Birthday and Stimmung!

The faculty of Linguistics celebrated its 40th birthday. Interestingly, the Dean said a healthy minded individual would either become sarcastic and develop a grim sense of humour or turn mad. The food would have been sufficient if only one out of three would have been hungry. Sadly, the event started too early to go home and have food, and it took too long (2.5 hrs) for not becoming hungry. After about one hour all drinks were drunk as well. This was despite the fact that Germans don't drink as they have to drive a car ("Driving a car is not a privilege, it's a right"). I marked the celebrations with Nanaimo bars. The next sentences subtly provide some background information on Nanaimo. They were invented on Vancouver Island, more precisely in Nanaimo which is right opposite Vancouver across the Strait of Georgia. The British Columbia Metro ferry service connects Departure Bay (Nanaimo) and Horseshoe Bay (Vancouver) as well as Duke Point (Nanaimo) and Tsawwassen (Vancouver). Having used the word Metro, you should be aware that there is a German company which owns the rights of this word. Recently, they stopped Microsoft from using the term Metro design with regards to Win 8. Microsoft now calls it modern UI. I wonder how long it takes them to realise that parts of Paris' transport system and an administrative body of Vancouver might infringe their proprietary rights. And don't say they wouldn't, they are German.

Later that month, some people celebrated the day of reforming the church. Specifically making it the Lutheran church (remember that episode where Lisa Simpson jumps up happily as she realises the people living on her tooth are Lutherans?). Well, the whole thing is accompanied by a specific kind of bread roll. In theory, this bread roll is only available on the day and resembles the Luther seal. Though, there have been reports of the rolls being sold on other days of the year. As far as I am concerned the bread roll is the most important thing. Well, being here I am surrounded by people who enjoy their cars more than anything, i.e. carharrt, carholic and Catholic. One of them was passionately dubious about the baked thing. His argument started with pointing out that Luther was actually born in Koblenz (rather than in Eisleben as the many others might believe, nevermind) and from this he produced some argument I can't remember. The baseline was that it just can't be right to eat the thingy. Despite my plans to dance on the following day (All Saints accompanied by state ruled dancing prohibition), I just lied in bed trying to cure a pneumonia/cough/cold thing. As usually in this country, I was refused medical treatment. I was told to go and maybe see a chemist or whatever. If it wouldn't be manageable by them, they could make an appointment with the GP. In situations like this, you can shout: Stimmung! to express your serious fun and to engage others in the fun as well.
On a slightly different note, being from East Germany does not constitute a circumstance of birth, upbringing, religion, sex, ethnicity, race, caste, disability, age, dress, culture or sexual preference. Thus, laws of equal opportunities are not applicable and discriminating against these people is just fine (Hon. 17th Chamber of Stuttgart Magistrates Court: Aktenzeichen: 17 Ca 8907/09). Stimmung!

Air space and issue

Following verbal attacks, Ryanair's O'Leary now offered that Spanish officials may review data about the airline held by the Irish air safety body. Ryanair is Spain's largest carrier with 30m passengers last year and 17 destinations, but it can be assured of Spanish authorities' most vigilant attention. The move is said to reflect Ryanair's fears of being left with a damaged image.
A lot of water power station feature so-called fish ladders. The idea is that fish would climb using the stairs rather than being killed by the blades of the water turbines. The German secretary of infrastructure, Klaus-Dieter Scheurle joked about the amount of literally shredded fish in German water power stations. Most fish do not climb the stairs, but enter through the main water outlets of the turbines. Travelling downstream fish are sought through the grids protecting the inlets of the turbines and transformed into fish mousse. But no worries, Scheurle is changing position and will be head of the German flight safety body. Reminds me on the number of almost-accidents around Berlin-Tegel (TiXeL) airport in the times before it stepped in for the failed Berlin-Brandenburg airport (BER). Supposedly, the numbers just increased.
Some detail on wealth distribution: in 1998 the poorer half of the German population held 4% of the total assets, today it's 1%. On the other hand, the divergence of incomes reduced in the time span from 2006 until today.

Markets and airspace

Some media have recently claimed that the drought in the US reduced the available crop and, importantly, investors would not only benefit more than anybody else - it was them driving the prices. Nevertheless, it seems that this time a number of investors simply missed out. Actually, they held short positions or reduced their longs (e.g., Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index) on corn and wheat since the farmers were out on the fields early this year and a rather good turn-out was expected. Only recently, fonds invested in long positions to participate and for correcting their losses. Nevertheless, this suggests that at least the initial increase in prices in June was caused by food and fuel producers. Hopes are now focussing on harvests Brazil and other parts of South America. But if everybody is buying corn in Brazil, prices will rise - without the contribution of evil forces (investors) whatsoever.
On another note, the Financial Times Deutschland published a report saying that AESA was investigating three incidents on 26 July 2012. Following a thunderstorm at Bajaras airport (Madrid, Spain) all flights were redirected to the much smaller Manises airport (Valencia, Spain). This included all Ryanair services to Madrid. The small capacity of the airfield (compared to Bajaras) and the unusual large number of flights arriving resulted in a massive hold time, i.e. aircraft had to remain in flight and wait for a landing slot. Within a timespan of three minutes, three Ryanair flights issued a Mayday call to Air Traffic Control after their fuel was hitting the 30 mins in-air minimum requirement. Thus, these flights were given highest priority to perform emergency landings. According to the news, allegations include that Ryanair acted systematically in not refuelling their machines appropriately. This was backed by the German pilot union (Cockpit) alleging Ryanair of pressuring pilots into refuelling at the bare minimum. Furthermore, the Irish Independent published reports that pilots who would use too much fuel or refuel above limit would be bullied and had to report for failing to achieve target numbers, which was denied by O'Leary. The emergency landings caused potential dangers as other aircraft had to remain in flight for longer which in turn reduced their fuel. Thus, AESA investigates whether the safety of Spanish air space was put at a risk as a matter of misconduct. It should be noted that another three aircraft were calling Mayday over Valencia this day (two EasyJet and one LAN Chile). All three of them for the same reason - a lack of fuel. Though these cases appear to be independent from the Ryanair flights under investigation. A Spanish consumers association said Ryanair could be banned from Spanish airspace for up to three years which is one of their main destinations. O'Leary denied any misconduct and said aircraft were handled and refuelled as required by EU regulation. He argued the problem was not Ryanair's refuelling policy but an unusually long hold time in Valencia. Furthermore, O'Leary insisted Ryanair's licence was issued by the Irish regulatory body and Spain could not expire or amend their licence.

The market

Recently, a rather naughty person transformed the 3 ft tall letters forming the signage to the section L, U and T of the university. An additional three foot tall letter S was cut out from black card board and somehow attached to this wall location. The letter had been removed the other day - it could mislead visitors as section S is located further down. I should add a photo of this and put in here. See, this is the kind of exciting stuff that happens around here.
Well, I discovered a market in Bielefeld. They do sell like fresh veg there! So, find me there early Saturdays. Though, despite having stuff on offer they haven't lost their special personal warmth. I asked for floury potatoes and frisée. The response were rants on how I could possibly go about and ask for stuff like that on a warm and sunny day. Apparently, I had no clue what I did and hence, had to be told. This involved farmers, how and where they grow and after all, people don't buy frisée not to mention floury potatoes. From personal interest, what do people do with their waxy potatoes in this country? Chips are deemed to be the most unhealthy thing. And what else could there be?
My journey went on to the cheese stall. Actually, that is a normal place. They do cheeses of different countries, all sorts of makes from solid to creamy, old and young, with lots of stuff on them or just little. I know that because a group of three ladies was being served right in front of me. They tried almost everything but bought only little. More interestingly, there was a man with the second assistant buying large amounts of stuff. Like 60 oz of each sort. Also, he engaged the lady who owns the stall in a conversation about their goats. How much milk they produce, how many they had, how many nannies a buck could serve (40) and so on. During these conversations, the sunshine was taken over by clouds, a shower started and stopped again, and more sunshine returned. Finally, I got some cheddar (semi mature), some Le Jersy (no, this is not a typo) and some Italian stuff whose name I always forget.
Earlier that week, I handed my suit to the dry cleaners (actually a single little lady). On my collection, she tried wrapping it in some sort of plastic bag using sort of a primitive hanger with rolls of bags attached. Having failed her initial two attempts and completing the task with a long sigh, she looked at me (or shall I say scanned me top to bottom and up again) and looked at the suit. From her assessment, she concluded "You look different. Are you French?" My surprise made her explain, that it is alright to look different these days. There is a growing number of people looking different these days. My enquiry revealed the issue at hand were my proportions (or the size of my suit that gave her such a hard time). I'd look smaller (i.e. shorter, less wide, less long), but fiddling around with the thing she found, I was less smaller than her initial assessment. Just I appear to be more less than I am actually less. Nevertheless, less. I am not sure I am reproducing this properly.
Having been confronted with all these Olympic events, I have to spread some random fact, right? So, here we go. The winners of the 1896 Olympic games received a silver medal, an olive branch and a diploma. There was bronze for second place and nothing for thirds. Tug of war was recognised as an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1920. The highlight of the 1896 games was the marathon won by the local boy Spyridon Louis. According to myth, he figured that there was a competition and started spontaneously-ish. During the race, he stopped by the local in Pikermi and had a glass of wine (or an Orange and a Cognac). He quizzed the people on how much ahead his competitors were. Once being presented with the facts, he declared he would catch up and win the race, so he did.

Banoffee pie

Well, I have been asked a few times how to produce the Banoffee pie. So, this is how. Though, I am not transforming this into a cooking blog as there is so much good stuff out there. Just check the Grilled Cheese Social, the Pioneer Woman, Saveur and of course BBC (look for Sophie Dahl and Lorraine Pascale). Mainly, this will be about substituting ingredients with stuff that is available in Germany.
For a quite substantial 28cm cake that will serve ten hungry people (or something between 12 and 14 normal people), you'll need:

• Chocolate Hobnobs, which are not available and substituted by one package of wholemeal biscuits (like Leibniz or De Beukelaer)
• A 100g chocolate bar (like something that wasn't sure whether to become milk or dark chocolate)
• About 1.5oz (some 50g) butter
• A tsp baking powder
• Two 14oz (397g) tins of sweetened condensed milk, I'd say Carnation, but in Germany you'll find Dogvan or Steinhauer products. The pre-caramalised stuff is fine and saves you a lot of time. If you can choose, the Steinhauer stuff is a bit more caramelised and more solid making the cake less likely to "melt" away.
• Six medium sized bananas (but since that's the healthy part, you can have six large ones with no probs)
• A big containter double cream (16oz/450g), which is not available in Germany. But there are two options. If you're lucky your supermarket offers "Crème double". There is only one supplier in Germany who lives in Bielefeld and and for some reason they believe it was sort of Crème fraiche (Can you believe it?). Second option is Amazon. They offer a 1l (aka 35 Imperial oz) package of Frischli Creme Double. You'll need four thimble sized packs of Dr Oetker or half a Frischli package.
• Finally, some cocoa for dusting

Once you've got all that stuff together, you've been to a number of shops and assistants will have looked at you as if you were alien. Dare you. Asking for double cream.

The toffee: For starting with the stuff that takes longest, you put the tins with the condensed milk in a saucepan and fill it up with water. You make it boil and leave it there for almost 2 hrs. Take care, the tins have to be covered by water at all times. Otherwise, there is a certain risk of the stuff exploding. Also, you might want to use an old-ish saucepan as something leaves some horrible stains on a stainless steel one. The tins will increase in size over time and they will be piping hot at the end of the process. So, you'll need something to get them out of the water. Maybe place them in the sink for a moment and get some cold water. This will caramelise the condensed milk. If you have the pre-caramelised stuff, you don't have to do that and you save almost two hours. Also, this is already cold and you don't have to wait.

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The pie: Whilst your toffee is boiling, you crush the biscuits. This should be sort of fine crumbles at the end of the process. You add those crumbles, some 1/3 of your chocolate bar finely chopped, the baking powder and the molten butter in a bowl. Mix it nicely. You want to press this in your cake tin such that it is packed and evenly spread out. You put that in the fridge and let it sit.

The banoffee layers: Chop all the bananas and lay half them on your pie. Again, this should be evenly spread out. Then you are careful with opening your first toffee tin. If something squirts out of there on your hand, put it under running cold water right now. Try to spread this toffee evenly (it can be quite thick and sticky and refuse to do so. But it's fine if it's not perfect - we gonna cover this with cream later). Put in the next layer of chopped banana on top of this toffee layer. The remainder of the chocolate should be molten by now (have I told you to put in a bowl and melt it?) and you use a spoon for sort of sprinkling the chocolate it all over the place (but within the boundaries of your tin). The idea is that once the chocolate becomes solid again it provides sort of a grid for stabilising the thing. As a side effect it tastes like a bit of extra chocolate. Finally, you aim for spreading the toffee from the second tin sort of evenly.

The cream: So, this is the double cream. Now, the toffee stuff is all warm and putting whipped cream on warm stuff is not a good idea. So let it sit, put the cake in the fridge until you are like serving it. It's only 5 mins from now. You put the double cream in a bowl and start whipping it, just way more gently than German so-called cream. The cream becomes stiff and fluffy faster than German whipping cream and if you're doing too much it'll turn into butter rather quickly. So give it a gentle whipping. Spread the whipped cream evenly all over the cake. Now this time you actually try to get it nicely evenly spread. Just in case there is some cream left, you might want to do some creamy decoration or just taste whether it's nice and fluffy (though too late for making amendments now). Finally, dust some cocoa powder all over.

Tidying up

Some people start tidying up as one form procrastination, others stumble into performance art or dancing or stuff or typical German food. I decided to have a look into the things that I always wanted to write a post about, but haven't come around doing it.
Okay, IKEA is a place that is in Brackwede and apparently a popular place as I have bought almost all (well, what shall I say) my furniture there. It had been rated down in 2010. Dare you. They have their own loop bus line numbered "123" traveling from "Brackwede, Kirche" to IKEA and back. In other words, you can't miss it. On a side note, Brackwede is pronounced with a long vowel a. Though, that seems to be quite surprising to most people. In a similar case, Hamburg altered the orthography of all place names ending in -beck to -bek in 1946 simply for conserving the long vowel in the pronunciation. The effect of not doing so can be observed in place names like Lübeck and a bit more local Jöllenbeck. These places are pronounced with a short vowel now. Having mentioned what kind of things people make up, let me say a big breakfast is not any more satisfying over the course of the day than my "ridiculously small portion of porridge" (yes, I am getting myself a camera for filming how I am using a mortar for making porridge oats). Anyway, IKEA experienced problems in selling ad-hoc items, such as baskets, glasses, pillows, covers, candles. More precisely, problems refers to lower growth rates of sales than usual, i.e. German customers buy still buy more useless stuff than before, but less more. Two years ago they were planning their first High Street shop in an effort of competing with their competitor stuff sellers with branches in the city centres. The most recent item on their news blog says they might receive allowance to start works mid this year. For making the point really clear, this shop can be reached without using a car or extensive travel on public services. What a move!
The next item is from 3rd November 2010. From today's perspective, reminds me on pussy riot with their naked protest. The High Street soap selling company Lush was said to having pressed staff into joining the "Go Naked Day". Also, shop assistants were said having been trained to refer to customers' private parts purposefully - and it wasn't like "You want to make a clean and well-kept impression there", apparently it was more aimed at size.
Well, German food. But let me say something nice towards the end of February 2011 (I mean with clearing the backlog): Even you have been a criminal and all that, you can become a star. Really.

Dancing prohibition

A day after the German holiday of Fronleichnam, I realise that there was no prohibition of dance in this county. Though, the prohibition of dance is a story of misunderstandings. There is a different set of regulation for each county and each day within a county - and there are regulatory differences on whether sports is performed in public, in private, with the aim of commerce or for regenerating the mental health, and whether the whole day or a just a few hours are affected. Actually, there is no English version in Wikipedia - hopefully the German does. The holiday also involves a Monstranz, e.g. in Cologne (a really dirty building, right next to Central station - seen it when changing for trains to Bruxelles). Nevertheless, the Germans can denunciate each other - for dancing.
What else? The eurozone seems to be in a considerable crisis. One of the main contributors is Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact, her actions seem to suggest that she attributed the crisis to some less well managed member states. That means some member states overspent and thus, increased their government gross debt excessively. According to this account, these countries have to be regulated and brutal spending cuts especially in pensioners, unemployed and public service staff are inevitable (in Merkel's world). Actually, Spain's government gross debt as a function of GDP is roughly 13 percent points less than Germany's. And one might wonder why Spain has such a hard time refinancing. One answer could be that there is threat of the country being unable to support its struggling banking sector. If that was the case, it would be refinanced by some ESM and in fact be under dictatorship of Merkel. If that is was case, Spain's economy could just close the doors. When Merkel offered benefits for Germans buying cars in an attempt of hindering a recession, no measure of stimulation was an option in her Greek policies. Indeed, Merkel's measures remind the observer on Brüning's ideas of austerity. The result is (and was) an unemployment rate of some 52% amongst adults younger than 25 (eurostat). In Germany, these measures were followed by most horrible parts of history and should increase caution if not hinder any German politician in doing the like. Well, maybe it is a more systematic crisis accompanied by half-hearted rescue measures. This would suggest that Merkel's austerity put Europe at risk and topped the bill for the German taxman.

Topping the daily chaos, my laptop is slowly dying. I suspect the CPU cooling device is not working well resulting sudden shut downs. Germany is suffering the carpet affair (the secret service transported a carpet on behalf of a member of government and did not pay custom). Current projects involve a trifle. Simply for marking the most joyful, relaxed and happy event. In contrast to a civilised pageant, streets tend to involve chaos, e.g. Tehran suffers the cars of its inhabitants. Side note, cars are Germany's main industry and Merkel claimed the premium for buying a new car was key in hindering a recession. Another side note, driving a car in Germany is a right not a privilege. Recently, a severe accident occurred. In the ten o'clock news, the moderator said the accident reminded him opening fire into a forest full of tourists and hoping you only hit the trees. In brief words, the driver suffered epilepsy and had an attack before the accident. Also, he used cannabis during the night before. He was sentenced three and a half years for killing four people and severely injruing another three (sounds little, but driving a car was not his fail, just bad luck it went wrong). Bielefeld's university got an aestehtic centre. Really? Seriously? I suppose it's just me and I should increase my asbestos intake (see this university website featuring research from wikipedia). Bielefeld was also home to two severe events, first a fire and a week later an explosion.