Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

adventures / London / memories / Tuesday — Comments Off
07
Jul 15

British selfies

(A few extra shots from our last visit to London, because it is summertime and our trip was grand.)

We were playing around with the selfie stick. Yes, we have one, and it facilitates the production of quality photographs. We’re actually laughing at you for not having one.

Anyway, this was outside of our flat in London. We were waiting on a family friend to stop by. She goes way back with The Yankee’s folks and lives and works in London. Turns out she lives not basically around the corner from where we were staying. We only had time to take a few pictures:

adventures / Germany / history / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
06
Jul 15

Two things about dining in Berlin

(This is extra material from our trip to Germany because it is summertime and our trip was grand.)

The food was very inexpensive. That’s the first thing. We went to a few places where the bottled water — which you do pay for — costed as much as the food. The grocery store was pretty cheap too.

The second thing we learned while eating at A Magica, a pizza place, on the suggestion of a friend. Germans eat their pizza with fork and knives. All of them. Sometimes you have to use a fork. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. No shame in it. To see an entire restaurant doing it was a bit unnerving.

Nearby the pizza parlor was Gethsemane Church, built in 1893:

The architect here used both Romanesque Revivalism with round arch windows and neo-Brick Gothic with traceries and rib vaults in the construction. His work wasn’t damaged during World War II, and there is a plate commemorating the German resistance against the Nazi government. Like many churches, this one was a meeting place for East Germans opposed to that government. The statue in the foreground is the Benedictive Christ, previously stood at the former Church of Reconciliation. That church was destroyed by the East German government in 1985 to make more space for the Berlin Wall. Since reunification it has been a central locale of civil rights groups and peace movements.

Just down the street was a cool sign for a burger joint:

I wonder how they eat those.

adventures / Belgium / memories / photo / weekend — Comments Off
05
Jul 15

The first thing I saw in Brussels

(An extra memory from our time in Belgium.)

When we got off the train in Brussels, this just down from the station.

It seemed an aggressive, passive-aggressive sign. We ate elsewhere that day, but cake seemed the better of the ideas. Very hip, hipster-ish place.

adventures / memories / photo / weekend — Comments Off
04
Jul 15

Ten Fourths

This is the tenth Fourth of July we’ve spent together. We took part in part of our regular tradition: getting ribs.

We missed the fireworks because we mis-timed things. But it was raining anyway. Clearly we got the important part right.

Last year we skipped the ribs for reasons that we’ve both forgotten. Had to do with staying in with friends, I think. That’s why we missed the picture then, why there’s a placeholder there now. Next year, maybe, we’ll get it right again.

Nevertheless, the traditional Fourth photograph collage:

family / Friday / photo — Comments Off
03
Jul 15

More family visiting

Yesterday I completed the family circuit and hit my other grandparents’ home.

I walked around outside in the woods, as I did as a child. I got eaten up by mosquitos, as I did as a child. I was not told to be careful of snakes, as I was as a child. But probably only because my grandmother wasn’t home just then to warn and worry. She was at a funeral and I was killing time playing in the woods.

And then she came home and fussed at me, as she did when I was a child. And pretty much every day of my life she’s seen me.

It is a wonderful thing to be fussed at.

She’d had a big day so she had an early night last night. I played the Facebook where-are-they-now game. This is difficult to do in a place with limited cell phone service. It is even more challenging in a bedroom with only one electrical outlet, which is as far away from the bed as possible. These things didn’t matter much in the 60s, I guess, when the house was built.

Also, the mattress might be that old, too. And while I’m not that old, I always feel like it after a night in the back room.

But a lovely morning today. Huge breakfast. I washed dishes. More visiting and then this afternoon was timed to get on the road before the rain.

So with more traveling and visiting, I’ll just point out the obvious: when eight of 11 words on a label are that important, you pour yourself a big serving.