Punctuality

Germany, possibly the only place where handymen, electricians, etc. show up earlier than the time they said.

Also, ARG, German language, why?? If the verb "ausbauen" (literally "out" + "build") can mean both "develop, expand, enlarge" and "dismantle, remove," how am I supposed to tell whether the sentence "Die Rebellen wollen ihre Positionen ausbauen" means that the rebels want to build up their camps further, or break their camps down? Seems like kind of an important distinction...

Winter

Berlin welcomed me back with snow last night! All evening it fell and swirled in the light of the streetlamps, and even stuck on the ground for a while.

By today, of course, it's melted back into gray and rain, but maybe this is a hopeful sign that we'll have a pretty winter here for once?

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.)