30 September 2007

 

Knit Prezzies! + Projectbrag

The gal tasked with spoiling me in the punk rock gift exchange did a great job!

She sent stitch markers, fun needles, soft sage-y sockyarn, and fun bright handpainted yarn.



Best, though, were the already-knit fingerless mitts.



Woo!

Now for what I've been knitting. The Bud Hat.



I started this hat when I got the Harry Potter 7 book on tape from Mom. It's extra-thick because of the fair-isle floats on the back, and I used a fold-over Picot edge for the bottom part so my ears would be extra warm.



The yarn is from Miss Marts, I managed to get 2 great hats out of the alpaca blend she gave me for Christmas/birthday 2 years ago.

The hat was finished at the Jazz/Blues Festival in Bamberg. I sat at a picknick table with strangers, drinkin beer, listening to mediocre jazz under the stars, and knitting.

Thanks to everyone who helped bring this hat together. :)

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19 September 2007

 

Greece the Photodokumentär

for the record, this bombshell had nothing to do with the wildfires in greece. i don't know what you're talking about.

or at least i wouldn't if it weren't for all the concerned friends and family sending heartening vacation messages like, "Greece is burning! Get Out NOW!!" and "64 died trying to escape fires. be ready to evacuate!!"

ok, that's still not entirely true. gin and i got 10 TV channels, for the first few days of our trip 9 of these channels were broadcasting pictures of forestfires with incomprehensible greek captions. the tenth was Albanian MTV - you do not know what you are missing without Albanian MTV.

That said, we had a great trip to Greece.

First she came to Germany for a couple days. I picked her up from the Nürnberg airport. Luckily she was just in time for the Sandkerwa (annual founding festival for the church on the bar street).



We ate a traditional Weißwurst breakfast accompanied by chocolate chip muffins and Bamberg's famous Smoked Weissbier. Nothin but culture.



We caught some trains to the Köln/Bonn airport and hopped a plane to Heraklion on Crete.



My bad museum karma carried on into Greece, where the Archaeological museum on Crete was mostly closed for refurbs, and half of Knossos was closed for.. because i was there.

the one room of archaeological treasures that they _did_ have open was fascinating. full of treasures from the Minoan culture.



There was some wandering around seeing the sights in the city, eating ice cream for breakfast, y'know the usual.





We had some laughs over the signs posted on islands:



The first for how much Parking (in Greek) resembles Napkin in English. The second just for the english translation itself. I believe the city would have been called something more like a "Traditional Settlement" but i love the irony.

After a couple of days that didn't go to plan in Heraklion, we caught a boat to Ios. It was supposed to be the gay party capital of the Cyclades, but that's not how we found it. Our hotel overlooked the bay, where the sunsets were pretty nice, especially since we were able to pick up beers from the fridge downstairs.



The whole Island was pretty quiet when we were there.

The path into town:



The Church in the main square:



Windmill on a hill



Gin and I spent two days in chaise lounges under sun umbrellas on the prettiest beaches on the Island. We took a ferry (glass bottom!) to Manganari the second day, and had lunch at the Taverna right on the beach. White sugar sand, clear blue water. No pictures, because it wasn't a fully-suited beach. Sorry folks.

Then we moved along to the island of Santorini, which is a Caldera. Click the link, Wiki's got a cool satellite picture of the island.

We stayed in Oia, on the north side of the Island. Well, see, first we tried to book a room at a hotel in Oia at the tourist office. But when we got to that hotel, it was about 2km outside of town, and not reachable by vehicle. We had to walk through a tortuous maze of (very traditional!) little white stone houses. The only way we found our way home that first night was to follow the little blue arrows spraypainted on the walkway. We stayed one night there, spent the day in Oia, and then moved to a swish hotel/spa in town.

Oia is the sunset capital of the island and every night cruise boats dump herds of people out to see the sunset. They line the streets.





and when the sun goes down they clap. We clapped too.

The city was very pretty by day and at night:





The next day we took a boat like this:



around the caldera. We stopped on the new volcanic island in the middle and climbed to the top.




and then the boat took us to a place where the volcano vents into the ocean, creating a hot spring. of course we jumped overboard and swam to it/in it.

All of the cities are perched on the edge of the Caldera




Which makes getting things onto and off of the island a bit of a logistical headache.

The second night we watched the sunset from the balcony of our hotel.



I prowled around the city a little bit afterwards, trying to catch it, and shop, and soak it in.



The next day Gin and I wrote postcards by the pool



and got "The Pesto Treatment," olive oil massages with a basil exfoliation in the hotel's spa.

it's a hard life.. and sometimes all that massaging wears a girl out



In the Santorini airport we met an 24yo American girl who was very excited to be running around in her bathing suit. From Santorini we flew back to Crete, and the next morning we flew to Berlin, I left Ginny in her pal Phoebe's apartment before jumping a 4h train home myself.

It was so much sun, great food, and a loooot of laying on beautiful beaches. I think I might have to go back next year.

12 September 2007

 

Adventure Update: Beer

Besides being a very smart comic overall, i relate especially to this xkcd. this year's country count keeps going up, as does the number of monuments/mountains/volcanoes scaled. i swear. if there's something cool, I've either got to climb it or put it on my head. but schtill...

Let me proceed today with some of the recent beer adventures. There have been many, some without photographic documentation (9pin bowling at the Weißbierhaus), but more with photodocumentation. and that's just what everyone wants to post, right? drunk pictures of themselves.. ah well, i figure you at home probably miss the antics.

August 03 the american interns, Alex and I jumped a train to Berlin to meet Jens for the Berlin Bierfestival. beverages began around noon and proceeded past midnight.


back LtoR: jens, chris, eric and alex before the mayhem began in earnest

the night went something like this:



the next day some of us were a little delicate, but we still ended up seeing cool things in berlin.



then there was a little more drinking, including the signature drink at the bar called Molotow Cocktail
and then there was some getting lost on the way home because the streetsigns were a little confusing, but then we found the train station, filled with fellow beer festival-ers headed to wherever. but they were all happy and singing songs, so that was pretty great.


August 15 - Maria Himmelfahrt (Mary's Ascension - Really!)
We had a day off of work thanks to the devoted Catholics in our area. Woo! I spent this holy day with the interns Chris and Eric, and Chris' visiting girlfriend Berryl. We decided to further our educations and do the Bamberg Beer Diploma. One must visit each of the 10 breweries in Bamberg and drink a half liter of their finest. This translates to 5L of beer in a day (all of this must be accomplished in one go). Unfortunately the Diploma is no longer officially offered because of "Personal offences, fully puked on bathrooms, and regular altercations" So we had to get our education in secret.

We started with the traditional Weißwurst/Weißbier breakfast at Schlenkerla (famous for its smoked beers). The Ami's had their first Weißwurst and learned to peel it. yumm..



I will say that Berryl, especially considering her lower body mass, did a tremendous job, downing somewhere on the order of 8 strong beers. Chris, Eric and I managed to earn the Diploma, although it was pretty close in my case..

The Bierdiplom day looked something like this:



Somehow 2 beer mugs from different breweries ended up in my "beer taster backpack" which we all picked up from the tourist info stand. it came with a bunch of beer coupons, a drunkard's treasure map, and some extra glassware/beermats in case of emergency.

let us also say that some extra beer mugs got into my pack when i was in the bathroom. the waitress at the last brewery noticed and asked for them back. she got her mugs. unfortunately, though, the bathroom was not left as nice as i'd found it.



Beer Event 3: Sandkerwa

Thank frickin god there's a church on the bar street in Bamberg. (there's a church on just about every street in Bamberg) And God bless the people who thought up having Church Anniversary parties. My sister was in town for the Sandkerwa.



Some special beer is brewed for the occasion by Mahrs Bräu:




The party went something like this:


The streets were like a wall of people:


(kinda shaun of the beer-drinkers, eh?)

Sept 22 i'm headed to Oktoberfest with these guys. Expect more pictures of us flipping each other off. Somehow that seems the height of sophistication after we've each had a gallon of beer.

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