A day in Bochum

Bochum. A city sandwiched between Dortmund and Essen. Famous not for its excellent university but for the singer Herbert Grönemeyer and his song "Bochum", which is practically the city's hymn. Everyone around here knows the words and everyone joins in when it's being sung!

Cactus veil - cactus house

Our day started out with a walk through my most favourite place here. The university's botanical garden. I love this place. It is an extensive garden with different geographical areas including tropical, savannah, and desert in the green houses. Another amazing thing about this garden is that it is absolutely free. The only gripe that I have is that the signs are only in German. 

The green house

To get to the main gate take the U-35 to Lennershof, turn left coming out of the station and walk straight down the road. At the end of the road you will see the university buildings on your right, walk keeping them on your right hand side and as the road bends around at the southern end of campus you will find the main entrance.

This is were we started out on a sunny but cold autumn day.

Our first stop were the ponds, because we have not been there for a while. They are great for a photo shoot. In the summer they are inhabited by wildlife and if you are lucky you will see the resident water snake.

Water snakes and Sequoia trees

We headed along the path and turned up hill to get to the green houses passing the vegetable garden on the way. Because of the crazy weather things were still growing. We saw artichokes, tomatoes, leeks, napa cabbage and lots of different herbs.

Kale (?) and artichoke in the vegetable garden

I love the green houses and this time I had time to take some pictures of my favourite plant, the cactus. I particularly love this plant because it's something I can grow without killing. Almost all plants die in my house. Cacti have the highest life expectancy!

A selection of Cacti

The tropical house reminds me of Sri Lanka. There is all the vegetation that you would find in my parents back garden including coconut, banana, cocoa, bamboo, shoe flowers and many many more. There is a turtle in the pond, some type of birds walking around and a stream runs through the middle of the green house. Not a great place for photos because of the lack of contrasting colours (everything is green) and the humidity that fogs up your lens!

A typical Sri Lankan shoe flower

The Savannah is pretty boring. Once they had a butterfly exhibit in there. That was really cool. On the weekend you can buy tea and coffee at the entrance and there is a watering can by the door where you can make a donation. Which I highly recommend if you can. The green houses are also the only place in the gardens with restrooms!

Chinese tea garden - from outside

After the green houses we headed to the Chinese tea garden. It's perfect for a photo shoot, which is why we had to dodge around a bride and groom and a photographer with a huge tripod. The path is very narrow so it makes it a bit difficult! Don't forget not to feed the carp in the pond! The garden is authentic and when some kids vandalized it a couple of years ago they had to close it down until they could get replacements manufactured and sent from China.

We had had enough of the gardens, because it was really cold, but there is lots more to see if you have time.
Heading out of the tea garden and upwards we climbed up the long stair case to get to the middle of the university. After a couple more stair cases we were at the heart of the campus. The Audimax.

Audimax - Ruhr University Bochum

Opposite the Audimax is the university's art collection. Being free of charge, warm and having a WC this was our next stop. You are not allowed to take photographs in the museum so I can't show you what it looks like from the inside. There is a bit of art, some very old Greek style sculptures, some old coins, an impressive oil lamp display and an even more impressive pottery display. It's so impressive that we asked the person working there if they were replicas. She claimed they were original! It will take you a maximum of 45 minutes to get through this very small museum.

Kunst Sammlung der Uni Bochum

Our next stop was the graffiti tunnel. To get there we continued walking towards the subway station "Ruhr Universitaet". Crossed over Universitaetsstr. and then took the escalators down to the bus station. From there you just continue in the same direction and turn left and go down through the tunnel. Be very careful. Even thought the speed limit is 30 km/h through the tunnel people usually drive 50. The sidewalks are narrow and you may have to navigate around graffiti artists.

I'm not sure how it works, but the art work changes sporadically. If you are lucky you will see some amazing graffiti. But you could also come after someone has sprayed the whole tunnel with some crazy text. Amateurs stick to the periphery, so in the tunnel itself you'll almost never find something that is not worth looking at. Here are some shots of what was on show last week.

There are many options for food at the "Uni Center", which is at the top of the escalator. Currently you can choose from 3 bakeries, a vegan cafe, at least 2 pizza places, Chinese food, doner Kebab, a mini pub, two burger places and more. Note that the Chinese food is oily, bad fast food and in the restaurant on the upper level I was once served a salad with a live caterpillar in it. The food and the service sucks there. We had lunch at burger brothers, who have two vegetarian options which were both good.

If it is you have not visited the German national mining museum, you should definitely head there next. The U-35 subway will take you directly there. At the moment they are renovating and only the mine is open. Given that we've been down there a hundred times we didn't want to go again. I'm waiting for the renovation to be done (summer 2019?) and then I'll go see what they've done to it. This museum will take up most of your afternoon.

And if you've never been before you should definitely take in an evening at Bochum's one and only musical Starlight Express. It's in German so if you don't understand the language read the story before you go. It's not so much about the story but more about the roller skates and costumes. We didn't go see it this time. We've been there twice before and our kids 3 times. True Bochumers!!

Our day did not end at lunch. Afterwards we went to see our friends art exhibition and then went home to play the new board games we had bought the day before at the Spiele Messe in Essen.

If you are looking for great places to have dinner in Bochum try Yamas for excellent Greek Mezze (it's a wine bar and usually very loud, reservations are a must). If you have a car and need a sushi fix visit Takeshi's for expensive, delicious sushi (reservations recommended). Great East Asian food can be found at Hatoky (avoid the sushi), fries between Kortumstr. 1 and 3, and the best ice cream ever (seasonal) at 4eck. Of course there are plenty of places to eat and surprisingly Bochum has pretty good food with sushi and Indian food being the exceptions.

A day in Dortmund

We didn't have time to plan anything for this fall vacation and most of the time we had to work. Therefore we took 4 days off to play tourist at home.
On our first day we went to Dortmund, on the second ... well we were going to go to Essen and do some cultural stuff but because the "Spiele Messe" was on we went to that instead, on the third day we explored Bochum and on the fourth Duisburg. It was quite an interesting vacation. I hope that you find this useful if you are ever in the region.

Given that Dortmund has one of the top soccer clubs in Germany I planned a soccer themed day. Now we are not soccer fans and don't support any teams (go Liverpool!) but nonetheless our first stop was the highlight of our four days. I booked us a tour of the BVB soccer stadium. My girls were grumbling about it from the time I first mentioned it, but they came along because it was better than the alternative (stay at home alone all day). 

Now my advice to you, if you go to the stadium, is to get there well in advance. If you are taking public transport and there is an event things could get tight and it might take a while to catch a train. If you are driving it could take you forever to find a parking spot. Plus the place is extremely badly sign boarded. We know the area and it took us a good half an hour to find a place to park because there was an event and they had reserved all the parking lots. Only one was free but the people manning the lots didn't know which one it was! I was very stressed out because I thought we were going to miss our tour and I had planned an extra 45 minutes for parking and finding the entrance. 

Stadium entrance. The museum is to the left and the fan shop to the right.

We half ran to the entrance, which is at the fan shop, and then had missed the tour by about 5 minutes. We were so annoyed. You could not have started the tour in a worse frame of mind. Someone headed out with us so that we could catch up with our tour, which was really nice. We caught up with them inside the stadium and it looked extremely small although it holds 81,000 people. 

After that the tour took another 45 minutes and it was amazing.  The tour guide was fantastic and obviously a soccer fan. I'll not tell you about the tour because that would spoil it for you. 

The very tight walkway that the players have to walk down to get to the pitch

I imagine that if you were a soccer fan it would be even better. 

The team "bench"

After the tour we went to the fan store (and didn't buy anything) and the BVB museum (admission is included in the tour ticket). The museum is very small and I would not pay extra admission to see it. The trophies are very impressive and the display about the clubs history was informative.

Since it was rather cold we didn't have a picnic here. Although there were some really nice gardens which would be perfect for a picnic.

Our next stop was the German Soccer Museum, which is just opposite the main train station in Dortmund. I must say that we were rather disappointed. The entrance tickets were not cheap and the museum didn't deliver. 

Museum as seen from the Dortmund main train station

My favourite exhibits were the ones on how soccer developed in Germany and on women's soccer. It took about 10 minutes to see these! Given that internationally the women's team is more successful than the men's it is sad that they only had a very small exhibit. 

Fun graffiti of Angela Merkel at the top of the escalators

You could watch a lot of old games, see a lot of trophies and memorabilia, and a horrible "3D" movie about winning the world cup. 

If you don't know what this is then you probably should not visit!

If you like this kind of thing then this is the place for you. It just gave us a headache and we didn't learn anything about the game. At the top of the building there is a restaurant and at the bottom there is a cafeteria. The problem with the cafeteria is that you have to walk through the whole museum to get there. Basically the museum is  one way street. If you miss something you have to go to the end and re-enter!

A much better place to visit would be the ... museum, which is also close to the main train station. We didn't go there last week but we've been there before and really enjoyed the exhibits. In fact Dortmund has a wide range of museums of varying quality, but there is something to suit everyone's taste.

Our next stop was the "Dortmunder U". 

The Dortmunder U seen from behind

We see the building every time we go to Dortmund because it is close to our favourite Sri Lankan restaurant. And we've wondered what was in it for years. So we were really glad that we finally were going to see it. 

Foyer at the U

Massive blown up pig in the stair well

They were having a Pink Floyd exhibition there so we were really excited until we heard how much it cost at the door. Since none of us are/were Pink Floyd fans we decided to skip it. The rest of the exhibitions in this building were free. Mainly it is an art museum. There was lots of paintings and installations. 

Frankenstein's work room. Look very closely to see the body parts swimming in the box

You can visit the terrace at the top of the building to get some good views of Dortmund. They have a cafe up there too.

The "U" as seen from the roof top terrace

A birds eye view

Lighting in the roof top cafe

There was one floor that was inspired by the Pink Floyd exhibition and you could "play" with the exhibits. 

Came complete with a box of tape so you could add your own art

Our favourite room in the whole museum was an art room that we discovered. It had signs that said you could take anything and be creative. There were all kinds of art supplies and it was a good place to chill with the girls. We were not very creative so we just took printed cards and coloured them in. It was fun, but I'm sure you could do many other things with the stuff there. 

Skate park across from the "U"

Graffiti at the "U"

By the time we left it was dinner time so we headed over to our favourite joint "Sweet Chilli" for dinner. We stuffed ourselves silly with potato roti, string hoppers, dosai, masala tea, mango lassi's and cream soda. I highly recommend this place. They serve plenty of vegan options and although it's not the kind of food you will be served in Sri Lanka it is definitely delicious and not adjusted to the western taste. It's also not very expensive and the portions are huge. We generally order an appetizer or two and two main dishes with two extra plates and are all pleasantly stuffed at the end of the meal. Be careful, unlike many places in Germany when they say hot they mean HOT.

You can find all these places and more on a google map that I created. 

Here is a list of other sights in Dortmund that you might consider visiting (also on the above map).

• Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Dortmund (museum of art and culture history)
• The Zollern Colliery - Zeche Zollern - museum for state industry
• DASA Working World Exhibition 
• Binarium - German museum for digital culture
• The Dortmund zoo 
• Hohensyburg ruins

Cheesy cauliflower bake

I found a nice cauliflower at the grocery store and decided to  turn it into a baked cauliflower, like my mum always used to make. Haven't had it for a while. We are going to enjoy it with some bratkartoffeln and vegetarian schnitzel.

Preparation time: 1 hour 15 minutes; serves 4 - 6 

Ingredients:

1 medium	Cauliflower
80 g	Peeled onion
1 tsp.	Minced garlic
50 g	Butter
30 g or 1/4 cup	Flour
500 ml	Milk
1/8 tsp.	Ground nutmeg
50 g or 1/2 cup	Grated cheese
3 tbsp.	Parmesan
	Salt & Pepper

Method:

Remove the green parts from the cauliflower and wash well. If you suspect that there are caterpillars, or other creepy crawlies, in it, place the cauliflower submerged in a bowl of salted water for about 15 minutes. They should all float to the top. I didn't know this the first time I made this on my mothers request. It was a very protein rich cauliflower!

Place the cauliflower in a steamer and steam for 15 minutes. You don't want your cauliflower to be completely cooked and definitely you don't want it overcooked. So keep an eye on it while doing the next step.

In the meantime you can put together the white sauce. First slice the onions and mince the garlic. Once this is done melt the butter over medium heat in a heavy bottom saucepan. Don't let the butter burn else the sauce will be ruined. If it gets a bit brown this is okay. While the butter is melting you can measure out the flour. Add the onions and garlic to the melted butter and allow to cook for about 2 minutes stirring all the time. Next add the flour and continue to stir. Allow the flour to cook for about 1 minute. Then add all the milk at once and keep stirring. If you stop stirring at any other point in time it's not so critical, but if you stop here you will end up with a lumpy sauce. If you didn't have the onions and the garlic even this could be saved, but with them it's neither possible to see the lumps nor to toss the whole thing into a blender. So keep stirring. To ensure that nothing gets stuck to the bottom I like to use a wooden spatula. If you buy one made out of a hard wood it can last for ever. Mine is almost 20 years old and still works well.

Stir until the mixture boils and then reduce the heat so that it is just simmering. Stir all the time. Now keep stirring until the sauce has thickened. Now you can remove it from the heat and stop stirring!

At which point my cauliflower was done. Perfect timing! Remove it from the steamer and run under cold water to stop the vegetable from cooking. If you are in the middle of making your white sauce and cannot stop what you are doing just dump the whole saucepan with the cauliflower in the sink and let cold water run over it until you have time to deal with it.

Add salt and pepper to taste, 1/8 teaspoon of ground nutmeg and the grated cheese (I used emmental but you could use anything that is at hand) and stir until it is well combined. Now place the cauliflower in an oven proof dish and pour the sauce over it. Sprinkle the top with Parmesan and bake at 180 C in a fan over for 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown. Garnish with some green herbs to make it look pretty. I used chives since they are growing wild in my garden!

And if you are wondering why there are so few photos with the instructions it is because white sauce and white cauliflower looks really bad on an overcast fall afternoon.

And finally since I have some extra time here is a printable version i.e. a version without all the noise ;)

Chapati

Chapati are easy to make and really tasty for just being flour, a bit of butter and water. My girls love them and the only thing that keeps me from making them more often is that they take a long time to make.

Preparation time: 1 1/4 hours ; makes 8 (serves 4 of my family) 

Ingredients:

350 g	Wheat flour
1/2 tsp.	Salt
175 - 250 ml	Warm water
1/4 - 1/2 cup	Flour for coating

Method:

For this recipe do not be tempted to use all purpose flour. I've tried using it and the chapati didn't turn out very nice at all. In fact it was just by chance that I made them  again when we were in Germany. In Germany the most common flour is pure wheat flour. In the USA you can either buy pure wheat flour or use cake flour. Place the flour in a large bowl and rub in the butter or ghee. Make sure that the fat is cold. This is espcially important if you are using ghee, which is liquid at room temperature (depending on where you live of course!).

Add the warm water and knead into a soft dough. You can now knead it by hand until it is smooth, which will take about 10 minutes, or you can put it in a kitchen machine with a dough hook (6 minutes). I'm terrible at kneading so I use the dough hook.

Then cover your dough with a damp cloth and place it in a warm place. I don't usually have a warm place so I just put it next to the cooker with the hope that when I start cooking things will warm up! Let it sit like this for at least 30 minutes.

Now comes the time consuming part... frying the chapati! Don't try to do this in parallel with anything else. It's best to do it once you are done with all the other things so that it gets to the table warm. You need a cast iron frying pan for the best results. You could use a non-stick pan, but it won't come out as well.

Put your pan on the cooker and heat it to medium high. You'll have to adjust the heat according to your pan and your cooker. You'll know if it's too hot because the chapati will start to burn! Take a piece of dough and roll it into a ball about the size of a golf ball. You can, of course, make smaller or larger chapati depending on the size of your pan or the amount of time you have (smaller ones taking way longer of course).

Dip the ball in flour and roll out to form a thin chapati about 22 cm in diameter. Put it in the hot pan and fry on both sides. The chapati will bubble in some places and, because the dough is so thin, burn in those places. Try to make sure this does not happen too much, but a little is necessary. If this burnt stuff sticks to your pan wipe it out with a paper towel before putting the next chapati in. Once you have put one pancake into the pan start forming the next one. If you have nothing else to do you should be able to have a chapati ready for the pan as soon as one is done. This will speed up the process a little bit.

Enjoy your chapati with anything. My kids sometimes just eat it with butter! But a paneer tikka masala on the side is their favourite (together with the butter of course).

MSU - East Lansing, MI

As part of our nostalgia tour we visited our Alma mater, Michigan State University. Otherwise known as MSU. It was amazing to see all the growth that has taken place in the last 16 years. The old buildings seemed to all stand in the same place as back when we were students there, but there were a lot of extensions and some amazing new buildings. Even if you are not alumni it's a campus well worth visiting on a trip to Michigan. https://msu.edu/visit/

Future Spartan??

Our initial plan was to walk around the whole campus and show our kids everything, and to take loads of pictures. I forgot one important thing when I made this plan and that was how huge the campus was!! We hardly had time to graze the surface and had to go back for a second visit!
If you go at the right time of year there are all kinds of things going on. Sporting events, livestock shows, theater, shows at the planetarium .... However, we had bad timing and there was nothing going on. We booked a tour of the National Superconducting Cyclotron, where my husband was a graduate student. The tours are free of charge and can be set up through the NSCL website. A PhD student showed us all the cool stuff and our kids got to see where amazing science takes place. Unfortunately it's a high security area and no photographs could be taken. The facility itself is growing at an alarming rate and with a new accelerator being installed the cyclotron itself will be deactivated very soon. I'm sure the tours will then become bigger and more exciting. Visit their website for more information about the 90 minute tour.

Another faculty that has grown is the math department, with a humongous new glass building on top of what used to be just a long corridor and a couple of lecture halls. I was hoping that the math library had been moved here, but was sad to find out that they had removed the math library completely and the new rooms were just seminar rooms.

So if you plan a visit to this amazingly beautiful campus there are somethings that you should definitely see. We started our tour at the MSU livestock pavilion. If there are shows going on you could spend all day here. It was not very busy when we went with just a few cows hanging around. The tarmac outside has not been resurfaced since I was in college. This is where me and my husband came, when things were quiet, to learn how to roller blade. I would be worried even riding a bike on the surface now!!

Up the road from the livestock pavilion is the Hancock Turf Grass Research Center. We actually never bothered going here as students, but MSU is pretty famous for their turf grass so we took the girls to see the grass. Fields and fields of Turf Grass awaited us. We were invited by the grounds person to go out and see the research taking place and were amazed at the grass that was surreal.

Back in the car and up the road visit the MSU dairy store. Fantastic ice cream, huge portions, decent prices (as long as you get many scoops). You can view their production plant floor from 9 am - 6 pm on weekdays. (We really would have liked to do this but we had to run to meet some old friends.) Take your mega scoops outside and walk over to the MSU horticulture gardens. Absolutely amazing place for a stroll 20 years ago. I'm sure nothing has changed for the worse! We didn't get here because we went for our tour at the NSCL (see above).

Jump into your car again and drive to the North side of the campus. Visit the most amazing Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. I just saw the outside and was amazed. If it had been open when we got there I'm sure we would have had a fun few hours looking at the art. 

Check out the website of the Art Lab, which is across the road from the museum, to see if there are any classes happening.

Another stroll around the old campus, which is north of the red cedar River, will take you through lush gardens and lawns to the iconic Beaumont tower and the MSU museum. 

If you still have any gas left take a stroll along the Red Cedar River to the botanical gardens (which are very small but well kept).

Don't forget to finish off your tour by visiting "Sparty", even if it is just a drive by photo shoot like we had to do.

If you feel hungry during your visit just drop into one of the dorm "food courts". Apparently the one in Brody Hall is the second largest in the USA (although I can't seem to confirm this)!!!

Enjoy your visit!!