CH2. Life in Germany 12: Random Activities and Living Life

Hello, Tim!
Life is a bliss when it comes to convenience here in Taiwan, especially when almost all is still open and people can roam almost wherever you want as long as you have a mask on your face.
Alas, it isn't really the kind of holiday where you can simply go all out and set off on an adventure of free spirit and boundless roaming, for there are still projects for the school to be done, and adequate resting along with family quality time are important, as well.

CH2. Life in Germany 11: Released and Active

Hello, Tim!
This week we are going to carry on with the quarantine - and how I eventually got released, wreaking havoc across the land already upon the recuperation of liberty (I did nothing illegal, though). The weather hasn't been steady - sunny on one day and pouring on the following one.

CH2. Life in Germany 10: Quarantine Life and Call Me by Your Name

Hello, Tim!
Life in quarantine, even when it is done in my place with the company of a human being, has been hard. My time indoors is almost up at this point this entry was written, and I really can't wait.

CH2. Life in Germany 9: Later! Germany and the Plunge into Quarantine

Hello, Tim!
We finished off the previous letter by concluding that I would have to come back to Taiwan and endure firstly, a fourteen-day quarantine. And this week was when it began.

CH2 Life in Germany 8: Corona and Going Off-Course

Hello, Tim!
It is true that I have been stalling the updates of the blog, given that I am actually a guy with so much indoor time to spend. Believe it or not, it feels nice to have someone egging you on that pushes you back on course after an unofficial hiatus. This letter was written to recount the events happening between the 9th of March to the 15th, just for the record and the sake of confusion avoidance.

CH2 Life in Germany 7: Kaiserslautern and One Book Read

Hello, Tim!
This week, all the weight of the studies have been lifted from my shoulders, and I can finally put more focus on my blog... or not. You'll see why at the end of the letter, or maybe you have figured out what it's about already.

Tuesday Day for Blowing off Steam

It was out of impulse, when I decide that I was to do something for myself on the day. I had no class to attend to, no group meetings for the project, and I was desperate to have some fresh air pumped into my lungs that was filled with indoor inactivity.

I was scrolling across the timetable of the trains I could opt to take on a half-day trip, and I saw a place called Kaiserslautern, west to Mannheim. No research, no extra fuss or indecision, and I was already packing to leave.

The trip took roundabout and hour and a half, and half of it was passed while talking to Melody on the phone.

Kaiserslautern gave me a more Mannheim-like feeling, Mannheim but less visited and more slow-paced.

The research as to where to go to was only done on the train. There on the map pinpointed with a green tree icon read "Japanischer Garten" which was, intuitively, the Japanese Garden. It showed pictures with architecture that scream "Japan" and I felt like this would be my ultimate goal for the day.

Due to a lacking of breakfast and insufficient planning, the first sense of basic human need that I felt after disembarking was hunger. Through the alleys of the rather tranquil residence area, I sauntered slowly through the chilly, free air whilst hunting for food. In an Italian restaurant, I found something worthy of trying: a bowl of pasta topped with a piece of pizza dough. I would want you to imagine how you make a pasta gratin. You prepare the pasta, and afterwards, you fill it in a heat-compatible ceramic bowl, top it with mozzarella cheese, bake and serve. The dish I mentioned was of the same kind of idea, but instead of having cheese as the upper layer, it was a piece of soft, oily dough that was capped above the pasta. It was soft and was able to entangle with the pasta when you twist it with your fork. The whole piece of dough felt like an extra portion of pasta, and I waled out of the diner with a satisfied belly.

Something I might potentially try in the future

How it looks on the inside

Homemade tiramisu

I wasn't expecting it to be that cold, to be frank, and neither did I expect to see some hail falling, but none of those were ever going to stop me from reaching the destination I wanted to see. 

And it turned out to be a classic Hugo day... the Garden was closed. Somehow, the fact that this garden stays closed throughout winter and all the way until the end of March was left omitted on the Google Map, and I was standing at the gate, staring point blank at the torii, the red dome-shaped structure characteristic of Japanese architecture. The plate at the gate told us that the Japanese garden will be back With the public soon after the winter break. Rather dismayed, I walked on, becoming aimless for the moment. 

The Japanese Garden opens on the first of April!!

What I could only capture when poking my phone through the gate.

I walked to a small grassy community designed with a grid-like layout. Each grid comes with a miniature one-man row house and a rather big garden. A mother seemed to be managing her yard while her child was walking around, playing; an old lady was playing with her dog, unleashed. I talked with the lady for a bit as she acknowledged my presence, and I told her how I ended up here after finding out that the Japanese garden was closed.

It's either gardens or children's playground.

I wanted to head out to another city scape, but even a the sun started beaming again at some point, the time has already gone by, and I would have to make my return. I'll be back to the garden in Kaiserslautern when the time is right.

One Immortal Written in the Page

One Saturday, I felt suddenly tired of everything that had been going on in my head were things related to the schoolwork and decided that it was not healthy a mindset to have, so, I chucked my work aside, and pick up my halfway read book, For the Immortal by Emily Hauser, and gulped it down like fish drinking water. Fluently written with multiple changes of POV, this is the writing style from Emily Hauser that I know of. Knocking down the chauvinism with focusing on the women coming from different tidbits of the Greek mythology vastness, all the same time hammering down the fundamental pillars of what constructed the cosmo of the Greek pantheon.

Here are some more details. For the Immortal took the thread from the fabric of Hercules' story, spinning it off into a new tale while Admete's and Hippolyta's eyes became ours. Admete was the princess of Mycenae, who was said to have accompanied Hercules on the quest for the golden apple, as Hippolyta was the queen of the Amazons, one of the fiercest battle tribes that was depicted in Greek mythology. The females in the books have their own voices, and I think that was easy enough to spot, as the male perspectives are very much magnified in the traditional narratives, and it simply proved that Greek mythology can still be told over and over in a million other ways. This book, as the finale of the Golde Apple Trilogy, destructured the concept of "Unavoidable fate" and reshaped the whole scope of the mythology. Although the new ideology of the implication that all Gods have been so manipulative and calculating didn't appeal to me as much as the previous two installment claiming that we make our own choices, I still highly appreciate the novelty of such radical way of storytelling from the author, and it was a pleasant surprise. 

The book also talked about the idea of becoming immortal through writing down about people, about their deeds and their actions, which will be passed down in the form of stories.

And that is how we become immortal.

End

I mean, the Coronavirus has been on the rampage. Things have become very different, from plans to go to Czech Republic and France have been cancelled, and now I will be going back to Taiwan, in two days. More on that in the next letter.

CH2. Life in Germany 6: Better & Back

Hello, Tim,
I'm back! Technically, anyway.
It is Thursday of the next week already, in fact. I would still need a week of simplicity before I can caught up with what is more like a weekly update. Told you that I would be back eventually. I am here with a story and a dish to talk about.

First Snowy Field

Last Thursday, I finally saw what real snow fall looked like.

I was in the middle of my marketing class when someone mentioned a possibility of snow in the chatroom of my dorm. That was when I dragged my feeble attention to a very old-fashioned guillotine and beheaded it. I tried to pry my eyes from the window that showed an expanse of the rainy campus.

I tapped frantically on my neighbor Emily's arm and thrusted my hand at the window as the droplets slowed down gradually, floating downward as if every single drop was equipped with a small, downy parachute.

My first snowfall. From indoors. The people from my floor in the dorm also went crazy with what was going on outside, but there was something they had but I didn't: the freedom to go out into the open and receive the melty kiss from the falling snow. I was sitting there, mind hanging on what feathery objects were descending outside, biting my mental nails to want to chuck everything and simply rush out. I didn't. And the snow stopped in around twenty minutes.

The next day, when I was just planning to plunge my whole day in my project work (which still isn't done yet at this point. It's the next week already and I am feeling very guilty about the delay) I got an invitation from Saad and Abhidha and an encouragement from Johannes that we together go to the top of the Königstuhl and have a look at the snow that must have had accumulated on the previous day. It was quite scary, thinking about how I was almost too determined to push some process on my project. 

I don't know if it is morally correct to say that I was happy that I neglected my school work (temporarily)

Halfway taking the mountain railway onto the mountain, we could already see the snow-covered railway and overgrown bushes. The excitement heated up as it became a bit colder up ahead.

We got off the mountain train, and what followed was, unsurprising for the standard of three people who were only interacting with such amount of snow -it was indeed all white!- for the first time, a snow ball fight.

The roads were actually a bit muddy because of the melting of snow that was already starting; we came at the right time.

Upwards on the snowy trail

I promise that we weren't bullying Abhidha.

Last time I was with Johannes on Königstuhl, the highest mountain (600 or so meters) in Heidelberg, and I recalled there was a grassy steep slope facing more west, where people would sit on and have picnics. It was then covered with a thick layer of snow. 

Also comes with great overview of the city.

On that day, I practically did whatever was imaginable on the snowy field. Here are what I could remember:

- I sat down and slid down the slopey snowy slide.

- I tried to freeze my fingers off because I certainly didn't think as far as to bring along a pair of gloves.

- I knelt down on the snow, took off my glasses. I pressed my hands into the snow, and smashed my face into the snow.

Was me.

- I threw myself into the snow.

- I did what animations stereotypically do and rolled a small snowball and pushed it down the hill to try making it bigger. It really worked.

- I made a snowman and named it Jonny. Succeeded after the third try.

Jonny in the making.

I didn't want Jonny to catch a cold.

- I lay down on the slope horizontally and rolled down. A kid aimed a snowball at me but it landed midway. I stood up feeling really disoriented and fell face-down while trying to climb back up.

Visual support:

- I made a snowball and smashed it against the ground. 

- I took of picture of me and Jonny the snowman.

So yeah, this was me on the snowy field. I think it was actually the overwhelming emotions of seeing snow that drove me into all the crazy shenanigans I pulled in the snow. I have been talking about wanting to see snow for over a decade now. Coming to Germany, I had learned that my story with snow won't just end the instant I see it. It's a progressive story that develops with time. I want to collect all different facets of snow. That day I tasted the playful aspect of the snow, and before I really  get to experience the romantic side of it, I guess I will try to have more playful encounters with the snow.

Now for the dish I was eagerly trying to talk about.

Full disclosure first: Two weeks have passed, and I can't really recall which of the two dishes I have in mind right now was the one I was thinking about introducing. So instead of doing one longer description of a dish, I would do two short ones.

The first dish was the pumpkin soup, and even though this was already the third time I made this soup, (it was a rare case as I normally would try not to repeat the dishes I had made in the past unless I messed it up last time), I was the proudest with this particular pumpkin soup because I used the whole pumpkin as a bowl. Here's the end product:

Look at it!

The whole process was excruciatingly long as it involved the removing of the flesh from the inside of the pumpkin with a spoon, making the broth that should be simmering on the stove for at least two hours, and putting the seeds into the oven for some roast-y salty pumpkin seeds that would go as the sides. But since the outcome was indeed satisfactory, I would raise a spiritual thumbs up to myself when I think about it.

Disclaimer: No pumpkin bowls were wasted during the process.

First time pumpkin carving

The next didn't turn out so well, but it was a good attempt and I had to acknowledge it. I tried to bake some earl grey macarons on my own. I have always state it as a fact that macarons are my favorite dessert, and even though last time I tried to make some macarons with the girls at Sherry's place, this was the first time I was trying this solo. Not exactly. It was late in the evening right then, which would be way past midnight of the following day in Taiwan, but while I was mixing everything together, I had Angela on the other side of the telephone, and we chatted and she gave me some instructions for making macarons. 

Photographer: Aliang

But they do rise.

Having almond biscuits with a cup of tea

The shells were having a nice shape, but as the bottom was still a bit undercooked after fifteen minutes of baking, I popped them back into the oven for way too long, and the shells became way too crunchy to call them macarons. The filling was also somewhat a catastrophe. I ended up using apricot jam and sugared butter because my whipping cream kept falling apart. I definitely have more to work on that, and I can see myself taking the challenge again in the near future. The taste was, however, still pretty good because all my friends were trying to get more even though I would call them almond biscuits instead of macarons.

Finally!

There is finally one thing less on my mind (count it as two things less since I did one of my two presentations on this Monday as well.), and I will have to pick up on my recount of week 7 pretty soon as well.

See you soon!

Sincerely,

Hugo