frankfurt lately

  
Lately:

+ Mandie and I made pizza dip. Easier to eat once it's been chilled, and tastes just like cold pizza.

+ Stephen and I bought an insane amount of cheese (that purple bundle is THE CHEESE) and turned it into the mac'n'cheese night of our dreams. Gorgonzola mac'n'cheese. Stovetop mac'n'cheese. Käsespätzle (not technically mac'n'cheese, but tasty). Martha's mac'n'cheese. (The gorgonzola mac was a particular favorite.) We also served steamed green beans, to give people a break, and sea salt nutella-stuffed chocolate chip cookies, to give people a chance to beg for mercy. No pictures past the cheese-grating phase, because there was too much eating going on.

+ I love the view from my office, the building in the foreground in particular. Its shape is so excellent.

+ Stephen and I spent a crisp fall Sunday afternoon on the river with books and beer and a park blanket. Lovely.

And tomorrow I'm off to Italy to hang out with Ann! Eleven days in Rome, Positano, and Capri? I think that'll do just fine.

frankfurter oktoberfest

This was my third year in a row of Frankfurter Oktoberfest, and it was a good one.

reeperbahn

  
I got a rather one-sided view of Hamburg when Stephen, Lauren, and I visited for an evening in early September, seeing as we arrived and made straight for the Reeperbahn (which, in spite of having spoken German for upwards of 10 years now, I persist in mentally pronouncing as "reaper" and not "raper"). You might notice a distinct lack of pictures of anything other than a few signs during daylight hours in the red light district (plus some amazingggg t-shirts). Much as I would have liked to take pictures of some of the excellent, glorious, nautical-themed dive bars, I figured the ladies of the night (who were all over the streets, and dressed quite pratically for the chilly evening) were not going to take too kindly to seeing a DSLR out in anyone's hands. Looking forward to visiting Hamburg again sometime soonish and seeing some other sides of the city!

bremen

Since I'm heading to Rome in just over 48 hours (!!!), I thought maybe I could go wild and try to post some pictures from when Stephen and I visited Lauren in Bremen in early September, on a gorgeous blue-skied weekend. The one time I'd been to Bremen before, I'd only stopped through on a layover long enough to wander through downtown and see the Bremer Stadtsmusikanten, and was delighted to find that the town is way cuter than anticipated. I went on a (painful) run along the river and wandered through town with Stephen and Lauren, checking out all of the marvelousness of the riverside flea market; ate some Bremer Knipp, which is the meat patty surrounded by pickles you see above and is also the closest thing to scrapple I've encountered outside of the mid-Atlantic; took an impromptu trip to Hamburg on the Metronom (pictures to follow in a separate post); ate a fabulous brunch at Cafe & Bar Celona (love that pun); and walked along the river on a Sunday warm enough that people were not only sunbathing but swimming, and I ran back to change into shorts before heading home.

Also, I feel as though you just have to love a town that provide you with a motorcycle with a pug box on the back.

energizer night run

I was going to post more pictures from this past weekend in Cologne with Mandie, but a) I only took pictures of pancakes with my DSLR, and those pictures are still sitting, unedited, on my computer; and b) this one iPhone picture basically sums it all up anyway. One of my 2012 resolutions was to run a 10K, and Mandie agreed to run one with me! So at the end of August we signed up for the Energizer Night Run and I'd been training for it ever since (I even packed my running stuff for Sardinia, though I skipped those runs in favor of beach lounging, whoops). And then at the end of September Mandie and I got together for a weekend of tons of TV, lemon poppyseed pancakes (pretty-looking but unfortunately not the tastiest thing either of us had ever made), cauliflower soup with sour cream and bacon and crusty bread (yum all around), and running a 10K at night with headlamps on our heads.

Fun fact about races in Germany vs. races in the U.S.: Americans would basically never wear the race t-shirt to run in. It's actively uncool. Germans? Don't understand why you WOULDN'T wear the race t-shirt for the race itself. "Isn't that the whole point of having the race t-shirt?" my coworker wanted to know. Mandie and I went American-style (though Mand's all-black-minus-the-shorts ninja outfit was a little more subdued than my flag leggings).

Mandie unfortunately busted her knee partway through the race and didn't get to finish. I finished in just over an hour (1:03:39) and agreed to run a make-up race with Mandie once her knee is through with being a jerk -- but next time, we're going to make it be a daytime run. It was cool seeing the bobbing line of lights against the nighttime sky, but it made me more nervous than I'm really comfortable with to run through a park at night, even with a headlamp (tree roots! random holes! surprise slippery sandy bits!).

In addition to the make-up 10K, I've decided I want to run a half-marathon next, possibly because I am a crazy person. (13.1 miles doesn't sound so wild knowing that I can do 6.2 already, though!) So I conned Stephen into signing up for a half-marathon in mid-January, because I started out looking at half-marathons in Germany in early 2013 and then it dawned on me: there was no need to constrain myself to just Germany. It just so happens that there's a race in the Canary Islands on January 20th, and if there is one place Stephen has been talking about wanting to go for absolutely ages, it's the Canary Islands. First travel plans of 2013 AND a half-marathon to train for? Done and done.