going to paris tomorrow

that's right..the city of loooooooooove for valentines day. And who better to take with me than my boyfriend...and my boyfriend's parents...

artur and i are treating his mom to a paris trip for her birthday. And Artur's never been there. And i'm living my dream of going to paris for the weekend. On a whim. wahoo!

berlin oh berlin

So the trip to Berlin was great. The first day was "tour" day and after Artur and I arrived exhausted on the 5-11am ICE train, we went and ate an amazing buffet brunch with everything imaginable for only 7,90 euros. Ah berlin is so much cheaper than munich. And then Michael chauffuered us around in his car for a few hours and told us all about berlin, including stops at kreuzberg with its fantastic view and the siegessäule, for its also fantastic view. Unfortunately, the pedestrian tunnel under the racing traffic island was flooded on one side, so it took us a while to get up to the top, but when we did, the views were commanding. The second day was "flea market day" and we took off for the antique markets at kupfergraben. After browsing the array of old DDR paraphenalia, cds, gas masks, babuschkas and china, we sipped some glühwein to thaw out and headed to a cafe to warm up, and then to a chocolate shop to eat chocolate ice cream and cool down.

Monday was then "badeschiff" day and we set off to bathe on the river spree... no, not IN the river, ON the river, on a half sunken barge that has been converted into a retro swimming pool. In the summer, the thing is just open surrounded by wooden docking, but in the winter, it's turned into a white bubbly creation by way of a plastic roof and includes two saunas and a bar. We spent three hours enjoying the mix of warm, cold, naked, dressed, and just plain crazy. An ingenious design.

the eye

Well, it's been a while. And lots has happened--- hospital visits, a trip home to Pittsburgh, my first set of finals at a german university--and the beginnings of my first "container vegetable garden"

But now i'm back on my feet and ready to write again. I'll start with the story of my companion from Azerbaijan in the hospital. During my stay in the intensive care unit, I had a neighbor, a bed neighbor, that is. In between IV changes and doctors visits, I noticed that she was having trouble communicating with the doctors. Strained attempts at English were made by the surgeons, but the nuns who did much of the care work just kept on speaking in their native Bavarian dialect. One day, when sister Fransiska was doing her "get up out of bed and move around" motivation rounds, I decided to pitch in. I translated the enthisuastic sister's instructions, relaying commands to breath deeply, stand up, cmon, you can do it!! Zoora, I learned was her name, looked and my with grateful eyes.

During our time "upstairs" in Intensive care, I became her translator. I thought a lot about how scary it must be to not understand anything the doctors say to you.. the whole thing was scary enough, as it was! In turn, Zooras sister, who was almost always by her side, would often fetch me water and pick things up that I dropped--the kind of little favors I was more than thankful for at the time.

The day before I was set to leave the hospital, I took a walk down to Zooras room (both of us had been relocated to the "stationary" (and more humane) portion of the hospital and gave her a christmas card and said goodbye. A few hours later there was a knock on my door and there she stood... she very quickly slipped a silver armband off her wrist and onto mine this is the eye, for protection and good luck" she said, and disappeared back down the hallway.

The bracelet depicts a round, blue eye, surrounded by half moon engravings and a wavy silver band. Now, I wear it everyday.

i'm back

so... after a 20-day stay in the hospital i'm back online. More updates to come...

The Mountain Show

In America, there's the house show. You know, that show on sundays that just shows houses for sale: no video, just pictures of the houses and the asking price. Watching the show is soothing, it requires no brain power, it's so elementally boring that it's like automatic meditation: you aren't thinking anything.

In Germany, there's the mountain show. Intended to provide skiiers with a view of the current weather conditions in each ski area, this program flips from one mountaintop to another, broadcasting images recorded by some tiny camera mounted, in most cases it appears, high up in some snow covered tree. This show is even better than the house show, not only because the images sometimes rotate to show the full panorama and because the video is live, but also because more than often all there is to see is white because, well--it's snowing. Sometimes there are droplets on the camera, sometimes the blustering snow lets up for long enough to identify the tree a few meters away from the camera--the only way to identify these places is by the logo in the lower righthand corner.

As if this wasn't already enough to beat the house show, the whole thing is accompanied by a background of traditional bavarian and austrian "Blasmusik" Fantastic. Of course, on a beautiful day the mountaintops look gleaming white and I cuddle up under my blanket on the couch and think to myself "this is so much better than real estate."

auf der Autobahn...

Germans love their autobahn. They like to drive fast, and the rules of the road are followed so strictly that drivers don't expect the unexpected. The roads are cleaned, the signs are repaired, all the lines are visible, and potholes are nonexistant-- hitting one at 220km/h would be a pretty big jolt.

Of course, even Germans know that not everything runs perfectly all the time. That's why the radio stations and their traffic programs are so crucial. Concerned drivers are provided with locations of the biggest traffic jams, construction sites and even speed traps. But my favorite section of all in German radio traffic programming is what I call "What's lying on the road."

Usually, the items are run of the mill things like tree branches, tires, hubcaps--there are also the occasional reports of people walking on the highway, accidents and construction vehicles. But often there are a few more exotic objects in the mix: rubber mattresses, couches, a family of geese walking along the side. These earn a prime spot each half hour in the traffic report--their exact location is relayed to the entire state of Bavaria.

This always made me laugh. The Germans say to me "but it would be very dangerous to drive if you didn't know that these things were on the road!" I usually chuckle and say "if they tried to report irregularities on america's highways the traffic reports would take hours"

So each evening while making dinner I flip on the radio, anxious to hear what's lying out there today.. I picture these objects, these people, those duck families, perched on the edge of the road while traffic whizzes by. Maybe there are even a few sightseers who hear the reports and take an extra trip to check out that abandoned pole lamp. Maybe these object sightseers cause their own traffic jams!

Today I listened to the radio report as always while filling out my christmas cards. The reporter whizzed through the traffic facts, the list of speed traps, the various construction detours, and finally arrived at the juiciest fact: lying on highway A6 near exit 4, albiet a bit early in the season--is a christmas tree.

Truthahn Tag

Truthahn is the word for turkey in Germany, and yesterday that word was on my mind. Of all the holidays, I feel most homesick on thanksgiving. It's not because it's necessarily my favorite holiday, but it's the only holiday that goes unnoticible in Germany. Halloween is celebrated (if rather lamely), St Patrick's day even has its own parade! But on Thanksgiving I have to go to work and eat healthily while the rest of my family is on its way to Cleveland to meet up with the relatives, eat and drink themselves merry on turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, only to plop on the sofa and watch football in a Tryptophan-induced coma for the entire day-off friday. It's not fair!

To alleviate some of the homesickness pangs, I conjured up a cozy "thanksgiving for two" meal with Artur... turkey cutlets rolled and stuffed with stuffing, creamy mashed potatoes, Preiselbeeren (the german equivalent of cranberry sauce) and apple crisp for dessert. I also gave myself and Artur license to indulge, and kicked off the meal with homemade whiskey sours fresh from our new, "one armed bandit" as Artur calls it (juice press). Here's the recipe for fresh whiskey sours, from the cooking genius Barefoot Contessa:

Fresh Whisky Sours

3/4 cup whiskey (recommended: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (4 lemons)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (4 limes)
2/3 cup sugar syrup (cook 1:1 water-sugar mixture until dissolved, cool)
Ice cubes
Maraschino cherries

mix all ingredients, fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice and 3/4 full with cocktail mix, and shake for 30 seconds. Serve in highball glasses

mmm mmm sour