from America

memo to self: it's the blue container that holds the real coffee with caffeine, NOT the red one which is 50% caffeinated.

Half caffeinated=half awake=half pleasant.

Greetings from America.

German translation - Schwimmkerzen

I was going through the store adverts and happened to notice Schwimmkerzen at Ikea.

Normally I don't give most German works a second glance, as they seem so clear and orderly in their logic.

This one gave me pause, however, because I had only learned
'Schwimmen = to swim' and
'Kerzen = candles'.
So literally 'Schwimmkerzen = Swimming candles'

But in reality they are not swimming, they're floating, so more passive than active.

If you go and ask Leo for 'to float' in German you'll get a plethora of translations in a variety of connotations, including 'Schwimmen'. If you putz around long enough, you'll find
'Schwimmen = to be afloat'

How about 'floaten' then? 'Floaten = to float' but in a financial sense.
'Floessen'? 'Floessen = to drive, to float, to raft' which sound rather in control of your water ways.

Hmm. I'm left with an uneasy feeling, as 'swimming' and 'floating' are two entirely different actions, so something seems off to me by having one general 'catch all' word in German.

Or what do I miss here?

comment posting is back....

i had broken it putting up a new profile photo. (oops) it's hard to believe i make my living working with computers all day long.

Packing it up

It's the last weekend before I leave for the US, so plenty to do. At least the weather finally feels like winter, the car tells me it was 2.5 C when I was driving to work today. Fortunately D leaves on a work trip Sunday and then goes directly to the US where we meet up again on Thursday. Therefore I can be uninterrupted in my packing frenzy that late this weekend through early next week will certainly be. Also, it's time for the semi-annual bottle return clean-up.

The packing should be easy this year, since I plan to do a lot of shopping with my euros. It's not so easy though, on the return trip packing, since earlier this year the US Postal service simplified their international shipping offerings, and removed the slow, but cheap boat shipping in favor of the more expensive air option. So everything will be fitting in the suitcase this year and purchasing will need to be limited.

The spirit of Christmas

H: Look what I found in the recycle bin while throwing out my newspapers. Pretty barely used wrapping paper and ribbon. It was probably for St. Nick's day. Score!

D: Do you really need to be picking out of the trash?

H: It's not the trash, it's the recycle bin. I'm going to wrap my Nana's gift in it. She'll love it.

D: How much do you love your Nana, to give her trash-picked ribbon?

H: Nana grew up during the depression and taught me everything I know about trash-picking. She'll be so proud. Besides, being green is in this year.

D: (Sigh)

This Wednesday at 11.45 AM

Feel free to mentally have a glass of champagne with me and throw some confetti; it will be the ending time of my last German class.

The company has generously paid for quite a few Berlitz hours while I've been here. It's paid off to the effect that I can generally understand what goes on the office, and that is sufficient for what I need at this time. I spend 8+ hours a day/5 days per week there, so that is the bulk of my time in Germany.

Sometimes I marvel at the fact that my vocabulary is so far skewed to office words. I knew the words for 'works council', 'interface', 'department', and 'woman boss' long before I knew basics like 'toothpaste,' 'toilet paper,' and 'Sunday shopping'.

Although I did pick up 'toilet brush' quite early by studying the various 'informational' cartoons in the office ladies' bathroom. Not sure why these 'public service announcements' must always be accompanied by a cartoon in Germany. I've been tempted to sneak into the mens' room to see if they have the same or similar, but never did. ;-)

George drives the bus - a German political view

Over the weekend I went to a work colleague's going away party (she's moving to the UK). It was quite interesting as I was the only foreigner, although I had met many of the friends/family previously, so it was ok.

There was a small child there, perhaps 2 years and some months old. He seemed very excited by being at the restaurant with all of the people and things, and being up past his bedtime. At one point the waiter carried him back to the table as he had taken off on foot to the kitchen.

His grandma decided to try to calm him down a bit and picked up a free Italy travel magazine and put him on her lap to show him the pictures. We all watched expectantly, to see if Grandma could work her magic. She watched to see which pictures caught his eye, and started to tell him about them, by whatever she could make up on the fly.

- You see the little boy on the beach? His name is Pablo and he is also two!
- Here is an old church, isn't it pretty?
- Oh, see the bus! There is the bus driver, George Bush, and the passenger on the bus, Angela Merkel. (ok, so it wasn't actually them) They go together in the bus, where George the bus driver wants to go. But not for long, because it will be someone else's turn to drive the bus very soon.

(I imagine the political commentary would have continued in a less polite way, had I not been there and listening--something to the effect of--and we're all happy that there will be a new bus driver, as we don't like the way that one drives.)

More on 'no love for the Germans' - the Dutch perspective

After yesterday's events, I asked my Dutch work colleague about the topic, knowing that he would give me the straight scoop. He also thought it was some slightly peeved Dutch people, just trying to irritate a German.

He is Dutch guy married to a German and working/living here for many years. However, he goes back over the border quite often with his company J car with its German license plate to work, visit family, and shop. He was telling me of one time, when he was driving this car in Holland.

A Dutch car with some 18 year-olds gave him the popular hand gesture in reference to a leader who was very popular in Germany in the late 1930's-early 1940's (not wanting to drive searchers to that topic here.) They both happened to leave at the same exit, and ended up next to each other at the red light at the bottom of the exit.

He couldn't resist to roll down the window and gesture to them to do the same. He then proceeded to rip them a new one in Dutch, his native language. He said the looks on their faces was absolutely priceless. Here they thought they were sticking it to a German, and instead they chose a fellow national.

He then gave me the tip--I should always keep something representing Holland handy in my car trunk for times when I go over the border, such as something orange to put in the back window, or something for one of the sports teams, or perhaps some Dutch reading material to have lying in the back seat. That will present the image, especially as I don't tend to go too far into Holland, that I could be a Dutch person working just over the border. And it will perhaps lower the possibility of future negative incidents.

'The funky chicken' or 'No love for the Germans'

One of my German work colleagues was recently telling me about his visit to Vegas, and how he went with a few of his 20-something aged German friends, and how the desk person said, "oh no, the Krauts are here" recognizing their Germanness even before they opened their mouths.

I tried to explain to him that it probably wasn't meant as an insult, but rather as American friendliness of making jokes. He said that he knew that, and he likes Americans and their friendly casual humor, and they enjoyed their trip to the US. He then said, "America is not like some other countries that absolutely do not like Germans at all." I wanted to hear more, but didn't want to push a topic that probably wouldn't be so nice for him to discuss, so I didn't. Besides, I've heard quite a bit from my other European colleagues on the topic of 'the Germans' so I already had an idea that they aren't liked a lot in certain countries.

On Sunday, D and I drove to Maastricht for reasons that belong in their own post. I parked in a public parking lot in town, one where you must buy a ticket from the little machine and leave it on your dashboard, but as it was Sunday, a ticket was not needed. We came back eight hours later and I went to the trunk to get out the map.

I noticed that while we were gone, someone had carefully placed a KFC bucket with all of their food trash in it directly behind the back wheel, so logically I would not see it, and then back up over it. In addition, there were chicken bones immediately in front of the same tire, I guess in the event that I happened to pull forward (which would not be necessarily expected, as I would need to go out on an angle that would put me going 'out' a row that was one way in the other direction.) In addition, the remaining chicken bones were scattered under the car, like someone made a serious effort to wing (intended pun) them there. Looking around we noticed no other German cars in the lot, and only one other in town.

My only guess on this one is that they saw the German license plate on the car and decided on a low level prank. Maastricht gets plenty of Germans as it's not so far from the border, and only around one hour, 15 min from Koeln. This situation was ironic on multiple levels to me, namely:

-I never eat at KFC as they don't have so many vegetarian options. I have no veg info in the car so they would not know the car belongs to a vegetarian. The use of chicken bones would be moderately offensive if the person would have known I am a vegetarian.

-While the car is registered and lives in Germany, I am not German. It's actually quite funny, knowing my lack of enthusiasm for Germany life that they wasted their energy trying to send an unfriendly message to a German and instead chose the German car not carrying Germans.

Next up: more details as to why we were there.

The hidden subconscious - more on language acquisition

I am coming to the conclusion that language acquisition is mainly mindset and exposure rather than talent driven. If I was dating a German and imagining a long-term future here, I'd probably actually make an effort. As it is I go to class each week for 1.5 hours because company J. is paying for it, it's private lessons from Berlitz with only me in the class, and it's during work hours. I spend around an hour each week on homework, mainly because I rather like the teacher and would feel bad by attempting nothing.

A few weeks back, I was talking to my Spanish colleague, whom I rarely get to speak to these days. My Spanish is quite comfortable, I have facilitated meetings in Spanish where I am the only non-native speaker, I've done meetings where the other speakers know almost no English, and I am able to read and discuss in Spanish high level topics like religion and philosophy. My exposure to Spanish these days is limited to a handful of work colleagues with whom I interact occasionally and 30 min per week in the car when I catch a Spanish news broadcast on Monday nights after Polish class. When I speak and read it, however, it's pretty well cemented. There is no longer 'lead time' while I get back into the feel of speaking it and I can read a newspaper pre-coffee without thinking.

Imagine my absolute surprise, then, when I am speaking to my Spanish colleague and some German words sneak right into the sentence. It was like they were slipping over the Polish border under the cover of night. The construct of the sentence was Spanish as were the bulk of the words, but 'wie immer' slipped right in, in place of the Spanish equivalent. As it is I don't really like the sounds of German in general and the best you'll get out of me on a good day is that I will listen to your German spiel and then respond in English to you if you are someone in my office. If I'm in tiny town of B I will move around completely in German on Saturdays, although it's often of a Turkish flavor over here.

Then over a weekend I was at a vegetarian restaurant in Koeln and picked up a soya hot chocolate on the way out. I was in line behind some people so it was taking a few minutes. While I was waiting, I could hear the coffeebar woman talking with a customer sitting at the counter and they were talking in Spain Spanish. I started off my order in German as that is what I am used to doing here, but midway it converted to Spanish automatically, I think because I was listening to the ladies.

The woman pauses for half a second, somehow understanding my half-baked sentence and then responds to me in Spanish. I carry on a conversation for some minutes with the customer in Spanish. But again, every once and a while a German word started to creep in, perhaps because I had spent some hours the previous night mainly around German speakers, and also speaking German.

My inability to control such slippages mainly tells me that the influence of living here is quite heavy.

i am back

from iceland. total hours of daylight there--currently around 6 hours per day, (from roughly 10 or so in the morning, until 16ish in the evening.) good thing they make good coffee.

the air and water are so clean, it is remarkably fresh. add in the below zero temps during the past few days, and it's so beyond fresh it's perfect.

Friday night: Kristallnacht remembrance in Germany

On Friday night, Nov 9 (the anniversary of Kristallnacht) we went to an evening program of a local church. Neither of us have any affiliation with this church, nor do we know of anyone who attends this church as it is not near where either of us live, but rather it's near the office. However, it was also noted in the local newspaper in advance, so we went.

The evening started with an overview of the number of children in the Cologne Jewish school before Kristallnacht and then today, and then an introduction of the main speaker whose name is Henry. He started off by telling us that he was born in Cologne and about his early childhood years of playing soccer in the streets of Cologne Ehrenfeld with his friends. However, all of that changed one day when his Catholic friends told him that he could no longer play with them.

On the actual night of Kristallnacht he remembers (the SA or SS, I missed which) came to his house. They threw the family's furniture out the window. He remembers their neighbors just standing there and watching, not saying anything. At this point there was a musical break, and a pianist played something from Bach.

Fortunately, he was sent on a Kindertransport to the UK where he made many friends. At the end of the war, these friends scattered around the globe: to the US, Canada, Israel, etc. His sister was a bit older so she didn't get to go on the transport, and was killed in Auschwitz. Around this part my German started to go downhill, so I missed a bit as to what he did next, beyond stay in the UK. However, he decided to return to Germany 35 years ago, and both D and I missed his reason for coming back then.

Next the Jewish choir from D'dorf sang with piano accompaniment. There were some short readings after that by children in the local school, who went in pairs to read some historical data. Then Henry came back and had a scripted interview with two of the children who asked him such questions as 'do you hate the Germans for what they did?' (the answer was no). Finally, the choir sang again a few songs, but this time in German, with a closing song in in Hebrew or Yiddish, inviting the audience to join in the hand clapping.

The evening closed with the church leader (I think), thanking each group for their contribution to the evening while the audience continued to clap during his two minutes of thank yous. As the crowd filed out, there were two unattended baskets at the exit where people could give money. Having come from the Catholic tradition, there are plenty of baskets for money, but never unattended where I come from. I was further surprised that there were large bills in the unattended baskets, such as 50's. The choir had a bus waiting to ferry them back to D'dorf.

Overall it was an interesting Friday evening. There were perhaps 200 people in the audience, and only 2 people left during the entire evening. We lingered a few additional minutes to read some of the materials they had posted on the walls. They had some local histories of other people who were in this Cologne school and who had also gone on the Kindertransport, and what had happened to them since. Most featured were now living in Israel. They also had some historical info on the school, before/during/after Kristallnacht.

Saturday lunch: Vegetarian Thai green curry

I fell in love with green curry when I first had it at a Thai restaurant in Milwaukee. I ate the same dish multiple times just to cement in my head the full taste so that I could (try to) recreate it later.

Before I became vegetarian I used to always get Pad Thai when as my Thai food of choice, but as it tends to be made with fish sauce, I've since abandoned ship on that one unless I'm at a completely vegetarian restaurant. I've tried making it at home but it never quite has the right flavor.

However, you can easily make a green curry without fish sauce without compromising on the flavor. A lot of recipes for green curry are very complex, but here is a simplified version that I make in 15 minutes.

1. The most difficult part-find vegetarian green curry paste. I buy mine in Holland, this tends to be the main one sold in Asian food shops there. It is an import from Thailand to Holland, and it will set you back a few Euros, but with one this container you can make this meal at least 20 times.

Maybe Christina G knows where to buy it in Germany. I have seen the Thai Kitchen and Blue Dragon brands have it, but it's more of an oily sauce than a dry paste, and both contain fish sauce.

2. Fry tofu squares in oil. Then set the tofu aside.

3. Open a can of coconut milk. Personally I go for the 'light' coconut milk, but regular is also ok. I buy a refrigerated version from an Asian shop in Koeln or from Holland, but you can get the non-refrigerated kind also.

4. Put the coconut milk into a skillet on low heat. Put 1 or 2 tablespoons of the curry paste into the skillet also (depending on how strong of a curry taste you like). Keep stirring constantly. One clove of chopped garlic can also be added now, if you like.

In the meantime put the container of unused curry paste into an airtight container or ziploc baggy and put it into the refrigerator.

5. Throw in a few handfuls of chopped up mangold (chard), including the chopped up stems. Any dark, leafy green thing could also be substituted if you're not in Germany where mangold is currently abundant.

6. I like my dark, leafy greens to be barely cooked, so at this point I throw my tofu back into the skillet, so that it gets coated with the sauce. Stir some more.

7. If you're feeling especially adventurous, throw in a chopped up green Thai chili pepper (optional). Throw in a few basil leaves (optional). Take off heat.

8. Serve over rice or noodles of your choice. Today I was in the mood to have some Japanese noodles.

The final result:

Thoughts on (Swiss) German

I enjoyed my work trip to Basel. I find my work colleagues there to be cordial in personality and gentle on my German. This is my third trip to Basel and my fifth to Switzerland.

All things being held equal, ie:
-if my job wasn't in the Koeln/D'dorf/Leverkusen area
-if i was not spending all time outside of the office exposed to the German from this area
-if from a purely raw number perspective, if the German of Germany wasn't the largest group

I think I would have preferred to have learned something a little closer to one of the Swiss varieties. Specifically, in flipping through the TV at the hotel and landing on some of the Swiss stations interspersed with the Germany ones, as well as in the meetings with the Swiss the next day, I enjoy the soft, musical quality of the Swiss speakers. It seems so differently from what I am used to hearing all day in the office.

travels planned

- Tomorrow afternoon I go down to Basel by train for an all day meeting on Friday. I'll be taking the bus to the Koeln Hbf to avoid the train strike.

- In november I have booked a Thurs-Mon trip to Iceland.

Why iceland in november?
1. flight/accomodation prices fall drastically (compared to high season summer prices)
2. it's easier to find accomodation, and it's not booked months in advance
3. fewer tourists allow more interaction with the locals
4. there is the possiblity to see the northern lights in the winter weather
5. the cold, blustery weather makes for perfect conditions to escape inside for strong iceland coffee or to the hot water outside of the blue lagoon

the angry whopper continues to fascinate me

I've been busy with work and offline, but when I look at the recent stats, 30 some visitors found me recently from this post.

Searchers are typing:
"angry whopper" (80%)
"angry onions" (8%)
"how much does an angry whopper cost" (1%)
"angry-gram burger" (1%)

A good number of them are from google.co.uk and one from google.de (both countries where this whopper is sold), but a number of others are finding me from non-selling countries such as the US, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Check out the cultural/marketing differences in these Angry Whopper commercials, from the UK and from Germany.

oh so happy

I do not need to take Deutsche Bahn tomorrow, with their planned strike. I take a regional train to/from Cologne each Wednesday for class, and all other trips to visit Cologne are usually occasional and optional on the weekends.

Last weekend I had a long distance ICE train trip already booked and paid for, so I needed to take the train or bus to/from Cologne on Friday and Sunday night. Friday was ok and trains were almost empty but Sunday was absolute chaos with trains running 90 min late and the boards not displaying arriving trains. Fortunately I know the bus routes very well around this area and it is possible (although longer) to take the bus completely and to bypass all trains.

What I do not understand here--coming from normally pro-union Philadelphia, where a strike actually means all operations cease and it will go on as long as it has to--how they expect to win this one when 20% of the workers are not striking and will continue operations, (as lackluster as they may be).

As a transit rider, I can certainly recognize how important you are if I cannot get a ride at all, in particular for a longer time period. You suddenly realize and appreciate what you do not have when it is completely gone. This pseudo-strike with its partial schedule only serves to irritate me as I can still get a train but with an unknown schedule, I must look at the website to see if this is one of the scheduled strike days, and it makes service even poorer than normal with sporadic trains and no announcements.

More on the Angry Whopper

I've seen a few comments around the internet about Burger King's latest campaign here in Germany, for the Angry Whopper. The "Angry Whopper" comes with "Angry Onions." But you can also buy Angry Onions separately, if you so choose--as I did today for lunch instead of fries. Unfortunately they do not have an 'Angry Vegetarian burger', only the normal non-angry version. ;-)

-If you're only visiting Germany, you'd probably think--well that's a little goofy, those wacky Germans.

-If you live here as a non-native Germany speaker like me, you probably blinked and automatically went into 'backward translation mode' trying to figure out what word they were working off of to mistakenly come up with 'angry' in English.

If you did as I did, you were automatically assuming that it was a bad English translation, or one of those goofy uses of English in Germany that inundates life here.

And if you did make that assumption, then you would also be wrong. :-) Check out the UK's campaign for the Angry Whopper:
http://www.burgerking.co.uk/
http://www.angry-gram.com/

Although notice that the UK has the additional description of 'hot-headed jalapeños' while in the German version the jalapeños seem to go together with the onions under the shared 'angry' adjective, although not angry in and of themselves.

BTW, my German work colleagues thought this campaign was goofy in German thinking as well. "Angry onions, what is that supposed to mean?"

The Oct 3 holiday in review - Part II

Following on Part I of the story, we walked all the way to the end of the street festival. I was surprised at how crowded it was considering it was still the work day, but we later found out it was the last day of the fair. Along the way we saw lots of rides and games, but nothing really stood out. I would have done the nice ferris wheel, but neither of us had brought a camera to capture the surrounding view.

I pointed out to D the camel racing game. It was a game I played often at the Jersey shore while growing up, but ours were jockeys on horses. It's sort of like skee ball, you have a small ball and must roll it up and aim for one of the 7 holes. The more difficult the hole the higher the points, or if you aim poorly the ball just comes back down the gutter and you get no points. As you get points, your camel/horse moves forward, competing against the other 13 or so players doing the same thing.

D. kindly offered that we should play a round, after I mentioned that I was 'the absolute best' at this game in my younger years. After overcoming the embarrassment that it was mainly children playing, we were signed up for two games each. Of course I won. I'm not sure if D was more embarrassed that I was as good as I said, or that his gf just triumphed over a group of 8 year olds. Then I lost the second game by a hair to the little girl sitting one seat over from me. The winning little girl gave her prize to her little sister who was sitting next to me. So I then gave my prize on the previous game to that little girl.

All gamed out we wondered back through the town for some final shopping. It was also a shopping Sunday that coming Sunday. Back at the car we had planned to have a drive back to Roermond to go to the supermarket. It was just before 17, but fortunately there wasn't much of a commuter backup in Weert. We made a quick stop at the garden center on the way out of town, but they did not have what I was seeking.

Earlier in the afternoon I had spotted a farm selling I was guessing pumpkins and that sort of thing based on a big pumpkin filled cart in the field. They had a Dutch flag out front and a sign saying something in Dutch, but it may as well have said 'Dutch drugs' for all we knew. I spotted it on the way back and we took a chance in pulling into the driveway at exactly 17.00. Once in the driveway you could see what you could not see from the road--the most beautiful display of bright orange pumpkins, along with other assorted gourds and that sort of thing.

It seemed to be a hobby farm as all they had were pumpkins and gourds, and each one had a tiny little handwritten price sticker. The display was laid out tastefully and meticulously in the garage/barn. Each item had been handwashed so everything was without a speck of dirt. The stems were fresh like everything had come from the immediately adjacent field. The best part was that the prices were a lot cheaper than in Germany where pumpkin retails for 1.50 eur/kilo.

D and I ended up with all that we could carry for 14 euros. For that princely sum I bought one perfect Halloween pumpkin, perhaps 5 pounds, a tall dark green gourd maybe 3 pounds, a short, squat and bumpy varigated 2 pound gourd, a small perfect pumpkin perhaps 2 pounds to sit next to my door in the hallway, a one pounder for the office, and two jack be littles at 50 cents each to give away to Germans who are temping for me. Yes, Halloween is my favorite holiday still.

-->If you want to go to this wonderful pumpkin stand, it's easy to find and a short trip if you've already made the trek to Roermond. Go to Roermond to the outlets. If coming from Germany from the east you'll probably come in on the N280, so that the outlet center is on your right and town proper is on your left. Just stay on the same main road and follow the signs toward Weert. The road will narrow down from two lanes in each direction to one, and you'll start to see crop fields.

The farm has a large Dutch flag out front and a sign in Dutch that meant nothing to either D or I understanding German. IF you happen to pass it (and you may as it is only a little driveway between a house and a cornfield), don't fret. You'll know for sure if you've passed it once you see a large horse-drawn cart filled with pumpkins etc. parked in the field next to it, which would be your signal to turn around.

Anyway...with the car filled with pumpkin purchases, we kept heading back in the Roermond direction, and upon reaching the outlet area again at 1720, we found it to be an absolute parking lot. No worries as we had planned to turn off anyway to go to Jumbo in Roermond. I like Jumbo as much as I like Tref in Venlo. Both have nice selections overall and good vegetarian selections. And, some recent good news:

JUMBO IN ROERMOND IS OPEN ON SUNDAYS FROM 12-17 FOR THE REST OF 2007 as some sort of trial phase. Supermarket shopping every Sunday of the year if I would like. Do you live in the Cologne/Dusseldorf area? Send me a note and we can arrange a train station where I can find you and I will drive you over to Roermond to share in my happiness and my desire to shop there on Sundays to show support of such a policy. My Dutch colleague found it amusing that the announcement was in Dutch on a sandwich board in front of the supermarket, but that they also provided a smaller translation in German.

While I shopped, D had 'bottle duty.' I have begun to carry around all extra bottles that need to be recycled outside of Germany. Like it's not enough of a hassle inside of Germany. Since I sometimes have worktrips to Belgium I end up picked up some raspberry beer there, as well as sometimes in Holland. I had around 20 extra bottles that belonged somewhere, but I was not sure where. Interestingly, the exact same cherry beer has two different bottle shapes depending on if it is purchased in Holland or in Belgium, and of course it can only go back from whence it came.

The people in Jumbo Roermond were so helpful trying as D was putting things into their automated machine and making it unhappy. Sometimes when you get a person, they know the bottle dimensions, so they will override the machine and take another bottle if they are selling the same exact thing but of a different variety, so the person recognizes what the machine cannot with its barcode rules. At the end of the day they managed to take everything except one type of Hoegaarden bottle that they explained says on the back that it is not a deposit returning bottle (oops) and a six pack of Budweiser bottles that they sell, but in a different bottle shape, so not returnable there.

We hopped back into the car at 18.00, but traffic was still an absolute parking lot so we decided to stop for dinner rather than risk getting home at 21.00 starving. We parked up and took a walk around already knowing in general Roermond town center. We went to New Delhi Indian restaurant which is located on Neerstraat 32 (very near to the town/mall entrance of Jumbo NOT the parking lot side) and is open Mon-Fri from 18-22.30 and Sat 17-23. It was not 'burn your mouth out' Indian, but a gentler, full of flavor Indian. Everything tasted like it was freshly prepared. The man and his daughter who run the customer side (I think Mom was in the kitchen cooking) were absolutely delightful in personality. Highly recommended and we would go back even if we didn't need to wait out a traffic jam. They do not serve alcohol, and my only regret was that I did not try their alcohol free wine as I saw another table order a second glass.

Finally it was after 20 by the time we were back in the car, and thankfully all the Germans were back over the border so the drive home only took an hour or so. We got pummeled by the fantastic rainstorms upon arriving back in the Cologne area but that was the first rain we saw all day, so ok.

Travel advice-->Basel?

I have an all day work meeting in Basel on Friday Oct 26th. As a result, I can:

1. Stay in Basel until Saturday or Sunday, and take the company-paid train home then. However, I've already spent one weekend in Basel under a similar situation last year and that seemed to be sufficient.

2. Just come home Friday night, arriving around 21 or so in Koeln as the meeting lasts until 17.

3. Use Basel as a launching pad for a cheap flight elsewhere (not company paid). I still have five days of unplanned vacation left so it can be a long weekend, assuming I can find a one-way out (mainly EasyJet from Basel), and a one-way back (mainly using anyone but EastJet to CGN or DUS).

Thoughts?