brussels

Stephen and I went to Brussels last weekend to see Arcade Fire in concert*, selecting Brussels out of the European options (Brussels, Paris, Berlin) because neither of us had ever been there. In the five years I've lived in Germany, I'd still never even been to Belgium! Through Belgium, sure, but I hadn't ever stopped there.

The weather wasn't terribly inviting and we were both pretty badly in need of a chill weekend, so we took it pretty slow. We didn't even see the most famous sight of Brussels, in spite of being only ten minutes' walk away. However, we did eat a couple of waffles (the street waffle was far superior to the indoor waffle) and drink a bunch of Belgian beer, if only to prove to ourselves that we like German beer a heck of a lot better. A La Mort Subite was our favorite place to hang out (other than our hotel room -- it was a good weekend for napping). Despite having seen only a tiny bit of the city we both really liked it. I'd go again! Brussels. Who knew.

*The Arcade Fire concert was very, very fun. It was a fancy dress or costume concert, so we busted back out our crocodile and roach costumes from Karneval -- you know you're in for a good time when you go somewhere in a full-body costume. I haven't historically been an Arcade Fire fan with the exception of a couple of songs, but I've really been digging the album Reflektor, and have slowly been tiptoeing into the prior three albums (off The Suburbs, the title track and "Ready to Start" are both excellent).

freiburg

In the middle of October, the weekend before the Frankfurt Marathon, I went to Freiburg with Mandie and a couple of her grad school friends. The first day was warm fall perfection: no jacket, sunshine, blue-skied beautiful. The second day rained with a fury so powerful it was not worth trying to ruin my camera taking a picture of it. So all of my photos are from Saturday, which was a marvelous day full of outdoor brunch, many Feierling beers in the Biergarten, wandering along the river, and surprisingly non-awful Mexican food in Germany. I'll take it.

frankfurt marathon

  
Just over a week ago, on Sunday, October 27th, I ran the Frankfurt Marathon, which was actually awesome! I had a pretty solid plan in place (run a mile, walk a minute) which I'd used in training and which meant that my knees felt good the whole way through unlike in some early training runs where they started to be seriously hurty after the six-to-seven-mile mark. The weather was kind of messy -- warm, rainy, incredibly windy -- but I turned out to have dressed perfectly for it, so I had no particular complaints.

I'd worried that running a home-city marathon would be kinda boring, especially since I knew that the route looped out toward the middle of nowhere right around the toughest part of the race. That no man's land section between miles 14 and 20 where the end is still incredibly far from sight took place way out toward Schwanheim and Höchst and it's true, there was just not a lot going on out there. But overall running my first marathon in the city where I live turned out to be stellar, since it meant that a bunch of my friends could come out and cheer! A couple of them even ran some of the way with me (including Stephen, who got a bunch of funny looks from the Germans for running while wearing jeans and carrying a messenger bag). Also, Frankfurt felt different, more fun, during the marathon than it normally does. Even areas I see basically daily, like Hauptwache, were transformed during the race. Plus, since I'm planning on moving to Nuremberg soon, it felt like a fitting sort of goodbye lap through a huge part of the city I've lived in for the past few years.

Speaking of which, today, November 4th, 2013, is actually the four-year anniversary of the day I moved to Frankfurt. When I moved here in 2009, I never in a million years would have guessed that I would still be here four years later. As much as I angst about living in Germany, clearly it's not all bad. After all, if I hadn't come here, I wouldn't have gotten to travel all over the place all the time, get a heck of a lot better at speaking German, or date that guy in the photo above. I still miss my family like crazy and despise the weather the majority of the time, but it probably comes out close enough to even.

new jersey signs

From a morning bike ride when I was in the US for my brother's wedding: The Wildwood, New Jersey boardwalk has the best signs (with a sneaky guest appearance from a Stone Harbor hotel).

ryan & mariah

Ryan and Mariah got married not quite three weeks ago, and we all celebrated with them two weekends ago! It was really gorgeous fall weather in Stone Harbor for a lot of fun outdoor time: a pizza dinner on Friday on the deck at Stone Harbor Pizza, a lovely midday celebration on Saturday at a huge rented house on 103rd Street with catering from Back Bay Seafood, and a bagel breakfast at my parents' house on Sunday with bagels and coffee from Avalon Coffee Company. My cousins from both sides of the family were in the same place for the first time ever, I got to meet Mariah's parents and a lot of her extended family members, and basically everything about the weekend was delightful. One of our family friends pointed out that the weekend felt like one big happy relaxed reception, which I'm pretty sure was just what Ryan and Mariah were hoping for. And it was great.

Stephen and Gran and I did a little bit of cooking to supplement the catered food, specifically the following things (the eggplant salad in particular was very, very tasty):

+ roasted eggplant and herbed quinoa salad [only change was to roast the eggplant in the oven instead of grilling it, but grilling would be delicious]
+ black bean and roasted cherry tomatoes salad [approx. 1 cup of caramelized onions added]
+ salsa
+ quesadillas: take small corn tortillas, fill with a small amount each of grated pepper jack cheese, caramelized onions, and sauteed green peppers, and cook in a dry frying pan until cheese is melted.
+ gluten-free chocolate nut granola [made with 1/3 cup of coconut oil rather than the 1 cup the recipe calls for]
+ Smitten Kitchen maple walnut granola
+ Nutella-stuffed brown butter sea salt chocolate chip cookies [we have made these before, and I think they turned out even better this time, which is to say incredibly deadly]

And then we spent the better part of the following week eating leftovers of all of those things plus the catering. Trust me when I say that we suffered.

capri II: water

     
Capri might not have beaten out Cala Gonone and environs for the most gorgeous water I have ever seen in my life, but it made a valiant effort. Careers I would not mind one bit: the hunt for the place with the most beautiful sea water.