Fort Cochin

I have a new favorite travel destination on my list now. It is the old and historic Fort Cochin in Kerala. The Portuguese were here in the 1500s and they definitely seem to have left their mark in this beautiful little place. What you experience is a mixture of cultures from Kerala, Portugal, Britian and the Dutch.

I loved the spice markets with their rich display of spices in pots and bags lining the streets. I learnt that there were times when the currency used for trading was mainly a barter of pepper.

The place even had a Jewish minority and one of the oldest Jewish towns in India can be found here.

Numerous Chinese fishing nets line the harbour and it is definitely a mechanical masterpiece.

Little bunny loved the ferry trip to the little island of Vypin from Fort Cochin and back. She and her grandmother checked out all the amazing bric-à-brac sold in the street markets of Mattancherry close to Fort Cochin and she quickly realised that convicing her grandmother to buy her all the little things she wanted was much easier than convincing me :-)

I definitely plan to go back to this place again and I really hope that this is going to be soon. 

Pre-Christmas, pre-vacation dinner

S, J, D and me knew that we will not being seeing each other this time over Christmas vacation. I was leaving for my vacation soon and J would also be visiting her family in Czech. S proposed that we all meet for a nice pre-Christmas dinner at her place. Dinner made by S is always a special affair and on that day I was constantly thinking about what she would be busy cooking and I was really looking forward to the evening. Like everytime it was really a fun evening and the food was just marvellous.

S served an exquisite pumpkin soup served directly in the pumpkin shell. You could scoop into the soft pumpkin flesh directly out of the shell and it was succulently juicy and perfectly spiced.

This was followed by a main course of spiced fettucine cooked with black mushrooms and shrimps, accompanied by fennel glazed with honey and lemon (yummy!!!!) on the side and green long beans cooked in a delicate spiced mixture. All of us got together and gave S a lovely Pugeot electric salt and pepper mill a gift that all of us knew S would not only treasure but also use a lot.

But the best part of the evening was when S walked in with the dessert,  all of us almost fell out of our chairs in awe. She presented a lovely assortment of hand made chocolate truffles with rum and nuts, a spiced chocolate tarte and yoghurt berry parfait decorated with a generous dusting of chocolate powder. The dessert was literally to die for!!

She gave us all a bottle of her hand made Eierlikör (Eggnog) to take home with us. I felt pleasantly content at the end of the evening the kind of blissful feeling that you experience when you are at peace with the rest of the world, I am sure you know the kind of feeling I am talking about. I have been thinking about S today and wishing that she has a great time over the holiday season.

Multitude of hues and colors

Its vacation time in India and I wish there was more time in a day to absorb the multitude of sights, the sounds, the colors, the smell of the place, the crowds of people. I felt that I have been using a lot more of my senses in the last few days than ever before.

So much to absorb and take in at every nook and corner of every street and side road. Little bunny points to each and everything and brings up an association to what she knows and understands and comes up with interesting comparisons.

Loved drinking the water from the very tender coconuts, actually something that I look forward to everytime I am here and plan to consume a lot more during the rest of our vacation.

I promise myself not to get paranoid everytime I see a speck of dust on the kids fingers but then I keep breaking my promise. Well, well welcome to India, amazing India!!! Some pics here and many more to come.

Horse riding

Its been a long time since my last post. So many things to blog about and then with so many thoughts running through my head I think everyday that maybe tomorrow is a better day to get my thoughts in order.

Anyway, couple of weeks ago we took little bunny to spend a day in a horse stall. Yes a horse stall! Little bunny always has been telling us that she would like to have her own horse that she can take care of and ride away on whenever she wanted to. We have been telling her that the idea though a good one would mean that she has to do a lot of hard work taking care of her horse. Since we have been having this discussion so many times we decided to give her a feel of the whole experience. So it was a day spent with Rina a cute little pony in a tiny village close to home.



The little girls from the stable showed little bunny how to clean the little pony, brush his skin and also clear out the slush from his hooves.
She was taught how to saddle the pony and also how best  to hold on to him when she wanted him to stop and continue walking. She could chose a helmet that fit her dainty head and also climb onto the pony and hold tightly.






A fun experience indeed but at the end of the day she was even more convinced that this was something that she definitely wanted to be doing on a regular basis.

So we have now decided to go back there maybe in the spring of 2011 and give her couple of more days of a similar experience.

Diwali with friends

This Diwali was really special. Our friends D and K invited us over to their home for a really nice evening to celebrate Diwali together. It was a fun filled evening and the best part was savoring all the delicacies that D had prepared and presented with such style. Yes, delicious food when presented with a lot of aesthetic appeal enhances the flavours doublefold. 

There was fresh rotis baked to perfection and this together with  the most amazing palak paneer and dal makhni and I lost count of the number of rotis I consumed through the evening. 

Our friends T &  his wife V also had the chance to sample some real delicious Indian food and T even proposed that all of us should think about starting a fusion restaurant with Indian, Brazilian and German gourmet food. A very interesting concept indeed and the best part of the evening was when D and K announced that D is starting her own catering business. She would take her skills to the next level by turning it into a real profession. This sounded like music to my ears, cos everytime you host a party and when you really want some amazing and professional cooked food and you don't want to spend the whole day  in the kitchen you know whom you could consult. If you want to know more about D go check out her blog here. 

Coming back to the evening after the yummy dinner, out came the array of sweets. Yes Diwali without sweets is definitely not complete. But I never had a Diwali where I had the chance to sample such yummy home made sweets which included Jalebis, Gulab Jamuns, Ras Malais, Badam barfis shaped like apples with tiny green stalks, Carrot halwa, Murukkus and there was also Chocolate Pudding.

Like you can see food is definitely a key aspect of Indian festivals and this Diwali with D and K was proof to to this fact. Happy Diwali dear friends!!

Historical Nuremberg

Nuremberg is a city with so much of history some good and some not. My work took me  to this beautiful city and I took the chance to soak in some of the local sights when I was there. 

The beautiful St. Lorenz church stood majestically in the old city center. The church dates back to the thirteen hundreds and of course it had been renovated after all the damage from all the wars including the second world war.

It was also the time of the year when the yearly Autumn market and the old town fair were happening in parallel.

It was a perfect occasion to sample the original Nürnberger Rostbratwurst (Nuremberg sausage) a small thin bratwurst from this city. Fresh majoram and ground caraway seeds give this sausage a very special taste indeed.

Unfortunately I had very little time on my hands but definitely need to go back there and explore this beautiful city in all its entirety.

Feldbahn museum

Last Saturday the Feldbahn Museum in Wiesloch had opened their doors to little children and also their parents. The Feldbahn is a locomotive that was used during the first world war, mainly used to transport agricultural and industrial goods.

 All of us got to actually take a ride in one of these trench railways. There was also a guided tour for the little ones taking them into a nearby mine and how the the Feldbahn or the trench railways were used to transport the materials from these mines.

The kids were particularly fascinated to understand how a carbide lamp which was very popular in those times really worked and how it was used for mining purposes.

The children got to take an additional ride on the Feldbahn after the guided tour.

The team from the museum also had a nice bonfire going and it was nice to warm yourself at the end of the tour.