Slovenian Sausage!

Back at the ETH, there is this well-known Slovenian chemistry postdoc by the name of Dr. David Sarlah (his last name is missing a funny letter in it that I can't make with my American keyboard). He is supposedly one of the most brilliant chemists ever to grace the planet (seriously, he has an excellent reputation). He does work hard but he also knows how to have a good time. And by good time, I mean sausage. And alcohol. I also love the way he talks; his accent sounds kind of Russian to me. And he has a lot of funny sayings. But that's an aside.

This past weekend David (il)legally imported 10 kilos of salami and prosciutto into Switzerland from Slovenia. Then he invited all his friends to a party to try them all out. They were all delicious. Some of them were homemade by his parents' neighbors. I think it's the one all the way on the right in this picture:

Here's the full spread. Bread, cheese, salami, and a bunch of side salads. Interestingly, all the salads were made by our friend Sebastien who lives in the same apartment we lived in when we first moved to Zürich - the teeny tiny one-room with a kitchen in a closet. So, kudos to him for cooking and putting together all those salads!

This is a Slovenian pre-dinner drink made from blueberries. It had real blueberries floating in it. It was pretty sweet and flavorful with just a little bit of alcohol taste ... just right for me. David said he'd bring me back a bottle and I'm going to hold him to that. I don't think you can find it in Germany.

This is another Slovenian drink, but for after dinner. It's made of unripened green walnuts. Pretty tasty, it reminded me of the Godiva after-dinner drink ... very sweet but with good nutty flavor. The Slovenians make my kind of drinks!

Some of the boys played soccer for a little while. It was super hot so it didn't last very long:

Relaxing on the grass in the sunshine. The guy with the arm cast, Simon 2 (not to be confused with Simon 1), got an arm filled with glass in a lab accident. Many pieces of glass will remain in his arm forever. Finally somebody who is more accident prone than Martin!

More relaxing and chatting. David is the guy in black on the right.

CuliVino

Last Monday was a holiday here (Pfingsten, aka Pentecost in English) and so we decided to bike down to a little festival, Culivino. Our friend Hans who owns a winery was there and it's hard to resist the opportunity to drink some of his tasty Secco (sparkling white wine). It turned out to be a 1.5-hour bike ride for us to get to CuliVino (only 15 miles and it looks flat in this area but there are actually a lot of rolling hills and the last half hour was all uphill ... any time you go west you end up going uphill). It was a beautiful day and we got to bike due south through a lot of little towns so we got to see a lot of the area. Some of the towns are really cute and they are all filled with wineries that you can stop in to and taste at. We will definitely be doing some more exploring of these towns at some point, and hopefully I will get some pictures of them. I didn't take any on this trip because we were on a mission to get to the festival. Here's Martin on one of our stops to look up directions. We do love our iphones! And our bikes!

Here are some pics from the festival. There were only 6 wineries there and some food booths. There were special cheese plates there where each piece of cheese was paired with a different wine and also chocolate plates where each chocolate had a different wine to go with it. We weren't really up for chocolate when we got there and they were out of the cheese-and-wine-pairings so we just got a regular cheese plate. We figured we biked off all those calories, right?

Here's the view, looking east out over lots more vineyards and a little town called Hambach:

There was also a castle up the hill behind me but I didn't get a picture of it. It was neat though. Sorry.

And some people enjoying some food and wine:

Stadtfest

May 16-20 is the town festival in Bad Dürkheim. We wandered down there last night for dinner and drinks. It's just a bunch of tents set up on the town square, serving wine and food. There's also a stage where a band plays at 8pm each evening.

Here are our meals. I had some pork with Tuscan-spiced pork meatloaf on top of it, ratatouille, and gnocchi. It was awesome but too much for me to finish. Martin had some potatoes, mushrooms, and beef with onions:

We tried some wine at that tent too but didn't like what we ordered that much. Cross that winery off the list! Here's a pic of some of the tables and tents:

We moved on to another tent where Martin got a schoppen glass of wine. These half-liter glasses usually hold 50% sparkling water and 50% wine but they will also fill them with 50% sparkling wine and 50% wine if you want. Everybody drinks schoppen glasses of wine around here. You couldn't even order wine in a smaller amount than a quarter liter! Which is so different from Zürich where you had to order by tenths of a liter and you had to pay twice as much for a tenth of a liter as you pay for a quarter liter here:

We stole this glass (they charge you 2 euros per glass, which you get back when you return them). So now we can mix our own schoppen glasses of wine/water or wine/wine:

No beer in sight! Of course you can order beer at the bars here or buy it at the grocery store but there was only wine available at the festival tents.

Some Vineyard Pics

Just some pics from walks we took last weekend around the vineyards. It looks like you can ride around on a horse-drawn buggy:

There are signs on the posts in the vineyards that tell you whose vineyards they are. So we can go out and buy the wine that is growing right outside our front door and see if it's any good (so far, most of the whites and sparkling whites have been excellent ... haven't found a great red yet but have only tried one as this region is known more for whites). We've had a really good white wine made from red grapes though ... just don't remember the name of it. This particular vineyard, Vier Jahreszeiten, is growing Portuguese grapes:

Here is the Flaggenturm that you can see from our apartment and that we walked to the top of our first weekend here:

Here's a view from the vineyards looking towards Bad Dürkheim and our apartment (which is the taller white building on the left under the Flaggenturm). Straight ahead is the Klosterruine Limburgh. You can also see The Wachtenburg castle from our apartment but I couldn't get it in this picture. It's a little to the left:

Here's a closer pic of Klosterruine Limburgh:

And some more vineyards, looking north from Bad Dürkheim:

Some Dark Pictures of Our New Apartment

Since I might never get internet access at my apartment to post the video I took of the apartment on my iPhone, I took a few pictures.

Here's our west-facing balcony. I just need to buy a few more flowers for the empty flower boxes:

And the living room, which leads out onto the above west-facing balcony. We ordered an L-shaped sofa that will be delivered next week that will take up some more space in this enormous room. We haven't decided how to organize it yet we'll figure that out once the sofa arrives then we'll put things onto the walls:

The dining room, which leads out onto our east-facing balcony. The living room opens into the dining area:

The kitchen. Sorry all these pictures are pretty dark. It was cloudy outside and I was too lazy to deal with making the camera flash work and of course we have no lights in the apartment! Though when it's sunny out, since our apartment faces due east and due west, it's so bright that it's like you're standing inside the sun. No joke we have to close the blinds in the dining room in the mornings in order to eat breakfast.

Anyway here in the kitchen you can see the awesome desk our landlord put in instead of counter space ... not sure what was going through her mind when she did that:

Master bedroom:

Guest bedroom/Onyx's room:

And my office, which has gotten horribly little use thus far:

Our First Walk in Bad Dürkheim

On Sunday Martin and I went for a nice long walk in the hills to the west of Bad Dürkheim (it's *very* hilly in that direction, and completely flat to the east). There is a tower that we can see from our apartment that we wandered up to the top of. It's called Flaggenturm and this is a view of it from my office in our apartment (it's on the very top of the hill):

It's only a 15 minute walk from our apartment but from it you get a great view of all the surrounding vineyards. The tall white building in the left of the photo is our apartment building. Sorry it was cloudy when we started out on our walk so these pictures aren't all that breathtaking. I would like to add that we drank some wine that came from the vineyards right outside our apartment ... the white wine and sparkling white wine were very good ... we like to eat and drink local. :)

Here's a view of Bad Dürkheim from the top of the tower:

Next we walked to the ruins of an old monastery, Klosterruine Limburgh. Apparently the Limburgh family built this huge monastery and filled it with monks to pray that their family would be prosperous. I'm not sure how well it worked. Here are some pics of the ruins. They're easily visible from the vineyards right outside our front door:

It looks like events or concerts are held in here, there's a stage behind me in this picture:

And, two hours later, we had finished our walk.

Spargelfest!

Last Friday our realtor Isabelle and her boyfriend Hans took us to a Spargelfest in one of the villages near Bad Dürkheim. Spargel is the German word for asparagus and here it usually means white asparagus. Germans are crazy for white asparagus. It's harvested in March or April and then they have festivals to celebrate the harvest. It's nothing fancy, just some picnic tables set up in a field with games for the kids and booze for the adults and of course plenty of white asparagus to eat.

Here are some of the picnic tables:

Here are Isabelle and Hans:

Here are the kids participating in a spargel peeling contest ... actually I think they're done here and in the process of being judged. You have to peel white asparagus before you eat it and these kids are pretty good at it already. I bet they're all a big help in the kitchen:

Here's my dinner - pork schnitzel with potatoes and spargel in a sort of spargel soup sauce. It took me awhile but I eventually fit it all in:

Here is a really big wine glass and a bottle of Secco. Prosecco is sparkling white wine that is made in Italy, and something can only be called Prosecco if it comes from Italy. So if you use the same grapes to make sparkling wine in Germany, you have to call it something else. Hence the name "Secco". And the big wine glass, I forget the name of it, is what people drink wine out of at the wine festivals here. You're supposed to fill half of it with water and half with wine but I don't think that actually gets done too often. And it's not a good idea to drink those if you're DD either because it will still get you horribly drunk.