Impressive, those Swedes

The other day on the train, I witnessed a group of six first-graders (all tiny little blonde girls in adorable outfits -- like sorority sisters, but cute and not mean and only two feet tall) go totally mental when the train passed an Ikea:

"IKEA, IKEA, THERE'S IKEA!!!"

*really high voices and squeeky noises*

It was weird. And funny. And Ikea's marketing folks should probably win award after award for successfully establishing brand awareness FOR A FURNITURE STORE in six-year-olds.

Gorgeous then, gorgeous now

Thinking back to my childhood days almost always brings up memories about our backyard. I spent so much time out there, playing by myself or with friends from the neighborhood, in the sandbox or on the swingset my father had built for me (we'd excavate plastic smurf figurines years later at the spot where the sandbox used to be), scavenging through the vegetable garden for sweet baby carrots, snap peas and strawberries (under the strict but tolerating eyes of my Grandfather), or splashing in the little pool my parents put out for me in summer (frequently terrified by the dead insects that would inevitably float around in there after a couple of days). At some point I had a bunny rabbit (Piefke), later a cat (Jana), and for many years there were sheep grazing on a pasture just behind the fence at the end of the garden (now the location of two three-story apartment buildings). Clockwise from top left: with a birthday party, feeding the sheep, August 1981; on the swing, Spring 1981; my Grandparents, ca. late 1980s; still owning a sandbox, Summer 1987; with my tricycle and Herr Nilsson, Spring 1981; in desperate need for a bath, Spring 1981; with my friend Jessica, Summer 1985.

Back in the day, the backyard was mostly a veggie and fruit garden, with a lawn area to sit and relax. The older my grandparents got, the smaller the garden area became, with the lawn expanding and taking over areas where rows of asparagus and onions used to be. When I was small, my grandparents would spend hours sowing and harvesting and digging and raking, with me "helping" them, cleaning carrots, pitting cherries, or cutting apples to be cooked into applesauce. There were rows of glasses with preserved fruits in our basement, and a freezer full with frozen veggies. The older I got, the less gardenwork my grandparents did, with more time being spent sitting in the comfy garden chairs enjoying the sun or taking a nap in the shade. Especially my Granddad always hated wintertime, when he couldn't spend much time outside.

Over the recent years, my parents have transformed the backyard into a beautiful ornamental garden. My Mom has an amazing talent for selecting the right plants for the right places and arranging and layering shrubs and perennials, annual plants and bulbs, and caring for them so that they perform a true firework of colors, blossom shapes and sizes all throughout the season.

Since my Grandmother is bedridden at the moment and can't enjoy the garden like she usually would, I took a bunch of pictures that I showed to her in the hospital. A nurse even encouraged us to tape a couple printouts to a wall near her bed.

In Germany, in May

I came home to Germany in a family matter a couple of days ago, rather spontaneously. For four years now I've only ever visited around Christmas time (with the exception of our wedding in late October 2006, when it was almost as cold as in December, for the most part), and had almost forgotten about how beautiful it is here this time of year. The lovely scenery made an adventurous drive over abandoned dirt roads and through tiny Northern German villages -- caused by slight navigation challenges faced by the driver and his front-seat passenger (hello, dear parents!) -- a real treat.

Not sure why they call it a "smart" phone...

...if it allows you to do things like this:


(Ed and I got ourselves a new pair of BlackBerry phones. It lets me take pictures and upload them to my Flickr photostream.)

Paradise is here

There's certain things you just can't overpraise -- Al Gore, warm summer nights, and Radio Paradise for example. The last-mentioned is an internet radio station featuring the best music mix ever. For over a year now, RP belongs to our household like good wine does to the before-mentioned summer nights, and it just doesn't get boring. Which would be nearly impossible given a program that plays Benny Goodman's version of Ravel's 'Bolero' one minute, Elton John's 'Funeral for a Friend' the very next, followed by some 'Cafe del Mar' or Coldplay. RP is commercial-free, listener-supported on a voluntary basis, and it is just pure joy to support something this good. (It's certainly no crime to listen for free, but every ever-so-small contribution yields double karma points...)



RP sounds as good during work as it does during dinner, and everyone sceptical of this praise just go and listen to it for just 30 minutes.

Good & healthy

I realize I'm a little late to the game, but if you haven't already, go rent (or buy, buy!) and watch "Once". This precious little movie riveted Ed and I to the couch and made our eyes water - I don't think I have been touched by music like this since my teenage years. Except that this music is much, much better.




Also very good: Mysterious Thursdays, brought to us by Mariquita Farms. Every two weeks, $25 buy you a box full of the loveliest organic veggies, and you never know what you'll get. Much of the box's content is pretty unique, which forces you to cook outside of your comfort zone, and discover your new favorite veggies. This was yesterday's box:



Yum, yum, yum...

Happy Easter!

We spent Easter with a colorful mix of traditions:

Old ones, like the easter egg tree, which is a German custom -- ours is a branch of pear tree I bought at a flower shop down the street.

Newer ones, like getting together with dear friends to decorate eggs -- I was too busy hollowing, painting, and glueing to take any photos, but Kathy posted her lovely pictures from our crafty afternoon.

And then there were quintessential San Francisco traditions, like the Easter festivities that take place annually in Dolores Park, where Ed and I spent a sunny afternoon yesterday, surrounded by the most multifaceted mix of people, reminding me why I love San Francisco so much.

All pictures here -- sun, fun, and hunky Jesuses...

Patented formula

What do you get if you combine the following:

1. Snow, lots of snow,
2. Wonderful home-cooked meals (including Biscuits & Gravy, Coq au Vin and a killer Italian menu),
3. Hours of hanging out with dear friends, drinking, chatting, playing games?

You get the 2008 edition of our annual trip to the Lake Tahoe area, 200 miles northeast of San Francisco, 6000-plus feet up in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

This year, we stayed in Truckee, directly at Donner Lake, in a beautiful cabin our friend Marg had secured for the eight of us. We had four wonderful days up there, including fun in the snow (skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing), spectacular discoveries (a visit to an abandoned train tunnel at Donner Pass), and just the right mix of serious fun and insane determination (Ed on our nightly walk along Donner Lake, proving that the waterline was much further out than we thought, by jumping from the pier into the snow below -- which did in fact turn out to be snow on solid ground, not snow on thin, mushy ice with lots of wet, cold lake underneath).

All pictures of this fabulous weekend with friends that like to eat, cook, and have a great time more than almost anything else are right here.

New bowlz, he has dem.

We bought a couple of new bowls for Popstickle the other day. Since I hated all the bowls I saw at the pet store, I had gottem him a set of simple soup bowls at Target a while back -- pretty porcelain dishes that weren't an eyesore on our back balcony, where we typically feed the little stray. But when I saw these cute bowls at Kamei last week, I couldn't help but buy them. It wasn't until I took this picture that I realized that the cat in the bowl looks just like Popstickle -- in color, and almost in shape as well.

Holiday pictures

I've finally gotten around to posting our pictures from our trip home to Germany for the holidays. There are two albums:

Home for Christmas - Pictures from our arrival in Germany, my Grandma's 82nd birthday, a night out with my parents, Christmas tree shopping, Christmas Eve, and much more.

In Berlin - Pictures from the short trip Ed, Tucker and I took to Berlin, to visit some of the amazing sights the German capital has to offer.

Sweetfest

It could have been any other day of the year, and normally Ed and I don't make a big deal about Valentine's Day, but this year I had such a wonderful time baking and cooking to celebrate the day a bit.

The Raspberry-Almond Financiers from Martha Stewart in the picture on the left were fairly easy to make, looked lovely, and were extremely delicious. And if I had read the entire recipe thoroughly, I woudn't have made them in paper baking cups, but directly in the muffin tin. Which would have saved us a lot of hassle peeling the little lovelies out of the paper to which they stuck to, badly. Well, I guess that's something to remember the next time I make them.

I made Crepes for breakfast, filled with Gruyere & ham, goat cheese & honey & pine nuts, and Nutella. For dinner I made a yummy salad, a filet mignon, and baked goat cheese with baguette. There was crepe batter left over from breakfast, so I made Crepes Suzette for dessert, using a lot of butter and Grand Marnier. We ate them watching the movie "Paris, je t'aime", and felt like God in France, on Valentine's Day.

More pictures of this Sweetfest here...

Looking for Bobcats

Yesterday was "Presidents' Day", a holiday officially named "Washington's Birthday", on which some people get a day off work, and others don't, depending on your employer. Fortunately, Ed had the day off, and so we went on a little hike on the Bobcat Trail in Marin County, just a few miles north of San Francisco. We weren't so lucky to spot a Bobcat, but it was beautiful anyway.

German according to LOST

Everyone's favorite TV show LOST baffles us frequently, A LOT, but last week's episode offered a special surprise. A scene was set in Germany, and as Sayid walked into a restaurant we caught a glimpse of the handwritten menu near the entrance. Which had apparently been written by someone who learned German in school. For a while. A long time ago. "Grilltes Huhnerfilet" instead of "Gegrilltes Hühnerfilet", "Knobloch Kartoffen" instead of "Knoblauch-Kartoffeln", and "Bratkartoffen" instead of "Bratkartoffeln". But my confidence in the LOST makers remains, and I can't wait to see how they're gonna explain this one...

Bookbinding, or: I can only do this in English.

I recently took some classes at the San Francisco Center for the Book, such as Bookbinding, among others. It is extremely fascinating to learn what goes inside a handbound book, and I caught myself several times now standing in front of my bookshelf or in a bookstore, analyzing the parts of various books.

Besides the fact that a book isn't "just a book" for me anymore, but a sophisticated and meticulously assembled piece of craftmanship made from beautiful materials, taking these classes had another side effect: I'm adding words to my English vocabulary for which I don't know the German equivalents. While I'm experiencing this in other areas after almost four years in the US, it is especially the case with bookbinding. What the heck does flyleaf mean in German, what is the equivalent of a spine wrapper, what do you call turn-ins in my native tongue?

Thanks to some German bookbinding sites on the internet I was able to whip my vocabulary book into shape, at least for the most part, so that the German descriptions of the photos I took during class aren't too interspersed with English bookbinding lingo. Enjoy!

All pictures here:
Bookbinding II - from sections to a sewn textblock, and "Hooray, the case fits!"
Bookbinding III - a nicely rounded spine deserves a handsewn endband

P.S. One of the German bookbinding websites that I really like a lot is tulibri's blog, published by a German bookbinding enthusiast with great photos and descriptions. In both German and English!

Oops.

"Look, Sweetie, the pictures of Mike and Marg that Jay took with our camera at Jess's wedding, near that window in the back, towards the end of the evening...?"

"Yes?"

"They're all totally weird. I wonder what he was doing. They're framed completely odd."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, they're pretty much useless."

"Sweetheart, _I_ took these pictures."

[Silence]

All pictures of Jess and Doug's wedding here. Almost all of them.

Trick or Treat - Halloween 2007

Halloween is one of Ed's most favorite holidays, and we celebrated it this year with a party at our house. As usual, I had lots of fun cooking and decorating - when else can you make maggots out of marzipan and serve noodle salad in a kitty litter box?

The winners of our costume contest, if only we had had one: Danan and Manisha as "Ed and Ineke" (top right in the picture).

All photos here:
Kathy and I carving pumpkins (10/11/2007)
Halloween party (10/26/2007)

One year ago...

October 28, 2007, Handeloh-Wörme

Ed and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary this Sunday. Hard to believe that it's already been a year since we celebrated our wedding with family and friends! In the last few days Ed and I indulged in reminiscences about the weeks surrounding our wedding, about the marvelous party, the preparations, the time together with American and German friends before and after the wedding in Germany. We enjoyed the whole thing so much, and I would immediately do it again the exact same way (even though Ed is wrinkling his forehead about that right now).

...and today
We spent our wedding anniversary with a trip to Moss Beach, and enjoyed the sunny Sunday afternoon while looking out on the ocean. The keepsake picture we took shows that, one year later, we look almost as good as on our wedding day, and are at least as happy.

More visitors from Germany

Denny and Kiru from Hamburg and Bremerhaven came to visit us for a couple weeks in September. They arrived a few days before Ed's birthday, and we practically didn't stop celebrating for two and a half weeks. All pictures here.

The last 6

They're finally online: Photos of the last six days of my parents' visit here in SF. A little sightseeing, a 4th of July BBQ, and suddenly it was all over and we had to say goodbye. Luckily only until December, since Ed and I will go to Germany for Christmas.

The three weeks with my parents were amazing, we still talk about their visit all the time. And the goodbye note they left on our fridge still makes me smile every day:

we are happy and
always had fun
it was wonderful
Mother with Man

All pictures here:
Day 15 - A walk to Fisherman's Wharf (07/01/2007)
Day 16 - Trip to Sausalito (07/02/2007)
Day 17 - Alamo Square, Chinatown, North Beach (07/03/2007)
Day 18 - 4th of July BBQ (07/04/2007)
Day 19 - The last night (07/05/07.2007)
Day 20 - Goodbye (06.07.2007)

Limo, Wine, and Sushi

Day 14 of my parents' visit was marked by more "firsts", one being the limo we had rented for a trip to the Wine Country. Had you seen how flabbergasted my parents were every time we encountered a limo during our roadtrip (or a Hummer, or an RV, or an RV pulling a Hummer), you would understand how rare limos (or Hummers, or RVs, or RVs pulling Hummers) are in Germany. Thus, they were quite enthusiastic about being chauffered around in one in Northern California's beautiful Wine Country.

Later that day, we spontaneously decided to throw in another premiere: the encounter of my parents and... sushi. It went quite well, but don't expect them to be sad if sushi was permanently and globally banned as of tomorrow. (And no, they wouldn't have any tonight either.)

All pictures here:
Day 14 - A trip to the Wine Country (06/30/2007)