Dent de Verreu, French Alps

Sometimes you like someone so much that you're willing to hike up 4,000 ft, sweating like a pig, staying on your feet for 10 hours, carrying a gallon of water on your back* – all for the sake of spending a day with them, doing what they love. And if you're lucky, they will like you enough to tolerate you complaining that you're starving, you're thirsty, you're tired, that you wish you could have slept later than 6 am, you wish you had never been talked into this, and who's great idea was it after all to eat lunch sitting on a rock surrounded by mud, with your fingers freezing to your sandwich.

It was the perfect time to see waterfalls cascading down the mountains.

Yep. I'm lucky. Very lucky!

Hike up Dent de Verreu, near Samoëns, France, on June 01, 2009. I'm proud to say that more such hikes ensued and the whole experience became less painful each time.

*Okay, I confess, I've actually been so lucky that I haven't even had to carry that much going up!

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau & Salzburg

Before I began studying in Weimar in the fall of 2005 I spent the summer in Munich. A friend had offered me a place in her apartment for two months so I could take a German course – I really knew no German at the time. I somehow learned about the Salzburg Festival and thought it would be a great opportunity to hear some great concerts at what seemed to be a honky-tonk local music festival. Right. Except no one told me that it was a highly renowned festival, mainly for German and Austria high-society and hardly a place for 10 euro student stand-by tickets. But Salzburg was only an hour and a half train ride from Munich and a place I was eager to visit, and with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose memoirs I had been reading, speaking along with a concert (don't ask, I have no idea what he was actually doing), I decided it was worth it to make a day trip. In retrospect, I have no idea how I could have been so utterly naive.

My plan was simple: go directly to the ticket office, get a ticket for later, and then explore the city a bit before the concert. So, I didn't really know where the ticket office was, but I found it eventually, and discovered a long line out the door. Man! So many people waiting in line to buy tickets for the DFD concert! But the line didn't move, and eventually I had to ask someone just why all these people were standing in line. And what couldn't be better: they were waiting to go hear a live interview with him in just a half an hour; the ticket office was inside. But here again, no one ever told me that the Salzburg Festival is one of the poshest of all music festivals. Tickets? What tickets? There were only 2 still available at 90 euros each. What about a student discount? Ha, ha, they don't have student discounts (I think I'm actually lying, they probably did have 10% off...no, maybe 5%). Student stand-by tickets? No. Well, in my complete and utter despair, I did discover I could get in line for the interview, the 7 euro tickets for which were given on a first-come-first-served basis. And since I was there ages before it was to begin, I would be one of the first to get in.

There is, unfortunately, one more tragic twist to this story. As I happily sat down in my first-row seat, something occurred to me: it was going to be in German. . . (Oh yeah, and the lady interviewing him sat on the same side of him that I was sitting on, and she somehow managed to sit with her elbow on the table, facing him, and alas, blocking my view of him....).

Ah! Bliss!

The day honestly wasn't so unsuccessful. :)

Jean Ives Thibaudet - average guy or super star pianist?

Yes, that's right – I finally got to see one of my favorite pianists perform live, and I can't imagine a pianist I'd rather have a beer and chat with more. I got to hear him preform Ravel's G major piano concerto at Geneva's Victoria Hall on the 19th of April. He's a pianist I have admired since I was a teenager, and I was floored when he walked on stage and looked like some fellow who had just walked in off the street. Honestly. Tall, lanky, a pierced ear, highlighted hair. However, if you watch interviews with him on youtube, you will quickly come across his staunch belief that male concert performers should also get to wear fancy clothes when performing (you know, he says, those tuxedo tails are so boring!). I initially thought his suit looked like something from some cheap European market, but after further consideration, he did look fairly sharp. Nevermind how he looked, though – his colorful playing did confirm my long-held beliefs that he is one of the best living pianists. His nonchalant manner at the piano made the music all the more accessible and the atmosphere relaxed. It was just fun – what a concept!

In November 2008 I also got to hear Evgeny Kissin in the same hall perform a recital of mostly works of Chopin. It was less memorable, and I certainly would not want to have a beer with him.

Winter delicacies from Thüringer Wald

As far as I understand it, you won't find this really anywhere else in Germany, except isolated in the Thuringia forest. In teaching English for a community college of sorts for the area of villages surrounding Weimar, I was invited by a family to come over on Sunday for a long afternoon to enjoy this specialty from the forest just south of Weimar.

Here we go:
First you take potatoes (preferably from your garden), cook them and peel them (Germans always peel their potatoes after they cook them – don't ask why, I never understood it...). Then you smash them through this thing:




Then you mix it with flour to make a sort of dough, and roll it into large rolls:



Then you cut off a slice of the roll, and then roll that out, into a flat pancake, and cut it into pieces:



I tried this part. I failed.



And put them on a pan and cook for a couple of minutes on both sides:



You butter them up and stack them up; it's a family affair:



And several hours later, behold, the potato tortilla!

You dip them in sugar and eat them with hot chocolate, and alas, you don't need to eat again for the whole day.

Many thanks to Familie Rausch!

PS – This is why you might want to stay inside and enjoy cooking: