New website

I haven't had time for many new posts recently, but there's a number of things I want to post on - mostly being held up by the time it takes me to scan in my slides/negatives since I've decided I would no longer pay 15 euros or whatever for the photo developer to scan them in. It's like 4 euros to get the film developed. So I've been doing it at home which is a constant battle against dust and, in the case of color negatives, color-balancing. Eventually I'll have some cool pics of Iceland, and also my experiments with infrared film, which is my way of staying sane with my old 35mm SLR while I wait to buy a digital job.

Anyway, I've also been spending time recently making a new work-related website, one about what I'm studying in the lab and why and how. It's geared towards other scientists, but there are some pretty pictures and movies I made in there.

Visit the new site here.

Deep.

Watch the following video and try to understand the logic:



Get that? Yes, I know what you're thinking. We all are. But it's funny when somebody with comedic skillz writes it down:


special bonus: notice the horrible fear that the politicians will appreciate praise of 'teh Europeans'. Those God-hating socialist terrorist-loving Europeans.

The Trabi

My blogging has slowed down considerably recently. Other than the last post, I had one post of a youtube video in the last 2 months. Unfortunately, nobody complained. Nevertheless, I will push on. Again, in the spirit of documenting my experiences as I go. And it may be long-winded. I still actually need to finish posting on my Africa trip, which is now over a year old. But this first. For those that don't know, last year I was part of an effort among friends/colleagues to acquire a Trabant 601. This is the Trabant, also known as a Trabi:

This is ours, and as you see it has a custom logo on the side. More on that in a minute.
At first this was going to be a post about an epic trip from Dresden to Krakow in the Trabi, but then I realized I should just start with a post about the Trabi itself, and get to Krakow another time.

The Trabant is basically the car of the DDR (GDR/former East germany). This was far and away the most common car in East Germany, and it was made not far from Dresden. I don't know the numbers, but judging by photographs I would say 90% of the cars on the roads during the time were a Trabi. Google 'Trabi" or "Trabant" to learn more about it. It was not built to appeal to customers. It was almost the only choice, and most had to wait 10-15 years or more to get one. For most of the 30+ years the Trabant was in production, it was more or less the exact same model, the 601, and it basically did not change. A '69 and an '88 Trabant 601 are more or less identical.

Dresden likely has the highest concentration of Trabants anywhere in the world I would say. Perhaps Zwickau has more. I'm not basing that on any stats, but I would be surprised if I was wrong. Drive anywhere in Dresden and you will see a Trabant.

And so, I became very curious about this fascinating tiny little car. They even have "Trabi Safaris", tours where for a price you can get behind the wheel of real Trabi and drive with other customers around Dresden. I never had any plans to have a car while in Germany, but I thought if I ever did, it would be fun to get a Trabi. But that was about the extent of it for years, just thinking about it. Then a couple years ago this fellow Cliff shows up in the lab. One of the first things he does after arriving in Germany is to buy a 70s-era BMW motorcycle. interesting. We get to talking and I say how I've always dreamed of having a Trabi, and we toss around the idea of buying one, maybe to share between a few people, and also to tinker around with.

Search the German Ebay for Trabant and you will see dozens of old Trabis for sale - almost all under 1000 euros. This was promising. But between Cliff and I we just didn't have the activation energy to pull the trigger. He had just invested in a new motorcycle, and I was thinking the German bureaucracy involved in purchasing, owning, registering, etc a new car was pretty daunting. As I said, we had thought of maybe getting a few guys to go in together on it. And then it occurred that maybe the coworkers in our lab would get a kick out of it. We approached our boss, Tony, with the idea of a "lab Trabi". Tony was instantly on board, and quite excited about the proposition. Within minutes he was on the phone with his local mechanic, inquiring into where and how the best way to get a respectable Trabi around here was. And before we knew it, the three of us were out looking at Trabis.

In the end, Tony was so game on the idea of a lab Trabi, that we worked out a deal. Tony would buy the Trabi and pay the initial expenses to get it running smoothly. Then everybody else that wanted to drive it would pay for registration, etc, and any repairs or costs that would come up over it's lifetime. A good deal. As it turns out, there's only 4 people that account for 90% of the mileage on the Trabi, and Cliff and I account for about 60%.

Since it's the lab car, we needed a logo. Nate had designed a logo for the lab, a mitotic spindle (the apparatus that divides chromosomes when cells divide, and the focus of most of my research), and so we had in translated into decals made to stick on the car. It actually turned out pretty nice, and Cliff, Misho, and I managed to professionally apply it to both sides in a few hours one evening.

There's so much more to tell about the Trabi, I really love the thing. Driving it is quite an experience. For example, there is no gas gauge. There is a stick under the hood with liters marked in it that you stick into the tank. It holds 24 liters (~ 6 gallons). It's a 2-stroke engine, like a motorcycle or a lawnmower, and you mix oil directly with the gas every time you fill up - mix it right into the tank. Top speed (in perfect conditions) is about 110 km/hr (70mph). The gear shift is on the steering column. etc.

We have the "kombi" - kind of the station wagon version of the Trabant 601. Basically instead of a trunk it's a hatchback. And it's functional - perfect for a trip to the gardening store:

Obamamania in Dresden (Nu Glaar, We Can)

Tomorrow, Barack Obama is coming to Dresden. And the city is FREAKING OUT. It's quite impressive. The newspaper has been running articles on it for 2 weeks. The Dresden police have been rehearsing for the visit the same if not longer. The city has even set up a website specifically for the visit: www.obama.dresden.de

Obama will be here I believe less than 24 hours total. He will make no scheduled public appearances. He will give no speeches. But that doesn't matter. The hype is out of control. Not being one to ignore hype, I got involved with Nate and Cliff and we conceived and designed the following graphic:

For those not familiar with Dresden, the building there is the most famous Dresden landmark, the Frauenkirche. Below, "Nu glaar, we can" is a shout out to the Saxony German dialect, where instead of "ja" you sometimes will here "nu" for "yes". "Glaar" is a phonetic spelling of the Saxon "klar". So it's meant to be a "yes we can" with a local appeal. Cliff and I have made it into stickers. I'll write it again here "nu glaar, we can", in case anybody sees a sticker and googles it - this is where to give credit/hate.

To give another example of the mania surrounding Obama's 18(?) hour visit to Dresden, every single tram in the city, as far as I can tell, has been outfitted with a banner declaring "Welcome, Mr. President!". This has been on the trams for the last week.

Air Force One is scheduled to land at the Dresden airport sometime tomorrow evening, along with ELEVEN other planes of support staff. And that doesn't include the giant C-5 that landed at the airport a few days ago and unloaded a helicopter and limo that will be Obama's transportation while he's here. Less than a day!!

Anyway, the city seems to be encouraging people to get out and about to perhaps catch a glimpse of the president - but with no guarantee that he will even appear in public. Also, a sizable fraction of the Altstadt around where Obama will be staying will be off limits to almost everybody as a security precaution. You're not even allowed to swim or fish in the Elbe tomorrow - special orders. I think I'll go out to check out the commotion, maybe to the airport, maybe around the secure area. The city apparently is planning a celebration nearby featuring American activities such as "cheerleaders" and "mechanical bull-riding" (no joke, check out the webpage). If I see anything interesting, I'll post more.

Sublime....

CocoRosie - Animals

In the Supermarket

I decided one day in the supermarket I would take a photo of everything with American- or Texas-related marketing. Interestingly, you see almost as much Texas stuff as American stuff.
As you will see, it's the most unhealthy and tasteless looking stuff you can find that gets the American branding. Sadly, fitting.

Here's what I saw:

We start off with the American classic, the cheeseburger. This one is prepared, packaged and frozen for your convenience, with the American flag in the corner. And what American wouldn't go for a good ol' "gebratene Rinderfrikadelle mit Schmelkäse" aka Cheeseburger?

And of course if you have cheeseburgers you got to have hot dogs:

American Style, which I suppose means made with all the bad parts of the pig and not the good parts like much German sausage. Although it's not very American-style to put them in a glass jar and advertise that they're wrapped in their own soft skin. Notice the prominent Statue of Liberty. A theme repeated in the American Style Pizza Supreme:

Also with American flag decoration. You can even more region-specific with a Texas big pizza, which appears to just be a spiced up pepperoni pizza. Although this combination brings up an interesting quirk of ordering pizza in Germany as an American. If you ask for 'pepperoni', you will get spicy pepper. If you want pepperoni, you would ask for 'salami'. Thus the peperoni-salami pizza below:

And then you have the Texas-Ribs. Already marinated and cooked and ready to go.

These don't actually say "American" or "Texas", but it's close:

It's not just meat, too. Check out the "Old Century Bourbon Whiskey".

Notice that it is "De Luxe". I wonder how much of the 8 euros per bottle is just to cover importing it from the USA. This stuff just seems really scary.

These may look familiar:

"Cool American" Doritos. Of course in the US we just call them "Cool Ranch". And I think when you're on a cool ranch you just call them "doritos."
And finally, I saved the best for last:

Feurige Texas Nudeln. It's like instant cup-o-soup. I actually had to buy this one. Surprisingly, it was actually spicy. Not real tasty. But it was spicy. Which is hard to find over here. Even when something says "fire-hot!"

Africa - Part 3: Visiting a Masai 'village'

On the second day before we headed out in the morning the guides asked us if we wanted to take an opportunity to see a Masai village (the tribe of this region). They would show us around their village and their traditions, show us some sort of traditional dance, etc. etc., and it was going to cost us each 40 dollars, I think it was. Maybe it was 20. Anyway, my initial reaction was to skip it – especially with the 40 dollar price tag in the middle of the Masai Mara – it seemed like there’s no way it would be genuine but rather a rehearsed show and dance that would leave me feeling uncomfortable. But the other five in our group were happy to go through with this and so I went with the crowd. We arrived at the village and were greeted by a young group of the village men. Most of them could speak English to some extent, some much better than others. These guys were all very tall and all looked to be between 17 and 25 in age. Except for one guy, who played kind of the part of tour leader among them, who looked unusually short and in his late 20s, but who was also the best English speaker and seemed to be in charge of the whole production. We later found out that he was the only one of the men not married, especially unusual given his age, and were given the impression he never would be. It wasn’t clear to me if this was because of his short stature which would make him relatively unattractive to the women in terms of the tribe traditions, or because perhaps he was gay. I’m thinking it may have been both.
So these guys did some singing and yelling and dancing for us – kind of what I had expected. And then proceeded to start what I’ve many times seen played out on TV and decided was one of my worst nightmares…
This is the part were the local tribe is doing their traditional dance and drags one of the white guys up in front of them to join in - simultaneously seeming to me to be making a mockery of their traditions and knowingly or unknowingly making a fool of the guys up there trying to dance (see George Bush on a number of occasions.) (Or maybe everybody’s trip to Hawaii that I’ve seen photos of.) You get the idea.
And so I was thrust into the middle of the Masai Mara warrior men to dance their traditional dance with them, trying my best to be a good sport and actually enjoy the experience, but in reality just thinking “this touristy crap is EXACTLY why I didn’t want to come out here and lose 40 dollars”. Anyway, all the guys in our little group were forced to eventually give it a shot. And at least I can come away saying I didn’t go through it sporting the most ferocious white man’s overbite that Mike was wearing (HA!) (see photo/click to enlarge)

They then showed us how they traditionally make fire...and then tried to sell us the sticks and wood they used to do this. Next we split up and each went into one of the family huts and the father figure would explain some of daily life...which was really the only interesting part of the whole thing. These tiny little huts made of cow dung were so dark and cramped. And then they would build a fire inside of them so also full of smoke. I guess they were very cozy though.

At the end of the tour we were directed over where, immediately adjacent to the village, was an area of about the same size, but compromised completely of makeshift cow dung tables where tribe women were selling handcrafts. It was basically a Masai shopping mall for tourists. I couldn't imagine this was representative of Masai life, which we'd paid 40 dollars to learn about. I'm not even convinced anybody there made the majority of things they were selling.
And I couldn't figure out what they could be doing with all that money. This little tribe must have been taking in 1000 dollars a day if not more in peak season. They appeared to be living off the land with everything we saw. I assume they actually lived there.

The rest of the day we spent finding more giraffes and elephants, hippos and crocodiles, ostriches and antelope.
The next morning we got up early and made the long journey back to Nairobi, and on the way we actually passed some real Masai villages, where the guides urged us not to take any photos.

We arrived back in Nairobi in the afternoon and Mike and I were able plan and buy tickets for the next leg of our trip, which we decided should be to fly straight to Zanzibar, as I didn’t have a lot of time to waste cruising by land over Kenya and Tanzania to get there. We found some dinner downtown near our hostel and got off the streets before it turned late.

Africa - Part 2: more Safari

We booked probably the shortest safari possible – 3 days, 2 nights I think it was. During the day on the way in to the park we already saw enough to be excited about, and we got up early after the first night in the camp to head out again. About 10 minutes out of camp I went to put my long lens on my camera and discovered I somehow had failed to include it in my backpack that morning. Distressed at the thought of bringing that giant lens all the way there and then going out on a safari in one of the situations where it really is necessary, I started to fret out load at my predicament, wanting to gauge if anybody cared enough to be willing to go back for it. The truck stopped, and after sitting there and some discussion, it was clear that nobody was really excited about turning around the truck and wasting more time, but nobody wanted to say it and probably wanted to keep me happy since we’d be spending the next 3 days together. And then just as we turned around I found my lens sitting next to me, which was quite embarrassing, but a relief for everyone.

At first it was very exciting to spot elephants and giraffes off in the distance. But I never imagined how close we could drive up to them. As long as we approached slowly, they seemed almost unaware we were there. I always imagined a safari as sneaking up on animals from 200 meters away, catching a glimpse as they ran away and desperately trying to photograph them with a super-telephoto lens. The elephants, giraffes, various antelope, and buffaloes we came across were none shy. But nothing compared to the lions. They would always just be lying there – we could drive up literally to within 5 feet of these guys. And they would just yawn and stare off into the distance. It was surprising, but then again, I guess with no predators they are well aware they are the kings there. What were we gonna do, get out of the truck? Even when they had cubs there jumping around – couldn’t seem to care less we were there. On the other end of the spectrum, unfortunately, were the warthogs and hyenas (not to mention of course the creatures we never saw). The sound of the truck in the distance would usually send these guys scurrying off. They were both particularly intriguing because of, if nothing else, their ugliness and the ways in which they would carry themselves. The warthogs like giant cute pigs vs. giant rodents. The hyenas were like stray dogs, yet evil with their hunched shoulders and large mouths. The animal that most impressed our guide, because he had not seen one like it before, was a giant snake. It was impressive, but with all the input we were getting so fast I would not have appreciated it as much of we had not been told how rare it was to see.

The landscape and atmosphere out there was really breathtaking. At one point I told myself I was going to smack Mike if he said “This is God’s country” one more time, but there was some sort of feeling of truth to it. Standing out the top of the land-rover, Titanic-style, with the wind though my hair as we cruised over the endless plains of grass with tiny giraffes and elephants always in the distance was unforgettable. I spent a lot of time when we were flying completely alone across the savannahs between animal sightings imagining that I was part of a party here in the 19th century, before photos and video and stories of Africa had really reached the west. What it would have been like to be along with the first new westerners that would explore (and exploit) the region for adventure and tales of adventure, tracking new animals. What it was like to be of necessity self-sufficient in ones travels. Wealthy, but nevertheless putting themselves in extreme danger.

I was able to get a number of nice pictures and a few movies of some interesting creatures, here are some of my favorites (click on them, as well as the ones above, to enlarge):

Next up:

Africa - Part 3 - The end of the safari including our little trip to a 'real' Masai village.

Africa - Part 1: Nairobi and Day 1 of Safari

I’m finally getting around to putting up some stories and photos from my trip to Africa. 9 months late. This seems to be a problem. I also would like to post about my trip to Venice, the ‘new’ Trabi, a trip Munich, and more….all that happened last year. But then I get lazy, especially now that I’m scanning in slides, and everything goes up 3 months later or not at all.
I regret from previous travels that I didn’t document or keep a dairy of what happened, as I find I randomly remember some old interesting stories, only vaguely jarred back to memory in unusual situations. Thus I think I should try to use this blog as a sort of journal to write this stuff down. Which could make for slow reading, but will serve well for having a more detailed description for myself to read in the future.
Anyway. Africa. There were a number of reasons this trip came together: 1) I’d never been anywhere in Africa 2) I wanted to go somewhere where I could dive, but hadn’t been before, and preferably not too touristy (i.e. not Egypt). 3) My old friend Mike could finally no longer contain the travel-itch and was planning on heading to Africa as well, so we timed heading out together. Mike visited Dresden for a few days and got to take in BRN before we headed for Nairobi.
I got off to a rough start. In the middle of our long flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi it somehow suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t packed my diver registration card. The worst feeling of doom swept over me as I convinced myself that I would now not be able to dive and this would consume me and my whole trip would be ruined. In dread I wanted someone to commiserate with me and I turned to Mike who was sitting behind me, but he had finally managed to find sleep. I was desperate to share my misery so I actually poked Mike to wake him up and said. “Mike. Mike. Mike. I forgot my dive card.” As you can imagine he was not enthused by all this. He just kind of looked at me like “thanks for waking me up, asshole.” I felt guilty and returned to my seat. I spent the rest of the flight trying to figure out scenarios in which I could get my card or manage to dive without it, and failing that how I would mentally not let it ruin the vacation. I’ve never seen a place let anybody dive without showing a card, but maybe this day and age they would have it all in the internet. But would the remote and probably sketchy dive operators have a facility to use this? Would it be possible that they would look the other way at the prospect at getting a hundred dollars from taking me out? This drove me crazy.
We didn’t spend much time in Nairobi, and it wasn’t just by luck. Nairobi has always had a pretty bad reputation for violence and crime, and with the recent violence following the elections in Kenya in December, it seemed more than sketchy. I managed to find a hotel to book that was across the street from the safari operator I had booked a safari with. That way it would be easy to roll out of bed in the morning to walk over and get on the truck out to the park. The hotel was typical budget lodging in a third world country – no frills. Mike and I had become somewhat disoriented with what time zone we were in and when exactly we were supposed to show up for the safari in the morning. Not wanting to miss the truck, Mike went down at what he thought was 5:30 am to walk over and check out the situation. Turned out it was 4:30am. He nearly tripped over the concierge who was sleeping inside the lobby stairwell, who woke up and asked Mike what the hell he was doing trying to go outside in downtown Nairobi at 4:30am. No, no, it’s too dangerous he told him. The safari leaves at 8 anyway - go back to your room. We showed up then promptly at about 7:30 to make sure we had all the forms/supplies we would need, and, as would become a theme on the trip, there was no urgency on the part of the people there, who suggested we go get breakfast or something. We found a nice looking, although empty, restaurant in the same building and ordered breakfast – eggs, sausage, toast, tea. The waiter was happy to take our order and disappeared into the kitchen. Shortly thereafter some of the staff left out the door. About 20 minutes later a boy came back in the restaurant with a grocery bag with what we expected was eggs, bread, and sausage. Seeing this made us laugh and Mike claim “I was worried you may not get the real Africa experience. Yeah, this is what I’m talking about.” Another 20 minutes later we were served our breakfast.
Eventually after stocking up on water, toilet paper, cheap rum, and cookies, the safari took off from downtown Nairobi. Nairobi I think must be the most polluted city I’ve ever been in. This includes cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Quito, Dar Es Salaam, and Makassar. It seemed like every vehicle on the road was pouring out thick black smoke that left everything grey. I noticed in the city between the jammed streets at one intersection a little gardening – some flowers. Put there by the city, with a proud sign. It was there to point out that they were trying to beautify the city and make life there better. It was so sad. Just so little among the backdrop of dust, trash, black smog, etc. If the city council really were to make an impact on this city it would have to start with some sort of cleaning and/or pollution legislation. As we made our way outside the city, the trucks were still expulsing thick black smoke, but they were much more diluted in number and the smoke no longer seemed trapped by the buildings. There were 6 of us on the safari, packed into a Land Rover along with our driver/guide and our cook. I think the ride was like 6-7 hours, most over unpaved roads. On the way to the park we passed along the Great Rift Valley and stopped for a photo-op and obligatory souvenir-stop:

This is the old don't tell 'em it's a movie at first trick

Besides Mike and I the safari participants were all teachers on summer break: Two American women working at international schools in Budapest, and an Irish couple that were I believe taught English back in Ireland. We arrived at the park in the late afternoon, and got our first glimpse of some wildlife while driving through the park on the way to our campsite on the other side. The wildlife was already breathtaking. Outside the park we did see some animals, but only various antelope and maybe some buffalo.

Once we got in it was completely different. Not long after we entered the park we came upon a colony of vultures on the side of the path we were driving along. They were clearly very aggressively devouring something. As we drove up they ignored the truck for the most part and we saw they were eating a baby antelope – and making quick work of it.

The company we booked with has a permanent sort of campsite set up not far from the outside of the park (it’s not allowed for them to have them inside). It actually had a number of permanent basic lodges and tents. But it was completely empty. Our guide explained to us that since the violence following the elections, we were the first group they had to go out on a safari. The camp could hold 60-80 people, but we were the only ones there. It was nice in that we had booked to sleep in tents but they upgraded us to the empty little cabins. Nothing luxurious – there was no electricity, and we shared a common outhouse. But what was pretty luxurious was that one of the guys would get up early and start a fire under the water tank/pump so that we would have hot water for a shower. The food was quite good, the guys cooked it up over a fire in the floor. The first night there Mike was restless and instead of sleeping decided to go out and explore around at night, eventually settling on our little porch and waiting to spot nocturnal wildlife. Or maybe elephants across the stream our cabin overlooked. At some point in the night, when everybody else was asleep, there was this sudden thundering of feet across the front of the cabins, causing, we found out the next morning, each of us to wake up individually. The others speculated that it was one of the guards chasing off some animals or something. In fact Mike had spotted a small nocturnal cat on one of the other cabins' stoops with his flashlight, and as it ran away attempted to chase it down, probably frightening the heck those in that cabin.

next, but probably not soon:

Part 2: the rest of the safari (with lotsa pictures of magnificent beasts)

Nice

Back in September I mused about what it may look like when, as Sarah Palin says, "Putin rears his ugly head and comes into the airspace of America" and how one could capture this with photoshop. Well, somebody did a very good job capturing this:

And lest you think Sarah Palin was a thing in the past, an embarrassment that much of the country wants to go away, a series of recent polls, including that of the CPAC conference indicate the top three choices right now of republicans for who to run in 2012 seem to be

Mitt "who let the dogs out" Romney
Bobby Jindal of the Republican Response to Obama disaster fame
and
Sarah "In what respect Charlie?" Palin

Nazi march and protests

You know you live in Eastern Germany when you get an email like this at work:

Date: February 10, 2009 12:54:37 PM GMT+01:00
To: mpi-cbg-staff@mpi-cbg.de
Subject: [mpi-cbg-staff] Caution on 14 Feb!

Dear expats,

on 14 Feb there is not only Valentines Day but also a huge demonstration of Neo-Nazis announced in the City Center in connection with the remembrance of the destruction of Dresden in 1945. About 8.000 Neo-Nazis are expected and the police will have it's biggest operation this year (see below).

Please watch out if you have to go to the City Center on this day not to get into trouble, or maybe just don't go at all :)

Of course upon reading this, I GOTTA check it out.

Actually this happens every year. February 13/14 is the anniversary of the beginning of the bombing of Dresden in WWII, but it seems that what is this weekend at the forefront, at least what seems to dominate the media headlines and conversations in Dresden, is the annual Nazi march held on the same date. The Nazis use the thousands killed during the bombing, and also exaggerate it (if that can really be done), as some sort of counterpoint to the holocaust and attempt to further nationalistic feelings that we (or Germans) should be mourning this more.

Unfortunately it seems that in an attempt to go against the nazis (past and present), there is some sort of attempt to justify the bombing, or at least accept it as a means to and end. This is of course part of the broader phenomenon that due to Germany's history a generation of Germans have been raised that it is practically a sin to be nationalistic - to the extent that it was very not-cool as a German to fly a German flag for a long time. That is until a few years ago, and in particular the last world cup, when the flags all came out, finally guilt-free.

But it is still evident with these demonstrations against the Nazis, that people get so wound up going against Nazis, that it's almost like they are pro-WWII catastrophy. I understand that they want the world to recognize that they know that Germany was on the wrong side so to speak, but can't the tragedy that was Dresden be left out of it? By any standards, without getting into all the details and complexity, it was a tragedy, and thousands and thousands of innocent people were burned and suffocated alive.
It was a little weird to see the few US and British flags being paraded around on the anniversary of one the most questionable acts of war. But what was REALLY ridiculous was to see flags with the ensign of the Royal Air Force. What. the. fuck. I'm sorry, I hate the Nazis and what they stand for too. But that's just wrong.

Anyway, I wandered around the city and found myself in the middle of an anti-Nazi march. In the middle of a bunch of punks. Police were imported from cities all over Germany to make sure order was kept.

Their job being to protect the Nazis from the thousands of counter protesters.

It got a little hairy every know and then. Some of the crowd I was in started hurtling things at the riot police. I saw a glass bottle break off a policeman's mask. And then the police would charge the crowd. I saw some real baton-on-back beat-downs of kids too slow to get out of the way. It actually happened at the end of this video below, but you can't make it out...

Here's another video....

All in all an interesting day. except that the city's mass transit becomes paralyzed and I ended up walking all the way to work and back home. And the Nazis succeed in stealing the limelight of this historic day from where it should be focused.

Photography 'portfolio'

I found a kinda slick site where I could put up some of my favorite photos I've taken into a portfolio-type format. Limiting the number of total images and cutting out the debris I think really accentuates the best ones. Almost all of them are from 35mm film, the exceptions being mainly the micrographs and the underwater photos. I'll probably slowly be adding photos here and there as I scan in old slides.

Click here to visit....

My first surgery

I wanted to post about my trip to the hospital a few weeks ago. As with pretty much every appendectomy, is was a quick surprise thing. I’d never had real surgery before (unless you count wisdom teeth removal), and I’d never had an extended hospital stay. I’ve always kind of romanticized the idea of spending a few days in the hospital – with nurses and doctors doting over you – not having do anything but eat, sleep, read – having visitors come with gifts – almost like you could let reality go for a few days and have absolutely zero responsibilities or something – with sweet people attending to your every need. But now of course that image is shattered. This was nothing but stress and frustration. Not necessarily that I wasn’t at a good hospital, or that the German way of doing things is any different (I wouldn’t know of course without a frame of reference). But I’m certainly not left with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I came into the ER late on a Thursday night with severe abdominal pains and vomiting. This has happened before to me – but never this bad. Thankfully I have a good friend, Alex, that has car and is German, and could take me in and also help navigate the system in my delirium. Actually her help would be invaluable throughout the next week for helping me prepare for my stay and eventually get home.
After a time of moaning and rolling around they hooked me up with an IV and gave me some "pain killers" (salt water?). I’ve run into this before. In Germany they REALLY don’t like to give you pain killers. It’s probably a good thing in general, when compared to the US, where vicodin prescriptions are written with wild abandon. But it really sucks when it’s you and you’re really in pain. First they gave me what I think was just fortified water in the IV, and after a while of complaining and moaning and intense pain, they bumped it up to metmizol, an NSAID, a bit stronger than ibuprofen or naproxen. Another 45 minutes or so later with no relief they gave me Buscopan, which is not a pain-reliever at all per se, but a kind of muscle-relaxer to prevent spasms/craps. Basically the intense pain reduced to a moderate level on its own, after like 4 friggin’ hours, my moaning and begging having no affect on the doctors. I can’t explain how much this sucked and the level of pain. While this was happening they did an ultrasound, which was inconclusive, and I spent the night at the hospital.
The next day the doctors determined that although without fever, my white blood cell count was rising quickly, and the region and type of pain was consistent with appendicitis. The night before they actually said they thought it was NOT appendicitis, but the surgeon they brought in the morning had a different thought. I actually felt much better in the morning, and the last thing on my mind was having surgery. I was just waiting to leave. My doctor came to the conclusion that, while not certain, it could be appendicitis, and I gathered the thought was that it was too risky not to go in, and if it was something else then they may see that too when they cut me open.
Let me say here that the communication here was mostly in German. About 100% German with the nurses and some doctors, and about 50/50 German:English with the other doctors. The latter is still frustrating because neither of us could really express ourselves comfortably as well and accurately as we wished in our non-native tongues – a situation you don’t want to be in when they are deliberating cutting you open. It makes the conversations very short.
At some point a nurse came in and says they have decided I probably have appendicitis and they want to have surgery without delay, that night. But don’t worry, it’s a standard procedure to take the appendix out – just three little cuts and they go in and it’s 20 minutes. The doctor came in later having somehow found an English version of some papers explaining the procedure for me to read and sign. I noticed there were two boxes for “open appendectomy” and “laparoscopic appendectomy”, and the “open appendectomy” was checked. This did not make me feel good. Why not the laparoscopic like the nurse described? It’s supposed to be better for recovering, healing, less certain complications, smaller scars, etc. I asked the doctor about it when I saw him again. He said something vague about the facilities...they don’t like to do that here…if something goes wrong... it wasn’t really clear. Then he said plus, we usually do that for women and not men. I asked him “why” and he literally just stared at me silently for 5 full seconds like “you need to stop asking questions. right. Now.” Maybe he was just frustrated because I was having him trying to explain it in English. I can’t remember what he said eventually but it was nothing that made sense to me. But it was clear he was not going to go for the laparoscopy. This did not instill confidence in me. Especially the part about not having all the facilities if something went wrong. Because I no longer was in pain, I felt it may be worth trying to get a second opinion. Or at least somewhere where they would be able to do laparoscopy. I thought maybe there was another good hospital in Dresden. I called my boss from work, with hopes that he may have some advice on where to get a second opinion. He said that he didn’t personally really think the other hospitals were any better, this was the biggest, the university hospital, and all the doctors he knew worked there. But said he’d make some calls. Soon after a nurse came in to get the signed surgery consent and get things rolling. When I told her I had not decided if I wanted to have the surgery or not she was not happy. She stormed off saying, “well, we’ll have tell the doctor about this as soon as possible!” Yes, fine, whatever. Then I got a call back from the boss. He said he had talked to some people, and basically got in touch with the head of surgery for the hospital, who was of course at home at this hour on a Friday night. He said the chief was going to call the hospital and see what was up. A few moments later my doctor comes back in, says “Well, I just got off the phone with Dr. so-and-so (the head of surgery)” in a very accusative voice. “You know, if you really want laproscopic surgery, fine, we can do it”. He was clearly not happy about what appeared to be me going over his head and getting his superior to force him to change the procedure. In a way that is what happened, but I didn’t know it was happening. I tried to explain it wasn’t my call that things went this way, mainly because I didn’t want this guy who’s about to cut me open fuming. I tried to discuss with him again why he wanted open vs laproscopic in the first place and again never really got a good answer. My feeling it that it may have a been a combination of a)open is easier and faster for the surgeon and b)he wasn’t 100% sure it was appendicitis and if it wasn’t he could see around better for other things with open, versus having to make a while new cut and start over with a new surgery if he started with lapro. I don’t know though. But at least it was settled, and I could rest a bit easier. In the meantime however, I heard that nurses were not impressed with my second-guessing and hesitation on the matter, and were in fact gossiping about me outside in disapproving tones. And hence I would become the bad guy for the rest of my stay….
This wasn’t just my imagination either. Before this last episode a nurse was asking me questions and being very friendly and happy. Afterwards she was not. I was trying to be as nice and humble as possible, but it was not changing their minds. Meanwhile my roommate was practically cursing at them and they seemed much more eager to help and be friendly to him. Maybe part of it was my surely tortured-sounding German. And the fact that they needed to speak a bit slowly to me and lose the Sächsisch accent. The meal Frau was exceptionally nasty. And the rations she would bring atrocious. After basically two days of fasting (except for what came in the IV), I was eager for my first food at lunchtime. A big bowl of potato soup, I was psyched. Until I tasted it. Wow. Didn’t know you could do that to potato soup. Especially in Germany. It still didn't, by the way, prepare me for what came the next breakfast - double brown surprise (pictured). I ate some of the potato soup anyway (can't say that for the breakfast) since I was pretty hungry. But it would be fair to say afterwards I was really looking forward to some dinner. The meal-frau came in and asked if my roomie and I wanted dinner. He said no, and she said something to me like “and you don’t want any either?” Which is one of those questions to which I never know what ‘yes’ or ‘no’ really means…. So since he had said “nein”, I went with “ja”, with a nod of the head to make sure. I figured it would be unusual to refuse dinner so even if there was some question she would err on the side of bringing me dinner. Apparently not. Food never came. She came in a few hours later to bring water or something and I asked her if there wasn’t going to be any dinner this evening. Then she said I told her I didn’t want any. So I said, no, he said “no” and I said “yes”. To which she kinda shrugged it off saying there was a misunderstanding. So she started to leave and I had to stop her to ask her if I could have some dinner. But right at this moment a very poorly timed chance coincidence happened. See, my bed was not long enough to fit me. And there was a large board at the end, which my feet would press up against. Well, just at this moment, the bed finally did not want to contain my legs anymore, and the board broke off the end and came crashing to the floor right at the woman’s feet. I’m sure there was no question in her mind that it was intentional. But it wasn’t! Anyway, it made such a crash that a couple more nurses from outside came in, looked at the board, and the looked at me in a kinda of “yup, this one” look. Now the food lady replied that there was in fact no more to eat. And of course now things were getting a little contentious and it was getting harder to understand her as she spoke faster and got frustrated. I would tell her I wanted to eat and she kept asking me a question I could not understand. So I said “ah, mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, können sie bitte langsamer sprechen?” To which she simply repeated what she said exactly the same, but REALLY LOUD with an angry tone. So I calmly said “nicht lauter, aber langsamer and deutlich, bitte”. Which didn’t make her want to help anymore so I just said “ja” to her question assuming she was asking if I wanted something in particular. Well it turns out she was asking I guess if I wanted “zwieback”, because that was my dinner. 3 small hard bread crackers. Fortunately a nice nurse came in an hour later and asked if I got dinner, I told her no and told her about the food-frau and she kind of rolled her eyes, and my roommate interrupted to tell her the woman was very unfriendly. So fortunately she was able to find me some decent food that apparently the food-schwester did not have access to or something.
Lunch the next day was actually a surprise. A genuine heavy German meal, complete with sauerkraut. But then the next two dinners consisted of nothing but two pieces of bread. And one day a slice of cheese on top.

I ended up in the hospital for about 5 days total. Right as I was going into surgery my doctor said I would be able to see the video of the surgery afterwards. But upon asking him each day after I came out, he always said it wasn’t possible, it wasn’t easy, they don’t usually do that. Which made me wonder what changed his mind. He eventually showed me a still photo of my appendix before it came out. As they were ushering me out (to go straight home to my couch, I could hardly walk) they provided me with all of TWO pain pills. I asked if I could get some more and they told me I needed to see my general practitioner for that. I also asked how long I should stay at home, when I should resume activities. They also said to go to my general practitioner, who hadn’t seen me in a year. Nevermind the fact that I would eventually have to drag my ass in that state halfway across town for this appointment, why on earth should he be brought in to this situation he knows nothing about? The next day I made it in, he took a look at me and was kinda like “yup, looks like you had surgery.” He game me a prescription for more metamizol and asked how long I wanted a note to get out of work for.

Postcard

A Zeppelin-fanatic friend of Cliff's got this antique post card and asked if he could decipher the English on it - it has become a sort of puzzle for a group of us now. And we're looking for help. We're pretty sure of about 50%, 30% we have a guess and about 20% of the words no idea.
If you have time post an attempt at it - we're getting bogged down in our first impression.


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