Tidbits

Here's a new German word for you: lecker. It means tasty, and man was it an appropriate word for last night's dinner. I was invited, along with Martin, by Berthold and Tatiana for dinner at their home last evening. I have eaten there a couple times before, and an invitation for Tatiana's cooking is something one does not turn down. She is fantastic. Last night she served an appetizer of little zwiebak crackers, I think they're called, with a pate of salmon and tuna, a slice of green olive, and a parsley leaf on top. Awesome. After that she served homemade carrot ginger soup - again, awesome - and then for the main course, lamb with the most amazing French sauce, a salsa of tomatoes and cilantro, and rice, and green beans. So dang tasty. And for dessert I bravely tried a bit of Rumtopf, which translates to "rum pot". It's a traditional dessert here and, as you might have guessed, has a lot of rum in it. It's basically fruit soaked for a year in rum, with a bit of sugar, served with vanilla pudding. Tatiana's pudding was fantastic, but I'm not so much a fan of rum, so the fruit wasn't really my thing. Perhaps the most amazing part of the evening, though, purely because it was so unexpected, was the cheddar cheese she had on the cheese plate she served last. Cheddar cheese is nearly impossible to find here, and it was such a nice treat!

Also, we went to the dog park at the military base again yesterday. No machine gun casings this time, but here's a pic of one of the cars scattered around:


It's such a strange place. Fun for Aengus, though - there were a bunch of other dogs there yesterday.

It's Sunday today. Aengus and I went for our walk through the rain, but have a pretty low key rest of the day planned. All the shops here are closed on Sundays, including the grocery stores, and things kind of shut down. Not very often, really, but sometimes it hits me that I'm actually living in Europe.

I heard it was above zero there - break out the flip flops!