This started as an e-mail to my 'Grama June', but then sprawled into something long and inspring and stomach rumbling so I though I would finish strong and post it for lack of other productivity.
Thanks for the birthday wishes, I had a great birthday (birth-week (and birth-month)).
On my birthday I bought fresh croissants for the 4 members of my team at work (Combustor Cooling for gas turbines) and then also a bunch for my other intern friends. Here on your birthday it is tradition that you bring treats for other people, rather than people bringing you a cake or something. Also people shake your hand and look you in the eyes and say congratulations which is kind of strange.
I wanted to bake something because I've been experiment with some baking (pizza dough, tortilla shells, foccia bread) but the night before I ended up buying a bike and going to pick it up. I usually ride my long skateboard to work, but now it will be very rainy in the winter so I wanted a bike. I ended up getting a racing bike just because it was cheap and in good shape and availible. It's really cool, but it has skinny tires which might not be best in snow. We will find out tomorrow i guess.
Anyway after work I went out for supper. I had talked to all the other Canadian Interns (there are just under 30 here) and 21 of them came and joined me and we trained to a little town in Germany (I live 30 minutes from the border) and went to an all you can eat sushi place. You sit at your table and there is a double decker conveyor belt that goes buy with little plates of food on it. One carries hot food and the other cold food. I don't actually eat that much sushi there. Probably about 10% of what I ate was sushi and then they have tons of other rice and noddle and chicken and duck and pork plates and such and fresh fruit and jello and ice cream. I'm sure you will believe me when I tell you that I got my money's worth.
The next day after my birthday we went to a free event that our town puts on for new residents (my one roommate is good working his way into free events and he helped all of us with this one). So we had a welcome with wine and some snacks and they talked (all in German so we just nodded and said "Ja" a couple times in agreement. After that they took us through a walking tour of the city (the town just lit all the Christmas lights they put up that night, and everything looks so nice). Apparently the big clock tower used to be used as a prison, as late as the 1980s and it wasn't hooked up with plumming and the prisoners were given 2 buckets each day. One filled with water to drink and use, the other to do their business. This was happening 30 years ago. So crazy.
After the walk we had a free meal (pretty weak, but it was free so I guess I can't complain).
Then the next day I left from work and caught a train to Basel (1 hour away) and flew to Bordeaux (city on the west coast of France). At the airport I was picked up by my couchsurfers (couchsurfing is a website where people post that they okay with travelers staying with them for a night or two, and so the travelers come and hang out and sleep on their couch or the floor or wherever and have a visit usually and head off a couple days later. It is a lot cheaper than staying in a hotel (it's free so...like 100X cheaper) and good way of having cool local cultural experiences with local people).
My hosts were named Pascal and Isabelle and they were 55 years old and both teachers and had one daughter who was working in Amsterdam doing Website Design. They live close to Bordeaux, but they have a house in a summer village area right beside a little surf town called Lacanau Ocean. This is a huge tourist spot in the summer with 80000 people, but in the winter it turns into a ghost town with 3000. So we drove out there and got into the cold little cabin and turned the heaters one. The next day I went into town with Pascal and rented a surfboard and then we parted for the day. He had a wetsuit that I had borrowed. I surfed in the morning, then got out and wandered the town and had some lunch and then again in the afternoon. It was cold and windy and rainy off and on and the surf was pretty terrible and I only rode a couple of waves that weren't very good, but I still had fun.
That night we had the most epic supper. These people knew their food and their wine and they knew how to do it right. Supper wasn't just a quick meal to rush through to watch TV after or a means of refilling your body, but instead an experience to be enjoyed. They said they often planned their meals around the flavors and aromas of the wine they would be having with it. It's hard to describe in words how good the meal was
1st Course: Fish soup. From the local market. Just a thick broth, but really deep flavors and really good and warm after a day of cold water surfing.
2nd Course: Open a white wine. I don't even remember the kind because more talk was about the actual wine maker which they had gone to and met or something. They just knew everything there was to know about wine (it has 4 aromas apparently and you can tell different things about it if you smell it 10 minutes after the first smells). Out of the fridge came plates with crab, prawns and some other little shell fish thing that I didn't know what it was and they couldn't find an English name. I thought he was going to start cooking them, but he had cooked and spiced them earlier in the day and we ate them cold.
3rd Course (main): A big plate of cooked mussels (started cooking them as we were eating the crab) covered in a white sauce made from cream and blue cheese (a milder blue cheese (we would have the stronger one later))
4rd Course. Cheese. We had three different types of cheese. We opened a 8 year old bottle of some local wine for the first two cheeses but then had to eat the third cheese with this other special cheese. The third one was a really strong blue cheese, so we needed to be drinking a really thick sweet wine because the flavor complimented each other really well.
5th Course. Dessert. Because most of the people are only at these houses in summer, the people that go in winter all know each other, and one of the guys that lives there year round is the baker at the bakery in town. He is friendly. So earlier that day he had brought over a fresh Apple Pie thing that he had made. It was delicious. He had also brought over these funny little bullet shaped things (but the size of your big toe (I can't think of anything at the moment that is that same size but would be a better use in the context of appetizing food)). Sometimes when they filter wine they use the egg whites to help filter out sediment and so they have all these extra yolks that they don't use. So someone started making these little treats and they are a real delicassy and are apparently really hard to make (Isabella said she had tried and couldn't make them very well).
Such a good meal. It lasted almost 3 hours and a lot of time was spent going back and forth in a French-English dictionary to try and find the right words.
The next morning I slept in, then had a casual breakfast and then went for a surf. It was better and I got a couple waves, but still not on my list of good days. Then I came home and we had another delicious meal.
1st Course. Fresh Oysters. Pascal showed me how to use an oyster knife and pop the shell off. He told me about how lots of people screw up and cut their hand open and end up in the hospital, and then he handed me the knife. But I still have all my fingers today, so it ended well.
2nd Course. Cod. Baked in an olive oil and white wine sause with tons of big white grapes with it.
3rd Course. Cheese (sames ones)
4th Course. Dessert (last half of the pie and more of the strange egg yolk things)
After lunch we packed up the house and drove towards Bordeaux. I fell asleep on the drive because I was exhausted from all the surfing and eating. I woke up and we at a winery. We were there doing tasting of 12 wines for about 1.5 hours. We would usually spend like 3 minutes with each glass just discussing (Pascal talking and me listening) where the wine is from and some interesting facts and then the 1st and 2nd aromas and what food it would go with and various other things, and then finally we would sip it.
After the wine they dropped me off at the airport and we said our goodbyes.
Our plane was delayed an hour due to snowstorms in Basel, and so when we finally landed we had to run through the airport and caught a bus as it was just leaving and then made it to the train station to catch the last train home to Baden (if we missed that train we would have slept in the train station (I've slept in an airport 6 times and a train station once)). When we got to Baden all of the trains and busses to Wettingen (the neighborhood i live in) were done for the night so I walked the 30 minutes in the snow to get home.
I saw a fox in town and it made me smile.
Today I woke up and it was still snowing and I was still smiling.
This weekend I have off (meaning no travel). I plan to sleep in, play guitar, bake a big pancake breakfast and possibly go cut down a Christmas tree (this may be illegal here (probably) so I'm going to check and make sure I can do it and won't get deported).
In the past three months I have been to 12 different countries. I'll have about 8 more new ones before I finish my job at the end of May, and then will go to another 6 knew ones when my friend Dawson comes and travels with me in June. I'll be home in July. Looking forward to it, but enjoying everyday here.
Hope you are enjoying your winter, as I am looking forward to beginning my ski season on the Alps.
Love you all and hope you are smiling.
without wax
benwa
