Paris

Top of Montmartre

After getting up at 4:30 this morning to make it onto the TGV on time, we made it to Paris by midday. (So close-easy to forget how close some cities are). Grabbed some rather mediocre salads for lunch at a restaurant near the hotel. Rested for a couple hours and read guide books. Decided to take the metro to the Montmartre district (art galleries, tourists, near the Moulin Rouge) and walk to the top of the hill where this huge church sits. Amazing view overlooking the city. The Eiffel tower lights up like a Christmas tree for ten minutes once an hour. So far, food experience not worth remarking on. Both restaurants today were not great. Hoping this will change tomorrow. Feel very handicapped not being able to speak the local language.

Off to Frog-Leg Land

When we were little my family would always eat dinner together. Most of the time, our maid would cook dinner (please, mom, do not protest. During the week, you did not usually cook. ;-) ) but sometimes my mother would. And generally mom stuck with the tried-and-true...I think. Occasionally there would be the serving of beef tongue in a tomato sauce with olives (disgusting - sorry mom, I don't care if Amy loved it, it was terrible), which might even find its way into our lunch the next day (mom, still can't believe you did this to us) in the form of some ground-up paste spread on bread with pickle relish. (I am suddenly horror-struck...) Moving ON NOW...

But I think I will NEVER forget the dinner of the teenage chicken legs. What, you ask? Teenage Chicken Legs? What are Teenage Chickens? We sat down to dinner that night and my mother pulled a baking sheet out of the oven. Lined up in their little chicken rows on the baking tin were perhaps 50 pairs of...legs. Animal legs. Breaded and baked. My mother casually piled a handful (perhaps 4? 5? pairs) on each of our plates. My sisters and I looked down at the plates with some skepticism. But Amy and I were pretty fearless when it came to food. Emily probably immediately asked for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After explaining to us carefully that these were teenage chickens ("about your age, girls, just chicken") we proceeded to eat. And truthfully, I don't even remember how they tasted. I just remember eying my dad as we ate. He was LAUGHING as he ate them. (Yes, you were, dad). But he wouldn't say why he was laughing. When we finished, my mom asked: "what did you think? want more?" But before we could answer, my father stood up (he couldn't hold it in any longer) and started...HOPPING around the room. Our mouths fell open. I turned to my mom: "why is dad hopping around?" My mother said "oh, just ignore him. These are french chickens." ????? At which point my dad said: "They are not chickens, they're frog legs!" Needless to say, the teenage girls did not eat any more teenage french chickens. (My mother proceeded to explain after that that in France, it is VERY COMMON to eat frog legs - yes, perfectly natural. :-PPP

I think I haven't eaten frog legs since then, although I have tried plenty of other amphibians and insects and sea creatures in general...

Tomorrow am off to frog-leg land for a week. Looking forward to visiting here for a few hours:



My friend, Dirk, recommended yesterday evening, that we buy a loaf of french bread, a really nice camembert cheese, a bottle of red wine, and then go sit on the beach (or the sea wall, I think he said) and watch the tide for 6-8 hours. Hoping to do so.

Honest Butterfly

Just grabbed lunch at a little Japanese noodle and sushi shop in downtown Munich, where I picked up some guide books for our upcoming trip. I didn't buy one of these, although I was tempted to grab the "Ehrlicher Schmetterling" (Honest Butterfly). A mix of mango and passionfruit juice. Not quite sure about the significance of the various animals. These are all fruit drinks...

Maybe the cute faces of the critters (ok, so the butterfly and the eagle are not CUTE per se) sell the drinks. But I would just want to buy them for the colors alone. Not that I did. Next time I guess I need to be thirstier...

Chicken Patiala, take 2

I didn't take a photo of it because actually, it's nothing special to
look at (white meat in a white sauce) but i did manage to make chicken
patiala last night that at least bore a close resemblance to the one
we ate in Singapore a couple months back.

My recipe:
Chop up about 800 grams of chicken (i used a mix of white and dark
meat) in 1 inch cubes. Heat water and season with salt and boil the
cubes for about 3-4 minutes. Drain.

Mix 1 1/3 cups yogurt with a tsp of ground white pepper.

In a blender, blend about 1/4 cup fresh coconut (i used dried, but
fresh would have been even better) 1/2 cup blanched skinless almonds
and about 100 ml of water until light and creamy.

Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a pan and put the chicken, the
spiced yogurt, 3 tbls of very finely julienned ginger, 3 finely
chopped thai bird chilies, and about 800 ml of water in. Let simmer
and reduce for about 15 min or until much of the liquid is gone.

Add the nut paste and cook 2 min.

Add 1/2 cup cream, 2 tbls lemon juice, 3/4 tsp ground cardomon, and 3
tsp rosewater.

Simmer again for about 15 min until the sauce is thick and creamy.

Add salt (about 1-2 tsp or to taste) and a bit of sugar ( i put in
about 1-2 tblsp) and a couple more teaspoons rosewater. take off the
heat and stir in two hard boiled and finely chopped eggs. Serve with
rice, yogurt, nice dry Riesling.

Dose of Regeneration

Made it to yoga on time. So looking forward to sweating my a** off for
the next 90 minutes.

Rainbow Surprise

I was running errands around downtown Munich today (Emily, I mailed the furs - you get one, Amy gets one - battle it out between you as to who gets the white and who gets the brown) and didn't realize that today was the Christopher Street festivities (Gay Pride day of sorts - not sure if this is happening in Berlin simultaneously? Somehow I always thought that it was celebrated there, but maybe it has expanded in Germany...) Anyway, so I had a lot of biking to do to get around all the festivities and get my errands done. Nonetheless, I caught glimpses of the parade as I peddled around, although I didn't take any photos...have just snagged these two off another website. The transvestites, as usual, were lots of fun to look at. Home now....time to sleep for an hour...then think about dinner.

Bing

Just read this article over on the NYTIMES. Maybe I've been too critical of Bing and I should give it a chance...need to try using it for a few days.

Funny is the joke that some people are saying Bing stands for "But It's Not Google."

If nothing else, while I like the clean simplicity of Google, I honestly have to say I also like the changing photography Bing uses for the background of the site.

I read an article a couple days ago that they are having a user competition - send in your best photography and it could be used as background image for the search engine. Could be great promo opportunity for photographers...:-) Need to dig it up again...

Although my iphone photography won't win me any prizes.

Promises, Promises

When I look out the window, I wonder if my iphone needs a lobotomy.

Curiosity Killed The Cat, Take 2

ok Em, you want the brown one or the white one or maybe a little grey
one? :-PPP. The cats seem intrigued by the strange skins, and as I
type this, they are playing on top of them. Maybe I should keep one.
(think u would prefer the brown...)

The Zoo

Plan: go to yoga this morning.
Reality: get hopelessly lost trying to use GPS on iphone (usually i
take the u-bahn/s-bahn to this studio so i don't know the above ground
route and my general sense of direction is laughably horrible) and end
up giving up and simply taking long bike ride down the Isar, past the
zoo. Let's see if I am more successful with yoga during the week.
Now: sleep for an hour, get the 30 min of work done i need to have
complete for tomorrow morning, figure out what to cook for dinner,
clean up. Routine. Slave to routine. :-P

California Dreaming

It's nice here, don't get me wrong. And there is a lot to be said for German summers. Most of the time they are not too hot. And ...um...sometimes it doesn't rain here...(thinking hard now..) oh yeah, the street cafes and beer gardens are VERY nice. whew. But now I may get harassed by Dirk who yelled at me yesterday for publishing photos of the Fachwerk houses in Schiltach because he said I was doing Germany a disservice by perpetuating its stereotypical image of things like cuckoo clocks from the black forest and those typical wooden houses and certainly talking about beer gardens does not move us past the cliches. But, as my mother would say, "cliches are truth," at least some of the time. So while I liked riding my bike back after the movies tonight (State of Play - can really recommend, even though Russel Crowe looks like HELL) along the river, I still really miss the beach. I will never forget the first time in California. I was there for two weeks before heading back to university. Of 14 days, my sisters and I spent 11 of them at the beach, reading, picnicking, dreaming.

The movie was really good, perhaps particularly for me because at the moment I am really fascinated by how journalism is continuing to evolve in the new world of changing news business models. Reading a lot of Jeff Jarvis most days. So interesting to watch how the politics and the business side of news affects what is being printed-or not. Can't help but be sort of disgustingly fascinated by the columns written by Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins of the NYTimes these days. Biting wit and incredible talent both of them. But sometimes it's easier just not to read some things and wonder about motivations for articles (well in their cases, editorials) Anyway, enough for now. Go see State of Play. Good.

I Love Summer

Landscape 1

Between Stuttgart and Ulm again

Shower World

Just in case you are ever in Schiltach, I have a recommendation for you.
Go try out the free "Shower World" at Hansgrohe. What is it? Well, the company is famous for its showers, among other things, and in order to convince you of the quality of its products, and show you the enthusiasm it has for what it sells, it has built a beautiful facility called the "Aquadamie." Here you can find a museum, explaining the history of the over hundred-year-old company, extensive exhibits of all of its products, full bathroom concepts, and try out the "Shower World." What is Shower World? Well, here, you can strip down, throw on a provided bathing suit (or not - your choice), grab a towel and soap, and wander from shower to shower trying out a large variety of their products. And that's what we (THE GIRLS on my team from 9 am to 10 am and the MEN from 10 am to 11 am) did this morning for an hour. :-)))))














































































Here some photos from the museum:























































































And some photos of some of the bath concepts:




























































































And a photo of the shower I want in my bathroom now. :-)))

New Word For Me: Gerberei

Gerberei means tannery. I.e., the place where they transform animal skin/fur into products...

And there is one of these just around the corner from where we are working at the moment.

We had two hours to rest this afternoon (aaaaahhhhhhhhhhh) and all I wanted to do was curl up under a blanket for an hour.

So, headed out. The wind was already whipping the leaves into a frenzy on the pavement and the storm clouds were menacing overhead.

See:



















But just across the street, we saw pelts hanging outside and I got interested. And we had two hours, so why not just go look quickly?

We've seen so little of Schiltach - other than a couple stores, inns, restaurants and the client site...



So over we went. The smell of a tannery greets you first and foremost. It goes beyond the pleasant smell of fresh leather more in the direction of the scent of the animal. But I like the smell of sheep's wool, even if has a strong odor. (Our cats hate it though - I once bought them a little sheep skin because I thought they might like it as a bed, but both of them wouldn't go near the thing).

So, saw a bunch of products that they seem to manufacture there - really beautiful and soft.


































And then came the hail and rain.Look. No, LOOK. Open up the photo and blow it up. It was like SHEETS of water.
And it didn't seem to stop.
So we ran
not too far really, perhaps 200 meters.
we kicked off our shoes, and scampered through the allies and over the cobblestone streets and got soaking wet.

And then I slept.

And now....we work..

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Title of the post more appropriately: curiosity will leave you soaking
wet.

Just a quick line now because I will write a proper blog entry later
tonight. we have a two hour break at the moment before we start our
internal wrap up meetings. Britta and i decided to go back to the
hotel to sleep, but we were waylaid because i wanted to see the little
factory that produces sheep pelt products. It started to hail and we
made a run for it, which left us soaked, but at least also refreshed.

My Future New Best Friend

Co-worker Christian has very generously offered to lend me his new best friend (otherwise known as vacation) after I asked politely ;-):