Three things from Canada

Three things we brought home from Canada last summer have been keeping us going right into this beautiful spring.

1.  The Bread Bible.

I must confess to a new hobby these past couple of years: baking bread.  I kind of stumbled into it, but now I’m hooked.

At a bookstore in West Vancouver I found The Bread Bible and thought: I don’t care if it weighs a tonne and we’re already at our limit, I’m going to buy it.   This book gets into the science of baking and introduces refined techniques I’d never heard of before.  Most importantly, all measurements are laid out both by volume and weight in metric down to the last gram – perhaps unique in an American cookbook.   I love it.

About that photo: At left is an old-style metal bread container often seen in German kitchens.  At right is a grain mill into which I pour the raw wheat just before mixing the dough.  It’s nearly 20 years old and in perfect shape.  That bread beside it is my latest variation on a Bread Bible recipe.

2. The Ortofon OM30 stylus.

If the Bread Bible triggered overweight baggage alarms at the check-in desk and a quick bag re-shuffle, at a few micrograms worth of retro technology the Ortofon OM30 stylus tucked away in my hand luggage would almost have gone un-noticed had I not been sitting in glorious anticipation of countless hours of vinyl enjoyment to come.

Hanging at the end of my tonearm since the day we got back, it’s been digging out tones from my record grooves I never knew existed.  Right away I noticed the difference from my old stylus, an OM20.  Designed and made in neighbouring Denmark, why did I wait to buy the upgrade in Canada?  Because hunting around before leaving I discovered that in Canada you can pick it up in a store for less than you can find it online in Germany.  Why that is, I haven’t bothered to look into, so busy I’ve been enjoying my record collection anew.  If you love the rich, textured feel of the sound spilling from your speakers that only vinyl can give you, or are looking to join the growing movement away from CDs and MP3s and back to vinyl,  the best advice I can offer is to start with a decent turntable, then get the best stylus you can afford.  It makes such a difference.

3. Six litres of maple syrup.

It’s only been nine months, and we’re on our last bottle already.  Damn.  That’s the real reason I’m headed back in June, you know.

Almost trampled by fake ugg boots

The red-haired girl needs warm boots for the winter, so we go online for some UGG boots.

“And they’re really a great price,” she says.  ”Only 64 euros.”

Completely unaware of the hundreds of sites out there selling fake UGG boots, of which the list at left is merely one page of dozens to scroll through, and also unaware that these boots go for about four times the website’s price in German stores, I go to uggbootssale-de.com, register, and order the boots.

I key in my Mastercard details and hit Payment, but get an error message.  Something about the bank fraud scan failing, and that I should try again with another card.

Hah, but what’s this?  The message is written in sing-song English, has a number to call in case of error with a Chinese country code, and hey, why is there Chinese writing up there in the top corner?

Then I go back for a closer look at this dog’s mess of a website over which I’d just spewed my credit card information right down to the three-digit code on the back.

Now, I’m not saying they’re selling fake UGG boots.  Maybe they actually are the real thing and they just fell off the back of a truck, but take a look at that site.  Gawd, what a mess.  The formatting is all over the place.  The home page is in German, but when you register, you hit a button labeled login in English.

Then when you click on an item to buy, up comes another page with the text in English and the buttons in Italian.  So I now know that Aggiungi al carello means put in shopping cart, sucker.

Already having ignored so many red flags I thought I was standing blindfolded on Tiananmen Square, I write an email anyway asking why, when I key in my credit card details, I get an error message from China.

Back comes the answer overnight:

Dear,

     We have accept  pay with a Mastercard. You can try it again or you can use another card to pay it. Thank you !

 

Right.  Fully aware my credit card could be in danger of being hit for something I now want nothing to do with, I phone Lufthansa’s Card Control hotline.

 

Whenever I buy something online, I get a text message right after it goes through saying what was ordered, where, how much it cost, and the time of transaction.  At the bottom of the message is a number to call.

 

So I called it and got them to temporarily block the card.  I also wrote an email to them detailing the site I’d ordered from, asking them not to process any transaction that might be coming from them.

 

So the red-haired girl gets a lesson, and I get a reminder: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Like this woman who bought an iPad for 180 quid in a McDonald’s parking lot only to find she’d picked up a great bargain on a block of wood. 

International Day to Bite Me

I don’t know whether it’s because I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago, or passed the half-century mark a few months earlier, but nothing seems to bother me much anymore.   Not that I just let everything slide, but in dealing with obnoxious people or situations I’ve become a lot more mellow.  What’s the point of getting all in a lather anyway?  In most cases where you get all pissed off at someone or something, there two things at work: the situation and your reaction to it.   Only one of those is entirely in your control.

Nevertheless, there is something to be said about venting, in real life or right here.  So here goes.  Thank you, Deutschland über Elvis, he of the carefully worded, well-researched and always entertaining  posts on matters personal and cultural: may the third annual International Day to Bite Me be the success it deserves to be.

Ahem.

To the driver who honked and brayed at me from his rolled-down window because I was cycling with the traffic on the road instead of dodging pedestrians, spaced-out shoppers, dogshit and various obstructions found all too often on Hamburg’s laughably inadequate cycling path “network” – BITE ME!  Where the hell did you get your license, anyway?  It’s legal to ride on the road unless there’s a circular blue sign with a bike on it telling you otherwise.

To the pedestrian who yelled at me because I wasn’t on the cycling path but on the sidewalk because the cycling path is covered in tons of slippery grit left over from Hamburg’s spectacular failure to remove the December snows, not to mention the piles of filth left over from New Year’s Eve fireworks mayhem: BITE ME!

To the millions of brain-addled Germans who in an annual three-day orgy of mindless, wasteful consumerism spend upwards of 120 million frickin’ euros on fireworks for New Year’s leaving a heaving mess behind for weeks, months and years afterward – they NEVER clean it all up: BITE ME!

To the driver who assumed I was a jobless bum simply because I was cycling at noontime on a weekday: don’t you know some of us work shifts, full-time?  BITE ME!

To the grocery store nitwit who feels it’s his duty to tell me to put the items back in an orderly fashion on the shelf because “es gehört dazu” – BITE ME!  Do you have a cellphone?  Next time you see a federal crime in process, call a cop!

To the awful, pinched-faced cow supervising security at Gatwick Airport: lose the psycho bullshit!  Yes, your minions discovered a battery-powered iPod charger in my hand luggage and they -  in their ignorance of modern consumer technology – have every right to take every soiled piece of underwear out to inspect, rifle through every book, test every cranny for explosives and take apart and run the charger through a scanner a third time, but please: don’t stare at me for minutes on end while assuming some sort of accusatory tone when you ask me the routine questions.  Oh, and I almost forgot: BITE ME!

Finally picked up a new mountain bike

So many good people have had their bikes stolen lately.  Recent victim Yelli in Berlin says she’s hoping I’ll post something on how to keep a bicycle safe.   I plan to do that over the next week, but in the meantime, a bit of fun:

A couple of weeks ago, I finally bought myself a new mountain bike.

Fifteen minutes through the travel category here will show you I have no problem spending money, as long the only thing to lug home are memories.  But toys and gear don’t grab me.

I can’t even stand shopping for stuff that will add to the simple pleasures I get out of life, which is probably why I have a 15-year-old bicycle, 10-year-old skis, a 4-year-old computer and iPod, and why it took until only two years ago to finally pick up a digital camera.

But after convincing myself that getting a new bicycle would give me that extra kick in the butt to get out riding again for the simple joy of being on wheels for its own sake instead of merely a way of commuting, and having given up on Angela Merkel ever getting back to me with my idea about a bike-scrapping rebate, and reminding myself that in less than a year I’ll be turning 50 and officially a crotchety old geezer, so why not give myself an early birthday present to lessen the pain of it,  I went shopping for a new ride.

One stop at one shop was enough to convince me that I didn’t need to look any further to buy a decent bike.  It took a couple of weeks for the frame to arrive from the factory in Italy, but as soon as it did they called me over so I could watch them build it.

If it’s true that you should buy quality and moan only once, I was moaning like hell two hours later at the till, but only half-way through my first spin down the Elbe the sticker shock was far behind.

It felt like flight on wheels.  What a difference from the old one!  It feels so light and fun to ride I was thinking: why didn’t I do this a few years ago?

Actually, I’m glad I waited.  Bike technology has been flying ahead along with everything else, but since I’ve been out of the market for so long and not really paying attention, I’d missed all the new developments.

The biggest change is in the brakes.  I’d first discovered the amazing quality of disk brakes while on a raging blast on a rental bike through the Whistler Mountain bike park during my trip to Canada two summers ago.

As long as you keep oil and grease away they grab no matter if you’re going through rain or mud, though they’re so responsive, you stop too abruptly if you apply the same force as with the older rim brakes.

I’ve been told they’re practically maintenance-free: no rubber brake pads any more, no more fiddly adjustments, no constant wear on the rims, which if you leave too long without checking can actually wear through.

And no cables to snap when you least expect it, either.

Instead of a metal wire, the cables are filled with a fluid that looks a lot like motor oil.

Most of my riding is on the city streets, but the mountain bike tires are too slow on pavement, so I also convinced myself to dig a little deeper and pick up an extra set of front and back wheels, onto which I installed some narrow and light road-racing tires bought in Canada on that last trip.  So you might say I bought a bike to fit the tires, instead of the other way around.

The thin tires make it look rather strange.  With the fat, nobby ones it’s just a regular mountain bike.  Slip on the skinnies and it’s as spindly as a spider web:

Fat tires or thin, it’s been a lot of fun so far.

I’ve even had fun junking things we’ll never use again to clear a spot for a safe place to park it overnight.  Yes, we’ve learned our lesson. A thief is going to have to break into our building past three locked doors just to get near it, and then he’s going to have to break through a damn good lock.  More on that later.

On playing chess with Hitler and the misunderstandings of language

The first time I traveled to Turkey I spoke only one language.  Now I speak three, and it made for a weird little situation our very first day in Istanbul two weeks ago.

We’re browsing through a quiet, narrow little alleyway off Istiklal Avenue, the main strolling and shopping street in Beyoglu, still on the European side but across the Galata bridge and away from the Tourist Hell that Sultanhamet has descended into.

About four or five shops down on the left I see something in a shop window that makes me gasp.  A moth bigger than my outstretched palm is mounted front and center behind glass in a black, wooden frame.

Look! I say in French to my wife – Look at the size of that thing! It’s enormous!

We’re fixated on this creature and I want to switch to German, but for some reason the word for moth escapes me,  so I ask her – still in French: What’s the word for moth in German?

But just as I’m posing the question the young shop assistant who’s been listening to us reaches into the display case to re-arrange what we then notice lined up on the shelves above:

With two deft moves he swivels the rooks so the swastika banners are no longer facing the street.

I can’t help laughing, but right away feel embarrassed because I don’t want him to think I’m laughing at him.

Why did you do that? I ask him in English.

Because, he says.  French people don’t like to see that sort of thing.

Not wanting to get into much of a discussion on the matter I just smile and say that’s OK, we’re not French, we just speak the language.

He looks relieved, but by then I’m really curious, so I ask: who does actually buy these chess sets?

Germans like to buy them, he says.

Oh…

I see…

Another typical day in Germany: the customer is never right

This is about what happened this morning, but first we have to back up six months. Last fall I took the beast in to get the winter tires put on. As usual, I stopped in first beforehand on my bike to make an appointment.

Oh, sorry. We don’t take appointments anymore.

Why not?

We found that too many customers weren’t showing up, so we had mechanics sitting around idle.

Well how am I supposed to plan for anything? My wife needs the car on some days to drive to work. I can’t just show up and hope for the best.

Well, sorry. You can leave the keys with us tomorrow morning, and we’ll try to get to it during the day.

Fine, I say.

Fast-forward six months to this morning. I stuff the car with four summer tires and head to the same place to get them mounted. I walk in and get served right away.

Do you have an appointment?

… moment of stunned silence….

But I was here yesterday. I talked to the guy who said I should just drop in this morning with the keys. He didn’t say anything about making an appointment, and I didn’t ask because six months ago I was told you didn’t take appointments anymore.

Well, you should have made an appointment.

But that’s just the thing, I tell him. I was told by you people when I brought the winter tires in last fall that I couldn’t, and besides, nobody told me that when I dropped by yesterday.

Who did you speak with?

(As if I know their names) Well, it was a guy with a beard, older fellow.

Naw, couldn’t have been him.

Well anyway, I don’t understand how I’m supposed to guess whether or not I can make an appointment or not.

Well, maybe it was just a temporary thing due to certain conditions back then, I don’t know. Just leave us the keys and we’ll try to squeeze you in today, but you probably won’t get the car until tomorrow night.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Come on in! Don’t sit there, that’s for company

Dear all,

I was in a major German department store the other day with a friend who was shopping for a bathing suit. I had some time to kill during the try-on phase, so I dithered about.

In my ditherings I noticed a wad of scrap paper in my pockets, so I dumped it into a nearby garbage can.

Clerk: That’s not a garbage can.

Me: But it looks like a garbage can.

Clerk: But it’s not a garbage can.

Me: It sure looks like a garbage can.

Clerk: (getting testy) But it’s NOT a garbage can.

Me: So where’s the garbage can?

Clerk: Right here.

Me: (noticing cushioned lid) It looks like a stool.

Clerk: It’s not a stool.

Me: (smiling) It sure looks like a stool.

Clerk: (not smiling.) Under the lid is where you put the garbage.

Note to major German department store: For the past 150 years since their invention by itinerant farm labourer Elmer Schmedlapp in Akron Ohio, USA, large cylindrical thingies made of galvanised steel have been considered by most of the civilised world to be Boeing jets garbage cans. Store productivity level would skyrocket if your clerks spent more time stocking shelves and less time telling customers the garbage cans aren’t garbage cans. Or they might simply take longer coffee breaks. Beats me.

All for now,

Ian

PS: I was going to submit this to Overheard in the Office, but since it happened to me directly, that would be cheating. That site, like its sister site Overheard in New York, are recent re-discoveries and have become daily summer brain candy.

PPS: For a sample discussion in English about Germans and stores, click here.