Nuremberg

It has been so cold that even I gave up on running when I saw that it was -4 F at 8:30 am. I did the only responsible thing I could think of, which was to go back to sleep until 10:30 and wake up in time for hazelnut pancakes and cappuccinos. Sorry Shamrock 8K, please forgive me. I'm going to try running in the afternoon when it is slightly warmer, and all of the museums are closed on Monday anyway. We're going to a Super Bowl party with some other ex-pats Krishna has met, but due to the time difference we're having the party on Monday evening and watching the game from DVR, though it is probably impossible not to know who won the game unless we forgo checking emails, Facebook, and U.S. news websites for the entire day.

So far I have gone to the toy museum, which is very close to Krishna's apartment, and yesterday I went to the Dokumentationzentrum, which tells the history of the Nazi Party and Nuremberg's significance as the site for the Nazi rallies and propaganda. The plan was for me to join an English-speaking tour of the Old Town as well, but when I showed up to the meeting spot, there was no one there. I guess they were too chicken to lead a walking tour when it was 10 F outside. So, lacking that tour, I made up my own, which consisted of taking pictures of churches in between visits to shops selling chocolate and other necessary confections, before I went to the Documentationzentrum. I should add that Krishna and Yagnesh were not with me but they had told me what bus to take, so not only did I succeed in getting on the correct bus (#36), I also successfully bought my own bus ticket after several repeats of, "Tages carte, bitte" (day pass, please). When traveling in a foreign country, even the small things that I figure out in another language seem like accomplishments. I rode the bus and didn't get lost or end up in Poland, so I am awesome!

As for food other than chocolate, Krishna and I have been cooking most nights. So far we have made Turkish lamb kebab and rice pilaf, stir fried green beans and Sichuan peppercorn potatoes, roast pork shoulder with parsnips and potatoes, and kidney bean curry and potato carmelized onion curry with Malabar roti/Kerala paratha/missy roti (everywhere we went in Kerala the name changed, but the bread was the same flaky roti slathered liberally with ghee, and I have made the recipe from 660 Curries multiple times and think its pretty close to the best rotis we ate in Munnar). If you noticed a certain potato theme, you would be correct in assuming that there is a plethora of potatoes available. As far as trying local cuisine, I have yet to try the lebkuchen, but I met Krishna yesterday for a late afternoon snack of Nurnberger bratwurst (Drie im Weckla, which means 3 in a bun because they are thin, small sausages served 3 to each bun). They are quite tasty. Pork is the most popular meat here, so about a month before I got here, Krishna told me to stop eating pork so that I would have a pork deficit at the beginning of my trip. :-p Tonight I tried the Schäufele (roast pork shoulder) which was quite tasty.

Krishna and Yagnesh are speaking fairly good German already, so now they speak to each other in a mix of English, Gujarati, and German. I'm not sure what you would call this new language they have invented, maybe Gujangleutsch or Duetschenglarati? Dean and I used to joke that when Krishna and Yagnesh would switch to speaking Gujarati in front of us, that they were saying things like, "When will these white people go home already?!", and now they can do that in not one, but two languages. But so far so good; I don't think they're ready to send me home yet.