Der Man in Schwarz

US American culture is readily embraced by Germans. But even in a market that's as receptive to American culture as Germany is, some US artists seem to be more readily accepted than others. In literature for example, John Irving is a big favorite here, as is Philip Roth. Cormac McCarthy, on the other hand, or Michael Chabon don't seem to appear in bookstores here anywhere near as often.

One classic American musician who is incredibly popular in Germany is Johnny Cash. Here in Deutschland, Mr. Cash's music appeals to people in a way that isn't clouded by the artificial categories that are so important to marketing in the States. Cash's music crosses all boundaries in Germany, appealing as easily to a burnt out old hippie-type as to a twenty-something punk. I hear Johnny playing as background music in department stores and on the radio and his CD's stand in the bookcases of almost every home I visit here.

My own radio interests here don't include Johnny Cash. I admire him and his music, but I don't travel to Germany to spend my time listening to American popular music. In Essen the radio dial is dominated by the WDR stations, with WDR Eins focussing on current popular music and WDR 5 offering a broad range of news and cultural offerings. I doubt if many of my acquaintances here listen to WDR5 very often: it has a reputation of being just a little spießig. But I enjoy the variety and novelty of the station. There's just nothing like it in the US.

I often wonder how Germany can offer this kind of entertainment: what's the business model, and how do they pay their bills? The answer is, of course, that Germany is a socialist economy. Until recently, the government ran all radio and television. If you own a radio, you pay an annual tax on it, and those taxes go to supporting public programing, like WDR5. The catch is, WDR has to serve a wide audience to maintain the government support they depend on and their constituents include organizations like the Catholic and Evangelical churches (which, incidentally, are also state-run institutions here.) And that's why WDR5 can sometimes be just a little stodgy. Every morning at 6:05, I listen to a piece produced by a prominent religious figure in the region and they're rarely very dynamic. The speakers are all so damned earnest, so unctuous, so anxious to please. They talk slowly,  and their arguments are formatted in a way that reminds me of the ads the white-haired guy on Wild Kingdom used to do:

The hammerhead tortoise has a shell to protect him from wild predators and you need protection too....

 

But this morning's piece, by Diplom Theologe Markus Potthoff from Essen was really quite entertaining and he made his point with a quote he attributed to Johnny Cash: 

Das Christentum ist nichts für Weicheier

Loosely translated, it means something like, Christianity is not for sissies. It's entertaining for me because it uses some of the great vocabulary German has to describe sissies: Weicheier, Shattenparker, Warmduscher... And ironic too, because, no matter what they do to escape it, all of these religious commentators wind up sounding like a bunch of Weicheier. But today at least, I listened eagerly to the Kirche in WDR5 address, and I'll continue to be a faithful listener, even following the station on-line when I'm back in the States. Tomorrow at 6:05 there will be another preacher greeting me from the electronic pulpit, but at noon I'll be listening to a Hörspiel about a fictional dominatrix who runs a shop in the government quarter of Berlin, beating up on Muttersöhnchen for fun and profit. Public radio in Deutschland makes for strange bedfellows and reminds me every day that I'm not in Kansas anymore.

Still-Leben A40

The average speed on the freeways of Los Angeles can be as low as 5 miles per hour during peak traffic periods, but that's nothing compared to the average speed on the A40 yesterday. The A40, or Ruhrschnellweg, as it is sometimes called, is the main Autobahn through the Ruhr region and yesterday it was closed from Duisburg to Dortmund as the entire Ruhrgebeit sat down to a 60 kilometer long Kaffeepause. Average speed never crept above zero as the classic German picnic benches and tables were stretched end to end and the Autobahn was closed to vehicular traffic for the whole day. Not everyone was sitting down though: 1 million of the 3 million estimated participants were there with bicycles and plenty were just walking or skating or running. It was the biggest and most talked about event of the Kulturhauptstadt Year and I'm sorry I missed it.

But I've got plenty of photos, videos and even a 3D virtual Kaffeetisch that WDR has put together to help me experience the event vicariously. And I'm not sure I could enjoy a gathering of 3 million people anyway. So, I'll check out the pictures online and download a video or two. Hope you enjoy them too.

Fußball in Amerika

I took time out today from my extremely busy schedule to watch a World Cup game between Deutschland and Ghana. I'm not much of a sports fan, but it's hard not to become involved in Fußball if you spend any time in Germany. I was a Yankee fan when I was 5, 6, and 7 years old, played football (very badly) in high school, and since 1994, I'm a periodic Fußball fan.

Isenberger Platz, Essen

My interest typically peaks every four years at the time of the World Cup and I believe what I find attractive about soccer at that time, is the intense excitement and camaraderie that surrounds the game. When I'm in Germany, I prefer to watch the games in Isenberger Platz, a small plaza not far from the center of downtown Essen. It's a tree-filled square with a children's playground at its center and a combination of apartment buildings, second hand stores and cafes and bars on the margins. For some reason, there is a distinct Dutch slant to a lot of the businesses and one pub in particular, De Prins, recreates the atmosphere of the Netherlands as far as they are able. When World Cup games are being televised, they mount a large screen facing the square at De Prins and a friendly crowd packs in, sitting on parked cars and folding chairs. I find the vibe there particularly gemütlich.

The vibe at the White Owl in Logan this afternoon was decidedly different. The game was on one of five different wide screen TV's with the sound down. Serbia vs Australia was playing just three feet to the left moving down the bar and some American baseball team was playing on another channel. My companion and I were essentially the only patrons at the bar, so the bartender had no problem turning the sound up for us.

The soccer crowd at the White Owl

In 2006 Ghana beat the US team in a game I watched at De Prins, but the German team dominated Ghana in today's game. The German team controlled the ball for most of the game but scored only once. Ghana was obviously frustrated by the uncanny ability Germany demonstrated to work as an organized unit, but Ghana players could really take advantage of a slip-up on the German side and they came close to scoring several times. Philipp Lahm made a couple of great saves and prevented Ghana from scoring, but the hero of the game for Deutschland will certainly be seen as Mesut Özil, who scored Germany's lone goal. I've got a soft spot in my heart for Özil, who came up through the Rot/Weiss Essen team† and now plays for Bremen.


The German win was exciting, but something seemed to be lacking at The White Owl. I listened to hear the bar patrons begin singing "Finale, whoa ooooo ooooo oooo!" a traditional response to a win back in Isenberger Platz, but the only sound was the bartender listlessly shifting glasses on the back bar. A couple of distracted customers wondered aloud if this win would be good or bad for the US: a rhetorical question not worth answering. I'm ready for Germany gegen England now, but I'll keep my expectations low regarding the team spirit evidenced by the tired rummies at the Owl. I'll either bring my own vuvuzela, or just keep a low profile. Either way, I'm hoping to be back in Essen for 2014.

__________________________
†Essen's premiere soccer team, Rot/Weiss Essen has had another bad year and it's very existence is threatened now. On my recent visit to Essen, I was able ask the Bürgermeister what the future might hold for this club: "Sie müssen schon wieder in der Fünfte Liga absteigen. Sie müssen mühsam und Schritt für Schritt wieder aufsteigen." It's a sad day for an illustrious club with appparently no support coming from the Mayor's office.

La Fura dels Baus

I was in Duisburg Ruhrort on Thursday evening for the opening of the Duisburger Akzente, a festival of cultural events, and I enjoyed a performance by La Fura dels Baus, a Catalonian dance/theater troop known for spectacular interactive performances. Thursday night's event didn't disappoint, even with the Kulturhauptstadt media machine in overdrive.

And yesterday I experienced another event planned for the Pfingsten weekend: yellow hot air balloons that float above the Ruhrgebiet, marking the site of each former coal mining shaft. I was at the Landschaft Park to witness the spectacle and I expected to see the whole of the Ruhrgebiet spread out before me, dotted here and there with hundreds of bright yellow spheres. What I hadn't reckoned with: the Ruhrgebiet is flat as a pancake; there's plenty of smog even with the industry mostly gone; the balloons were fairly small and they only went up about 80 meters. The result was a little disappointing when viewed from the Aussichtsturm at the Park.



I'm sure it was exciting for those who were releasing the balloons at the various mines, and probably it looked pretty cool from an airplane. But from any given earth-bound point in the Ruhrgebiet, it was a little less spectacular than the hype may have suggested. The photo above, taken from the top floor of the Essen Rathaus looking north toward Zeche Zollverein, shows the event to better effect.


The Akzente, on the other hand, was everything it was cracked up to be and more. Newspapers report that over 80,000 people came to the Mecatorinsel in Duisburg to view the show and it's unlikely that any went home less than satisfied. Two huge cranes lifted the performers high into the air and they swung out over the audience, lit by a combination of colored lights, projected images and enough fireworks to celebrate Independence Day in even the most pyrotechnically inclined of US cities. Supposedly, the performance entitled Global Reingold, was an homage to Gerhardt Mercator, who was born and lived in Duisburg (who knew?) and Wagner, but with angels flying overhead and a sixty foot high marionette giving birth in the crowd, it was hard to keep the conceptual aspect of the work straight. When the puppet's water broke, there just wasn't time for deconstruction: we all broke and ran. My shirt wasn't completely dry until I arrived home in Essen well after midnight.

The Guns of Essen

When there's a lot of snow on the ground, I lose my enthusiasm for riding my bike around town. The cold doesn't improve the situation, but mostly I object to the shrinking road shoulder. Banks of snow and ice push out into the street in places and a relatively pleasant morning commute becomes that much trickier. Then there's the air quality: worst in the US when we're under an inversion and cycling just increases my exposure. Still, I can't really bring myself to drive, so most days I walk to work. It's still cold, the air is still dirty and the average Logan sidewalk looks like a section of the Chilkoot Trail. But when I walk, I can listen to a book on tape and that makes it all worth while.

Last week I was "reading" The Guns of August again, Barbara Tuchman's classic book about the first month of World War I. It's a fabulous book and outrageously entertaining. I know hindsight is 20/20, but there is hardly a general or statesman in the whole 544 pages (or 14 disks) that doesn't come out looking like a complete ass. Field Marshall Sir John French, leader of the British Expeditionary Forces, landed in France only to execute a series of brilliant retreats. His troops could only make contact with the enemy when he made a mistake and forgot to retreat fast enough. The French, under Joffre, felt any battle could be won with proper Gallic élan, thereby neglecting to provide troops with items such as weapons and ammunition. The Germans seemed to have every advantage, but had an incomplete understanding of the value of diplomacy. After a gratuitous violation of Belgian neutrality to open the war, they felt the best way to win back world public opinion would be to execute woman and children in villages along the way to Paris. Mostly the Americans escape the worst of the stupidity by remaining neutral themselves, but the American ambassador to France reinforces the European view of American naïveté by suggesting that when the Germans arrive at the gates of Paris, he'll go out and "talk" to them.

I'm probably being too critical here. Albert I, King of the Belgians, shown here walking with the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel II, acted admirably. He was also very tall and sat a horse well. And Joseph Gallieni, French retired territorial General, whose intelligence, strength of will and resourcefulness saved the French from defeat, certainly deserves our respect. The Germans, under Moltke, had transport figured out to the timing of every axle of rolling stock and the second it would cross the French border, but Gallieni delivered his troops in a fleet of taxi cabs and stopped Moltke cold.

A big part in the first month of the war was played by German arms manufacturer Friedrich Krupp AG of Essen, Germany. It was their siege guns that allowed the Germans to overrun Belgian forts so rapidly. So imagine my surprise as I crested Old Main Hill on campus last week and spotted a ThyssenKrupp delivery truck in the parking lot behind our administration building, just as Ludendorff surrounded Liege in my headphones. It turned out to be nothing more serious than a routine elevator inspection. But it made me wonder about the resemblance of certain Utah State University administrators to General Erich Ludendorff.



Krupp AG merged with Thyssen, another Ruhrgebiet industrial giant, in 2000 and their new world headquarters is nearing completion in the Altendorf neighborhood in Essen. It's the sort of development that makes me really think the world might be getting better. Instead of invading one another's countries, almost everyone in Europe is busy now planning to sell bratwurst or some other local specialty in Essen as a part of the World Cultural Capital celebration. Krupp isn't building siege guns, but is instead insuring my safe transportation to the dean's office on the third floor of Old Main and back. The "Krupp Belt" that wraps around downtown Essen to the west, a phalanx of belching smoke stacks in WWI, and a heap of rubble at the end of WWII, is now a beautiful park with a new north/south boulevard and public transit line. The transformation has taken over one hundred years and I try to keep the long view myself as I walk the frozen trails of Logan, an urban planning waste land in the air pollution capital of Utah. If Europe survived the foolishness of their leaders, there must be hope for Cache Valley too.

Folkwang Eröffnung

I'm busy in Utah completing a report that assesses my department at the state university. It's an an important document and will soon be lining wastepaper bins in offices all over campus. While I look for more places to insert vital buzzwords such as "diversity" or "disaggregate," Forschungsjahr readers will have to make do with this exciting video about the newly renovated (and expanded!) Folkwang Museum building in Essen. My favorite part is the neu-Deutsch phrase, Besucher Facilities. I wish I had THAT guy's help with my report.

zwanzigzehn

The official World Cultural Capital celebration opening took place a few days ago in Essen at the Zeche Zollverein and here am I, stuck in Utah. Luckily, there's no lack of information about the event, and from what I can see it was a blow out Essen will be talking about for years to come. Americans often have a romantic picture of Germany, in which a layer of crisp new snow lies on all the pretty cottages. The truth is, as I've mentioned in previous blog posts, snow is fairly rare in the Ruhrgebiet. So an opening night celebration in an open air arena at the heart of the Zollverein campus mustn't have seemed like a particularly risky enterprise. But on the night of the ninth of January, the snow was flying. Far from ruining the event, it seems to have heightened the drama.

Grönemeyer was there, the Minister President, Helge Schneider, Dietmar Bär and Klaus J. Behrendt (the Tatort Kommissare from Köln,) the former Minister President... it seems only I couldn't make it. I'll include some pictures I borrowed from Spiegel below, but the most exciting images I saw were included in WDR's video presentation, which you can view here: 200.000 feiern Ruhr 2010. I thought in the new, digital world, everything would be free, but it turns out WDR doesn't allow me to embed their videos in my blog. Mist! So, click on the link, watch the video, enjoy the pictures. I need to get busy booking my flight for a visit at the end of this semester.

White Christmas

The weather has dominated the news in the US for the past week or so and the same is true for Germany. The Ruhr region doesn't get many serious snow storms as a rule, but this past week they were hit hard. I picked up on the story listening to WDR and went to some local print news sites to get more detail online. My search brought up some references to the recent snow, but I was quickly sidetracked by news about a new children's book being featured in a series of pieces in the KinderZEIT. KinderZEIT is a regular feature of the weekly newspaper, Die Zeit. It has stories aimed at children and they're going to be publishing one of the tales from Ritter, Räuber, Spökenkieker by Hartmut El Kurdi each week until mid-February. Herr El Kurdi is a Jordanian born writer, who grew up in the UK and Germany. The perfect multi-kulti credentials for this book of Ruhrgebiet folk tales, given the Ruhr's reputation as Europe's ultimate melting Pott.

Like everything that happens in the Ruhrgebiet right now, the publication of the folk tales volume is timed to coincide with the Kulturhauptstadt year, 2010. The festivities will bring a lot of attention to Essen and the surrounding cities and I imagine sales for the book might be just a little stronger than would otherwise be the case.

I enjoyed the first story, but was again sidetracked as I read the profiles of loyal KinderZEIT readers in the web page sidebar. It seems kids can send in short bios and get an early fifteen minutes of fame if the newspaper chooses their bio for publication. The format is reminiscent of the "Dewar's Profiles" that used to run at the back of the New Yorker and similar magazines in the US: passport style photo in the upper right and short answers to a series of standard questions, such as, Where do you live? What do you find particularly nice about living there? What doesn't appeal to you there? What makes you sad? What word do you always misspell? I was fascinated by the questions alone, never mind the answers the kids gave.



Thinking back to my own childhood, I'm wondering, were American kids in the 1960's allowed to be sad? I don't think so. Not that we weren't ever sad, it's just that society didn't really allow for the possibility that we would ever think about it in the abstract. I think what made me most sad when I was younger were the Saturdays when my father would abruptly announce that he would be cutting hair after lunch. Not his own hair, of which there wasn't enough to bother talking about, but our hair: we the children. Those Saturdays always ended with me looking like some skinny reform school type, tried as an adult and prepped for the electric chair. I knew school on Monday would be a living hell and wondered why a parent would make his child look that bad on purpose. But by Tuesday I had already forgotten that haircuts existed and lived in a fool's paradise until the next Saturday my father would decide to make my brothers and me look like a band of youthful collaborators.

As I read the profiles in the KinderZEIT I was surprised to see that the German kids were made sad by things like fighting, war, death, or in two cases, noise. I fought constantly as a kid and don't remember being sad about it. Angry, yes, but only if I lost. And noise? I loved noise and reveled in noisy things. Reading these profiles, I wondered if maybe it's only the children of Zeit readers that get sad about noise. Probably kids whose parents read the Bild Zeitung get sad about stuff that I could relate to, like having to go to bed in the summer when it's still light out. But not all Zeit reader children are so sophisticated. One child, when asked what he particularly disliked about his home town (Marburg,) replied "Hundehaufen." In my neighborhood we called it dog doo and we didn't like it either. I couldn't have responded in any meaningful way to a question about a world free of war, but if we just could have made the front lawn safe for playing "Duck, Duck, Goose," that would have meant a lot to me.



The Hundehaufen in Essen are all safely hidden today under a glittering blanket of white snow and presumably the children, whether Zeit readers or Bild readers are looking forward to the excitement of Christmas tomorrow. The quintessential Christmas for me is still the year my brother got a toy cannon, one that shot real wooden shells. We took advantage of my parent's absence for a short time to get the range on the Christmas tree and lay waste to a number of glass ornaments. It was great fun, but for tomorrow, I'm hoping for a Christmas that would make a KinderZEIT reader happy: quiet, no fighting and everyone in Marburg gets a shiny new Pooper Scooper under the tree.

Dreamgirls

On a recent trip to Seattle I learned that a Capitol Hill landmark, Vivace, had been knocked down and the lot paved over. It's being done in the name of light rail mass transit, so I can't complain too much. I'm facing similar changes in Logan, where building seems to go on at a furious pace, in spite of what I'm told is a pretty serious recession. There's a MONSTER new Walmart in Cache Valley now on the south end of town. It's easily the ugliest building I've ever seen, with the other monster Walmart a few miles to the north running a close second. There's no light rail planned for Logan but at least it's good to know that everyone's consumer needs are being met here in the Intermountain West.

But the loss of Vivace was a blow. The coffee there was outstanding and it had a tradition and a vibe that the new place a few blocks further up Broadway just can't replace. The old location wasn't perfect. For one thing, the restroom hadn't been cleaned since the King Dome was demolished. If you anticipated a call of nature, it was best to bring a hazmat suit. A little inconvenient, but it just added to the legend. Legendary or not, many buildings along Broadway were knocked down during the year I was in Germany. By contrast, during the year I'm in the US, I anticipate that no buildings in Essen will be razed. Even with the current renovation of the Bahnhof and other preparations for the 2010 Kulturhauptstadt celebration there's just very little demolition. Germany is stable. People stay put. For the most part, the new must accommodate the existing, and where it doesn't, such as the new Limbecker Platz development in Essen, most people are not pleased. There are some people in Logan who are not pleased by our second Walmart store, but mostly it's just me and a few other malcontents out on the fringe.

On the road back to Logan from Seattle I unknowingly stopped at what is apparently another Washington coffee monument. It was very early on Sunday morning and I had pulled off I-82 in Yakima to find some breakfast. Nothing seemed to be open along the main street and I was ready to get back on the highway when I noticed a little hut in a parking lot with cars idling in front of it. It was an espresso drive-thru called Dreamgirls, according to the Yakima Herald, one of several businesses springing up that people are calling "Sexpresso stands." The concept is simple: your coffee is served to you by a young woman in her underwear.

I think this may be a bonus for some, but I found it just a little disconcerting. When you give your order, where are you supposed to look? Is it impolite not to leer? Should you hand the payment for your purchase directly to the barista, or just tuck it into her waistband? Is it appropriate to make casual conversation, such as "Isn't it hard to walk with your underpants all wedged up in your butt crack like that?" I teach life drawing from time to time and have no particular problem with naked people. But then, they're usually not making me a double latte. The bottom line (no pun intended) is that Dreamgirls was open and the coffee was excellent: what's to complain about?



When I returned to Logan I was curious about the Dreamgirls and gave them a quick google. There were news stories and blog postings listed. Lots of photos and they have a MySpace page. I visited the page and was suitably underwhelmed, but they do have their fans and some even leave them comments. Here's an example of a recent one:

WHATS SUP BABY GURL ...JUST SHOING LUV TO U R PAGE BUT YEAH GET BAK AT ME

I guess that just about sums it up for me too.

Syllabus

When I taught at the Universität Gesamthochschule Essen back in 1994 I was immediately struck by the contrasts between the German and American university systems. During the year that I was there my understanding of and consequent insight into the German system grew and ultimately I came to feel the two systems were far more alike than I had realized, but initially I was confused to say the least. As I sit in my office now, trying to write a syllabus for a course I haven't taught in over ten years, I'm more than a little nostalgic for that first Grundübungen: Zeichnen course I taught. With no real "registration," students could (and did) show up or not as they pleased. In the US I'm expected to develop a curriculum with a logical progression. Each week's activities should extend and develop concepts discussed in the previous week. But back in Essen in 1994 there was no expectation that the students present today would have any knowledge of what happened last week. Each week's activities had to stand alone and the students were responsible for putting it all together in an order that made sense. It completely eliminated the need for planning on my part. I was a very popular instructor and most weeks curious students overflowed into two, sometimes, three, classrooms. If I could find a chair for each student, my Learning Objectives Assessment Rubric was fully satisfied.

Chairs won't be a problem when classes begin here in a little over a week, but the need for a syllabus for my Drawing I section has my brain fully engaged. I know intuitively why drawing is important, but explaining its significance concisely is a real puzzle. I believe strongly that defining objectives makes me a better teacher, but at home we haven't located the silverware yet. It would be nice if I could wing it just this once.

I really need a few solid weeks of undisturbed unpacking to get my life back on track, but the needs of the job are distracting me in a variety of ways. Last night for example, after less than 36 hours in Logan, I was already attending an opening reception for an exhibition featuring the work of two visiting scholars here at Utah State. Having been a visiting scholar myself several times, I know how important it is to make visitors feel welcome, so I put aside the search for knives and forks and attended the opening for two Korea artists, vowing to myself that I would not stay long. Five hours and a couple of bottles of soju later, I was performing "Beyond the Sea" in the basement of a local Korean restaurant. I thought I did a pretty good job, but the Karaoke machine has an automated scoring system and my younger, less experienced colleague beat me, hands down. Clearly I need a copy of the Karaoke Objectives Assessment Grid.

Not the heat

In a previous post I complained about a slow Internet connection at my Wohnung. The people at T-Mobile must have heard me, because now I have no connection at all. It's all part of a trend here. Almost as if Essen can sense my impending departure, things are coming to a close all around me. Rubens, my favorite coffee roaster on Emmastr. is closed and the family that runs it is on Urlaub. Ditto for our local Turkish place where the boys behind the counter make the finest aubergine pizza this side of Istanbul and always have a complimentary baklava ready for us. We didn't even get to say goodbye.

The upside to Rubens being closed was that while I stood outside and read the sign, I remembered that I wanted to photograph the great window display they have there. The result is shown above. It's a sure-enough dollhouse coffee shop and while my photo doesn't do it justice, it makes me want to buy a coffee roaster and go into business every time I see it.

With just four days to go, I'm doing a lot of thinking about the sabbatical experience. I realize that there are things I just won't be able to get to now. I've accomplished a lot, but not everything I wanted, and it seems I just have to accept that. I wanted very much to improve my pronunciation of the illusive "ü" sound in German, but I've made little progress there. I can say the normal "u," as in Schule, but the more extreme "ü" stumps me. Two words in particular make my poor pronunciation a real problem: schwul and schwül. Schwul means "gay" and schwül means "humid." In most cases, I get away with my accent being seen as charmant, but given the wide gap between the meaning of these two words and my almost total lack of ability to even hear the difference (much less pronounce it,) I find that in this case, my accent just leads to confusion and embarrassment.

I was discussing this on a hot, muggy day recently, as my wife and I were walking through the vacation-deserted streets of Essen. We were both over heated and sweaty and I was trying to work through the impending departure and accept the inevitable. She was supportive and philosophical and reminded me of something I hope I won't soon forget: When it comes to temperature and good pronunciation, it's not the heat, it's the homosexuality.

Independence Day in Oelde

There's a hot debate going on in Germany right now about who has the slowest internet connection. Many voices are heard and there are thousands of candidates, but a consensus is emerging: it's me. I have the slowest of the slow. This has been going on the entire year but I've made a point of not getting into it here at Forschungsjahr. It's like the elderly woman I spoke with yesterday in Oelde said: "There's too much complaining today!" So, even though my internet connection is genuinely lousy, I'm resisting the urge to complain.

I was minding my own business in Oelde, a small town on the eastern edge of the Münsterland, when the elderly woman approached me with her walker. She squeezed by me and I said "Excuse me," as I tried to make room for her. She paused, looked at me and said (more or less) "There's no need to excuse yourself. There's plenty of room here. I'm not a complainer, like so many people today. Everyone would be happier if they went through a World War as I did." She followed up in a slight Polish accent, giving a quick summary of her daily schedule during the war: up at 5am, milk the cow so her little sister would have something for breakfast, and so on. She was a hot ticket and we traded world views for a minute or two before she headed off for the town center to do her shopping. "I'm blind as a bat and the only way I can get home is by counting the buildings as I go by to keep track of where I am," she said. "Aller Achtung!" said I.

I thought that was it, but as she inched away she caught sight of my bike in spite of her near total blindness. "Affengeil!" she said. A direct translation would be something like, "Monkey horny!" Not the kind of comment I expect from a woman who is clearly well into her eighties. Technically geil means horny, as in lustful, desirous of sexual activity, but really it's a slang word expressing impressed approval. When I was a kid we said "wicked!" Some kids, not me, said "boss!" which I always found ridiculous. Later, when I was in college, people started saying "bitchin'." Not much of an improvement. Today, my students mostly say, "awesome." But this old gal in Oelde says "Affengeil!," which I think is rad.

And another thing that's pretty geil: last night I saw fireworks, Fourth of July Fireworks, ON THE FOURTH OF JULY! In the States, Fourth of July Fireworks are generally set off on the 5th, the 6th, the 8th... Any date will do, so long as it's not the 4th. I'm a pretty conservative kind of guy and I think we ought to celebrate the Fourth on the 4th. Or not at all. Why the City of Essen decided to celebrate American Independence Day at all is a mystery to me, but they did a fine job of it. We sat in our darkened living room and had a great view of the sky over Gruga Park where the rockets' red glare silhouetted the houses and trees across the street. This is the kind of display I'd like to see in Logan, Utah and I considered writing a letter to our current mayor about it, but ultimately decided, there's too much complaining today. When I want to see a decent fireworks display on the Fourth, I'll just come to Germany for a visit.

Ruhrort

I find surfaces in the US pretty boring as a rule. Roads, sidewalks, interior floors: there's not usually much going on there. Surfaces in Europe are a very different story. Almost everything is tiled here in one way or another. When workers need to work on the gas lines beneath the side walk, they just pull up the paving stones and set them aside. When they're finished, they replace the pavers and a week later no one would ever know they had been disturbed.

I started taking photographs of interesting surface patterns soon after I arrived here in September and I've been collecting new ones ever since. It's an occupation that turns every walk into a treasure hunt.

Two weekends ago I spent some time at the Innenhafen of Duisburg, a city neighboring Essen to the West, and I made a comment to an acquaintance saying that I thought it was too bad that Essen didn't have a harbor too. That led to a discussion in which I found out that Essen does have a harbor. Imagine my surprise. I've spent most of my time in southern Essen along the Ruhr. The Ruhr is pastoral. There are some old tow paths, but mostly it's a rural and residential landscape. Not so on the north side of Essen where the Emscher River flows. Here the Rhein/Herne Canal was dug to facilitate the transport of coal and other commodities. On Wednesday of this week I visited the forbidding north end of Essen, walked the Rhein/Herne Canal and saw the harbor, which, for the record, is tiny. It's dominated now by recycling facilities and among other things I watched while small bricks of shredded clear plastic were excreted from a chute into an open container for transport, presumably to some other even more desolate location.

Learning about the canal made me curious about this whole shipping thing and I followed up today by visiting Ruhrort, a Stadtteil of Duisburg. Ruhrort got it's start in the Middle Ages and it's the biggest inland port in Europe. It's the home of a great museum devoted to shipping on the Rhine and its related network of canals and rivers. The best part of the museum is that it's housed in a former bath house for the laborers of the steel works across the street. The architect did a fabulous job preserving the baths and adapting them to the needs of the museum. I could go on forever about this place, but I was supposed to say something about paving stones and tiles.

Here's the connection: water is a great mode of transport for heavy stuff. Heavy stuff that isn't particularly valuable, kilo for kilo. So... a harbor is where the stone, sand, gravel and other building materials typically enter a city. That meant that as I walked around the harbor in Essen I found a paving stone shop. For a guy that likes taking photographs of tiles and such, it was like I died and went to heaven.

Ruhrort and the seedy docksides of the Ruhrgebiet are also where most of the Tatort episodes featuring the legendary Schamanski were shot in the 1970's and 80's. It's a topic that's worthy of its own post here on Forschungsjahr and I plan to get busy with it soon. In the meantime, here are some of my favorite paving patterns from the past year: