24 posts tagged “food”

This post is going to be all pictures, because there isn't really much to say about the content of those pictures.  That said, by the time I finish this post, I'm sure there will be plenty of text.  Like that.

And that.

And that.

Just kidding, but I do want to say two things:

1) Janice, if you're reading this, I just wrote you a post card, got interrupted before finishing it, forgot that I hadn't finished, and mailed it.  So sorry that it's weird and unsigned, among other things.

2) I shouldn't drink out of white mugs here.  The water is yellowish in both the kitchen and the bathroom, but there are fewer specks in the bathroom water.  Just a tip for y'all there.

Kreuz und Quer - my German frisbee team

(We won the Uni Tournament on Monday.  We were the only non-gym-class team there.  L to R: Back row: HaJu, Max, Ingrid, Moritz, Thomas.  Front row: Michaela, me, Wolle and Clemens)

Greg's newest beer glass

My newest beer glass - with bicycle bell!

A rather delicious slice of raspberry cake from "Sweet Cuisine"

All of the stuffed animals I somehow have here

(Xue, I sent the bunny baby home with my parents.  From L to R: Romero (from Ben), Admiral (from Betsy - I got him for Xmas and didn't want to abandon him in January), Monkey (from Luci and the Dans - a farewell present), Las Vegas (from Nagler - for my birthday), and Johann (my souvenir from Switzerland))

A really narrow alley!

The Oswaldstift kitty!

Grilling in the rain on the 4th of July

The weather clears up

The Finns get in on the action

Rachel & her very American apple pie

The "updated" Black Forest Cake I made for the other 4th of July party

(The update is twofold.  The first I think you can figure out for yourselves, but there are also about 2 teaspoons of ground chiles in that cake.  It was the perfect heat, I couldn't have wished for a better result)

The chemistry building cafeteria where this took place

Chiemsee

Ludwig II's Schloss Herrenchiemsee

The best fountain ever

And subsequent photos (the third one is Fraueninsel, another island in the Chiemsee)

In which Germany looks like Penobscot Bay

Renaissance Faire

In the longest castle in Europe

(no, seriously)

Dig the random small child playing on the ground (Germany in a nutshell)

Eight-year-old Greg would flip out!

(The Renaissance fair gave me a chance to tell Maya the "look what I shot" story)

What can I say? Fooses like dead stuff.

First off, I think this is my favorite blog banner yet.  Wild asparagus people! WILD!

Eeew!  My hot milk has a skin on it!

Okay, but seriously, I have made a few attempts to blog The First Acutal Vacation The Foos Family Has Taken In My Lifetime (well, I guess I'd have to count Savannah too, so second!), but it is kind of daunting, and it turns out there IS actually schoolwork to do this semester.  I figure I should keep blogging other events as they happen, otherwise nothing at all will get posted.

So Bürgerfest was unofficially announced to the uninitiated with little digital signs at all of our bus stops saying that there was going to be no bus service from Friday to Sunday due to this mysterious "Bürgerfest".  Eventually (on Friday morning!) I did some googling and discovered the schedule of events for Bfest.  There were a lot of events, but the official keg-tapping (yeah) was at 5pm, so I did nothing for a while.  It was great.

At around 5, I took a shower (heh...) and headed out to Neupfarrplatz, which I feel is the platz most likely to have a party going at any particular time.  Sometime during the night or afternoon, probably concealed by the defening noise of the constant construction on both of the streets that my building straddles, a stage and a metric ton of food & beer stands had been set up.  Of course I had some Flammkuchen, which is never a bad idea.  Trader Joe's actually has some pretty good frozen flammkuchen if it sounds good to you!

I strolled over to the Domplatz, to check out the scene there, as they'd blocked off traffic all over the Altstadt and I was curious what they'd set up in the streets.  First let me add that the overwhelming theme of Bfest was stages with live bands set up ON EVERY CORNER.  It was literally (which I am using in all seriousness) impossible to get out of earshot of one band without entering that of another.  In my opinion it was kind of a dumb idea.  But anyway, there was a band playing on Domplatz, but they had to stop playing when the BAGPIPERS came through!

I LOVE bagpipes!

The reason there were bagpipes is that the city of Aberdeen, Scotland is one of a handful of sister cities to Regensburg.  Others include Pilsen (Czech Republic), Odessa (Ukraine) and Tempe (Arizona, USA).  The hands-down best part about the bagpipe corps was that they were just marching in loops around Regensburg ALL DAY for three days.

Yay! More!

So back to Domplatz.  I met Lauren back at Neupfarr, where SHE got some flammkuchen, cause DUH, and then we went back to Domplatz for a beer.  There we saw totally cool dudes in lederhosen that had green felt suspenders, instead of matching leather ones.  They were off duty from whatever they were doing, so we didn't take photos.

One by one the other kids from the program checked their darn emails and cell-phones and Gretchen joined the party.  I feel like I may have also made her get flammkuchen.  But who knows.  I think we just wandered around for a while and eventually went home when all of the stands started to close around 11:30.  The "light show" on Bismarckplatz was unimpressive, but the snack stands were great:

Wood oven pizza. Seriously.

The obsession continues

On Saturday, Gretchen and I met on Haidplatz to see a play at noon that was being put on by a Scottish (Aberdeen again) drama group from an arts high school.  It was a short piece called "Connections" that was at least partially based in truth about the end of World War II.  Apparently creative writing groups in both Regensburg and Aberdeen sat down and wrote about their experiences at the end of the war, and this play was the result of one woman's writing.  It was set at the 50th anniversary party of a couple who had met in Regensburg during the war - a Scottish soldier and a German girl.  The story was told through recollection, and by their grandchildren "reading" stories out of a collection of family stories.  It was a little "scripted" sounding, but it was very emotional and by the end I really liked it and was glad I'd gone.  They also had a bagpiper during interludes, and the whole cast sang "Auld Lang Syne" and it totally nailed the sap in me.  Oh well.  In another surprise-that-you-kinda-saw-coming, Gretchen knew the words.

Jess met us in the rain (sorry!) after the play let out, and Gretchen and I got crepes (strawberry and nutella, natch) and we all went strolling down Ludwigstrasse and into a big ol' loop of Regensburg.  To our delight, there was a German rockabilly/50s band on Keplerstrasse.  It ended up being one of those funny situations where the English song ends and then the singer starts speaking in German, but incorporating things like "Rock and Roll!" in a thick German accent and you kinda laugh but then you feel bad.  It was par for the course, I guess I would say.

They had one groupie who was dressed all in leopard print

After not too long Jess and Gretchen had to go to play rehearsal, and just as I was setting off elsewhere, I realized that it was about to rain like cats and dogs.  So I walked leisurely back to my building and sat in my room for an hour or so watching tourists screaming and running from one awning to another.  It was heartwarming.

After the rain had cleared up and I had attempted to do some schoolwork but had actually just eaten another flammkuchen, Gretchen and Jess returned for me!  We went out to the Jahninsel, which is a Danube River island halfway across the Stone Bridge, only to discover that they had a BEATLES TRIBUTE BAND!  Ironically, they didn't play either of the two (I'm pretty sure it was only two) songs that the Beatles actually recorded in German.  Besides "Hey Jude", "Yellow Submarine" and "Let it Be", they didn't really tend towards the big hits.  Or maybe the big hits in my house aren't the real ones?  I don't know.

In accordance with the German tradition of having really bizarre traditions, Jess and Gretchen played chess on the giant chess set that had been set up on the island.

Very threatening!

Gretchen was all "I guess I'll play, I haven't played in a while" and then, again, in true Gretchen style, mopped the floor with poor Jess.  "My fifth grade teacher was kind of a chess nerd, so we always played it during recess," she admitted later.  What a sneak!

Then, of course, more wandering ensued.  Gretchen and I got some mini donuts from one of those awesome automated mini-donut machines that float the donuts down a river of oil and automatically flip them.   Remember them from the Portland Market, Mom and Dad?

We ended up at Bismarckplatz again, where, while  talking to Regina, we caught the attention of an American one table over.  It turns out that he was a Colorado student in Regensburg 9 years ago.  He'd married a German and had been living in Munich for 8 years earning 135 Euro and hour doing translations for a chemical company.  They were on a last trip around Germany before packing up and moving back to the states - Boston, to be exact.  It was encouraging.  By then it was a little past midnight, and I went home to go to bed, because I had to be up for the 6:42 train to...

Schloss Neuschwanstein!

The touristiest place on earth!  (More Americans than the Eagle's Nest and Dachau put together!)  We totally caught this American girl saying, "So are we like, in Germany now?".

As Charles and I expected, it was a bit of an odd spot.  When you're near or inside it, you can't really appreciate it because of the scale.  We did find out, though, that contrary to what I'd always thought, the walls are blocks of rough marble (I thought it was some sort of stucco/plaster over stone).  The way it works is that you buy tickets for 9 euros, and then walk 20 minutes up to the castle, and then wait for an hour or two until your number is called, at which time you see the three rooms of the castle which were ever actually finished.  Charles wanted to leave "as little ripped off as possible", and I wanted to leave before nightfall, so we blew off the "tour".  It was a pretty good idea, considering that by the time we'd checked out the castle up close and hiked around a little and were ready to hit the road, our "ticket time" (had we bought tickets) hadn't come up yet.  So, in the end, curiously enough, it was a really GOOD deal for us.  We split a 27 Euro Bayern ticket and everything else was free free free!  I liked the landscape just as much as the castle, myself.

Photos!:

(The first one features Schloss Hohenschwangau - childhood castle to King Ludwig II, who grew up to build Neuschwanstein.  Overall they're pretty unimpressive as photos go.)

And of the surroundings:

So the way it works is that you walk up to the castle itself, and go "oh.  neat.  it looks different up close."  Then, you go up to the Marienbrücke, which is the bridge visible in the third photo of the first set, and you get shoved by approximately 498567356835 Japanese people, and then you take a cliche'd photo that would be easier to photoshop than to actually pose for.

What the...

So basically, Charles and I spent the whole 4 hours getting there talking about how boring it is that everyone takes the same damn photo when they go to Neuschwanstein.  So of course my solution was to draw a face and a crown on a banana, dub him King Ludwig II von Bavarianana, and pose with that.  Of course, it would be irresponsible of us not to tell the whole story, so we have also made a plate of Ludwig's tragic end:

Wah-wah.

But so anyway, after you climb up to the bridge, you presumably either walk back down or take the bus back down if you're REALLY American.   Charles and I went for option C, and walked down to the stream at the base of this waterfall.  We did so initially just to take this photo, but it turns out that there is a lovely, peaceful path that follows the stream and then leads you back to the ticket center where you can get on the bus back to town.  It was quite a pleasant walk.

We also walked past this...thing.

Even with the 4 hour train ride, we made it back by 6pm.  The only mishap was that *GASP* we got stuck on another Czech train!  Since the German rail system is running this "Prague Special" (which Greg and I took to Prague, which is why I know I hate Czech trains), a couple of regional trains every day are replaced by the "direct train from Munich to Prague".  They're just unpleasant and I hate them.  While we're playing fortunately/unfortunately, I'd like to play my trump card and introduce you to...

The Bavarian Hot Dog

I picked this little doozie up in the Munich train station during our 40 minute layover.  It is: a pretzel stick, flayed open, filled with cole slaw and topped with a sausage (which contains cheese within the casing) which is then in turn topped with two types of mustard and ketchup.  It made me eurphoric and then eventually ill.  I have no regrets.

And then finally, a poetic end to the day and to Bürgerfest, and what I anticipate will be the first of many endings in the coming month: We all watched Sepp's band perform on the shore of the river.

La Meer

For those of you newcomers in the audience, Sepp (on the left) was our grammar teacher during our first two grueling months in Germany.  He is pretty much the coolest person alive, and always stops to talk to us when we run across him in one place or another.  My parents met him while they were here.

The band he was playing in on Sunday was a french-music-type trio, and the woman was sipping on champagne the whole time and singing love songs in French.  It was beautiful, and the sun was setting, and the water was flowing past, and then one by one, almost all of the 11 kids in my study abroad program showed up.  They'd walk up and scamper over to where we were sitting and exchange a few words before sitting back and being captivated by the music.  There was something very emotional for me about everyone coming from their varied activities in Regensburg and just once again forming this original whole that has changed so much since that first day in January. 

I remember telling myself that day that though I was just meeting these people, I would know them extremely well before the semester was out.  And I do.

Well, the family has gone back to the US of A, and after eleven days straight of "activities" I could once again sleep late this morning.  All the way up to 6:52, when the construction on the street starts.  I don't understand why they didn't do the construction BEFORE the tourist season.  There's a ton of scaffolding and machinery in this 'burg and it's driving me up the wall (which is abnormally easy to scale, given the scaffolding).

Here is the itinerary that Family Foos followed over the last week and a half (incl. what we did for dinner):
5/31 - Arrival, dinner (at die Alte Linde), crankiness, sleep
6/1 - Marianna's walking tour of Regensburg, ending with a Danube river cruise to Walhalla.  Plans for an hour train ride to a beer festival were vetoed in favor of not falling asleep standing up.  Dinner at L'Osteria.
6/2 - We arose at the crack of dawn to take a train to Salzburg, where we spent a few hours before heading to our hotel in Bayerisch Gmain.  Where we napped for several hours.  We walked into the larger town of Bad Reichenhall for dinner on the Rathausplatz, where Dad and I got racks of ribs larger than a breadbox.
6/3 - We boarded a train to Berchtesgaden and then a bus to Obersalzburg before taking a yipes-inducing bus ride up into the Bavarian alps to The Eagle's Nest, Hitler's former teahouse.  Then it was back down to Berchtesgaden and onto another bus to the Königssee, where we took a boat cruise on Germany's cleanest lake.  Then back to Regensburg (on the last train! eep!).  Dinner was Döner kebab in the Munich train station.
6/4 - Back to Munich for a brief I-haven't-seen-that-much-but-here-it-is tour.  Highlights included fresh sour cherries, the Chinese Tower biergarten, and getting back to Regensburg in time for cheap pizza at Peaches. (Happy Birthday Peter? Am I close?)
6/5 - After class (wah wah!) we went to the Schneider brewery in Kelheim for my 21st birthday.  Despite poor planning, it was almost a disaster, but through divine providence we made it.  I believe dinner was pastries, Döner, and milk from the grocery store.
6/6 - We took the bus to Donaustauf, 15 minutes outside of Regensburg, and climbed up to the ruins of a 10th century castle.  Greg said it was his favorite part.  Back in Regensburg, we had "kaffee und küchen" in Cafe Prinzess, the oldest coffeehouse in Germany.  Mom and I had dinner in the Ratskeller (aka the basement of city hall, if you didn't know).  Then I threw myself a grand birthday party with all the program kids, their guests, and the fam.
6/7 - Not partied out at all,  (or were we?), we headed off to Nürnberg to check out a handful of things, notably the castle and the Reichsparteitag - including the Zeppelin field where many a Nazi rally was filmed for propaghanda reels.  I believe dinner was pizza outside on Haidplatz (best atmosphere ever?).
6/8-9 - Greg and I went to Prague, a trip which I simultaneously want to complain about and pretend never happened.  There were a few snafus that were so horrendously wrong that the feeling is more of wonder than outrage.  I'm not really sure what the parents did, though I think it included Farmers' Markets.  You'll have to ask them.  Greg and I had some great fast-food Mexican in Prague near The Worst Hostel Ever.  When we returned, dinner was at a DIFFERENT outdoor pizza spot on Haidplatz.
6/10 - To round out the "understanding Germans" experience, Greg and I went to Dachau on Sunday.  It was an intense experience, and bears greater discussion than the lightning round I'm spinning here.  If I decide to put photos up, they will be linked from the blog rather than integrated.  Dinner was at Hotel Orphee, which I've wanted to go to since day one.  It was a good end to the visit.

So that's the teaser for now, I have to work on some questions for my history tutor, and get my act together for the Ultimate tournament that I might be going to this weekend!!!

Some Photos:

1 liter beer vs. 0.3 liter apple juice

The *green* glass necklace my aunt Betsy sent for my b-day

Typical Foos outing photo

Mom and I go a little classier with goats

The one photo from my party that came out

Alright, back to...work?

1)  The Circle of Life:  In a recent post, I discussed Obazta, a Bavarian cheese dish.  I promised that the next time I ate it, I would take a photo.  I ate it today, but I didn't have my camera.  Then, Jess sent me a photo of some Obazta we had in Bamberg.  That's Gretchen on the right.

See how it resembles a cartoon dead caterpillar?

2)  I have been making my way through "Von der Natur nicht vorgesehen", and the author at one point mentions the places she'd been in the United States: New York City (naturally) and Vinalhaven!  The same, 1200-person Vinalhaven that we can (theoretically?) see off in the distance when we visit the beautiful summer home of family friends on another island in Penobscot Bay.  In other news, I'm definitely translating that for my thesis.  *gulp*

3)  On Wednesday, I leave for Vienna for three days.  The plan is to get there around 4 pm, stay Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night, and then spend as much or as little of Saturday there as I want.  Hopefully I will not go crazy with solitude as I did in Switzerland.  I've gotten four guidebooks from the library, as well as the Rick Steeves' "Germany and Austria" that my Dad left here.  I think Rick Steves is kind of a stupid jerk, and normally I'd say that at least it was useful for the maps, but he draws his own, because he is kind of a stupid jerk.  So...I'm using it to get an overview before using the German-language guides for more specific items.  RS promotes this BS-type of "have-your-eyes-pass-over-everything-without-seeing-anything" tourism.  It's like, "Here is how to see everything "important" in a city in one day", and it's unfortunate.  It also makes him look dumb when he refers to anything in his best-selling guidebooks as "off the beaten path."  And lastly, today, I found this in the book (referring to cake shops): "Shops like this boast "K u. K" - good enough for the König und Kaiser (king and emperor, same guy)."  I am currently enrolled in a class for four hours a week about how König and Kaiser are not the same guy.  I am not going to get into why he's wrong, but what really gets me is that he made this fairly obivous error while saying something that had no other purpose but to make him look "smart".  Okay, I'm going to stop myself there.

4)  On...Thursday? I went to the Trinity Church (Dreieinigkeitskirche) on Gesandtenstr. (here in R'burg) and climbed up into the steeple, as it is open for a nominal fee during the summer.  Here are a few photos from the visit (click to embiggen):

The organ pipes

The sanctuary

More or less the money shot

(The rest of the photos are also in the "photos" section of the blog.

5)  This weekend I went to Aschaffenburg, which is near Frankfurt right on the Hessen border.  Our friend Regina's parents and brother live there, so five of us went to visit and stayed with her and her family.  The biggest deal in Aschaffenburg is the castle, which is quite large and is red.

See how it's refreshingly different?

This is the tiniest garden

The castle grounds extend (or seem to extend) around the bank of the Main a little bit.

Ludwig's Pompejanum

This is a replica of a temple from Pompeii.  King Ludwig I (who was not a kaiser!) built a lot of neat stuff, in fact, he paid for the spires on the Regensburg cathedral!  (Tangent: last week I went into an antique shop and saw a postcard of the cathedral in the early 1800s before it had the spires.  It was pretty funny looking.  I should go back and buy that.)

We also walked around the shopping area of the downtown a little, looking for a mothers day gift for Regina to buy for her brother to give to her mom.  Hah.  Unfortunately, my camera died right before I was able to take a photo of a giant knife that served as the sign for a kitchen store.  I was able to take one photo in the toy store:

I am obsessed with wooden toy food

We didn't do that much else, though we had two GREAT homemade dinners at Regina's parents house.  Homemade sauerkraut is about the best thing ever.

We went for a walk through the neighborhood and into the hills on Sunday before we left:

My ideal house

The view

6)  On Saturday night we went to a party at Regina's friend's house to watch this truly bizarre event called "Eurovision".  Basically, a bunch of european nations hold American Idol-like singing contests, and each country's national winner performs at Eurovision.  Then, all the countries vote (they're not allowed to vote for themselves), and the winner is decided by popular vote.  The reality of the matter is that every single act is more outlandish than the next, and in the end, everyone votes for countries to which a) they have current or former political ties, or b) they feel bad about exacting a genocide on.  Evidence:  All of the former Yugoslavia voted for Serbia, most of the former East bloc voted for either Russia or Ukraine, and Turkey voted for Armenia.  Germany had a really classy jazz performance, and if it had actually been about talent, they would've won.  France also had a great show, including a stuffed animal cat sewn to one of the singer's shirts.  He occaisionally sung to it.  The best, however, hands down, was the Ukraine group, headed by a drag queen dressed like a disco ball. The link is to a *highly* recommended video.

The following cat was not interested in the competition:

Mildy surly cat

The cat did find time to meddle in our game of Werewolf, which is basically a children's camp game.  Americans mostly know it as "Mafia".  The Germans had a handful of great twists on it, though.  The game is this:  Everyone in the group is assigned via secret slips of paper to be either a "dorfbewohner" (villager) or a "werwolf" (werewolf).  There are about two werewolves for every four villagers.  There also needs to be a moderator, who oversees the game.  The moderator declares it "night" and then tells the werewolves to open their eyes and see who their partner(s) is.  Then they silently agree by pointing which villager they want to eat, and then they "sleep" again.  The moderator then tells the group who got killed.  Then the entire group discusses who they think the werewolves could be and decides by show of hands who they want to sacrifice for the public good.  The challenge is to keep suspicion away from yourself and identify the right werewolves based on aural clues and pop-psychology.  Either they villagers win by killing all the werewolves, or the opposite situation comes to pass.  Here are the twists:  There is a hunter villager, who can take someone with them if they are killed, thus complicating "revenge for finger pointing" killings by the werewolves.  There is an oracle villager who can as the moderator every round about the werewolf status of ONE other player.  The rub is that nobody knows you're the oracle, so you have to convince the group who to kill without sounding like you're passing the blame.  The last twist, which was great, was having a "Romeo and Juliet."  Two players are secretly chosen by the moderator at the behest of a villager designated "cupid", and then they identify each other by "waking up" during the night when directed by the moderator.  They do not know if their partner is a werewolf or not, but if one of them dies, both of them do, so they have to defend each other from the torch-waving villagers.  It was pretty great.

7)  One more photo from Regensburg:

Haidplatz

I actually wrote it on my calendar today to BUY HEALTHY FOOD, seeing as I have been living on almost exclusively popcorn and generic, German snickers for about a week now for no discernable reason.

I am, as we speak, eating a delightful falafel sandwich: falafel-from-a-box, pita-from-a-pouch, fresh lettuce and tomato, and the pièce de résistance(/ruiner of healthiness, budget, and shirt), fresh, homemade tzatziki from the gourmet counter at the grocery store.  I didn't take a photo of it.  I did take a photo of lunch:

Mein Lunch

Most importantly, I am just finishing a cone of chocolate-rose petal-pink peppercorn gelato.  I wish I could tell you that it is as delicious as it is bizarre, but that's a tall order, and it's still pretty good.

So, I met my tandem partner, Sabrina today.  The idea of tandems is that you meet up with a German and speak German for half an hour, and English for a half an hour.  We ended up talking for about two hours, and she invited me to come with her to her hometown (Landshut) which is home to the tallest brick tower in the world.  If the weather is nice we'll probably go on Saturday.

I finally found the Regensburg Public Library, and got an 8 Euro library card.  This should be a more cost efficient way to find a text to translate than just buying books willy-nilly.  I found two books by Hilde Domin, a Jewish German author who left Germany in 1932 and then returned in the 50s.  I really admire the people who were able to come back after the Holocaust.  It must have been extremely hard.

The library itself is really neat.  It turns out it's about a block away from my room and I just never noticed.  I will have to post a photo later, as it is covered with scaffolding.  It shares the building with a handful of other offices and businesses, but the reference desk backs up to a door that opens to a balcony overlooking Haidplatz.  Being that librarian must rule.  The library is also cute and tiny.  It is one floor with a mezzanine above it.  It has a whole room dedicated to foreign language materials, and just looking in the American section was a little jarring.  They had the Moosewood cookbook, Mom!

The most surprising thing about the library is that the building it's in has this ridiculous Italienate courtyard.  I promise to take a photo of it.  The inner walls of the building are lined with these elaborate marble-looking arches.  I don't know how to describe it.

ETA:  Okay, so the libary is in a building called the Thon-Dittmer Palais, and here is a photo of the interior.  Also, here is a website about the area.  It's in German, but the pictures are what matters.

Obatzda/O'batzta/Obatzter is a standard, beer garden cheese dip snack food.  Its main ingredients are camembert, cream cheese or butter, beer and paprika, and it's served with raw, sliced red onions on the side.  It's generally pale orange due to the paprika, but I have eaten a whitish version (in Berlin).

It is traditionally served in either a dallop or a series of scoops on a plate with what Americans would call pretzel stix protruding skyward.  Thus, it either looks like a hedgehog, or a dead, comic-book caterpillar.  It is extremely delicious.  I had some for dinner last night.  Unfortunately, I did not think to take a photo.  I promise one in the near future.

In other news:  Mom, Dad, I have a really stupid idea for our Christmas card photo.  Contact me privately.

ETA:  I have been mentally compiling a list of "Ways to seem like a local" in Regensburg.  At the moment, most of the list escapes me, except for my personal favorite:  Comment on the poor quality of Thurn und Taxis beer.  Everyone will think you're super cool.  I think I may have even been patted on the back once for saying that.

For the first time ever, I do not have classes on Fridays.  It has been quite disorienting.  The full impact of the magnitude of the weekday/weekend ratio change has yet to hit me, I think.

Lauren, Maya and I went to IKEA today, on a bus adventure!  I bought this gorgeous medium blue (like maybe hex code #1378D7) half-liter thermos that I've been eyeing for like two years at the IKEA in New Haven.  Yay for saving money bringing my own tea to class.  I also got this silly easter mug that has a CHARTREUSE chick on it for 69 cents.  You all know how I feel about green.

After we returned, I ate a Teddie peanut butter and jelly sandwich (strawberry, for those of you who understand exactly why we blog).  It was pretty great.

THEN I had more frisbee practice.  I kept very focused, and I played extremely well.  It's such a pleasure to play when your not sucking wind (or in general).  I even got a d[efensive] block, but it got called back for a foul.  It was right on the goal line, though. (and the foul didn't affect the throw, for you skeptics).

Oh man, this day keeps getting better.  AFTER practice, I made dinner!  I boiled a few handfuls of spirelli pasta in salted water, and then drained the pasta and tossed it with about a half-tablespoon totes German garlic-infused butter (good call!).   Then I plopped about three tablespoons of pesto (from a jar) on top and mixed it all around.  THEN I dolloped something like a heaping 1/4 cup of ricotta cheese on top of all of that.  I tasted it, and it was pretty insanely delicious, but to put it over the top, I lightly (and I do mean lightly) sprinkled it with granulated garlic and black pepper.  I didn't take a photo 'cause I ate it pretty fast.  Eh, it was ugly anyway.  But with fresh pesto, it might be nice-lookin'!

I picked up an additional course at the last minute yesterday, called "Literature and Electronic Media".  I thought it was going to be about e-books (which doesn't really explain why I went to it) but either way, it's not.  It should be called "The Narrative and Electronic Media".  The professor showed us an internet video of babies puking on their parents to demonstrate a new type of narrative, talked about Finding Nemo at length, and mentioned how blogs depart from the linearity of a narrative!  I'm really psyched for it, and I REALLY hope it gets approved by Wesleyan.

Tomorrow we're going to Bamberg and then having a BBQ, and on Sunday a couple people are going to the Starnberger See, near Munich.  Regina's great-aunt who is a nun lives in a cloister there, and we're tagging along on her visit.  I think it will be really neat!

Oh, and my birthday is June 5th.

This one I had with myself on the way to the post office, which was closed, because they knew it was on my to-do list.

Me:  Oooh, gelato.  I should get some gelato
Me:  But it's kind of cold out, and you just want it because it's there
Me:  We'll cross that bridge when I get to the gelato shop
Me:  I need to save my money!  Okay, I will either get a gelato or the food magazine, but not both.
Me:  Well, you probably want the food magazine more.
Me:  Do you even want gelato?
Me:  Not really.
Me:  Then it's settled.
Me:  I'll just walk past the shop on my way home, but I'll only get some if there's a really crazy flavor.
Me:  Good plan.
Me:  Man, this chocolate gelato is good.

Well, it didn't quite happen like that.  I ended up NOT buying a gelato, but I had anticipated the end of that particular conversation with myself, and liked it better that way.  I actually didn't get the food magazine either.  But I probably will next time I go food shopping.

What? I like posing with giant ice cream cones.

(clearly)