the mysterious pickle

As I mentioned in my last post, Germans are extremely enthusiastic about the Christmas traditions, and many of them have migrated to America. One that I'd heard of years ago and continues to crop up regularly is that of the Christmas tree pickle. These things are readily available in stores and online in the US, described as this charming German tradition. The story goes that this glass pickle is

german holidays

Germans know how to do Christmas properly, from the gluhwein and the markets to the vast and ancient churches that host vesper services. The markets are a unique experience that no American replica I've visited has been able to reproduce faithfully. To start with, I've had the happy fortune to be able to visit one of the oldest and most famous of all the German markets, a festivity that consumes

marshmallow lessons

I was one of the fortunate invitees to a rather spectacular dinner on Saturday night, at the now famous blue house. One of the temporary house residents A, a restaurant owner from Germany, had been in Iceland for the autumn lamb slaughter season, learning about where exactly the food's coming from. He'd also started producing a new lamb sausage, a perfect marriage between the texture and

not mourning the departure

After our first attempt to hail the departure of McDonalds failed, S was determined to try again, so we went again a few days later and braved the line for a final "góðborgari" for me and a McFish for him. As always, the food tasted exactly like the McDonalds in France or Canada or America (the only locations I've tried it) and came in the exact same packaging as always. Nothing special there

two ways

Last Saturday I met one of the very few traffic engineers in Iceland, and we spent some time discussing how they're in the process of overhauling the timing of all the lights in town so that certain corridors have the "green wave" where you can hit greens all the way along. This was happy news, since only a few months ago I'd been having a conversation about how the number and timing of the

Iceland escape

So, the reason I was in Norway a few weeks ago was to start the next phase of the Norwegian project in Trondheim. My colleague had told me that I'd like the place, and my Norwegian friend K had lived there for three years, coming away with many good things to say. After my time in Oslo I was starting to think that Norway was a rather uncolourful and serious place, but my time in Trondheim has

oh, the tragedy

yes, the news reports on MSN and.. pretty much everywhere are true. Iceland is losing its McDonalds as of the first of November. The import costs what with the brave new exchange rate could no longer be justified, since they would have required a Big Mac to cost the equivalent of a rather decent meal downtown. Bargain meal no more.Since neither S nor I had ever tried McDonalds here in Iceland we

gale force arrival

On Friday I was due to fly back to Iceland but had heard from several people that the weather was not supposed to be particularly friendly, so when I landed in Oslo I started checking the airline website. Everything was cancelled going in or out of the domestic airport, but as far as I could determine there was no disruption whatsoever in the international arrivals.So off we went and just before

escape artist

As much as I love it here and all that, sometimes a girl's gotta escape. Last year the grand finale of the Norway project phase 1 coincided with the collapse of all the banks (literally.. the first bank collapsed the day before I left for Norway, and when the installation team returned to Iceland they'd all gone under), so since then I haven't had much chance to travel abroad for work. I've had

what else I did on my summer vacation

I decided to say the heck with the kreppa and go all-out with my summer vacation, so I spent 3 weeks away during the month of August. The last week of the month I went to Martha's Vineyard (yeah, I booked my trip before Obama decided to be there at the same time) to see my parents, brothers, and my nephews that I last saw in 2007. Since then, my brother and his wife also bought one of the little

accidental delights

Two weeks in Germany seems like a rather fat chunk of time but it ended up being only just enough to wish that there'd been more time to explore. Along our trek from north (my beloved Weimar) to south (Oberstdorf), from east (Frieburg) to west (Görlitz), we happened upon quite a few accidental delights in our relatively loose plan.One such happenstance occurred as we were making our way east from