Manhattan, Brooklyn - Day 2

Manhattan - Day 1

We arrived at Penn Station in the early afternoon on Friday. We were pretty happy with our choice of hotel - Eastgate Tower in Murray Hill (aka Curry Hill). Our hotel room is basically a little studio apartment (the Junior Suite) with a nice little kitchen, a dining area, a sitting area, and 3 closets. Our first order of business was picking up some food at the Duane Reade on the corner and making ourselves at home. A good friend of our brother and a former housemate of ours, George, is in med school doing his first rotation out here. He and Endla came over and we hung out for a bit at the hotel, met up with some of his friends and some of Ranjana's, did a little barhopping, played some Big Buck Hunter, and George and I ended up walking a mile to Crif Dogs before retiring for the night. George does not heart walking. Crif Dogs is where I first saw this poster:

Cambridge

Our visit to Cambridge was fun and scary. In the car on the way there and back we listened to a This American Life episode called "Another Frightening Show About the Economy". That was the scary part. Credit default swaps are no joke. We had some really good flatbread pizza at Cambride 1 followed by a pot of spicy hot chocolate at Tealuxe. We got to see Vinny's lab, office and the lecture hall he teaches in. All that and Al Gore. He happened to be giving a speech for the "Green is the New Crimson" campaign. Vinny came back to Providence with us where a hot Sri Lankan meal made by my mom and her patient and eager assistant, Asha, awaited.

Providence - It's like totally Fall

Tonight I am in Providence. Pritz took off from work early to pick me up at the airport. We hung out with Dawn and the girls for a bit before heading out to Boston to pick up my mom and Ranjana. My cousin, Vinny, (I like saying that) met us at the airport and took us out for a very nice dinner at Navy Yard Bistro. We're planning to go to Cambridge tomorrow to check out his 'hood.

Chicago - It's like Fall or something

I didn't get much sleep my first night in Chicago. Good thing I slept on the plane. I was awoken by the pitter patter of little feet accompanied by the plastic crinkle of pull-ups rapidly approaching my door followed by a giggle and the same sounds in reverse...a few times. Beth was kind enough not to unleash Ellen on me until 9 o'clock. After what must have been a late breakfast for Beth, Arjuna and the kids of delicious pancakes made lovingly by Arjuna (with vegetarian eggs), he dropped me off at the NAMA conference.

The conference was great. I attended some good talks, met some potential vendors, bought too many books and had them signed. It was really cool to look around the bookstore and see the names of many of my professors. I'm really glad I attended, but I was exhausted when it was over. Saturday night, Beth and Arjuna took me out to an amazing vegetarian dinner at Green Zebra. On Sunday, I had to get up earlier than I cared to in order to make it to the conference on time. That evening, I walked to Whole Foods with Arjuna and the kids where we put together a dinner of sushi, soup, sticky rice with mango and indian style potatoes. Beth and Arjuna made mini apple pies with fresh whipped cream for dessert with apples they had picked at an orchard. Yum. It was a family night. If I don't end up having a family of my own, it's nice to feel like I can drop in and be a part of theirs.

I slept in this morning (Monday) - my first day of vacation on this trip. When I woke up, I returned all the phone calls I missed last week at Esalen. I had lunch with Ellen, and went to Kate's gymnastics class. I got to spend a lot of quality time with them playing games and gave them each a massage. Tomorrow, I'm off to Rhode Island to meet my niece, Maya!

Esalen - Day 5

On my last day at Esalen, I woke up early and went on a photo safari before class. I went down to the ocean and collected some rocks. We had class from 9:30 - noon. Jerry and I hightailed it out of there when class ended to make it to LAX in time for my 7:10 pm flight to Chicago.

Esalen - Day 4 (cont'd)

I did end up going for a walk. The sun was red from all the smoke in the sky. I ran into the garden meditators on their way back and we went to see the monarch butterfly tree. I've never seen so many butterflies in one place! That was pretty magical and it cheered me up. This guy told us a story about a small town he stayed at that is in the path of the monarch migration. The town was full of butterflies and he awoke early one morning to a huge commotion. All the townfolk were out in the street and he couldn't tell what they were doing. There had been a frost that night and all the monarchs were frozen. They were picking up the butterfiles and putting them in their mouths to defrost them. As they opened their mouths, the butterflies would fly out. It was just what they did. What a sight...butterflies flying out of everyone's mouths...

I ran out of class to catch the sunset. Totally worth it. There was an impromptu sing along in the lodge after dinner. Jerry, Ali and I went down to the baths for a light night soak. All in all, it was a pretty great day.

Esalen - Day 4

It is the middle of our last full day of class. It's hot and there is smoke in the air from the fires south of here. The kelp flies are out in full force and they are very aggressive today. I'm not in the best mood. 25 minutes until class starts up again. I should probably take a walk or something...

Esalen - Day 3

Internet access was down last night. A helicopter carrying water to the nearby fires started a fire of it's own when the line carrying the water bucket hit a power pole just up the road. Yesterday was a very full day. Woke up early to catch the moon setting, only it set after 7 am so I missed it for yoga class. I finally stayed on the property for our three hour lunch and did a walk around the property with Ali. We went down to the water. There's a fresh water creek that runs through the property and the ocean access is right where the creek hits the ocean. We walked down to the farm where they grow a lot of the food we eat. We passed the Art Barn and Dance Dome on the way. That side of Esalen is much quieter. After class, Jerry and I got our massages, ate a quick dinner and headed back to the baths for the didgeridoo meditation. I ended up passing out on a massage table wandering in and out of consciousness.

Esalen - Day 2

Esalen is amazing, but it's even more special to be here with friends. I came with Jerry, a relatively new friend from one of the last schools I've attended, and we met Ali here, an old friend from one of the first schools I went to. Ali and I were best friends in elementary school and recently reconnected (over 20 years later!) through Facebook. We met up earlier this year and found out that we were both planning to attend this workshop. It's been great to have them both here.

Today started for me with the sun rising over the hills behind us. I encountered many creatures throughout the day - bees, a green hummingbird, butterflies, a thieving blue jay, a murderous cat that caught and ate the aforementioned green hummingbird, turkey vultures, a whale, and a floppy-eared, green-eyed pit bull puppy named Tyson. We made it to Nepenthe at lunch! (Just barely.) After another great day of class, I caught the full moon rising over the hills behind us. And now for a quick moonlit dip before retiring! There's a 7 am yoga class I'm gonna try to make it to and before yoga I'd like to catch the moon setting over the ocean if I can.

Esalen - Day 1

It's the end of my first day here. Class was great. We have a very good instructor. He explains things well and answers everyone's questions without letting us go off on tangents. (A problem we often have in Ayurveda class.) The work is very subtle and can be extremely profound. It's much easier on the body than most of the other body work I do. I'm excited to learn more and practice when I get home.

I saw two whales spouting off in the distance during our break this afternoon! I don't have a long enough lens to take a photo worth looking at or you know it would be posted. I think Jerry and I are going to skip the morning movement class - 5Rhythms Dance from 7:30-9 am. We woke up for a 7:45 am Continuum class this morning. It was interesting - breath work and micro movements starting with your eyeballs and ending with whole body undulations. The class was very appropriately named "Fluidity". We didn't get to bed until pretty late last night. We arrived a little before 7, checked in, ate dinner, went to an orientation and class started at 8:30 pm. After class, we unpacked and went to explore the grounds a little. There are no streetlights around here and the footpaths are very dimly lit so it gets very dark at night. However, the moon is almost full and it's pretty bright. We ended up marveling at the starry sky on the top deck of the bath building. We had the whole deck to ourselves - massage tables, a hot spring tub, bathroom and shower. We weren't planning to, but couldn't resist getting in the water. The water feels so good. So good. It tingles and you feel lighter. It smells like sulfur and comes out of the pipe at about 110 degrees. It can get up to 120 degrees at the source. There is also a pipe of cold water so you can regulate the temperature in the tub. After our bath, we took showers and went to bed very happy.

Class is 9:30 am-12:30 pm and 3:45-6:45 pm Monday-Thursday and 9:30-11:30 am on Friday. Much to my dismay, we are going to miss every single sunset while we are here as it sets a little before 6:45. The after-sunset sky is not so bad and we did catch the sunset on our drive up. We have a nice, long 3-hour lunch break that was much appreciated today after the late night and early morning. We attempted to go up to Nepenthe at lunch, but our efforts were thwarted by some road construction on Hwy 1. We're going to try again tomorrow.

Esalen!

I drove up to Esalen yesterday in beautiful Big Sur with my good friend, Jerry. We're up here taking a CranioSacral class. We decided to take this class back in May when we graduated from massage school. I have wanted to come to Esalen ever since I first found out about it maybe eight years ago. Big Sur is one of my favorite places on the planet. So far, my experience at Esalen is exceeding expectations. The natural hot spring baths are amazing, the setting is gorgeous and the weather is perfect! It's warm, sunny and clear. As an added bonus, the moon will be full tomorrow. I couldn't ask for anything more. All meals are included and a lot of the food they serve is grown on the farm here. There are free classes (yoga, meditation, tai chi, dance) throughout the day. Jerry and I have Esalen massages scheduled for Wednesday evening. Here are some photos from the drive up and a cat!

Day 13 - Koblenz

Day 12 - Bernkastel

Day 11 - Cochem

Today we woke up very early and looked at castles on the Rhine. We made a "nautical" stop to pick up a small box of parts from our sister ship that was docked along the way. That was fun. We pulled up right next to it -- close enough for one of their crew members to hand a box to one of ours. We turned onto the Moselle river, cruising through wine country and stopped in Cochem to take a tour of a furnished castle. It was just what you expected the inside of a castle to be.

Sailing on the Rhine

Day 10 - Mainz & Rüdesheim

Yesterday, we were in Mainz, the home of Guttenberg (printing press, bibles). We had kind of a wacky tour guide. The thing I'll remember about Mainz is the Marc Chagall windows at the St. Stephens cathedral that I didn't see. After Mainz, we sailed for like a minute down the Rhine and stopped at Rüdesheim for the night. Ranjana and I ended up going out with some of the crew and we didn't get back to the ship until almost 4am. We set sail this morning around 7am and the announcements about castles we were passing started shortly thereafter. It's been a bit of a rough day.

Day 9 - Wertheim

Wertheim is the glass industry capital of Germany. The glassblowers from East Germany fled to Wertheim shortly after the iron curtain fell. We started our day with an excellent glassblowing demonstration on board and spent the rest of the day in the small town of Wertheim. Super cute.

Day 8 - Würzberg

Aaaah...Würzburg. What can I say about Würzburg that hasn't already been said?

It is the home of the "biggest staircase house" in the world, more commonly known as The Würzberg Residenz. Above said staircase is an amazing baroque ceiling fresco by Tiepolo of the four continents: The Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. (Australia hadn't been discovered yet.) It also features a pretty amazing roccoco mirrored room. Much to my dismay, I wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside. Würzburg, like many of the places we are visiting, was bombed to oblivion during WWII, but the staircase room survived. Much of the rest of the building and town were reconstructed after the war. The furniture and artwork that could be moved was taken to the wine cellars and survived. After visiting the residence, we went wine tasting in a small village outside Wurzburg.

Day 7 - Bamberg

Bamberg is a city of about 75,000 people, with 8000 of those being students at the university there. Bamberg boasts the highest density of breweries in the world. It is also known for a smokey tasting beer that smells like BBQ sauce and tastes like ass. (I'm not making these facts up.) There was a nice gothic cathedral called The Dom and a beautiful rose garden (though it's just a bush garden at this time of year) and some quaint little buildings on cobble stone streets. The city hall has a large baroque mural on one side and there are some nice sculptures around town.

We found another lovely cafe with free wireless after our city tour today. It was the perfect day for cafe internet surfing -- overcast and most of the shops were closed. Ranjana had a Schokolade "Spicy" and I had a "HOT SPICY CHAI". They both had crushed red pepper sprinkled on the foam. The cafe is called Liv Coffee & Shop and is run by Karen (Kah-ren), a very bubbly 68-year-young woman who should be a part of everyone's tour of Bamberg. Her 42-year-old son, Swen, a moto-crossing single dad who lives in The Dom, owns the cafe. She jovially calls herself his "sclava" (slave). She says that his job has something to do with looking after the catherdal and he has keys to a secret network of underground tunnels. Karen doesn't speak much English, but she was somehow able to speak German in a way that we could understand her. It helped that she likes to act everything out and write down names and numbers. She told us all about her family, where she's from and where she's been. I could feel myself learning German for the first time. Or then again, maybe we completely misunderstood her and I made all that up. In any case, just when we made a friend, it was time to set sail again...

Day 6 - Nuremberg

I'm sitting in the lovely stockholm bar/grill/lounge in Nuremberg. Just finished a tour of the important sites here: the documentation center, the zeppelin field, the castle at the top of the old city, and the new city center. Saw some neo-nazis making a pilgrimage. Walked through an asparagus market. Got in a fight with my sister. And found this lovely bar! Where I am stealing a wireless connection from the cubano cafe two doors down that said they didn't have interneten. I feel particularly clever about that. Oh and I'm having the best "homemade lemon ice tea" ever made by the very cute english speaking bartendress. Actually, the whole staff here is quite good-looking. And so is the place. I love the aesthetic here. Reminds me of Wellington -- all the cute stores and restaurants.

Overheard

Old Lady sitting directly behind me in the lounge:
"I think you're right. I think they are mother and daughter."
(Me: She can't be talking about us.)
"The two ladies sitting behind you."
(Me: Well, Ranjana's not here...but they are old, so...)
"I think they must be from India or something."
Note: Save the two older asian ladies, every single person on the boat is W-H-I-T-E.
(Me: Wow. They are talking about us. That's incredible.)

That was the second person that day that thought we might be mother and daughter. Everyone else thinks we're "kids". Can't tell who is older. Our presence on the cruise has really troubled some people. Many people have just had to know what we were doing on this trip with all these, as most of them refer to themselves, "old people".

Day 5 - Regensburg

Today we are in Regensburg and I finally found a cafe with free wireless! The Boston Coffee Community near city hall. Regensberg is about 2000 years old. The main cathedral here is gothic. (Passau's was baroque.) Regensburg wasn't very important during WWII and so was spared any bombing. It's monuments did not have to be rebuilt unlike most of the other monuments we'll see on this trip. It also has the first stone bridge on the Danube. There are also a lot of students here and so it boasts the most pubs per square kilometer in Germany. (We generally sail at night, so we are unable to enjoy them.) Speaking of sailing, we sail in an hour. There is a beer garden in the middle of the aforementioned bridge that I'd like to check out.

Day 4 - Passau

Day 4 on the cruise took us to Passau. I'm back in Germany. Passau is a city of 50,000. About 9,000 of those are university students. Therefore, Passau has the most number of pubs per head in all of Germany. The cathedral there also has the 2nd largest pipe organ in the world and the largest in Europe. Again with the mixing of the old and the new, they put a new organ in an old church. They put pipes up in the front, on the sides and even in the ceiling wiring them all to one console. It's got 5.1 surround sound! There are over 17,000 pipes in total. We attended an organ concert at noon. They didn't crank it up loud enough.

Day 3 - Melk

We set sail from Vienna at about 3am on Tuesday morning. Our first stop was Melk to visit a baroque abbey built in the 1700s. The cool thing about the abbey is that it is a living abbey. One thing I've noticed about this part of Europe is that they mix old with new, baroque with modern very well. The figure 8 (infinity) bookshelf sits in the original abbey library amongst books that are centuries old. Where they are unable to restore original paintings, they paint new ones.

There was not much else in Melk. We stopped in an apothecary on the way back to the ship. I liked their tea section - a wall of silver tins.

Day 2 - Vienna

We happen to flag down the same cab driver that took us from the flea market to the Reichstag earlier that morning to take me to the airport. I fell asleep in the cab. I fell asleep on the bus from the gate to the plane and I had a whole row of seats on the plane to stretch out on. I got to Vienna at about 4pm and was greeted by my sister at the boat. (She had arrived the day before which was technically Day 1 of the cruise and was spent in Vienna.) She happened to be walking by when the cab dropped me off. We had dinner on board and went to a concert in Vienna that night. I went more for her than me, but I really enjoyed it…when I wasn’t struggling to keep my eyes open.

Mad Dash Monday

We finally got an early start on Monday and it’s a good thing because my flight to Vienna was at 2:45pm. We checked out the flea market that Ludwig had mapped out for us and then went over to the Reichstag to climb the dome. The Reichstag is open from 8am-midnight with the last admittance at 10pm. It turns out, 8am is the time to get there. We didn’t get there until about 10:45am and the line was about an hour long. HP was kind enough to stand in line for us while I walked around the corner to check out the Brandenburg Gate. On the way, I shot some photos of what I call the “wallprint": two rows of stones that mark the path of The Wall in the street. We had just enough time to climb the dome, sit down for a bit at the top, and cab back to the hotel so I could get to the airport.

Biggest Speed Racer Ad Ever

Veggie Currywurst

Currywurst (sausage in a tomato based “curry” sauce”) is a Berlin specialty that I wanted to sample. As a vegetarian, this was not an easy task. When our dinner plans fell through for Sunday night (the restaurant we chose was mysteriously closed), we went on a quest for veggie currywurst.
I had done some research online and we ended up at a place called Frittiersalon. They had currywurst made from organic sausage for HP and tofu for me. The frittes were delicious.
They have about 8 different dipping sauces to choose from. The currywurst wasn’t really anything to write home about, and yet here I am.

Lensbaby Slideshow

I bought a new camera and a lens to play with just before I left. Here are some of the shots taken with the Lensbaby 3G...

Berlin Slideshow

Berlin Bus Tour

Dominick flew home on Sunday morning. HP, Laura and I decided to do some sightseeing. You can tour Berlin by bus, boat, and apparently even by clown car. We opted for bus. We hopped on a double decker bus (top deck of course) with a bunch of young, dutch guys on it. You can drink on these buses, so on a beautiful, sunny afternoon like the one we were having, it was basically a moving beer garden. They were all over it. We saw all the important monuments (the remaining piece of The Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Philharmonic, Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Chancelor’s House, the Embassies, the train station), hopping off to check out a few flea markets and hopping back on to finish the tour by the late afternoon…or early evening. The sun sets after 8pm which is a good hour later than it does back home right now. It feels like 4pm and then all of a sudden it’s night time. We lost a lot of time taking naps in the “afternoon” which was really the evening and having to wake up for a late dinner.

Saturday Shopping

 On Saturday, Dominick, Laura, HP and I followed a map that Ludwig had drawn for us to get to the Farmer’s Market. We stopped at the big shopping center, KaDeWe, on the way.  It’s kind of like Rodeo Drive in a building. Their “food court” has a Moet bar. HP and I had an expensive bite of sushi there which we later followed up with some very cheap shwarma near the Farmer’s Market.  (7 euro for a roll vs. 7 euro for two sandwiches plus two drinks.) On the corner by the Farmer’s Market, there was a restauraunt called, “Tim’s Canadian Deli”. What is Canadian food?

We ended up having a very late dinner (around midnight?) at a place called “White Trash Fast Food” in Mitte. They specialize in American food served with attitude. I had the best veggie burger I’ve ever had…ever. Wow, was it good. They put their burgers on buns made fresh daily. The buns may have even been organic. They also make their own patties (veggie or otherwise.) They had veggie chili which also made me very happy as I got to have chili cheese fries, although they put salsa on theirs. My only complaints were the smoking at surrounding tables (once you go smoke-free it’s hard to go back) and having to pay the cover for the club downstairs in order to get dinner because we got there too late. HP might have a thing or two to say about the pace of the service. But they weren’t any slower than the rest of Berlin.

Ampelmann!

The walk symbol in Berlin is a man with a hat. After I noticed him, like a new word, I saw him everywhere. He’s got his own merchandise, a store and even a café!

New Friends, Old City

My first night in Berlin I was invited to a very nice dinner at Remake Restaurant in Mitte. I came to Berlin to meet up with HP who was there on business and I got to tag along on this business dinner hosted by Mental Images. The evening started with a driving tour through Berlin. Ludwig, one of the hosts of our dinner, put himself through college as a tour guide in Berlin, so it was a very nice introduction to the city. Berlin has some amazing modern architecture. It’s an old city with a new facelift. The old and new standing side-by-side. I could have spent a week just looking at buildings. Dinner was great. Delicious food, tasty wines and interesting conversation. We had a four course meal each paired with a different wine. Two of the dishes I had featured a white asparagus which is a much bigger variety than the one I’m used to. I heart asparagus. Though I didn’t know anyone but HP at the start of dinner, I felt like I knew most of the other seven by the end of dinner. VFX is a small world and of those seven at least three of them were only one degree of separation away from me. Coincidentally, that one degree was the same person for all of them – Endla. One of them, Dominick, I had heard a lot about from Endla.

I was really happy to finally meet him and felt an instant connection with him by transitivity. Laura lives in India and I really like her, too. If I was still in the business, I’d probably want to work with/for her. It was nice to come to a new city on another continent and feel at home right away.

Arriving in Berlin

It's day four of the fifteen day cruise my sister and I are taking from Vienna to Amsterdam. I've been in Europe for about five days. I arrived at Frankfurt airport last Friday afternoon where I wasted no time getting ripped off. I'll just say this: "duty-free != cheaper". Other than that, Frankfurt airport was very nice. Each gate has a bathroom and a complimentary tea/coffee and newspaper station. It’s too bad they can’t do that type of thing in the US. Pretty soon they’ll be charging us for peanuts. From there I flew about an hour and a half to Berlin. I ended up taking the bus from Berlin's Tegel airport into town. It was an adventure -- very crowded and I had no idea where I was going or when I was getting off. It reminded me of the bus ride to meet Peter in Rome from the central station with all my luggage. I was able to get my bearings thanks to some Americans waving around a map. (Their southern accents gave them away.) The only advice the bus driver offered was "Watch the numbers". Turns out they number one side of the street completely differently from the other side (i.e. one side was in the hundreds while the other was in double digits.) While I didn't overshoot my destination, I think I could have stayed on for one more stop. I only had to walk a few blocks to the hotel and it was a beautiful sunny afternoon.