A taste of Italy

Whee, what a fabulous week in Italy we had. Where to begin with the stories? Every meal could be the subject of its own post. We squeezed a ridiculous amount into our 8 days, from Rome to Tuscany to Venice, with a few other stops in between. Normally I wouldn't advocate such a ridiculously quick travel schedule, but somehow it managed to work out crazy well.



The highlights of the trip were definitely the Tarot Garden and the days we spent in the Tuscan countryside. Indeed, the entire trip was planned around the idea of visiting Niki de St. Phalle's sculptural masterpiece, which is located pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I had never even heard of this garden when we were living in Italy. I think it was at the Espace Jean Tinguely – Niki de Saint Phalle in Fribourg that I saw a video about her constructing the garden, and I've wanted to go see it in person ever since.



Since visiting the garden required renting a car, it made sense to also spend a couple days driving around Tuscany - something we had never done before since we didn't own a car when we lived in Milan. Observing the driving situation in Milan, neither of us was particularly eager to get behind the wheel in Italy at the time. But the Tarot Garden and tiny Tuscan hill towns definitely proved themselves worthy of the effort.

I'll end this post with some of the questions that kept running through my mind during this trip:

• How did the Italians manage to construct so many buildings that look more and more beautiful the older and more run-down they get?
• Why is espresso (and gelato and pizza and pretty much everything else) so much yummier in Italy than in other countries?
• Why don't we live here anymore?

More blogging from the road: Tuscany

Yes, we're in Tuscany. It sounds so trite - don't a gazillion American tourists come here every second? But damn, this area is worth every dollar and drop of ink spent on it. My eyes and my taste buds are having the times of their lives. My little camera is way out of its league. My Italian language skills are happy to be of use.



Tuscany is so improbably perfect I can't stand it. A couple more pictures here. You'll have to wait for the rest.

Where in the world am I today? Hint #2

This one should tip off many of you at least to the artist(s) involved, if not the exact location.

Edited to add: We have a winner! It is indeed the Giardino dei Tarrochi in Italy, an enchanting garden designed by Niki de Saint Phalle (the artist who created the angel sculpture in Zurich's main train station). I'll blog more about this trip soon, but if you can't wait, you can see more photos on my Flickr.

Where in the world am I today?

Any guesses?

Edited to add: you can find the answer in the following post.

I move to Munich, it becomes Germany's Hot Spot

Coincidence? I think not.

Munich Redux: Germany’s Hot Spot of the Moment

Thank you to the many, many folks who brought this article to my attention. I'd like to also point out that I've already reviewed Saf, the restaurant from the NY Times article, too.

Dear restaurateurs of Munich,

Please stop using Flash on your websites. It's a pain in the ass. I come to your site to check out your menu and find out where you're located, not to watch a multimedia presentation extravaganza that bogs down my computer. And if it takes me more than one click to get to your address, you're doing something very, very wrong.

Otherwise, keep up the good work. I'm especially impressed by the number of vegetarian offerings you have that involve actual vegetables, rather than just potatoes and cheese.

Love,

Jul

(photo: super yummy vegetarian sushi at Prinz Myshkin, which is one of my favorite restaurants ever despite their website)

Save the date: expat fun in Regensburg this summer

I've been trying to come up with a good title for Christina, organizer of many a get-together for the Bavarian expat blogger crowd. Social coordinator? Den mother? Cruise director?

Anyway, she's at it again, this time with a whole weekend full of Regensburg-style fun. There'll be food, a city tour, baseball(!?!), and if you're lucky, some beer, too. So if you'll be in this area, mark your calendars for June 21-22 and join in on all the expat revelry.

The finest in German teen Europop

Introducing... Jimi Blue! Mr. Blue would like to inform all the ladies out there that he is only capable of romancing those of you sporting pants of the little, red, and hot variety. Tokio Hotel doesn't have anything on this Justin Timberlake clone.

Munich: the first quarterly report

Our first three months in Munich have flown by. Well, on one hand it has felt fast, and on the other it feels like we've been here forever. Since I've lived in Germany before and speak passable German, it was a pretty soft landing. It also helped that we were able to move into our permanent apartment right away, and for once there were no delays in receiving our belongings. The immigration process involved a couple of ridiculous hoops, but luckily we had company lawyers to assist us in jumping through them. And overall the process was much closer to the über-efficiency of Switzerland than the clusterfuck of Italy.

Although I feel quite at home in Munich already, there are still plenty of things I don't know about the city. When people try to describe where certain things are, I often stare blankly, not having a clue where the mentioned streets or landmarks are. I've never been particularly good at street names, anyway, and if you consider that my brain is already full of mental maps of about 20 previous cities of residence, it's a wonder I can even remember my own address (which I do, most of the time, except for the zip code, which sounds kind of lame, but can I impress you with the fact that I still know my zip code from when I lived in Bologna 12 years ago? No? I didn't think so.). I wonder how long I can get away with this before the "I'm new here" excuse wears off and I start to sound like a scary recluse who never leaves her house.

We still don't know very many people here, but we have met some great folks and started to make some friends. Meeting other expats is pretty easy (even though I tend to dread large happy-hour-type get-togethers), but I wish we had more social contact with locals. This is one of the perpetual challenges that foreigners seem to face all over the world, to varying degrees. (I have much more to say on this topic, but I think I'll leave that for a post of its own.)

Munich has a lot going for it in terms of livability: safety, cleanliness, good public transport, good & affordable restaurants, good beer, good pubs, green areas, nice architecture, and so on and so on. Not to mention the cheesy pretzels. So far I'm really liking it here. And with beer garden season around the corner, I'm thinking it can only get better.

Watch out Autobahn, here I come

[Headbang8, I recommend skipping this post...]

Woo hoo, let's hear it for efficient bureaucracy! (And you thought that was an oxymoron.) Although not quite as speedy as in Switzerland, we have managed to procure ourselves some German driver's licenses, and it was relatively pain-free.

Whereas in Switzerland all US licenses are equally and deliciously exchangeable for Swiss ones, in Germany some US licenses are more equal than others. Depending on which state issued your license, you may be subjected to a written exam, a practical exam, both, or neither (you can check out how your US license stacks up here).

Or you could just trade in your Swiss license and be done with it. That is, if you happen to be lucky enough to have one.

It took two trips out to the big old German DMV (or Fahrerlaubnisbehörde - how's that for a beautiful word?), each visit involving a token amount of waiting (less than half an hour in each case). Apparently the Germans don't trust their postal system as much as the Swiss do, because instead of mailing us the licenses when they were ready, they mailed us a piece of paper inviting us to come pick them up. And while Switzerland let us keep our US licenses, Germany held on to our Swiss ones. But still, the whole process was simple and not overly paperwork-laden, and our German licenses are the magical kind that never expire. Yippee!

What this blog needs is MORE COWBELL

Having spent two years in Switzerland, I know exactly where to find such things.


More cowbell from zurika on Vimeo.

Slushy spring skiing

We popped down to Austria for a final ski trip of the season yesterday. It's so easy to do this that I'm having a hard time remembering that Austria is, in fact, another country. You'd think after two years in Switzerland I'd be over the novelty of popping into another country for a day trip, but you'd be wrong. What can I say? I'm easily impressed.

The time change meant we got even less precious sleep than we normally would have, but on the plus side now we can be happy that all that daylight is no longer going to waste. And, we're finally back to our normal 6-hour time difference from the east coast of the US. Whew.

We went to the irrsinnig gross ski area called SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser Brixental, which was indeed quite sizable. The skiing was pretty good - slushy, to be sure, but that slush allowed me to ski the red slopes like a rock star, granting me the opportunity to think that my skiing skills have actually improved in the past couple seasons. The sun was brutal and relentless (some people might have called it 'pleasant' or even 'beautiful'), and we probably could have spent most of the day skiing in little more than t-shirts.

Forgot to bring the camera this time, but I'll add a photo off of the old camera phone as soon as I can figure out how to magically beam it to the computer. Or you can just get the general idea from any other photo I've taken skiing.