Thursday, July 12, 2012
Minnesota
This weekend I got to go to Minnesota for H's wedding. It was great. I'd never been to Minnesota before, and though I was only there for a short time, I liked it. It was so green! and Midwesty. The plane landed in Minneapolis during a thunderstorm, breaking the heat, which had been up to about 100 earlier in the day; Saturday was beautiful, clear, warm, and relatively dry. We drove by a farm store that advertised apples, cider, cheese, and fudge: this is my idea of a good thing. And we drove across the Mississippi River and visited a town where Jesse James robbed a bank and saw some cows and I didn't fall in a lake. Most of the pictures are from either the reception or the car, but here are two of the better ones.
If no one's made a t-shirt that says "I Went to Minnesota in July and I've Got the Mosquito Bites to Prove It," they're really missing a trick.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Video of the Day
Man, parts of this video look unreal. One day I hope to be able to photograph stars half so cool as this. Props to Shawn Reeder for capturing this amazing beauty.
Friday, April 13, 2012
100 Places to Visit Before You Die?
If you're on the Facebook, you may have seen an app called "100 Places to Visit Before You Die" (there's also a "US Traveler Challenge" going around, too, but it doesn't have a non-Facebook site, and I refuse to add stupid apps on my Facebook). This morning, after seeing more of my friends' results, I decided to check out the list. Even if you're not on Facebook, you can find it here.
On the site, you can find both the list and the challenge, where you click boxes about whether or not you've been to the sites. The options are "I've been there," "I would like to visit," and "Not bothered" (which to me sounds better than "Don't care"). My breakdown is 17, 32, 51. The numbers seem to belie my experiences and my status as the owner of a travel blog.
Although the list says the sites are in no particular order, the first place is Los Angeles. Good people, here is my response to that. First, put them in some order, whether it be alphabetical or geographical or topical (the nature, world heritage, whatever). Second, I think this list in particular encourages indiscriminate travel. Clearly, I'm all about going out and seeing things. But you may have noticed that I almost always explain why I've gone somewhere. I don't think the point of traveling is to keep score; I'll admit that I talk about where I've been ALL THE TIME and it probably gets pretty annoying (they went to Dubrovnik in the April 5 episode of "Missing" and I couldn't stop saying "I've been there... and there... SO MANY CRUISE SHIPS... You can't just run in there, that's a museum..."), but I don't travel just so I can annoy people in the future. I want to see and do things for totally subjective reasons, and that's okay. I have comparatively little interest in most of Asia; so I don't see the point of going there, just to say I've been. Maybe sometime in the future I'll learn something about, say, Japan that really makes me want to visit, or maybe I'll win an all-expenses-paid trip to Tokyo. If the latter happened, I wouldn't turn it down, and I'm sure I'd find that there was plenty interesting about the place. But I'm not going to go to some place I'm not bothered about just to rack up stamps in my passport. Unless you're in "The Amazing Race" or Around the World in Eighty Days, travel isn't supposed to be a contest, and I should apologize if I've ever made it seem like it is. I consider it to be about learning and enjoying and bettering yourself and hopefully the world.
This has been my opinion, of course, what with this being my blog and all. If you have a different opinion, congratulations! It's still a free internet.
On a marginally related note: Don't know your travel style (or where you should go in the Great White North)? The Canadian Tourism Commission has a Traveler Type test where you rate statements to reveal your type. My favorite statement is "Wherever I go, I have to have the very best there is to offer: the best hotels, the best restaurants, the best shopping and the best service." If you replace those nouns with "ice cream," "cider," "chocolate," and "cheese," then yes. Otherwise, that's a Totally Disagree with a side of derisive laughter. The test calls me an Authentic Experiencer, and says that I can often be found at nature reserves, world heritage sites, hiking trails, and museums. Indeed. If you look for me in any of those places, I'll be the one eating cheese.
(This post was sponsored by parentheses and parenthetical statements that probably could've been rephrased.)
On the site, you can find both the list and the challenge, where you click boxes about whether or not you've been to the sites. The options are "I've been there," "I would like to visit," and "Not bothered" (which to me sounds better than "Don't care"). My breakdown is 17, 32, 51. The numbers seem to belie my experiences and my status as the owner of a travel blog.
Although the list says the sites are in no particular order, the first place is Los Angeles. Good people, here is my response to that. First, put them in some order, whether it be alphabetical or geographical or topical (the nature, world heritage, whatever). Second, I think this list in particular encourages indiscriminate travel. Clearly, I'm all about going out and seeing things. But you may have noticed that I almost always explain why I've gone somewhere. I don't think the point of traveling is to keep score; I'll admit that I talk about where I've been ALL THE TIME and it probably gets pretty annoying (they went to Dubrovnik in the April 5 episode of "Missing" and I couldn't stop saying "I've been there... and there... SO MANY CRUISE SHIPS... You can't just run in there, that's a museum..."), but I don't travel just so I can annoy people in the future. I want to see and do things for totally subjective reasons, and that's okay. I have comparatively little interest in most of Asia; so I don't see the point of going there, just to say I've been. Maybe sometime in the future I'll learn something about, say, Japan that really makes me want to visit, or maybe I'll win an all-expenses-paid trip to Tokyo. If the latter happened, I wouldn't turn it down, and I'm sure I'd find that there was plenty interesting about the place. But I'm not going to go to some place I'm not bothered about just to rack up stamps in my passport. Unless you're in "The Amazing Race" or Around the World in Eighty Days, travel isn't supposed to be a contest, and I should apologize if I've ever made it seem like it is. I consider it to be about learning and enjoying and bettering yourself and hopefully the world.
This has been my opinion, of course, what with this being my blog and all. If you have a different opinion, congratulations! It's still a free internet.
On a marginally related note: Don't know your travel style (or where you should go in the Great White North)? The Canadian Tourism Commission has a Traveler Type test where you rate statements to reveal your type. My favorite statement is "Wherever I go, I have to have the very best there is to offer: the best hotels, the best restaurants, the best shopping and the best service." If you replace those nouns with "ice cream," "cider," "chocolate," and "cheese," then yes. Otherwise, that's a Totally Disagree with a side of derisive laughter. The test calls me an Authentic Experiencer, and says that I can often be found at nature reserves, world heritage sites, hiking trails, and museums. Indeed. If you look for me in any of those places, I'll be the one eating cheese.
(This post was sponsored by parentheses and parenthetical statements that probably could've been rephrased.)
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Inspiration: Medieval Love
The Medieval Love tumblr is mostly full of pictures of places, though it also posts pictures of manuscripts and film stills and so on. Basically it's just full of things that are rad and that I now want to see (and some that I'm lucky to have already seen). Check it out yourself, then do as I am: bookmark it and start adding things to your wish list.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Homemade Knedľa
Woe is me for living in a place with no Slovak restaurants. (Let's face it, the States isn't big on Slovak restaurants in general; your best bets are New York or Chicagoland. There are also a few Czech food trucks in the Northwest.) If Ahab can't go to the Slovak food, the Slovak food must come to Ahab.
When my dad was making pork for dinner last night, I decided we needed to have an appropriate side dish. We don't have the right kind of potatoes to make halušky, since it would probably look pretty weird made with little multicolored ones. We did, however, have all the right ingredients to make knedľa. Knedľa is a big steamed dumpling, usually in the shape of a loaf, though mine turned out a little more round because of how I had to steam them. Knedľa is most often served with saucy pork dishes.
Although I'd never made knedľa before, the recipe is pretty straightforward: Activate the yeast, mix it with flour, milk, and egg, knead for a bit, let it rise, form the loaves, and steam them. For the complete recipe and many more Slovak favorites, check out Slovak Cooking. I pretty much never underestimate my ability to mess up a recipe, but everything turned out okay.
Here's the bigger of the two loaves in all its dumplingy glory. The recipe says to cut the knedľa with a thread or piece of dental floss, but I just used a serrated knife. Next time I'm going to have to make a proper entree to go with it. Until then, I (and all of my former students and fellow teachers who saw this same picture on Facebook) am very proud of my successful knedľa.
When my dad was making pork for dinner last night, I decided we needed to have an appropriate side dish. We don't have the right kind of potatoes to make halušky, since it would probably look pretty weird made with little multicolored ones. We did, however, have all the right ingredients to make knedľa. Knedľa is a big steamed dumpling, usually in the shape of a loaf, though mine turned out a little more round because of how I had to steam them. Knedľa is most often served with saucy pork dishes.
Although I'd never made knedľa before, the recipe is pretty straightforward: Activate the yeast, mix it with flour, milk, and egg, knead for a bit, let it rise, form the loaves, and steam them. For the complete recipe and many more Slovak favorites, check out Slovak Cooking. I pretty much never underestimate my ability to mess up a recipe, but everything turned out okay.
Here's the bigger of the two loaves in all its dumplingy glory. The recipe says to cut the knedľa with a thread or piece of dental floss, but I just used a serrated knife. Next time I'm going to have to make a proper entree to go with it. Until then, I (and all of my former students and fellow teachers who saw this same picture on Facebook) am very proud of my successful knedľa.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Inspiration: ASCE
"It might make one in
love with death, to think
that one should be buried
in so sweet a place."
Percy Bysshe Shelley on the English Cemetery in Rome
I think I already know the answer to this question, but: Did you know that there is an Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe? I only learned this recently, when I'm clearly no longer in Europe. This is the problem. I learn these things, and then figuratively kick myself, going, "There's a cool cemetery in Montmartre? Why didn't I go when I was there?" (Because last time you were in Montmartre you were with a bunch of other high schoolers, Ahab, and on a tour with a tight schedule. They weren't going to let you wander off to a cemetery by yourself.) But it's not just Paris; it's Kraków and Porto and Dublin and Vienna. And on top of that there are the places I haven't been yet, like Berlin and Malmö.
Aside from information about the Association itself and notices about events, tours, and lectures around Europe, the site also has listings for individual cemeteries. The majority of the descriptions are in English and include general information and history, famous interments and notable monuments, opening times, directions via public transportation, and, of course, photographs. One navigation difficulty that I've noticed is that although there is an interactive map, clicking on its icons does not take you directly to that cemetery's page. The best way I've found to navigate is to choose a country from the drop-down list above the map.
Unfortunately, the Association does not include a one cemetery in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. In my opinion, Olšany Cemetery in Prague rates as "significant," and, although I've not visited it yet, Vyšehrad is full of important Czechs, like Dvořak and Mucha, and on those grounds alone I think it should be included. It also doesn't have the London cemetery I most want to visit, Highgate. That said, I'm sure the ASCE has a process for adding sites that I don't understand, and I respect their expertise in matters of historical funerary arts.
Percy Bysshe Shelley on the English Cemetery in Rome
I think I already know the answer to this question, but: Did you know that there is an Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe? I only learned this recently, when I'm clearly no longer in Europe. This is the problem. I learn these things, and then figuratively kick myself, going, "There's a cool cemetery in Montmartre? Why didn't I go when I was there?" (Because last time you were in Montmartre you were with a bunch of other high schoolers, Ahab, and on a tour with a tight schedule. They weren't going to let you wander off to a cemetery by yourself.) But it's not just Paris; it's Kraków and Porto and Dublin and Vienna. And on top of that there are the places I haven't been yet, like Berlin and Malmö.
Aside from information about the Association itself and notices about events, tours, and lectures around Europe, the site also has listings for individual cemeteries. The majority of the descriptions are in English and include general information and history, famous interments and notable monuments, opening times, directions via public transportation, and, of course, photographs. One navigation difficulty that I've noticed is that although there is an interactive map, clicking on its icons does not take you directly to that cemetery's page. The best way I've found to navigate is to choose a country from the drop-down list above the map.
Unfortunately, the Association does not include a one cemetery in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. In my opinion, Olšany Cemetery in Prague rates as "significant," and, although I've not visited it yet, Vyšehrad is full of important Czechs, like Dvořak and Mucha, and on those grounds alone I think it should be included. It also doesn't have the London cemetery I most want to visit, Highgate. That said, I'm sure the ASCE has a process for adding sites that I don't understand, and I respect their expertise in matters of historical funerary arts.
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