Tag Archives: life

A journey’s end…

Posted on by

My summer has been a real blast travel-wise. I’ve been on a lot of almost magical vacations and successfully completed a heap of business trips, which both took me to quite some places in Europe.

The journey went about like this: Munich, Ireland, Munich, Memmingen, Vienna, Gif sur Yvette, Leipzig, Dresden, Stockholm, Paris, Manchester, Alkmar, Seewis, Munich again, Dinkelsbühl, Stockholm again, Madonna di Campiglio, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Leukerbad, Böblingen, Barcelona, Brussels, Freiburg, Schruns, Tieringen.

It feels like inbetween I was home only to do the laundry and to sleep. It is really amazing, what one can do and see in one year. All in all, I was sleeping for 101 nights in a foreign bed. Considering that many of the trips were only one or two days, this is totally too much.

 

NP: Stereo Total – Pixelize me

My hobby: night-time cycling

Posted on by

A dear friend of mine told me the other day that he started to do night-time cycling tours through the empty city of Munich. I liked the idea a lot and have starting to do the same. I’m just back from my latest tour through Aachen. 12.7 km in 41 minutes. This is an average of 18.5 km/h. Not too bad for the hilly terrain, Aachen is built on. Yay!

Now Erdinger Alkoholfrei, shower, and off to bed!

Pain Pickles

Posted on by

This is just a quick update to the pain harvest post. Meanwhile, I prepared a nice bottle of chili-garlic oil from some of them and pickled most of the remaining chili in brine, made from vinegar and salt, sugar, juniper berries, and bay leaves. Please also note, how nicely my kitchen counter supports AppleTM-style reflections 😉

The rest of my harvest now lays in the kitchen to dry. I’m really looking forward to use them during the winter! Now off to Freiburg.

Harvester of sorrow pain

Posted on by

Today, I harvested the chili from my garden and am quite happy with the result of almost 1kg 🙂 This year, I had 7 different breeds: Red and Green Spanish Peppers, two different plants of Fire Kiss, Turkish Peppers, Pinocchio’s Nose, and Jalapeños.

Pain Harvest 2011Unfortunately, I only started growing in June, when I finally arrived here. This means that some of the chili did not get completely ripe. For example Pinocchio’s nose should have become purple. They are still hot, though 😉

To conserve my harvest, I will dry some of them, make garlic-chili oil of some, and try to pickle the rest in a salt-vinegar mixture, I read about on the web. I am already looking forward to cooking with them. Maybe I’ll post some follow-ups to this post with recipes and pictures…

Kiachle

Posted on by

500g Mehl
50g Zucker
1 Kaffeelöffel Salz
1/4 l Milch
80g Margarine
1 Würfel Hefe
2 Eier

Alle Zutaten zu einem festen Teig verkneten. Eine Stunde gehen lassen, dann ausrollen und in Rauten schneiden. Die Rauten in reichlich heißem Distelöl ausbacken und auf einem Küchenkrepp abtropfen lassen. Anschließend mit Zimt und Zucker oder Puderzucker bestreuen oder einfach so genießen.

Ade, Tante Honhanna!

Tomorrow, maybe

Posted on by

I’ve been to the theater last night. They played a very interesting piece, which was spun around living and surviving in dictatorships. It was called Tomorrow maybe – Über-Leben in Diktaturen.

Every time I visit an event like this, or a museum, or if I experience some other kind of art, I realize that I should do this much more often. Culture can be such an inspiration for the rusted mind. It can influence the thoughts and give way to new directions of thinking in such a wonderful way.

Lapin rôti

Posted on by

I just come back from a very nice dinner with three colleagues at La Garrigue in Edinburgh [Update 2015-08-11: their place in the New Town seems closed now]. For starters, I had “Le petit pot d’escargots et gésiers de canard confit, sauce tomate et croutons à l’ail”. My main course was “Le lapin rôti avec pipperade Basquaise et petits pois à la Française”. And as if this would not have been enough, I finished off with “La tarte au chocolat, rayon de miel”. Delicious!

The safest place in the appartment

Posted on by

So, we’re sitting here in Evacuation Zone C, drinking beer and waiting for Irene to arrive. The picture below shows the view of Manhattan, we have from the roof top of the place I’m staying at.

BrooklynThe way it looks at the moment, however, it will rather be a tropical storm than a ‘real’ hurricane, once it hits New York. It is still interesting, how all public transport was shut down already at noon and how people secured their buildings and their trash cans 😉

Traveling

Posted on by

So, I finally made it to New York. Yay! After a train ride, two flights, some more train and subway and a lot of walking, I finished my journey after about 23 hours and approx. 6500 km. I’ll try to blog some more from my journey. Now off to bed.

Power

Posted on by

When I drove home from work the other day, nature showed all its beauty and power. The sky to my right, behind, and in front of me turned almost black, leaving only a small piece of perfectly blue sky to my left. From one second to the next, a massive thunderstorm set in and it started raining so heavily that the traffic on the highway slowed down to almost a standstill.

I really liked the almost unreal atmosphere this sudden change of weather created. At home, I called a friend when suddenly all lights went off. Power outage. Awesome! I lighted some candles and started a candle-lit BBQ 😉 Very nice experience!