Extreme Cheese-rolling?

Ok, I think we've established that the Brits love their cheese--as do we. But I was still bemused a few weeks ago when I heard about the annual cheese-rolling day in the village of Stilton. And yes, they roll Stilton. Here's a few pictures from this year's event--more at the link above.




Now I was quite sad we missed this grand event and remarked to KT we should try to attend next year. So I was even more annoyed last night when I read a paper and realized we had missed another cheese-rolling event this past bank holiday Monday: the annual cheese-roll in Gloucestershire. Making the Stilton event look rather sedate, this is apparently the granddaddy of cheese-rolls, the equivalent of the running of the bulls in Pamplona. It's cheese-rolling meets the X games as hundreds of people chase a wheel of double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill.

Here's a video from this year (will launch a YouTube window)

Every year this cheese-roll produces many "cheese casualities", some quite serious. The papers remarked that this year's tally of 20 injured was remarkably low. Past winners have suffered broken arms.

Here's a winner of one of this year's races, holding his cheese, getting medical attention

Next year's roll is May 26--book your airline tickets now! (Beer festival and cheese-rolling combined?)

--jt

Happy Bank Holiday!

It's Memorial Day in the U.S. Not here, but it is what's called a bank holiday. Why? Because the government says so, of course!


From the Wikipedia entry on bank holidays:

-------------
Prior to 1834, the Bank of England observed about thirty-three saints' days and religious festivals as holidays, but in 1834, this was reduced to just four: 1 May, 1 November, Good Friday, and Christmas Day.

In 1871, the first legislation relating to bank holidays was passed when Sir John Lubbock introduced the Bank Holidays Act 1871 which specified the days in the table set out below. Sir John was an enthusiastic supporter of cricket and was firmly of the belief that Bank Employees should have the opportunity to participate and attend matches when they were scheduled. Included in the dates of bank holidays are therefore dates when cricket games are traditionally played between the villages in the region where Sir John was raised. Scotland was treated separately because of its separate traditions; for example, New Year or Hogmanay is a more important holiday there.
----------------------------





This Monday, the bank holiday we're observing wasn't actually legislated until 1971. The observance is Whitsun, or the 49th day after Easter Sunday, otherwise known as Pentecost. Of course, few people actually know that this is the reason why, and everyone just calls it a "bank holiday weekend."

"Expect bad traffic this bank holiday weekend!"

"The weather may dampen your bank holiday plans."

"Bank holiday sale at Debenhams!"

"Come to the bank holiday car boot sale at the Cowley Park and Ride!"




It has taken a while to figure out that people don't really care that deeply about banking, it's just what the day off work is called.

What'd we do with our bank holiday? Rented a car and stayed home. Once again, we got a great deal on a VW Golf automatic. And once again, we got upgraded:






To a Toyota RAV-4. There was a time, when we were car shopping about 4 years ago, that we thought the RAV-4s were much too small. Now put that car in the home of the Mini Cooper, and you've got one giant vehicle. We had hoped to perhaps go to the coast or take some long drives, but constant, heavy rain altered our plans.

So, we took the opportunity to buy two hideous (yet charming) armchairs for our sunroom, one small and one large dresser, and a floorlamp, and to go to a New and Exciting grocery store that even had Skippy peanut butter. I bought about 6 plants, because I need some climby things to climb my boring brown fences. We also went to the dump (to drop off our broken cardboard boxes from the move), to Ely (for no particular reason other than we knew how to get there) and to Wimpole Hall, our closest National Trust site and where you will all be dragged when you come to visit.

I now think we're leaning much more toward just liberally renting a car when we need it rather than buying one. We're still a little traumatized by not being able to sell the Passat before we left, and JT's predecessor at his job had a hard time selling his car before he left England. Besides, there's something rather liberating about being a two-bicycle, no-car household, and being perfectly happy about it.

Mmmmm, beer.

If you like beer, mark your calendars now. You're coming to Cambridge May 19-24, 2008, for the Cambridge Beer Festival.




This past week was this year's festival, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It's a 15-minute walk from our house, includes 170 beers and scores of ciders, and even a foreign beer bar, not to mention the cheese bar, exotic meat grill, and freshly deep-fried donut stand. Here's what we've decided:

Belgian beers still rock. So do German beers, particularly dunkelweissens. Italian beers are refreshing. The City of Cambridge brewery makes some beers that are pretty tasty. Anything called "stout" or "porter" can be quite good.

But on the whole, we're still not huge fans of British real ales.

I'm trying very hard to embrace the warm, flat beer. Really, I am. And it's at great risk that I say that I only tolerate the real ales, because I've paid for membership in the Campaign for Real Ale but have not yet received my membership card. (Hey, it got me into the festival for free, and allowed me to jump the 300-person-long queue on busy nights. And it will get us a discount into the Great British Beer Festival, too. That one is August 7-11 this year, FYI.) But when you just want a tall, cold, lager, then the distinctive taste of a British ale just won't do. The program for the festival even says, "Please don't ask if we've got 'anything like Stella.'" Gulp. I have a case of Stella in my pantry.

I did find something new at the festival that I really, really like:


the Scotch egg. That's a hard-boiled egg wrapped in spicy pork sausage, breaded, and deep-fried. Serve cold, yet still fresh. Oh my stars. This thing is worthy of the heart attack that follows.


We also enjoyed the cheese bar, where we had six kinds of cheese. One favorite was called porter -- an Irish cheddar flavored with porter. The donuts were pretty dang good, and John has a kangaroo sausage that was fine, but more a novelty than a delicacy.


I got notes on most, but not all, of the beers we tried:


City of Cambridge Hobson's Choice - Tasty!
Elgood's Winter Warmer - Two stars!
Milton brewery Mammon - Two stars!
Ufford Setting Sun - British. [That's not a compliment.]
Adnams Regatta - Not very good. [But if my boss asks, it's grrrrreat! (his favorite.)]
Six Bells Big Nev's - pretty good
Titanic Nautical Mild - Surprisingly good! [but also my fourth half-pint that night, so that may be off.]
Goachers Real Mild Ale - just OK.
Gribble Pigs Ear - just OK.
RCH Old Slug Porter - Great!
Oakleaf I Can't Believe It's Not Bitter - Great!
Cornish Orchards Cider - pretty bad.
Dupont Saison (Belgian) - Meh. Just OK.
Augustiner Helles (German) - fantastic!
Karg Dunkles Weissbier (German) - Yum!
Schlenkerla Marzen Rauch (smoked barley beer) -very interesting flavor - actually smoky!


It took three (JT) and four (KT) trips to the festival to knock back all those. Maybe next year, we'll take vacation for it. :)

Trip Report: 48 Hours in Nice

Our friend SZL, wife of JT's best man, was scheduled to be in Nice in May for a conference. We've known this for a while. What we didn't know until recently was that she was going to get to Nice a few days before our conference started. And that her friend E would also be there.

Clearly, we needed to make the sacrifice and go to the south of France to hang out with her.

We got up at 3:30 Saturday morning to catch a taxi to catch a train to get us to the airport by 5:15 for our 6:30 flight. and by 10 a.m. we were in Nice. A bus ride later, we dropped our stuff off at the airport and met up with S and E at a cafe. All at once, we remembered what we loved about France: the cafes! The boulangeries! The crepes! And here it all was, with the added bonus of the Mediterranean, and friends.

After some lunch in Old Nice, we headed off to the train station. The afternoon's adventure would be a trip to Monaco, a 19-minute train ride away. The entire area of Monaco is 485 acres, with a population around 32,000. Our rough guide to Monaco joked that they must scrub the buildings to keep everything looking so shiny. Man, they aren't kidding.

The ladies in front of the casino in Monte Carlo.

Monaco was getting itself ready for the Monaco Grand Prix, which is going on this weekend. (I didn't know anything about this; apparently it's a Formula One race through the streets of Monte Carlo. 77 times.) Also, people were getting the prime docking spots for their yachts. I thought I had seen yachts. Oh my gosh. The trunk space for the jet skis. The furniture. The perfectly fluffed and aligned pillows. Names like, "Just One More Toy." So that was entertaining.

We walked up to the casino, then stopped for a Diet Coke break in a fru-fru shopping mall, where we sat and watched well-dressed people walk by with their well-dressed purse dogs. Then it was off to the other end of the country (ha) to visit the palace and what was the original city of Monaco. We found some dinner in an Italian restaurant, accompanied by some red Sancerre. (YUM) Back to the train, back to Nice. One gelato later, we all collapsed in our respective beds.

Sunday morning, JT and I were determined to visit the famous flower market in Old Nice. It was so lovely! (More pictures here, by the way.) But it was so much more than flowers. Bread! Spices! Fruit and veg!

One of the veg stands. Just to the right of the pole is zucchini -- they sell it with the blossoms still on. We saw fried or sauteed courgette flower on the menu at quite a few places. In fact, I'm pretty sure that people who buy it like that are after the flower, not the fruit.

We decided on some croissants and a focaccia covered in ham for breakfast. After a break for some coffee (and a Diet Coke that cost 3.60 euro), we went in for another round. We caught up with S and E, and started gathering provisions for later consumption. We finally left the market, heading to the water. We then climbed (213 steps, I'm told) a big hill up to Le Chateau, which is really just the remains of a cathedral and some Roman ruins. But there's also a lovely park, where we decided to relax for a while and have the best spread in the universe:

Clockwise, from bottom left: Goat cheese covered in chives, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh cherries, mini chorizo sausages, olives (nicoise, even). Not pictured: The most fabulous crusty baguette. Actually, two of them.

We then wandered over to the cemeteries (still on top of the big hill). They're divided into Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. I'm not one to visit cemeteries, but this one was absolutely amazing.

By now, we were ready for the beach. So, we meandered back to our hotel(s), changed, and hit the water. In Nice, you have the option of going it on your own, or going to one of the private beaches (which is just a cordoned off area of the same beach) and paying an exorbitant amount of money to sit in a chair. Considering this:

is the surface of the beach, we opted for the exorbitant fee. (10 euro. Each. But by golly, that chair was darn comfy. And it came with an umbrella. And it would have come with a man to bring us fru-fru drinks, except that we smuggled in our own, so we wanted the man to not notice us.) And let me tell ya, after 3 weeks of rain in the UK, the time on the beach was really, really wonderful. All of us even went for a dip, despite the water being a couple of degrees on the wrong side of comfortable, and despite the rocks making it a little tough to walk on.

Random body parts of random people, and also JT in the water.

We stayed on the beach for a little over two hours, then headed back to clean up for dinner. We met up with one of S's colleagues in town for the conference, and headed out to another Italian restaurant. More wine, some salami pizza, linguini, uber-spicy arrabiata, and tiramisu later, we were strolling home talking about how soon we could come back. Or how maybe next year when S comes for her conference, we should just get an apartment and stay for a week.

We left early Monday morning, stopping first a corner boulangerie to load up on croissants and pastries. We got back to Cambridge around 1. Both of us had to leap into work, frantically finishing stories to meet deadlines. I dashed off to class; JT dashed off to London (his adventure is here). Already, it seems so far away. We've talked about how many places there are to go so we probably won't visit many more than once. I think Nice is on the list of places we definitely must go to again.

All of us, near the palace in Monaco. The camera is sitting on top of a cannon, of course.

(The full photo album is here. If the pictures don't have captions, try back again later. I'll get them done eventually.)

The Midnight Train To Cambridge

One of cultural shifts I've found so interesting is how quickly we have become use to taking the train. I don't mean the subway, though London's Tube system is impressive (I still miss DC's Metro, particulary the Red line). I mean real trains that go from town to town. We regualrly take the train into London, a trip that takes about 45 minutes on an express train (no stops) or as much as an 75 minutes on one that makes many stops on the way. The express train runs every 30 minutes during most of the day and the trains go from Cambridge to two different stops on the Tube network, King's Cross or Liverpool St.

The UK rail system use to be run by the government but it was privatized in 1994. Since then prices have risen considerably, much to the dismay of commuters. Without discount cards, a roundtrip to London can cost nearly 30 pounds ($60)! But the trains are remarkably good at being on time and one can eat and drink on them (even beer) unlike on DC's Metro.

This is all a long-winded intro to the events of Monday when I went into London to visit my Canadian cousin Millicent (center of picture), her husband Jim (next to me) and the two friends, Eric and Margaret, they were staying with. Jim and Millicent were doing a London-Paris jaunt on the way to a meeting in Copenhagen and it was their first trip to Europe. Though I had just flown in from Nice (that post is coming!) that morning, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to say hi. The only problem was we didn't start dinner til after 9pm and I didn't pay attention to the train schedule.

After a nice but very slow dinner (at the Wolseley), I hopped on the Tube for a short ride to King's Cross. It was about 11:30pm when I got there but I still expected to see several trains to Cambridge on the departure board. Nope. I quickly used my phone to check whether Liverpool St station had any--none until the 3:30am morning training. Uh-oh. Finding it hard to believe there were no trains home, I looked again at the King's Cross board and noted that there was a 12:07am train to Stevenage with a note "Bus to Cambridge" in small print. Apparently my normal train stopped half-way so work could be done on the tracks and people had to bus the remaining distance. No one besides me seemed surprised by all this so I reluctantly got on the train. After a 45 minute ride on the train, another hour ride on the bus with about 15 people, and a short taxi ride, I finally arrived home at 2am in the chilly drizzle. Hard to believe I had woken up 20 hours earlier in Nice and ate freshly-baked croissants looking at the blue Mediterranean waters. Long day.

--JT

Prayers for strangers

Tonight, thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. and Mrs. Crab over at 2Crabs. Mr. C's dad passed away yesterday, after living with Alzheimer's for 4 years then suffering a stroke a little over 2 weeks ago. Who are these folks? Complete strangers, in fact. But there are a few reasons why our hearts go out to them.

One of the things that you have to consider when you move an additional 3,500 miles from friends and family is what happens when something ... happens. You've got to accept that you can't be there for every event, both good and bad; there will be graduations, baby showers, family reunions, etc. things that you simply can't attend. And that there may be a time when you do need to get home quickly. This was in every book, every website, every online forum we consulted, and all of them noted to seriously consider this when deciding whether to move overseas.

On a completely different note, the author of 2Crabs is a journalist. From DC. Who moved to London with his wife about 2 years ago. I learned of his blog because his nickname on one of the expat sites I studied before moving here is apstyle. (If you don't get that, don't worry -- journalism thing.) He also posts almost daily and is an amusing writer. And, frankly, his site is what motivated me to do ours. Mr. C and I have exchanged a few e-mails, but I don't know him and I just check his blog every once in a while to see what they're up to.

So, those two things collided last week when we checked in on 2Crabs to find that Mr. C had flown home to Manassas. He had gotten "the phone call." Mr. C writes that he knew that call was coming, given his father's illness, but when it comes, you're never ready for it. His subsequent posts beautifully document his father's last days, both in words and in pictures.

It doesn't matter that they're strangers; they are like us -- a couple close to family in spirit but not in geography having a grand adventure in another country. And in far too many ways, it hits close to home. So tonight, thoughts and prayers to the Soriano family.

And also tonight, we're thinking of our own families and friends. We love you all very much and send you big rockin' hugs. And now that I've made my own self cry writing this, let me encourage all of you to please go take some vitamins, get a little exercise, and eat your 5 a day. Please wear protective gear at all times and don't engage in dangerous activities. Maybe don't leave the house, just in case. Also, children must stop getting older and doing things like walking and graduating from college. Thank you.

Much love,
K&J

Random sightings

What's weirder than running into a herd of cows in a public park?

Coming across a man twirling a flaming baton among the herd of cows.