Mushrooms

Marcel got me addicted to Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall's series, River Cottage. In this series, Hugh, a London cook, downsizes by buying a farm in Dorset. There he grows all his food and meat, supplemented with fish etc. from the ocean, wild picked edibles and game. In several episodes, he goes mushrooming with serious mushroom experts. One episode even involved hang gliding.

Inspired by Hugh, I took a trip to the Utrechtseheuvelrug with Effrosyni, Jasenko, Yulia and Jorn. Yulia turned out to be a mushroom expert, although she was very modest about her skills. The book we brought turned out to be totally useless, but we ended up picking out 3 types of mushrooms we thought were edible (thanks to Yulia). Mushroom hunting turned out to be a very exciting way to enjoy the outdoors.

Now they are molding in my fridge, before I got a chance to eat them...I will definitely go again.

Nuremberg, Part 1: Cultural Differences

I arrived in Nuremberg today via ICE (Deutsche Bahn's Intercity Express) train thirty minutes ago. Now I am sitting in my hotel room wikipedia-ing Nuremberg and waiting for our leader (just arrived from New York) to awaken from his jetlagged slumber.

On the way here I noticed a couple of things that my American mind, and maybe other people as well, might have trouble comprehending. The first point is regarding at least the Netherlands and Germany, and maybe other Europe. The second is regarding the color of U-bahn buttons.

1. In the bathroom there are two buttons for flushing one of the two major functions that can occur in a toilet bowl. One is significantly larger than the other by at least 2.5 times. The other is small and usually cut out of the larger button. Which one do you press for which function? Scroll down for the answer.


2. Buying a metro card for the U-bahn, I was confronted with a green, zuruck (back) and a red, abfart (continue). This is the complete opposite of logic especially when considering how the colors for go and stop in driving remain the same. Maybe it means CAUTION, you might be spending money on the wrong thing. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

More to come on this topic and on other toy or Nuremberg related things...

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Answer: big button = no. 2, little button = no. 1.

My logical answer would be the opposite. In my opinion, logically the button that should be bigger should be the one that is used more often not the reverse. Even after a year of pushing the wrong button, I still have the inclination to push the bigger one.

Poll: in your opinion, are the buttons logical?

Poll results, ok I lose:
Logical - 8: Athena (UNC), Gemma (UNC), Mike, Jenny, Jamie, Jean, etc.
Not-logical - 2: Shauna, Ellen

The results might be skewed by the UNC people because they are used to two flush functions.
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