Archives for April 2019

For once I did get enough sleep, I had set my alarm for 5.45. I meditated a bit and wrote morning pages and then it was time to make breakfast.

The boy had his first day of school and everything went well, he even had the afternoon off. My husband showed up a little earlier than I thought he would and then we talked quite a bit.

I went running for the first time in weeks and am happy to say that while my knees are still sore at times running doesn’t seem to affect the pain. Maybe it’s making it less, even. I did 6.4 k, mostly walking but running as well:

You can see that there has been rain and there was a bit of a drizzle while I was out but the path is still mostly dry.

I came back home and helped to make lunch:

First meal I knew would agree with me and taste wonderful in almost a week.

I spent a lot of the day thinking about traveling with fructose-intolerance. When I’m home I don’t really notice it. I can eat everything my husband cooks and most of what is in the house. But when I eat elsewhere it all comes down to a constant stream of worry. Will there be too much onion in the sauce? Is it better to take the fish with the mustard sauce or the salad? How will the salad dressing affect me? Did I manage to pull out most of the onion and what did they put in?

Everything comes down to guessing what ingredients are in any given meal. There are usually no labels. I can eat bolognese sauce at home because my husband makes it with lots of meat and only a little carrot and tomato. Choosing from the menu is not about what I’d like to eat and what will taste good, it’s just about anticipating how my body will react to it.

And it’s not like I eat something and know half an hour later if it was okay or not. Which is both a blessing and a curse. I don’t usually have to rush to a bathroom right after a meal. But my long reaction time also means that the reaction hits me a day later when I don’t expect it.

And it isn’t as clear-cut as when you’re lactose-intolerant. We do tolerate a certain amount of fructose just fine. I eat blueberries and banana in my muesli each morning, and veggies all the time. Having some protein and/or fat with the fructose makes it better digestible. It’s a constant dance for balance. And you only know if you did it right a day or two later.

And I keep forgetting that we choose the things we eat at home for a reason. We eat this certain type of brat or wiener because we know they’re okay. But when I eat brats or wieners elsewhere they can contain too much fructose.

So when I travel I avoid veggies and sweet things and sauces and soups because I can de-construct a sandwich and pull out what I don’t want to eat but that’s near impossible with something pureed. On the other hand I tend to crave sweets when I travel because when I eat too much fructose or when I am exhausted I want something sweet. And since sugary things are okay in moderation when I’m at home I have them when traveling as well. Only more of them. Plus the food that is not great for me.

By Saturday last week I was feeling totally sick. I just wanted to stay in bed. I was dizzy and nauseous and sweaty and feeling faint. It took me a bit to realize that I would feel better immediately once the food had passed a little further along, and yes, two hours later I was fine again.

But the whole experience drove it home once again that traveling with a food intolerance is no fun. And explaining the complexity of it is much harder than saying, „I need to eat vegan,“ or „I’m allergic to onions.”

Next time I travel I will lay off the sweets and take more of my own food. But that’s what I said before the Hamburg trip as well.

Anyways. I taught my students, called the woman who was looking for a guitar teacher for her too young son back, had dinner and went to bed early.

Today there will be grocery shopping and teaching and preparation of the podcast.

It is good to be back home. I like traveling (apart from the food issues and the sleep deprivation) but I like being home much more.

Which is a good thing because I’m home way more often than I’m away.

And again I went to bed way too late and woke up around 6.30. By then I had given up on all pretense of adhering to my usual routine.

I wrote the blog post, had breakfast, crammed everything back into my backpack and purse and walked to the train station without seeing any signs of the impending marathon.

Boarding the train was a little confusing because the part where my reservation was supposed to be had technical difficulties so that there were no seat numbers or carriage numbers displayed. I did find my seat, and then found a woman with a baby asking me to swap seats so that she could sit next to her husband, the toddler and the baby. I gladly gave up my window seat.

They were surprisingly good at managing both kids and kept them mostly quiet for the whole trip which is quite a feat. I would prefer it if families with children would not reserve seats in the quiet section of the train but then I have no idea when the booked, not everybody is planning their trip so far in advance that they can choose the seat they want. Especially if you’re traveling with four people.

The train was even more crowded than usual, the one going from Munich to Hamburg and back is always packed to the gills. It was the last day of Easter break and the trains are always full on Fridays and Sundays.

I made no attempt to work on the novel, with me being totally sleep deprived on a full train there was no use. I read and knitted and read and went to the train restaurant for lunch:

The food was meh and the beer was warm and not on tap (the waitress had warned me about the beer before accepting my order). I should take my own food more often when traveling. The food you can get doesn’t taste all that good, is more expensive and doesn’t agree with me a lot of the time.

The train was half an hour late and I was rather relieved when I was finally walking up to our house.

I greeted my family, talked at my husband for an hour, spent some time online, had an excellent dinner that my husband had cooked, watched some Star Trek with the boy and keeled over. In fact, I kept nodding off while watching TV.

We opened a bottle of champagne because it was our 24th wedding anniversary. No additional festivities.

Today there will be the start of school, running and cooking and teaching and maybe some podcasting not sure yet.

I guess I will need a few weeks to get my energy back to normal but it was totally worth it.

Woke up at six and regretted it. I am really looking forward to getting enough sleep again.

I did everything very slowly because I didn't have anywhere to be. Had breakfast (I am also looking forward to breakfast at home at lot.) and made plans for the day.

Shortly before ten I walked to the “Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe”. I spent all morning there and it was wonderful. I looked at Greek vases, pottery from all over the world, swooned over ceramics that were thousands of years of and from the other side of the world, felt my heart beat a little faster when seeing the harpsichord collection. (And there was someone in there practicing for a concert. The piece he was playing was really intrguing. The concert will be tonight and they are playing rather modern music on rather old instruments.)

I left the Art Deco and the Bauhaus stuff for last because I love it so much and wasn't disappointed.

And then I started thinking. Why does this kind of museum make me so happy? I was basically looking at old furniture and pottery and clothes. Of course this was rather special furniture and clothes but still. And now that I'm writing this it just occurred to me that when I'm stressed I usually go and look at things like tiny houses or minimalist packing guides. More furniture and clothes.

The funny thing is that for someone who can be soothed by pretty things my home is not furnishes with this in mind. I am one of those people who doesn't change a room once it's furnished, who values her time and energy higher than finding just the right thing for her living room, and about three quarters of the stuff in our house is something we have because we got it for free. Then we put it in place and there it sits, 25 years later.

After the museum I had to eat lunch and decided on a bag of potato chips and some chocolate because I couldn't be bothered to choose a restaurant and find out what I wanted and such.

This was delicious but turned out to be a big mistake. I love potato chips but they don't agree with my digestion. And I had been eating too much fructose every day for days at that point.

In the afternoon I met with Eliandhra again. I had been wanting to take a boat or something but we were both rather tired and it was starting to rain. So we sat and knit. The sock I restarted is coming along nicely. And then we took the subway and walked around a lot and started getting hungry and all through that I felt like I was sick and needed to retire to bed. I thought a sandwich would make things better but it turned out it didn't, I felt worse after a few bites so I left it.

We walked around some more and looked at Scandinavian churches and bought lots of licorice and walked some more. By then I felt better, took a ferry along the river and walked around some more. The beauty of feeling unwell because of something I ate is that the worst is usually over after a few hours.

So I was all ready for my 3-course dinner. I was having dinner with a view of the harbor. The food was good, service was impeccable again and I had really interesting conversations over fish. I shared a table with a man I had already met the night before and he was telling us about visiting Gambia, and a woman was from the region I was born and was a teacher too and the two across from me were from Munich and we were talking about all kinds of things. Very nice.

Then I mingled and talked some more with Eliandhra and her husband and at the point where someone pulled out the guitar and started singing “Country Roads” I decided to not join in but leave to keep my sleep deprivation at a level where I wouldn't spontaneously doze off at random times the next day.

My way back to the hotel was nice, I walked a bit in the drizzling rain and took the subway all on my own for the first time.

Today there will be the packing and the getting on the train on time. The Hamburg marathon is going on and quite a few streets are closed off but I'm near the train station anway, it's only 500 meters or so.

And in the afternoon around five I will be home again.

I woke up around six again, I'm guessing it will takea few weeks until I'mback to normal after a whole week of not enough sleep. Had breakfast and went to seethe first presentation, on autism. I'm not quite sure what I expected but while the presentation was good I was in critique mode and didn't learn much. But then I have read about a dozen books on the subject, so I'm guessing the whole thing was not meant for people like me.

The next presentation was on game theory, and I found that one super-interesting. There was much that I didn't know yet – though I was surprised to learn that I did know some things beforehand – and the presenter was engaging and was presenting very well.

After that I met with Eliandhra and we set out to do a bit of sightseeing. First we went to a tea shop, sat down to knit and I had my first ever scones with clotted cream and lemon curd which were delicious and tried one of the teas I had tasted the day before a Keemun.

Then we took the subway to mylys, a very nice yarn shop, where I looked at all the yarn and then decided that I didn't need or want anything. While having tea before I had tried on the sock in progress and found that it was a little too snug so I ripped it back and started over.

Then we walked around and looked at stuff and went to the Elbphilharmonie and looked over water and the city. We ended up at a place where we could look over the Alster, very picturesque, before going to our evening dinner which was at the local Hofbräu which was a little weird for me, since I am usually living in Bavaria and here I was, on a trip to Hamburg which is definitley not Bavaria, sitting in a Bavarian restaurant, drinking Bavarian beer and eating Bavarian food. I have to say, that is not quite what I expected.

Since the organizers of the annual gathering had to find a place that seats several hundred people and would be able to feed the more or less at the same time the Hofbräu was a good choice, the service was prompt and polite, the food was okay, the beer good and there was a lot of it.

After dinner Eliandhra persuaded me and her husband to join the Hamburg quiz with someone from Est Germany that we didn't know before. Well, we didn't do badly, especially considering that I and the other woman knew nothing about Hamburg.

After the quiz I walked all the way back to the hotel and went to bed some time after midnight.

Today I will walk around Hamburg some more, go to a museum maybe, and step on a boat in the afternoon.

I woke up at six not quite well-rested. Since I had made the mistake of booking a sightseeing thing at nine in the morning so I had to get up early. I meditated, took a shower and had breakfast. And then walked to the meeting point forr the group tour of the Minuature Wonder Land.

It's a huge model train display and really great to look at. Since it's vacation time, though, everything was packed even at nine in the morning. I barely had time to look at everything before it was time for our peak behind the scenes tour where we got to watch the display from the back and got a rather informative and entertaining view at the exhibit.

After that I was hungry again and left so I could wander the 'Hafen-City' and get something to eat. I had a panini that said it was tuna, bell pepper and goat cheese but unfortunately also had a layer of raw tomato at the bottom that I had to extricate first. I don't like them and they don't agree with me.

I didn't really feel satisfied after that meal so I got myself a very tasty Franzbrötchen as well.

And then it was time for the tea tasting. We spent ninety minutes learning about tea and tasted all kinds. Usually I am really picky about tea but this time I actually liked most of everything. White tea, green tea, black tea, all sorts from all over the world I found it all wonderful. Well, apart from the herbal teas and the ones with things like coconut and caramel. Let's not talk about those.

We all got a little gift bag as a parting gift and I was very happy about that until I looked inside and found that each and every tea sample in that bag was something I couldn't stand drinking. Maybe the boy will like them.

I have to say that this tasting made me love tea even more than before because there are so many different kinds. I also learned that Germans don't really do tea and that my husband drink way more than the national average but less than the people in Ostfriesland a region in Northern Germany. I also learned that I apparently am drinking my tea quite a bit stronger than most. Who would have thought?

After that I wandered the streets, trying to find my way back to the hotel and also to pick up a travel size tube of tooth paste, a comb (both things I forgot to pack) and some licorice.

With a lot of false turns and some writing podcasts in my ears I managed to get back to my hotel after 15,000 steps.

I almost fell asleep, read a bit and surfed the web and then it was time to go to yet another Stammtisch at the Gröninger brewery where I had a dinner that was basically meat on top of meat.

Came back home later than I had planned (I should plan better in the future, I keep forgetting that I'm me) and went straight to bed.

Today I will have two lectures, the afternoon off where I might go to a museum, not sure yet, and another dinner thing in the evening.

I woke up at 5.30 after a bit of a restless night. I did meditate for once but forgot to write my morning pages. Apparently I'm not quite back to normal.

I got up at a reasonable time and made breakfast and my husband showed up shortly afterwards. I even had enough time to start my travel-knitting sock. Husband is still very worried about the balcony and the leak-situation and was discussing his plans for that with me.

Our overnight guest had tried to reach us via phone at 1 am with no success because we never answer the phone. When we saw him at breakfast he said that he had gone to the wrong address in the night and hadn't been sure where he needed to go. He had been entering the town from the other side last night and only knew how to get to our house from the direction of Munich and then realized that he had forgotten which street we live on. Since he did arrive at our house at some point I'm guessing he solved the problem without our help.

Unfortunately he loves his perfume and getting a noseful of that first thing in the morning resulted in me being rather over-sensitive to all smells for the rest of the day.

I chose to take an earlier train to Munich and a good thing too because my train app later told me that the train I had been supposed to take did not, for some reason, stop at the main train station. Bummer. I did try to get a travel size toothpaste at the main train station but no luck. I'm thinking there might be a place in Hamburg where I can buy toothpaste, for sure.

I entered my train twenty minutes early and then it was time for the big sitting around and waiting. I actually made myself work on the novel for 25 minutes, had a mediocre lunch of chili (full of onions), started writing my May patreon newsletter, knitted a little, read a lot and watched half a video on Youtube.

The whole train ride went smoothly and well, I arrived in Hamburg only two minutes late and walked to my hotel after a bit of confusion about directions.

Then to the other hotel where the conference is held, got my badge and coupons and tickets, mingled a little, knitted some more and went to my first event, eating and drinking out.

Everything was really nice and I was so busy that I didn't even take a single picture. Well, apart from one showing my room number so that I wouldn't forget.

Today I have booked a super-early event which wouldn't be a problem normally but I went to bed at 11 and didn't think about the fact that being somewhere at 9 means taking a shower and having breakfast some time around seven which is early even for me. Especially since I thought I might be able to do some writing in the morning. Um, doesn't really look like it.

Still. I will look at model trains and taste tea and walk around Hamburg and go to a Bavarian pub in the evening. Yes, drinking Bavarian beer in Hamburg when one lives in Bavaria is weird. I'll deal.