A Day of Great Moments

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I know most people choose Christmas, but the Fourth is like Christmas—all the food, all the people, all the festival—without all the stress of what to buy for whom, and with whom to spend the day. It's a day of pure fun and relaxing, ended with oohs and ahhs. Some of my favorite moments in life have taken place while chilling and watching fireworks. There is nothing like a summer night, good friends, and explosions of color across the dark sky.

This was the third time in four years that my family has been separated on July 4th. I was a bit worried about it; no one in Germany cares about American Independence Day. I mean, why would they? The thought of it being a normal day frightened me.

My first idea was to bake an apple pie and have a cookout with either my lab, the Albino Squirrels, or both. I remember my labmates asking me what sort of food one had at a 4th of July cookout. I informed them that I expected potato salad, hot dogs, and maybe some coleslaw at a proper July 4th festival. They frowned in irony as I realized that I had just named a typical German meal. Potato salad {kartoffelsalat} and coleslaw are staple German foods; they're available practically everyday in the Mensa {where we eat lunch}.

As Germany continued to win in the World Cup, our 4th of July plans grew smaller and smaller because we wanted to watch the game against France {which Germany was expected to lose}. As of Friday morning, we had a plan to ascend the hill of the fortress and look over the city, with all its spires and towers of 88 churches {so I've been told}, and accept pretty lights as a substitute for fireworks. So this is how my Friday went:

I arrived at the lab and settled into an empty office due to my two officemates being away at conferences. Most of the hallway was empty, actually; the night before was the university physics Sommerfest—their Physnic, for those familiar with UT Physics—and Germans are not shy about late mornings when beer {free beer, in this case} was consumed the night before. So anyway, quiet hallway.

The IT Guy popped his head in looking for the Host of Midsummer. I informed him of the conference and also of the fact that today was American Independence Day. “What do you say,” he asked me, “for this?”

“Happy Fourth of July,” I told him.

“Well, happy Fourth of July,” he told me. He asked what my plans were for the rest of the day.

I told him about our plans to watch the game and climb the fortress hill, then mentioned my sadness concerning the lack of fireworks. “Well,” he told me, “the Kiliani fair is going on, and they usually have fireworks for opening and closing. So maybe there will be some in a few days and you can watch them then, belated. And also, we do not have parades, but if Germany wins tonight, there will be all the cars honking, and it will be sort of a parade.”

I agreed that this was true, and he left to go do science. Then he was back. “So I think there will be fireworks tonight.”

No one in EP6 has elicited a wider smile from me in my entire stay here {except perhaps for that moment when I discovered my name on my door}. “Really?!”

my name. on the door.
i. have. an. office.

He said probably, since Friday was the opening day of the Kiliani fair. He told me that the fortress would be a great vantage point. I. Was. So. Happy. So happy. I could not stop smiling. This was Great Moment Number 1.

The rest of the day was just as splendid. I finished my very first personal experiment and actually accomplished the task of finding out what they wanted to know. The Team {more on that later} also did some measurements, and we were very pleased with the results. Great Moments Numbers 2 and 3.

And then the Germany game.

We watched it in my conference room, actually. Me, Numa, and Julius. We had planned to attempt to use our projector, but we were using an Apple laptop with no projector convertor. So we watched it on the laptop. I had been given the link to the stream by one of my German labmates {Creator of National Cake Day*}, and of course the announcers were announcing in German. At this point in the World Cup, we are used to this, and we didn't bother to change it.

Please picture this: Three Americans, alone in the EP6 conference room, watching Germany play in the World Cup on a small laptop screen, and listening to German announcers. It was rather humorous.

About twenty minutes into the game, one of my labmates {He Who Waters Tomatoes**} came in and tried to find an adapter for us. He couldn't. Then another one came in {I don't know his name} and said that this was not okay how we were watching the game and proceeded to scour the hall for the proper adapter. He found one.

combining game day and the 4th.

So we five watched the World Cup on a projected screen and speakers, biting our nails. Germany had one score fairly early in the game. We cheered them on and hoped they could keep it this way. They did. Germany is now one of four teams to make it to the semi-finals! The optimists won this time around; I admit I'm kind of getting used to these victories. A win for Deutschland! Great Moment Number 4.

Near the end of the game, there was a knock on the door and the arrival of a long-awaited member of our party: VICTORIA! Victoria was here! Great Moment Number 5! We watched the rest of the game with her and then swept her away into our evening. We went first to the Hauptbahnhof {main station for buses and trains and trams} and then walked through the city to enjoy the aftermath of the football win.

see the ferris wheel?

We then climbed up the fortress hill and settled ourselves in. We'd also brought some chocolate—Numa was tasked with the choosing thereof—and munched on that while we waited for our fireworks. We could look out over the city and see the ferris wheel and other rides of the Kiliani fair. At 22:30, once it was actually dark, came our fireworks. It is odd to be as high or higher than the fireworks, but they are just as beautiful.

I sat on a hill on a summer night with good friends and explosions of color across a dark sky. Great Moment Number 6.

I had my Fourth of July here in Germany, and it was grand. Not only were there fireworks in Würzburg, but we looked out and saw them in another direction as well. And when Numa got home, she saw even more. I don't know if everyone is celebrating Kiliani or if the football win was that monumental, but I prefer to think that I was handed a lovely little gift that night, and it's one I will never forget.

* The Creator of National Cake Day got his blog nickname the day we had cake in the conference room. All of the conversation revolving around this cake had been in German, except for the statement, "There is cake. Let's go." I ate the cake happily, of course, but afterward I inquired of this person, "Why did we have cake?" He looked at me and said, with a straight face, "It's Cake Day. Don't you have that in the US?" It meant a lot to me that he was comfortable enough to joke with me; he went on to explain that the cake was a practice cake made my the Raman Spectroscopist who had been tasked with the baking for a friend's wedding.

** He Who Waters Tomatoes gets his blog nickname because of one of his many roles in the lab. Our lab hallway and foyer is home to a great many tomato plants {some of which are ripening}. I've asked about them and received vague allusions to an experiment comparing plants grown in coffee grounds and plants without. Whatever the science behind them, this guy is the guy who waters them {and does a great many other fancy, scientific things in the lab}. {And yes, the tomatoes may be the source of our fruit fly problem, but we don't think about that.}