there are lots of snipers, but hey - i might be in a commercial with nicole kidman

the last two days at the UN have been MADNESS. MAYHEM.


in case you haven't heard, there was a global environmental summit of all world leaders at the general assembly yesterday where obama gave a lackluster speech, and today is the day when american delegates get to walk out of what is sure to be another america-bashing diatribe by iran. maybe they'll rip up the UN charter the way qaddafi did in his speech. yay for UN politics! but i tell you, the security around my building is insanity. i have to wave my little blue UN badge to get past multiple police blockades, and the whole area is guarded by roof-top snipers and large men roaming the sidewalks in full battle-gear yielding large guns. there are myriads of protest/support groups around the blockades of every denomination and political affiliation - huge groups of orthodox jews, green peacers, and my boss even saw a man with an "i <3 qaddafi" t-shirt. really? of all people to heart?


this is most definitely the closest i'll ever be to so many world leaders and a genuine global event, and i am incredibly jealous of all my coworkers who have caught a glimpse of obama.


on the upside, just a few floors below me UNIFEM is filming a public service announcement against the global abuse of women with nicole kidman. they've asked UNICEF staff to come by for 5 minutes and serve as extras. hello, of course i'm going to go by. if i can't see a crazy world leader (think how close i am to chavez, qaddafi, and ahmadinejad as i type!), i'm at least going to see nicole kidman. but i'm thinking that maybe we should have roped in all the world leaders to serve as extras instead - think how great it would be if politicians actually took a real stand on a critical issue rather than snarking at each other like high school kids and puffing up their own egos. nice thought, yeah? :)

i no longer have dad's name on my checks

one of the guaranteed markers that you are traveling abroad are the ubiquitous HSBC ads (example above) - please tell me you have thoughtfully read them as well while shuffling through the gangplanks and corridors of european airports? they actually have made their debut in the new york subway recently as well, which makes me super happy. i absolutely love them. i remember first seeing them in heathrow a few years ago and thinking them clever. though i can absolutely see how some people would find them cheesy and easily mockable.

whatev'

i fell for it. they totally worked their magic on me. because today on my lunch break i finally began the process of phasing out the union bank of california checking account i've had since i was 16 for brand new ones at HSBC. ["ones" meaning checking AND savings - take that adulthood! and is it ok to be talking about this on a public blog? i mean, i'm not giving details, right? hm. i'm worth hardly anything anyway, so no one should be getting too excited.]

in any case, i owe a great deal of my decision-making process on which bank to switch to to those lovely ads which have comforted my jetlagged self on many an occasion. and this has all just proven to me that don draper was right all along. and by don draper i mean the main ad exec on mad men, the fabulously written and lusciously designed tv series that toni and i shamelessly fell in love with via rented dvds while together in berlin. SO GOOD.

and now... i'm offiicially declaring the workday over, i feel awake and over jetlag, i have a 3-day weekend because of Eid (yay UN multiculturalism!), and i'm off to the whitney to see the new o'keeffe abstraction exhibit. bon week-end!

coming back to new york city is not the same as coming back to america

there are so many wonderful things that just scream new york city and it's insane uniqueness. it really operates on its own planet (and seems to be quite content to do just that). my flight from berlin landed at jfk earlier this evening, and just in the few hours of being home all these idiosyncratic delicacies of the city have jumped out and greeted me again after nearly 3 months away...

fast talking street vendors, loud dominican music, harlem cat calls, ubiquitous notices of subway service changes, old men playing dominoes on cardboard boxes, jazzy latin hair salons, the mr. softee tune...

noise noise noise... that constant background noise of the city that never ever ever goes away, adding to the general buzz/hum/energy/freneticism of the place...

and just plain and simple multiculturalism... (berlin is surprisingly homogeneous) new york is really unlike anywhere else in terms of world representation (maybe london?) - each subway train is filled with chinese, arab, bangladeshi, dominican, african, palestinian, puerto rican, anglo-saxon, micronesian, visigothic etc etc etc people of all shape and size..... it's remarkable.... what brings everyone here?

in any and all cases i am back. manhattan is a glorious and absolutely mad place to return to... it will never get old, and i admit that i am quite content to be here at the moment - knowing that i'll be back in berlin again before too too long - berlin is also a fantastically interesting place that has endeared to me a great deal by now, and that i will truly truly miss...

and also... i can be content (and not cry too much) knowing that toni will be here before too too long as well... :)

and so p.s... everyone call me! i have an american cell phone again! let's chat! for real! huzzah!

AND everyone excuse the fragmentary nature of all sentences in this post. i am fighting major jetlag tiredness right now, having been awake for nearly 24 hours, and having spent my 9 hour flight from europe squashed between loud increasingly drunk russians...

grammar and coherent verbalization are not my priorities at the moment :)

we went to dresden to visit toni's little sister ...

... and it was super beautiful.

food blogger for a day

i'll just tell you off the bat that the cake[s] were a HUGE success.


the chocolate zucchini cake was divinity. i used applesauce with a bit of maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg to substitute for the apple butter, and toni chopped up ritter sport 50% cacao bars for the chocolate chips. AMAZING. i think i may just do the ritter sport thing back in the US, even with the option of chocolate chips. because seriously - the germans do chocolate right.

i put an uber creamy cream cheese frosting on it, which was divine. toni's flatmates have already commissioned my services for january for the next birthday in the apartment. this cake alone will now be responsible for my multiple trips back to deutschland. thanks ginger! :)

and so the tradition in germany is that you eat cake for breakfast on your bday, and since this chocolate cake of divinity was for the lovely dinner party last night, toni and i decided to make yet another cake yesterday to enjoy this morning. so this is what our breakfast table looked like:


french apple tart from allrecipes.com. SO GOOD. make it. for real. you won't be disappointed.

let it be said that this my first time:
1. making a cake from scratch
2. making any kind of pastry dough/pie/tart crust from scratch

and yet they both turned out amazing. i owe this to 2 factors:
1. heavenly recipes that i dutifully followed [ginger was SO RIGHT ON]
2. the subconscious skills i accrued from the dozens of cookie sessions at grammy's house growing up. yes grammy i remember! they were my favorite! and look how they payed off! :)



sigh. celebrating toni's birthday for the full weekend was uber fun. i will spare you all details, but to sum up:

it will be really hard to leave germany in 10 days.

*toni checking out the apple tart as it carmelized in the oven. DIVINE.

this is what happens when you work from home

i have been a baking machine since coming to berlin. now ok, i understand terms are relative: for me "baking machine" means making one loaf of bread and a batch of cookies in less than 2 years. i don't bake at home - the whole measuring exactness has never meshed well with me. so why oh why would i pick up baking when i'm in europe? where...

1. you have to attempt to successfully convert all measurements to grams/ccm?

2. you have to go to 3 separate little berlin grocery stores just to find baking soda?

3. you have to translate every ingredient into german and write them down before you go to all those stores?

4. they don't even believe in extracts over here so you have to use creativity? [which with my no baking experience, i don't have]

but mostly i do it because elliott's google reader always has the most delicious looking things, i actually have a boy right next to me who can share the bounty of my baking journey with me, and most importantly, i really really have wanted to make this cake ever since ginger posted it. and it's toni's birthday on sunday and i'd love to make it for him and his 10 friends at their fest tomorrow evening.

and just for a quick recap: so i tried steph's cinnamon banana bread, and it turned out more like banana granola bars. still yummy, but not loafy enough. SAD.

but THEN i found this masterful website which calculates every known baking substance from any US measurement to the annoying metric systems. brilliant. so yesterday, i made these cookies to resounding success - even with substituting for almond and vanilla extracts. they are SO GOOD - and because of the olive oil they stay moist and yummy and fresh.

so i'm revved up to tackle this cake tomorrow. but ging [and everyone] - i won't have apple butter at my disposal... what should i substitute it with? also i'm concerned about finding cocoa powder... and i'll have to just chop up a chocolate bar because chocolate chips don't exist here. gah! i'll let you all know how it turns out.

LAME! blogger is digitally messing up my swiss photos, but i post for you nonetheless!

so yes, toni and i went to switzerland. his wonderfully kind cousin barbara runs an amazing little mountain hut hotel in the alps - 3000 meters high, tucked into a tiny village of cow farmers, and invited us to stay for a full week, with no expense to us whatsoever. we had 4 course dinners and scrumptious breakfasts and mountain views. in a word, it was heaven. we have been back in berlin for a week now, and BLAH... how does anything compare to the beauty of the swiss alps? it really makes you want to quit all jobs and make cheese on a mountaintop. sigh.


at the matterhorn [even if it's covered in clouds, it's the real thing - promise!]

alaskan fireweed in switzerland too! [one of the views from our hikes around the hotel]

this was our hotel and our view. we spent lots of time reading here :) [pictures do no justice. i'm not a professional photographer, obvs.]


i really want to go back.