Alps

This weekend we headed to Kaltenbach, Austria for some late-season snowboarding. After the relatively quick 2 1/2 hour drive into the mountains, we were a little worried to see absolutely no snow! In the valley it was warm and sort of rainy. In the morning we got on the gondola and headed up the mountain. At the top of the gondola, there was plenty of snow. We were glad to have made it to the mountains at least once before the spring settles in over here!

The photo should link to all the photos we took over the weekend.

Es ist nicht Frühling!!

Apparently spring in Bavaria does not start in late March like in other places ... It has been snowing consistently since the weekend. Last night we watched as several inches fell in the course of a single Scrabble game. Thank goodness we finally got the winter tires!


At least it looks like it will warm up after today, according to weather.com anyway!

It's official!

Now our engagement is really official, and we have a very very nice diamond ring to prove it - hand delivered by Dear Sister from Portland last week. The above picture is this happy couple, center square, Lille, France.

happy (snowy) öster

Le trip.

This past weekend we made it all the way to Lille, France to attend the marriage of my cousin. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting the city & seeing the family. We happened upon a very authentic Breton crèpe restaurant - below is John's crèpe aux epinards, jambon, et fromage, et avec un oeuf bien sûr! More reports from the weekend to follow!

Adventures in Cooking

One of the things we miss most about Portland so far is the food. No longer is MuuMuu's at our doorstep, and we can't walk to 5 different microbrews. Nurnberg is not exactly "up and coming" when it comes to world class chefs and eateries!! So, we've been encouraged to try some new things in our own kitchen!

First we tried Mexican, because we were missing our weekly trip to Por Que No. We had a rather grand failure when trying to make tortillas from scratch:



Fortunately we had rice as a backup and made ourselves a very very nice meal of carnitas with many fixings, despite the lack of homemade tortillas, jalepenos, and queso fresco!!



This past weekend we were missing our many take out meals from Swagat and used it as an opportunity to take a stab at chicken tikka masala. We did not attempt naan, seeing as how we lack crucial equipment. We took a gamble and bought "naan" from the grocery store here ... next time we will pass, since it tastes like pita bread that had been sitting around for a year or so. Accented by some yummy veggie pancakes, our chicken tikka masala was surprisingly good!



We're looking forward to seeing a large percentage of my family in France this weekend! We'll report back next week ...