Traveling vegetarians

For almost 13 years now I have not eaten either meat or fish; it all started out with a pretty stupid bet with my sister. Meanwhile, more than anything else, I simply got used to it. During the rare occasions where I (accidentally or out of politeness or laziness) ingested meat, it mainly tasted salty, but was not able to significantly improve the overall impression of the respective meals. After all, there is no convincing reason to purposely start eating meat or fish again, as long as my personal vampires provide me with iron pills after the blood donations to increase my record low hematocrit values (never without adding “Oh, dear, still vegetarian?”).
Every once in a while I embark in the difficult (and tiresome) mission to explain and repeat to people (mainly of Spanish origin), how and why a person can voluntarily and without any medical or obvious reason abstain from such delicious, healthy, tasty and important nutrients like chorizo, bacon, ham, fish, brats, schnitzel and steak, even though one just LOVED it as a teenager. Arguments like mad cow disease, porcine and poultry pest, avian and porcine flu, scrapies, cloned cows and high levels of antibiotics in meat and PCBs or heavy metals in fish have become old and boring – after all, convincing counter arguments exist: pesticides, genetically manipulated vegetables, and tasteless tofu (tasteless but for the sauce it is fried in) whose fabrication procedure and ingredients no one really wants to know.
On the get together evening of the Goslar conference finger food was served. The vegetarian contribution to the first load, grapes and cheese cubes on toothpicks or sliced vegetables in yoghurt dip, was approximately 10% of the total amount of food and disappeared within seconds (I somehow managed to get three pieces of each). The vegetarian share of the second load was 15 chips with one tablespoon of salsa – which I made disappear in record-breaking time. All that remained were sausages, fish, mini schnitzels, meatballs and pork loin. And my stomach making grumpy noises that were almost louder than Prof. Eisenmenger from Munich telling anecdotes from his 30+ years as a medical examiner. Politeness and general interest in his stories quickly discarded the go-out-and-have-a-quick-vegetarian-kebap-option and left me in a catch-22 situation: stay hungry or eat meat (judged by their looks, fish and sausages were not really an option). After the next demanding roar from my stomach I courageously grabbed a piece of pork loin. It tasted just like I remembered it. Only a bit saltier. After the fourth piece my stomach finally calmed down, and a slightly nauseous feeling made me decide to stop the meat feast immediately and for the time being.
The next challenge came with my vacation and the flight to Iowa, where shortly before landing in Chicago the tasty United Airlines breakfast was announced. With a spontaneous cramp my stomach reminded me of the oily and incredibly sweet donut I had been served last time. But surprisingly UA had decided to switch to a healthier breakfast: a chocolate bar, a package of potato chips, and a spongy bread roll with a slice of cheese and a slice of what could have been cooked ham wrapped in plastic. Yummie! I mentioned to the friendly flight assistant that I had ordered a vegetarian meal – and the bread roll was immediately replaced by a second package of chips. While I still asked myself whether or not it would have been better to simply remove the slice of ham from the bread roll, my seat neighbor discovered that the bread roll had been packed on February, 18th, and we wondered which exotic places it might have traveled in the past six weeks. Just a little later she noticed that the bread roll package also said “best before 09/2009” – and was really happy she got it in april and not in august. Thanks, United! On my return flight Lufthansa served me a lactose-free dinner: chicken with rice, instead of pasta with tomato sauce like for all other passengers. Dear Lufthansa, the terms “ovo-lacto vegetarian” and “lactose-free” do have different meanings, go look it up. After a short complaint and explanation the chicken was replaced. Thanks, Lufthansa, great job!
In Iowa Tomasz told me that one kilogram of pork could, by adding brine and spices to cover the watery taste, miraculously be converted into up to seven kilograms of ham. Thanks a lot, Tomasz, for providing me with another convincing argument to not change my habit of refraining from meat!
And now will you please excuse me, my next meal is wilting.

The German text on the picture translates to "Vegetarians protect the climate" - and the guy belongs to the German hip-hop group Die Fantastischen Vier (The Fantastic Four).

Are you suffering from conference sleepiness?

You are at the 35^th annual meeting of the German Society of Traffic Medicine in Goslar.
How prone are you to doze off or fall asleep in one of the following situations?
Please evaluate yourself on a scale from 0 (not likely) to 3 (very probable), and add all your points.

1. During your journey to Goslar with a train departing from Heidelberg main station at 5.47 a.m.
2. During the welcome speech of the meeting president, Prof. Dr. Whatshisname (or something like that)
3. At the lunch buffet
4. While the big band of the local high school is playing
5. During the speech of the honorary guest, the German Minister for the Environment, about, uhm, something related to the environment I guess...
   
6. In the youth hostel’s TV room after the conference dinner with buffet and free drinks
7. During your city shopping trip combined with a guided tour of Goslar’s oldest church and an organ concert
8. During the 4^th presentation in the session “Day sleepiness and driving a vehicle” with the title “wide awake behind the wheel”

We appreciate your participation in this survey!

Evaluation:

0-9 points:

You show surprisingly few signs of meeting sleepiness. Either you are new or highly motivated, you have one or more presentations, you are one of the lovely persons in charge of organization, reception or the wardrobe, your were a tiny bit too generous with your morning coffee dose or had too many refills during the coffee breaks, or you accidentally mistook your amphetamines for vitamines.

10-12 points:

You suffer from borderline meeting sleepiness. You are in constant ambiguity between forced wakeful politeness with the necessary fake interest and the standby mode your brain wants to be shut down to. Talk with your competent colleagues about your conference sleepiness, and maybe there’s a workshop you can all participate in.

13-24 points:

What the heck are you doing on a meeting?! You desperately need some sleep! Go to bed DIRECTLY, do not detour for a quick look at the buffet, and don’t even think of confusing speakers by eventually snoring during their presentations. Do not consider attending another meeting until your meeting sleepiness has been successfully treated. Stop wasting your department’s traveling funds.

Similarities to the AAA questionnaire about day sleepiness are pure coincidence. And one of the pictures was, of course, just a pose and not taken spontaneously.

CappuCinema

On each 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month at 3 pm, Mannheim movie theatre Cineplex offers something called CappuCinema: for 4€ you can go and watch a recent film that is just out of the movie theatres (but has not yet been released on DVD), add 2€ for a hot beverage and a piece of cake. Senior citizens get a 1€ discount. Frustrated by the latest lab work and with a ton of extra hours for the last couple of weeks I spontaneously decided to take the afternoon off for tea and a movie in Mannheim.

A friendly elderly couple joins me queuing at the ticket office, they later turn out to be my seat neighbors. After saying “One ticket for ‘Im Winter ein Jahr’ [A year ago in winter] with the hot beverage, please” I hear a not so young lady from the queue mumble to her companion in a broad Mannheim dialect: “Look at that, Uschi, the young man will be joining us for the senior citizens’ special.” For one second I hesitate, much more confused by the “young man” (uhm, maybe the last haircut was a tiny bit too generous) than by the “senior citizens’ special”. Nonetheless, I collect the extra tall latte macchiato and a piece of nut cake at the bar, look for my seat, assure the elderly man sitting on it and his wife next to him they should just stay right where they are while I take the seat two seats next to my original seat, put my jacket on the seat between us and fully concentrate on my early afternoon nutrition.

After finishing the cake my friendly seat neighbor asks me, also in broad Mannheim dialect: “Excuse me, may I ask you a question? How much did you pay?” – “6 euros.” A surprised murmur goes through the couple next to me and parts of the row behind us. As an explanation I lift my paper coffee cup. “With coffee and cake. Otherwise it would have been only 4€.” – „Ah. I already thought, gee, that’s expensive! We just paid 6€ in total, my husband and I, didn’t we? Senior citizens’ discount.” More murmuring from the back row, this time with a more supportive note. I let my gaze wander through the theatre – and am startled with surprise: Around me are maybe 80 persons, most of them women (this may partly be blamed on the selected movie), and all of them at least twice my age. Now, THIS is something you really don’t see every day, not even as a regular movie guest. Most of them are enjoying their coffees and chatting. Just like at home on the couch. One last discussion before sitting down. “Well, I really don’t understand at all why people have to bring their jackets to the movie theatre and put them right on MY seat, especially now that the weather is much warmer! You don't need jackets any more!” Lights are off. One ad, the movie starts. Last conversations in broad dialect and at full volume. „Wait a minute, wasn’t this Caroline Link [the director] the lady who wrote that bestselling book?” – “Naw, she’s the one picking up the Oscar five years ago. Nowhere in Africa.” – “Ah, yes, now I remember. And what was the name again of that lady with the bestselling book?” Oh, no, no, no, we’re NOT having a conversation, some of us actually came here to watch a movie… But during the film it’s surprisingly silent in the theatre. No fumbling in handbags, no comments, no ringing cell phones. Every once in a while suppressed sobbing. And although the pretty sad film touches me deeply, I am (like always) the only person in the whole theatre to somehow miss the point when to start crying. The credits are on screen, lights are up again, everyone slowly starts moving. “Alright then, take care. Say hi to the rest of the gang. And see you next time!”
Ah, now I understand. Back in the good old days, the traditional elderly Mannheim lady and, if lacking a good excuse, her husband went over to their neighbors’ for tea and biscuits on Sundays at 3 pm to exchange the latest gossip. Nowadays they meet on Wednesdays at the same time at CappuCinema.

Doping at work

Last Friday every employee of the Heidelberg University Clinics received a letter (a real paper letter, not an electronic one) from the hospital administration. It briefly said that due to the potential involvement of another state hospital into a scandal, our hospital administration wanted to make a firm statement that doping is illegal. This includes, but is not limited to, self-administration as well as administration to others, be it knowingly or unknowingly, etc. etc. Furthermore, we are not supposed to take bribes.
And what do I read in the last edition of the newspaper Der Spiegel? Two million Germans work under the influence, 800,000 of them even regularly (article in German). And we’re not talking about peanuts like coffee, vitamin pills and cigarettes here. No, no, the real stuff. Antidepressants, prescription medication, illegal drugs and other substances to increase concentration and efficiency. I am shocked.
For years the police has been bringing us blood and serum samples for analysis, many a time attorneys call to say it’s urgent. Every once in a while they bring plant material, powder or pills as well, which turn out to be marihuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or God knows what. Usually, those analyses are even more urgent, especially if the suspect has already been taken into custody. We have a whole safe full of material to increase our working efficiency – and what do we do? We dope ourselves with clinic food, caffeine, nicotine, chocolate and tons of other sweets and are happy once we get our analyses done just in time (or a tiny little bit later). How incredibly stupid! But, hey, we are capable and willing to learn and to read between the lines. After years and years of subtle hints, we finally got the message. Thanks to the polite and detailed instructions of the clinic administration and the newspaper, everything will change – what exactly took us so long?
Alright, you policemen out there, bring us some good stuff, some of those cute colored little pills or anything, we will share them evenly between all of us, and you’ll get your results before the word “urgent” even crossed your minds or lips. Oh, yeah!
And now will you please excuse me, I have to take a look at our safe.

Tatort

Thrillers or crime series are not really Germany’s forte. There have been some nice tries, but generally, the result is not something I would go to the movie’s for or spend an evening glued to my (non-existent) TV screen. For that I prefer “The silence of the lambs”. Or a Mankell-based movie with inspector Wallander. Or – in case of great despair and little alternatives – series like “Crossing Jordan” or “Cold Case”. Nonetheless, for the last almost 40 years, the Sunday night murder mystery “Tatort” ("Crime Scene") has persistently survived, as did the music and trailer at the beginning of each 90 minute (no ads!) episode.

Thrilling like any suspense movie, but with a lot of social criticism, as well as regional/ local characteristics, hot topics, controversial discussions on its internet forum, and then again an extreme popularity in general, and all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Maybe with the exception of some inhabitants of Northern Germany, who have problems understanding the Austrians (due to the language). Or some people in Swabia and Saxonia for whom the inspectors in Stuttgart and Leipzig do not speak enough of the regional dialect compared to the ones who recently retired. And, I fully admit, there have been some very bizarre, not to say crappy, episodes. But hey, just wait one week, and chances are high you won’t be disappointed again. Tatort is a classic, Tatort is cult. In lots of cities, so called Tatort pubs have been established, where Tatort lovers can enjoy the murder mystery in the company of spaghetti with tomato sauce, ice cold beer, and other fans. Unfortunately, there’s no public place to watch in Heidelberg (should I lose my job, I’ll open one :-).
Tatort is a survivor. It could not be eradicated by either the launch of competitive private television channels, the fall of the Berlin wall and the German reunification, the parallel broadcast of Rosamunde Pilcher movies, or, last but not least, the smoking ban for public television. While in the first Tatort in 1970 a chain-smoking inspector Trimmel took a taxi to Leipzig in a cloud of blue smoke, all current inspectors have kicked their habit (if necessary) to become role models for our children and teenagers. And, by the way, most of the suspects and murderers are impeccable, too – at least as far as their nicotine consumption is concerned.
Somehow the concept of Tatort works. Rumors spread that the Dutch are planning to copy it. As they have more than 700 German episodes to get ideas and inspiration from, it shouldn’t be that hard. Even the Americans, who are somewhat reluctant to show foreign movies and prefer American productions instead, could surprise their CSI-traumatized viewers by reshooting the first 700 episodes for a start. That should get the crisis shaken movie business up and running again. With a good marketing concept, a couple of familiar actors as inspectors, a bit of luck (and maybe some more action scenes for the older episodes), they surely would get some passionate admirers like in Germany.
And in case producers out there need some help, no problem, they can call me anytime. Except on Sundays between 8.15 and 9.45 p.m.

Hairytales from the lab

I have started a new project at the Institute of Forensic Medicine. It’s about hair analyses, and it’s horrible. Not the project itself, which is pretty interesting and can even, with a bit of luck, be published quite well. I am comparing washing cycles and solvents for forensic hair samples to differentiate between compounds that have been integrated into the hair from the bloodstream and those adhering to the hair due to external contamination (e.g. passive smoking, sweat). And no, I am not spending the whole day smoking opium or crack or kneading hair with my cocaine powdered hands... :-)
Instead this past month I have been trying to bundle, contaminate, weigh, wash, dry, mill, weigh again and then somehow extract standard hair in the beautiful colors medium blonde, light brown, red, Japanese-black and Chinese-bleached. To the day it’s a mystery to me how my boss could give a nervous clumsy person with two left hands like me a project that is based on handling objects sized less than 0.1 mm in diameter (that is about 1/16 of 1/16 of an inch :-).

Ok, she felt sorry and wanted to help after my boss at the other lab I have been working sent me an email at the beginning of November that he wouldn’t be paying me in 2009 and I suddenly lost 1/3 of my full-time position. Ok, she still had a project and some funding in her drawer and was ready to upgrade me from 66% to 81.58% for 6 months. And ok, I was not really amused by the whole situation and just wanted to work full-time again, period. So I agreed. And I really don’t want to complain about the great opportunity of increasing my knowledge and experience with a new project.

5 months to go. The mill for shredding the hair makes an unbearable noise, as does the ultrasound bath during the extraction (fortunately one milling cycle takes only 8 minutes and manages 2 samples at a time, but then there’s still the 2-3 hour extraction). Everywhere – on my desk, on my clothes, at home on my laptop, in my shoes, in my tea mug at breakfast – I keep on finding hair that doesn’t belong to me. The times where one could whistle in the lab to a song on the radio are over, and it somehow reminds me of my PhD: “Oh, nice song – wait a minute, where are the 50 anesthetized drosophilas I was just sorting?! Shoot! … Oh, hi boss, nah, everything’s alright, I was just counting some drosophilas and somehow spread them all over the bench. No, no problem, I’ll just gather them quickly before they wake up.” Unfortunately, milled hair is much smaller in size than anesthetized drosophilas – the advantage is merely that hair doesn’t wake up and fly off after a while…

Furthermore, my judo colleague Lucie gave me a book for Christmas (Haruki Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) where one of the characters works for a wig factory and her job consists of sitting in public places and classifying the decreasing scalp hair of her fellow male citizens into three categories: A “those with a bald head”, B “those who have lost a lot of hair” and C “those whose hair has thinned out a bit”. Since reading this book I catch myself sometimes categorizing my fellow citizens into “those whose hair is too short”, “those whose hair structure and color are too irregular” and “those whose hair color already is in my collection”.

My colleagues in the lab usually start laughing when they see me fight this almost invisible opponent who cannot be thrown, arm-barred, choked, much less defeated. I admit that it often looks as if I was taming a bag full of fleas. To compensate the endless patience and fine motor skills one needs to work all day long with one inch long and 300 mg heavy bundles of hair I defrosted one of the lab freezers. Voluntarily. On my own (or mostly on my own). With the help of a thick monkey-wrench, making a whole lot of noise and with what must have been a very determined not to say slightly aggressive look on my face – “Regine, I really don’t want to know whom you’re thinking of right now…” – one lab sink full of ice was beaten out of the freezer. That really felt good!

As a second part of the project I am supposed to bleach or treat my standard hairs to a perm, again followed by weighing, washing, drying, milling, weighing, and extracting. Fortunately, we do have some more freezers left in the lab which urgently need to be defrosted.

In order to use a hair analysis in court (e.g. to prove drug abstinence during a certain period of time) the analyzed hair needs to be at least 3 inches long. After this month I swore to myself to spare my colleagues from a lot of miserable work by never letting my hair grow that long. Two inches is a really nice length for hair. And maybe I could throw in some bleach and a perm for a change. :-)

Take care and “give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair. Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen. Give me down to there hair, shoulder length or longer. Here, baby, there, mama, everywhere, daddy, daddy – haaaaaaaair!”

Heidelberg in winter time

Basically, winter does not exist in Heidelberg. At least, there’s no real winter with snow and ice and temperatures in the twenties or lower. Each winter it snows, sooner or later. Everyone is happy, just to discover the next morning that the snow has changed into a wet and muddy liquid or is already gone. Nonetheless, in the house where I live, the list of which party has to remove the snow on which day is hanging right next to the cleaning schedule – German planning and efficiency…. Each year hundreds of people visit the Christmas Market and have their mulled wines at sunny 50°F, or 40°F and light rain. More than once people have tried to order ice tea.

Another great thing during Christmas time is the charming Christmas decoration in Neuenheim, the neighborhood I live in. While other neighborhoods and other cities embellish themselves with luminescent stars, Christmas trees, angels and other season’s motifs, year after year Neuenheim strikes back with undefinable objects. Those who dispose of a lot of good will and even more imagination or are under the influence of some psychotropic substance might see half stars, I always see underwear. And it’s all over Neuenheim. Every single year.

But this year everything changed. No, of course the decoration stayed the same, that would have been too much to ask for…. In December it was cold, and we had snow for almost two days. Mulled wine was high up on everyone’s list, as was the Friesian tea punch. Tea punch is a healthy mixture of black tea, fruits (with lots of tasty vitamins), sugar and traces of alcohol in the form of red wine and rum. As a matter of fact, the punch contains so many traces of alcohol that one feels comfortably drunk just after starting the second cup. Tea punch is my personal all-time favorite Christmas Market beverage and the second best invention after sour gummi bears.

In January, temperatures dropped constantly and it snowed for several days. My roommate was so happy she stored a snow ball in our freezer (it’s still there). On my way to work, I read -1°C (30°F) on a thermometer and wondered how -1°C could make by bike’s brakes and gear shift freeze. A second glance revealed that the temperature was instead -13°C (8°F), random pieces of ice were floating down the Neckar. A couple of days later temperatures reached -17°C (0°F), and the river froze completely. Very brave persons even dared to walk on the ice. Some of my elder colleagues reported, the last time they had crossed the Neckar on foot was in the severe winter of 1963, since then even they had rarely seen ice on it. This historic moment had, of course, to be captured with my camera. But as far as I am concerned, it does not have to repeat itself next winter. Tea punch tastes equally great at 35°F and with an ice-free river.