Umbrellas and Fuse Boxes and Tomatoes, Oh My!

Umbrellas
What is with Germany and umbrellas? Yesterday I was walking home from work and it was pouring rain. I was the only person with an umbrella. And when I say the ONLY person, I mean the ONLY person. I saw no one on my campus with an umbrella. No one at the train station. No one on my walk home. In fact, people looked at ME weird for having an umbrella. I don't know if the German way is to just walk through the rain, convinced of one's own invincibility, but my years in England taught me to never be without protection from a sudden rainstorm. Although I'd like to add that the rain was in no way sudden, as every forecast I saw (from my iPhone to the newspaper at the train station to the intranet at work) predicted an afternoon rainstorm. If anyone has any insight to this, I'd be very interested...

I Should Not Be an ElectricianI was off work today in celebration of something called Ascension Day. Seems this is a Catholic holiday that happens roughly 40 days after Easter. I'm not sure why it is a public holiday, but I'm not arguing having a random Thursday off. I slept in a bit and decided to make myself a nice brunch, consisting of scrambled eggs and white asparagus. (As an aside, asparagus is very big here. In fact, it is right now what is called "Spargel Season" - season of the Asparagus - and the big, thick, white asparagus is everywhere. I happen to LOVE asparagus, and so this makes me very happy.) I put a load of laundry in the washing machine (one thing about Europe - you are ALWAYS doing laundry. Because there are no dryers, and the washing machines are about the size of a small cereal box inside, this means that a normal American-size load of clothes takes at least 2 to 3 loads and about a week to get through), and fired up the coffee machine. I put the pans on the stove - one for the eggs and one for the water for the asparagus and then dug out the toaster that came with the apartment.

I plugged it in, and put a piece of bread in. Pushed down the lever. Nothing. I tried a few times before deciding that the toaster was broken. So I went back to the eggs. They seemed to be taking a really long time to cook. After a few moments, I noticed how quiet the apartment suddenly was - and I realized that the power had gone out. I opened my window to see if it was a neighborhood-wide thing (did they turn the power off on Ascension Day? Did someone hit a pole?), but I could still hear the crosswalk beeping and music from next door. I remembered seeing a fuse box in my hallway.

And now this is where I have to (in advance) defend myself a bit by saying sometimes I'm the dumbest smart person you'll ever meet. I opened the fuse box. All in German, but the concept was similar to American set-ups. Lots of small switches for the various rooms/outlets and one master switch. And so I flicked the master switch. Twice. And nothing happened. Those of you with any technical acumen at all will realize that I simply turned it on and then off again. I, however, did not realize this and found myself quite perplexed. I considered calling the local electric company, until I remembered it was a holiday and everything was closed. I thought about calling my landlord for the temporary flat, until I remembered she doesn't speak English and isn't exactly speedy to respond. I then spent about 15 minutes puzzling this through before it occurred to me that I would have to shower in cold water unless I figured this out. I opened the door to my hallway. The hallway lights were on. Thus, it was clearly an issue with my apartment.

So, back to the fuse box. This time, for whatever reason, I only flipped the master switch once. And voila! Power! Let there be light, and so forth. It occurred to me that maybe the toaster wasn't working before because there was no power. So I grabbed it and plugged it back in. Suddenly, no more power.
It didn't take the cast of CSI for me to figure out that either the outlet was bad or the toaster was bad - but that either way, I didn't need toast that badly. I'm sure I could have experimented with different outlets (although my flat has a grand total of about five that I could find across five rooms) but I prudently decided it was best not to mess with the electricity and to take my victories as they came, small as they might be - and so I flipped the master fuse switch again, and got back to the business of brunch.

Tomatoes
Which brings me to the tomato situation. Tomatoes in Germany are DELICIOUS, and remind me of the ones my mom used to grow. They are a zillion times better than the crap sold in American grocery stores - Whole Foods included. They actually taste like tomatoes. And they are firm, and round and fresh. I'm also pretty sure they are only available on a seasonal basis (at least here in Ingelheim - maybe in Frankfurt they will have the hothouse versions year-round), which accounts for them tasting so good. Either way, I am LOVING having such fresh produce. The same goes for the peppers, onions and salad greens I've bought. I can't always find everything (been searching desperately for fresh spinach), but what I do find is fresh, crisp and reasonably priced. Germans may eat the hell out of bread and schnitzel but their produce is on point.

That's all for today. I'm headed off to bed soon, content to fall asleep to the sound of the dishwasher (POWER IS ON!!!) -which, in an interesting turn of events, is supposed to be uber-environmentally friendly and takes 3 hours and 15 minutes to do one load of dishes.