a dash of pepper, a sprinkling of salt and a good shakeout ala Granny!
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
: : News for 2008 : :
Grats to Sam for winning the White Pepper Draw (Menu for Hope 4). Prize will be heading to you in the mail.
On the other hand, since I'm playing World of Warcraft for the last 1.5 years, I've started a forum for Malaysian WoW Players called "Jom Wow!" Was kinda tired of how the newcomers were being treatead in some of the forums as well as getting irritated with the moderators in others. Minimalist site because it's free and hopefully will answer questions to WoW. Postings and community chats are slow but hopefully traffic will pick up.
Having slept most of Saturday and Sunday away, here are some of the details of the journey to Erfurt, Germany.
From Frankfurt Airport, we caught the high-speed InterCity Express (ICE) train from Frankfurt Airport to Frankfurt Mains where we changed trains to Erfurt. The journey took a little over 2 hours to reach there although the speed of the train was very fast. Speeds were either over 200 km/hr or 168 km/hr, depending on which part of the land we were. Not sure why the train speed was different although probably the railroad tracks had something to do with it.
We stayed relatively close to the train station at the Mercure Hotel Erfurt Altstadt. It's tuck away in a little corner right in center of where the trams meet. Erfurt is a very beautiful and picturesque city where many of the old buildings are still standing up to today. It's also the state capital city of the Thuringia state. Here are some pictures of the city :
This is a picture of a building built on top of a few bridges. There's a little brook running underneath the building which is split into 3 small channels whilst flowing underneath the bridge.
Another side view of a nearby building near this bridge.
This is how the bridge looks like from the top. It's full of quaint little shops selling handicrafts and also very very old books.
A lot of the older part of the city looks like this although some of the facades are different from the others. The city council subsidies some of the maintenance cost of maintaining the facade of the building.
For lunch, we had something to eat at a quaint little Italian restaurant nearby. The square that you see is known as the Firschmarkt a.k.a. the Fish Market. They no longer sell fish there anymore but the name stayed.
Me, being me, was feeling very cold so decided to have some of the traditional German mulled wine known as Glünwein. The one at this restaurant wasn't that great but it was hot enough to keep me very warm.
A bowl of minestrone soup for me. Yes, I was feeling very cold throughout the trip.
Seafood spaghetti is what my boss ordered. It came with some mussels (which I had later on for 3 days in a row in Rotterdam but that's another tale).
My colleague had a risotto instead as he wanted something with rice.
I went for the Gnocchi without knowing what it was. But suffice to say that it was very nice and everything ended up in my stomach. One of the major problems about food blogging from another country is knowing the names of the food that you're eating.
As I post new pictures up, I'll also be updating my Google Maps link on all the places I've been during this trip. Here is the link to Google Maps.
Oh yeah, when I mean that it was eating at Alarming Crustacean, I wasn't kidding. Eating lobster was an experience at the Red Lobster Restaurant at Lubbock. My boss' wife wanted to have some of their lobsters and their huge snowshoe crab. And seriously, we polish them off as well as 2 bottles of wine between 4 people.
So, here's the video for you all to enjoy. Again, the auto-focus is being a pain but just reinforces the fact that I need to get myself a flashlight or videolight for the handycam.
You know, it's easier than I expected it to be and making videos has been a fun process so far. It's not as boring as I thought it would be although it also still needs time to prepare it. But I need to find a source for music tracks that are royalty free or CC free.
Link to Red Lobster site. Funny thing about this website is that there Store Locator is not working at all or I'm not putting in the right searches. Then again, if you put in the search for Texas, nothing shows up anyway. Going to drop them a mail after this.
Yep, big steaks alright. I'm getting used to using Windows Movie Maker now but have to look for some better music pieces to attach on to give better video viewing experience.
This blog comes with this psychological warning : eat before reading.
Also, the pictures are not to be linked through a forum, email, etc. without permission. This is a Creative Commons website.
