The Get Fresh Cruise

January 14th, 2011

Finnmaid

somewhere on the baltic between sweden and latvia

Believe it or not the Get Fresh Crew is on a two day cruise.  Sweet little cabin with window and a valid bathroom and shower.  Of course making the ship was another adventure which necessitated changing trains twice,  yours truly screaming at his lolligagging family, a bloody thumb, and a "veritable perils of pauline series of cliffhangers"*.   The quest concluded on a pitch black wharf in the mist with lots of razor wire and me speaking into a speaker and trying to get the harbormaster to open the gate.


Just got back from the dinner buffet.  Buckets of shrimp, smoked salmon, beef rind (?), escalloped spuds, and marinated mussels. Ben found the video room and quickly became the international gaming king.  He is upset that we will not let him play video poker.  We arrive in Helsinki tomorrow at 7:30am.  Hopefully grab a cup of joe with petri and then hop the one month old high speed train from Helsinki to St. Petes. If all proceeds apace, we will be seated in the Marinsky Theatre for the ballet tomorrow night.   

The last couple of days in berlin were a blur of museums with the pergamon and the neues following the jewish.  Currywurst found favor amongst the family and I strongly considered buying a cane at the second hand store.

Now scoffing at finnish statute 22.12.1994/1345, 4 (with the weird s thing.)

* Bruce Simon (family Haggadah)

great success!

Jan 13, 2011
berlin
not for too much longer

Just got back from the Berlin Philharmonik.  Yo-Yo Ma got my inner eyelids to dance.

In one piece the 1st violin and 2nd violin executed a perfect co-op. After a particularly frenzied section, the first violin realized that his strings were a mess.  While things were still moving along, he passed his violin and bow to the second dude and they both continued playing suavely.  The second violin realized that he couldn't get any purchase with the messed up bow so he casually restrung the bow and the two violinists switched back their tools of the trade just in time for another particularly frenzied part.  The whole thing was so deft that I don't think more than ten percent of the audience noticed.  In the famous words of Pat Rabdau "you gotta play it off."

Our last night in Berlin.  The document drop was successful, although I had to wait in the cold for a while.  The Merluzzi operatives in Geneva managed to persuade the russians that the consulate was open despite the fact that it was closed, and the documents reached berlin.  It is fortunate that Ben and Clare had the pads of their fingers surgically removed years ago.  Interpol and  the russians have no idea what they are in for.

 A cup of coffee has likely been arranged for Helsinki.  You see where this is going.

checkpoint charlie

Jan. 11th 2011
berlin

It is true, Clare has taken to sleeping in her ski pants with a navigational compass.  Motivation remains unclear.  Benjamin adores Chief Inspector Clouseau and Cato (see his latest tweets).  Jill is making winter insoles out of sheepskin she purchased in Budapest so that we may be toasty on the Siberian steppes.  Enzo has picked up our visas from the russians in geneva and is overnighting them to the Berlin safe house.  It is odd walking by checkpoint charlie everyday and thinking how different the world was just two decades ago.  Nice to not worry about a "death zone" while one is doing errands.

Spent over four hours at the Jewish Museum today.  Longest museum visit of my life.  Believe it or not, I was the last family member standing.  The architecture, exhibits and vibe are pretty amazing.  Can see why Liebeskind was picked to do the twin towers. Twins hung tough and needed only some gummi bears near the end.

The Berlin jamming scene is awesome.  I think I have played with about 15 shredders.  It is so cool that you can show up in a city and immediately have fun and friends (all year round).  The european disc seen has blown a fresh wind into freestyle.  I love it!

Wong To Yick Wood Lock

january 10th, 2011
berlin

was trying to make it to the jewish museum today.  Went to the hipster bio stores in the hipster area south of us, bought bio beer and bio coffee filters (seattle anybody).  Ankle crumpled into a bulbous mass of crum. Museum tomorrow instead. 3 straight days of jamming with the berlin crew has just about done me in.  gotta fire up for the gym jam tomorrow.  Struggling with china visas.  no surprise.  hoping the russian visas make it here.  hoping we can find a place to live when we return late feb.  hoping that Dr. Wu will continue to make his special Wood Lock medicated oil.  We found the juggling store in berlin.  Ben and clare are working on the Diablo thingy for phys ed.  gotta love home schooling.

dachau in an ice storm

january 6, 2011

berlin

made it to berlin on time.  woke up in dachau at an inn in the old town run by Christian Simon and his wife Andrea Simon (!).  drove to the concentration camp in an icestorm.  talk about bleak.  hopped into the lancia.  and pounded the autobahn in a driving rain.  made it from dachau to berlin in about 3 and a half hours.  Miraculously found the new safe house at the pre arranged time despite some terrible navigation from yours truly.  had the rap with marion about bio dynamic wines, went to the local tapas restaurant and now verging on --

I think i fell asleep there.

jan 7th

dropped off jill's bff,  lance.  Tooled around.  Jammed at night in a tunnel in Alexanderplatz.  The acs job is still out there.  life is good. coffee and cake with landlords (myberlinstyle.com)

family singers family portraits to date:

bodrum family

cafe central, budapest 

random family- nemrut dagi

cappadocia family

lesvos family 

salzburg with matriarch

ephesus family 

harran family 

fisherman's bastion family 

hagia sofia family 

istanbul ferry family 

love is all you need, john lennon wall, praha

family somewhere

myra, rock cut tombs family 

salzburg snow family 

winter wonderland

jan 3, 2011
munich

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of winter fun.  We left the Geneva safe house on new years day at somewhere after high noon.  We had reserved the mitsubishi Lancer but ended up with a Lancia which jill promptly fell in love with.  So far jill's two favorite activities of the new year have been complaining about my navigation skills and extolling the virtues of her new Italian love machine.  We ended up in a town called MeIningen somewhere in the mountains.  Next morning we headed towards Chur and ended up in Klosters where we rented skis and hit the slopes at a "family oriented" resort called Madrisa.  I hadn't been on skis since i bought my first sims switchblade at Skates on Haight in 1988.  Our fearless leader decided to eschew the bunny hill as the twins had a couple of epic days in Maine last year.  So we hit the gondola and headed up.  At the top we looked around and found that we were in the land of the t-bar.  There were some ugly moments on the 25 minute t-bar ride but we eventually reached the top to find the beginning of a slope-clearing snowstorm/whiteout.  I think we reached the top at about 2:00 and reached the bottom of the run at around 4:30. You do the math.  I'm not sure that the twins were fully buying Jill's philosophy that feeling the snow is more important than seeing.

we hopped back in Jill's new bff and cruised the autobahn at a tame 170 kmph to Munich where we crashed with Konstanze and her 12 year old daughter Johanna.  We had last seen Konstanze in Seattle 15 years ago.   today was backcountry sledging at its finest.  We fired up Lance and headed to the Bavarian Oberland.  Hiked for a sunny hour and a half up a beautiful, winding logging road which had been perfectly primed.  Fortified ourselves at the mountain hutte, and then mounted our sledges for the screaming-high speed-somewhat-out-control-most joyous descent.  Jill and clare had to bail out on one particularly sharp turn and clare has a nice shiner to show for it.  Later we went to a monastery for dinner.  The nuns observe vows of silence but make great beer.  We all had pork and dumplings with brown gravy and slaw.  Perfect day.

raclette and radar

12/30/2010
geneve
safe house

U ever have a feeling that you are in a spy movie.  Vienna to Budapest to Prague to Geneva.  Lots of castles, rivers and bridges. Throw in some mist and snow and russian embassies.  Maybe u get the picture.  Anyways the plan continues to develop at the geneva safe house.   Commencing, naturally, with artisanal raclette paired with a Swiss Fendant.

Less obviously, we have made contact with our people in berlin.  Arrangements have been made and we will fly under the radar (the Russians have our passports).  A Berlin document drop is scheduled for jan 13th if there is a folded copy of the International Herald Tribune placed face down on the third park bench...

-Jill wonders how the Buscher brothers are doing.
-Enzo is pleased that we have not burned down his house.
-ACS has not skyped back.
-the fingerling potatoes are fully roasted and raclette is immanent.
-the bottle was dusty but the...
-free museum of natural history today