Tis the season for spargel (asparagus)

Here in dusseldorf in the springtime there is excitement in the air. Yes the weather gets nicer but also it's the season for asparagus. The green one is common but it's the white asparagus that gets people excited. At the start of the season you will see shows that will show you the best way to prepare it and the restaurants have special menus that feature the strange looking vegetable. It's the time where the white asparagus is the main course and you might get meat or fish as a side. I heard that it's grown a special way. As soon as it starts to sprout they cover it with dirt so that it does not have a chance to get sun to get green. It's a lot more work to prepared than the green type. You have to peel the whole thing with a special peeler. Its cooked boiled or steamed and then covered with hollandaise sauce. The whole thing just melts in your mouth. SO delicious!

Holy ash cloud batman!

We were supposed to be in kiev for 3 weeks but ended up leaving 3 days early. All because of a little ash from a little volcano from a tiny little country way the hell up north.

After the eruption earlier in the week we kept an eye on it on the news. I remembered the nightmare last year when the same thing happened. It paralyzed air travel for wks. All I could think about was my flight home the coming sunday and did not want to get stuck in europe! After 8 wks away I was SO ready to be home! Marietta was keeping an even closer eye on it. She was tracking the cloud movement on the website. By tuesday the cloud was approaching the northern coast of germany. Already our group was thinking of options. Rent a car and drive back (nope that would take 2+ days), take a train (maybe, it's a 12 hour ride). All day we were trying to get approval from dudo to come back early and have our final meeting via phone conference. It's not the ideal way to do it but we did NOT want to be stuck in kiev if they start closing german airports. By Tuesday night 2 of the airport in northern germany was shut down. On the ride back to our hotel around 8pm we got approval to leave so none bothered to go up to the room. we were in the lobby checking possible flights. I was working separately with the north america travel agency and was actually trying to leave from kiev to phx. I wanted to skip western europe altogether! The change in ticket would have costed 3-4 thousands more so scratch that idea.

It tooks hours to figure things out and finally booked a 6:30am flight the next morning. I have to use the travel agency from the US so I orignally booked a 3:40pm direct flight to dudo. When the rest of the team booked the earlier flight with connection I was worried about getting stuck. They did not want to wait that long in the day in case the ash cloud keeps moving south and shut down more airports in germany. Luckily I was able to change my flights again to match the group. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant while we worked out the flight situation. I also had to book a hotel once in dudo. With the short notice all the usual hotels were booked so M found a nice hotel for me right in old town, sweet!

By the time we settled our hotel bill & went up to pack, I had less than 2 hours of sleep before getting up to catch the 4am taxi ride to the airport! It was a madhouse at the airport and we snuck into the business class line even though our ticket was economy. I have elite gold membership but didn't have my card. With my milage I can now go not just into the business lounge but also the first class lounge!

While traveling around ukraine I noticed that they have a counter where people can have their suitcase wrapped in plastic. Picture siran wrap. I thought they do this to protect the luggage. Marietta told me at the airport we should also do this because it discourages people from stealing things out of your suitcase while in transit. You can't even trust the people that work at the airport, crazy!

We connected in munich with no problems. BY that time they had closed down the airport in berlin. I was so happy when our plane started to take off from munich. At least I will be in dudo and closer to home! Wouldn't you know it It turns out that the situation got better so hopefully no other problems this sunday.

Our final meeting was a tough one for various reasons. I guess if it always goes smoothly I would not learn as much. It felt strange because we all left so suddenly and didn't have to chance to give proper goodbyes to our colleagues. It was a nice team and a unique experience. Eastern europe is like another world. I had planned to do souvenier shopping on the saturday before I leave kiev but with our sudden departure there was no chance. Gary will not get a ukrainian traditional shirt this time!

2 weeks rest at home with hubby and side visit to cali for family. My nieces and I will attempt to cook turkish food for our family gettogether, let's see! Then it's off to france.......

Hungarian chicken recipes

Ok, Laszlo gave me this traditional hungarian recipe. Sounds so weird but he claims that it's a favorite dish of his daughters besides one of the few he can actually make. It sounds so weird when he described it but can't wait to try it at home. Even with all the sale he claims that the dish will not be salty.

Hungarian Crispy Baked Chicken

Cut whole chicken in half, season if desired
Line baking pan with salt (1kg)
Place chicken on pan (cut side facing down)
Bake for 60 minutes for average size chicken at 180C temperature

Do not turn chicken over

Another variation......

Same as above except:
Whole chicken
Apple cut in 4 & put inside chicken, seal all openings to trap in apple aroma
With additional ½ kg of salt add enough water to make consistency for mud pack
Cover the whole chicken to make a mud pack

Bake for 50 minutes

Talk about getting into your job!

This was one of the vendors on the boardwalk in yalta. It's a big orange so guess what she was selling? Yep, fresh oj! It was so funny looking.

Castle in yalta

Publish Post

May 21-23

I was so excited to see the Swallow's Nest castle. It's only 100 year old and was actually built for a german guy. OK, so it was not a real castle but I don't care. It's so picturesque and perfectly perched on top of a cliff overlooking the beautiful black sea.

We took a taxi there but for some reason they would not allow you to drive right up to it. Instead you have to take a 20 minute walk that included stairs down to the sea and then up to the castle. When we got close to the castle there was some construction guys working and one of them had a small removable gate blocking our way. He tried to charge us for coming through! L kept saying no and questioning him and he finally gave up and let us through! Unbelievable! I would have paid not thinking about it but L knew what was going on, he said it wasn't uncommon for them to get creative to make some side money!

Our taxi driver waited for us and we decided to use him to drive us to a waterfall in the mountain. At least the picture on the map showed a big waterfall. When we got there it turned out to be a disappointing trickle. Regardless the walk through the forest was really pretty. Everything here is a vibrant green and smells so good.

So glad I got to see this part of the country. I read that it's one of the best kept secret in eastern europe. Its a favorite destination for the russians but not too many westerners. It's not so easy to get to so I can understand that. I loved it, it was a unique combination of sea, mountains and historical. We walked so much especially up and down the long boardwalk. It was fun to people watch.

The crimea peninsula

May 20-23

We worked our asses off during the week so we could take time off the 2nd wknd to go down to the black sea. Getting there was a big chore. Our final destination was Yalta which is a small coastal town on the southeast side of the crimean peninsula. The nearest airport was in simferopol which was 2 hours taxi ride north. I flew into simferopol late friday night and met L the next morning when he arrived by overnight train from odessa where he was visiting one of the plants. When I got into the simferopol airport friday night and it was a tiny terminal with no desk counters, nothing but a big room. Outside the people were being picked up by family. I didn't see any obvious taxi stands but a few guys approached me for taxi. I knew to expect 30-50 hrynas for the 10km ride but boy, they must have thought I was stupid tourist. first they said that it was at lest 16km and will cost 200. I told them 30. One by one the 3 would punch in a number on their phone and I would shake my head. Meanwhile they could see I had a taxi phone number on the paper in my hand so they had to work fast. they would come back with a lower number and I would shake my head and kept trying to call the taxi number which wasnt working!! Finally one of the guys punched in 50 and I agreed. This was less than 7 bucks but it was the principle of it, I didn't appreciate being ripped off. Because I was alone for one night here I picked the best hotel in the town. It was supposed to be 4 stars but I could see it was typical hotel here which was old, built pre-war and hasnt been renovated since then. You can tel that it must have been pretty fancy in its early days but now just looks tired and worn down. It had a peculiar smell but seemed clean enough for one night.

The next morning L met me at the hotel and we took a taxi to the train station to catch a trolleybus to yalta. It's advertised as the longest trolleybus ride in the world. More than 2 hours and 27 stops before we get to yalta! big difference in cost though (only 10 hriynas versus 400 for a taxi). By miracle our taxi driver spoke very good english and thought we were crazy to take the trolleybus. "who the hell told you to do this?!" It was so funny because he said we were the first tourist he has taken to the bus station. Well, it turned out fine. It was like a excursion bus because there was a lady on board that talked the WHOLE TIME. She was like a tour guide who was telling us about the points of interest and history of the place. Too bad it was in russian and we didn't understand what the heck she was saying.

Our hotel in yalta was awesome. The oreanda hotel was right on the beach and had a spa! I got massages both days we were there! We were also right next to a boardwalk that ran along the ocean and up to the marina. It was a lively boardwalk with shops, restaurants and music. Apparently this place is overcrowed during the high season which starts in 1-2 weeks. It was already crowded when we were there so I can't imagine.

I really wanted to see Livadia palace (pics above). It was the summer home to the last few russian czars. It was a favorite place of the last czar who tried to ask for asylum at this palace when he was overthrown. I have always been fascinated by the history of the romanovs so this was exciting to me. Laszlo wanted to see the same place for an entirely different reason. This palace was where they had the yalta conference where president roosevelt, churchill and stalin met to divide up europe after wwII. The treaty was signed at this place but it was also where roosevelt stayed while he was here. There were so many more displays and pictures of roosevelt and I had wondered why,duh. The other leaders stayed at separate palaces. They did this because roosevelt was ill and in a wheelchair. I learned so much more about the affects of wwII from L because he learned much more about it in school. It was impactful to see old hand sketches of the old and new borders of europe and imagine how 3 people sat around a table to divide up countries like it was a board game.

THe extensive grounds around the palace was so beautiful. We were high on a hill so you can see the ocean below and yalta in the distance. Not sure why they call it the Black Sea because the water was a gorgeous turquoise blue, especially when the sun comes out. We decided to be adventurous and walk through a forested trail down to the water. Ok, we totally underestimated the distance to the water but it was one of those things where I felt compelled to keep going and not waste our efforts going down. Ofcourse in the back of my mind was if we are going down down down it means we will have to at one point turn around and go up up up!

It was fun but by the end I was sweating like a pig. The weather is not hot but it was humid enough to make me sweat. At this point I was missing the dry air of az!

A great dinner in the forest

May 19

Today our ukrainian colleagues took us out to dinner at a fantastic restaurant in the middle of the forest. They had an indoor place but most of the table were outside under wooden canopies. We sat at a table set on the edge of the property. It's so nice to go with locals because they know what to order. We had endless appetizer dishes including some great cheeses from georgia (the country not the state). I ordered the chicken kiev and not surprisingly it was not like what I have eaten at home. I never knew that there was a special way to making them and it has to be a certain cut of the chicken that includes the breast and part of the wing. The food was really good and put the ukraine cuisine up another notch for me!

Tonight I got to see another side of my colleagues. They seemed so austere when I first met them but they really opened up once outside of the office. The high corruption index of this country (138) makes doing business very different from what I have experience. One of those things you have to see to believe. Klaus told us so many funny stories about the russians who I think have a love-hate relationship with the locals. Tourist here are mostly russians so I think they put up with them.

Down down down the metro, on the way to Lavra Monastery

May 19

Went to see, guess what, more churches with Sascha and Lalo. The guys had a multi museum pass so there was one more church they wanted to see. It wasn't so much a church but a wooden structure built around the original gate of the city. We werent too impress with the whole thing and it took about 15 minutes to see. Next on my list was the Lavra monastery which was supposed to have one of the holiest orthodox church in the country and a major place of pilgrimage. First is to figure out how to get there. Let me just say that I am usually very good at reading maps but try to do it in kiev! The street names are in russian. Our map was in english but that did us no good. OK, can you read this?! Ви можете прочитати цю
You can't even attempt to say it! Russian are made up of some letters that you recognize but some that looks like symbols. After the first day I stopped trying to navigate by street name but more by contours of streets and major landmarks.

To get to Lavra we decided to use their subway which was supposed to be very good. All 3 of us have experienced many subways systems in our travel so we were confident enough. Well, thank goodness Laszlo thought to count how many stops we had because you can't even read or understand the stop names! Going down the subway was quite and experience. No exaggeration but it took us 5 minutes on escalator to go down. And the escalator was so fast it made me nervous to get on and off it. We notice people sitting down on the steps of the escalator while going down, that's how deep it was! Once down we noticed what looked like a metal gate on the ceiling and L told me that this must have been a nuclear bomb shelter at one point and that's why it's especially deep. Regardless it made me a little nervous being way down there.

Women have to wear a scarf when entering the churches here so thank goodness I happened to have one on me. If not you would have to buy one or borrow one from the basket at the door. One of the draw of this place is the underground caves where the monks are buried, since the 11th century. Sascha was especially interested in this so we got in line to go through the caves. The monks buried here are considered saints so a lot of people come to see and pray to them. The humidity level in the caves are such that it has perfectly perserved their bodies. I have seen the catacombs in rome and in paris but still I did not know what to expect here. We all bought little candles and followed the slow procession through the caves. It was too eerie for me especially once I saw what was down there. After a long and narrow walkway we get to a network of rooms that had glass coffins of the monks. Their face and bodies were covered in intricate cloths but you can see their blackened and shrunken hands! OMG this was going to give me nightmares. After the first one I wanted to get out of there but the guys were taking their time looking at each one!! I noticed some people kissing the top of the coffins as they prayed. All this felt so macabre to me.

Aside from the caves the monastery was a whole complex of buildings and pretty churches. It was very peaceful to walk through and I could easily spend a few hours here.

So far I have increased my russian to 4 words, hooray! Now I know how to say no (nyet), yes (da), thank you (placiba), good (harosho) and very good (otchen harosho). The last two were fun to learn because I was able to tell the auditees this whenever I approve of something they are doing. It makes them very happy when they hear this from me! Either that or they are just laughing at my butchered russian.

Finally in kiev!

May 9

I was excited to be in ukraine, never been this far east of europe. I didn't know what to expect but it's a whole different world. First, no one speaks english here! People only speak either russian or ukrainian. I know one word, nyet which mean no. Ok, that's not very useful! so my backup is body language. On top of that the russian alphabet is different so you cant even try to pronounce it by looking at it. A word is usually a mix of some letters I recognize and then there are some of what looks to me like symbols. It's like trying to read chinese when you dont know the language, you can't!

Walking through the streets we noticed the women get really dressed up with short skirts and ridiculously high heel. My first clue should have been in the shoe shops that I walked through when looking for a pair of practical heels for work. There were only two extremes - flats or frickin high heels that I if I try to walk in them I would seriously hurt myself. I kind of remember when preping for my estonia audit I read that the business women dress very provocatively. It seems to be true here as well. It seems to be due to the long years of soviet suppression. Their independence has been as recent as 1991.

Our hotel is walking distance to old town where there are mucho pretty churches. They really like their gold domes here but it makes a pretty picture. The weather was perfect, cool and sunny with some puffy clouds in the sky. This city is right along a river and there are nice walking paths along the water, reminds me of dudo this way.

Because of the language barrier it was a bit challenging these past 2 weeks. Only a small handful of people at the plant can speak english. As a result they hired an interpreter to help us during interviews and reading documents which were all in local language. Everyone is very nice though.

We eat catered lunches at the plant everyday so it's an opportunity for local cuisine. I have to admit that ukrainian food is not my favorite. It's on the heavy side. Typical meal at the plant is either some kind of salads drowned in mayo then a meal consisting of buckwheat/barley and a few cubes of meat. After work we do explore the nearby restaurants. A popular type of restaurant is a cafeteria style restaurant where you choose the dishes you want. It's not the best but very cheap. We found a favorite italian restaurant that has great service and they speak english! I was excited to try their borsche since I loved it so much in estonia but was disappointed that it did not taste the same.

Last Saturday Marietta's friend who is bulgarian but has lived in kiev for 2 years took us to a traditional ukranian restaurant. It was fun to try some of the dishes he ordered for us. Here they dont use butter with the bread, instead it's pig fat which is lard. yuck. They also love dumplings here. Sometimes it's a savory dish with potato & mushroom and sometimes it's a sweet dish. Martin ordered a dessert dumpling which was filled with berries and you dip it in jam and sour cream. They seem to put sour cream in everything! Especially soup.

Another thing - I have not seen any asians here! What's going on? Therefore no big surprise when i don't see any asian restaurants except for japanese. I really miss it and going without for 3 wks is tough. I have one night in dudo before I fly back to phx so I think I will be going to the vietnamese restaurant there.

Cooking class and then a turkish bath!

April 25

Finally! I was able to take a cooking class. We LOVE the food here so it was perfect. Something about turkish food. Everything is so flavorful. Di found a class at a hotel in the old town. They got us involved with the prep work (smart, free labor) so it kind of hands on. The menu was grape leaves stuffed with meat, cheese pastry, green beans with tomatoes, stuffed figs. After the class we sat down with a glass of wine and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. To start, we learnt how to make a pretty rose with the tomato peel. Cant wait to try out these dishes at home! My favorite was the cheese pastry. We used a special pastry that's as thin as paper, hope I can find it at home.

THEN, L went home and Gary joined us for a traditional turkish bath. We went to one of the oldest hamman in the city, which is on the official list of "1000 places to see before you die". I can't go into the details here but it was an experience I'll never forget. The place is about 500 years old and mostly of made of marble. Upon selecting what you want (just bath and/or exfoliating scrub) you have the opportunity to buy your own exfoliating glove which they will use on you OR you can go cheap and just let them use a community glove. Um, you can guess which route we took! Then the guys and girls go separate ways and get a "locker room" which is basically a small room for you to change, leave your things, and even take a nap afterwards. They give you a piece of cloth to wrap around you. Swimsuit bottoms are optional. You go into a big room with a huge octagonal shaped marble slab where they lay you down to basically bathe you. Before that you sit around the slab where there are running fountains of warm water with a bowl that you use to pour over yourself to prepare your skin for exfoliation. Once you've been bathes and exfoliated the woman leads you by the hand back to the fountain where they pour water over you and then wash your hair. After that is a great massage. This was better than any spa treatment I've been to but have to say that it's not for the faint hearted! Can't wait to tell my girlfriends the full details. Di and I will laugh about this experience for the rest of our lives. I was impressed Gary was sport enough to try it.

We were so sad for the trip to end. Only 10 days in turkey but it was jammed packed with adventures. I'd love to come back and see more of this country. Now it's a week working in germany and then to Ukraine!

Gary can't just be a normal tourist - part 2!

Wonderful day tour of cappadocia

April 23

After our EARLY hot air balloon ride we were back at the hotel by 8am for breakfast. What to do? We decided to book a day tour of the highlights of cappadocia. It was such a fun day. Our sights included:

Kaymakli underground city - this is a fantastic example of the many in the area. It's an underground manmade cave system where a village can substain for a period of time when hiding from the enemy. We were there on a holiday weekend so it was super crowded.

Ihlara Valley - it was a hike through a valley cut through by a beautiful stream (1st &2nd picture). We hike for about an hour along the stream and stop at belisirma village at a restaurant with seating right next to the water. I had the whole trout which was so fresh and yummy!

Selime Monastery - ok, picture a typical monastery and then wipe that off your mind. First of all, this was really old give or take a thousand years. THis place is usually advertised as where they filmed star wars movie but it's not true. However, george lucas visited here and it's was supposed to be his inspiration for the 1st movie. It was a whole network of caves that was carved out with churches and living spaces. We must have gotten there in between tour buses because we had the place to ourselves. Talk about a great playground! There are no ropes blocking access to anything so we were just all over the place, so many good pics. We didn't want to leave!

SaruhanCaravansarai - In the old days they create these places with places for travelers to sleep including a stable for the animals and a small mosque for praying. The distances between these caravansarais is supposed to be a day's travel since it was rather dangerous to travel by night.

The best hot air balloon ride EVER!

April 23

Today was the big day of our hot air balloon ride. All of us have been so looking forward to it. It's not cheap but it's one heck of a check off the bucket list. I try not to remember how early we had to get up (hotel pickup at 5am!) but you have to start this early to get the right wind. Most of the time captain mike took us so low as we swept over the fairy chimney rocks. At one point he started to go up up up and suddenly we were above the clouds! G & I have done hot air balloon rides 2-3 times and never went this high. It was kind of scary to be up where birds or planes usually go. It was so exciting to be floating like birds. We ended the ride with a champagne celebration. This was way better than the ride over red rocks of sedona!

At one point melinda was watching the crew pack away the balloon and I think she was joking to them about helping. Next thing I saw was one of the guys picking her up and slamming her on top of the packed balloon. We were laughing hysterically. Suddenly the guys came at angie who happened to be close by and picked her up and slammed her down as well. I was laughing so hard and trying to take pictures and suddenly I was over somebody's shoulder and then airborne.