Thanksgiving & Blessings

Why hello!

I remember you!

And upon looking at the date of my last post, I also realized that it hasn't been as long ago and far away as I thought that I'd last send a missive through the wavy waves of the interweb.

Cool.

I'm not as degenerate of a blogger as I thought.

Anyway. Back to the wild and wacky world of yours truly and all of the random shit that entails.

Welcome, I say.

What's been going on?

Well, loads and loads. I just happened through the pure coincidence which is my raging internet addiction to stumble across one of the best, most thorough horoscopes for my illustrious sign that I've seen in years (YEARS, MAN!). And basically, what it told me was 'November is your month, child. Now get your ass in gear.' Really, essentially that. With a few unmistakables such as a particular week being declared especially good for the submission of applications FORGRAD SCHOOL (I think they mentioned college, too...but that obviously doesn't concern me as much) and one week being singled out as especially good for le babymaking (unfortunately notmy pervue, although it DID cause me to fwd the link to another cancer friend).

ANYWAY, long story short, as a result I got my sht together and finally sent in my application for two law programs here in Berlin. And last Friday, I told my boss.

And you know...it really wasn't all that bad. She took it like the Real Woman of Class and Substance she is and told me that I had to go my own way and that there'd always be a dooropen for me in her little corner of the world. Cool, huh? Considering I'd been losing sleep/getting my panties in a ROYAL twist over this little sit down for...oh, MONTHS now, not half bad. I'm still waiting to hear what's missing from my application (I'm sure there'ssomething. Gotta love those German bureaucrats. Normal people cannot think as nitpicky as they are.) and I won't be getting any kind of definitive news for academic aeons, but the wheelsare moving. Just posting the damn thing was terrifying, but I'm working on that.

Otherwise, there's been the usual insane level of stress with school, clients, work and you know...the little social life I try to keep alive. But I think I sort of manage to keep things in balance...if by balance you mean some kind of death-defying, somewhat productive tailspin. But I'm not complaining. Tis not the season to complain. Tis the season to be thankful!

And thankful I am. Really. For what seem like a thousand blessings. Not the least of which is a good group of friends who humor my need to throw a fck-off dinner party in late November ever year. I make them cook in teams. They make great things. We reached culinary heights this year, in my opinion with the herbed dinner rolls. Those things were FANTASTIC. Despite afew unfortunate last-minute cancellations and a very unfortunate boxing match which kind of put a damper on the mood, it was a great time. This year, we didn't even need to borrow a table! We can seat twelve! It's great.

Other things to be thankful for include loyal clients, gainful employment, a nice warm place to call home...and (nearly) five years with the most supportive, funniest, beardiest human teddy bear known to man. And not leastly or lastly, a great family and great, loyal, supportive, wonderful friends in faraway places (yes, I mean you yanks).

Yous wonderful, alluvyas.

Thanks for being yourselves, thanks for being great (although since you ARE ALL GREAT, it comes out to one and the same. Whatever.)

Take care everyone.

X's&O's

101th POST!

Silly me, I didn't notice that I'd hit the 100 mark on ye olde blog until after I posted. So I'll have to commemorate the 101th post instead.

This won't be long, since all the whirlwindery of the last few weeks has knocked me a bit flat (might also have something to do with the miniature bacteria catapults with which I work). The Schatz has a long lab day/night tonight, so I'm on me onesies with my HSE and my sage tea. I SHOULD be writing a paper on something around the general health of small children based on some study or other, or better yet paying bills, or better YET putting together a presentation on the main jewish holidays, but instead I'm ensconced on my couch under several blankets with some physalis (for the vitamins) and some of the Schatz's secret swiss chocolate stash (for the soul) posting to all you internet folks and coughing my face off.

Sounds like a rollicking good time, non?

Berlin has decided to release her winter ire a bit early this year--it's only a shade darker at quarter past six pm than it was all day. It never really got light. Instead, it rained and winded and was generally ugly. Ohhhhhh uglyberlin. It's the jekyll side of this city to be sure. Some cities turn into sparkling winter wonderlands in the wintertime. Berlin is not one of those. From now until April, things won't really change much, barring perhaps an early March thaw. It doesn't really freeze, so snow doesn't really stick--things just get gray and rainy and raw. I think that's what has turned me into such a festive holiday person. I never used to be, but celebrating Thanksgiving and the Advent season in general last year was a turning point for me. It was so great having a mob here cooking and eating and drinking together. I'm looking forward to the planning for this year. It will indeed serve to distract me from the impending hounds of winter hell. Freezing rain was forecast for today. I hauled out my ski jacket and the lined clarks for the trip to and from work and was a happier commuter for it.

Time to get a move on with the Christmas shopping, I suppose. But also alas, time to get a move on all the work I've got to do around here.

So, happy Fall to you of the interweb and happy 101th post to me. May your apple pies be crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside and your jack-o-lanterns well cut.

xo

Renovations and other Fall fun!

Oh, hello internet friends!

Believe it or not, I have missed you so. There's just been so much going on! Well, I suppose not more than normal, but details, details. I'm here now. My dashboard was so kind as to inform me that I last posted on the 2nd of August. It is now early October. That means I left out most of August and all of September. Bad, bad blogger! Oh well. What all went on is the question?

Well, the Schatz had his birthday. For which he came back from Zürich. We celebrated withmany lovely folks here in chez Bänsch and I do believe a good time was had by all. I spent a few weeks in August working in a relatively relaxed fashion, did a Swim & Run with the lovelyMs. Carina (we didn't do very well, but seeing as we were both vacationing beforehand, we didnot train very hard either. It is logical that there would be a correlation between the two).

School started for me (my last year! Oh and how I cannot wait for my exams! Seriously.), the Long Night of the Museums came to pass (I was not out very long at all, visited the Helmut Newton archives, Schloß Charlottenburg and a Synagogue)...I trained my munchkins to run a 1km race, which was charming and rewarding...and last but not least, THE SCHATZ RETURNED!

I picked him up from the central train station here on the 25th of September, at the end of a very crazy week. The last few weeks have been light-duty in terms of work (thank heavens!) and have enabled me/us to get a lot done around chez Bänsch. In fact, last weekend we renovated the bedroom. It was pretty cool and I've got some lovely before/after photos.

Bedroom before ...and after.

Another view of the revamped bedroom and the NEW BOOKSHELVES in the livingroom.

Oh yes, and we finally have a dishwasher. Saints be praised!

This weekend, we helped some friends move. They left the lovely Südkiez in favor of less rowdy Potsdam...I wish them eversomuch love and happiness there. And I hope we get to visit them lots, even though it's quite far away (at least by urban standards). The move is my excuse for not prepping my lesson for il Dottore...I feel like I've been out for 3 nights in a row drinking, when all I really did was schlepp/unbuild/rebuild IKEA furniture for 11 hours and inhale lots of dust. Getting old is a terrible thing.

Since the Schatz has been back, we've started a little habit of going out to breakfast on Sunday mornings. It's been lovely really--last week we went to a tiny cafe and I had a most delectible bagel with some kind of a goat camembert, arugula, pesto & tomato. Today we hit up a place called Kuchenrausch (Cake High) and were very impressed by service & food. Service is a rare commodity here. I haven't felt so pampered by a server in aeons!

On the whole, there hasn't been too much of note going on. My application process for Uni is coming along well--as far as I can tell, I have all of the necessary official documents, and they have all been notarized. Now I just have to put together a detailed resume for one University (so that they can see where I've been in the 6 years since I took my last German proficiency exam) and I'll be good to go. The conversation with the Boss Lady is also imminent. We shall see how that goes. Please do wish me luck and balls.

Hope this finds you well and enjoying all the apple pies, cider and pumpkin delicacies you can all stand!

XoX

In case y'all thought I was a raging narcissist...

I was never actually intentionally following my own blog. Still not sure how that happened...but I managed to un-do it!

Yay for that and yay for being back in the Hauptstadt.

Caio for now, Kinders.

Viva Italia

So some of you clever folks might have gotten the memo that the Schatz and I went to Italy for a week. Florence, to be precise. And the even trickier ones of you have already cruised through my selection of photos posted at a certain social-networking site.

Be that as it may, I would be remiss I suppose, if I didn't post my impressions and culinary exploits here. That's what this damn thing is for. Aaaand the german amazon hasn't quite gotten around to delivering my book to me here in Switzerland. Bastards.

So anyway, Italy.


Due to my inordinate and inexplicable love for italian food (my family is WASP through and through) and warm, sunny places, I have always imagined that Italy would be a happy place for me. You know, the kind of place you visit and it just clicks and you say "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!"

As you can see, I went with high expectations. Quite high.

I was not disappointed in the slightest.

I'll give you the less interesting things in a high-speed rundown:

Hotel: FANTASTIC. If you go, stay at the Hotel Cellai. The deskpeople are lovely, helpful and fluent in a variety of languages. Make sure you specify what kind of a room you want, because it's a boutique hotel, not Best Western. They have small rooms and pimp rooms. We asked and we received, if you know what I mean.

Shopping: Good enough to make a girl weak in the knees. They have (as apparently most European countries/cities do) annual sales in January/February and July/August. Really, really fantastic. Be prepared to hemorrhage money and be thankful for the opportunity.

Locals: Well, in the Summer, the city is overrun with Americans. Some of them look italian, some of them don't. The locals we encountered in retail and gastronomy were helpful and English-speaking. Bus/Tram drivers also very helpful, not so fluent in the foreign languages but verrry fluent in sign language. And you don't have the feeling that people are perpetually trying to snow you. Italy does somehow have that reputation and I can say that the worst thing that happened to us was that we got overcharged for one of the lemon sodas that the Schatz got addicted to during our stay. Really, coulda been a lot worse.

The City: Breathtaking. A little stinky in the summer because lots of the less fortunate like to pee in the sidestreets (do NOT assume that liquid on the ground is water, EVER.) but aside from that there is so much of the old architecture that's been preserved, so many goregous piazzas and cathedrals and duomos and old statues that you get the feeling you could change people's clothes and the stores and easily be in another century.
Funny related sidestory and the reason we have decent pictures of this escapade at all:
I actually set foot on this journey thinking that I'd be able to take all necessary photos with my phone. My old camera was broken in a drunken incident at the beginning of the year which I believe was also chronicled here, but bygones. Anyway I really did think that my lovely little BBbold would do Florence justice. We got in late and after dinner we went for a walk in the city. Just kind of meandering because that's what we do well and out of nowhere I saw this really breathtaking cathedral. The street ended in a huge central square and I'm staring at one of the most imposing churches I've ever seen (and as you know, I live on the old continent where they DO business churches). I looked at the Schatz, the Schatz looked at me and I said, "honey, we need a camera. NOW."
So we spent the first day asking around where the nearest, large electronics store was to be found. Successfully, might I add. Another testament to very helpful, English-speaking locals. So now we have a nice little sony. Nothing to write home about, but it got the job done.


That was the rundown. Now it's time for the grub.


The food we had was fantastic. We tried to do a good mix of everything--nice meals, street-food, take out, basic sit down meals so that we could get a real picture of what people eat there. Not just the tourists. I'm not going to write down everything we had, but I'll do a top 5. I'm not as good at food porn as Anthony Bordain, so I'm pretty sure a bite-by-bite chronicle of eight days worth of food might not be that entertaining.


(drumroll please.)

5. The mushroom strudel and the steak courses of our multi-course dinner. Divine.

4. Real buffalo mozarella in an insalata caprese. WHOAH. Real Mozarella TASTES like something!!!

3. Crazy things with rice. I in my ignorance, saw rice as the direct competition of pasta. This is not so.

2. These little fried soft salty chewy roll things we had the first night at dinner and never again.

1. PIADINE! Dear lord, find a place that serves them. Italian streetfood at it's finest. If you don't like it, you haven't had the right one yet.


I am now realizing that the things I liked the best and the things I took pictures of are two different kettles of fish. Probably because I was too busy stuffing my face with the deliciousness to commemorate the moment. Oh well. I do have what normal people would consider a ridiculous amount of food pictures. Most of which were taken before I realized that my camera had a specific setting for those types of pictures.







The motto of the story?

Go, try the shellfish and generally enjoy yourself. I highly recommend it.

Zürich is rainy and other thoughts

Hello lovelies.

Greetings from once-sunny now soaking-wet Zürich.

Normally I don't have too many problems with the weather. This Summer has been quite nice...some heat wave, low humidity, a bit of rain...but the thing is, I'm living out of a suitcase and I have been for the past 2 weeks. Due to ridiculous weight limits for inter-euro flights, I was only allowed a paltry 20 kg of luggage. This left no room for multiple cardigans or rain boots. Hell, the only close-toed shoes I have with me are my running shoes! Long pants are also underrepresented. This has to do of course with the weather while I was packing. The foreseeable future looked like HEAT WAVE.

Oh well.

While visiting the Kunsthaus yesterday (GREAT collection folks. Really. And Wednesdays are free entry. Go if you're here.) I got stuck in the rain. In leggings and birkenstocks. I was wearing a windbreaker which got the worst of it, but generally a weather-appropriate clothing FAIL. I therefore announced yesterday that should the weather again be so miserable, I would refuse to leave the house. So I'm here. Doing laundry, watching old school disney flicks and waiting for the DHL man to bring me my latest Politkovskaya book (side note: I love that woman.).

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day of vacation. The Schatz is worried that I'll be bored and cranky, but I tried to persuade him he's got nothing to worry about...unless the DHL man does not bring my book. In which case I will not be bored, just cranky.

But let me tell you a bit about Zürich.


I know I already posted an overview of the city, but now I've seen some more things, taken some better photos and generally been here a bit longer. So I feel like another post is in order. I might not have done the old girl justice before.

So. Zürich is not really that exciting. It is beautiful, clean and full of great luxury shopping if that's your thing. If you don't mind paying substantially more than you would elsewhere, Zürich is the place for you. However, being as I am, a fan of alternative funk, I'd been searching in vain since my first visit, trying to find at least a single street with a few funky hip stores doing cool things. All leads I thought I had turned out to be funky fata morganas, and I was getting discouraged. Lord knows I'd really racked up the kilometers traipsing through Zürich and searching. Finally I stumbled across a website of an exberlinerIn living in Züri and though she listed mostly things that were not anywhere off the beaten path, she mentioned a store called EINZIGART. (einzigart.ch) in the Josefstraße in Zürich. I put in on my list and did my daily wanderings which included the Haus Konstruktiv (very very cool: hauskonstruktiv.ch) and a loooong walk through Zürich's "red light district" (rather tame if you don't count the occasional junky and the ageing prostitutes). By the time I got to the Josefstr. I couldn't even remember why I wanted to be there. And I walked down the wrong end of it first--lots of neat restaurants and a lot of indian folk but no cool stores. So I walked down the more boring looking side and PRESTO, a la peanut butter sandwiches, I see the SHUALA concept store. I couldn't really believe my eyes, I went in and had a wander. It's one of those stores that's a dime-a-dozen in Berlin (spoiled, I know) featuring handmade stuff from various european grass-roots designers. (shuala.com) It's cool, but vasssstly overpriced. I bought a bag just to convince myself this wasn't another hipness mirage. I continued my meanderings and found all kinds of neat stuff, including said EinzigArt store (really, really neat stuff there folks.) and another store called something like Liliputans...it was full of the most unholy kitsch you have EVER seen. We're talking everything available in red-white polka dots, plastic flowers and childrens toys in shades of bright my eyes weren't used to. Di-vine.

I recommend walking the street from Langstraße to its end (Hafnerstr.) which is also a treat. Just around the corner is a store that blew my mind...Garten Eden, full of antiques, the odd plant and really great glassware. In the Hafnerstr. itself there are a few hip-seeming clothing stores, which I didn't bother checking out...they looked cool enough.

I can't tell you all what a relief this was to me. I felt quite guilty passing this city off as lametoast...turns out there are a few highlights after all.

The whole waterfront thing tickles me. Not the Züri See...it's nice but often very crowded with cosmetically augmented older women (botoxed face+bleached blonde extensions+silcone rack+short shorts with jiggly chicken legs = unaesthetic, sorry. I don't usually bodysnark, but if you are that gungho with the plastic surgery you kind of invite it.). I'm talking about the Limmat. It feeds into the Züri See along with the Sihl and if you walk upriver, you encounter some nice places to swim, grab a coffee and just enjoy the day. Unfortunately, due to all the rain, some have had to close. The river is getting a tad full.

There was also the Swiss Ironman here last weekend and this Sunday is apparently some kind of national holiday (hence, I believe, all the flag-action in the photos) involving fireworks. I'm almost sad to be flying out on that day.


But only almost. Really, I miss Berlin and my apartment and my friends and using the smart functions on my smartphone. Vacation is cool and all, but I kinda want to go home now.

Topp, die Wette gilt...

Hello, lovelies.

As usual, it's been far too long. I've had all kinds of time, especially this weekend. I've been feeling a bit under the weather, so I cleared my schedule to recover. I did important things like paint my finger- and toenails two different colors, sit on my balcony for hours, make chicken and rice for dinner, watch oodles of HSE and visit two markets.

Anyway, I've been up to all kinds of interesting whatnot since we've heard from eachother last. I got booster shots and an international immunization pamphlet from my Doc, got an EKG to check on my ticker, sworn off of watching Germany's Next Top Model...all kinds of terribly important things, as you can see.

Perhaps my most interesting undertaking has been to make a bet with my Schatz. Or the fact that my Schatz made a bet with me. Not of the nicest sort, I must warn y'all. As is known to my friends and acquaintances on the interweb, said Schatz is spending six months working for the Swiss in Zürich. He was here visiting over Pentacost (in the homeland of Protestantism, one gets long weekends for such things) and we got talking about my Great Loves. For example, pizza. I don't really care whether it's good, bad or frozen. I could eat it 8 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for the REST.OF.MY.LIFE. This presents a certain...problem for my figure.

I said that I would certainly be able to keep things under control with diet and exercise and not go all hedonist just because my Teutonic Half isn't around. He said I wouldn't.

I'm a lot of things, one of which is prideful.

This makes me an easy mark for bets of this nature.

If I manage to lose 5kg before the Schatz comes back at the end of September, I get to pick out a pimp electric toothbrush.

If I lose 7kg (which is about as likely as me going vegan), I get a kitchen aid mixer.

HOWEVER...

If I lose the bet, I have to do all the housework for 6 months...to the Schatz's standards.

I HATE cleaning. I'm not even good at it.

So.

I obviously have to win.

To my (dis)credit, I have never dieted in my life. I've never had to. I was a distance runner in my teens, and during college I was much too preoccupied with other things to be worried about my weight. Once I arrived in Germany, I was busy starting a new life to worry about losing weight. My weight has gone up and down in the last few years, but really all by itself. I've wondered at it, contemplated it...but never really tried to influence it one way or another.

Now it's game time.

I've been keeping a food diary, keeping track of everything I eat. It's embarassing sometimes, because it's never really been how I roll, but so far I'm doing an all right job. I get why people say that writing everything down is the first step. It's an epic pain in the ass to write down every cookie, every square of dark chocolate, every shot in my coffee. So you do less of it. It's easier that way.

It's Summer, so it's easier to skip the carbs and load up on salads and veggies. Still, I love noodles, like a fat kid loves...noodles. So I'm trying to cut back and when I do indulge, it's whole grain.

The other thing I'm trying to do is get the word out. If my friends don't know, they'll accidentally sabotage me. If they do know, they serve me whole grain noodles and/or brown rice when I'm there.

Other than that...I'm trying to not to inhale trucker-sized portions of everything.

...kinda thinking that might help a little.

We'll see.

In the meantime, I hope those of you who made the pilgrimage to Gambier played safe (& hard) and I also hope that my lymph nodes stop feeling like they're going to explode out of my neck.

Till then.

Visual Input

This is a saying from the Ivory Coast: "One cannot live without such beautiful things."

Good Afternoon!*

(Aren't these pretty?)

Hello, folks.

I'm not entirely sure this is in fact, a good afternoon...but I am determined to make it positive and not just productive (yes, it is a quarter past three European Central Time and I am FINISHED with my planning for the week. Normally I think about STARTING at this time. Ole!). So productive I have been.

Just not so positive. Despite a prettypretty princess bath and a chat with my Dearest. Perhaps it's the weather. Friday was so lovely and then Saturday and Sunday were so nondescript. Not warm, not cold, not sunny, not entirely cloudy...just terribly bland.

Perhaps it is also bland in regard to the last few days. I've been flitting all over tarnation, discovering delicious whatnots like Piadine (combines börek--a sort of turkish crepe usually filled with spinach and cheese or a ground meat mixutre only crispy and with FRESH italian fillings--procutto, arugula, fantastic cheeses) neat little shops full of neat little things, catching up with friends and just generally enjoying my lovely little pants off. I suppose that a Just Work Sunday is a bit of a let down.

Good, so now I've figured out where my general funk is coming from.

What about the other great mysteries of my life?

For example, why is there so much subtle residual glitter around here? I don't strike myself as the glittery type (unless of course there's a glitter epidemic at work. These things do happen. There will be a period of a few weeks where everything MUST GLITTER. Then of course, I'm covered in the damn stuff and it doesn't scrub off well, I can tell you.). For some reason, however, the back of my relatively new phone has a distinctly glittery sheen to it and when I washed the mattress pads and duvets, the next things to come out of my washing machine also had a sublte glittery sheen. Do I sweat glitter? I know I have a rouge that sort of shimmers...but I apply that to my FACE and not my ENTIRE APARTMENT. My lotions do not glitter and I have one body powder that does. Which I don't often use, due to the fact that body powder is kind of tricky to apply. The bathmat usually winds up looking like some kind of glittery drug explosion just happened...

So this is my question to you, folks. Where doth this glitter come from? And why?

This is what I think about instead of plotting my next career move. Or dreading my next career move. I don't dread going back to school. I'm all for it. It was my idea. I feel baldy for the people I'm going to be hurting/leaving behind. Which then leads me to contemplate the idea of living your life for other people. I think there's a difference between being selfless and loving and really basing every major decision in your life on someone else. I know, I've been doing one and attempting the other. I'll leave it to you, fair readers, to figure out which is what. Be that as it may, I know I have to move on and do Something Else with my Life. I even have an idea as to what that Something Else could be. At least a vague one. At the moment, it's a question of bureaucracy and finances. Two great loves of mine. Just kidding. You'd be hard pressed to find two things I dislike more. I also know it's time for me to (wo)man up and take care of the uncomfortable business in my life myself. Without diversions or excuses.

Ugh.

It's just that I hate uncomfortable business. We're talking about people who have trusted in me, given me responsibility and money and who are counting on me. And I don't think they're going to see it coming. I just want to do the Right Thing...that is of course, without having to work there for the rest of my professional life.

Anyway. Enough of that.

I feel like I've been so productive today that I MUST be forgetting something. It's just not possible that all of my planning and printing is already done, school work included. I keep thinking of other things I might maybe have to do...and I can't come up with anything, other than to call my parents (but not until 6pm CET) and clean the apartment--and if there's anything else to be done, I'd rather do that first.

*think think*

*think think*

I can't think of a thing.

However, I did have a perfect Eiskaffee yesterday (coffee with vanilla ice cream and in this case, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and sprinkles) and my friend Carina had the perfect little strawberry ice cream mini sundae. And there are pictures.

*I am almost certain that I've already shared the anecdote of my maternal grandfather always saying "GOOD AFTERNOON!" in a resounding voice whenever we woke up after spending the night there. He was always up first, even when we were little and treated 8am as if it were 2pm. Whenever someone says "Good Afternoon" to me in a pleasant, normal voice, I think of my grandfather trumpeting this greeting throughout the entire house.

In that same spirit,

GOOD AFTERNOON!

Enjoy the last vestiges of weekend, lovelies.

The Rest of Züri

So my lovelies,

I promised to finish my review of Zürich when I got back to Berlin.

Here's the rest of the story.

I was another few days in the city and I feel like it was enough to get a picture of the place. I know that to really know a city, you need to live there. And I don't live in Zürich, obviously. So all of what I'm going to let loose here is pretty much my subjective, prejudiced, reactionary ramblings.

In other words, business as usual.

I deliberately tried to do as little as possible while I was there. I work a helluva lot and this was kind of supposed to be something like a vacation. So I slept a lot and spent a lot of time people watching by the Zürich Lake. And staring at the Alps. You've got to hand it to the city--it's clean, the air is fresh and the scenery surrounding it is breathtaking. There are lush parks and the promenade along the lake is dotted with the perfect amount of benches. Pretty much the way you would imagine something created by the Swiss. They're thorough.

They're also filthy rich. I've never, in all my travels seen as many jags, ferarris and lambos registered to the same city. Mercedes and BMWs were, like...middle-class cars. The main street was full of your rank and file designer stores and the fun of course doesn't stop there. The whole city is full of lovely narrow alleyways that remind one of falling down a rabbit's burrow. There are neat little indie stores and even more ridiculously posh stores. The Swiss seem to like to buy their ladies lots of expensive jewelery and the women seem to take their interior decoration verrrry seriously. 2 Bedroom apartments cost around 2,500 chf (the frank is about on par with the dollar) wherever you want to rent in the city. The pimp cars you see are usually cleaned--for those of you who aren't filthy rich enough to know, this means that the only thing

you see on the back of the car is the audi emblem (or the ferarri, jag, etc.) --no information about the dealer, the engine, etc. It's cool to be discrete, apparently.

The city as I said is nice. The people are friendly if a bit reserved, and very polite. The city proper has a population of around 400,000--including all surrounding suburbs it's mayyyybe a million. This of course can't hold a candle to Berlin's 4 million inhabitants--not counting the surrounding bedroom communities. (You guys know I don't really do numbers, so these are not figures I've in any way researched, they're just things I've been told. If you really want to know, wiki it.)

I'm going to let you in on something.

I am not so much the outdoorsy type.

Zürich is full of people who ski, hike, climb and just generally love nature. I like nature, but I don't love it. I grew up in lots and lots and lots of nature. It refreshes me to visit it. I do not,

however, need to climb a mountain every weekend to get my kicks. Most people in Zürich do.

I'm going to tell you something else.

I currently live in a city that is the love of my life (Don't fret y'all, Stephan knows this. He's not thrilled, but he understands). If you can love a place more than anything, that's how I love this city. Travelling is great, but there always comes a point where I say, "ok, the party's over, it's time for me to get back to MY city". If I'm going to be enthralled by a new place, it's got to beat out Berlin in several different categories, a few of which are:

Funk/Flair

Character

Culture

Creativity

Action

...

I'm sure after I post this, I'll think of more, but these are the first few that come to mind. As you can see, beauty is missing from this list. I do not ask for beauty in a city. That's what makes it nice, but that's not what makes me love it. I can love ugly things. Not everyone can. Funk is important, character is important, things like art and music and theater are important (even if I don't go nearly often enough), and you've got to have bars, restaurants and clubs to go to, depending on what your thing is.

Zürich is a great place to spend time. It's probably also a great place to raise a family. A wonderful place to spend an outdoorsy vacation.

However, it's not necessarily anyplace I'd want to live, despite businesses throwing lovely flowers into historic fountains just because it's Easter.

Hope you're all well and that Spring has sprung in your respective areas.

love and swiss cheese,

Berliner Halbmarathon & de Schwiiz

So. To all those of you who were wondering...

I did run that half marathon on March 28th. Although I felt prepared and although I had trained since mid January for this event, including 2 full-length training runs, it still kicked my sorry arse. Despite years and years of race experience, I still managed to go out wayyyy too fast over the first 5k. Silly of me, really...but running with 27,000 other people through my city just made my heart go so pitapat that I couldn't really control myself. On the whole, it was much more beautiful and amazing than I had imagined and much more terrible and painful. The organizers, SCC running said after the fact that ca 170000 Berliners came out to cheer for the racers. I believe them. There was no part of the route where there weren't spectators lining the course, cheering and holding signs. Bands came and set up shop and played and sang along the course, drumming groups drummed...it was like a festival. It kind of restored my faith in humanity to see all those people come out, you know? The weather was not the greatest. It was cloudy and blustery and approximately 10 °C, if that says anything to you. Above freezing, but a tad on the chilly side. Then it rained. Then the sun came out and it was glorious...except that I kind of wanted to stop and die at that point. People taking off their jackets and repinning their start numbers were faster than I was at this point.

Be all that as it may, my years of training paid off in that I was still able to sprint the finish (although some guy in a wheelchair cut me off directly at the finish...@$%&!) and I got all 21.5K done in less than two hours, which was my goal.

Now I'm on vacation in Zürich for a week and a half. Stephan's got an internship here for the next six months and I decided to stop by on the front end to bring him some stuff and check the place out. I've been here since Thursday night and it's quite nice. The people are very friendly, their dialect is a bit on the wonky side, but the city is impeccably clean (especially in comparison to Berlin), the houses are old and charming, and the view of the Alps from Stephan's place is rather breathtaking. The only catch so far are the prices...it's comparable to New York. I just find it silly in this picturesque little city to pay world-class metropolis-prices--we're talking $8 for a kebap, between $4 and $6 for a coffee...I'm used to being able to eat my way around the world for like, $10 for an entree. I know, I'm spoiled, Berlin is a gastrointestinal paradise...I'm working on getting used to the fact that other places have other prices. Oh well, I'm on vacation. I'm hoping the weather gets nice and I can spend some time down at the Züri See (Zürich Lake) next week while Stephan's working. I've been taking a few pictures and I hope to get them posted once I get home--I left all the proper cables in Berlin. : /

Hope you all had a great Easter. I'll finish my review of Zürich when I get back to the Fatherland.

NewPost

I'm not entirely sure what merits posting today...probably the fact that this weekend is starting off mellow and I actually have TIME to post. AMAZING. Well, we all know that one makes time for what's important...I could be working on a paper for a class called (translated) Creating Living Rooms for Children. By that of course they don't mean living rooms in the American sense of the word, but Living.Rooms. Rooms where children live. You know?

...I don't. Well, I do, but it doesn't interest me a hoot to describe the rooms at work and how they could be improved. And I have an introduction already. So there.

Anyway. We've had a few wild weekends behind us with some spontaneous dinner parties that turned into overnights, me visiting some of my no-longer-work kids, a pro basketball game, gallery visits, more dinners and a whole helluva lot of kilometers. It's been fun. Apparently, it's also been exhausting. So much so that Stephan has actually opted for a formal nap IN BED instead of just dozing off to soccer on the couch. The boy never naps. He's a high-energy morning person. I nap. Whenever I can. I know it's going to be a tough day when I wake up and try to figure out when my next opportunity to nap will be. But enough of that.

Things here are rolling merrily along. We rediscovered the weekly market at Boxhagener Platz on Saturday mornings last week in a fit of sunlight induced spring fever. I bought a few magnolia branches which I'm trying to coax into opening their buds and we decided the culinary delights of this market could not possibly be enjoyed on one morning, so we vowed to return. And we did, today. With the express purpose of eating breakfast. They have such lovely things! Whole roasted fish, turkish breakfasts, waffles, swiss speacialities, sausage by the ton and everything fresh enough to sass you back and flanked by goregous produce. We chose to get a big mix of turkish goodness at one of the stands--my chickpeas in sauce, stuffed eggplant and chicken with mixed veggies didn't disappoint...although it did leave me with a hankering for really good turkish steetfood. I had stuffed mussels from some random vendor after a night of dancing with my landlady and her friends back in the day which occasinoally haunt me still. Is that what being a foodie is all about? I think so. Some things I've eaten just don't let me go. Another example would be the potato salad from Stephan's Grandpa. I could lay down and die happy in a bowl of it. Or his stuffed mushroom caps! The man can cook. He sent us a package of cured meats the other day which has had Stephan making himself secret sandwiches since.

Speaking of mushroom caps, one of the stands this morning had the HUGEST white mushroom caps ever. I got so excited when I saw them...and had to have them. I know they're not going to be close to what Stephan's Grandad can do, but I'm going to try. I'm envisioning a ground beef filling with elements of rosemary and feta cheese. Oooh, I'm already getting hungry. This isn't good.

Aside from the edible experiences of the last few weeks about which I could go on and on...things have been busy and I'm glad to have a weekend where not so much is going on to just kick back and relax. We're meeting friends later on for drinks...but just drinks, not dinner and not here for a change. Also refreshing. I love hosting. I love having people over and cooking and eating and wining together...but sometimes it's great when the action happens someplace else. However, the trip last Sunday to the Berliner'sche Galerie in Kreuzberg was fantastic. Well worth breaking my rule that nothing wild and social happens on Sundays. I went with a friend of mine who did some modeling work for them a while back. The exhibit was great...some really bizarre, thought-provoking art from the corporate collection of a natural gas company here in Berlin. I'd never really thought about it, but I guess it often happens that companies diversify their portfolios and that in large companies some of that "corporate art" hanging around might just be galery worthy. Let me tell you, the GASAG has some cool stuff. It's well worth a visit, although the neighborhood is a bit crap. Not dangerous or anything, just...nothing there. At least not in comparison to the bopping enclaves I'm used to in Berlin.

As interesting as all this is, I can't really surpress my hunger any more, so I'm going to go cruise the kitchen. I got some yummy greek yogurt today, and I think it's time has already come....

love and delicacies!

Catchup Post

Hello Kinners!

(Berlin'risch for "Kinders", which in Real German is actually "Kinder" which in English is...."children"--not meant condescendingly, much more conspiratorially.)

Good afternoon to you all.

I'd've loved to have posted sooner, but you know, I was kind of busy trying to get a year started. My sincere apologies. Really. I know you out there in the interweb have been hankering for my double conjunctions and rambliness (oh, and did I mention the made up words?).

I think I can say after about a month and a half, this year is off and running. 2009 had a tendency to beat me up and steal my lunch money, among other things. Twentyten is going to be better of course (aren't they always?) but I have an inkling that things will be just as challenging.

To save time and space and my wrists, I'm going to give you the quick and dirty version of all the silly whatnot, drama, wonder and beautiful scenery I've been bopping around in since we

last heard from eachother.

Let's rock.

1. The Karkonosze.

Looked something like this. This lovely chalet was apparently a best-kept secret among the nordic skiiers in Bedrichov. You could get delicious czech food for silly prices in a wonderfully dark, mountainy atmosphere. Of course, being the foodies we are, Stephan and I couldn't resist. He had pheasant with those dense czech dumplings and I had venison with a lovely mushroom sauce. We were out of there for under $20 and it was so delicious. It came close to rescuing the whole vacation for me. I'm not going to get into too much detail, but suffice to say there was

pouting, a few yelling matches, some bewilderment, a few grudges and I won't be going on vacation with another couple (or 2) any time soon. I could have lived long and happily not knowing all the things I know about that crowd now.

But such is life, right?

2. Ringing in the New Year

Technically this is cheating, because we did ring in the New Year in the Karkonosze with That Crowd, but we did it at this random village party that our landlady told us about. They'd transformed some huge old soviet-style community center (there were murals of virtuous workers on the walls) into a place for a mixer for everyone under 80 from the surrounding 5 villages. It was ridiculous. Stephan had rousing conversations with the youth about soccer (what else?) and I beat all comers at the foosball table. And there was a pink wig involved in which we were

all photographed at some point.

3. I'm training for a half marathon.

Unfortunately, Berlin is covered in a thick layer of ice and snow, which occasionally turns into a thick layer of slush and then refreezes. This makes training difficult and has kicked my otherwise titanium immune system in the proverbial junk. I seem to pick up whatever bacteria are floating around in my general vacinity and take them for a test drive. This makes training tricky. I've got a little less than 2 months to double my mileage. It's going to be tight, folks.

4. There was the Lange Nacht der Museen.

I love the Lange Nacht. It commeth twice a year and I plan these outings with military precision which cannot be found in any other area of my life at any other time. This year, stops included: the Berliner Zoo Aquarium, a fanastic fashion photography exhibit at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the very mediocre Film and Television Museum, an interesting exhibit of cover-jacket and poster art in the Kunstbibliothek and a depressing amount of religious iconography in the Gemälde Galerie (which reminded me why I'd never been there before).

I love aquariums. Not of the home variety...don't ask me why, but I'm not a fan. I love being in huge rooms just surrounded by even huger tanks of water full of fascinating creatures. It brings out the cancer in me, I think, being completely surrounded by water. I could lay down on a bench and sleep like a baby.

5. Sickness.

We're a bit out of order here, because technically, I was out of commission for the week before the Lange Nacht, but it was wretched. Stomach flu with all the fixings. I'll spare you the details, but it was noteworthy. Fastforward to now, which is me skipping my morning classes today to drink tea, take a eukalyptus bath and bond with the european homeshopping channel. I figured I have to give a course tonight and instead of doing everything today in a crappy/mediocre fashion, I could cut out a few things and do something well. We'll see if it works. I just know I also have to make it through the rest of this week somehow. Vive la Chamomile!

6. Matthias/Ladies Night.

Now we're back to recent things...like last weekend. Although Stephan and I have what we like to call our "rockstar" lifestyle, it usually does not include partying like said rockstars. It mostly includes eating like them...or eating really well, since I suspect that many rockstars subsist on pizza and random pills. This weekend, Matthias was in Berlin. Matthias of Rostock fame, who now lives in Hamburg who hasn't visited us in quite a while. It was great, but it was a bit on the ginsoaked side. Somehow it always is when we get together. We watched Bond, which is always good, but on Saturday I was invited to partake in a Ladies Night. Which is also something I don't do often. It wasn't ginsoaked, it was proseccosoaked. Oh dear, oh dear. On the way from Nici's house to the club, I think we entertained the entire subway. Without flashing anyone, which is perhaps a testament to the raucousness of the evening. In hindsight, I'm still pretty sure we were hilarious. I'm not going to pretend that Frannz is the end-all, be-all of the Berliner club scene, but it was appropriate for the evening. And they played almost all of the music we pregamed to. Since when is that not a win?

Somehow I think coming home at 6am on Sunday has something to do with my sniffleiciousness. However, I'm not that old yet, damn it...and I don't do it that often.

So.

It's official. You're all caught up. Mostly. Now I have to get caught up. I've got class to teach this evening, and I've got to finish the planning and perhaps get out of my nest here and get some photocopies made. And I need some sage tea. I'm fresh out and when you're feeling sniffly, there's nothing like sage tea. Chamomile is close, but sage is better. Take my word. You've got to get past the taste but once you do, it'll do you a world of good.

Anyway, I hope you all on the other side of the pond have managed to dig youselves out of your various snowpocalypses and are back to going about business as usual. Stay healthy and remember...the days are already getting longer. Spring is coming. I swear!

This post was brought to you by HSE24, Chamomile tea and my fuzzy pink blanket.