Bath Part I: The Roman Baths and Pump Room

My two sisters and I went to Bath on the recommendation of our one other sister who had been. I know it was wrong of me, but I was actually not too excited. Turns out it was very wrong because it was amazing. The trip started off badly when I went to the wrong airport and so obviously, missed my flight. That day I wished that I could've spared myself the money of a second ticket and Bridget the inconvenience of having to come back to London to pick me up, but now I am mostly sad that I missed that extra day seeing the sights of Bath. We missed out, for instance, on the Museum of Costume, Museum of Bath at Work, and seeing the preserved Georgian artifacts at Number 1 Royal Cresent. On the afternoon of my first day there, however, we did manage to squeeze in a trip to the Roman Baths and Pump Room.

The Roman Baths are very well preserved and the information provided is interesting and very comprehensive, detailing the use of baths right down to the Roman's favorite food while bathing (oysters brought in from the sea on river boats). Starting out the lowest level, you can progress through thousands of years of history, all tied together by the natural hot spring there. Not rediscovered until the 18th century, the Greath Bath is a testament to the engineering skills of the Romans with original lead plumbing still feeding and draining the vast pool. We learned that, when the Romans invaded, the spring was already a sacred place to the Celts who associated it with their goddess Sulis. The Romans co-opted both the bathing place and the goddess, only now calling her Silus Minerva. I always picture invading Romans stomping into a new area, supressing the inhabitants by force. This was an interesting reminder of how they really managed to control such a vast empire: by adapting the traditions of the people already there.

As we climbed up out of the Roman level of the baths, we learned that, after Rome fell, Bath suffered a decline until Queen Mary was "cured" of infertility by the water. A mere 10 months after taking the waters she delivered a healthy boy. Bath become the rage again, attracting aristocrats and their money and making it a social hotspot. We viewed the King's Bath and entered the Pump Room of Jane Austen fame. The final piece of our experience was actually getting a taste of the spring water, served only slightly below the temperature from which it leaves the ground. This, combined with it's odor of sulfur, made it taste rather like someone's used bath water. I was the only member of our party who managed to actually finish my glass, but no miraculous healing effects have been noted yet.

Interestingly, the spring waters are available for bathing again now: in a roof top pool high above both the Georgian and Roman baths. More pictures here, including some to be explained in Part II.

news from a broad

Just checking in, lest everyone think only Henry is blogging anymore. We've been to Bath and returned to Ireland. Pictures and stories soon...probably....maybe.

Ellis caught Silas's solar sickness so we are both exhausted. My sister Lucy has informed me I spend too much time talking about the baby's bodily fluids. So, let me just say that there's been a lot more laundry done around here than usual. This is about as sick as Ellis has been yet and I feel I didn't fare well in either the "remain sweet while getting up again in the middle of the night to change a diaper" or the "remain calm while watching my feverish-eyes-glazed-over baby in pain." Several times I thought about just adopting Silas's habit of screaming "NO!" whenever something he doesn't like happens (Bridget just informed me sometimes when the wind blows in his face he screams "no" at it). However, Ellis ate a nice big breakfast this morning, so while he's still crabby, I think he may finally be on the mend.

When was the last time you learned a new word?

Check out this article. I learned a new word in this article (bloviating), which is rare these days given the reading level target that most journalists must hit. I don't know how I made it to 32 years old without learning this word. I must like it is because the first syllable is reminiscent of "bloat" and the second of "emanating" or "radiating". Somehow, I picture someone so bloated with conceit that is is leaking out uncontrollably. My only disappointment is that "bloviater" or better "bloviator" seem not to be real words.

It is interesting to think back on growing up and the differences in the standards associated with parental conduct toward their kids. I especially like the author's assertion that for her parents, hitting was a given, requiring tools, and that the debate mostly surrounded whether or not it was alright to hit someone else's kid, if they needed it.

The central issue of the article is more about name calling and the effect it really does have on children. The issue here is primarily humiliation and the fact that shame and humiliation are a way that someone would typically attempt to punish an enemy, not someone they supposedly love. With spanking, I think it is pretty similar: if you hit a kid hard enough to make it hurt, then you are treading close to battering the child, if not, you are probably shaming the child, demonstrating your power over the child with a physical act or just blowing your top over a relatively small thing. These aren't particularly good options, in any case.

Name calling might seem less severe but may be no less damaging, particularly when it is a consistent barrage directed at the fabric of the person rather than a particular act. Calling a kid a stupid jerk is a lot different than, say, telling your child (of the appropriate age) that the reason the other child on the playground wouldn't play with them was because they were being thoughtless and selfish.

Whatever my childhood was like, I still have enough self-esteem to engage in a little bit of bloviating occasionally. And, I can see now that it is time to stop.

A simple, 3 step process

Today was the other kind of day at work. Other, as compared to yesterday. Because of my unique position (being an engineer working with biologists and trying to slowly become a passable example of one), I occasionally have days where I spend my whole day doing things that everyone around me can do in the dark immediately following a closed head injury but that I have no idea about. These are things like expressing proteins, purifying proteins (in some cases), solubility studies, and buffer swaps through low yield columns. And sometimes I just have a whole day where that is all I do and these days have a tremendous negative effect on my outlook, despite the fact that I like learning how to do new things.

The main knock I have against my lab is that we are weak on writing standardized protocols. So, each time I have to do something new, I have to solicit advice and nag for real information. Often there is a great deal of conflicting advice because no one compares notes and there is a fair bit of superstition: folks seem to believe that using blue tubing was the reason it worked the first time they got it to work, so now they tell you that you MUST use blue tubing. Because everyone is so busy in our lab, getting an adequate answer can be tough. Today, I spent 4 hours doing something that was described to me in three steps, none more complicated than "put toothpaste on the toothbrush." Often the conversations are exactly analogous to the following:

Me: How do I bake a cake, you know the round tube pan kind?
Coworker: Butter, flour, eggs, mix and put it in the pan.
Me: Don't you use leavener?
Coworker: Of course, it is a cake.
Me: How long do I cook it?
Coworker: Don't know. Never timed it. More than 5 minutes but less than 30.
Me: Oh. Do I grease the pan?
Coworker: If you want to get it out.

I think you see can see the problem. This can all get very exhausting in a real hurry. Especially if you really need to take the cake somewhere tomorrow, if you know what I mean.

To make it worse, these are days where you are doing things that feel like pre-research to me. I don't feel progress when I am doing this kind of stuff, even though it is all necessary. I try to mix it in with things that are directly focused on a future publication, but once in a while it is like today and this is how it all goes. Today, for instance, my expression was excellent. It was stellar. In all likelihood, I will never have to express this protein again. The other thing I had to squeeze a coworker for advice on didn't go quite as planned, but will supply an extra low concentration data point and can be repeated later this week in half the time. Yet, walking to the car, I felt like I had lost the day. This must be why, when things go badly, people say things to me like, "Henry, you could win the the Nobel Prize on Thursday and if experiments go badly on Friday, it would still ruin your weekend."

In the car ride home, I had to really focus on my projects and remember that I have done all the things I need to do in terms of having a lot of irons in the fire diversifying my risk. I have a Phase IV project wrapping up and it will likely be in print before I have been here 18 months. I will supply three plots to my coworker's paper and end up an author. That paper will go into a top 3 journal. I have two phase II projects, both with large impact potential. I also have the project I abandoned last year as it reached Phase III to work on these other things. And, I have the new instrument we are building where I have an excellent partner in the work and a big budget not to mention that we are thinking of doing some modeling* together. And, I need to start working on an invited talk for a microscopy workshop in Barcelona in June.

Yet, I can still get thrown from the horse by one bad day that wasn't even that bad. When I don't feel things moving forward but the days are passing, I get anxious and sad. If anything stops my academic career, it will be this: the inability to deal with the slow progress that is part of the process. Its not just that I find it annoying. It profoundly impacts my mental health at times. We all tell ourselves that to be successful we have to "run the marathon" but when you look back you don't see a well paced race, but long slow walks and slogging through mud, punctuated by sprints. I don't think there is any secret to it, its just being able to react to it in a reasonably healthy way and that is something I struggle to do.

*That would be mathematical modeling of a biological structure. We won't be heading down to fashion week in Milan to try our luck on the runway.

Going through a phase

Today, I am working on a Phase III project. This is the best phase for an experimentalist: we don't know the answer yet, but we know we can get to it. Today's data answers the question.

Phase I is proof of concept. This is that first test experiment that shows you that you can control the system, that your experiments are likely to work.

Phase II optimizes things so that you have the resolution and necessary throughput to actually work on the hypotheses that sprang into your head at the end of Phase I when you realized you had a pathway for investigation. At the end of Phase II, failure becomes less likely.

These first couple of phases are the ones that can be long and angst filled. They eat your life during your doctorate. They plague you as you see your kids being born and you wonder if you can send a kid to college on a post-doc salary. They can be filled with false starts. When someone says 99% of research is negative results, they talk of these two phases. This is also where most of the good ideas happen: ways to get things to work, how to fix a dirty purification and honing the hypotheses that you can test.

Phase III is the phase where you give the hypothesis a thumbs up or down. This is where you cross the line to statistical significance. At the end , you know the answers, but you aren't ready to publish yet. That is for Phase IV, the long slog up the hill to being publishable. This is where you take more data and get those P values down to 0.01. This is where you anticipate the concerns of reviewers and try to have answers ready. And, you make figures for the paper again and again and again, struggling to satisfy your boss and avoid distracting the reader with details you find beautiful, but won't get you into Nature.

In my case, the answers and questions aren't that interesting to the uninitiated. We are studying a reduced in vitro system from from a single celled eukaryotic organism. So we are studying a piece of a organisim far simpler than humans looking for clues to how similar mechanisms work in higher animals.

A poorly designed noodle

Today, I rose, looked in the fridge and realized I had better make a hustle to the grocery store before heading into work. The fairy that normally visits and stocks the fridge left a note, seems she is in England on holiday.

Among other things, I wanted something to have on pasta since it could be done so quickly. As I approached the sauces, something on the opposite shelf caught my eye: Macceheroncini (perciatelli, bucatini, depends on where). They looked so plump and nice being basically a narrow tube pasta as long as a spaghetti. And white!* I thought, "And, oh, the little space in the center will hold the sauce, just the right amount." And, so I was taken in by the most poorly designed pasta.

Casari always told me to make a function list before designing anything and it was clear that these folks did not. As I see it, pasta should have only a few design constraints beyond the nutritional: 1) it should be easy to get in your mouth, either by stabbing, twirling or in extreme cases sucking. 2) It should hold some amount of a certain kind of sauce. 3) It should be possible to cook it evenly in a reasonable amount of water and time.
First, it was very difficult to cook. Since its cross section is cylindrical, the mass of the pasta is far from the longitudinal axis meaning this pasta has uncommonly high stiffness for its mass. When I placed it in the water, I had hoped to not break the pretty long tubes. It took four minutes of one end cooking to get them to bend enough that I could get them in the pot and the final result was that each noodle was cooked to different degrees . True a larger pot would remedy this, but at the very least then, this is not pasta for one. Therefore, I declare that the single fork on the package is misleading. Instead it should have a picture of a gigantic pot and a party to let oafs like me know that this isn't bachelor** food.

Second, the eating was very difficult. Again because of the stiffness, the pasta didn't twirl well at all. Often, as I got the half twirled fork of pasta to my pie hole one or two would begin to unwind and sauce my nose on their way by. Hell, one had sufficient zip to make a second revolution and noodle slap me twice! Undeterred, I resorted to the old stand-by: suction, 3.5 year old style noodle consumption. But, of course, here I was foiled again. The pastas are straws and all you get for sucking is a jet propelled flake of Parmesan wrapped around your uvula. Finally, I resorted to the other way 3.5 year olds eat their noodles and just cut the little buggers into macaroni sized lengths. But, what a disappointment. I admit, I probably used them wrong, but the website does recommend heavy sauces and I was having a ricotta, pecorino, walnut pesto (also made by this company, it was good). This stuff was damn near a solid at room temperature. And, the company says this is the easiest noodle to cook al dente because the water circulates inside and the wall thickness is thin. So you aren't supposed to cook it to death to get it twirlable. Next time I will lay them on the plate side by side and cut them in a nice orderly way like one does asparagus. Also, note the way they are twirled on the box. Clearly false advertising.

*Our pasta policy bends to the whole wheat stuff, but sometimes I just crave the good old white.
**I am not a bachelor, but Rachel is off on holiday with the fridge fairy, so I am on my own.

Even nerdy boys are snips and snails and puppy dog tails

A while back, Wayne and Garth revived the old classic joke where you walk up to someone and initiate a conversation by asking them very quickly, "Hey, you gotta a dickfor?" Of course they reply with, "Uhh, what's a dick for?" and the two culprits rewet their yellow pants, still damp from pointing out "Homo Milk, $1.09" signs to each other in gas station windows.

The following incident reminded me of these old days and proves that no amount of education can remedy what goes on in a boys mind. Our story opens with the Hard Working Focused Graduate Student(HWFGS), wearing a shirt that says, "Break the Rules" being questioned by Melancholy Deep Thinker Graduate Student (MDTGs) about the shirt:

MDTGS: So I guess that you don't like Kant very much.
HWFGS: What did you just say to me?
MDTGS: Kant, you must not like it very much.
HWFGS (to me): Do you hear what he is saying?
ME: Yes, I hear what he means to say and also know why you are confused and slightly perturbed.
MDTGS: You two have the dirty minds around here, I am talking about philosophy.

In fairness, MDTGS has used this base vernacular word for female genitalia at work in my presence more than once and with his accent Immanuel Kant's last name sounds exactly the same. Plus, once you have used this word in front of coworkers, I think it is fair that they expect you might say just about damn near anything to them. Also in fairness, this guy just doesn't understand how offensive this word really is in English. The Germans don't usually swear with sexual words, sticking instead to the scatological. So, I think when they learn English and hear Americans and even more the Brits swearing with sexual terms, they get a little over zealous. Maybe I am wrong on this, but I will give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

If you are interested in the applicable philosophy try here in the section on "The Categorical Imperative".

A couple of notes on firsts

My talk at work is over-went well enough. After, my boss and I outlined a little paper around the central finding and planned for the next few months of work. Yet, I am sitting here at the end of a pretty good week dead tired, head spinning with anxiety. So, I thought I would write short post about the some of the nice things happening lately, including a couple of firsts with Ellis.

In addition, I will be making a small contribution to another paper that is likely to end up in a pretty prestigious journal. This should be another little bump to my confidence about work and should contribute to the feeling that my career is starting to track properly. It isn't doing this right now at this moment but it is a good thing so we will put it in the good column.

This week saw Rachel get asked to work for a new company helping Chinese researchers prepare publications for English speaking journals. We don't know yet how much work might come down this pipe, but, she auditioned successfully and this will be one more writing gig for the CV.

As I was walking back from the store with Ellis the other day, a nice woman who was about 75 stopped me on the street to say she spoke English and that Ellis must be a happy baby because she never heard him cry and she only lives 40 meters from us. She said she has heard us speaking to each other on the porch and around town and kept meaning to come up and introduce herself. She learned English from her sister's husband, but I have a hard time believing she didn't work at it at some point really hard because she had excellent English for someone who hadn't lived in an English speaking country. She mentioned she would like the opportunity to chat some to keep her English fresh and she seemed to think Ellis was a quite cute. So, maybe Rachel has a speaking partner.

Then today, our midwife who we hadn't seen since before Christmas stopped by. She was one of our best things about Germany and we were very happy with her care and really liked her whole philosophy, but it seemed that here in Germany we couldn't transition from the patient style relationship to being friends. But, with her stopping by today for a visit we can try doing the same and hopefully we can spend some more time with her without having another baby immediately. She had her 8 week old baby with her. His name is Leon, which as far as I know is not a common name over here, but the parents are an uncommon couple.

This week we have, for the first time, managed to show Ellis how to do something and that something is slip himself off of a piece of furniture and onto the floor. He is a bit over zealous sometimes, landing hard in the following sequence: feet, ass, back, head. The effect is like a short drum role to introduce the screaming that follows.

Also, today, Ellis intentionally handed me something for the first time. It was a little squishy rubber crab that has a little hole in it. When you squeeze the crabs body, a little puff of air jets out. Ellis loves having his hair blown back by the little stream of air and likes it even more if I pretend the crab is sneezing as the air comes from its sinister little anthropomorphic mouth. Anyway, he took the crab and looked at it for a minute, couldn't get it to do the trick, so carefully pressed it back in my hand. After a couple of crab sneezes, I set it on the floor and he picked it up and gave it to me again. And, we repeated this sequence a few more times to satisfy you science types.

Maybe this just isn't your tragedy

When I arrived at work this morning, I was immediately confronted with the the terrible events at Virginia Tech. Last I heard this evening the number was 32, mostly young, all dead. I hadn't thought I would blog about this, but, as it turns out, it is what is on my mind, and on the mind of Europe, so in some ways it is worth recording a few thoughts.

Of course, like a lot of parents, my first thought was for Ellis and the fears I have about being able to protect him. Then I thought about the parents trying to remember their children's class schedule and looking at internet maps of campus to see if theirs were near the shootings. Not to mention the anger that students were not alerted immediately that a murderer was evidently loose on campus.

Of course, as a gun owner, there is a lingering pain every time something like this happens. Mostly, because it is one more incident that can be misunderstood to advocate for banning guns. And, while I know a lot of people on both sides don't agree with me on this, I mourn the lack of reasoned, data-based debate on this issue. I heard the first reports on the BBC International feed when I got to work this morning. They interviewed a pro-gun guy whose English was about even with my German and he was pestered to no end by the interviewer. On the other side, they interviewed an American congresswoman who came to congress to ban guns. She was equally pestered, interviewer:"But the Americans have elected a democratic majority. You have the votes and a mandate." She did manage to point out that the mandate is about the war and that there is no such growing consensus on the issue of guns or gun violence. This was followed by an expert whose simplistic correlation between number of gun owners and murders was a scientific and journalistic travesty that ignored major cultural differences between the countries being compared.

Then it was off to lunch, to defend not just my opinion but my country. It was brought up as usual, "What a terrible thing this is that happened in Virginia." (Of course we all agreed.) Then it was followed by some technical questions directed at me: "Why can't guns that hold so many shots be illegal?" (We don't know what weapon he used yet, he may have carried many or been prepared to reload quickly.) Then the political/cultural gulf between America and Europe began to open and swallow us: "Why do you allow something so dangerous to be owned by everyone? Who is so afraid that they have to have a gun? " "This is about as backwards as you guys continuing to execute criminals, don't you think?" "Why would any one want to live in a place where there is sufficient fear that you think you need a deadly weapon in your home waiting to cause an accident?"

Since the general view here is that all gun owners are generally unreasonable, I am especially careful about the rhetoric I use when gun control gets discussed at work. I explained a lot of technical things about auto-loading pistols. Then, I reminded them that the American culture around firearms and the American idea of freedom have a different shape than it does here, pointing out that one statistic we do have in good order is that people who carry handguns legally commit violent crime at a lower rate than the police, those sanctioned by the state to carry a firearm, on and off duty. Generally, law abiding citizens handle the responsibility pretty well.

Since the cultural divide is so wide around this issue, I usually, and did today, make the point that banning handguns in the U.S. is no simple thing. First, many generally law abiding citizens would refuse to give them up. Second, there is a huge black market that will not just cough up its guns and finally, someone with criminal intent is unlikely to go and hand in his hand gun. This is one argument where the NRA is right: if we take away the right to have a gun, only criminals will still have them. And, believe it or not, there are plenty of pro-gun democrats out there.

Things did turn slightly offensive at one point when I was told that I was partially guilty, as a gun owner and supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, for what had occurred there in Virginia. Worse I was accused of being like a, "Right-wing, fundamentalist, Republican who goes and sees a prostitute." I said, well, "I am more offended by the first three than the last and I hope you are making an analogy to beliefs that don't fit with either party line rather than calling me a hypocrite."

I hope a few of you read this far, because this is the important paragraph I think. I did ask them why they don't ask me:

"Why don't Americans take care of their mentally ill?"
"Why don't Americans take care of their children?"
"Why are their kids who feel so desperate?"
"Why is the gap between rich and poor growing?"
"Why aren't minorities becoming wealthy at the same rates as whites?"
"Why is it so hard to afford college?"
"Why is there little sense of community?"

Over here, the government takes care of the sick, at home families used to do it. There was community and family and a place that most of us fit in somehow and for most of us it was in the middle class. For minorities there was the promise of equal opportunity. Now, not so much. If you throw out constitutional arguments, my personal interest in firearms and my general belief that gun control thus far has largely failed to save very many lives, there is still this: I am not prepared to believe that America's human institutions have failed so irreparably that the level of personal responsibility felt toward one's fellow man has dropped so low that we can no longer be trusted with this tool. If I believed this, I would truly despair and probably carry all of the time.

Another run around the sun

Tonight I mentioned to Rachel that it was nice to see the seasons getting back around to where we started our time here. The apartment smells like it did when we got here and the sun comes in the windows at the same angle we remember from last year. But, things feel a whole lot better this year compared to last, on that we both agree. Rachel even said that she is starting to appreciate some things about Germany and what we might bring back to our American life when we come home.

She has noticed that all of the highest rated toys on the American baby sites come out of Germany and we both like some of the housewares, especially those that seem incredibly cheap here, considering the quality, as compared to home. I will, of course, miss the beer that I call boring now and being able to travel on the train has been really convenient. The wide variety of food available is also something I will miss. Whereas one might head to a specialty store in the states for some prosciutto and be faced with one or two artisanal choices that are regarded to be the two best in the world, here, there are several pretty good options available in the regular store and butcher shop at everyday, everyman kind of prices. For example, in the Netherlands last week, I bought a cheese (aged farmhouse gouda)for about 5 Euros/lb. A similar cheese at my favorite shop in Ann Arbor is routinely marked at $12/half lb. On average, yes, food is more expensive here, but the stuff I called a treat at home (good beer, good wine, good cheese, good olive oil, good olives, the occasional duck or goose) can be had for half, sometimes less.

This year, as spring advances, we are also seeing things that we were too stressed to notice last year at all. For instance, we didn't realize that the tree pictured here was a cherry tree until the neighbors told us to feel free to help ourselves before the cherries started to rot. We never even noticed the blossoms, which is pretty remarkable considering the view from our balcony this year.

Today as we returned home from our bike ride through the farms that surround our village, we stopped to chat with the downstairs neighbor and let her play with Ellis. I managed to discuss his development with her, his favorite foods and to convey the idea that the best way to befriend him is to offer something for his baby sized pie hole, which she did in the form of a banana that he refused to eat while she held him. Then we managed to discuss our families a bit. She told me when her children were born ('54, '56 and '59) and what they did for a living. She asked how many we might have and laughed when I said we didn't know. I told her Rachel had quite a few sisters and she asked about our siblings. She told me about hers, two of them, one who lives nearby, who I suspected might be her sister, and a brother killed long ago in a motor cycle accident a couple of miles from where we all live.Of course, moments like this are what help the most. To manage a nice conversation with someone in German, connect with a neighbor a little, it really helps. We have seen a year go 'round and see all of the unexpected bills and strange cultural happenings southern Germany can throw at us and we are neither outcasts nor broke. It doesn't feel like Home, but it is a home for now and if it is for a while longer we will do better to appreciate it.

BigMacfalafel and a side of fries

Simple proof that I have an excellent wife:

Homemade falafel, on homemade pita bread, with homemade Baba ganouj.

Holland and Alimentation

No surprise we ate plenty in Holland and much of it was good.

We were able to enjoy several more beers from the low countries, mostly Belgium. I had the Kwak from the brewer of Tripel Karmaliet. This was good, but not as good as the T.K. which might be my current favorite beer after a second sampling. We also tried the beers from Christoffel and had a rerun on the Rochefort trappist ales. I decided the Rochefort 8 was the better of the two.

Since we didn't have an apartment, but a B&B in Leiden, our meals were mostly out and had a much different character than the meals on other recent trips where we shopped local and cooked piles of fresh seafood for ourselves.

Our first evening in Amsterdam, near the touristy flower market, we parked it at a street side cafe looking for pancakes. Rachel and Bridget had a sweet pancake and Orrin and I went for the Dutch pea soup. The pea soup was quite good (and very hot), but not much different than what you find in America. This was the first thing we had eaten all day that wasn't junk, so once we got settled in our B&B in Leiden, we headed out looking for something with some nutritional value of some sort. Note that the infamous fried gravy log was among the junk food of the day. I saw so many folks getting these that I had to try one, and I was expecting cheese. What I found inside this thing was a gooey mess that was reminiscent in flavor of sausage gravy but with bacon instead of sausage and in appearance looked like that coconut icing people slop on German chocolate cake. If I had taken a bite a little sooner, it would have still been so hot from the fryer that my taste buds would have been destroyed prior having to actually taste it. In retrospect, this might have been preferable.

I don't think any of us were starving as we headed out, but definitely needed to erase the memory of the gravy log,and knew we should have something to eat, so we settled on a little place near the B&B that didn't look too expensive called M'n Broer. After sitting and considering the menu, we all chose fairly light meals or appetizers. Even the small appetizers were sizable enough. I had the salad with roasted goat cheese and warm vinaigrette. Bridget had a nice size tuna carpaccio for less than 10 Euros and Rachel had forest mushroom crepes. Everything was excellent, but for me the highlight was the discovery of Maredsous Brown ale, formerly brewed by monks, now brewed by Duvel under monastic supervision. This beer seemed to have all the best of a double, a triple and a sour ale mixed in good proportion and it was a hit with all four of us. Orrin got the La Chouffe Blond and this was also excellent, a little tart and very fruity.

The next day we rose to a Dutch breakfast, which is pretty much the German breakfast: yogurt, fruit, breads, cold cuts, cheese and cereal. Ellis loved the cold cuts. One item of note at this meal was a strange loaf of spiced bread with raisins and a big lump of marzipan in the middle. We, along with some other Americans, made a small error by toasting another sweet bread from the table; according to the proprieter, it wouldn't occur to a Dutch person to toast this type of bread. All Americans agreed it was good this way.

For lunch we had some excellent pancakes that included one with onions and ham, one with apples, bacon and cheese and two sweet and boozy fold-overs. It was a nice meal, and the place had Leffe triple pretty cheap. Overall though, I found the pancakes to be a little expensive compared to other options. It may just have been that we were eating them in touristy areas. We had sushi picnic for dinner in the common room of the B&B. The sushi place was slow, but cheap (sushi for 4 less than pancakes for 4!). The sushi was simple (no spider rolls, no rainbow rolls, nothing with cream cheese on it) and the fish was good.

In the middle of this we had the famous Indonesian spring roll that is popular street food in Holland called a Lumpia. I can report that these tasted good, were better with the sweet chili sauce and apparently give you really bad breath.

The next day was our big bike trip through the country side to the flower garden Keukenhof, where we ate a boring and expensive lunch. We made up for this by going out to a nice dinner though. We were all pretty beat and so were the babies, but we had a reservation and the staff seemed very nice at "Entrance Forbidden". They had "Forbidden Fruit", a nice dark brown beer from Hoegaarden and a supposedly Dutch menu. The girls got the set menu and shared their appetizers and dessert with us boys who only ordered entrees. The better of the appetizers was asparagus spears wrapped in thick slices of lamb ham. Having the lamb ham completes my study of cured meats; I have reached the statistically significant conclusion that almost every meat can be improved by curing and a little wood smoke. The second appetizer was a smoked mackerel mousse with slices of cured haddock. This was also good, but perhaps not suited to the American pallet. It was, however, better than the unsmoked alternative might have been.

In an unadventurous move, both girls got the chicken, something Rachel and I almost never order in a restaurant because we tend to eat a lot of it at home. It was all rolled up with some ham and cheese and sauce and they seemed quite satisfied. Orrin got a plate called "The Fishing License", which looked to me like a relatively no nonsense dinner of three things from the ocean with a bit of nice sauce. I had the pork ribs for a "normal appetite" and surprisingly that was the right amount for my normally abnormal hunger. The ribs were enough like home to be comforting and unusual enough to seem special. The latter was due to the sauce, which looked like good old American barbecue, but was sweeter, less tangy and flavored with coriander and maybe cinammon and cumin.

The desserts were quite good. Orrin and I split the cheese plate. We didn't recognize any of the three cheeses right off, but they paired well with the grapes and walnuts that came with, and, we cleaned the plate. The girls had a stack of vanilla ice cream with mango sorbet frozen over the top. The whole pile sat on what was called a "brownie". The brownie was more like a cookie and could have been left out, but the rest was excellent.

The next day it was back to Amsterdam where the babies tried shrooms (kidding!) and we had some excellent Thai before grabbing snacks at a grocery store and getting on the train. If we missed out on something in the food department it was herring. Rachel only got to have it once. All in all though, we ate good and pretty cheap for the quality.

what we learned in holland

1. If you want to clear a path through a group of tourists, consider pretending that a bike trailer is actually a stroller. The protruding metal piece that would normally connect to the rear bike tire serves as an effective spear/ cattle catcher.
2. The best nickname for the contraption described above is probably "the narwhal stroller".
3. Art history textbooks do not do justice to the chiaroscuro in Rembrandt's work. It's amazing. Absolutely worth the trip to the Rijkmuseum.
4. If you trap a 20 month old and 10 month old in a narwhal stroller, they might surprise you with their amicable behavior and side-by-side snoozes.
   
5. You might also have to use the hoods of their jackets as "anti-hair pulling devices."
   
6. Windmills were invented in the Middle East and brought to Europe by the Dutch. They had to figure out how to get the windmills to work when the winds blew from different directions. At first, this required "post style" windmills, in which the whole structure rotated. "Cap style" windmills were a big improvement because the upper part of the windmill could rotate independently. (full disclosure: I woke up sick the morning the rest of the party visited the windmill museum, de Valk. For all I know, they made this whole thing up).
7. Gone with the Wind sells some sweet, but not expensive mobiles.
8. We can bike 50 km, but not without several pit-stops, snacks, and a lot of whining.
9. Info from the Pilgrim Museum: You know those weird paintings where the people's faces look flat and white? They look normal if you view the paintings in candle light. That is, the way they were painted to be viewed. Also, because they were made from green wood that was allowed to dry after it had been worked, you can still sit in chairs made by pilgrims and their contemporaries. Also, there was lawsuit in Leiden in the 1600s in which a brewer claimed he could not make proper beer because the cloth manufacturer upstream was putting too much urine into the water. The brewer lost his case when the townspeople said they liked the beer to taste that way. Yuck!
   
10. The guide at the Pilgrim Museum is a font of fascinating information, but his delivery will not make it seem that way. This situation is not improved by American ladies giggling and repeating his punnny jokes 4-5 times. Not improved at all.
11. You can see some amazing flowers at the Keukenhof, but bike riding through the country side is even cooler. In the loveliest spots, the air smells like hyacinth blossoms and willows hang over shimmering canals flanked by tulip fields.
12. In the not so lovely spots, the air smells like a horse barn, the canal water is covered with algae, and all you can see is the back of an industrial park.
13. Wooden tulips not only last longer but are easier to transport than the real thing. However, like the real thing, they are not baby proof.
14. If you vacation with the Lorenzes, they will do all the picture taking and uploading. If you (foolishly) do no already read Never Here Again, look here.
    

baa!

We are back from our Easter mini-break in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, it seems that during our absence burglars broke into our apartment and left clothes all over the floor, dirty dishes in the kitchen, and bread crumbs throughout the living and dining rooms. And they ate all the food in the fridge! So, a recap of our trip may have to wait a bit. We had a great, but tiring, trip with the Lorenzes. From the train we saw the spring's new little lambs and here's one more:

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter.

10 months- short but on time

Tomorrow we leave for a long Easter weekend in the Netherlands and I am not at all ready. So, here's a quick update on my 10 month old (!) little sweetie:

I have no idea how tall or heavy Eli is this month, but he's continuing to outgrow his clothes and carrying him just down to the bakery on the corner is getting more and more difficult. Around the middle of last month, I really noticed him starting to get into everything. For the first time he was willing to crawl or cruise out of the room to see what mischief he could get into elsewhere: rattling empty plastic bottles, pulling the shoes off the shelf, playing in the curtains, and grabbing handfuls of dirt. He's gotten good at walking along the wall and this remains his preferred form of locomotion. But, his interest in what's around him means he crawls a bit more often now. His new mobility, of course, makes him even more indignant about anything that impinges upon it (diaper changes, getting dressed, etc). Other new hobbies for this month include lots of babbling and the rather less endearing smacking and pinching. And he routinely makes quite the little piggy of himself at breakfast and dinner. Here is a series of pictures in which Eli simultaneously reminded me not to store things below the one meter mark and demonstrated that he inherited the "flagrant overuse of paper towel" gene from his father.

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me...

Since one of our American guests this past week is, among other things, literary and not, an automotive writer we loaded up and headed down to Stuttgart to see the museums of the two famous automotive companies based there: Daimler-Benz and Porsche. Generally, the museums reflected the differences between the two companies with Porsche having a big room with 25 cars, some racers, some street legal, with a little history and a lot of expensive jackets and other souvenirs. Mercedes has just built a modern museum whose architecture, exhibit design and visitor flow is on par with any internationally recognized museum such as the Holocaust museum in D.C.

We stopped first at the Porsche museum and slipped in the back door by accident. There was no entry fee and one short paragraph about each car. There wasn't any historical context and most of the information was about power ratings, top speeds and races won. It was a worthwhile stop but only required about 45 minutes. My favorite exhibits at Porsche were some of the prototypes that never made it to the street and the Le Mans cars.

We then got lost four times trying to get to the Mercedes museum, a building that we could often see from miles away, but couldn't seem to approach. I have heard this is how people feel in Ann Arbor, saying they love the downtown once they have parked and commenting that they have never spent so much time in sight of a building without being able to get to it. Anyway, we finally found a garage reasonably close and discovered that there was a big soccer match at the Daimler arena next door to the museum, filling that section of town with rowdies. Apparently, Stuttgart beat Aachen.

We grabbed lunch in the reasonably priced museum restaurant and then were off to see the history of not just Daimler-Benz, but also the history of the automobile and the 20th century, according to Mercedes. The museum was setup to funnel visitors through the whole collection. One did have the choice to either see galleries of vehicles according to a theme first followed by the history, making two trips to the top floor and descending twice along two routes. Or, you could just alternate in a single descent as we did. This feature gives you a hint about the architecture and the complexity of the design.

There is plenty I could post about the Mercedes museum, but the website will give you a chance to see a substantial fraction and a feeling for the design of the place. The parts about the early engines and their use in other vehicles was especially interesting. The company even built a narrow gauge rail system in and around Stuttgart at one point. This section included airships and boats in addition to cars that were barely recognizable as such. I was surprised to see frequent references to the "stringent standards in North America" that created problems for the company, since the Germans think Americans are the polutanest folks on the planet. Particularly, the CAFE standard which demands a minimum average fleet fuel economy forced the introduction of new models, some of which became outrageously popular.

The section mentioning the company's involvement in the world wars, particularly the use of slave labor in the second, were straightforward and didn't mince words which I found pretty satisfying. On the other hand, it was probably a little easier in the case of Daimler to discuss this since they paid reparations early to those who survived the holocaust and the families of those who didn't.

In America, we think of Mercedes as a luxury brand, and it has that cache here, but the museum also lets you see the full, international scope of the Benz market from the Unimog (look for it in the gallery of voyagers on the museum site, it isn't easy for me to link to because of the ridiculously fancy website design) to the bus to the semis and even trash haulers that don't fit that image we see in America. Benz even made tractors (as did Porsche, briefly). The museum, of course focused on the beautiful sports cars and giant luxury models but didn't shy away from ambulances and fire trucks that made up part of their industrial business.

My favorite exhibited vehicle was a low sided pick up that had a wood carburetor. Not a wooden carburetor, but a wood carburetor. Apparently, between the wars, during the second one and after, gas was hard enough to come by that some people ran their cars on wood in a manner that seems almost too straightforward to have worked. Basically, in the bed of the truck was a fire box where one put a pile of embers. The combustible gases produced, in a process including pressurized steam, from the glowing embers in the fire box fed the engine.