Expat Thanksgiving rock’n'roll!

Over the years, I’ve been to every type of expat Thanksgiving imaginable. The potluck with other expats. The ‘American’ restaurant. The Italian-restaurant-tries-to-make-turkey. The expat housewife extravaganza. The potluck-with-mostly-Europeans-who-bring-shit-like-cole-slaw. But never did I expect to see the day where I’d spend Thanksgiving at the Hard Rock Cafe.

The venue was chosen because of its promises of 1) Thanksgiving-like food and 2) American football shown live on eleventy-billion screens. Personally I would have rather watched the Macy’s parade. I hear there was a Smurf balloon… But I digress.

I skipped the dinner part (I had an art class, and restaurants tend to have no idea what to do with a vegetarian for Thanksgiving), but the reviews of the meal ranged from “at least the turkey wasn’t dry” to “the cornbread had less texture than the pumpkin pie”. Ah, the pumpkin pie, the one part of the meal I actually did sample. This pumpkin pie was amazing… in all the wrong ways. While it managed to look somewhat like pumpkin pie, at least from the top, it had the texture of rice pudding and the flavor of key lime pie. I don’t believe it contained any pumpkin at all. How gloriously fucked up is that?

How was your Thanksgiving?

Tags: expat life, holidays, Munich

Here it comes!

Little wooden huts are being constructed all over the city. All over the country, really. The huts are being filled with Christmas kitsch of every kind. They will open for business at the end of the week. I can’t wait!

The snow and cold weather this week have more than put me in the mood for strolling through a Weihnachtsmarkt, drinking Glühwein and munching on hot roasted chestnuts. If there is one thing the Germans do right, it’s Christmas. If you only make it to Germany once in your life, do it during December. I mean, assuming you don’t mind the cold…

Tags: German culture, Germany, holidays, Munich

Oh la la! Beaujolais Nouveau!

Last night we went to a Beaujolais Nouveau party. Beaujolais Nouveau, of course, is a crappy French wine with a brilliant marketing strategy. What to do? Our wine is so crappy zat no one wants to buy it. We cannot possibly compete with ze other fine French wines. I’ve got it! Let’s use a little reverse psychology. Get people excited about, um, our wine’s freshness. Zat’s it! We will pretend it is supposed to taste zat way! And have a big party to celebrate ze new shit every year!

And party the people do. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love a good excuse for a party. The invitation for this particular one came with the instruction to wear a French detail. Like a beret. Or a mustache. Or a picket sign. Or…. a Camembert cheese hat?

Tags: Munich, wine

Toasting Obama in Zurich

I’m a little behind on my travel blogging here… the day after the election I crawled out of bed and hopped on a train to Zurich. It’s always a treat to see my Zurich-based friends, but this particular trip was even more joyful than usual. The election results had us all in a fabulous mood. Heck, even the roasted chestnut sellers were excited.

Zurich itself seemed largely unchanged. The city felt clean and safe and was bustling with shoppers. The usually crazies were out: Alle Tot guy and the Scientologists. It was as if I had never left.

Notice the tent to the left in the top photo? That’s Zurich’s version of Oktoberfest, going on now. Although we are familiar with the tent from past years, this was the first time it registered what beer was being served inside – Feldschlossen. What’s the point of a beer festival with undrinkable beer? But it wasn’t all bad – across the way floated the wine boats, which host Zurich’s regular wine tasting extravaganzas. Those brought back fond memories.

Although I don’t think back on Zurich and remember it for its culinary greatness, we were able to think of plenty of things we wanted to eat this trip. Mostly it involved chocolate and melted cheese. The trip also involved an obligatory dinner at Hiltl, my favorite restaurant in Zurich. Insanely delicious as usual.

It has been a year since we moved away from Zurich. Three years since we left Milan. Over four years since packing up and saying goodbye to New York. One of the cool things about moving so often is getting to go back to our former hometowns and walk around like we own the place. Get off the train or the plane and know exactly where we’re going and how we’re getting there. I definitely enjoyed that feeling on this trip to Zurich. I wonder how long before all this stored city knowledge wears off.

Tags: Switzerland, travel, Zurich

Oh German music industry, will you never cease to delight me?

Dude, why is it that no one told me about Jimi Blue‘s equally musically talented older brother, Wilson Gonzales?

For Wilson’s last birthday gift, he apparently received a large amount of sub-dermal collagen. English lessons might have been a better idea. Not that whoever wrote this isn’t clearly a musical genius:

I got two tickets
To New York City
Come with me
You look so pretty
I take you down
To Abercrombie
Later we gonna
Have a Zombie

Wait, it gets better. The name of Wilson’s album? Cookies. I swear I’m not making this up.

Everybody sing along! I drink like Britney Speeeeeears!

We want cookies!

Cookies!

Cookies!

Tags: German culture, huh?, music, Ridiculous English

November is for being creative

This month I’ve been busy over at my art blog, participating in Art Every Day Month. AEDM was started by artist Leah Piken Kolidas several years ago, and I’ve wanted to participate ever since I first heard about it. So far I’ve found it a great motivation and also a nice way to ‘meet’ other artists online.

Given that I’ve decided to blog about my AEDM creations daily, I’m also participating in NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. The idea of this, you guessed it, is to post every day for a month. Just because.

I think both of the aforementioned November events were inspired by NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, in which I participated two years ago. Participants aim to write at least 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. That’s a lot of words.

What creative stuff are you doing this November?

—-
Photo: Munich – Theatinerkirche, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 45cm, by me.

Tags: art

…carved by gummi artisans who work exclusively in the medium of gummi*

Dearest Headbang8,

While I truly appreciate your generous gift, what in the world am I going to do with 150 gummi smurfs? I don’t think these are the kind you can make into gelato.

Love,

Jul

* Can anyone name that quote?

Tags: huh?

David Sedaris reading in Munich tonight!

I barely heard about this in time, so wanted to post it here in case there are any other crazy fans of David Sedaris in Germany who are interested in going to see him read (along with the guy who does the German-language audiobooks – I can’t even imagine DS in German!). Amazingly, tickets are still available as of this morning. Go get ‘em! (ie, call the number listed under Kartenvorbestellung.)

For those of you who haven’t yet had the pleasure, David Sedaris is the author of numerous books, including the essential-reading-for-expats Me Talk Pretty One Day, and is also possibly the funniest man alive. His latest book (which is apparently coming out in German around now… but I’d go for the English) is When You Are Engulfed in Flames. We spent our long bus rides in the Lofoten Islands laughing so hard we peed ourselves*, listening to the audiobook read by the author himself. The people around us must have thought we were escaped mental patients.

Folks in other parts of Germany can see him, too! Here‘s the schedule for his German book tour:

• 10 November 2008: Munich
• 11 November 2008: Cologne
• 12 November 2008: Hanover
• 13 November 2008: Leipzig
• 14 November 2008: Berlin

He will also be making appearances in Zurich and Paris next week, and after that he’s off to delight North America. See David Sedaris’s appearance schedule here.

ETA: Two things. First, whomever I lent my copies of Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day, I hate you. I know, I probably told you there was no hurry to get them back, but obviously I lied. I need them back right now. Given that I only have audio download copies of his other books, I have absolutely nothing to bring for David to sign.

Second, I have spent the afternoon wondering what interesting/crazy/fun/deranged thing I could say to David Sedaris to make sure I end up being a story in his next book. Any ideas?

*Not literally

Tags: books, media

Partying with the Dems Abroad

Another first for me today: I took the first subway of the morning home, at around 4am. We got home in plenty of time to watch CNN call the election for Obama at 5am. I knew it was coming, but still I was surprised how emotional it made me to actually hear it.

I barely made it through McCain’s concession speech before I fell asleep. Still, this was the closest thing to an all-nighter I’ve pulled in quite a while.

It was a long evening. We arrived at the Democrats Anonymous Abroad party around 7pm to have dinner with friends. There was an, um, interesting program of live music on offer, but by around 10pm or so we were all itching to re-glue ourselves to a TV, even though we knew it would still be hours before any news came in. We moved upstairs to the bar area and found some prime seats in front of the big projection screen showing CNN. Thanks to my new toy (which I will tell you more about later) I was even able to get online and chat with friends and family back in the US, to find out what they were hearing on their end.

In the hours before the polls started closing, we entertained ourselves by watching a little Nailin Paylin and making up election night drinking games.

The crowd cheered each state as it was called for Obama, and for Democratic House and Senate members who were declared winners. It was especially satisfying to see Elizabeth Dole go down, after having seen this. Unfortunately Al Franken’s race was still too close to call.

Not everyone managed to stay up as long as we did.

Tags: Americana, expat life

Bring on the hugging*

A funny thing happened to me today. For the first time in eight years of living in Europe, I walked around wishing that everyone around me knew I was American.

Thank you America. Well done.

* The title is in reference to this fab video

Tags: Americana, expat life