currently waiting for art hum to start, and so in the process of doing so, I’d just like to say happy birthday emma! you’re amazing. :)

(Liz added:)  Happy Birthday Emma!  I miss your DC visits and echo eureka’s talk about your amazingness with fervor! All my love-

Oh gooey gooey cheesy soft burgery goodness. It was my first time to the Shake Shack today, and it was definitely worth the… crying and pain that it took to get down there. Mike and I each had a Shack Burger, a thing of fries, and half a double cheeseburger. And let me just say, just the Shack Burger was enough. I’m still reeling from how full I am. I’ll put up photos later, but I found that one of the charms of the Shack is that it’s located in Madison Square Park, and while it’s not the prettiest or the most famous of all parks, it’s a great place to enjoy good food, good company, and much greenery in this concrete city.

I took my love down to Violet Hill
There we sat in snow
All that time she was silent still

So if you love me
Won’t you let me know?

On June 23, 2008, my life ended as I knew it. I had seen Coldplay. It was always the band at the top of my list to see live, but I knew I was joking. I mean, tickets were probably ridiculously expensive, and by the time I could afford them, they might be old geezers no longer playing. So when I found out that they were playing for free at Madison Square Garden, and the tickets would be raffled off… Well, let’s just say, it was a nervous couple months for me. June 3rd was a normal day for me. I came back home, checked my email, and there is was, looking innocently back at me. “You’re a Coldplay Concert Ticket Winner!” I think I squeaked.

The concert was incredible. They were opened by The Blue Jackets and Jon Hopkins. I wasn’t all that impressed with The Blue Jackets, but I’m definitely going to look up Jon Hopkins when I have the time. Apparently, he also helped produce and do some keyboard instrumentation for some of the songs in Viva La Vida. But when Coldplay came on, everyone rose screaming to their feet, and I almost cried from the massive realization that my dream to see them live was coming true. This is the song list they played.

01 “Life In Technicolor”
02 “Violet Hill”
03 “Clocks”
04 “In My Place”
05 “Viva La Vida”
06 “Chinese Sleep Chant”
07 “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face”
08 “42″
09 “Square One”
10 “Trouble”
11 “Lost!”
12 “Strawberry Swing”
13 “Yellow”
14 “Death Will Never Conquer”
15 “Fix You”
16 “Lovers In Japan”

Yellow happened to be played a few YARDS from where we were sitting. They were apparently trying something new, walked “the walk of shame” up into the audience, and stopped ridiculously close to us. Once people realized what they were doing, there was a massive scramble in our section to get as close to them as possible. Mike had said at the beginning of the show that he was hoping they would play Yellow. Well, they did, with the added treat of having it played extremely close to us. Let’s just say, it was incredible. The only downside was that they asked for no cameras to be brought, which meant, of course, I didn’t bring mine, but everyone else did. So I lost out on a ridiculously good photo opportunity. But *sigh* things could’ve been worse right?

After reluctantly saying goodbye to Madison Square Garden, we walked to Hanbat for great Korean food! Although their pa jun was made by fully frying, it was still good. I think it’s just that I’m more used to only a light frying. The bibimbap was good too. This place is practically open 24/7, and I’m definitely going back at some point. I miss Korean food… :( I’m getting hungry. *sigh*

even though i told erika i wouldn’t be writing until i could get back to the united states next week (and thus back to normal keyboards that know where their y and z keys are), i couldn’t help myself. erika said this would be a blog about, among other things, great food, and i couldn’t leave germany without some kind of last love poem to german food.

despite having nearly no knowledge of the german language before i got here two weeks ago (that much hasn’t changed), i quickly figured out that by pointing and guessing i could manage to order food and drinks on my own. the first miracle was, of course, the sausage (wurst). bratwurst, weißwurst, knockwurst, blutwurst…i have tried to use the language barrier to my advantage and avoid asking what went into any of these foods (i ran out of creativity with blutwurst, once i figured out that blut was a cognate for…well, you know). germans also have a healthy derision for anything resembling a hot dog bun. wurst comes with brötchen, or little rolls, but they’re nowhere near the size of the sausage, and are apparently just meant to be used as a way to make wurst portable.

while germans in general have perfected the sausage as an art form, i was lucky to discover that the small town i have been staying in (hannoversch münden, in niedersachsen) is home to ritter der rotwurst, which has won some thirty or forty trophies in europe for their sausages, pates, and meats. i have been a regular customer. while it would be rare that anyone reading this find themselves in hann. münden in the future, this is one place you wouldn’t want to miss.

the other, more widely available miracle of german cuisine isn’t even german at all. the turks first came to germany in the 1960s on guest-worker programs, and germany now has a turkish population of several million. it’s a hotly contested issue in germany, the way that immigration in in the united states, but one thing is undeniable: everyone likes turkish food.

think of a gyro. now think of the best gyro you’ve ever eaten. the turkish version, called döner, leaves gyros in the dust. i don’t think i’ll ever eat another gyro again. the toppings are somewhat indescribable…shredded red cabbage, tzatziki, a huge pile of lettuce, tomato, and other vegetables, and several mysterious sauces with unfathomable ingredients. anyone who’s been to amsterdam felafelshop in DC knows kind of what i mean. döner are about the portion size of a chipotle burrito. one can easily feed two people, or one person who’s very distracted by the germany-turkey euro cup game.

there’s no time to do this subject justice, but everyone should know that they have gelato here in the shape of spaghetti. no joke. someday i’ll figure out how to upload a picture of it, maybe along with a description of my love affair with ritter sport chocolate bars.

lest anyone think i came to germany just to eat, i did other things too. i just don’t know what they are right now. this blog is supposed to be about things that make us happy, and right now, that’s german food, my copy of anna karenina, and the ten minutes of internet time i’ve managed. tschüss, y’all.

Sondre! Let me just say, it was amazing. I’d heard some of his stuff through Mike, but Mike was most definitely the bigger fan of the two. But what I’d heard I’d liked, so I was looking forward to the show. And it was everything I could hope it would be. He does this crazy thing with his voice where it undulates and his lyrics are really sincere and almost always about love, which I personally adore. There really aren’t enough love songs out there. :)

I called you because I love you so
It’s reason enough it doesn’t show
Surely I could ask about things you have done
Who am I to question you? Oh, no
All I wanna hear is everything, alright
Cause I left my mind in the airport
My thoughts in a taxi
My heart in reception
The last thing I saw was you

Now my question is, how can you read/hear lyrics like that and not fall in love? In the midst of wowing us with his great voice and passionate guitar playing, he interjected his songs with cute random talking that showed just how nervous he was. And his hair! Let me just say, it was flying all over the place. If you’ve seen Dan in Real Life, you’ll know his music because he was asked to do the ENTIRE original soundtrack for it. Good for him. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth looking into. It didn’t get the greatest of reviews, but it’s a cute sweet movie about the difficulties of falling in love when everyone in your family could basically possibly get in your way. And if anything, there’s Sondre everywhere.

I think, for my first time ever at Joe’s Pub, I was impressed by their great music taste and the overall professional feel of the atmosphere. If you ever have a chance to go to a venue there, I’d say you should jump at it and reserve seats.

And of course, there was food, and Mike, and candlelight! And that’s pretty much where the night ends. But please, check out Sondre if you’ve never heard of him. I promise, you’ll be pleased.

the fish in the sea / have many things to tell me / well what could they be? / i’ll never know, i had to go / because i don’t associate with fish

well, first post, so i’m not totally sure how to go about this. the above verse is a line from priscilla ahn’s “astronaut”, which she introduced at the concert as being for “forest creatures and the sea creatures, because they need love too.” not all of the concert was that weird, actually, but she’s indie enough to make her…quirky. it was her first solo concert (she tours with people like josh radin as well), so she was pretty shy. and as erika said, it made her “so cute”. (for those of you that have heard erika say that, i’m sure you can figure out what voice she’s saying it in too.)

now, on to the real concert. more than anything else, her voice. good god, her voice. filter said “[her vocals] settle upon the ears with the grace of a morning light coming through your blinds.” i don’t know how to describe this without being all teen emo, but she just has this amazingly light and airy voice. but there’s a certain strength behind it, when she needs it. her music is good, her backing band was good, but the entire show was carried by her voice. you really have to hear it to know what i’m talking about it. i think her music’s been featured a few places before, like gray’s anatomy. feel free to grab a copy of that song (priscilla ahn - dream) at this link.

well, i’ll keep this from getting too sappy, but of course, it was an amazing night…because erika was there too. (collective aww….) quirky, fun, cute, and candlelit. for a date, what more could you ask for?

but really, don’t answer that.

Fill this site with rantings and ramblings and food, music, and happiness!