Travel, TV, Templehof

It is two weeks now since I updated the blog. In that time I went to a conference on digital archiving in Frankfurt (on a train that left at 4:35 am!), taught something like 28 hours of classes (including 8 in our distance education program, which meets in Berlin about once a month for intense sessions), met with 4 university committees about curriculum and staffing for the distance education program, and was interviewed by a TV crew from Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg about why we chose to live in the Hansa Viertel.

The interview took place on the same morning as some of our new furniture arrived. This disconcerted the delivery men, who immediately called their company, which called the TV station to get reassurance that this was not an exposé about furniture delivery problems. It was not. The TV crew was just happy for a bit of an action sequence to enliven a talking-head interview. The show is supposed to air on 31 May at 8:15 pm.

During these two weeks Joan also arrived in Berlin in time to take part in the interview, and then left for a European accounting conference in Lisbon, Portugal. She was especially interested to see Lisbon, since my father lived there some while after leaving Germany. She liked it well enough, especially the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. Transit was a bit of a problem, though: highly overcrowded and without any metro connection near the convention center.

She flew to Portugal from Berlin's Schönefeld airport in the east and returned to Templehof in the city center. Since she had arrived on the Sunday before at Tegel, she used all three of Berlin's airports in one week, a record I doubt I will ever match, especially since Templehof is scheduled to close once the expansion to Schönefeld is complete in a mere 5 or six years. Temlehof is famous for its role in the Berlin Airlift. The airport is handsome in a 1950s style reminiscent of Washington National airport. (See photos at the right.)

Cat and quiche

Annette arrived without any problems last Monday. When the plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, I had to go through the luggage return to get to my next gate. My luggage was checked through to Berlin. All I had with me was the cat and my backpack, so I walked out the door and off to the next terminal without stopping. Only some meters into the main airport did I stop to think that I had just walked through customs without anyone asking me for cat papers. No one seemed interested, and of course the papers were all in order. So I just kept walking. In Berlin no customs officers were on duty -- it was an intra-EU flight.

Annette spent the first day hiding under the bed. An apartment with no rugs, no furniture and only stone floors was not her ideal. And she refused to use her cat tree until our friend and cat-sitter Elke suggested that I move it away from the window. Suddenly the tree became interesting, she moved into the cat cave, and even began using the scratching posts. ... If only I had known.

On an unrelated matter, I bought the ingredients for a quiche this week-end, but rather than make it with pie crust, I tried making a "crust" layer out of mashed potato (well laced with butter) that I also grilled a bit in the oven. Then I put normal quiche ingredients on top: onions, red peppers, swiss cheese, and a custard of eggs and milk. It was remarkably good, especially when served with "Weltmeister" bread -- a dark bread rich in seeds -- and a bit of cucumber salad.

On the bus

I am writing this blog entry on the bus to Detroit Metro airport in Michigan. One of the miracles of modern communication is that the bus comes equipped with free high speed wireless, which means I can update the blog while traveling.

Our cat Annette von Droste Hülshoff is sitting peacefully next to me in her travel cage. She seems reasonably reconciled to the bus. What she will make of the airplane could be another matter.

The photo at the right shows her in front of the balcony in the Michigan apartment. The white substance on the balcony is indeed snow. It has been bitterly cold, windy, and snowy for the past week, which made for an unusual Easter,

The real adventure in the past week has been getting the cat ready for immigration into Europe. Her German name will probably not impress customs officials without all the proper papers to show she has been vaccinated for rabies, is healthy, and has an implanted identity chip. Our vet first gave the impression of knowing exactly what was necessary. The assistant said they handle this sort of thing all the time and we just needed to make an appointment shortly before the move. When we got there a week before the flight, we discovered he really had no solid information about EU regulations. He knew that some countries required a blood test and that blood test had to be sent to a lab in Kansas which could not process it in under two weeks. He maundered on about regulations for Hawaii, Australia, and Japan, even though we kept reminding him that the cat was going to Germany. We finally had to find the EU regulations ourselves, and if we read them correctly, we should have all the necessary papers. I will find out in the next 24 hours.