"Bratäpfel"

The original purpose of the Owl's Nest was to share my American experience with my friends in Europe and elsewhere. However, today I would like to talk a little about my European life; namely I would like to present my parents. The man with the hat and the the headphones is my father; he is having breakfast in the early morning of the second Advent sunday. He likes music a lot, and he was my initial guitar teacher, so he wears the headphones a lot, also when he cleans the house, for instance. The lady below is my mother, sitting on her desk. Note the little web cam on top of the monitor: it was used to chat with me over Skype while I was in the United States. Unfortunately my own web cam and also my headset recently broke, so I got to use theirs to chat with my friends back in Chicago. (This web cam has a built-in microphone, so I only need to use my own headphones in order to avoid feedback effects.)
Finally, the bottom picture displays a special treat my mother prepared for me a few weeks ago: Bratäpfel (fried apples). You know all very well that I like to stress on language topics, and here is another one: "braten" means "to fry", and "Apfel" means "apple". As I have mentioned before, all German nouns are capitalized, and we tend to agglutinate them; also if the second part in English is actually an adjectiv. There are virtually no limits for how many nouns can be glued together. One famous example (that is used to impress those who learn German as a foreign language) is Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänsmütze ... Donau = the river Danube, Dampf = steam, Schifffahrt = ship navigation, Kapitän = captain, Mütze = hat. (Note the additional letter s before Kapitän - in some sense it works as the glue between the enclosing parts.)
Oh, but I got carried away a little, so back to the Bratäpfel. There are also two dots on the letter ä, which changes the pronunciation a bit; from close to the u in "but" to close to the a in "many". While the plural is always indicated by a final s in English, there are more than a handful ways to do it in German, not counting combinations. Adding a letter s works for some nouns, changing a vowel a/o/u to ä/ö/ü, respectively, for others. Unfortunately there are no clear rules, so anyone who dares learn German must memorize the plural forms of all the nouns. Really, I prefer eating Bratäpfel than studying their silly German grammar!

Happy New Year

Dear all,

I would like to wish you a Happy New Year 2011, with good health, good luck, and lots of happiness!

I did not really celebrate the beginning of this new year, but I certainly have great hopes in 2011. It be the year in which I find employment. So, I do not have any photos from the fireworks that welcomed the new year, but I took some on Christmas Eve. Complying with a request from a friend, I give you: our Christmas tree the moment all the candles were lit, the dinner table just before the feast, and the kitchen table with the starters. Our annual ceremony comprises the singing of a few Christmas carols, followed by the wishing well, and the gift giving. It only takes about 20 min, because the candles on the tree are real, so we do not want to let them set the tree on fire. (In fact, I had to ask to have a few of them re-lit, so I could take this picture properly.) I am afraid, though, that my camera was not expensive enough to fully capture the beauty of all the burning candles in an otherwise dark room.
As soon as the candles are extinguished (using a special spoon that only serves this purpose), we switch on the light and proceed to the dinner table (which is just to the right of the tree, but you cannot see it in the top picture). My mother is a very talented cook, and on Christmas Eve she usually outdoes herself! (Hail to the chef!) The shrimp puff pastries you see on the bottom picture, which we had as starters, were outstandingly awesome! (Okay, I just made that up, but it was so good that it does deserve a bit of linguistic creativity.) The ensuing main dish (Beef Stroganoff, Spätzle, and Rotkraut (shredded red cabbage)) did not fall short of it. - It may be a stereotype that Germans eat a lot of kraut, but I see Rotkraut as slightly more sophisticated than Sauerkraut, and it is served as a side dish to meat as fancy as game. (Sauerkraut goes well with simpler dishes such as a sausage.) Anyways, we used to have a different tradition until last year, but this one is healthier. Still, we had a final treat: plums cooked in plum spirit, served with vanilla ice cream. I did have nice Christmas celebrations the two antecedent years, but there ain't no place like home!
You see four chairs on the table - my father sat on the far end, and I was across the table from him. My mother sat to my right, and my only remaining grandparent, my paternal grandmother (who lives in a separate apartment in our house) , to my left.
On Boxing Day, as the British call it (Dec 26), I visited my godson Xavier and his sister Noëlle, whose parents Dominik and Simone invited me over. The parents are high school friends of mine and actually the only people I still keep in touch with on a regular basis from those times. (I exchange notes with other people more randomly, though.)
In total I am quite happy with my gifts. Among other things, I got a painting (hand made by seven-year old Xavier - amazing!), a pretty hefty puzzle cube, and an acoustic bass guitar. The latter has been my wish for some time, so I mentioned it when my mother asked me what I would like Santa to bring for me. I must have been a very good child this past year, or maybe I am just a totally spoiled brat! Either way, I love my new instrument, but it is more difficult than I thought to carry my (anyway rather mediocre) guitar skills over to playing the bass. But I only have it for a bit more than a week, so I need to be patient ... However, do not expect any demonstration before the year 2020!

The Owl Has Landed

... or should I say: the Owl's Nest is temporarily the Sloth's Lair. Now that I am reunited with my parents, I am also unemployed. Therefore, I have some time to stroll around my old hometown, which is actually "old" in a double sense. I grew up here, but it is also older than one millenium. St. Ingbert, as it is know today, was mentioned in an official document for the first time in the year 888. Which makes one wonder how Chicago could grow to almost 100 times the size of St. Ingbert in so much less time ...
Anyways, I think I had a great childhood and youth in St. Ingbert, and it is worth the notion that it was the education I received here at the local primary and secondary schools that ultimately enabled me to go to Berlin for a doctorate, and then to Chicago for even more scientific research. And for that reason I would like to share a collection of the pictures I have takes after my return.
A - my parents' house, but not my parents' car. (They drive a Citroën, a French car.)
B - the tower of the church of St. Joseph. The roof went up in flames in 2007, and they are still rebuilding it.
C - one end of the pedestrian zone. I do not remember seeing pedestrian zones in any U.S. city I have visited. I do remember this street before it became part of the pedestrian zone.
D - I was laughing so hard! Delusions of grandeur are an integral part of the nature of Germans, especially when it comes to a comparison with the United States. (But that is a different story.) Note that Germany is slightly smaller than Montana alone, and that my home area in Germany (Saarland, after the river Saar) is even smaller than Rhode Island.
E - the church of St. Engelbert, who is called St. Ingobertus in Latin. This hermit is my town's namesake. The legends make him a descendant of Irish or Scottish nobility. In case of the former, I would have a genuine right to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Chicago!
F - a pond in the park. I used to feed the ducks with my paternal grandmother when I was a toddler. (Sadly, it is now her who cannot walk so well.)
G - the office building and chimney of the former Becker brewery. These are two landmarks of my hometown, even though the facility is now defunct.
H - a fast food booth with a long tradition. Formerly owned by a guy everyone knows as "Schleppi", this is the place in town for a "brat" from the grill.
I - a view across the valley of St. Ingbert, from the old cemetary, which is actually called the Old Cemetary. The other burial area is the larger and newer Forest Cemetary at the town limits, where there is a significant amount of forest indeed.
J - the creek in the park. Being another indication of delusion, it is called the "Grand Creek" ("Großbach").
K-N - a column at my old high school, where the class of 1996 wrote down their names. I can be found as "Alex U." on M. - The school is called Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium, which is an example for how words have evolved to different meanings. The greek parent meant a place where both body and mind could be exercized. The English language has maintained the former, and the German language the latter meaning. Note that a Gymnasium (which is capitalized because all German nouns, proper or not, are always capitalized) is the highest tier of secondary schools and the principal road to university access. Other tiers lead to vocational training and take less years. - The degree conferred by a Gymnasium that grants access to tertiary education is called Abitur; hence the "Abilympics" theme of the decoration.
O - a stone that commemorates the tenth anniversary of the town twinning between St. Ingbert and St. Herblain in France. That is remarkable because France and Germany used to be arch-enemies, which originates from a post-Charlemagne rivalry. Charlemagne, who considered himself the heir of the Western Roman Empire, crowned himself Emperor of the Franks in the year 800, thus ruling over much of what is today Germany and France. His three sons then fought each other to reunite the Empire, but they only got as far as eliminating the one brother in the center. Over the centuries the fight was continued on several occasions, including Napoleon's conquest of central and eastern Europe and both World Wars. Since I am a fan of France and currently live as close as ten miles from the Franco-German border, I am quite happy about this new approach.
So much for the places of my youth. The show must go on of course, and I am in the middle of a job hunt right now. Therefore, this is not a sloth's lair, despite the allusion at the outset, and that is not just because sloths do not live in lairs.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

... don't know when I'll be back again. That's the chorus of an old John Denver song (which he performs here with a cool 12-string guitar I wish I could call my own).
I'm finally back home in Germany, after almost two years abroad. I left Chicago, my home away from home, on September 3, 2010. However, I did not return to Germany from there, but I did a little detour via Washington, DC and New York City, NY. This also gave me the opportunity to reunite with some friends of mine. Lucky me had Heather (accompanied of course by Jon) as a tour guide in DC - Heather is the most organized person I have had the pleasure to know, and she planned the entire trip to the most minute detail in advance, which worked out perfectly. I got to see the following places: the Iwo Jima monument (on my own), the White House, the National Mall and the many presidential and war memorials in and around it, the Smithsonian museum of American history, the National Archives (with the originals of the Declaration of Indepence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution)), the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, Congress (also the visitor center inside), and finally (after Heather's and Jon's departure) Arlington National Cemetary and the Pentagon. This was a very intense weekend (extended by Labor Day), and it would be impossible to show you all the nice photos I was able to take. Thus, I was having a hard time picking out my absolute favorites, but finally I came up with a selection. Also included are photos from my subsequent stay in NYC, from where I ultimately left the United Stated "for good" - for now. I actually met another friend from Berlin in NYC: Dr. Björn Brandt, who pursued his doctorate together with me.
Here is a description of the photos (A-D in DC, E-L in NYC):
A - the White House (front view). It is a bummer that I was not fast enough to get this photo with the (presumed) Secret Service agent on the central pediment.
B - the Washington Monument from up close. The obelisk is as tall as 170 m! It is sourrounded by many American flags.
C - the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool. (Yes, the pool ist there to produce a mirror image of the Washington Monument.)
D - the Vietnam War Memorial. The right part is aligned with the Washington Monument, and the left part is aligned with the Lincoln Memorial, which we also visited, but is not depicted here.
E - the Chysler Building. It is my favorite building in Manhattan. When I first saw a picture of it a long time ago I thought it was something like a citation of the Empire State Building's architecture. But in fact the Chrysler Building is even older by about one year.
F - the Empire State Building. It is named after the Empire State, also known as the State of New York, in which the City of New York is located. It is currently the tallest building in New York City, until the new World Trade Center is completed; probably around 2020.
G - the Statue of Liberty. I took this picture from the Staten Island Ferry, which is free, and passes close enough by the statue that I considered a separate trip to Liberty Island a redundancy.
H - the Unisphere. It is a globe of the size of a twelve-story building, located in Flushing Meadows. That is where the U.S. Open tennis tournament is held, and they were actually playing while I was there.
I - view from the Empire State Building at night, toward Lower Manhattan. I highly recommend visiting the Empire State Building at night. It is open until 2 am (the last elevator goes up at 1:15 am). I was there at around 10 pm, and the "legendary long" lines at the entrance (ticket, security and elevator!) were actually not long at all. Plus, the view at night is just so much more stunning! I actually went up to both the 86th and 102nd floor observatories.
J - "Tribute in Light". Every anniversary of 9/11 two giant spotlights commemorate the destroyed twin towers.
K - the beach at Coney Island. This was my first encounter with the Atlantic in two years. And I was about to cross it to go home.
L - the Brooklyn Bridge. The Manhattan Bridge is just behind it.
The video shows the panorama of the site known as "Ground Zero" on September 11, 2010, at around 6:30 pm.
I would like to point out that I visited all five boroughs of the City of New York: I arrived in Manhattan by train (Amtrak) from DC, I stayed in Brooklyn in a motel, I went to Queens to see the Unisphere, I took the ferry to Staten Island (and stayed for about half an hour, until the next ferry took me back to Manhattan), and I went to the Bronx to photograph the New York Yankees Stadium.
After all this sightseeing I was completely exhausted and ready to fly home from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Düsseldorf (Germany) International Airport, where a close friend of mine picked me up and gave me a ride to my parents' hometown.

"... my only friend, the end"

Since the final hour of my stay in Chicago is drawing near, I have begun to reflect a bit on my time in Chicago and the United States. In one of the earliest posts I raised the question whether or not it actually made sense at all to come here - it mainly prolongs my time in Academia, which is not where I ultimately see my future. Also, while I do feel that my language skills have improved over the past two years, my time in an institution such as the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin, where I did my graduate research, had already exposed me to a lifetime's worth of English, particularly via my friends and well-esteemed colleagues Dr. Neetha and Dr. Heather. I trust (in all modesty) that my proficiency of the English language would have sufficed the standards of the Human Resource departments of most potential employers in Germany. So, one might argue that I have just been wasting my time or even hurting myself by deliberately delaying my entering the world of the grown-ups; i.e., acquiring an adequate employment (preferrably in industrial Research & Development).
I have been contemplating about this recurrently, but it is only now, in retrospect, that I can evaluate the effects that this endeavor had on me. I have come to the conclusion that it was most certainly the right thing to do. While being a doctoral candidate at the FHI Berlin was the best possible thing that could have ever happened to me in terms of my scientific advancement, it is also a rather hierarchical environment, where students are at the bottom of the food chain, and postdocs do not outrank them by much. That is because the day-to-day management is done by group leaders, while the grand decisions are the privilege of the department head. This type of structure is certainly a neccessity if the manpower (and womanpower!) is to be coordinated for maximum efficiency, but it leaves the individual student only little slack in the pursuit of his or her research. I am not complaining about a micromanagement advising style - I have experienced the opposite in another place, and it was most painful. But in comparison to my current assignment, I am now enjoying a much larger share of the responsability to keep our laboratory up and running, including the introduction and scientific training of two students from scratch. I hope this will be an asset in any job interview situation.
Fortunately, I can proudly announce that both of the students I have been trusted with are doing extremely well, because they are both exceptionally bright and incredibly motivated. I am well aware that one day rather sooner than later they will surpass their teacher. I could not be any prouder. I like to think that I made a difference for Homa and Zhu, and we will certainly remain friends beyond my time as a postdoc at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Therefore, the title of this post, a line from a song by The Doors, is stating the exact opposite of our relationship.
I think it is fair to say that the three of us were and still are a good team. I recently mentioned the mere fact of my departure in Homa's presence, which caused her to burst out in tears! She allowed me to take a picture as a proof and even post it here. - While Zhu is less prone to cry, she is also showing a lot of affection for me, as you can see from the sweet drawings she put on the orange depicted below Homa. Clearly I was lucky with "my" girls! I will miss them direly, and the only moment I could be even prouder of them than now is when they become Dr. Homa, and Dr. Zhu.

Independence Day

Today is the Fourth of July, the day the U.S. of A. declared its independence in the year 1776. It has since become the national holiday; however, since today is also Sunday, the actual holiday will be on Monday, by law. (By the same law, the holiday is on a Friday when the Independence Day is on a Saturday, like last year.)
However, regardless of the importance of this day to the Americans, my colleagues and I had to spend some time in the lab today. We were of course particularly unhappy about going to work on a Sunday that is also the national holiday, but we had a big maintenance day on Friday that required additional measures on two extra days. While it would have been possible to postpone the extra work until after the celebrations, it would have meant that the experiments can be resumed only by Wednesday. Time is always an issue in our lab, so we had to go through with this. At least on the way home I caught a glimpse of the decoration of our street with a host of Star Spangled Banners. Someone is doing this every year, and I did take a few pictures last year, but I hope the video will reveal better the affection of the Americans for their country. I apologize for going to work today, but at least I would like to say to everyone, "Happy Birthday America!"

"This train will run Express"

As every day when I go to work, I commute via the Elevated train, more precisely the blue line. (See the photo for all the stops.) I live near Oak Park (here referring to the station, because I currently live in the municipality of Oak Park), and my work is at UIC/Halsted. Earlier on this week, on my way home, the train started to run Express, which usually happens if it had been too slow, and another train line is right behind it. Express trains skip a certain number of stations, which is usually good for me, because Express service typically starts at UIC/Halsted, Racine, or Illinois Medical District. It typically ends at Cicero, Austin, or even Oak Park. This time, the Medical District, which is by the way also where Rush University Medical Center is, where I got my recent conjunctivitis treated, was again the starting point for Express; however, the train operator did not manage to inform the customers about this properly. Perhaps she did announce it, but either way it later became evident that the speakers in the train were malfunctioning. Yet the sign on the train did show Express, along with a flashing red light. Now, I understand that it is quite inconvenient to be trapped on an Express train you don't know it is one and then go many stations further than you actually wanted. Yet that is, in my humble opinion, no reason to puckishly activate the emergency opening mechanism of the doors to make the train stop. This then led to an extended halt, because the operator could not override this and had to search for the door in question, before she could continue our ride. I don't know how long we were staying there, but it sure felt like 15 minutes. Then, finally, we started moving again, and we reached Cicero. For one moment the speakers actually worked, and it was announced that the train would run Express to Austin. That was a bit weird, because Austin is the very next stop anyways. I assume that Austin was the original end of the Express run, but then the time we lost on the door incident gave of course the following train more than enough time to catch up with us, so our train then had to run Express from Cicero all the way to the end of the line at Forest Park. Therefore, I had to wait at Cicero for the following train to get home. To sum up, this so-called Express run, combined with a speaker malfunction and a bratty attitude of a fellow CTA customer, gave me the chance to expand my average commute time of 20 minutes to almost one hour. At least the next train was not so crowded - another downside is of course that the subsequent train has to accomodate about twice as many passengers.
I would like to conclude this post with a link to a video of an old Madonna song, "Express Yourself". It even has some trains at the beginning. - I am, by the way, anything but a huge fan of Madonna. But that is only appropriate, because I do not want to waste my favorite music on something stupid.