Views from the trails

Jena is my kind of town. I could live here forever. OK, the people are a bit too German for forever, but the town fits me well. It does have a lot of green space with creeks, a river, great playgrounds for the kids and the hiking is very good.

One thing that I was really looking forward to was being without a car. At home we are completely dependent on cars. Walking distance to everything we need and good public transit were going to be a nice change of pace.


For me, walking to work has been a vacation of its own. If I took the fastest way to work, and pushed it a bit it's 25 minutes from apartment door to office door. But that is on a pretty busy street and not that nice of a walk so I avoid it unless I need to pick up milk or it is early Saturday morning. The road contours around on the side of the valley, with some city above it until it gets too steep and the forest starts. I've explored every nook and cranny of the cross streets looking for alternate routes, and have a couple of great ones. My standard when I need to make time is only about 10 minutes longer, and it is all on residential roads, less traveled paths and old abandoned parking lots. It has a bit more elevation change and a much better view.

But I haven't stopped there. Every time I think I have a route in mind, I find another possibility to explore and have almost never taken exactly the route I've taken before. The upper end so far is a 75 minute ridge walk. It starts at the house, goes across the neighborhood park, past a couple residential blocks, climbs straight up into the forest to the valley rim, contours the rim until you get to a great overlook, then drops down through meadows to the institute's back door.

Here's some of the views along my various ways to work.

German Food For Your Reading Pleasure

So this whole being a new Celiac trying to live in a foreign country is an interesting challenge and also kind of a pain in the arse.

My guts are totally f*cked and yet I still have to eat. Prepared foods and eating out is pretty much over. Whole foods and Home Cooking is not a bad draw. Really,, I am so thankful it isn't dairy I must avoid.


This is actually a fairly sparse cheese day in our little German fridge.

Those inventive Germans have found some way around their own law stating beer can only contain barley, hops and water. In addition they have come up with some pretty damn good brews from rice and sorghum. This is a nice medium dark rice beer I would have been proud of in my beer brewing days. Thanks to them I'm enjoying drinking a beer once and a while again, something I haven't done in years cause it always made me sick, DUH! This one sets me back almost 3 euros each so that part sucks.

Last weekend along come these little gems. I've always been a big fan of chocolate with a bit of puffed rice. The ability to translate German food labels isn't a skill I expected to need when I left home, but if I do say so myself, I excel. Necessity is the best classroom (after the bedroom of course). A quick scan of the ingredients and crispy M&Ms were on my "oh yeah" list. About 12 hours later I got that feeling of being punched in the stomach when you are not ready. It lasted almost three days and was accompanied by other pleasantries. Racking my brain trying to discover how I got glutened (new verb!) I finally reread the packaging a bit more thoroughly this time.

So I can read, but I'm not thorough enough. Starke is starch and can be from any grain and unless it says corn, rice or potato starch, I should avoid it even though it is often gluten-free. The next one on the list is Gerstenmalzextrakt aka barley malt extract. No ambiguity here. That is like a concentrated gluten party to my immune system. I'm on day 6 since being glutened and though I'm weak, I'm coming back and I'm smarter and more thorough!