Assisted by Friendly Natives

We acquired our new apartment in Offenburg this week and started exploring the area around it. The good news here is that Offenburg is bigger than Kehl, and correspondingly more civilized as we define it. The stores are larger and have a better assortment of goods to choose from, plus being a little further from the French border it has fewer Tobacco stores and Casinos.

Anyways, none of that is as important as what I am about to tell you.

We were exploring the nearby stores and stepped into a local pet shop. It had the usual assortment of dog/cat products, fish, and the customary small furry animals section. Since that is always a favorite of mine, we headed over to check them out and were rewarded by a nice assortment of gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, etc.. and some really cute soft bunnies. It was good to see gerbils and long-haired hamsters, which were kind of scarce at the pet stores back in LA, apparently having been ousted by the less cute and more spazzy dwarf hamsters and short-hairs that were there instead.

Ok, all that is well and fine, but it was only then that we made our key discovery: They had a chipmunk for sale! That's right, the same little stripey tree squirrel that you see all over the states in the wild was here for sale as a household pet. And, giving him a little pat, he seemed completely ok with that idea. Cool!

A little research later turned up that apparently they are kind of a tough pet to actually have the right environment for. Quite energetic, they require a lot of room and not much noise. They seem to largely like the same sort of space and environment a chinchilla does. Not for us clearly, but still cool nevertheless.

All right, that doesn't segue at all into my real point for the day, so I'll just abruptly switch over to it in an awkward fashion instead. One of the things that I have noticed since I arrived here, is that the locals have been pretty darn helpful in getting us set up. That's great you might think, but trust me, when it is a struggle to do stuff like buy trash bags or order a pizza you really appreciate any help you can get. So with that in mind, I just thought I'd share a couple folks who have made my life easier since I got here. It'll let you put some faces to the names, and it will give me a brief moment to once again say Thanks All!


First up - Vladimir


Vladimir was the guy who originally convinced me to come to Germany. He's kind of a 'zany adventure' type and engages in pastimes like random trips to Spain and sleeping in train stations. He won't blink at getting up obscenely early in the morning to help out after a 3am bender. He tromped across the countryside with me to negotiate for my used car in Russian. We're off to France for more misadventures next week so pray for our safe return. :)


Next Stop - Mathias

Mathias is another programmer in my special projects group and sits next to me. He's a thoughtful and effective coder and has a quiet sense of humor that makes for a very pleasant work environment. Now when I first arrived in Germany, being the well-prepared guy that I was, I came equipped with several adaptors to allow me to use my US electronics here in Germany. Now that was a great idea except for one small detail. All the stupid adaptors had their plugs sticking straight out of the adaptor. Perhaps 20 years ago that would have been fine, but these days all German outlets are recessed to provide grounding. None of my stuff would work, and several trips to local electronics stores (who largely had English speaking workers) couldn't solve it. Mathias thought about it, checked the French stores (he lives in Strasbourg), and then when these didn't turn up a solution, took an old extension cord and hand-modified it to fit one of my adaptors! Yahoo! That was some cool stuff.


Here's Cay (pronounced "Ky")

Cay's the fellow who ended up with me working for him (instead of Vladimir) since his group needed someone more senior to build stuff. His English is great (he spent several years in England) and he'll happily translate menus, explain German cultural norms, figure out directions, and scratch his head at what he has decided are my 'list of food rules'. We joke a fair bit about who eats what and why, and he's willing to eat those green grubs on pizza. Oh, and recently he helped me find and arrange for my soon-to-be-installed high speed cable internet connection. Much kudos for that one!

Finally, my local guardian angel - Sanja

Sanja is the office manager at work - that person that just gets stuff done and makes everything magically happen. I'm not sure what prompted her to take me under her wing and help out, but to whichever deity was responsible - Thank you! She arranged for our temporary housing, chaufered me around town and translated for me to fill out the dazzling array of German legal paperwork. She actually found and negotiated the rental of our new apartment! She showed me where to buy groceries, acquire bus tickets, use trains, set up utilities, search for cars, order lunch, get to work in the morning, and more absolutely useful stuff than I could even vaguely begin to count. She says its because she is an immigrant herself, with her family having come from Croatia (when she was 5). I think she speaks 4 languages fleuntly, has 2 kids basically the same age as ours, and is just amazingly useful. I have no idea how we would have survived without her help. I hope any of you moving to a foreign country get a local Sanja equivalent to help you out too!

Germany is Mighty German

Ok, clearly we're not in Kansas anymore.

Every single day from the time I get out of bed until the time I go to sleep, it is altogether clear that we are not in America.

Sure, the giant obvious stuff you would expect. The locals all speak in German. The television is in German. The cereal, the toilet paper, the books, the maps, the .. anyways you get the idea. Everything is in German, and considering my German language capabilities rival that of a five year old child, that's kind of a daunting place to start.

Still, it is not actually terrible. I am learning, and I feel like I'm doing so at a reasonable rate. At least until I try to talk on the phone. German phones kick my ass. I'm never sure how many digits to dial. I know you're supposed to put a zero on the front (usually), but when they give you 12-15 digits of phone number, the actual location where you're supposed to put that zero can be anywhere from the first to the ninth number. We've got a phone in our house but it laughs at me. I can call the local pizza place with it, and not much else. For anything more complicated I have to use my disposable cell phone. It works exactly like you'd expect. You dial zero and ALL of whatever the horrible garble of digits are that compose the phone number, and it magically calls the right person. Maybe someday I will master the German phone, but that someday has not yet come.

Oh, and for bonus aggravation when I first moved in here my house phone used to ring every night at 1 am. Since every phone call I ever answered was a wrong number I wondered who would be calling me at such an hour. It turns out the sadistic soul in question was the actual phone, which apparently had a built in alarm clock that was set to 1 am. I eventually figured this out, but only after an embarrassing number of having to tromp downstairs at 1 am to make the darn phone be quiet. Cursed device!

If you have been reading Stephanie's blog you've probably already seen our excursions to the local sights, confusing shopping experiences, and amazingly small Everything. If you haven't though, go read it now. Lots of good stuff there, and unlike this, it has nice pictures. Enjoy: http://americanparisadventures.blogspot.com/

However, while the wife and kids have the advantage of time and a car to do their exploring with, I do have the advantage of spending day in and day out with a bunch of actual Germans, and apparently, of eating a lot more German food.

One of the things I decided to make a point of when I came, was that I was going to go out of my way to just try new stuff. We're here for new experiences after all, let's eat some weird new things and see what is good. I started this from my very first trip over, through London, where I made a point of eating some of the British food while waiting for my next flight. My advice to any who may follow in my path: Don't bother. I swear the English are the only people in the world who can screw up a simple biscuit, ham, and egg. I don't know how they did it, but I'm going to try hard not to give them the opportunity to do it again!

So, escaping the clutches of the evil proper-English-speaking food mutilators, I arrived in Germany and commenced trying out the local cuisine. On my first night one of my co-workers showed up to escort me to my hotel and then took me out for pizza. It turns out there is a lot of pizza in Germany. Its one of the easiest foods to find here, mostly because it is largely made by the Turkish people who seem to have an awful lot of local eating establishments. The pizza is pretty ordinary by American standards, so its safe to eat. Just make sure never to order it with Pepperoni. It turns out this translates to 'scary large green peppers' which are plopped on top of the pizza in question like some giant green grub. Avoid it if you can.

Your best bet of course is anything 'mit Käse' (cheese), or 'schinken' (ham). For some reason Germans are really big on ham, and it shows up everywhere. They eat it breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a whole range of products. Germany is a terrible place to be a pig. Cows on the other hand, must like it just fine here, since they seem to be eaten far far less. Pizza doesn't come with sausage or beef, pretty much ever. Though you can get some reasonable looking salami that does a decent pepperoni (our style) imitation if you have the urge.

Anyways, there are an awful lot of Turkish places around. Usually selling both pizza and döner kebaps which are big meaty gyros like you'd see in the US. Not bad and fairly cost effective for a quick meal out.

Now one place Germany has clearly got the US beat is its ubiquitous snack food store. Instead of a Starbuck's on every corner (which for all I know, they might have in bigger cities), Germany has a bakery on every corner. Although small bakeries exist (frequently with woefully inadequate stocks and only open for some gruesomely stifled amount of time), the bulk of the bakery locations seem to be dominated by two chains - Dreher's and Armbruster. Each of these sells a variety of bread and pastries that are pretty good. I've spent some time sampling the contents just in the interests of science of course!

The Salzbrezel - This German standard is found at every bakery and is universally tasty. Simple, salt + firm bread and it is a winner. They're great snack food and always welcome.

Quarkini - Similar to beignets, these are small round donut hole-like items with a cinnamon sugar coating. Somewhat rare, but worth eating when found.

Yeah ok, I was going to give German names for the rest of the stuff but darned if I know them. There are a variety of ordinary croissants, danish-type items including some with a vanilla filling that I quite liked, some wonderful firm yet fluffy rabbit cookies (I think those were for Easter, but fresh ones are great), loaves of bread (usually somewhat grainy but fine tasting), and an assortment of other smallish pastries. You can also get quite ordinary pre-made sandwiches on bread, with cheese or meats similar to pre-made sandwiches in America but with better bread.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Two of my absolute favorites German bakery goods:

Apfeltorte- Kind of an apple pie with a creamy topping. Not something you see all the time, but yummy regardless.

And... (drumroll please)....

Strueselkuchen!! I love this stuff! Firm bready interior with a crumb topping. It is more substantial than it looks and makes a great snack or breakfast accessory. It isn't nearly as sweet as you would expect when looking at it, but once you get used to that you realize it tastes great regardless.




Anyways, that's probably enough about German bakeries. They're good, not hugely expensive, and plentiful. Thumbs up from this reviewer.

With that in mind, how about the 'real German food' you ask (wait, I already gave you Streuselkuchen, go be happy!). Sure, there are no shortage of 'Gasthof's around advertising schnitzels with schinken (I swear the German pork industry must be as strong as the US corn industry, it is in Everything!) but at about 15-20 EU/plate, four of us to feed, and a tiny salary to work with, such places are just going to have to remain unexplored for the time being. If I'm going to spend a lot on food, I want it to at least be French food (which in my so far somewhat limited experience, is the best stuff around).

However... work actually provides an opportunity here. You see, in the interest of keeping us all there for more hours every day (probably a good investment), my employer hires a regular caterer. The food is heavy, usually no more enjoyable than it has to be, and well.. just the right price. But they definitely provide resoundingly German food. Which is perhaps why I kind of unfairly associate German food with prison-quality grub.

Anyways, in the efforts to both conserve money and to try a bunch of weird German stuff, I make a point of eating the free lunch when I can. The menus are generally in German, but Google Translate does a surprisingly good job of deciphering them.

Daily options generally include some sort of meat buried in a large pool of brown sauce with spetzle. If you're really lucky the meat is breaded as well (though still buried in brown sauce). There's sometimes a noodle option (spaghetti in tomato sauce with a large hard slab of parmesan cheese stuck to the top), or fish fillet (buried in brown sauce), or some sort of salad with stuff in it. These are all regular offerings that come back a lot, and most of them are edible if not exactly something to write home about.

However, there's also some weirder stuff thrown into the mix as well. So our adventure-seeking explorer (whoops, that's me) will order those as well. I admit I'm a little more gun-shy these days after some early bad experiences. I tried the 'sausage salad' one day thinking "Well, I can eat most forms of sausage just fine so it should be ok", and then opened my tinfoil box to view the abomination within. Tiny strips of baloney like substance were mixed into a large heaping of onions and various plant stuff and then doused in a huge vat of grease. My boss looked over at it and said "Yeah, I could see how that might not be quite what you were expecting."

I've ordered dumplings with vanilla sauce, and been pleased to discover they were exactly that - two large squashy dumplings in a tin of vanilla cream sauce. I don't know why it qualifies as a lunch, but it tasted pretty good. The dumpling with soup was a bit less desirable (the soup wasn't good), and had jam in the middle.

I wish I had managed to catch the apple strudel so I'm hoping it makes another pass. This week I also declined the 'housewife herring', which the menu assured me was 'made in housewife style!' I think I will have to try that at some point though, but instead I went for the 'helen toast', which largely was unexplained on the menu. I mean, shouldn't we already know what that is? Heck, not me. I'll let you know.

*Follow up* Ok, so the helen toast turned out to be a large slab of cheese browned and melted over a warm slice of ham, warm peaches, another slice of ham, and stacked on top of two soggy pieces of white bread. I think perhaps sitting in the tin for a few hours didn't do it any favors, and the bread really seemed sad to be thusly abused, but overall relatively harmless.

Germany! What Am I Doing Here?

Those of you who read my past blogs are probably expecting another game review. The truth is that its been a fair whle since I really played much new so I don't have anything too interesting to say there. Instead, I spent most of the last year the same way I spent the year before that - unemployed, and trying to maintain a semblance of sanity while so. I scoured job openings, applied for countless different ones of all flavors (executive, senior & ordinary producer, creative director, designer, and programmer). I would reshape myself and my presentation for each role and plow through, trying my hardest to project that yes, THIS was the job I both wanted and was ideally suited for. Whether that was running a AAA gaming studio, producing WWF wrestling titles for chinese distrubution, or programming medical imaging software, by golly that was exactly who I was. I waded through a zillion applications, phone screenings, interviews, panels, flights, etc... and had tons of close calls, but to no avail. Stephanie worked, having good success at her writing, but it paid badly, and I scraped up the occasional contracting job to augment, but mostly we just burned through our savings, our 401k, my portion of my grandparent's estate, and accumulated credit card debt.

It was pretty horrible in a 'try not to show it' sort of way, and feeling increasingly desperate as time went on. We eventually figured out that there was no way our house was ever going to recover, so we may as well stop paying on that. Eventually we were simply running out of time and I vowed I was going to land _something_ one way or another. I would do it by force of will alone. I'm kind of a pushy bastard when it comes right down to it, so this should be doable.

I applied for another batch of jobs and got a number of good responses. By simple act of will I stopped biting my fingernails after 20+ years of doing so because I thought it made me look better for interviewing. I took a 10 hour programming test for a company in Germany figuring if nothing else it would be good practice (yeah, do _that_ for fun sometime). I had one company actually tell my recruiter they were offering me the job (to largely run their company) and then... change their mind at the last minute! I had the company that makes the game I play the most (Riot - maker of League of Legends, see past blog) offer to make a kick-ass Design Producer role just for me, and then I must have fumbled one of my last couple interviews and they didn't make the offer either. And oddly enough, the place in Germany offered me the job. The pay was terrible (no, I mean *really* terrible), but it was located in Germany, right on the French border, about 2 miles outside the city of Strasbourg. As an added bonus, one of the producers made a point of visiting me while he was taking his US vacation, was a pretty cool guy, and said "come to Germany, please!"

Now two years ago I probably would have looked at that and said yeah right and skipped it. But really when you think about it, you know how you have those life moments that you always look back on and say "but what if I had done that?" Yeah, this was clearly going to be one of those moments. I thought about the fact that my wife would really like to see Europe. I thought about the fact that my kids would have stories to tell about it for all their lives. I thought about the fact that continuing to be unemployed in America really wasn't that compelling as an alternative. And I thought... hm.... I could say yes.

I told Stephanie I was willing to take the job. I think she was just dazed by it. She had wanted me to say yes, but I don't think ever believed I would. We arranged to sell the cars, as much furniture as seemed practical (no where near enough), packed and prepped. The company said they'd pay to fly us over, stay somewhere for a while, hire a broker to help find a permanent spot, pay to move our stuff, etc. The final contract said all that only it also said for no more than one month's salary's total cost (doh). In the end we sucked down the price of moving, sold some furniture, packed about half our stuff, 3 beds, 1 folding table, and a chest (and no other furniture), and walked away from everything else (tvs, furniture, house, etc...). I flew over two weeks ahead of the family, worked nonstop from the time I landed, and all of a sudden we were in Germany.

I admit on reading this again to myself it all sounds a bit grim, but I wanted to give some honest context on how I got here. On a more positive note, we're here for an ADVENTURE, and we're going to live and breathe it every day. We do try new things, meet new people, and have a wealth of experiences we would never have come into contact with before. I moved all my childhood, but never to somewhere as resoundingly NEW as this. So let's see where this wild ride takes us!