the tragedy of lake mead

We are making our way from Los Angeles to Chicago right now and we've decided to take a few detours and see the sights. One of which was supposed to be the man-made wonder that is Lake Mead Recreation Park. Unfortunately, we drove all the way down the boat launch and still weren't in the water, even though the GPS had us placed squarely in the blue.

Global warming at work I suppose, or perhaps just mankinds folly in thinking that they can divert a river and make it into a lake all in the middle of the desert. And we wonder why we have ecological problems throughout this country. Next thing you know, they're going to want to divert all of the fresh water from Lake Michigan to the water starved metropolises out West. I say NO! go live somewhere that water doesn't evaporate year round.

That's my thought anyway. Well, onto Zion National Park.

The Return

I am officially back in Chicago. And the only word for how I'm feeling right now is surreal. I'd like to go back to Germany please. Or at least go on vacation. Somehow I don't think my three week trip to El Salvador is going to come soon enough.

Last Day of Work

Well, that's that. Yesterday I finished up with work and am just about to embark on the madness of packing up my life here in Frankfurt. It's hard to believe that it's all over actually. I have one week of packing madness here and then many weeks of unpacking madness complimented by my dad's own unique brand of insanity. Here's hoping I stay sane through it all.

It's been a remarkable experience here in Frankfurt. In fact, I enjoyed this job more in the last year and a half than I have in a very long time. It's definitely due in no small part to the people that I had the opportunity to work with. Right to the end they managed to exceed all of my expectations whether it was taking extra time to be thoughtful about my review and how I could build on my experiences to giving me a leaving do that was more than almost anything I could have hoped for complete with my very own Schultutte (first day of school dealy) and a map where I could pin all of my travels in the last year.

More than anything, I feel like I'm leaving this job, this office actually, with new friends that I'll have drifting in and out of my life for a long, long time. I'm very lucky that way.

So, onto the packing madness I suppose.

Lost in the UK: Surfing Devon

Ever have one of those trips where even if the conditions aren't exactly perfect it's still fantastic? This would be one of those trips. I have to say, despite the forecast, the waves are pretty crap. With my luck they'll smooth out on Monday when I'm back in Frankfurt for my VERY LAST DAY. Whoohoo!

Anyhow, crappy waves aside, the trip is pretty fantastic. Great girls, great food. Even some good music. We heard a band on Friday night called Scaramoose. Totally local, and with a kind of Jack Johnson/Ben Harper sound to them.

So it's been such a trip to far. I arrived on Thursday, Kerry gave me ENDLESS crap about my board bag. Which is a lovely board bag, if you have 3 boards which I do not. Anyway, we manhandled the sucker into the car and headed to her house. Our 5am start time didn't pan out quite how we had hoped, but we still managed to get onto the road by about 6am and we missed ALL Of the Glastonbury traffic somehow and even squeezed in a quick session before the other girls arrived.

It has been incredibly windy so far. So bad in fact that the other girls tried to put up their tent and one of the tent poles BROKE! Can you believe it? Crap tent if you ask me, but anyway, they've managed to swing themselves a camper that has heat and a real shower in it so I suppose we're making out well in the end. Kerry and I are actually camping which is great. Wake up to the birds calling and the waves breaking. And when you step outside the tent you can do a surf check right on Croyde Bay right then and there. Absolutely lovely. And there are two other breaks that we've been surfing as well, Putsborough Sands and Saunton Beach. The surf culture here in North Devon is truly amazing. There are surf boards and surf shops everywhere. When picturing the dream world of surfing, it's always been SoCal or Hawaii that really pop into my head, but man are they hardcore here. And they have so many places to go. Incredible.

Anyhow, I'm so glad I was able to squeeze this in before I leave Europe. Hopefully I'll be able to find more opportunities to travel with her even when I'm back in the States. . . .

Euro Cup 2008: Germany wins!!!

Amazing! Germany has won a spot in the Euro cup finals. I can't believe it! Not that they played particularly well against Turkey, but man! They won!! There are car horns going off everywhere tonight it's like the entire city has come out to celebrate!

Go Deutschland!

Already missing Frankfurt

I haven't even left the city yet and somehow I already miss it. I can't believe that I'm only a few weeks away from leaving Germany and heading back to the States for grad school. I know that it's the right decision, but somehow I just can't get excited about giving up my life here and going back to school.

There's something about leaving a city just when you start getting to know it and you start building a life there that actually feels like it could be yours. Frankfurt finally began to feel like a home to me after a little less than a year and a half. Good friends, an incredible boyfriend, and a world of experiences that have changed how I view the world. I finally know where to find the best produce in the farmers markets, the waiters at my favorite Italian spot know me by name and pour me a glass of good wine as soon as I walk in the door to order carry-out after a long day at work, I have found my favorite cafe to sit and read in. And my little apartment feels like home.

It's a hard moment to pick up again and know that I have to start all over again back in a city that was home for so many years. Somehow it feels like going backwards even though I know that I'm starting an entirely new phase of my life.

I am forever grateful to have had this experience and I know that somehow, Frankfurt will always feel a little like home to me, even though I only had the chance to be here for the briefest amount of time.

Euro Cup 2008: Germany beats Portugal!!

Oh my god! Germany has beat Portugal! We're on to the semi-finals now! Euro Cup here we come!

Germany Wins!

Germany has beat Austria! It was a kind of dicey game, a little underhanded on our part, but we beat Austria and are moving onto play Portugal next. It's incredible. I'm so glad I can be here for the excitement of it all. I love cheering on my adopted homeland.

Sorry Nick, I'm just not ready to root for Austria yet. . . .

Whirlwind Chicago Weekends and Frankfurt Springs

So last weekend I hopped a plane for a 48 hour turnaround in Chicago to try and find an apartment now that I've officially committed to going back to Chicago for grad school. It was more than a whirlwind I have to say, I viewed close to 20 apartments in less than 48 hours before getting back on a plane to Frankfurt. But I think the trip was a success as I believe I have found a place I could happily live in for the next 2 years or so. And! I've found a little piece of my german home not too far from the apartment I'm hoping to sign on. Yup, so here's a little toast to my return to Chicago. I'll have to lift a glass at Prost once I get back there.

Anyhow, I arrived back in Frankfurt, mercifully not feeling too much jetlag and got back to my lovely abode just in time to miss being struck on the head by a massive thunderstorm complete with hail! I swear I have had the strangest weather since arriving in Frankfurt. No snow all winter until about May, and now that it's pretty much Summertime we're getting heat waves followed by huge thunderstorms complete with hailstones. And it had been so hot when I got home that I opened all of the windows, so I ended up with little hailstones melting all over the apartment. Strange days.

Lost in Belgium: Surfing in Oostende

After traipsing around Brugge for a few hours, Nick and I decided on a whim to head up to the coast and dip our toes into the North Sea in a beachside town called Oostende. Immediately when we pulled into the center of town it was clear that this place was a summer tourist beach destination, probably in the order of say the Jersey shore or Rehobeth beach in Delaware. But because it's only the end of May, it was still pretty quiet.

We got down to the shore and my first thought was, 'Why didn't I bring Kyma!' That would be my surfboard, yes, Big Red actually has a name. Anyway, the waves weren't amazing, but they were there and just as I was starting to wonder if anyone surfed in this town, Nick looked over at this van parked along the boardwalk and said to me "Hey, do you think those guys are surfers?" They were pulling on wetsuits, so my bed was yes. And sure enough about 30 minutes later, there was a solid handful of guys out in the water, leaving me on the short to wade up to my ankles and get all windblown. Sad, but honestly if I had known you could surf up there, I'd have probably been making weekend trips there for the last two months. Oh well, next time I suppose. First I have to learn to read the weather charts so I can actually make it worthwhile. Nice to know there's surfable water nearby though.

Oh, and Oostende was actually quite cute, even though it was touristy. After he managed to drag me away from the surfers, we walked down near the harbor and were met with the site of fish stand upon fish stand upon fish stand. Most of them were selling a combination fresh fish, smoked fish and some kind of fish stew usually. I walked away with a lightly pickled raw herring and a smoked herring that I thought might be kind of like the smoked whitefish I love having with my dad at home. (FYI: It turned out to be quite tasty, but also completely whole. I've never had to clean out a smoked fish before but this one, well lets just say that in addition to de-boning it, I also had to clean out the innards)

We ended up having an amazing meal of mussels before we left. I mean, I don't think it's possible to go to Belgium and not has the trifecta of foods it's known for: Mussels, Beer and Waffles. Oh and chocolate. I can't forget chocolate. Because I love chocolate almost as much as I love little critters that live in shells for eating.

Lost in Europe: Eurovision 2008

So last night, I had the joy of experiencing Eurovision 2008. For those American types who like me have no idea what this is, allow me to explain. Eurovision is a multinational talent music contest conducted every year with representatives from a series of countries throughout Europe, Russia and (strangely) Israel. Basically, it's like American Idol for the European continent. However it only takes place on one night. So all these countries hold their preliminary contests locally (although some apparently just pluck a group out of the ether) and the on a single night, they broadcast the performances throughout Europe. Each country is then allowed to vote (but they can't vote for their own country) and a winner is named.

We watched a broadcast of the contest commentated thstrange talent contest commentated by a very funny British newscaster, who filled the gaps between performances with snarky commentary on the trend of Eastern Block countries only voting for each other, thus the ongoing run Eastern European countries coming out tops. In the meantime I was treated to performances featuring strange Pirates of the Caribbean singing, overly plastic surgeried Swedish performers, Retro Frenchmen and a very strange Spanish man who was truly terrible. Most of the songs were in English, but a few groups bucked the trend by singing in their native language. At the end of the performances, the lines are opened up and people from all the participating countries are allowed to vote for 30 minutes before the winner is finally announced.

At the end of it all, the winner is Russian singer Dima Bilan who I believed my lovely commentator referred to as Michael Flatley on rollerskates.

Lost in Portugal: Sights around Lisboa

So, I neglected to actually write more posts while I was in Lisbon, therefore I don't really have a place to put these as my earlier posts were rather random and too specific, but I have to say that I loved Lisbon as a city, it is quite beautiful with some wonderful architecture that really reflects the different cultural groups that have lived in and shaped the city.

Even though most of the weekend was cool, rainy and grey, I adored wandering through the steep, narrow city streets. In fact, the cool, rainy weather combined with the replica Golden Gate Bridge over the harbor and the steep, narrow streets climbing up the hillside just made Lisbon feel that much more like San Francisco. Although San Fran feels more upscale in many ways.

We saw quite a bit of the city and with the less than favorable weather even made it to the Lisboa Oceanario which has a phenomenal saltwater tank as its centerpiece, including perhaps the coolest fish ever, the Mola Mola, or Ocean Sunfish, a gigantic saltwater fish that can grow up to 11ft long and enjoys drifting on its side while the currents carry it through the ocean. Plus a fair number of sharks and barracudas floating around inside.

We hit most of the big sites: St. Jorge's Castle, Belém where we saw the Belém Tower and Jerónimos Monastery (both UNESCO World Heritage sites), the Chiado shopping district (although this time I refrained from tragging Nick through another shopping marathon), the Bairro Alto, and even the Jardim Botanico, which was slightly disappointing after the immensity of Berlin's Tiergarten. That combined with all the walking around the city gave us a pretty good sense of things although I can definitely see coming back for a longer stay. Plus perhaps a bit more time on the coast . . . gotta work on my timing on the waves after all.

Lost in Portugal: Lisboa Graffiti

Saw a load of cool graffiti in Lisbon last weekend. Lots of it was stencil work with some freehand stuff, but the stencil stuff was so prevalent it made me wonder if it might be a single artist.

Lost in Portugal: Pastel de Belém

So one of the things that we were told was an absolute, must try food in Lisbon was the Pastéis de Belém, a small egg cream tart in puff pastry. According to local lore, the recipe for this particular pastry cream is a closely held secret and only three people in Belém know the recipe, passing it down from one generation to the next as each retires. Jamie Oliver apparently tried to recreate the recipe without success, he just wasn't able to replicate the silky texture of the cream.

So with that knowledge in hand, we headed to what is supposedly the birthdplace of this tasty, creamy little tartlet, Antiga Fábrica de Pastéis de Belém. And taste, and taste, and taste we did. Tiny, silky smooth tarts, still warm from the oven. Flaky and tender but still sturdy as you bit into it so that you didn't end up with a lapfull of puff pastry shreds.

We purchased two dozen with the intention of bringing them home for our co-workers, but unfortunately the pastries were left behind as an unintentional gift for our new friends at the Surf Castle. I guess we'll have to return to Lisbon to partake in the joy again.

Lost in Portugal: Sintra Views

Sintra is this beautiful little village in Portugal, a UNESCO World Heritage site in fact (I seem to be racking up quite a few of these lately), that we stopped in before heading out to the coast for my surf experience.

We didn't have nearly as much time as we would have liked to have in the town so we didn't get to see the summer palace, but we did hike up to the Moorish Castle (ruins actually) which took a good hour. The view was completely worth the time and effort (we foolishly hiked along a road instead of the trail from the village, a bit hairy now and then when the locals would come barreling around the tight, steep turns).

The castle wall was supported from below by enormous granite (?) boulders that must have been carried through the landscape by glaciers during the ice age. From the topmost part of the castle wall you could see all the way down the coastline, even to Ericeira an incredibly famous surf spot. Unfortunately I couldn't tell what the waves were like from there, but we didn't go there anyway so it didn't really matter. Next time, when I'm actually better at this crazy sport I've picked up.

Lost in Portugal: Surf Castle

So it's hard to fly all the way to Portugal, which has some of the best surfing in Europe along the coast, and not at least attempt to get in the water for a few sessions. Unfortunately this entire weekend was massively blown-out with super high winds, mostly coming on-shore Saturday and Sunday. But today, today it is better. After a grey start this morning, we headed out from Sintra to Peniche so I could once again tempt fate in the water.

I had heard about this place in Portugal called the Surf Castle from a couple I met in Famara in March. So when I knew I was heading to Lisbon, I looked them up and got in touch to see if I could get a local heads up on the wave conditions and also maybe score a lesson. Still lots to learn after all.

The owner, Joao, was incredibly helpful, besides giving me the insider update on the conditions (which led to me NOT dragging my board along with us this weekend), he also helped me set up a session with an instructor named Pedro. All in all, a pretty sweet afternoon although I was only able to get a single, hour and a half long session in and the water is sooo much colder than it was in Famara. Once you start moving though you don't really notice, besides it's going to be a lot colder in Chicago this winter. Yes, if you look very closely at that little black dot in this picture, that is me, actually surfing. Albeit not as well as I would have liked . . .

The waves were small, but Pedro said it was the glassiest day they had all weekend, and besides I wasn't complaining, it's not like I can afford to be picky after all.Anyway, even a short session is good for me. The more time in the water the better I say! Gotta work on my timing paddling into the waves though. Practice makes perfect!

So a funny bit of the day actually took place over a late afternoon snack that Nick and I had with Pedro and his girlfriend. They asked me how I had found out about the the Surf Castle, as I related my Lanzarote story, talking about this kind of crazy Italian guy and his Irish girlfriend, they said, "You know Allie and Jenny? They're hysterical. They're coming back in September."

Not that I was really that surprised that they remembered those two, but Pedro even commented on Jenny's board, which isn't really her board since Allie rides it ALL the time. But anyway, love the small world connections.

Lost in Portugal: Coffee Days

Much to Nick's delight we have discovered that Lisbon has quite the coffee culture. In fact, I think ordering coffee in Lisbon might almost be a complicated as ordering coffee in Vienna. A fact Nick found highly reassuring. That and the coffee tastes sooo good. Strong, but not burnt, deep roasts that can be served any number of ways if you just know how to ask for it. Not that we managed to figure that out in three days, but it was good nonetheless. Wish I had pictures, but sadly I have none.

Here is my quick Lisboa coffee primer, courtesy of my failed attemps and TimeOut Lisbon:

For Milky Coffee in a glass, ask for um Galao, basically like a latte but if you add the words Maquina, you should get coffee that's fresh from the machine as opposed to coming from the carafe of the stuff that's been sitting around for a while getting burnt

For a Cappucino like drink ask for uma Meia da leite (half milk).

For Espresso, ask for Bica but ask for um cafe or um duplo if you'd like a double shot.

For the really strong stuff, ask for uma Italiana, a tiny cup of sludgy coffee essence.

Granted, they don't take it quite to the levels of the Viennese, but I have no doubt that if you really know the city, one would find that the subtleties are just as extensive when you know your way around.

Lost in Portugal: Capoeira in the Street

We started the morning wandering through the streets down towards the water and the main square. As we walked down that way, pounding drums and chanting started to fill the causeway between the buildings. I always love street musicians so we made our way towards the crowd and the drumming to find the delightful spectacle of a Capoeira school doing a demonstration with the instructors and their students.

We stood and watched while the teachers and their students wove a dance of martial arts and gymnastics. It was great. I've always wanted to learn a martial art, perhaps this should be my next sport . . .

Lost in Portugal: Literally lost

This may be the worst marked subway station ever. It took us asking directions three times before we were able to locate it, and getting to it meant walking over a highway and through a roundabout. Not so convenient. . .

lost in Portugal: Caracois, caracois

OK, we arrived in Lisbon. It was kind of cold and rainy and I was STARVING! Big shock there I'm sure.

So Nick and I went wandering around our hotel to see what we could find to eat. We wandered into this tiny little storefront and ordered a couple of sandwiches. I happened to see two women behind us eating what looked like a plate of teeny, tiny escargot. So when the server came over I said "I'd like a small plate of those, please."

He looked at me, said "Caracois?"

And I said, yes, what those girls are having. With smile he returned about 5 minutes later with a steaming, garlicky pile of tiny little snails, complete with tiny, little, smiling snail heads that had antennae.

Now I'm a pretty adventurous eater, but for just a moment even I paused. But after a stern, internal pep talk, I dug in with my toothpick while Nick looked on rather horrified. Until he tried them. And boy were they tasty. As long as you can get over the little heads, these suckers are really, really good. Nick only made it through four, but I devoured a good plateful almost before I was full.

Although not for the squeamish, I highly recommend them if you happen to be in Portugal and they're available.