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january noms
//i have been continually surprised by the amount of excellent meals i’ve been cranking out these days, if i do say so myself. i haven’t even felt particularly inspired or full of ideas, but day after day i’ve found myself plating up some serious photo-worthy meals. woohoo! (unfortunately, the photos aren’t turning out so worthy of the meals)the beginning of the month took us on a trip to globus where we stocked up on some serious mexican ingredients. oh, refried beans! cilantro! real salsa! how i’ve missed thee! i cranked out this huevos rancheros type meal one sunday brunch and felt pretty dang proud. so full of flavor… and enough…
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travel fails & how to fix ’em
travel is a learning experience. when anything goes wrong, it always comforts me to know that that is one thing i will not be doing again in the future anytime soon, and these experiences have helped to make me a better traveler. i don’t even mind thinking about or revisiting them because it helps refresh the moral of the story in my mind and it’s that that’s made me wiser.this week, i’m talking my biggest travel fails and what i learned from them… and what i hope you too will learn so you don’t make these same mistakes that i have. mistake #1: accidental fare-dodging on the prague metro system……
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panic at the supermarket
this is one of those everyday life expat stories. except this story has three endings. two are made up, and one is what actually happened. i was cruising down the aisles at our local LIDL, it was my usual weekly late afternoon grocery shopping trip with alex. we don’t have a car, so we have to figure out a time that works for us and meet in the town square and walk across the bridge, south to the store, and then schlep it all home in our fabric tote bags until our shoulders fall off. we like LIDL the best because it’s uncomplicated, it’s got bargain prices, the cashiers are…
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I Dyed in Szczecin
it was my last full day in poland and i was on a (very very full) train from the hel peninsula bound for szczecin, near the german border. i chose to visit szczecin because i’d heard a lot of great things in the travel bloggy world about this gritty polish harbor city and i wanted to see it with my own eyes. naively, when booking the trip i planned a handful of “one-nighters”, and this was one of them, my last hurrah in poland. but little did i know that one nighters aren’t such a great idea when you’re on a long backpacking trip. those days were such whirlwinds and admittedly,…
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a czech heart
sometimes i feel especially touched by certain stories i am privileged to hear from locals who share them with me. this is one of them, one woman’s account of what living in prague in the mid-70’s was like. this is another.i can’t tell it interview style because i don’t remember the back-and-forth quite as well, as it was a bit longer, but i’ll tell you what i remember and what i know. last week, i shared with J a story about the tragic separation of my landlord’s family from a part of their family who emigrated to the united states after the second world war, which was important because it…
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a winter wunderland
the day after christmas, i (and much of central europe) woke up to a magical blanket of snow. i hadn’t at all expected that it would snow during christmas… last year it was around 10c! this here was the stuff of miracles. after breakfast, we took a snowy winter walk around the lake and some residential areas before hopping on a boat for a lake cruise to st. wolfgang– the biggest village on wolfgangsee (which still isn’t really that big at all). it is also the most heavily toured spot on the lake. all the other merry tourists seemed to have the same idea as it was the first day…
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beginning the year
oh the dreaded first monday of the year, the day when we are forcefully shook from our holiday stupor and before you know it, you’re standing in front of eight students on a monday morning thinking, “welp, this is weird.” fortunately getting back to normal wasn’t quite as brutal as it was last year. so far so good. but, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. besides travel tuesday, i’ve been pretty absent from online things. i’ve been busting my back with teaching and other daily activities that by the end of the day (we’ll say around 9pm) i am ready to hit the mattress. (which is good, because our…
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atop the zwölferhorn
the zwölferhorn, which means something like “the twelfth peak” in german, is a mountain of 1,522m in height that looms over tiny st. gilgen. the village is, in fact, where you go to take the cable car to the top. when i was first researching the area a few months ago i was thinking no way, no how am i ever getting on that cable car! for some reason, i’ve developed a crippling dislike of heights in the last three years or so (good thing i got some swiss travels out of the way before then….) and was thinking i would have to forgo this trip.and then, right before we left,…
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christmas in st. gilgen, austria
why did i choose to spend christmas time at austria’s wolfgangsee? well, by the beginning of autumn, we hadn’t heard any talk of visitors so i thought it would be a great idea to experience an alpine christmas somewhere. austria, with its close proximity to southern czech republic fit the bill perfectly, especially the salzkammergut area (lake and alpine region near salzburg), which is closer to us than tirol or the other famous alpine regions of the country. we booked a sweet family-owned hotel and christmas was planned! it only took two and a half hours to get to st. gilgen from budějovice (mostly because our driver flew like a…
