Mohonk (Wonderful World of Words)

I planned this current U.S. trip mostly to coincide with Thanksgiving and seeing family, but as long as I was coming here in November, I made sure to come in time for Mohonk.

(Pictured: Driving up to Mohonk from the NYC area.)

"Mohonk" is how my parents refer to the word puzzles weekend they attend every year, but more properly it's the name of the place where the event takes place: Mohonk Mountain House, an enormous old hotel nestled by a mountain lake in the Catskills.

On this particular weekend in November, crossword puzzlers and word games nerds from all over the country descend on Mohonk for an event called the "Wonderful World of Words," hosted by Will Shortz – yes, that Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword editor and NPR puzzle master.

I knew I'd found my people when I walked into the main downstairs lounge the first evening to find it full of nerd types already at work on the weekend's packet of puzzles, in front of windows onto a panoramic view of the lake outside. And there were chocolate cookies. Is this heaven?

From Friday evening to Sunday midday, there are speakers and games and puzzles, not to mention decadent meals, and ambles along the beautiful paths outside. Then there's the highlight of it all: a several-hour "Puzzle Hunt" that has everyone racing around the enormous hotel, trying to decipher clues hidden in framed photographs and behind fire extinguishers.

Highlights for me included:

– Our team winning the highest scoring single word in Scrabble Scramble (in which teams draw giant letters and compete to make the best word they can) with a word ("PREFILL") that later turned out not actually to be a word – but no one challenged us during the round, so we got to keep it. Audacity pays off!

– One of the weekend's speakers, a professional magician, learning the game Set from a friend of his and muttering, "That's crazy awesome," in response to my speedy Set playing.

– Putting a friendly face to Will Shortz's famous radio voice.

– The speakers, including a writing professor who developed an interest in lost and disappearing alphabets when he started carving phrases in obscure languages into wood, and another who gave a whiz-bang talk on the lyrics of the Beatles and how they developed over the course of their career.

– The Puzzle Hunt! I'd go every year just for this. Here's how it worked: Greg, who designs the hunt each year, gave us a speech about the history of the Mohonk site, then handed out a sheet of paper that was purportedly a "real" puzzle played back in the days when Mohonk was a small country inn.

(My family Puzzle Hunt team.)

Solving the four puzzles on the paper yielded the words "FIND FOUR TIME PASSAGES," suggesting the next clues would be somehow related to time. A search of the clocks on the ground floor of the hotel produced a paper with clues; the missing words could be found somewhere on the clocks, for example in the date shown on one clock or the name of the company that made another.

(I think I was the first person to pop into the pool room and ask if there was a clock in there, because the group playing pool – unrelated to the puzzle weekenders – was baffled by the question. Later in the night, I saw they'd put up a "No Clocks" sign to stop people coming in and bothering them!)

Plugging the words found on the clocks into the clues yielded letters that spelled "dining room" – where the place cards on each table, bearing numbers and flower names, turned out to correspond to letters which, when rearranged, spelled "laundry room." And then the laundry room (where I was helpfully led by a member of the desk staff, who wouldn't answer clues, but would direct you to any location in the hotel if asked) finally contained the final step of this particular "time passage": one quarter of a crossword puzzle that could be filled in with clues relating to this and other parts of the hunt.

The other three passages were similarly complex (including a mocked-up fake "TIME" magazine, a visit to a purported retirement party for someone named "Tim E.," a search for clues hidden in photographs from days past when Mohonk was a boys' school, a hunt for supposed alien visitors from the future, who looked an awful lot like the floral pattern in a certain tapestry...)

All together, it took us three or four hours, and my team (which was just me and my aunt by the end, after my parents called it a night) managed to finish third out of quite a numbers of players. We actually found the solution without solving all four "passages," then went back afterward and followed the trails we'd missed, so that we had all four pieces complete.

 

The Wonderful World of Words at Mohonk. Good place to be for a word nerd!

Thanksgiving on Long Island

I spent Thanksgiving (that second most consumption-oriented of American holidays, and thus not exactly my favorite thing) on Long Island (still a least favorite place, all suburbs and sprawl and snarled highways).

Thanksgiving on Long Island, yet I couldn't imagine a better weekend, because I spent it with the family: parents, and aunt and uncle and all three of their kids, plus my cousin's adorable almost-two-year-old baby, who was rightly the center of attention.

On the way back to Ithaca, we visited old family friends, and cousins from the other side of the family, one of whom is also going to have a baby, so all feels more or less right in my world. Especially when I think of friends back in Berlin who can't go home to see their own families, because their countries have erupted into violence and war.

Hokey as it sounds, this Thanksgiving I am grateful for family.

(Insert here pun using my dad's new invented word, "gratitouille" – originally created out of Thanksgiving-oriented "gratitude" and the butternut squash "ratatouille" our friends served us... but perhaps the word could be pressed into new service to describe "gratitude for a mixture of things"?)

American Absurdism

Things that make me want to move back to the US eventually: proximity to my family.

Things that make me want to run away and hide: the fact that all day Thanksgiving and all the next day one of the main items of "news" on all radio and TV channels was "Black Friday," the biggest shopping day of the year and kick-off to the coming month's Commercialism, I mean Christmas, season.

This news loop came to a sublimely absurdist peak when we stopped for gas on the way back from Thanksgiving on Friday and there was a TV screen on the gas pump showing images of people in parking lots and big box stores. Self-referential much?

Ithaca

Happiness is: Being curled up somewhere cozy, reading a book, with a cat. (I'm the one reading, I mean. The cat is just being a cat.)

Today I went jogging and stopped off at Ithaca Falls. Just to say hello.

And in the tradition of making the world my office, I worked part of yesterday from Ithaca Bakery. (Where they've gotten all streamlined and modern, and give you the number-on-a-pole you see here, instead of just calling out names like they used to. Yeah, I feel a little like an old person coming back after years away and saying, "Well, but back in my day...")
 

I'll write soon about last weekend, the "Wonderful World of Words" event that indeed was wonderful, and full of words and word games. And word nerds. My kind of place!

U.S.: Arrival

In the U.S. now. Oh, how I missed porches. Even more than water fountains!

French Interlude

Hi from the U.S.! Once again. (East Coast this time.)

My flight to New York was through Paris, where the very first thing when we got into the terminal building from the tarmac was an up-going escalator, which of course wasn't working. The guy in front of me sighed and muttered, "la France!"

And I had to chuckle, remembering trekking all across Gare du Nord station in Paris just a couple weeks ago on the way back from Normandy, with my friends Naomi and Sylvia, trying to find the (well-hidden) luggage lockers, with every escalator in the place not working. France, indeed.

Then, I'd been in France barely half an hour before I received a marriage proposal. Again, why am I somehow entirely not surprised? Here's how it went:

Passport control guy: "Bonsoir."

Me: "Bonsoir."

"Parlez-vous français?"

"Not really...English?"

"You are beautiful."

(not catching it at first, because of his accent) "...?"

"You are beautiful."

"Thank you."

(flipping through my passport, noting my birthdate) "Twenty-nine?"

"Yes."

(pointing to himself) "Same!" (then) "You want me? Husband?"

"...Thank you...no..."

"Yes? Okay!"

And then he smiled, wished me a nice flight, and waved me through.


The hour and a half layover was just right for getting through border control and security without having to worry or rush, but unfortunately it didn't leave much time for piano-playing.

Piano?

Yes, piano.

I'd just settled down in a mostly empty waiting area near my departure gate, when I heard someone playing the piano. Nearby. I looked around, and almost hidden by the window behind rows of waiting area seats, was a nice little upright piano.

Possibly the best idea I've ever seen in an airport terminal! (Though Amsterdam's mini-art museum display is a nice concept too.)


On the flight, I watched a French movie that was billed as a comedy – and mostly it was fairly light-hearted... aside from the fact that the little girl's best friend died at the end. Maybe that counts as a comedy in France?


Then, on the other end of the spectrum:

U.S. border control guy: "What was the purpose of your visit?"

Me: "Just visiting." (then, realizing the misunderstanding) "Uh, I live in Germany, I'm visiting the U.S."

"Germany? Why Germany?"

"...It's nice."

(shrugs) "I've been there."

Germany, Land of Bluntness

Uh, thanks for the heads-up? I guess?

(Advertisement reads:

"YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

Let's talk about it."

It's about a week of programming across TV, radio and internet, on the subject of death and dying.)

Pies and Pans

Frustration at the grocery store, where it rapidly became clear that such a thing as a pie pan just does not really exist in Germany.

As it happens, I already owned one of these odd-looking pans:

...and in the supermarket the other day, I finally figured out why it has that odd depression around the edge: It's intended for baking a base layer of cake that's then flipped over and covered in fruit to create the kind of fruit tart that's much beloved of Germans but, er, not very beloved of me.

The depression around the edge creates a nice edge ridge when flipped over to make a fruit tart, but for me it's only ever been an annoyance when trying to do what seems to me the sensible thing when in possession of fruit, a pan and an oven, i.e. bake a pie.

Solution? Try to fill the darn thing in. With tinfoil:

Creatively cobbled-together result: one pie in a converted fruit-tart-cake-base pan, one in a rectangular pan probably meant for casseroles or some such. Why no pie pans, Germany? Why?

The pie came out quite well, but in the final reckoning, I don't recommend the tinfoil trick after all – it got all commingled with the juices from the apples and baked into a solid, sticky mess that had to soak overnight before I could pry it back out of the pan. Next time, back to the drawing board on that particular point.

In any case, apple pie!

And friends gathered for a fall-themed dish-to-pass, with lots of dishes heavy on the pumpkins and the apples, all delicious:

(A tip of the hat to Anna and Ian, if you're reading this – I finally actually used your brilliant pie recipe after all these years! Clearly I don't make pie often enough.)

Café Hilde: Good Atmosphere and Music

More reasons Café Hilde is my favorite café in Berlin: the music they have playing is, at least half the time, my very favorite singers – and the rest of the time it's really good too.

Right now, it's been Jeff Buckley (his cover of "A Satisfied Mind," an amazing version that I first discovered here at Hilde, in fact) followed by Antony (the upbeat "Kiss My Name"). If I stay here long enough, I know they'll hit Leonard Cohen, the Swell Season, any number of other favorites...

Ooh, now Paul Simon.

Post-Election Day

An American Election Day rather quickly becomes Election Night over here, thanks to the six-hour time difference, and I'd made plans to meet a bunch of expat friends for the evening at an election-watching party hosted by the Democrats Abroad. The party itself was lackluster, but it was nice to be around friends to share the election-related anxiety.

We hung out in the lobby (pictured above) rather than the main auditorium, where one friend went in and reported back that they were showing some kind of boring slideshow of facts – "But I already know who I'm voting for!" she said – that was being watched by a bunch of rapt presumably-Germans, who sighed in annoyance when she had to pass in front of them to get her coat.

(Pictured: The auditorium, and I don't know what those guys on the stage are doing...)

There must have been about two journalists for every non-journalist at this event, and as a result people kept trying to interview each other... I watched as one young journalist interviewed two of my friends (one of whom is also a journalist). "Why do you think there are so many Democrats here?" the journalist asked, and we all looked at her blankly because the party was hosted by the Democrats Abroad.

The frustrating thing was that I had to leave before anything actually happened – state-by-state results come in between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. here, and there was no way I could afford to pull an all-nighter: I'd promised to be on-call for Spiegel Online International all the next day, translating election-related articles as they came in.

(Pictured: Discovery that my necklace more or less matched Obama's campaign symbol – which was also the stamp on our hands at the entrance to the event.)

So I made my way home early-ish, and only a couple states had been called when I went to bed for a scant 2 or 3 hours of sleep...and woke up to the headlines that the election had been called for Obama!

I had about five seconds to be slightly sad I hadn't been there to experience the results coming in and hear the final call, before I had to dash out of the house (I'd set my alarm, but woke up late to find something had gone wrong with it, which was alarming...heh, pun) to meet friends for breakfast – we'd agreed to convene again at 7 a.m. to see the last results and celebrate and/or commiserate.

As it happened, our timing was just right to watch Obama's acceptance speech. (When I talked with a friend in the U.S. much later that day, she found it funny that she'd watched the speech just before finally going to bed, and I'd watched it over breakfast.)

We were only able to get a German TV station, unfortunately, so it was a matter of straining to hear Obama under the overdubbed simultaneous translation. (Or, in my case, listening to both at once and comparing, impressed by the general quality of the translation but also amused by a few small mistakes and omissions.)

Here we are, listening to Obama from Berlin:

Then straight into a long workday, where I helped with turning around election-related articles as quickly as possible after the German authors filed, to get them up on the English-language site.

And yes, I appreciate the irony, that I was translating about an American election from German back into English. The thing is, the pieces are by Spiegel's (German) correspondents who are covering the event from the field, then filing their stories back to Germany. Then we translate them to give you, the English-speaking readership, the German perspective on the election!

For once in this situation (where I've been involved in a bunch of articles at once) I actually thought to take a screenshot of the page, so here you go. Of the four election-related articles that made up the top of the page yesterday, I translated or helped partially translate three:

And then I crashed into bed and slept.

Election Day

Election Day. Well, Election Night by now, over here.

I woke up today already feeling anxious. Even though the polls hadn't even opened yet in the US. (I voted by absentee ballot weeks ago.) I've only grown more anxious as the day has gone on.

Tonight is election-watching at the Democrats Abroad party (state-by-state polling results come in between midnight and 7 a.m. Central European Time, unfortunately).

All over Germany, people are crossing their fingers for Obama. Well, actually they're pressing their thumbs down for him – the German equivalent – but it's the same idea.

I read an article today that outlined how the rest of the world would vote if they could vote in American elections (overwhelmingly Democratic, obviously). There's sure an argument for that, that the rest of the world should somehow get to vote for the president of the United States. After all, it affects all of us.

Sorry, do I sound gloomy enough yet?

I'm anxious.

Let's all press down our thumbs.

Pictures: Normandy

And now Normandy... Frances, an English-friend-who-lives-Belgium, invited the same crowd from the silly Swiss ski weekend to her parents' vacation apartment in Courseulles-sur-Mer, a lovely little town right on the sea in Normandy, where we indulged in incredible French food and enjoyed the stormy, dramatic Atlantic.

(Ironically but perhaps unsurprisingly, at the same time Hurricane Sandy was devastating the east coast of the US on the other side of the Atlantic, though here it just caused dramatic winds and lovely waves. ...Okay, now I feel bad about having enjoyed it at all.)

Anyway, here is lovely gourmet Normandy:

Normandie Gourmandie

Pictures: Paris

Hello there, back to the present now, to give you a small album of pictures from one-day-and-one-half-day in Paris... I was meeting friends for a weekend in a little town on the sea in Normandy and decided to take the night train between Berlin and Paris, which worked out fabulously. And gave me a day and a half to explore the city, with an emphasis on neighborhoods rather than big sights (I'd been to Paris once before) and on checking out the city's famous Velib bike borrowing system. (Which, incidentally, was the subject of the very first translation I ever did for Spiegel. The bike program is five years old, and so is my tenure as a freelance translator. Wow.)

Here's Paris, a bit gray and rainy, but still fun:

Paris Paris

Pictures: Spain (Madrid, Cádiz, Sevilla)

Well, this is just getting completely out of chronological order, but at the moment what I've got on hand is an album (finally) of my trip to Spain back in...April. I know, I know. I haven't sorted my pictures from Senegal in January either!

Friend A. and I went to visit friend K. (yes, they're delightfully anonymous!) for a week in April; we spent a few days checking out some of the more alternative sides of Madrid, then traveled to the old port city of Cádiz in Andalucía, with one brief afternoon in Sevilla.

I'll let the pictures do the talking. Here you go!

Madrid, Cádiz, Sevilla