A pickup truck in Rome.

This one is for Kel!

I was a little disappointed with Rome when I found a pickup truck the first night.

It looked ridiculously enormous next to the others. As it should. :-)

Fool me once...

Drats, foiled again!

First off, I admit that the title of this post was just a little bit of an excuse to call attention to one of my favorite Bush quotes.

With that out of the way, I really did have a point here. :-P And that point, it turns out, is mushrooms. If you know me, you know that I do my best to be open-minded with food... but mushrooms and olives are where I draw the line. Or at least try to.


Back in August 2004, I was just beginning to start traveling (my only previous lone trip to Europe was Prague in March 2004 -- who knew I'd be starting a trend?). I was in Geneva, Switzerland for a conference, and went out to dinner with some colleagues. The menu was in French, as that's what most of the western Swiss speak. I asked the girls I was eating with to translate the menu, and I chose what I wanted. When it came time to order, I wanted to be self-sufficient so I ordered for myself, in French. And it turns out, I remembered the wrong thing! ;-) I was one line off. The meal arrived, and I was expecting something like pasta... and it's a bowl of mushrooms! only mushrooms! in some sort of gravy sauce! I was horrified. I ate nearly half of it, then finally confessed to the other girls what I did and one was nice and traded the rest of her meal with me. ;)

Of course, after that experience I was certain to memorize the word for mushroom -- champignon in french -- and since then, for each country I visit, I make sure to learn the word for mushroom so I can avoid it. A foolproof plan.

And THEN -- Germany foiled my plan!

A few nights ago in Germany, I again went to the restaurant below my hotel to get a pizza for dinner. Straightforward, yes? After almost two weeks in town, I knew a few German food words, and "Champignon" (just like the French work) was early on my word-spotting list. Based on my confidence, combined with cheapness, I ordered one of the more simple pizzas from the menu. Pizza arrives... COVERED with mushrooms!!

For all you fellow mushroom haters who may choose to wander Germany in the future: it turns out there's a second, secret word! "Pilzen". I felt tricked :) I saw that word on the menu (with the words for cheese, tomato, and pepperoni which I knew), but thought of the beer ("Pils" in German, "Pilsner" in Czech") and figured it was just a spice of some sort.

Again, I sucked it up and ate the mushrooms. Ay de mi. :-P

Maybe I'll become a coin collector :-)

Cool only to me (probably), but feel free to read on. :-)

Seven years ago, the governments of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and some other ones gave up their national currency to form the euro, one unified currency set, which by the way continues to kick the US dollar's butt. Until today, I always thought that the bills and coins were identical throughout the region. Just now though, while avoiding work to productively examine the edge inscriptions on the two two-euro coins in my pocket (one said "2 EURO", and the other a much harsher "EINIGKEIT UND RECHT UND FREIHEIT"; surprisingly the translation is quite friendly), I noticed that there are actually notable differences. Avoiding work already, I decided to investigate more.



It's interesting to see which countries really put effort into it. (Hint: Not Ireland. And Pope Benedict XVI must be feeling a *teeny* bit inadaquate about now...) Obviously, all coin types are accepted throughout the euro-using region (there's an actual name for that -- the "Eurozone"), and they gave up national expression when it came to bills, where having a single standard is maybe a little more important.

One more way to draw in the coin collectors, I guess (and speaking of that, I've passed a few coin collector shops in Saarbrucken alone -- I guess there's a crowd still mourning the loss of the Deutsche Mark). Not that Americans can speak.

My day at work today

Fantastic --- thanks Zak. :-)

I love Dan Quayle quotes

Yes, I'll get back to my Prague experiences soon... I have a bunch of posts half written and pictures waiting to post, but I just haven't been able to sit down to do it. In the meantime though, I thought this page was great. I used to collect dumb Dan Quayle quotes, demonstrating the wisdom of George H. W. Bush's VP almost as much as the quotables of our current esteemed world leader. This page has a good collection though -- nice for a laugh. :-)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/dan_quayle.html

Interesting article from BBC

Let's be honest: if you have time to read my blog, you have time to read a quick article and provoke your mind a bit. :-)

In the interest of being a "real blogger", here's a link to an interesting article from the BBC that I haven't seen picked up on any American news sites yet.

"How the US 'lost' Latin America"
(thanks to Arnab for passing the link along)

Congratulations Stacie!!!

Congratulations to one of my best friends (and favorite yinzer) (and devoted blog fan), who was just accepted to the MBA program at Harvard Business School!!!!!!!!!

Way to go, Stacie!! :-D

Go Steelers!!

Better late than never, eh? :-) But anyway, I'm proud of my hometown team, the 2005 Superbowl Champs!

I actually did watch the first half of the game from an (overpriced touristy) sports bar I found in Prague. Sadly, while most of the commercials did seem to be American-made, none were the exciting and creative ones you folks in the states got to watch. :-( (we had the likes of Yoplait Yogart's "itsy bitsy teeny weeny, eat our yogart and you can wear a bathing suit in public" commercial instead). We did get the Rolling Stones halftime show though (my friend in France told me that she didn't), so I got to see a too-old-for-this Mick Jaggar swinging his hips around like everyone else. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

The first half of the game seemed a bit messy actually, though Pittsburgh did end up ahead. Glad the second half apparently worked out better for them. At 6 hours ahead of EST, that part was way past my bedtime. :-)

All 80's, All the time

Most of the stores and restaurants here remind me of sitting in the backseat of the stationwagon while growing up- all 80's music, all the time. Yesterday while I had coffee in a nearby cafe, we jammed to Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven on Earth", the first tape I ever owned. Very funny. :-)