swiss photos - by k

some thoughts on switzerland, or more specifically appenzell - by k

we're spending our "semana blanca," our "white week" or "ski week" in appenzell switzerland. this is a town where women got the vote in 1990, so we're a long way from san francisco and liberal politics! this is not the picture perfect, disneyland-like switzerland i have visited before. at first there was a bit of disappointment, but once the eyes adjust, there is a lot that is quite beautiful. the mountains are spectacular and there are many charming old houses, and green meadows where the snow has already melted. what have we done here?

we've eaten cheese. lots of it. mostly melted.

we've gone sledding. very fun, very wet.

we've gone hiking. very tiring. very beautiful. dorian hated it until the descent.

we've eaten lots of sausage. well, dorian is correcting me, some sausage, although it feels to me like lots.

i went skiing one day in austria with a friend of ours from barcelona. my favorite part...stopping for lunch halfway up the mountain, drinking weiss weinschorle (white wine mixed with bubbly water) and talking with a group of romanian dentists. (they thought i should have my teeth bleached...too yellow!)

we watched a champion's league soccer match between barcelona and stuttgart in a hotel lobby after searching long and hard for somewhere to watch. this is not spain where every single cafe/bar would have the match on. dorian happy sat in a massage chair the whole time.

that's about it. tomorrow we fly back to barcelona where spring seems to be settling in.

Barcelona Scenes - by b

Here are a few shots from around town over the last month or so....

Here is a busker in Guadi's Parc Guell. This seemed like a lonely shot. Though I thought the woman cleaning is lucky... she gets to listen to some pretty decent music while she works.

Fresh flowers in the Hotel Arts. Despite these, it's ultimately a very sterile hotel.

Looking out

from my office

Glimpses of Kristin

at Flash Flash

Amazing technicolor dreamfamily

Gilded cages in the windows display in a Louis Vuitton store.

Outside My Office II- by b

Sigmund Crosswalk
Originally uploaded by bkassar

This made me smile though? (see Outside My Office I ... it's less cheery)

Contrasts: Outside My Office I- by b

Private Bank
Originally uploaded by bkassar

This contrast.. a little cliche but still real, bummed me out when I went for a coffee today.

First signs of spring by k

I remember this time last year. I wrote about the wild irises sprouting on the mountain...spring had arrived! A year later, I know that spring is not here yet and that the mountain will slowly reveal all its treasures over the next months. Spring is a long drawn out process here. Some trees are already in bloom, but most are still bear. And I have to feel a little sorry for the trees that are blooming because it's still freezing out! They get fooled by the bright sun that warms things up during the day, but it's still definitely winter here.

several posts in one - by k

just because i haven't posted in a while doesn't mean i'm not always thinking about things to post. sitting on the plane from london to san francisco in december, i wrote a post in my head about chasing the sunset. in my mind, it was a very poetic vision of trying to catch up to the day. we left london in the afternoon when the sun was already going away in that northern winter way. as we went north, we did lose the sun completely and night joined us, but as we headed back down south, there was constantly a fading sky in the distance, until we arrived in san francisco right at sunset, never quite reaching another day. we had to wait until the next morning.

barak already wrote a little bit about our trip, so i'll leave it at that. i'll just add the beginning of the list of the things i'm looking forward to having back in my life in san francisco, and the things i will miss when we leave barcelona behind.

i'm looking forward to: food in general (the diversity, take out, breakfast, trader joe's), being physically closer to family and friends, having a home that really feels like home, the openness of people in san francisco, the kookiness of people in san francisco.

i'm sad to leave: a life without a car. (it's a pain sometimes, but overall it is a lot less stressful.) all the people out and about always. (i love being able to join the throngs of people when i'm in the mood.) eating outside. taking quick trips to wonderful european cities. walking on tibidabo. the friends we have made here. working as a substitute teacher every now and again.

it's 2010 and it is a strange feeling having entered the transition zone again. we're still here, but there is an end in sight. i'm working every day on staying present in this life here, even as we start to deal with some of the details of going back. we've got lots of travel still planned, and i want to keep exploring barcelona, spending time with friends, and enjoying what is unique to this place.

blogodometer - by b

my dad used to get excited when the odometer in the car would tick over a certain, um, milestone. i never could get into that. but did get excited when the blog archive ticked over to 2010... we've been writing here for a while now. it's a fun thing to do.... i like writing here and i really like reading what kristin writes. i wish the kids would write more than they do.. but oh well..

Slownoma - by b

We rented a nice place up in Sonoma to try have our northern california time be less hectic than it was when we were here last (remember san franstresco?). it had a great big kitchen and a hottub... we hung out a bunch at the house... various people came to visit including my parents and kristin's mom... ariege and john (we also hung out at their place a few minutes away a bunch too).. marc/charlotte, karen/nick, lydia.. and of course kids.

it looked out over a lovely vineyard.

here's DD running to the hottub

i've been in a superfrenzied place for months.. with not much reading.. it was good to read in slownoma

sven very kindly loaned us his car to get up there

 local artist famouse in sebastopol

hugo

DD and frozen yogurt.

walking into town one day with john, stella, hugo, arel and dorian

in the house.. a kinda weird, kinda cool hide-the-tv-behind-the-photos-but-one-of-the-photos-is-actually-a-computer-with-a-screen-saver-with-photos-that-look-just-like-the-printed-photos setup and Arel

senta on new years. we crashed really early--me like at 8 pm. i think this pissed nick off who wanted to partay!

a walk 

with my parents

morning

m and a

a good point

outside ariege and johns

funty getting eggs in the AM

chicken

more pics if you want on flickr

Milau Viaduct - by b

Can't sleep in SF... so some blog catchup. Two days before coming to SF, I drove with my friend Jeff to Paris. He and Heidi and their kids have moved there from Barcelona and Jeff needed to get the car over. It was fun and a really beautiful drive---but very cold. We stopped to sleep a little earlier than we might have otherwise because we wanted to see Norman Foster's Milau Viaduct (world's tallest bridge for vehicles) in daylight... so we slept at a roadside motel just before it.

Here's a picture of the bridge in the motel office

Here it is from the car

Here it is from the perspective of some better photographers with better cameras

Here it is from the perspective of some better photographers with better cameras

Here it is from the perspective of some better photographers with better cameras

The pictures above are from a Flickr group for photos on the viaduct. You can check it out.

BTW.. here's Jeff doing the final scraping on the windshield before we left the motel parking lot for the bridge. He's quite a bit taller than me.. I couldn't reach the middle of the windshield

And a glass of champagne with Heidi in a very cute wine shop in their 'hood, the 17th

this was followed by a very tasty meal at an old school bistro called Chez Fred down the street from their place.

getting home was a bit of a challenge. I went to Airport number one at about 9 or 10 am (Charles de Gualle) but my flight (and the following one) were canceled due to snow ... so i cabbed over to Airport number two Orly and caught a 6:30 pm to BCN. next morning at 7 am we left our apartment for the airport to fly here to SF

Happy New Year

wishing you a new year of health and happiness

Refugi Redux - by b

I finished reading The Book Thief yesterday on our little vacation in Sonoma. It was an incredible book... terribly heartbreaking. The contrast to this little piece of heaven in northern California where we are staying is almost painful.. where there is space and warmth and food and friends and family around. The Book Thief is about an an incredible young girl outside Munich in WWII --- who loses everyone and everything except her own spirit to naziism and to war. The story is told by perhaps the most omniscient of all narrators: death.

Bombs play a big part in The Book Thief.. and it reminded me that I'd dashed off a very fast blog post a few weeks about about a tour Kristin and i took of one of barcelona's last remaining Spanish Civil War bomb shelters (Refugi 307) -- and that I'd meant to write more and hadn't had a chance. Maybe I was waiting to finish the Book Thief and didn't know it.

The shelter as seen from the street

Our guide

The guide at one point asked if anybody had been in a bomb shelter before. And nobody in the assembly of women (I was the only guy... I'd joined Kristin on a tour put on by the Barcelona Womens Network) ranging in age from 35 to maybe 55/60 raised their hand. I didn't raise my hand either... but I have. When I visited Israel a lot as a young boy that's where we kept our bikes.. the bomb shelter in the small apartment block where my grandparents lived was a bike room. I'm sure for kids of different ages the bomb shelter served other purposes as well ... i can imagine a pot-smoking room, a makeout room, some pretty nice things. But still... it was a bomb shelter. And when I was very young... during the six day war (which, of course, still continues.. the 100 year war was not 100 years and the six day war was not six days (maybe it's the new 100 years war?)) the sirens went off and my mom had to lift me from my little fold-up bath 'tub" and run me downstairs. No wonder I'm skittish sometimes and a bit of a scaredycat. For me as a baby and for my parents as young parents.. a bomb shelter was a real thing.

And for Kristin's mom too.. in WWII.. she actually was bombed as a very young child. And had to escape a burning building.

As our guide in Barcelona told us, these techniques of bombing civilians (urbacide) were tested out and perfected by the fascists in the Spanish Civil War... and they were used heavily by both axis and allies in the war that followed, WWII.

There is a plaque outside the shelter in Barcelona. The quote is in Catalan and it refers to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. The guide translated it: "Never again, anywhere / is a cry of rage / and the desire that the past should not repeat itself".     But of course, sadly, it does.