Ireland: Beer, Beers, Beeri. Or, really, Guinness.

Hey y'all.


I'm in Ireland.

Ahem, Pardon.

Wow, I'm way behind. Thus is the problem with traveling: you do so much, you don't have any time to do anything else. Now if only that were my problem...

Anyway, new blog soon. In the meantime, the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman nor Empire. Discuss.

Spain: Tapas? Tapa? Tapi? Tapas-i? I question.

Hey y'all!

We're in Spain!

Smooches -s

The Baltic: Ruskis.

Hey y'all!

We (were) in Russia!


...and Estonia!

And now are headed to Spain. Ole, yo.

Smooches. -s

Life in the CPH: Here, for a very short now.

I'm a terrible, terrible blogger. Possibly a terrible person, too, but that's not particularly relevant here. No, I'm a terrible blogger because I've heard that taking three months off in between substantial blogs is, like, the cardinal sin of blogging. To which I say: what did you expect? My people have a long history of cardinal sinning, which will no doubt be memorialized in my Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the time my great-great grandfather shot both the sherriff and deputy of Throckmorton County. This is not a joke. However, I digress. My point is: I'm sorry, and I'm here now.

I do have some excuses. I've formulated a list (and I'm super-stoked I just got to use the word "formulated") of reasons I've not been blogging, for your reading amusement: long winter days at cafes, working on novel, working more on novel, throwing computer with novel out window and having to have it replaced (imagined), having purse stolen in shady KFC through no fault of my own and having to have it replaced (not imagined), eating hummus, eating more hummus, eating Laundromat burgers, going to Spain, going to North Carolina, pretending to be a model, shopping, buying shoes, going to Omaha, braving an ice storm, braving my grandmother, going to Texas, buying more shoes, hanging with my peeps, hanging with my pregnant sister, not being pregnant (but that would've been a good excuse, right?), flying back to Denmark in severe turbulence, writing haiku, going to Berlin, surviving Berlin (more on this later), discovering cheap beer on the Denmark-Germany ferry, bringing said beer back to Denmark, going to Amsterdam, eating tasty fries (no mayonnaise), getting awesome anniversary diamonds (alliteration!), going to Turkey, celebrating Jon's birthday in Turkey, loving Turkey, wanting to move to Turkey, being forced to leave Turkey because the weekend was over, eating lots of turkey sandwiches in honor of Turkey (I do not like mayonnaise), working on novel, finally sending novel out for feedback, enjoying visit from sister-in-law, visiting castles, visiting Sweden and Finland, cleaning, enjoying visit from parents, eating pastries, eating more pastries, visting more castles, visiting Sweden again, cleaning again, writing column about Jakarta, writing column about Brussels, refinancing house, laundry, laundry, laundry, laundry (dear god, do we have this many clothes?), planning massive vacation for July, watching So You Think You Can Dance, rejoicing that Wade Robson is back on SYTYCD, extending backyard fence in Clayton, catching up on email, running, running, running, watching a bonfire in which witches once burned, catching 4th of July AmCham picnic (not on the 4th), cheering for all the drunk high schoolers frollicking in open-top buses, sweating, being surprised at said sweating (when does it ever get this hot here?), laundry, more laundry and packing.

That about catches you up.

No witches here.

Before I get to the packing (or anything else, really), here's the low-down (down-low? why don't those mean the same thing? I wonder.) on a few of the trips we've taken.

Feb-09: Spain, Like Mexico but Way, Way Better

For my birthday, I asked Jon to take me somewhere warm. Jon responded (a few weeks later) with the fact that there is nowhere warm in Europe in February (to which I ask: why God? why February? why me?), and so he was surprising me with the closest he could get to warm, which was a trip to Madrid and Toledo (the one in Spain, not the one in Ohio). Amen.

So, to make it short (probably impossible, likely too late), we LOVED Spain. As in loveloveloved it... and I mean, loved it like really good margaritas and queso and the "Come and Take It" flag and Tiffany and diamonds and Tiffany diamonds and incredibly high priced Italian leather shoes. Like Gucci. Like Geoge Clooney. Like... okay, you get the point.

We only had a few days in Spain, but we spent the first day in Toledo, the historic Spanish capital, where we visited one of my favorite cathedrals thus far in Europe (and that includes all of Italy). The Cathedral of Toledo was four parts Italian marble and two parts Spanish-style hacienda, with a small but very nice museum, with a Rafael (that I, of course, didn't write down the name of and can't find on the internet) that Jon had to drag me away from.

Gold really is my color.

Toledo is a walled town, so we tooled around the walls for a while and enjoyed the view over the Tagus river. The landscape reminded me a lot of the gradual desert-ization on the drive from central Texas towards Odessa. It was all reds and dusty greens and fabulosity. A little sangria and some W-W-J and I would have been home...

Texas, our Texas.

...and then we went to Madrid, where, frankly, I want to live. It was sunny. It was warm-ish (I wore flip flops and didn't need a coat, okay?). There was a huge palace filled with shiny stuff. There was a plaza filled with tourists where there were once bullfights and public executions. There was the Titanic exhibit. But most of all... most, most of all... there were tapas and sangria.

The Versailles of Spain. And me.

I am not a foody. I will not pretend to be a foody, no matter how many times I watch Top Chef and think "ooohhh... fancy," and can identify Japanese eggplant or mango chutney thereafter. But oh. my. God. Tapas might be better than queso (could queso be a sort of tapas, in fact?), and I think I tasted a solid sampling of Madrid's sangria. Our first night we did a "tapas crawl," and discovered another reason to love Spain: the crazy Spaniards name the tapas bars after animals (and usually the kind you're eating). We ate, in no particular order, at La Taurina Cerveceria (The Bull Bar), the Museo del Jamon (The Museum of Pork), La Casa del Abuelo (My Grandfather's House, where they served seafood, not grandparents... but still) and Oreja de Oro (The Golden Ear, where Jon ate pig's ears and I did not as I was so stuffed from the croquettes at my grandfather's house, where we were, indeed, served by someone who reminded me of a grandfather.) Anyway, so as far as the pig's ears went, I made a wise decision and abstained. They were, ahem, crunchy. Anyway, so you get my point: lots of tapas, lots of sangria, lots of bar hopping, nobody sleeping (except in the middle of the day, apparently), and they also make paella. God help me, I'm in love.

Everyone needs a museum of ham.

April-09: Berlin, A Different Sort of List

The Germans, alas, do not name things after animals (or the person serving them). Sadly, the Germans name things after the horrible things that were done in the past, and rightly so. Berlin is an amazing, cosmopolitan place, but it ain't Madrid. Allow me to illustrate.

Here's a rundown of what we saw in Berlin: The Hard Rock Cafe (alright, so we started off easy), the Reichstag (possibly burnt down by Hitler as part of his rise to power), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (and museum), the Memorial to Politicians who Opposed Hitler, the Brandenburg Gate (divided East and West Berlin), the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Museum of the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, the German Cathedral (and exhibit on German Parliament), the Topography of Terror exhibit (on the site of the command center of the Gestapo), the Germany History Museum, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (half-destroyed in WWII and left as a memorial) and the Pergamon Altar and Babylonian Ishtar Gate (incredible antiquities from Greece and Babylon that somehow ended up in Germany) at the Pergamon Museum.

Never forget, indeed.

This was definitely not made in Germany.

Don't get me wrong. I really liked Berlin, and the Germans there, while being their normal, efficient and somewhat-no-nonsense selves, were all very friendly. We drank some tasty German beer, ate a lot of super-tasty German schnitzel and saw one of the most incredible antiquities exhibits I've ever seen: the Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate.

One of the six gates of Babylon. Yes, THE Babylon.

Still, though, Berlin wasn't exactly a place where it was easy for me to just, you know, enjoy the tapas and paella and ignore the history of oppression (Franco? the Spanish royals? the Inquisition, anyone?). So while I enjoyed my beer and schnitzel, there was also a great deal of history to digest, which thusly perpetuated the cycle of needing more beer and schnitzel. I guess you can't really go wrong with that...

Uplifting, until you realized that's Athena, goddess of war, up there.

Tune in, Tokyo?

We also took a day trip to Dresden, which, like many German cities, was bombed flat in WWII and has been rebuilt in a really well-organized and enjoyable fashion. The old town revolves around the 18th C Frauenkirche, a Lutheran cathedral (yeah, I said huh? to that, too), which was bombed in 1945 and left as a mound of rubble/peace monument until 2005, when it was rebuilt. It's very spare and open and light and Protestant. Personally, I liked the Catholic cathedral, the Hofkirche, better. But then, one might say I'm biased. It was, after all, shiny.

God approves.

The town itself was one of my favorites in Germany. It's situated along the Elbe river and has a really nice river walk and terrace view, as well as a huge palace complex housing the Zwinger museums and the the super-fabulously-shiny treasury of the Saxon prince-elector (most notably Augustus the Strong, and do you ever wonder what you'd be called if you had a "the" after your name? Like "Susan the Shopper?" or "Susan the Lover of Shiny Things?" or what your theme song would be, like when they introduce baseball players? why don't we all get those? and yet, I digress). Anyway, we didn't get to see the really, really fancy stuff in the historic green vault - you have to make a reservation for that, and we went on a whim - but we did get to see a whole lot of nice porphyry and teensy-weensy ivory figurines. After Berlin, it was remarkably... well, relaxing.

The Zwinger. Does this remind anyone of an aptly named baseball stadium?

April-09: Amsterdam, Land of Fries with Mayonnaise and Diamonds

Appropriately enough, when our anniversary rolled around, we decided to celebrate by heading for romantic... Amsterdam. Um, yeah; not exactly what you would expect, but fun, and, as it turned out, fabulous (would you expect anything less of me?). We rented a houseboat literally across the canal from the Heineken brewery (yay! beer!) and proceeded to cut a swath of pancakes and fries across the city. Did I mention they sell fries there, wrapped in paper cones? With whatever dressing you want? The really good, crispy kind that are sort of salty and greasy all at the same time? Not as good as tapas, but... close.

The view from Houseboat "Nuance..."

Somehow I missed this in O-Chem.

We saw a ton of stuff in Amsterdam - the Anne Frank House (evocative, sad, moving), the Red Light District (the exact opposite of how I described the AFH), the Van Gogh Museum (colorful, small), the Heineken Brewery (shiny, big), the canals, Begijnhof, the Amstelkring Museum in Our Lord in the Attic (seriously) Church - but, shallow as it may seem, my favorite part of the whole trip was getting my surprise anniversary present. Allow me to present:

This O is for "Oh, Fabulous"

That's right. Diamonds. And not just any diamonds. Black, brilliant-cut diamonds from Gassan, one of the oldest diamond cutters in the world, AND I got to pick whatever I wanted from their stock (okay, within reason. but still). I know I should be focused on what I learned culturally and the history of Amsterdam and the political and moral implications of legalized prostitution and even the science of how Heineken is brewed (we tasted half-fermented beer, and let me tell you, the science isn't all that exciting), but I am a big enough (and small enough) person to admit that when I got to pick FROM THE ENTIRE STOCK OF DIAMONDS OF ONE OF THE OLDEST DIAMOND FACTORIES IN THE WORLD, I indeed lost a bit of perspective on the rest of the visit. So... that's what I've got.

Diamonds and fries... a little slice of heaven.

Other Stuff...

In May, we went to Istanbul for Jon's birthday, and my sister-in-law and I took the boat to Helsinki, but I think both of those stories and latest goings-on about Copenhagen (picnics! buses full of drunk high school graduates! sunshine! depeche mode!) may have to wait for another day. Soon, I promise. Soon.

Smooches. -S

Yes, I know.

I have recently been told we are no longer in Istanbul, although arguably my heart never left (aaahhhh.... I do heart turkey). To which I say: noted. More on where we have been (at least, bodily) over the last few months shortly.

Smooches. -s

Istanbul: Which is Indeed Not Constantinople

Hey y'all!


We're in Istanbul. Which might be my second favorite place we've ever visited, next to Madrid. Because really, who can beat both the concept and execution of tapas? And also, we just saw our cruise ship for July and it rocks. And furthermore, we sat on a rooftop terrace over the Bosphorus and watched the moon come up. But that's neither here nor there. Well, actually, it's here. But not there. You get me, yo.