MICHA.ELMUELLER

This is an article which I wrote somewhen in 2015 (or 2014, I don’t really remember), but was never sure about how publish-worthy it is. I decided it’s better to publish it now than to leave it lying around.

Valerie reacts allergic to nuts since her early childhood. By chance we found out that she can eat macadamia nuts a couple of months ago. There were other inconsistencies as well: one time she ate a cake and afterwards was told that it contained Milka chocolate — which contains a large amount of hazelnut paste. She didn’t get an allergic reaction from the cake though. But on all other occasions there was a strong allergic reaction when she ate something containing nuts — even if she was unaware of nuts being in the food. This goes so far that when buying ice cream from an ice cream stand, she gets an allergic reaction if the spoon used to take out the ice was in contact with a nutty ice cream.

Then one day a friend told us that she thought she was allergic against peanuts for a very long time, but then found out that she isn’t at all. The background was that her dad reacts allergic on peanuts and when she had an allergic reaction as a child he derived that she had to be too. For years she shared that assumption, until she ate some food unaware of the peanuts inside without any problems whatsoever.

So the small inconsistencies with Valerie’s nut allergy spawned an idea inspired by our university experiences in study methodology and experiment design: why not execute a double-blind self experiment in order to determine if she is really allergic against nuts?

We thus decided to do this. With Leo’s help we baked two types of cookies: one type with chopped almonds and one type with chopped hazelnuts. The idea was for Valerie to eat them and to determine if she had an allergic reaction. We used chopped almonds in order to make the two types of cookies indistinguishable.
In order to further mask the color and taste of the two types we put a large amount of chocolate and cacao into the dough. Right before we baked the cookies we splitted the dough in two parts and added the hazelnuts/almonds. Thus we could exclude a previous nut contamination of the “control group” dough.

A trusted third party (Leo) chose three pieces of each type from the resulting cookies whilst we were in another room. Leo then wrapped each cookie in aluminium foil and wrote a number on the foil. He noted the classification of number+cookie in a sealed letter and put the cookies in a box.

For the next three days we repeated the testing procedure each morning and evening: Valerie would receive a blindfold, I would then pick a random wrapped cookie from the box and feed some pieces to her. Whenever she started to experience an allergic reaction we stopped (and I ate the rest of the cookie). We didn’t want to risk a heavy allergic reaction.

We noted all her guesses and after the three days opened the envelope and checked against the true numbers. As it turns out she really reacts allergic to nuts :/. She guessed all of the probes right, except one were she wasn’t entirely sure, since she had to try it on short notice, stressfully, in between the door after having overslept and being too late for an appointment.

After South America we travelled around in the south of Germany, visiting various friends in different cities. It was really nice to arrive back in Germany for the summer — everything blooming, amazing weather whilst most friends had their holidays and a lot of free time.

Our plan was to spend one month travelling in Germany, organize some stuff, find jobs, find a flat, and then move to Berlin at the end of August. I see this as an opportunity to start a new chapter in my life here. It already feels like I have left university a long time ago. I think the time in South America has amplified this perception. To me it also feels as if we’ve been travelling for a year or so, even though it was just a couple of months.

Luckily, everything worked out. Since September 1st, we are living in a nice, roomy flat in Berlin-Tempelhof. The area is quite green and there is a subway right around the corner. It is very easy for us to reach different areas of Berlin by subway or by bike. To my astonishment, riding a bike is very comfortable around here and it is very easy to get around. There are just no mountains whatsoever! The numerous bike sideways and bike traffic lights make riding the bike here further comfortable.

Also I have found a nice job here, which started at September 1st as well. I am still a bit flabbergasted that everything indeed really did work out. It’s even still summer here! The weather is amazing each day, a lot of people going out on the streets, eating ice cream, etc..

The company in which I now work since a couple of weeks started out as a typical Berlin IT startup five years ago. But opposed to many startups here, it was more of a business-to-business startup, highly technical, working with high performance computing, big data, machine learning, and real-time web services. They got bought a year ago and are now part of a larger company. The startup mentality (and office) though is still there. I think this is somewhat what I had been searching for: a mixture of big corporation and startup. As a further plus, I am developing software with node.js and git in unix environments utilizing open source software.

We’ll see how things work out, but currently I am excited to start anew here.

We have spent some time in Lima now. I was very surprised by how much the Barranco and Miraflores districts have a modern and metropolitan feeling to them. I think these districts could as well be placed somewhere in North America and one wouldn’t be surprised to find them there. Other districts or the city center, on the other hand, are much poorer and do represent more of the Peru which we have seen so far. It was a nice time in Lima and we had a very pleasant last evening there when we met up again with two guys whom we got to know in Iquitos (Tom and Yash).

Besides Lima we have spent some more days in the mountains. Yash had told us about the city of Huaraz and got us interested, thus we took a long distance bus from Lima to Huaraz. This is one of those bus rides where the view is quite nice and it is worth taking a day bus. There is a lot to see during the whole trip, driving along the coast was very interesting as we saw some more of the peruvian deserts and huge sand dunes. This is definitely another side of the country and I was once more surprised by the variety of landscapes which this country has to offer. I feel that it was a wise choice to take a couple of weeks for visiting this country (we have been to Peru now for around six weeks). To me the below excerpt from the book Marching Powder is exemplary for some other travelers which we have met.

Paul, an Australian, interrupted Jay.
“So, where exactly are you from again?”
“It’s hard to say, really”, sighed Jay. “I’ve been travelling for some time now. I don’t feel like I belong to any one place in the world. I’m really from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, if you know what I mean.”
“How long have you actually been on the road?” asked Giles, a longhaired backpacker from the UK.
“Oh, approximately thirty-four days,” replied Jay, nodding his head proudly.
Paul raised his eyebrows.
“A month, you mean?”
“Well, it’s not really a question of chronological time,” said Jay, sounding defensive. “I don’t measure things in that way. I’ve done more than ten countries during that time and it’s impossible to measure any cultural experience in terms of number of days. It’s more of a personal growth thing…” His voice trailed off as though he were allowing the thought to linger for dramatic effect. As an afterthought, he added, “Besides thirty-four days is more than a month, isn’t it?”
“How can you ‘do’ ten countries in thiry-four days?” said Giles, using his fingers to indicate the inverted commas around the word ‘do’.

In Huaraz we discovered a very nice off-the-beaten-track hostel, in which we stayed for a couple of days. Though technically it is not really in Huaraz since it takes a taxi drive of about one hour into the wild. And then there it is: “The Hof“, an eco-hostel with a focus on sustainability, located in the midst of an amazing view, surrounded by steep, uninhabited mountains and glaciers. There were only a few people in the hostel (or looking after it) and we quickly got to know them. Meals were served family style, whilst sitting around a table together, and in the evenings we would talk until late at night and drink whiskey or play poker. A sweet puppy dog was also around and oftentimes eager to play. I liked this chilled back atmosphere a lot and it was a nice place to calm down after having been to Lima. Also, places like this seem to always attract interesting people. There is no internet connection at the place and electricity is scarce (i.e. only available if the sun shines on the solar panels) — a reason why there is no refrigerator and thus only vegetarian meals. It is also possible to do volunteering at the place; for 4-5 hours work a day one is provided with a place to sleep, bathroom facilities, and food. I can easily imagine how one can get stuck at a place like this whilst travelling. My highlight was the hike to a nearby lagoon and a pizza night, where for the first time in my life I fired a proper pizza oven and made a pizza in it. Mhmm!

We have left Cusco in the meantime — after three weeks! I don’t know there the time went, but I enjoyed the time here very much. One thing which impressed me a lot there is the Greenpoint restaurant. After eating in this (vegan) restaurant a couple of times, we got to know the owner and some people in this environment and became friends with them. At first I thought this was just a single restaurant with a couple of people working there. But as it turns out there are around 70 people working in the environment of the restaurant! There was much more going on than I had glimpsed at first. The main reason why there are so many people involved is because they make practically all their ingredients by themselves — vinegar, kombucha, vegan chesse, the bread for burgers and sandwiches and appetizers, sauces, jam, yoghurt, milk, …. A reason is to guarantee high quality and to be sure where stuff is coming from and how it was made. That it is nevertheless possible to operate a very reasonably priced restaurant amazed me a lot. Furthermore, they offer cooking courses where it is possible to learn how to prepare any of the meals from the restaurant. I find this amazing, it is a very transparent way to operate a restaurant for people to be able to see how things are prepared. Also there was no resistance at all to pass on recipes or knowledge. To me this is in stark contrast to “average” restaurants where you can’t dare to ask for the recipe of e.g. a certain sauce.

As a next stop in Peru we have come to the city of Iquitos, which is located deep in the peruvian jungle. Iquitos is the largest city in the world which is accessible only by plane or boat. There are no streets to the city, the airport is very small and the boat takes a couple of days along the amazon to get there. This “endless jungle” makes quite a nice view from the airplane. Since the city is hard to access, a certain culture has established there. For example, there is a lack of cars, since it is much cheaper to get a motorcycle there. A fitting quote from Wikivoyage is: “As a city not accessible by road, motorcycles and mototaxis dominate unlike anywhere else. Imagine if an American style biker-gang had taken over a city.” When on the road you are always in a bulk of motorcycles and mototaxis and sometimes one can’t help but feel like part of a biker-gang when driving around. The vibe and culture here is completely different to the Peru that we have seen so far — which was so far only the mountain region. In fact, when first driving through the city I thought I was back in Thailand: palms everywhere, very hot and tropical, much humidity, a lot happening outside on the streets in the evening, open houses without windows, many many motorcycles and bikes. And insects of course! They usually seem grotesquely oversized and there is a tick too much of them everywhere. Furthermore there are so many fruits available here of which I have never heard before — aguaje, cuma-cuma, cocona, …. So it is possible to get quite unique juices and jam here and it was a joy to try different things.

In the last days we have done an extensive jungle tour here by which I was very impressed. It was very interesting to see this different side of Peru and our visit in this city was quite worth the effort of getting there. First of all, Iquitos is situated right besides the amazon river. I always thought this is “just” a long river, similar to the ones in Europe. But I was quite mistaken and indeed very impressed by its dimensions. I think this is one further thing which one has to experience to really grasp the dimensions (like e.g. Machu Picchu). The amazon river here is about 1.5 km wide and 4-5 meters deep. In Brasil the river gets even wider. When moving in a boat it sometimes feels as if one is on a sea, rather than on a river. From the city we drove up the river for about 2 hours and then into a sidearm for a while. There we reached a small lodge in the jungle where we stayed for three days. Each day we made explorations with our guide — a native of 30 years who got born in the jungle, grew up here, and has lived here all his live. The last time he visited a city was ten years ago. During our excursions we experienced a lot of the jungle environment, went for walks in the jungle, did piranha fishing, swam with wild dolphins, etc.. Our guide even catched a wild alligator from the river. Crocodile Dundee style. The walks in the jungle were extremely interesting, experiencing this kind of fauna and how its conditions are opposed to anything remotely comfortable. There are so many layers of plants in it: the ground which is muddy everywhere, ponds of water, rotting trees, all kinds of plants competing, huge trees, palms, etc.. And all of it is so dense that you need to make a way with a machete. And when turning around you are oftentimes unable to determine where you just came from. Everything just gets back to its previous state so quickly! It is very exhausting to walk around and there are myriads of small (and large) animals that want to bite you. This is such an uncomfortable environment for humans that in my opinion a “jungle walk” is something you do only once. Overall our stay in Iquitos and the jungle was a very unique and enriching experience. The effort of getting there was very well worth the effort. I was very surprised by how much the culture and mentality here differ from the mountains.

I have heard that there are three regions with distinct mentalities and culture in Peru: the mountains, the coast, and the jungle. The coast is the last region which we are missing and the city we head to next is Lima — the peruvian capital which is located at the coast. So I am looking forward to find out how this hypothesis holds up.

In the meantime I have read another book: the infamous classic “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis. Valerie got me interested in reading it, she had it on her reading list since quite some time and read it a couple of weeks ago (I guess the book is even more interesting to psychologists). During that time she always mentioned stuff from the book to me. I had seen the movie some years back and liked it a lot, so this got me interested in reading the book as well. The book was a very tough read though. Some chapters are quite disgusting and very violent and it sometimes was hard for me to read on. But I guess this is the overall literal genius behind the book: creating emotions such as arousal, disgust, and empathy in the same chapter. I am looking forward to rewatch the movie now and found it interesting to read up on literary analysis and interpretation after having finished the book.