Trash

It is 5:00 in the morning. Dark. Cold. I am deep in sleep. And the doorbell rings. Is it a dream? Is it an emergency? Should we ignore it? It rings again, and again. Urgently. Somebody must be in trouble, we have to get up. ("We" means Olof of course).

He stumbles out of bed, into a bathrobe and down the stairs. I wait. It is quiet. Maybe it was a trick and somebody is trying to rob us. But we are in Germany and people are law abiding here, right? Finally, Olof comes straggling up the stairs, chuckling - or is he grumbling?

There was no one there he tells me. Though he caught a fleeting glimpse of man in a reflective vest wandering down the street, pulling out garbage cans from neighboring houses. This was the garbage fairy - the do-gooder citizen who was ringing on our door at an ungodly hour to let us know that we had forgotten to put our trash out!

Well, Germans are nothing if not rule bound. And when it is trash day, don't you forget it. Trash day is not really as easy to remember as it would seem. We were given the schedule for all trash pick-ups for the year when we moved into our house. The trick is to consult it regularly so we do not miss our window of trash collection again. Here there is nothing so simple as "every Wednesday" or even "every other Wednesday", nor do we just have one type of "trash" to look after.

Of course the Germans are to be commended on their recycling programs. Just about everything is sorted and recycled. Very little is actually considered trash actually goes into a landfill.

Plastic and metal go into the yellow container, paper into the blue. Food scraps and green waste into the green bin, and all the rest of the "garbage" goes into the black container. Drink bottles are generally washed and reused. There are standard sizes for beer and soda bottles, and most of these get returned to the drink stores by the case. They are not melted down as in the States. Miscellaneous bottles must be dropped off at separate recycling bins, usually placed near grocery stores.

My kids have become experts on what goes where. Under the sink we have 4 separate bins to sort things, and a very small bag for "trash". It is amazing that our trash can, half the size of what we had in Davis, is only collected twice a month, and is rarely full.

The schedule is very complicated for our black, yellow, blue and green containers. Some are collected twice a month, while others are collected once a month or every 3 to 6 weeks, and some even just twice a year. Since the schedule is not regular, we must consult our little notebook every evening, lest we incur eager bell ringing by our reflective vested friend, whoever he may be.

(Ironically the day I posted this was a black bin trash day, and even though we discussed it the day before, Olof and I both forgot! Luckily the trash fairy came and took our bin to the street for us, yet again)

must_learn_German

For someone who is not fond of pork (ya'all may remember that from previous posts), I just had a very close encounter with a pig stomach. I must learn the language, and quick, or I am going to ingest something disgusting, or deadly.

I was happily planning on making split pea soup to eat for a cold October meal, and thought I would add some flavor with a bit of ham. Well, having never bought ham, I do not have a lot of experience in this department. So, I picked out something that looked smoked, and like a hunk of bacon, and bought it.

I was please with myself for having ventured out of my normal food routine after smelling delicious pea soup at a local pottery fair this weekend. From my Joy of Cooking recipe, I acknowledged the benefits the added flavor of ham added, and thought, "why not, I am in the land of pork after all".

After measuring out the peas and water and putting it all on to boil, I started to add my ham. I decided to pull out my dictionary first to read exactly what kind of ham this was. Well I could guess that rauchen is smoked, but I did not know what geräucherterbauch was. Well, turns out, Bauch is stomach and what I had indeed bought was smoked pork stomach!

This concludes my adventures in pork purchasing and has moved me one more step back into my old vegetarian life. I am sure that there is nothing wrong with pork stomach, but for me, I prefer my pea soup as is. Maybe I will add some onions and call it a day!

Adventuring

My blogging days are not as active lately as we move from the adventure and discovery phase to mundane routine. Not that we have so acclimatized to Germany that it is blasé, oh no, we are still on the road of discovery, the pace has slowed is all.

We have gone from wide eyed tourists, ogling baked goods and testing sausage, to savvy residents finding the best vegetable market and quickest bike route to school. Adventure takes on new meaning.

We did however venture out of town over a weekend to explore the neighboring Ahr valley. It is a narrow wine growing valley with dramatic hills covered in grape vines. Not unlike Napa and Sonoma, and my mom's own little valley, Anderson valley. There were wineries and restaurants around every corner and lots and lots of tourists driving slowly on a sunny Sunday afternoon, taking in the quaintness of every little bend in the road that followed the river.

One of my objectives with the trip, besides seeing beautiful landscape, was to try a very local specialty, onion cake and fresh wine. The onion cake is more like quiche without custard, and it goes very well with the sweet, early press of the white wine grown in the region. The wine was surprisingly good for being sweet, like drinking spiked grape juice with effervescence.

Of course we were obligated to wander along the Ahr, throw some stones and eat ice cream. It seems that along with beer, sausage and coffee ice cream is a required accompaniment to any activity.

There are ice cream shops everywhere, and it is all quite delicious. It is similar to gelato but not as creamy. A special treat is the spaghetti ice cream which comes looking like a plate of spaghetti with strawberry sauce and white chocolate sprinkles. It is a big hit with the kids.

Like all adventures, big or small, one must be prepared to jump off the path and discover something unexpected. Before we even got to our destination and planned onion cake outing, we spotted something glinting through the trees. We had to pull off the road and check it out. The goats greeted us first, but with further investigation we realized we had discovered a luge park - something I had never seen before.

No question, we had to try it. We paired up and each jumped on a small cart on rails that took us up a steep hill. We were then released onto a winding luge track to careen down at our own risk. Of course there are no waivers here, no helmets, no safety belts. Just mom holding kid and laughing at the fun of it all.

Adventures are good for the spirit and necessary for the soul.