1000th Blog Post!

What could be more appropriate for our 1000th blog post than someone else's baby? This is Leo.

Chinese Foodz in Berlin

The restaurant came highly recommended by our trusted guide book, and we were really craving some good Chinese food.





Unfortunately, the restaurant was only so-so, and now we REALLY miss Beijing.

On the other hand, Berlin has its charms, too.

More Strickbombing

Also just before we left, we found more guerilla knitting by Anke's yoga teacher.

Another Trip, Another Quiche

Somehow we always seem to eat quiche when we go traveling. We ate this one with mache, the night before going to Berlin.

Pom-Pom Project, the Final Chapter

Remember the pom-poms I put up last week? Me neither! And nobody will anymore anyhow...

Schnitzel

Enjoying our balcony

We have really been enjoying our balcony overlooking the Kaninchenberg this week. Today, we added Weisswürste, Brezels and Cremant to celebrate the weekend.

Colorful = Healthy

Addendum: Frans wants to add a little math lesson to this already healthy food. He claims that it shows that 3 x 2 >= 6. Why? Let me explain.

For the bottom part of each pepper, we have 3 choices of color: red, green or yellow. Once we have chosen the bottom, there are two choices left for the top, since we don't want the top and bottom to have the same color. Hence there are 3 x 2 different combinations possible.
On the other hand, the photo shows there are at least 6 combinations, since no two peppers in the photo have the same color for the bottom and the top.
Hence 3 x 2 >= 6.

I invite readers who are as nerdish as we are, to tell us in the comments about the math they have learned by looking at this picture.

The Aurora

For no other reason but its bi-winningness.

Endive, not endive

Good old Dutch fare: vegetables mashed with potatoes. We were looking for raapsteeltjes, but ended up with andijvie. Google translates this as "endive", which can mean either andijvie or witlof.

Foodz in Qatar

As promised some pictures of the foodz we had in Qatar. Basically it was an extension of the food at Ellen's birthday party. The first day we ate Moroccan at Tajine in the Souq Waqif. We had appetizers (pictured above), baby chicken tajine with stuffed dates:



... and baby camel:



Baby camel meat turns out to be very fatty, more fatty than either of us liked.

We were then taken out to dinner two days in a row, where I did not want to embarrass A by taking pictures. Therefore sadly no pictures of the really good Lebanese food we had (in great quantities) the second day.

The fourth day we were on our own again, and went for more Middle Eastern foodz. We ended up in Al Majalis with pretty good food (not as good as the amazing food we had the second day, but still very good --- especially the red hummus-like thing pictured below, which contained a lot of harissa).

Biking

I took advantage of the great weather yesterday, and went for a bike ride.

I think you are supposed to eat pasta before biking, but somehow the order was reversed yesterday.

Looking fashionable

Look at the beautiful disposable swimsuit I picked up in Doha. You can look fabulous, too: get your own at swimeeze.com!

Bread, Chicken, Dessert and Baby

Yesterday we had guests for dinner, so we tried to impress them with homemade bread with olives and sun dried tomatoes, together with chicken in yoghurt marinade (no pic). And we went all out by even making dessert: dried apricots filled with almond paste with orange flower water in puff pastry, sprinkled with a little of Christiaan's awesome honey.



Easy to make, goes great with espresso, highly recommended.

But the most interesting thing about the evening was the way Mr. Bojangles reacted to the 6 month old baby: he came out of his usual hiding place under the couch, and studied the baby with intense interest. It was very cute.

Pork

We had a strange craving for pork after a week of healthy middle eastern foodz --- I will put up some pictures of the food in Qatar soon. We therefore roasted this nice piece of pork so that it had a wonderful crispy skin.



It made for a great meal, together with some vegetables and Spätzle.



And yesterday we made another large batch of the usual kefta.

Back to Potatoes

This is our transition to German food: potatoes, but no sausage (yet). In its stead we had a very sea-ish fish with a vinaigrette.

One More Batch of Pom-Poms

Leaving Doha

Yesterday morning we checked out of the hotel to go back to Mister Bojangles. A last minute picture of the impressive flower arrangement for the folks at Hilvaria Studios, who are able to have flower arrangement that I like at least as much, at a much smaller budget.


Our driver was nice enough to stop so we could take a quick photo of the Doha Skyline.


And then we were off again. As soon as we left the ground, the air hostess came by to allow us all to replenish our alcohol levels. I have never seen so many people hit the hard stuff at 2 in the afternoon!

CMU Q and Education City

We present to you: Education City...

... and CMU Qatar.



Because it is so freaking hot in the summer months, and because people don't seem much inclined to go outside in other months either, the university has huge open spaces with fountains that feel almost like the outdoors.


The last photo shows the corridor where most of the Computer Science faculty is located. The bean bags are there for the students (and used quite a bit -- I've been told they are always dropping by to talk and ask questions). A nice Filipino man makes the rounds many times to make sure everyone stays hydrated.

Guerilla Knitting

Remember the yarn in this post? Me neither! Anyway, just before going on our trip, I received a "Pom-pom kit" to participate in an art project by an design student from Edinburgh. She sent out 1000 of these kits, so that people all over the world hang colorful pom-poms on trees, thereby "spreading joy and happiness!!" More pictures can be seen on Flickr, and a newspaper article about the project can be found here.

As we were in the Netherlands for Ellen's birthday party, we put up a first batch in Hilvarenbeek, hanging them from a branch of the more than 300 year old linden tree (planted in or just before 1676) on the Vrijthof in Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands.





The second batch we put just before leaving Qatar. We did not have time and energy to look for a palm tree (nor a ladder), so they ended up on the hotel premises.