Mom and Dad and Baba come to visit - Part I

Way back at the end of September, my mom, dad, and Baba came out to visit us here in Victoria. The last time my parents had visited, two years before, they had arrived on Halloween and stayed through a typically horrible and rainy first week of November. While they made the best of it, I strongly urged them this time to visit as early as possible so that there was some chance that they could see the sun while they were here.

So this time they arrived at the end of September, and were able to stay until Thanksgiving. Also, Baba was well enough to come along too, so we had a full carload on our trip to Salt Spring Island the first weekend. For those of you who haven't been out here much, Salt Spring is one of the Gulf Islands to the east of Vancouver Island, and it's a quick half hour ferry ride there from the terminal nearest us. Salt Spring is known for its somewhat "alternative" culture, with lots of artists, artisans, and organic farmers (and the odd dirty hippy). We took the ferry over early Saturday morning so that we'd be in time for their weekly market in the main town of Ganges. The first picture shows us enjoying the view and some sun on the ferry, while the second shows one of the many booths selling such things as produce, handmade soaps, jewellery, clothing, cheese, bread, etc.




Mom was quite taken with this particular booth mostly because of the beautiful red-coloured leaves on the overhanging tree. I don't actually remember what they were selling.

Mom and Dad came away with quite a bounty from the market, including a new wrap/jacket for my mom which apparently has been warm enough to see her through all but two days of winter so far in Toronto. She still hasn't changed the ugly buttons on it though for the nice new ones she bought to replace them - you really ought to get on that, mom. Baba's walker came in handy for stashing away the purchases while we walked around.

We also picked up some nice bread and cheese, which provided us with lunches and snacks during our two days on Salt Spring, when matched with the wide variety of apples (but more on that in the next post).

And Jeremi and I picked up an incredibly beautiful but far too expensive braid of garlic, which we're using now, actually. I'm also including a picture of my mom and I posing with the exquisite garlic, in front of a little mural.

Cat in the box

This week Jeremi bought a new pair of shoes, which of course means that the cat got a new shoe box as well. Here she is, checking out her new favourite spot in the world, and down below, her squeezing in for a little nap.
And what could make a shoe box feel more like home than the presence of a carrot bag? For those of you who don't know, the cat loves all plastic bags, but she seems to have a particular affinity for those that once held carrots. Though it's hard to tell in this picture, she's actually grooming the carrot bag in this picture. She is a funny duck.

Jeremi in Ottawa

Back in October, I went to Ottawa for a course on electro-explosive safety. I stayed at the hotel Les Suites Ottawa. I got bumped up to a real big suite since they didn't have any goverment rate rooms left. It was pretty much as big as a one bedroom apt. It had a big kitchen, a living room, a balcony and a separate bedroom. It was pretty awesome. I saw a lot of friends I hadn't seen for a while; Richard, Frank, Yves, Michel and Robyn who was good enough to come up from Kingston to hang out on very short notice. I hope your mid-terms went well. It's exam time already. Good luck with sand box math!

Here's Robyn and Rich over at my room for my last night in town. We had a few drinks and went out downtown for a little while then came back and had some more drinks.






Here's Robyn a little later (and drunker).




And here I am probably much later (and much drunker). Fun times.

Jeremi sold the car!!!

The other great news upon our return is that lots of people were interested in Jeremi's car. After having listed it only on craigslist.victoria.com and usedvictoria.com, two free classified websites, there were lots of people contacting us. He ended up selling it for $8000, and they paid in cash. Well we'd never really seen that many hundreds in one place, so we took a few pictures. The first is just a quarter of it laid out on the table, with Jeremi's feet nearby, and the other is the whole wad with an elastic around it. Unfortunately it was really out of focus, but I still thought it was worth posting just to show the size. We realized afterward that we really ought to have taken a picture of the cat rolling around in a big pile of money, but by that point we'd already deposited it. Oh well, next time.

Vegetables upon our return

Once back from Germany we found a garden positively overflowing with ripe tomatoes, zuchinis, and peppers. Here's a sampling of our tomatoes:As for the peppers, we were trying to leave them on so that they'd turn red or yellow, but during our inspection we happened to knock one beautiful specimen off the plant. We could have put it on a windowsill and waited a week until it turned red, but it was just too succulent and shiny to wait, so we ate it then and there. But we did manage to take a picture of it first at least!

Our week in Europe (part IV: in Frankfurt with Jenny and Leo)

Finally, the last of our posts regarding our trip to Europe. We took the train to Frankfurt a day before we had to fly out, so that we could visit with Jenny and Leo briefly before leaving. Lucky for us, Jenny's sister Nicole was visiting as well from her home in Bremen, so we were able to meet her as well. Jenny and Leo had only moved into their apartment the weekend before, so there was still some unpacking to do. In fact, Jenny's things which she shipped from Vancouver still hadn't arrived, so even more unpacking was to come. Here's a picture of their new apartment though, which was huge and beautiful.

That afternoon Leo was helping his friend move (they were formerly roommates), so the four of us headed downtown to see some of the sights. Here's a picture of us a big square surrounded by historic buildings on all sides. It's quite a popular tourist location as well, and Jenny and her sister wanted to be sure that we got some idea of what Frankfurt looked like before we settled down to eat.

We ate at a nice restaurant quite close to the square, with tasty food. In fact here you can see the menu board, next to a kiddie table complete with ashtray. They sure do love smoking there!
On Saturday night Jenny and Leo cooked us a wonderful traditional meal from their region. It was a dish prepared by a famous butcher either in or near where they grew up, pig's stomach stuffed with something like sausage filling. It's already cooked, but then it's sliced and pan-fried before being served. We also had mashed potatoes and sauerkraut with grapes, and some plum cake made by Jenny's grandmother. Here you can see Jeremi and Leo hard at work in the kitchen.
The next day we went on a trip a bit out of town, as Leo had borrowed his friend's car for the day. We went out to Goetheturm, a big wooden tower on the edge of the city. It wasn't actually built by Goethe, but it is dedicated to him. We all climbed up the many steps of the tower, including poor pregnant Jenny, and we were rewarded by a wonderful view of the city from a distance. Of course we neglected to actually take any pictures while we were up there, or even any pictures of the tower, but I'll include one I nabbed from another website:


We then ate at a restaurant at the foot of the tower, before heading on to the airport. Jeremi took some pictures of the food, so that you could see what you'll be eating when you come to visit us. The first is Leo's dish of white sausage (weisswurst), sweet mustard, and a pretzel.

The next is mine, which was a lovely green sauce, made from quark (a soft unripened cheese) with a variety of herbs, served with boiled beef and broccoli. I don't really get what was going on with the boiled beef, but the sauce was delicious. There were also some boiled potatoes served on the side. Jenny had the same thing, but with hard boiled eggs in place of the meat. All of us but Jenny were drinking a kind of apple cider that is very popular at this time of the year there. There was even a special streetcar going around downtown where they were serving the cider to the passengers. You can sort of see the ridges on the glass in this picture. Leo said that these ridges are there so that you can still grip the glass when your fingers are covered in pork fat from the food traditionally served with the cider.



And finally, here is Jeremi's dish. It is yet another sausage platter, veal sausage this time I believe. It did come with some lovely seedy bread.

Our week in Europe (part III: the city of Jena)

Of course we didn't spend our whole time in Jena working. We also did our best to sample the food and drink and some of the sights while we were there. I have to admit that we didn't really adore German food. Usually when you travel somewhere you realize that so many of the stereotypes aren't really true, but in Germany they really do eat a hell of a lot of sausage. This doesn't bother Jeremi so much (though his health may disagree), but I found it a bit much. At least it was quite affordable to go out. Here is Jeremi happily looking at his plate of sausage and sauerkraut, with my plate of some German chili-like creation in the near ground. It was pretty much like chili, but with pork rather than the usual beef, and with a complete absence of spice. The lack of spice was ubiquitous actually, including the indian restaurant we tried. Looks like we're going to continue cooking at home most of the time.

We weren't really expecting much from Jena in terms of a night life. It doesn't make sense, considering the reasonable size of the city (~100 000) plus the large university, but we were warned to expect the worst. After the first two nights we still hadn't really too much excitement downtown, but we were still willing to give the city a shot. But then on our third night, while waiting for the bus to head back to the institute, we decided to take a walk around a block we hadn't seen yet. And then, as we rounded the corner, we saw the most incredible thing - a small street packed full of people, completely lined with bars, cafes, and restaurants. It was like Christmas. We tried to get a couple of pictures at night, but they didn't really show the wonder. We went back the next day to take a couple of photos, if only as proof to our European friends who said there was nothing at all in Jena. (We're talking about Gerd, mostly.)



We also took a picture of the Intershop tower, the only really high building in Jena, which houses a business software company of the same name. It was built during the Soviet years, and is one of the only major buildings obviously from that era. The name people use for the building in German translates as something like the cookie roll, like a roll of dough you'd make before cutting icebox cookies. It really is a giant cylinder. But the real reason that we took this picture, is that from this angle you can see the ruins of another old cylindrical building in the foreground, and the Intershop building really seems to continue straight out of it. The ruins are from the Anatomieturm, or Anatomy Tower, where Goethe once performed anatomic studies. I think the Anatomieturm might have been part of the city walls once, but the sign was in German so I'm not so sure.

And finally, we have one last picture from Jena. It turns out that our last night there was the first night of the Old-Town festival in Jena, where there's a big carnival in the middle of the city centre. We ate and drank, and enjoyed the musical entertainment, and even went on one of the carnival rides. I was quite enjoying myself on it, while Jeremi was merely bemused, while taking pictures of me squealing. That is until the spinning caught him by surprise, and while he tried to take a picture he smacked me in the face with his outstretched arm. And that was the end of the self-portraits while on a rotating ride...