Cinque Terre

Stay tuned, I'll be enjoying the Italian riviera next week and plan to post pictures and stories to brag about the food, wine and landscape. In the meantime, please enjoy some light reading:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/travel/05hours.html

36 hours in Berlin and 20 years after the fall

The following article was recently posted on the New York Times dot com: 36 Hours in Berlin

(Berlin T.V. Tower)

I hope to accomplish most of that after 36 months. An evening at the TV tower is expensive by Berlin standards, especially when you can "pay what you like" at wineries around town. It's also fair to say that although I spent a bit of my childhood in Charlottenburg, I rarely venture to the West.


(above: dad and I at East Side gallery last spring)

In light of the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down, there is a plethora of events going on around town. Artists who painted murals along the east side gallery 2 decades ago have been invited to recreate what has faded or been covered in graffiti.

There are concerts (there is a rumor that the Hoff himself will be playing on Nov 9th) exhibitions, and of course a large scale, human recreation of the wall. At 8:15 pm on Nov 9th a chain will be formed along the path that the wall once followed. Naturally, I will be part of this and as soon as I find the youtube video of it I'll post it on the blog.

Click here for more information : Mauer Mob

Oktoberfest part 1- the Devil's Wheel

(most photos courtesy of Katie Lepak, I wisely didn't bring my camera)

Last weekend, Katie and I went to Munich to play in an ultimate tournament and of course, join in the Oktoberfestivities. The weekend was set up so that we played all day Friday, had Saturday off to taste the beer and played again on Sunday. There are 14 big beer tents on a massive fair grounds, where each tent could hold close to 10,000 people.

(taken from muenchen.de)

Our tournament fees included entrance and reservations in the Hofbräuzelt, right beside the band who played everything from Country Roads to the traditional and often repeated toast "Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemutlichkeit", which roughly translates to " A Toast, A Toast to Coziness".


Before heading into the tent, however, we explored the midway and met up with a few other people from the tournament at Das Teufelsrad (the Devil's Wheel). This is a rotating disc, where people try to stay on while being hit with a giant ball and lassoed by carnies. Occasionally, the caller gets two kids up there and makes them box, or asks all the women in dirndls to come up and have a hool-a-hoop contest.

Click on the photo above or this link to watch the hilarious video of us giving it a go. I didn't stay on long because I am weak, but Russ ( a friend from Berlin Ultimate) managed to stay until the end.