august: cleveland county

If you live in Germany, one of your favorite pastimes has to be complaining about the national train service, Deutsche Bahn. The trains are often a bit dirty (especially the regional trains) and they are often a few minutes late, which isn't aided by the company policy to call trains that leave less than six minutes after their stated departure times as punctual. If you've ever had the singularly unpleasant experience of catching a small train that has been overrun by a bunch of school children, one of whom is affected by motion sickness, you can be tempted to swear off the entire enterprise as hopeless and decide that renting a car is a far better option. I've been there. After spending all. day. long. on a train, it's difficult to appreciate the efficient train service. Despite all this, Deutsche Bahn actually represents the best that Germany has to offer.

This article from Germany's public television station is about security standards at German train stations following the Thalys attack last week. It points out that higher security standards that would make train stations more like airports are entirely unrealistic. I wholeheartedly agree. One of my favorite things about train travel in Germany is how simple and efficient it is. To ride on a train, you simply purchase a ticket from a kiosk, then take the stairs up to the platform and get on your train. You don't have to present your ticket at any point in the train station. You don't have to figure out how to work the ticket turnstile to get onto the platform because they do not exist in Germany. The German train system works on a good deal of good faith and common sense.

Tickets are checked after you are sitting in your seat and the train has started moving. The conductor enters the car and says "Jemand zugestiegen?" (Any new passengers?). If your ticket hasn't been punched yet, you hold out your ticket. After that, you can ignore the conductor whenever s/he comes through the car. (Unless you cross national boundaries, but that's another story.)

For me, the ticket check was always a bit nerve-wracking, especially when I had an early train and really just wanted to fall asleep. (I have before fallen asleep with my ticket in my hand out in front of me.) If you're on a regional train, the ticket checker may not even come through, especially if you're only taking a very short trip. This system works perfectly well on the honor code. I am perfectly fine with paying a bit more for my fares if that means that people who cannot afford train travel can slip by for free from time to time. (That is not the intention of the system, but I still think it's a jolly good side effect.) If you get caught without a ticket, you have to pay 40 Euros.

The article above from tagesschau.de mentions that police officers are allowed to ride free whenever they want as long as they're in uniform. This is a brilliant idea because it means that police officers are almost always present on a train in case of emergency. (It also explains why there were always police officers on the train last year...they always made me nervous, like I'd gotten on a particularly sketchy train route.) Knowing that police officers (and in the Western part of Germany, off-duty American servicewomen and men) are aboard does help to curtail crime on the trains.

The only train station that I've been to that has a lot of security is the one below the airport in Frankfurt am Main, for obvious reasons. Almost every time I've traveled through that area, there has been some sort of disruption in the train station due to unattended baggage. Every train station has signs posted and announcements that tell people not to leave their baggage unattended, but due to the train station's proximity to the airport, every piece of unattended baggage throws the entire rail system off. It was due to unattended baggage that I missed my train to Koeln on the way to Fulbright orientation. I think unattended baggage had something to do with the fiasco in Frankfurt where I saw someone fall on the tracks. Unattended baggage shut down the tunnel between the station and airport on my very last morning in Germany last July. If one train station with airport-ish security can throw off the system this badly, think of what an entire network of train stations with this security would be like! (I'm ignoring the fact that this is not a financially viable plan either - none of the train stations even have turnstiles, much less an area for security screenings.)

So you do you, Deutsche Bahn. Germans and those who reside in Germany may love to complain about you, but after a year without any real public transit (the bus system in Norman is okay, but limited), I'm really missing the freedom to wake up, jump on a tram to the train station and from there venture off to a new city or country.

(Also, this girl is living on DB trains as a school project. Interesting & in English!)

I hope you're enjoying the back to school season as much as I am!

- Chelsea

Hello, reader. It's almost May, which I am really excited about. Hence the blog title: Anticipating May! I love May, despite its often unbearable heat (or, in 2013's case, snow), for many reasons. The two biggest are that school is over in May and my birthday is at the end of the month! I have not yet outgrown being happy about my birthday...especially since this year it is set to coincide with my family's trek to Indiana to watch one of my cousins graduate from high school. Hopefully I'll get to visit Funky Bones while I'm there.

Emily and I are also going to go see Rainbow Rowell in Dallas in two weeks!! I am so excited since she's written some of my favorite books!

Also, Mumford and Sons is releasing a new album in one short week! I absolutely love the songs they played on SNL a few weeks ago, and I'm sure the rest of the album is similarly delightful.

And here are some photos:

Fair reader, there are so many things I could write a blog post about. I went to a wedding two weekends ago and was reunited with 4 of my lovely Fulbright friends. I went to class, which usually lends itself to the absurd. I sat in my room and read several books for fun. The weather has changed from pleasant to cold to hot back to cold. But I'm not going to write about these things. Instead, I'm going to write about the restorative power of Kaffee und Kuchen.

Kaffee und Kuchen is a German phrase meaning coffee and cake. The concept is pretty simple: at four-ish in the afternoon, you drink a cup of coffee and eat a slice of cake. It's really common if you have someone over to offer them coffee and cake in the late afternoon, and it's also common to have an afternoon break in a meeting (like the Fulbright Berlin Conference or Welcome Meeting) to relax and partake in some delicious coffee and cake. Here's some information about the history of this tradition from the German Embassy's website.

However, before you partake in this glorious event, you need to know a few more things.
Firstly, the cake probably isn't going to be quite as sweet and moist as you're used to in the US. It's still absolutely delicious (I recommend the marbled cake or anything that looks like it has fruit in it), but it's a bit different.
Secondly, if there is whipped cream involved, know that it's just cream that has been whipped. It's not sweetened at all! (Do you see a pattern?)
Thirdly, there may also be tea available. It's good too. (I love love love Waldfruechte tea & Vanilla Pear tea.)
Fourthly, there will be no coffee creamer! You'll probably (but not always) be offered milk & sugar. Sometimes they have something called Kaffeeweißer, which is a sort of powdered non-dairy creamer that never seemed to have much taste when I used it, so I stuck to milk & sugar. (My host parents like foam in their coffee, so they'd use this little contraption to turn their milk into foam, which was cool. They they'd tease me for putting 3 spoonfuls of sugar into my cup when I thought they weren't looking.)

Cake from the Polish side of the German-Polish border.

Now you know the secrets of Kaffee und Kuchen! Are you ready for some anecdotes?

On one of my first days in Erfurt, I was really busy with registering for my visa, opening a bank account, and going to work. I was meeting someone for coffee around 3 pm...on that day, coffee & cake were my lunch. It was really quite nice.

On one of my last days in Erfurt, I went to a colleague's house. It was upwards of 85 degrees outside, but we still drank boiling tea outdoors. She got cake from the church bazaar, and it was so good! (Her cat stole my last piece when I wasn't looking though!)

And, finally, today. I went to Walmart this afternoon because I forgot that it's Super Bowl Sunday. The trip took forever because there were so many people there! In the midst of all this chaos, I discovered that you can buy coffee that's in tea bags for people who are too lazy to bring their coffeemaker from its current position in their closet at their parents' house to their apartment. At the end of the trip, I found a relatively short checkout line, but the computer kept on messing up, so it took a really long time to check out! (It didn't actually bother me that much; I knew it wasn't the lady's fault.) However, at the end of all this, I was quite worn out and grumpy. When I got back to my apartment, I realized that I had coffee and I had cake, and the only thing that would make me feel better was coffee and cake! So I had some and now I feel cheerful!

Coffee (the plain stuff with just milk & sugar) always reminds me of Germany because I'd never had it like that before I studied in Holzkirchen and Werner made us coffee during the morning break so we wouldn't fall asleep during literature class. Ahh, good times!!

The kitchen at the school in Holzkirchen, complete with a view of that fateful coffeemaker!

I've resolved to try 12 new recipes this year, just to make sure that I don't eat breadsticks all year long. Yesterday, I made a sort of chicken dish. It's probably already a recipe somewhere, but I just made it up last night!

A Sort of Chicken Dish

Ingredients:
Chicken Breast
Italian Dressing
Mushrooms
Chicken Broth
Shredded Cheese
Salt
Pepper
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder

Preparation:
Marinate chicken breast in some Italian dressing (I would estimate that I used a few tablespoons) for a few hours. After that, put the chicken and dressing in a casserole dish along with about 1/2 cup chicken broth. Slice some mushrooms (I did 5 for 1 chicken breast) and arrange then around the chicken. Top the chicken with cheese, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Put the lid on and cook at 350 degrees for about an hour. After that, check to make sure the chicken is cooked. If not, put it back in until done. When the chicken is done, add more cheese to the top of the chicken and let cook uncovered for 10 minutes or until the cheese is crispy and delicious. Enjoy!!

(It doesn't look super pretty, so there is no picture. It is delicious, however!!)