling the day you would like to have labor induced.

#4, Over protectivness of children. Germany appears to be about the safest place in the world to raise a child. 4-year-olds routinely walk to kindergarden in small groups without parents. My French labmate and I were both astonished by this. As in the States, he said such behavior in France would cause the intervention of the government for the well being of the child. He was actually admonished by his child's kindergarden here in Germany for being too protective and not letting his son's confidence develop. He admitted that the first time his 5 year old walked to school "alone" he actually followed him while hiding behind shrubs and buildings. I have to say I would have done the same thing.

#5, Disposable Diapers. my French labmate has two small children, so I have been asking him lots of questions about babies. I asked if he used disposable or cloth diapers. Once we got him straightened out that "pampers" was not the actual word for "diaper" he told me that cloth is popular in Germany, but, like most Americans, the French see this as an incredibly stupid inconvenience.

I also want to say that this French guy I work with in my lab has been very helpful and I like him very much. It is good to have somone around who has moved here as a foreigner but has also been here a while. He has been a tremendous help in getting the basic information I need about things here and in showing me around the new place we will be living. So, I hope it is clear that in this and other similar posts I am making fun of the Americans as much as anybody else. Particularly around language and the humorous things that happen in an international environment, I want to acknowledge that I am well aware of the fact that every one of my coworkers speaks my language far better than I speak theirs.

Our new village

Yesterday, we signed the lease for our new apartment and got the keys. Since we don't have furniture to move in yet, we decided instead to explore the town a little bit and find out all we could about it. The picture here shows one of the streets near our home. Unfortunately, I didn't compose the photo very well to show the large number of shops along the main street. Most of the town is older stucco houses with tile roofing. Many have skylights as does our apartment's upstairs bedroom.

Later in the afternoon the town was really hopping due to the fact that Saturday is the only day of four that anything will be open over the Easter weekend. The weather was good and many people were obviously getting their gardens in order. Like in the U.K., a garden is what we would call a yard, not just the part of the yard where you grow stuff. Many people with small yards have no grass and our growing 100% decorative plants anyway. Its kind of a nice improvement over boring grass and all of the pollution spewing mowers.

Our home is at the far end of the main shopping street and off the main drag about 200m. At the other end of the main drag (about 0.5 km) is a small shopping center with what looked like a very good grocery store and several restaurants including a chinese place that appears to not have one thing on the menu made of putenfleisch. There is a large garden nursery a few hundred meters down by this church. Besides the supermarket there are 2-3 butchers and 2-3 green grocers and probably 3-5 bakeries. Also there is a fine foods store with expensive cheese etc. There are at least 10 restaurants and pubs within walking distance and also a store that just sells berverages by the case. At astounding prices. Pretty reliably, decent to good beer costs less than coke. Also, Germans don't like to drink tap water even at home, so these places do a brisk bottled water business.

A small river also flows through the town. It is dammed at many points and as a result appears to have several small waterfalls. A number of buildings on the river still have the equipment necessary to draw power from the river, but none seem to use it any more.

We will have many more pictures once we move.
Henry

will this really make me a better parent?

So we went to our first birth class the other night. Our midwife arranged to have a special class in English for us and another American couple she's working with. I should explain that midwives have rather more legal/medical standing here than in the US (they are nationally licensed, insurance covers their services, etc). Using one for your birth attendant is also the best way to ensure some kind of consistency in care because you have pretty much no choice in doctor when you check into the hospital. Midwives are able to handle most of the routine prenatal care, though you do have to see a doctor for ultrasounds and to obtain certain medicines. Luckily, at least in our experience so far, these two types of practioners work together much more smoothly than they tend to in the US. Yeah!

At any rate, being fairly well informed, neither Trey or I learned much about the physical process of birth in the class. However, it was really good to hear the midwife explaining some of her philosophies and the procedures she generally follows at a birth. Because we've known her for such a short time, we were both a little apprehensive that we wouldn't feel comfortable with her by the time the baby comes. Happily, her general attitude was that she would be vigilant for any indications of difficulty, but that women's bodies are designed to give birth and, allowed to do so, generally will.

So we had hoped that in addition to actually preparing us for the birth, the class might allow us to meet some other soon-to-be new parents. Unfortunately, it seems this was not to be. There was only one other couple in the class and being older, wealthier, and already having one child it seemed unlikely we'd become fast friends. Then the husband starting talking and it became patently clear that we would not. They were perfectly nice people and even gave us a ride home and I'm really sure he was just trying to be helpful and offer advice that he thought would be useful to first time parents. But he spent a lot of time telling us about his wife's experiences with labor and delivery of their first child and even how she felt as it was going on. His wife was right there! She had clearly demonstrated she was neither shy nor mute. He even told us about how sore her nipples were when she started nursing the baby. Then he explained how he had allowed the baby to suck on his own little finger and after that would never have allowed their baby to nurse from him. He concluding this charming little story with a warning to Henry about how my breasts would be "off limits" once the baby came. Thanks, very helpful.

I think I am probably a little over sensitive to this type of thing because it's really always bothered me when husbands and family members discuss intimate details of someone's birth with casual acquantences. I can't help feeling that, by and large, it's really only the woman's place to talk about this experience as she chooses. I mean, do I really want my husband running around discussing my mucous plug with his co-workers? It's not because I think it's disgusting and inappropriate for polite society. It's more the idea that a woman's body is somehow public property once she becomes pregnant. It's really the same as people patting your belly, people who are not your child calling you "mom", and 10 different nurses, residents and doctors parading in and out of your hospital room. I've heard a lot of mothers saying that you just lose all modesty during the birth and time leading up to it. In some ways I can see how it's good that you shed some of your inhibitions, but in a lot of ways it seems sad that your privacy can't be respected.

After we got home, I starting complaining about this stuff to Trey, but I also asked him his opinion on how a partner should talk about a birth experience. I know that 2 people are becoming parents and witnessing the birth and supporting the woman giving birth are bound to be deeply affecting. So what would be a positive way for partners to discuss these experiences?

Suprisingly, Trey was not so interested in getting into a lengthy discussion about this at 10:30 at night. He did however note that as soon as he shook hands with the husband at the birth class, he thought to himself "Man, this guy's gonna irritate my wife." I'm pleased to see he's getting better at spotting these people, but he's really going to have to work on the "eliminate irritant" portion of his job if he wants to save himself from listening to any additional rants.

Buying a car is stressful

I noticed that Rachel mentioned in her post how different this place feels than home and the new respect she has for immigrants going to strange places because everything is so strange. I am feeling quite out of sorts about cars and car buying over here so I thought it might be worth a post. I should note that I felt the same way about apartment renting a few weeks ago and that worked out fine.

To begin with, there are a lot makers over here that Americans are not very familiar with (Peugeot, Renault, Opel, Fiat) and then some Americans really hardly know at all (SEAT, Skoda, Citroen). Then there are all of the Japanese and Korean makers, the European makers you know and a few American as well. On top of this, the models you might be familiar with from VW in America are not necessarily all that similar here. By the way, Skoda is kind of an interesting story. They are over 100 years old and stayed intact through communism in czechoslovakia and re-emerged and readapted to the free market pretty well. I would say they are like Hyundai in the sense that they build okay cars that maybe aren't as luxurious, or feel a little out of date in the interior. But, everyone predicts growing market share for them as they do for Hyundai.

Inspections are mandatory every two years here and how long until the next inspection also can figure heavily into the price and the decision. The inspections are pretty rigorous: brakes, alignment, suspension as well as emissions and making sure the doors and windows function properly. No one gets away without having to fix something. They are also privy to how many miles you have driven since your last inspection and will force you to replace your brakes if they don't think they will last until the next inspection. Doesn't matter that they will last 18 of the 24 months. You can protest, but then you don't have a legal vehicle until it is resolved. So this is a big pain. But in combination with Germans not driving long distances as Americans tend to, it means that a 10 year old used car here is in good shape, might only have 55k miles and can be expected to be reliable.

Fuel economy is important as well since gas is $6/gallon and diesel is $5/gallon. With 20% better fuel economy it would seem that a diesel would be an easy choice. But because of the higher registration fees due to the higher pollution it requires a pretty careful calculation to know if a diesel is worth it. My labmates say that it breaks even at 20,000 km. I think it must be sooner than this, but a lot of them run very expensive oil in their diesels (45-60euros/change) and that figures in too.

Beyond that, you also have to consider the issue of tires. In Germany, you have to have two sets, one for the winter and one for the summer. I have to say that this whole thing is a bit of a mystery to me in general since the winters, even in the north, are not much compared to what we have in the midwest. When I arrived everyone had their winter tires on and the treads were no different than the ubiquitous all seasons that we use in the midwest which that begs the question,"why switch back and forth?" Well it turns out that the specs on winter tires require them to be considerably softer which means you would wear them out quickly if you ran them year round. So it is worth it to shell out 35-60 euro twice a year to have them switched. (That price includes mounting if you only have a single set of wheels.) The summer tires don't look all that different from all seasons in the states either because it rains like crazy here. So why switch at all to the softer ones? Well, first of all, German's are rule followers. Second, yes, the police check and some other violation isn't necessary to get them snooping (my civil rights post will be up in a few days). Third and most importantly if you are in an accident and have the wrong tires on, your insurance is immediately invalidated and if you injure someone the consequences appear to be worse if you were operating an "unsafe vehicle". Historically, these rules only applied on mountain roads as sometimes happens in the western U.S., but a few years ago it was expanded by federal law to all vehicles. The tire/rubber/grease monkey lobby here must be very powerful indeed.

I have also found that the books for expats moving here tend to over do it a bit when discussing a lot of things but especially insurance. The prices aren't so outrageous and they can't do sneaky things like charge you more if you have student loans as they do in the states (its true, they can have quite an extensive look at your credit report and they calculate their own rating). One of the bonuses of my job is I qualify as "oeffentlicherdienst" or as a public servant which means I can get my insurance through a coop for public employees which is considerably cheaper. I am also hoping for to be able to buy some gas "on base" once I get set up with privledges which isn't hard to do. Turns out this is the redeeming quality of the guy from the birth class who annoyed Rachel...he works on base and can make me getting on easier.


Anyway, when I decide, I will let everyone know.
Henry

finally, something from the better half

Seems like Henry doing all the talking is part of our German experience- even on our blog. Since he speaks (at least some) German, he tends to do most of the ordering of food, asking questions of potential landlords, and discussing my ultrasound results with our doctor. I'm really glad he's able to do so, but I probably need to start trying to speak German too if it's ever going to improve (is it ever going to improve?). After we move, I WILL start a class and hope that some enforced studying will speed my progress. Anyway, at least as far as the blog goes, I should be contributing something!

I guess my darling husband has already posted a lot of the news about our move, so I don't need to recount that. Since the baby is due to be born in just a few more months, I didn't figure looking for a job right off made much sense. So, my days are mostly filled with going grocery shopping, doing the laundry, looking at furniture online for the new apartment. I'm sure I'll be busy once the baby comes, but without gainful employment I feel a little isolated and unproductive right now. At least once we'll move I'll be able to start getting the apartment set up and able to cook a decent meal now and again.

While this may sound a little trite, moving here has really increased my respect for immigrants in America (well, everywhere really). We came here with a lot of advantages many new arrivals in a country don't have- some institutional support, enough money to meet our needs, each other and we are in a country with a culture similar to our own where many of the people actually do speak a bit of our native tongue. And still I feel overwhelmed by all the small, silly ways it's not like home: no english television, all the brands of stuff in the store are different, the food is unfamiliar, I don't know how to operate the washing machines, I can't read the signs on the streets. Not only do I miss family and friends, many of the things little things I might use to comfort myself are unavailable. I'm sure these feelings will fade as we grow more acustomed to the way of life here and we get settled in to our own place, but this experience has really made me wonder how so many other people have and do make a new country their own.

Life in the Guesthouse

So right now we live in the guesthouse of the institute where I work. For what it is, it is really pretty good, but we still can't wait to get out of here and into our new, big apartment. Our current place is a 1.5 room apartment. You can see Rachel at the computer downstairs. The photographer (me) is upstairs in our little bedroom. The best thing about our room is we have two balconies. The one off of the bedroom faces west so we can lie in bed and watch the sun set, when it isn't rainy.

The kitchen is a fridge and two electric burners in a counter top. I could build a suitable cooking fire in less time than it takes the burners to get hot enough to cook something. Our fridge is also a little smelly...okay, a lot smelly, like someone wiped it out with a leftover herring.

The other drawback of the guesthouse is that it is in a small village called Boxberg, that is now part of Heidelberg. The shopping is pretty limited and the restaurant choices are pretty unimpressive. The joke at work is that the EMBL cafeteria is the best restaurant in the village. (It is indeed quite good and cheap.) The village is full of pensioners and also a lot of immigrants. This is a bit of an ugly combination as there is some racism and animosity here toward the Turks and it is worse in the older generations. Also the village isn't at all cute or old fashioned. It is mostly hideous 10-15 story bauhaus style apartments.

The nice thing about the guesthouse, is that I just stroll up the hill to work everyday. Heidelberg is down in the flood plain of the river Neckar with the institute 400 m above in the mountains. The mountains are more like really big hills, similar to Pennsylvania's. The guesthouse is about 80m below the institute so the walk really gets the blood going in the morning. I have lost 12 pounds here, mostly due to the walking. Walking in the hills is very nice. This picture is of a little mountain pool that was spring fed. This duck appeared to have made it his bachelor pad as he was the sole inhabitant.

When we move we will be living on the other side of mountanin in Bammental and I will drive over the top of the mountain to work. We should still have good access to tremendous amounts of public land that the pooch should enjoy. The Bammental side is a much gentler slope. Many of the villages are connected by good bike trails making for easy Saturday excursions.

You can expect a series of posts on the move and the new place next week.

What I do at work

I have been asked a lot by friends and family what it is exactly that I do at work. Since we moved over here for me to work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), I figure a post or two on this is appropriate. I will warn you, this post is long!

The EMBL is a one of a kind international research institute. The EMBL website covers some general info and some of the history behind its founding. I work for Thomas Surrey whose lab webpage discusses the general tenor of our research.

I have three projects at various stages of development: 1) Understanding the mechanisms by which motor proteins negotiate road blocks as they move cargo in cells, 2) Understanding how several microtubule associated proteins in yeast cells function in combination to organize the cell's internal structures, 3) Developing methods to track individual motor proteins in mitotic cell extract.

My goal with this post is to give you a little feeling for what this means, why it is important scientifically and why an engineer is doing this type of biology at this type of an institute.

Project 1: Motor proteins move intracellular cargo. One end of such a protein is referred to as the binding domain (think of this as your trailer hitch) and the other is the motor domain (think of this as your engine). The cargo is often, but not always, a vesicle, so you can think of this as the trailer, but it is the least important part of the story for my purposes. The road is an intracellular structure called a microtubule and the fuel is a biological molecule abbreviated as ATP. Based on the amount of stuff that moves around in a cell, pulled by motors, and the amount of non-motor protein that binds to microtubules, one would predict traffic jams to happen quite often. Unlike a car, the engine in a motor protein only runs when bound to a microtubule, and it seems that motor proteins can't "change lanes" to simply go around an object. Yet, traffic jams are infrequent.
What I am doing: There is already quite a lot of data on this topic, but it is conflicting in its explanation of how a kinesin (one of many motor proteins) behaves when encountering an obstacle. Thanks to some friendly scientists and and the hard work of gillions of bacteria, I have several genetically engineered road blocks and kinesins with built in markers. With a hot rod microscope, I can see individual kinesins walking on microtubules.
This is a starter project to get me familiar with the microscope and to resolve this conflict.

Project 2: I will say the least about this one since it seems the least interesting from the outside. The fission yeast, schizosaccromyces pombi, is a very convenient organism for the study of cellular oganization and cell division. Remarkably, many of the proteins involved in these processes have obvious homologues (protein in another species that does the same thing) in higher mammals like us. A collection of three of these proteins affects how the cell "knows which end is its head" more or less, but it is unclear how the three cooperate to do this. Combining an assay like the one described above and one a little like the one I used in my graduate work, we will attempt to discern what the minimal functional unit of these three proteins are. This project is a little like assuming that a car really is just gas, tires and oil, and then adding and removing them in different amounts to figure out how they work together to achieve the goal of going down the street. Some bonus info: I have been told that "Pombi" in the name of this yeast, means "hooch" in a regional dialect in africa.

Project 3: This project is still pretty undefined, but will be getting more shape in the next few months. The first thing you need to know is what a cell extract is. Well, one of the chief difficulties in studying anything in a cell is that the membrane is in the way, but in most cases without it things diffuse away and you don't really have a cell anymore. By making an extract one can get around this in some instances. In my case, I will be using an extract from the oocytes (egg cells) of Xenopus laevis (a frog) to make an extract that can perform cell division. This part is well established. Basically, you break open the large oocytes and by properly centrifuging collect the cytoplasm. Then you can add some bits from sperm to trick the extract into believing that the egg has been fertilized. When you do this, you trick the extract into going through cell division as though it were growing a new frog, but without it really being a cell anymore at all. A great deal has been learned about cell division from studying this system.

In my case, I hope to adapt/extend my ability to see single molecules to the extract. In order to accomplish cell division, the cell puts together an extensive scaffold of microtubules that then interact with the chromosomes, to make sure that each of the two daughter cells gets all of the genetic material it needs and it does this with phenomenal accuracy. The picture of how all of this happens has lots of gaping holes. (You can watch some examples if you want. I recommend the flattened endosperm cell near the bottom of the page, but they are all pretty cool.) It is clear that the scaffold is partially organized by several motor proteins working in concert while also being influenced by some anchoring points called centrosomes and by the chromosomes themselves. What isn't really understood is how the motors behave in this complex environment, hence the interest in watching them on an individual basis.

So, why does an engineer care about or work on this stuff?
Engineer as a biologist: Well, first, working on sorting out biology is becoming a career that more and more requires an engineering background or a background in one of the physical sciences if one is interested in studying the most interesting problems. Many of these problems require the development of new techniques and often these techniques are founded on principles from physics. The best example from my specialty is the huge expansion in light based microscopy in the last 50 years.

Also, the funding institutions in the U.S. have issued mandates favoring quantitative rather than descriptive work. A descriptive bit of work might say that the addition of blah blah to a growing culture of cell type xxx up regulates the blah blah pathway which down regulates the blah blah cascade. The quantitative scientist wants to know exaclty how much. Can we write down the differetntial equation that actually governs the cascade? Most engineers naturally think this way to begin with. This is not to knock the importance of descriptive work. Sometimes descriptive work is all that can get done and it often opens a whole new field or identifies whole new problems. It is just that positive outcomes for the clinic and mankind require the precision of quantitation.

Biologist as engineer in the first sense: This really comes down to the fact that biology ain't all chemistry and that is a lot of what biologists are trained to sort out. There are systems in biology that are natural fits into electrical, mechanical, and maybe computer engineering as well as material science even at the sub-cellular level.

Biologist as engineer in the second sense: Biological systems can provide inspiration and direction to engineers working on non-biological problems. This is the really interesting one as far as I am concerned and is particularly interesting with regard to cell division. Biology has had a tremendously long time to develop solutions to problems in a trial and error paradigm. In the case of cellular processes, the cell is able to execute uncounted tasks at the micro and nano scale with tremendous precision. As such, we already have fully functional nanotechnology operating on this planet and in our very own bodies that far surpasses anything that has been man made to date.

If we use cell division as an example, we have the controlled synthesis of an exact copy of the genome which includes error checking and correction followed by the compaction of this info into easy to manage chromosomes. A mechanical seperation system is established in the cell which is able to efficiently verify the organization and then insure that each daughter cell gets one copy of each chromosome. The process spans across the chemical to the mechanical. Chemistry regulates the system and provides energetic molecules to accomplish the task. But this chemistry is linked into a microscopic mechanical machine that does the actual sorting. These are the types of tasks that the nanotechnologist hopes to conquer. So, if you had to build a space ship, would you rather start from scatch or would you rather take a few apart and maybe even reuse some of the old parts?

I am happy to entertain questions.
Henry

Turkey Burritos

Well, this will be my first post about food. There will probably be more as you all know that my pie hole is very important to me.

As I sit here eating a pb&j, I would give...well, certainly the sandwich and probably a whole lot more for a burrito. But because of some of the food peculiarities over here, I couldn't get a good one anyway.

The germans seem to have fallen in love with the great american turkey. The german word is "Pute" and the meat is "Putenfleisch". Due to our small kitchen in the guesthouse, we are eating a lot of pasta and frozen food. I started looking at the labels and turkey is in everything. We bought meat tortellinis, and the meat was putenfleisch. We stopped at a little chinese place and had the number 2 because the picture looked nice. It tasted really funny and when I looked up what it was on the menu, I was a little stunned to find out that it was hunan putenfleisch.

Then, I went to dinner with my new coworkers at a pretty nice restaurant in Heidelberg. The menu had excellent tapas, and several lamb and fish dishes. Many looked good. (I had 8 small, lambchops, that were excellent, for 13 euros.) Also on the menu was turkey breast cutlets in barbecue sauce for 15 euros, and this was what my coworkers were salivating over.

But the real punch line in all of this was some frozen chicken cordon bleu we found at the grocery store last week. Rachel even asked me to make sure that it was indeed chicken breast, and it was. But when we got home, I read the label more closely and what did I find? Sure enough, the slice of ham inside the cordon bleu was processed putenfleisch.

So, I expect now that if I did find a burrito place, they would be made with putenfleish anyway.
And, there would probably be some cabbage piled in there too, but I will save that for the next rant. I wish I could say I was optimistic that General Tso's Putenfleisch or Kung Pao Putenfleisch will be better, but this seems unlikely. Maybe erradicating the willy nilly use of putenfleisch is the sliver lining behind the burgeoning cloud of bird flu epidemic.
Henry

Herzliche Wilkommen

Welcome to our blog!

I have now been in Germany for over a month and Rachel for a little over two weeks. We have found an apartment and move in a week or so. Once we get the key we will post some pictures. Next we need furniture. Thank goodness for IKEA. I never thought I would say this after visiting one in America, but for budget furniture in a hurry it is pretty good. We also will have to get a car since our apartment is in a village and public transit will not get me into work. We already have several good stories in relation to public transit, apartment finding, car finding and the place I work. I will try to post of few of these this week to get things rolling.

We are hoping to use this blog to keep our friends and families up to date with our travels and life over here. Additionally, you can expect baby pictures, some funny stories and observations on the cultural differences. In regard to the last one, we are both surprised how living in a first world, fully industrialized country can feel so different from home.

That's all for now.
Henry