Dinner in Colindres, lunch in Laredo

As you may have read elsewhere, my wife and I spent four days in Spain recently as a tenth wedding anniversary celebration trip, visiting our friends Erik and Marga. While fancy restaurants were definitely on the agenda (wait for the next post for details), we also ate Chez Rasmussen and at a few bars in town.

On the first evening Erik prepared a lovely tortilla. Check out his expert tortilla-flipping technique!

 

 

He also sliced some ham from a large pig leg he happened to have sitting in his kitchen. Check out his expert ham-slicing technique!

 

 

Plus, there were some yummy anchovies on sticks with chillies and olives. But after that they did something else with anchovies. Wait for it; I’m about to blow your mind. Anchovies…with condensed milk.

I know, right? I did take a photo but I’m not going to post it, as the finger-length cylinders of dark red fish flesh spattered with creamy white sauce looked a little NSFW. But trust me, they were amazing.

The next day we headed over to the next town: beach resort Laredo. We bar hopped drinking red wine and stuffing ourselves with tapas. After a couple of tortillas we were taken to a restaurant which specialised in grilled mushrooms.

And here they are. Huge, succulent, piping hot and slathered in garlic sauce. So hot in fact that I burnt the roof of my mouth on the first bite, but it was worth it. I could have eaten ten of these.

I tried to take a photo of another bar’s tapas selection, and this guy photobombed me. And then he gave me his email address and asked me to mail him the picture.

Next bar, soft-boiled egg, potato puree and ham speckles.

Erik ordered one enormous slice of tomato, which I think had mozzarella underneath. He seemed happy with it.

Finally, more anchovies with dairy products. Cheese, this time.

A very civilized approach to lunch, and pretty filling too. Which helped soak up all the wine. Maybe these Spaniards are onto something?

Decade

By the time you read this we’ll be in Spain for four days to celebrate our anniversary. Exactly ten years ago we got married, and slightly less than exactly ten years ago we went on honeymoon to French Polynesia.

Scanning the prints from the wedding album would be tricky and time-consuming, so I’ve just chosen a few shots from my own compact digital camera (one meeelion pixels!) which I took out a couple of times during the reception. Funny to think that were I to get married today I’d be tempted to post live photos from the ceremony from my phone. The honeymoon snaps are from the same device, as at that stage I didn’t have any other kind of camera. Which is also a strange thought.

The wedding cake, brought over with us from Brussels. As per tradition we kept the top half for the birth of our first child. The Italians were a little nonplussed by this English-style fruitcake, and couldn’t believe that we planned to keep part of it to eat almost a year later.

Wedding night still life.

Our first day on honeymoon, at the hotel pool on Tahiti. I love the expression on the face of the guy at top left.

Moorea. Weather was variable, scenery stunning.

Approaching Bora Bora.

Approaching Manihi.

Our over-water room on Manihi.

Mr.

Mrs.

Ten happy years and counting.

The babbling brook

This little stream ran past the tent we stayed in last week while “glamping” on a farm in Devon. I became fascinated by the patterns of ripples as the water passed by the rocks, especially since at the time I was reading a book about waves and how they refract.

It looks quite different on video. A sequence of perfect little circles bubbling off the edge of the stone.

Lost in translation

Living in a multicultural nation and working in an even more multicultural organisation, translation and its attendant problems are often at the forefront of my mind. And yet while the necessity for translation is never questioned, one thing about translation has always bugged me: why do we translate names?

For a practical example of this, simply drive southwest from Brussels and you’ll see signs directing you to “Mons” and “Bergen”. This is one and the same town, but the name is listed twice: in French and Flemish. Or drive northwest towards Lille and you’ll see signs for “Lille”, but also for “Rijsel”, which is what the locals in Flanders call it.

Now presumably there are historical reasons for why English people say “Finland” instead of “Suomi”, or why the Deutsch are referred to as “Allemands”, “Tedeschi” or “Germans” in other parts of the continent, and presumably this force of habit is the reason why, like many irrational aspects of language, it’s just something we’ve got used to and isn’t likely to change any time soon. But it still irritates me. Especially because of the inconsistency. We say “Tuscany” instead of “Toscana”, but then we manage to pronounce all the other Italian region names the same way as the Italians do. It’s not as if the originals pose pronunciation problems for non-natives, or, as is the case of the full name for Bangkok, the issue of having to draw breath several times while you try to say it.

While it may grate slightly to hear someone speaking in English and then dropping in a foreign name, with an attempt at the correct foreign pronunciation: “Yah, we spent the summer in Toscana this year”, to me it seems the only logical and respectful way to do it.

But the one I find even more bizarre is the tendency in some countries to translate people‘s names. I know several Greeks living in Brussels who, presumably for the sake of integration and convenience refer to themselves as “Georges”, when in fact their original Greek name is “Giorgios”. And once when I was teaching English in Genoa and we were discussing the royal family, I was asked a question about “Principe Carlo”. It took a good few seconds before I realised that they meant Prince Charles. No English person would dream of seriously calling the king of Spain “King John Charles”. He’s King Juan Carlos. My name is my name, and I don’t want you to change it to something more familiar to you from your own culture, thank you very much.

I am untranslatable.

Moss Rules

It started some years ago with a sarcastic comment on a friend‘s photo of some moss. “Moss Rules!”, I said. She laughed. It became a running joke, used whenever anyone we knew posted a photo of the same subject matter.

It got to the stage (as it often does with flickr) that I went out specifically looking for moss to take photos of. Soon a flickr group of the same name had been set up, and at the time of writing it has 178 members and 820 photos. My own contributions come from places as varied as Belgium, Exeter, Vienna, Piedmont,  Japan and California.

But last month I hit the motherlode. We visited the Hall of Mosses in the Hoh rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, where every tree is literally dripping with moss. It coats the floor like a soft green carpet, it hangs in curtains from the branches, it bubbles up tree trunks. It’s a magical place, and although I’m happy with some of my photos they don’t really capture the full verdant softness of it all.

Eating Portland

I didn’t have any particular culinary expectations regarding Portland, Oregon, but then a friend reminded me via facebook that there’s a big food cart scene there. A few minutes later I’d downloaded a free smartphone app and was on my way downtown to search for lunch. According to the site which produced the app, there are around 500 carts in the city, usually grouped into “pods”.

I headed for a spot on the corner of  SW5th and Stark, where there was a pod of around twenty carts offering a wide range of fare:

Love the photo on this one:

I chose a Czech cart, which is one of the most well known and popular.

If I’d known I could get a free postcard I’d have stopped shaving before I left Brussels.

Here’s my “Schnitzelwich”, which is, as the name suggests, a Schnitzel in a bun, although a tangy red sauce underneath added flavour.

If we’d had more time there I’d love to have tried some more. In fact given the number of carts you could stay in Portland for over a year and never need to step inside a restaurant or eat at the same cart twice.

The other food ‘must do’ in Portland, about which I was also ignorant before arriving, is Voodoo Doughnuts. Friends who live nearby insisted that we go there.

We passed it several times during our stay and there was always an enormous queue.

All the bricks are glittery, for some reason.

Here’s the full menu.

And there’s a range of suggestive merchandising. I bought a t-shirt.

Here’s our haul. Chocolate covered figures for the kids, a Portland special for me (filled with cream and covered in chocolate), and the two at bottom left are for our friends who are American and who therefore insist on having bacon with everything.

Beautifully soft, sweet doughnuts, and very reasonably priced too.

OMG, TBISC

We stayed for one night in a hotel on the Oregon coast which seemed inordinately proud of the fact that they give guests clean bed linen. Yes, that’s right, unlike all those other hotels which let you sleep in the same filthy, sodden sheets which have been used by all the previous guests, the Hampton Astoria clean theirs! Regularly!

This poster in the lift (elevator) was accompanied by a photo of a teenage girl excitedly texting this message to a friend, a manic grin on her face, seemingly unable to contain her delight at the prospect of a hotel room which meets basic minimum hygiene standards. Unfortunately I had to crop her out in order to get in close enough to see the small text.