Neither Yacht Rock nor Politics (sort of)

Oooh! New Post!

Are you thinking this will be exciting and filled with pithy insights about the world or art or foreign languages or funny food? Well, wipe those hopes out of your mind because Jeremy and I are feeling kind of boring and slow-- it's winter hibernation time and the Gluhwein hasn't even hit the streets. The weather is gray and rainy, and we had the daylight savings thing last weekend, so it is dark at 5:30. Waaaah.

Oh wait! This is fun! With Funny Food! Last weekend we took advantage of actual sun to ride our bikes to Bonn, a mere 36 kilometers away. Since the trams go to Bonn, I thought it was somewhat closer, and we didn't even check the distance before heading out. Crazy kids! We stumbled, exhausted, into the first brauhaus on the market square and ate up a delicious quantity of Rheinland homecookin': Himmel und Äd (remember the apple post?) and a pancake packed with fried potatoes and bacon. We took a look at the outdoor flea market, ate some cake, and then hit the road again. Somehow we took a wrong turn as night fell, and we ended up taking the train back home from Bruhl, home of the backyard baroque palace. It was actually not dificult to take the bikes on the train on a Sunday evening.... duly noted.

We are, in an undisciplined fashion, getting ready for our spring trip down the Mosel River from Trier (home of Germany's most famous Roman ruins) through Luxemburg to Metz, France. Now I know that I can do about 40 km per day easily, but 70 makes me a bit brain-dead.

I had wanted to host a fabulous "European Elites for Obama Election Night Soirée", but I realized today that having a party in one's apartment on a Tuesday night is not very polite. So, hopefully we can find some CNN-playing kneipe...

anyway...

For those of you who are truly sick of politics, here is how I while away my free hours:
Yacht Rock!
I have already watched all of them at least 3 times, but at least I don't have to hear about pitbulls, acorns, lipstick, weathermen, plumbers or any other such nonsense. Here are a couple of my favorites (warning the following videos contain some piquant language, and adult themes).

I may be Imaginary

Am I a Real American?

I grew up in Mecca, OH which had 3000 residents in the 2000 census compared to Wasilla's 7000 residents. Therefore, Mecca is twice as much a Small Town, and therefore I am undeniably a Real American.

However, I lived in NYC very happily for 6 years. NYC is, of course, the sinful epicenter of Fake America, but does that cancel out the 18 years I lived in Mecca?

Oh, but I live in Europe now. I am most definitely, then, not a Real American.

Case in Point

I really don't want to turn this into a political blog, but Colin Powell is just so brilliant in his statement endorsing Barak Obama that I couldn't help myself. You Americans have probably seen this 800 times by now, but if you haven't, make sure you scroll to minute 4:30.

Substitution News

More Switzerland!

I had a deeelicious dinner in Switzerland that consisted of Rotkohl (red cabbage sort of pickled and cooked), Glazed Chestnuts (chestnuts again!), and Mashed Potatoes. I wanted to make the same thing for Jeremy in order to spread the culinary delight around, but I ended up making Sauerkraut, Purple Mashed Potaotes (yay Greenmarket! Ummm, except that you shouldn't mash them...too waxy), and Swiss Dried/Cured Meat (those chestnuts are always letting me down). I wanted to take a picture, but Jeremy didn't want to scare you.

Sorry, this has been a slow news weekend in the Edgar/Lynch household.

Oh, and I am now hopelessly addicted to the election coverage.

What Heidi Saw...

Ok, so I've just been in Switzerland for a week, but it is indeed full of cheese and chocolate and money and cowbells and goats and rolling hills with trees turning yummy fall colors. Ahhhh...

I took a walk in the woods on my birthday, and found quite a few little friends:
(by the way, the German word for hike is "wandern"-- so perfect)

































































































And my personal favorite:

Die Bahn/Notes on Switzerland

Dear Deutsche Bahn,

Please accept my deepest apologies for saying bad things about your service on this blog. In reality, I love you and your comfortable, fast trains with every fiber of my being. Let's just put my last post under a "lovers' spat" and please, please, please, do not send the fates against me again.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Sarah Edgar


Oh, hi there, blog readers.
I'm just trying to cover my behind against future mishaps because on Saturday I missed my train. It went down like this--- Early Saturday morning, I went on an airplane from Zürich to Köln (as per my new policy of only being on the train a max of 8 hours per day) in order to teach my contredanse class at the Cologne TANZhautnah festival. The class went very well, and in 6 people I may have awakened a new passion for nerdy dancing! After the class, Beate and Jeremy and I had a refreshing beverage (1st mistake) and talked about the funding possibilities for our show in Feb. (2nd mistake). After we paid for the drinks, I only had a 1/2 hour to get to the train station, and on a weekday this would be ok. But it was SATURDAY-- the train was running 10 minutes late and I missed my train back to Switzerland by 2 min. I tried to tell my sob story to the ticket desk, but I had to end up buying a ticket for early the next morning for an insane price that I won't write here because I want to forget it as soon as possible.

But I got to spend the evening with Jeremy! Totally worth it.

Notes on Switzerland:

1. It is a rich, rich country. The airport in Zürich is filled with fancy wooden modern-art design desks, and the seats are leather. The Swiss franc is almost worth the same as the dollar (1.13 francs = 1 dollar), but it is kind of crazy expensive here. Example: a Starbucks coffee at the airport costs 7 francs, a cocktail at the bar in Winterthur costs about 25 franks (I didn't buy either of those things, FYI)

2. The choreographer and his husband have made me feel completely at home-- they cook for me, borrowed a bike for me to ride around town, and I even have my own bathroom. And they gave me a jar of jam (homemade from their own grapes) for my birthday!

3. I am speaking German A LOT. Yay! It has become my fall-back language because I can't speak the local dialect.

More later--- I can't wait to explore the medieval castle and hike in the woods and see Zürich and etc etc.

Some Bundeslands just don't like me

I went to Kassel on Sunday for an audition-- this meant leaving the house at 6am to travel 4 hours by train, forgetting to eat lunch, and then not getting the job. And it was COLD! I was walking through the town in the drizzling rain after the audition, when I spied a fabulous yellow palace (I think 75% of the baroque palaces in Germany are painted yellow-- why?), so I high-tailed it over for a little baroque nerdiness. And let me tell you, inside it was indeed nerdy, but not in the way I expected-- the museum inside the palace is the Astronomical-Physics Cabinet! There were globes from the 15th and 16th centuries, astrolabes, weird surveying equiptment, alchemy vessels, card-punching computers, a movable-type machine, and....
a microscope from 1700!











After that delicious dose of culture that I wish I could have shared with Jeremy (duh), I sat around the train station for an hour because the weather was wretched. When I was finally able to get on my train, I luckily found a seat next to a crowd of jolly beer-drinking men. Everything went smoothly for 2 stops... and then... one of the train doors refused to close. They tried to fix it for an hour and a half (during which time I made friends with the several children bouncing around the train) before making us all get off the train in order to get on another train. Another piece of luck-- this train was going straight to Cologne. Only 2 1/4 hours after I would have originally gotten home.

The thing is, Kassel is in the state (Bundesland) of Hessen-- the same Bundesland where you will find Göttingen (remember that sitting-on-the-floor-with-giant-costume-boxes fiasco?). I don't know what Hessen has against me, but every time I try to leave that place, it takes me twice as long as I planned to get home.



I am writing now from Winterthur, Switzerland (which is not the home of breast-milk cuisine, and the choreographer gagged when I told him about it), where I am doing funny dances with a couple of tall actors and trying to look manly.

The search for Apfelkuchen

Oh, yes, ladies and gents, it is that time of year when a girl's fancy turns to baking and eating all manner of fatty things. We had pâté and cheese for dinner last night-- but I digress. On a whim, I picked up a kilo of apples at the store with a vague idea to make Apelkuchen. Of course, on the internet, there are about 8 million recipes, leaving me feeling rather confused and uninspired. I may make "Himmel und Erde" (Heaven and Earth), a traditional Cologne dish, instead. Here's the what you do if you feel similarly inspired:

Heaven and Earth

Ingredients:
2 pounds potatoes
salt
1 1/2 pounds apples
2 T. lemon juice
4 oz. bacon, in pieces
small onion, chopped
1/2 cup milk
pepper
nutmeg
1 1/2 pounds blood sausage (haha! I bet you could use some other sausage instead...), sliced
2 T oil

Wash, peel, and quarter the potatoes, then cook in salted water for 15-20 min. Wash, peel, take out the seeds, and cut the apples into eighths. Combine 1/2 water and the lemon juice and bring to a boil. Add the apples and cook for 10 min. In another pan, fry the bacon, and then add the onions, frying them together for 10 min. In a separate pan, scald the milk (What?!?! another pan! oy.)

Drain the apples and the potatoes. Puree the potatoes, then add the apples (leaving a couple of pieces aside) and mash them (it seems the apples are supposed to be less mashed than the potatoes...). Add the milk and combine. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Fry the sausage in oil until crispy (another pan!!! NOOOO!).

Serve the apple/potato puree with the onions and bacon on top, and the sausage with the remaining apple pieces on the side.



OH, heavens, after writing that out it seems like a lot of work... If anyone makes it let me know!

silly internet fun

This is from wordle.net-- you plug in a text and it randomizes the words. I copied into the system the little bit of explanation I wrote for the upcoming Punks Delight website. I know, total nerd.


I'm just sitting here, enjoying our brand-new heat and waiting for Jeremy to come home from England. I hope he brings me some bangers. Or mash.