Christkindlmarkt

Last weekend, Heimlich and I went to the Akron Christkindl Market [lock3live.com]. It's kind of a smaller version of a Christkindlmarkt (Christmas Market) that you would find in Austria or southern Germany.

At the Akron event, there are bona fide Germans from Chemnitz, Germany running all of the huts (selling Christmas-y items) and food stands (so the food is authentic-tasting). The food (you know, the most important thing on any agenda for me) was great! We had a good time, it was very reminiscent of our visits to the Christkindlmarkt in Salzburg (see pictures below):



The Akron Christkindl Market will be open through the end of December.

Note to the organizers: it will be easier to find your website if you call the event a Christkindlmarkt (the actual German name), instead of a Christkindl Market (where only half of the word is translated). I would have never thought to have googled for a word that is half translated into English, and if you search for "Christkindlmarkt Akron", your website doesn't come up.

Restaurant 'Open'

The other week, I mentioned that I had been in Holland. My favorite part about traveling has to be the food. One of the places that we ate was a restaurant called "Open", which was built on an old railway bridge.

Obviously, it was built on one of those bridges that is designed to rotate out of the way to allow boats to pass, and it's now fixed in the open position. When I visited, it was quite cold, so, they couldn't open the windows. But all of the sides of the restaurant are windows that they open when it is warmer (as in the picture).

The atmosphere was fun (although a little cramped). And the food was quite good. The English version of the menu was not really much of a help over the Dutch version, because of the piss-poor translations. We were lucky to have native Dutch speakers with us who could explain exactly what each menu item really was.

Here is another person's review [momondo.com] with additional pictures of the restaurant.

Krampus

After hearing about the Sinterklaas tradition, I described the Austrian tradition of Krampus to the Dutch (and to my surprise, none of them had heard about it).


The Wikipedia entry for Krampus describes it as the following:

"In the Alpine region the Krampus is represented by an incubus in company of Santa Claus. Traditionally, young men dress up as the Krampus in the first two weeks of December, particularly in the evening of December 5, and roam the streets frightening children (and adults) with rusty chains and bells. In some rural areas the tradition also includes slight birching by the Krampus, especially of young females.

The present day Krampus costume consists of red wooden masks or Larve, black sheep's skin and horns. Considerable effort goes into the manufacture of the hand-crafted masks, as many younger adults in rural communities engage competitively in the Krampus events."

The Wikipedia description glosses over the most striking feature of Krampus runs by using the following euphemism: birching. What they are really doing is assaulting young women with sticks. While Heimlich was living in Austria, her description of the Krampus runs was much closer to what is described in this Wall Street Journal article:

"For a full week during the start of the holiday season, scores of Krampuses stalk the cobbled ways of Salzburg and its surrounding villages. The Krampus is a hybrid-beast of pagan origins that has been affixed to the Christmas season... Only instead of inviting young boys for midnight monster romps, they stalk young women, fondling them, throwing them over their shoulders and whipping them with wooden switches until their shins and thighs are black and blue."

Heimlich told me that she would not go outside during the Krampus runs, and I can see why.

Picture of person in Krampus costume from annia316's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Sinterklaas

I was in Holland last week. One of the things that I learned while I was there is the Dutch legend of Sinterklaas (which is probably where the North American legend of Santa Claus probably comes from). The Wikipedia entry of Sinterklaas has the following description:

"Sinterklaas has a long white beard... [and] carries a big book with all the children's names in it, which states whether they have been naughty or nice in the past year..."

"Sinterklaas is assisted by many mischievous helpers with black faces and colourful outfits, modelled after 16th century Spanish clothing. These helpers are called Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes)..."

"From about 1850, Pete was said to be an imported African servant of Saint Nicholas. Today however, a more politically correct explanation is given: Pete's face is said to be 'black from soot' (as Pete has to climb down chimneys to deliver his gifts)..."

"Sinterklaas traditionally arrives each year in November (usually on Saturday) by steamboat from Spain, and is then paraded through the streets, welcomed by cheering and singing children. Invariably, this event is broadcast live on national television in the Netherlands and Belgium...."

The way that it was explained to me, the parents make sure that their children see the television broadcast. A short time later, someone dressed up as Sinterklaas comes to their school or house (who has been fed information ahead of time), and brings them up in front of everyone and tells them all of the good and bad things they have heard that child has done in the past year (how traumatic!). Good children are given candy, while the bad children are threatened with being stuffed in a sack and taken back with Sinterklaas.

Gifts come a short time later. Apparently, the tradition used to be that Sinterklaas or one of his Black Petes would climb down the chimney. But most European homes don't have chimneys anymore. Now, most families ask a friend or a neighbor to leave the gifts at the front door, knock on the door, and then run away. The children are then left with the impression that the gifts have been left by Sinterklaas.

Picture of Sinterklaas via Jacob Johan's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

New Airbus A380

The new jumbo Airbus A380 super jumbo luxury jumbo airliner has been getting a lot of press lately.


One of the things that cracks me up about these articles is that people are still naming planes. Qantas' first A380 has been named [theage.com.au] after Australia's first female pilot Nancy-Bird Walton. To me, naming planes reminds me of a bygone era of the Enola Gay [wikipedia.org] and the Spirit of St. Louis [wikipedia.org] -- naming a plane these days seems very antiquated.

At least there are several worse names (or tributes) they could have chosen:

• Satan's Testicle (although this probably would be a great band name)
• Tokyo Rose
• Ticket to Hell
• Mata Hari
• Marie Antoinette
• Ethel Rosenberg
• The Titanic
• Eva Braun
• The Hindenburg
• Amy Fisher

Picture of Airbus A380 airliner from Telstar Logistics' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

More Weddings...

Our Junes are always ludicrously busy. We went to another wedding (our 3rd in two weekends).

Apparently, if you wait a few hours into the wedding reception (you know, at the height of guest drunkenness) and then drop a few hundred beach balls onto the dance floor, a spontaneous, crazy game of drunken dodgeball will ensue:


I still have to carefully select which pictures will get uploaded to Flickr. Most (if not all) of the pictures we took imply massive intoxication -- either on the part of the photographer or subject. And not always in a good way.

Take for example, the pictures of me dancing (see below). I've always worried that I look like an idiot out on the dance floor. And I have been horrified to find out that it's far worse than I could have ever imagined. Heaven forbid me ever seeing video of myself dancing...


What am I doing exactly? Pretending to be a surfer from the 80s?

BROOD XIV

Apparently, one of the 17-year cicada broods has emerged in Pennsylvania. We know this, because on our road trip this past weekend, every time the highway went through a wooded area, all you could hear were millions of cicadas screeching. Even with the windows closed.


According to this site, this is the second largest cicada emergence in Pennsylvania. That site also has a nice map showing the areas affected (read: the areas to stay the hell out of).

Picture of cicadas courtesy of photos_martha's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Purple Boxes in Ohio

This weekend, Heimlich and I took another road trip. One of the things we noticed along the way were all of these purple kite-like things hanging from the trees along the interstates.


Apparently, according to this article [hpj.com], they are part of a multi-state study to determine how far the emerald ash borer (a pest) population has spread across the country. Here's a quote from the article:

"The three-dimensional, triangle-shaped traps are 24 inches long and hang vertically in an ash tree or are secured to the tree trunk. They are coated with nontoxic glue, and they are baited with oil from the Manuka tree. The traps pose no risk to humans, pets or wildlife, but their glue can be messy if touched."

According to this page [emeraldashborer.info], the emerald ash borer has killed over 30 million ash trees in southeastern Michigan, and a similar number have been devestated in Ohio and Indiana.

Picture of emerald ash borer trap via psforsberg's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Jesus Christ Superstar

John recently posted [citym.org] about seeing Momo [livedoor.biz] perform in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar this weekend in Brooklyn. Seeing that post reminded me that I totally forgot to post about it earlier.

I was also at the show last weekend. The production is being put on by the Brooklyn Association of the Performing Arts. For ticket and other information, you can go here [theatermania.com], or directly to the Brooklyn Theater Arts Project [btap.org].

Momo plays the lead female role -- Mary Magadalene -- and she was fantastic. She has an incredible voice, and I hope that we'll get a lot more chances to see her perform.

Anyway, as John does, I heartily recommend the production. Several members of the cast had such great stage presence, and it was very enjoyable. Momo has several pictures of herself and other cast members on her weblog [livedoor.biz].

Stupid Trains

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of news articles devoted to the virtues of traveling by train [highlandstoday.com].

With the inevitable delays of air travel, and having to get to the airport so early, means that for many medium-distance trips, taking a train, driving, or flying will take around the same amount of time to arrive at a destination. So, on paper, taking a train doesn't sound like too bad of an option.

Except that it's so ridiculously inconvenient.

Passenger trains should stop at airports. It's really the only practical solution in the US. Right now, in most midwest cities, the train stations are in horrible locations. It's not easy to park nearby. When you arrive at your destination, it is not easy to get to a rental car agency.

In Cleveland, it is not even easy to go from an Amtrak train to the local light rail system to get around. The airport is twice as far away as the Amtrak station. And I almost always use the light rail system to go from home to the airport. And I can guarantee that it would be much larger of a hassle to try to use light rail to get to the Amtrak station.

Even if the frequency of passenger trains increased, I just don't see them ever really challenging air travel. Even if it is significantly cheaper.

Travel and Stupidity

On Bruce Schneier's weblog [schneier.com], I saw a link to an interesting article: Here's How America Looks to the World [washingtonpost.com]. It uses actual data to show the ridiculousness of the current airport security procedures in a different way. I think that we've all seen articles about this topic before -- how much of a headache it is to fly, how the new procedures have actually made flying less secure, etc. But here's an article that takes a different tack. Here's a quote:

"Last November, the Commerce Department reported a 17 percent decline in overseas travel to the United States between Sept. 11, 2001, and 2006."

"Two-thirds of survey respondents worried about being detained for hours because of a misstatement to immigration officials. And... 'More respondents were worried about U.S. immigration officials (70 percent) than about crime or terrorism (54 percent) when considering a trip to the country.'"

Great points. It's about time that we stop the neo-McCarthyism and start using some common sense.

Berlin Photo Essay

Ok, last post on Berlin for a while. I finally have finished with the photo essay I have been talking about:


The photo essay consists of 22 photos, with associated descriptions. I could have put it together using Flickr, but I thought it would be easier to use this other format to tell the narrative.


Above is a picture of Heimlich that I love. She's standing next to a statue of a dog at the Pergamon Museum.


The above picture of the Aston Martin that I spotted in Potsdam is just included for the few car lovers that read this weblog. ..and because it was so surprising to finally see one in person. I cannot believe that someone parked one of those on the street.

More pictures from Berlin in my Flickr photostream.

More entries about Berlin: April 1, April 2.

Food and Sights in Berlin

Here are some more choice shots from Berlin:


There is one long stretch of the Berlin Wall which is still standing, which is called the East Side Gallery [wikipedia.org]. Above is one of the works that was painted onto it. The works are being rapidly eclipsed by graffiti, and we even saw people writing on it.


Food is my favorite part of any trip. There were great bakeries all over the place, so we got our fill of delicious bread and pastries. Although I was very adventurous with food (as always), I learned that weird breads (that have fillings or any special ingredients) generally will NOT taste good to Americans.


And, of course, the most amazing part of any city in Europe is the architecture. There are beautiful buildings hundreds of years old, right next to ultra-modern structures. And somehow it works. Our cities look downright boring next to theirs.

Photo essay coming in a few days...

More entries about Berlin: April 1, April 3.

Back from Berlin

So, if you were wondering where I have been, Heimlich and I just got back from our vacation in Berlin:


Unfortunately, it was pretty cold over there, so we had to wear 800 layers of clothing. As a result, we look like the Michelin Man in every picture. The pictures of us look like they put a bunch of museums in Antarctica, and that's where we took our vacation...


It turns out that there are tons of things to see in Berlin, so we never were bored. Above is the Monument to the Murdered Jews in Europe [wikipedia.org]. As you might imagine, a lot of the sights were related to WWII. For example, Exhibit B (at Checkpoint Charlie [wikipedia.org]):


The rest of our pictures have been uploaded to my Flickr photostream [flickr.com], but they really don't tell a narrative. Plus, the sheer volume of pictures is going to prevent most people from looking through them. I'm working on a photo essay consisting of 20-30 pictures, but it won't be ready until later this week.

More entries on Berlin: April 2, April 3.

Visa Class Action Lawsuit

I recently heard about yet another class action lawsuit that I may be eligible to benefit from. Apparently, Visa and other credit card companies illegally charged customers for additional fees related to currency conversion [bizjournals.com].

The way it worked is if you used your credit card in a foreign country, the credit card company converts the currency so that the bills on your statements show up in US Dollars. And apparently, they were overcharging for this service. Here's a quote:

"The suit alleges that Visa, MasterCard, their member banks and Diners Club conspired to hide the price of foreign transactions by card holders outside of the United States, including fees of up to 3 percent, in violation of federal and state law, and that Visa and MasterCard inflated base exchange rates before applying the fees."

They recently settled this case, and people affected are starting to receive letters. Between 1997 and 2004, I think that I visited Europe at least 4 times.

Hiking the Grand Canyon

A bunch of people I know have hiked down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and hiked back out. The experience sounded pretty interesting to me, and I would love to try it sometime.


We already have a major vacation planned for 2008, so I think that it is too early to start planning another one.

But we haven't done any major hiking since our trip to Hawaii in 2005. I would love to make sure that our next trip (after Berlin) will include some major hikes. Especially since I have seen all kinds of inspiring pictures from inside the Grand Canyon.


Pictures of the Grand Canyon from Ms. President's Flickr Photostream [flickr.com]

European Lodging

Last week [fluggart.com], I mentioned that we had booked our flights to Europe.

What I didn't mention is that we ended up figuring out that buying a packaged deal (flights+hotel) ended up saving us a few hundred dollars over buying flights and hotel rooms separately.

Not only did it save us a little money, but it also gave me the peace of mind of knowing where I was going to be sleeping. Remember, the last time I toured Europe without booking hotel or hostel rooms in advance, Heimlich and I ended up having to sleep in a fire escape in Vienna.

Traveling with Heimlich is never boring, let me tell you...

Tickets to Berlin

So, we finally booked the tickets for our trip to Berlin! We have been talking about it for almost a year now, and finally pulled the trigger, so we'll be going next year.

Heimlich and I seem to do everything on a very long time scale. It's almost always a year between the time when we decide to do something, and when we actually do it. Part of the reason for the huge delay was making sure that we got everything at the lowest price possible.

Going through all of the permutations of buying plane tickets through search engines or through each individual airline's website was very tedious. It was also a moving target, since the prices changed by a surprising amount week-to-week. It was also made more complicated by the huge number of options that we had. We could have found the cheapest tickets to London or Amsterdam, then flown a low-cost carrier to Berlin. Or we could have flown to another German airport and taken a train the rest of the way. Plus, we were somewhat flexible on dates. The number of permutations was staggering.

We are really excited, though. And we can't wait to go. Earlier this year, I visited Berlin for the first time, and I only got to spend a day there. So, it wasn't really enough time to see much of anything. It was just enough to give me a taste of what I could see if I had more time to spare. So, I am really eager to go back.

Berlin

Heimlich and I are in the beginning stages of planning a European vacation for next year. The primary destination will be Berlin (which we have both been to, but neither of us have been there long enough to see everything that we wanted to see). We are also thinking about hitting other cities on the trip as well, such as Prague. We've already picked up a copy of Let's Go Western Europe [amazon.com].

What we just realized is that there are also podtours that we can download (like these of Berlin [letsgo.com]). They are audio tours that you can download to your MP3 player, and listen as you are wandering around historic sites. Many museums make audio tour headsets available, but those usually aren't available for outdoor sites.

We're definitely going to download those, since we were going to be bringing at least one MP3 player anyway.

West Texas

Last week, my weblog was on hiatus because I was in West Texas, and having never been there before, I wasn't entirely sure whether they had even heard of the internet before. As I had said, I had never been to that area of the country, and ended up learning a lot on the trip:

1. August is not a bad time to go to West Texas, weather-wise. While it is generally the hottest month of the year up here in Ohio, it has already begun to cool down, down there. I was outside during the day for a large portion of the trip, and we chose outdoor seating every evening for dinner and were comfortable (even in the body armor that was necessary to defend ourselves from the mosquitoes).


2. In some areas of Texas, the density of oil pumpjacks [wikipedia.org] is frightening. There were some areas that we flew over in a plane, where it did not look like you could throw a rock without hitting one. Think of it this way... In Cleveland, there is a Starbucks about every 100 feet in any direction. Imagine that every one of those were switched out with a pumpjack (for those of you who are coffee-addicted and are about to have a heart attack at that thought, just pretend that the pumpjacks can take your skinny, grande, quad, half-caff, half chocolate orders...).


3. You can cover a lot of ground really quickly when the speed limit is 80mph. My commute to work would be so much faster if the speed limit were 33% higher...


4. There are hotels where you can check in and check out without ever interacting with hotel staff (even if you wanted to). How? If you make your reservation in advance, some hotels (like the Holland Hotel [hollandhotel.net]) have a self check-in procedure. And there don't appear to be staff in the hotel at all for most of the day.

Airlines and Wrongful Imprisonment

I had heard that New York had passed its own airline passenger Bill of Rights [iht.com] recently. One of the included items is that you are on a flight that is delayed for more than three hours, the airline is required to provide passengers food, water, clean toilets and fresher air.

Many airlines apparently will drag one of those huge staircases around to the plane and allow passengers to deplane in order to comply with the "fresher air" portion.

I can only hope that those measures are adopted outside New York state as well. With the percentage of flights that are delayed going up, it seems like travel horror stories are becoming increasingly common.

The trip that I took to Europe in March turned into a huge debacle [fluggart.com], in part because once our flight was canceled, the airline didn't do much to put us on another flight or offer us many options.

Golf

Does anyone know that I used to play golf? Yeah, that was before I had really decided that I hate golf.



Above is a picture of me from over the weekend. A bunch of people in my family play golf, so I went to a driving range with them. It is safe to say that this picture was taken moments before I either completely whiffed, or I made the ball go a whole 10 feet.

Luckily for me, a bunch of people were taking videos, so we have lots of those to save for posterity. It's like an instant Dorf on Golf [wikipedia.org] video -- just add Terence.

Visit to New York

Over the weekend, I also visited New York City, where I ate some pretty good food (which, you know, is really the only thing I really care about when getting out of Cleveland), and took a stroll through Central Park. On the way through Central Park, we went by Sailboat Pond (the boat in the below picture is actually a radio-controlled one):


One of my favorite things to do now in the City is to stop by The Green Tea Cafe [teamap.com] for some Mango-flavored green tea with tapioca balls. It's definitely my favorite place to grab bubble tea, and you can take my endorsement to the bank, because I have tried out three of the 800 bubble tea places in New York -- so obviously, my opinion is very authoritative.

Weekend Weddings

Over Memorial Day weekend, we trekked out for a wedding in beautiful Sparta, New Jersey. Having never been to Sparta before, we had no idea what to expect. The wedding was held at the Lake Mohawk Country Club, which overlooks Lake Mohawk, and it was without a doubt, the swankiest wedding we have ever been to.


The ceremony was held right at the lake-side, then we were bombarded with a dizzying array of hors d'oeuvres (like mini crab cakes, and mini chicken cordon bleus.), which would have been plenty of food. But then there was the full meal at the reception. It was top shelf the whole way.


They also had an incredible band. I have never heard a wedding band play multiple Led Zeppelin songs at a reception and actually pulled it off before.

More pictures on Flickr [flickr.com].

Pay by Credit Card in NYC Taxis

Recently, I saw this news article [guardian.co.uk] about new technology that is being introduced in NYC taxicabs.

Yeah, yeah, blah blah... Trust me, when I'm in a taxi in New York, the last thing that I want to be doing is screwing around with some poorly-designed entertainment device that is probably just as annoying to use as the ones on airplanes these days. The ones I have seen on planes have really clunky interfaces and really narrow viewing angles (what century is this?). They make you think they are recycling 486 laptops and putting DVD drives in them, or something.

Anyway, the item that really grabbed my attention was that you can pay by credit card now. Thank goodness! Every other major city in the world has taxicabs that allow you to pay by credit card. New York, ostensibly the cultural capital of the world, has finally caught up to the technology level in eastern European cities.

I can't tell you how many times I have resisted hailing a cab, because I have not wanted to pay in cash. Either I'm worried that I won't have enough on me, or I'm worried that I won't have the right bills for the tip, or whatever. Being able to charge it will save so much hassle.

I'm actually going to be visiting NYC twice this summer. Maybe I'll end up hailing a cab, and it'll have this blessed technology...

European Food

Ok, by now, you're all tired of hearing me complain about traveling to Europe. It wasn't all bad, though. The thing that I look forward most about traveling is the food.

That probably sounds really stupid, but I love being able to eat out at great restaurants (which we rarely do when we're at home). Even in the mornings, tt was nice being able to get up early, walk around the corner, and buy fresh bread or pastries at a local bakery. Those Europeans sure have great bakeries, let me tell you... I still have dreams about some of the pastries that I had bought.

I also tried out Indonesian cuisine, for the first time, while I was in Amsterdam (at a restaurant called Tempo Deoloe [tempodoeloerestaurant.nl]). Apparently, since it is a former Dutch colony, there is a significant population of Indonesians living in Holland, and vice versa. The food was excellent (although insanely hot). I could certainly get used to eating Indonesian food more often, but there don't seem to be any Indonesian restaurants in Cleveland.

Europeans Are Weird

So, the rest of my trip ended up being almost as exhausting as the flights out there. I ended up hitting England, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Italy.

In 7 days.

Something that used to be a huge pain in the ass is all of the different currencies you would end up accumulating throughout a trip, because every country had their own currency. You would collect about 10 different kinds of Francs or Crowns or whatever. And no currency exchange will take coins.

So, I was looking forward to being able to just use Euros the entire time I was there. But what you'll notice is that more than half of those countries don't use the Euro. So, I still ended up accumulating tons of useless change, in the form of Danish Crowns, and Swedish Crowns, and Czech Crowns, etc. Christ.

I also thought that pretty much all of continental Europe used the same kind of electrical plugs. But as I found out, there are some parts of Europe that use a weird 3-prong plug that is totally incompatible with the usual 2-prong one. Get it together you weirdos! Don't you live for my convenience?

Back from Europe

So, I'm back. I have been in Europe, on an extremely exhausting trip.

Things started going wrong right from the start. On Friday (March 16) there was terrible weather near Newark, so a ton of flights were diverted to Cleveland, where passengers promptly got stranded. My flight was originally slated to leave on Saturday (March 17) from Cleveland, but due to all of the stranded passengers, mine was cancelled. After a 3 hour wait in line at the airport, I was told that they could not put me on a flight for another three days. And cancelling just the outbound flights, and keeping the rest of the flights on the itinerary would cost an additional $3600...

So, I ended up cancelling all of my flights, and then rebooking them through Orbitz using the WiFi connection in the airport. Booking the tickets wasn't really a problem (other than being time-consuming). The problem was the not-so-great connections.

After having waited in the airport for 4 hours at that point, I had to rent a car, and drive to Detroit for the first leg of the flight. That was a non-stop out to London's Gatwick Airport. Then I had a three hour bus ride to London's Stansted Airport, where I picked up my connection to Copenhagen.

So, what should have been a relatively routine flight to Europe turned into a 34-hour travelling marathon...