Keep your fingers crossed!

Winter weather is tricky, especially in places that are unprepared for it.

A few inches of snow fell on Brussels Thursday night (2 days ago), and the flights in and out of the international airport are still being delayed and canceled!

Alberto is supposed to meet me in Brussels today, but some snow fell on Milan last night, so we are just hoping his flight makes it here today.  Unfortunately, RyanAir gives shitty information on their website, as does the po-dunk airport that serves that company. You really just have to show up at the airport and hope for the best with them.

Keep your fingers crossed that no more snow falls on these winter unprepared cities, that Alberto arrives in Brussels in time for our flight to Minnesota on Monday, and that the delays and cancelations in Brussels are over by that time!

We are looking forward to Christmas at home (my home) this year. It's been 3 years since I last experienced a Minnesota winter, and Alberto is a bit frightened by the thought of negative degree (Fahrenheit) weather. We had to get new winter jackets, socks, hats, scarves, etc. I still don't have a warm pair of shoes... how easily one forgets what frozen toes feel like!

We'll be home soon as long as the weather holds up over here. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

We're looking forward to seeing everybody!

I'm a little behind

In the middle of my "I hate October" hissyfit, I complained to Alberto about the fact that we never do anything cool anymore. That's far from the truth, but when you are in a long distance relationship your money tends to go toward plane tickets, and your organizational skills go to figuring out how to swing two days out of the office so you can see your boyfriend/girlfriend for more than 2 days at a time without falling behind on your work-related responsibilities. Needless to say, a weekend trip to Paris, London, Amsterdam or Rome seems hard to commit to both financially and organizationally at times. 

So, when I whined that we never do anything cool anymore, Alberto suggested Maastricht.

Situated on the Southern point of Holland, Maastricht is wedged right in between Belgium and Germany. I booked us a B&B for one night, and we planned a 24 hour trip for the last weekend in October, when Alberto would be visiting me in Brussels anyway.

It took us less than 2 hours to get there by train from Brussels, and with the 50% discounted weekend fares that Belgium offers, it only cost us something lik 25 Euros roundtrip per person. Not bad...

This is the B&B where we stayed. The ownder didn't speak much English. I had reserved the room online and he sent the directions to find it in Dutch. Thank God for online translators, and my Flemish speaking colleague!

These are shots from in the room. The red heart-shaped pillows are bit kitch, but all in all, it was a nice place. Oh, and the breakfast was awesome!

One thing that really made me happy was the fall weather that we had the day we were there. It was absolutely gorgeous. I stopped complaining immediately about how much I hate fall in Europe.

This statue had a real flame. I'm not sure what that was all about... I should have read the guidebook more thoroughly.

 

Horses!

  The city center was entirely pedestrian and was full of sidewalk cafes and window shoppers. 

But despite all of the cafes, a decent espresso was nowhere to be found, hence Alberto's annoyed face here.

There were all sorts of interesting statues in Maastricht. Exhibit 1.

...and Exhibit 2.

In the evening we found lots of charming little cobbled streets to explore. 

And what would a city in Holland be without a sea of bikes parked at the train station?

We had a great time in Maastricht. Both Alberto and I found the city to be utterly romantic. It had a somewhat posh vibe to it, without making us feel at all out of place. Everything about the city was charming, even the "coffee shop" (it was Holland, after all) seemed high class. Our only gripe was that we went out looking for dinner at 9pm, and almost every restaurant told us they were done serving already. Ooops, we forgot we were in Northern Europe. We ended up at a great Chinese place, and got drunk on Chinese beer, like the classy folk we are.

I just wish I had more pictures. I didn't even take a single picture of the Maes, the river that divides the city center in half! At least I have an excuse to go back...

Good press for good places

I'm always happy when I see good publicity brought to some of the places with which I feel a connection.

The first made me proud:

Minneapolis - St. Paul was named #1 in the US in a ranking of the city with the smartest people in the country!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34017699/ns/travel-destinations/

I always knew we were smart. I've traveled a lot, and I can confirm, nothing beats the brains of Minneapolis. Ok, so maybe I'm biased, but Minneapolis is full of great cultural events, and the people, unlike in many places, are intelligent while also being very down to earth (i.e. none of the snobbery or pretentiousness that people from other "intelligent" cities often exude).

The second good publicity is for Sardegna, of course!

The book Blue Zones is getting a lot of press lately. It identifies specific ares of the world that have a high proportion of healthy people who live to be at least 100. Some villages in Sardenga make up one of the studied blue zones and, among lots of other healthy lifestyle habits, credit for the longevity is being partially given to Cannonau, a popular Sardinian wine.

Cannonau is said to contain 2-3 times more antioxidants than other red wines.

The Blue Zones website: http://www.bluezones.com says that the key to red wine consumption is consistency (I can handle that) and moderation (hmmm...).

This wine has been a favorite of mine since my Sardinian friend Giorgio introduced me to it about 4 years ago, and now I have a good reason to keep drinking it! The two bottles above are my favorites.

I see an importation business about to boom. I'm sure all of those smart Minnesota yuppies will definitely want to get their hands on some Cannonau soon.

Happier, more hectic times...

It's no secret that I've grown to hate October. I was spoiled growing up in Minnesota, where October meant crisp dry air, crackling colorful leaves, apple cider and hay rides. October in Europe is nothing of the sort. It is the most depressing, dreary, rainy time. During this month, I've been doing my best to stay positive, although it's not always easy. I've watched many of my favorite TV shows online... enough to satisfy me for a year. I've hand mended some of my clothes. My mom would be proud, I've been sewing buttons back on and fixing holes in my clothes all month. I've also been cooking. I made some great chili yesterday that set my Polish friend Ola's mouth on fire. Still though, I get nostalgic for the months of spring and summer, when the sun made an occasional appearance, and my travels took me to some interesting places. I found these photos on my memory card today, and they pulled me out of my October blues for a moment.

My and Ablerto's friend Pasquale (aka Paky). Paky and his girlfriend Filomena visited Brussels with Alberto one weekend in June, and we had a great time. As you can see, we started with a nice beer sampler in the early afternoon.

Two samplers down, we continued the trend until well into the evening.

It's so sunny in Brussels in June, even the dogs need shades!

Alberto, our friend Fabio and I visited a zoo near Milan sometime this summer. These monkeys really liked us... or really liked the food we were carrying.

Gentfest! Alberto and I took an impromptu trip to the medieval city of Gent one evening in July with my roommate and a friend of hers for a music festival. We had a blast. 

I traveled a lot for work this spring/summer, first to Indiana, then Florida, and finally to San Fransisco in July. The travel schedule was hectic, but it was fun and interesting. However traveling to California is quite a trek from Europe. The trip is long enough, but a missed connection on my way back to Europe forced me to spend an extra 24 hours travel time as I was stuck in Philidelphia. I'm in no hurry to do that trip again!

Did I say I would update this thing???

Shame on me.

But honestly, not much has been happening in my life lately. In fact, things have been extremely boring. Work is slow do to some technical problems in the lab. I haven't done any traveling, except for one weekend trip to Milan 2 weeks ago to see Alberto, and I've had no visitors here in Brussels.

Something fun  is bound to happen soon, and I'll be sure to keep you updated when it does.

In the meantime, here a few pics from Brussels from the past few days.

 

Brussels looking dreary and grey... typical October weather

This is only a replica of the mannequin piss that they brought into the grand place (the main square) for a beer festival a few weekends ago. The real deal is just a few blocks away, but his pee doesn't have quite the projection of this replica.

school children being bored out of their minds by their teacher who is rambling on and on about the art nouveau architecture that is common in Brussels

This garden is beautiful in the summer, in October it's really just depressing.

waffles are the only thing that keep me happy in October!

Enjoy!

It seems so long ago

It's been more than 3 weeks since we left Sardegna, and my tan is almost completely faded away. Back in Brussels with the gray skies and sweatshirt worthy temperatures, it almost seems like I dreamed the whole month-long island vacation.

I realized that I'm not good at photo documenting my vacations. I never take enough pictures and the pictures I did take in Sardegna don't do the island or the people of the island justice. So, you'll have to trust me when I say that Sardegna really is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and the people are some of the most friendly and hospitable that I have ever encountered. Here are a few snippets from our stay...


Here's the boat we took to get there. It's about a 10 hour ride, so we take the overnight ferry. Luckily this year the sea was calm, and nobody got sick!

The lights of the port city Genova, as we set sail.

The first week that we were there, we decided to take a trip to the other side of the island to visit our friends Marta and Giorgio. They took us to a beautiful beach, that is completely different from the ones we are used to seeing on the east coast of the island. It was somewhat cloudy when we went, and this picture doesn't do it justice, but the sand of the beach shimmers an amazing shade of gold.

Many of our nights were spent down at the river being entertained by Leonardo as he played the bongo or guitar. Leonardo (right) is a full-time resident of Ballao, the small village (pop. 800) where Alberto's mom grew up. Fabio (left) lives near Milan and like Alberto and Claudio (Alberto's brother, center) visits Ballao every chance he gets.

This was before dinner on my birthday. It was incredibly HOT that night. In fact, it was a very, very hot summer in general. Typically, the temperature would drop in the evening, to probably about 75 F, but the days were all well above 100 degrees F. However, the night of my birthday, the evening didn't cool off at all. hence, a bunch of shirtless guys at the dinner table.

The last men "standing", Alberto snapped this pic of Fabio, Emilio, Leo and Claudio at 4am looking a little worse for wear. I had long since succumbed to the combination of the heat and the very strong home made wine, and was already sleeping like baby.

Our usual hang-out.

I wish I had a better picture of this beach. It's called mari pintau (although I may have messed up the spelling) which means "painted sea" in dialect. It was without a doubt one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen.

I was hoping to snap a nice sunset pic at Mari Pintau, but somebody, nobody we know thankfully, in a speedo (bottom right) is quite distracting.

Alberto and Claudio with their gorgeous Mediterranean beauty of a cousin, Carla.

Who's the ass?

This is one of our favorite beaches, Torre Salinas (salty tower). Although the sand isn't gold or pure white like some of the other beaches in Sardegna, we love it because it's close to home and, even in the height of tourist season, there's hardly anybody there.

The crazy German neighbor! This guy was a riot. Apparently he bought a house in Ballao 13 years ago, just because he liked the town. He spends about 3 months per year there, and brings a different woman with him almost every time.  On this occasion, he had made Mojitos for us and brought them over to our place. When those were finished, he ran home, and came back with a jug full of Sardinian grappa (ewww). He's an extremely friendly guy... you just have to hope to fall asleep before he does, because even though he lives in the house next door, his snoring will keep you up at night!

The woman in the hills greats us every time we head back to Ballao from the beach.

Alberto and I, wishing this vacation would never end. We actually had tickets to catch the ferry back to Genova on the 27th but ended up extending them until the 30th, just to have a few more days in the sun. It was money well spent!

sneak peek

Welcome to Sardegna!

Here I am

After not using myspace or facebook for almost a year, a few of you have started pressuring me to give virtual updates on my life. So, here I am in blog format. I'll try to be good about keeping this thing up to date, and giving you all a few moments of distraction from your work/mothering/whatever it is you do all day.