A blue day

The Thuringia region long earned lots of money from blue dye. This dye was made from the plant above ("woad", looking not very blue). This was actually the blue used for the Swedish flag in the beginning.

Thus industry was very important to the region, and we were told they still have an expression in German meaning something like "taking a blue day". That meant taking a day of not doing any real work, just sitting around gambling and drinking lots and lots of beer. The reason for this was that you were expected to pee into basins full of woad leaves, to help with the process of making dye.

Apparently they still use this expression to indicate that you are taking a day off.

Ice cream in Erfurt

Despite May being rainy (almost every day, leading to huge floods), we had great weather pretty much every day in Erfurt. During the conference lunch break we walked over to an ice cream shop near the conference venue.

Our timing was good. We only had to wait a minute or so, but right behind us a huge group of children appeared.

My German friend translating for me for some reason thinks I only eat weird things, so he said I had to pick the very blue ice cream. I asked the girl in the shop what taste that was (it was uninformatively named "smurf ice cream") and she said it tastes like bubble gum. As far as I know, bubble gum comes in many flavors, so that was still not very informative. I tried it in the end, and it was pretty good. I also asked her for her recommendation, which was white chocolate ice cream with raspberry, which was great.

Cool belt

One of the German guys at the conference had a very cool belt. I want one of these.

Conference dinner

The conference ended with a dinner party. The food was great! There was also a fairly long speech. And after that, my colleague talked about computer games with two Germans for an hour or so.

The thing that looks like Japanese curry is actually "chocolate creme brule", so it is chocolate pudding with a burned top.

Japanese related things in Erfurt

A shop selling cosplay magazines and manga.

A brand of clothes named after the Japanese mafia.

Green tea is the most common drink in Japan. This tea was green, but it was not green tea. I am not even sure it was tea :-)

This drink is called "kiba" and was recommended to me as the weirdest drink on the menu. Kiba is a word in Japanese (it means "fangs"), but here it was a contraction of "cherry" and "banana", so it was cherry juice mixed with banana juice. Not very tasty.

Food in Erfurt

This piece of bread filled with beef stew was very very good.

There was a lot of good food in Erfurt. The lunches were provided by the conference and consisted mainly of sandwiches. In bizarre numbers.

Spinach soup

Zucchini soup

Chocolate, for the coffee breaks

The welcome dinner was mostly wine, but there was also bread, fruits, and cheese.

Thuringian sausage, from the best sausage place in Erfurt. Very good.

Curry wurst (hidden under curry sauce) from the same sausage shop. Also very good.

Erfurt

We were at a conference in Erfurt, and since we worked mostly from 8 or 9 in the morning until 22 in the evening, there was not much time for sightseeing. I snapped photos of food (the food was good) and of buildings we walked past during the working hours, though.

Around town, there were statues of characters from children's TV shows.

The Thuringia region was flooded when we were there, but Erfurt itself has canals around the city, so the city was fine.

This is the only bridge of this type (stone buildings on the bridge) north of the Alps, I was told.