Bonne Annee avec mes amis

The best thing about France is Italy. Courmayeur is just 30 minutes from Chamonix and lived up to its reputation.

To ring in 2014, Molly and I decided to trade a proper New Year’s celebration for a weeklong trip to Chamonix with a motley mix of eight ski bums. We were not disappointed.

As the herds of skiers packed their cars and headed back to work, we rolled into town with fresh legs and awoke to some of the choicest snow I’ve ever face-planted in.

Skiers are so graceful.

More than a half dozen ski areas dot the valley of this adorable ski town, which is intricately connected by frequent, free buses. In addition, Switzerland’s Verbier and Italy’s Courmayeur ski resorts are within easy reach.

Had they banned all skiers, it would have been this snowboarder’s perfect, fresh powder dream.

We set up shop in a little chalet on the outskirts of town complete with a sauna and fireplace, and spent our evenings sampling each other’s cooking and nursing our ski-related wounds.

Each day a different pair prepared the meal.

Team Awesome took us south of the border; Molly and I broke da mouth with a Hawaii-inspired meal; Jeb and R. Eric brought the heat with a low country boil; Angela and Dave made magic Italian style; and Mike and Sonya delivered a savory Paddy’s Day delight. (We’re still waiting for Steve’s night.)

By the end of the week we were racing to find creative uses for all the leftovers, and somehow we left with more food than we brought. No toilet was safe and no toilet paper was left behind.

Friendships were forged, memories made, and we even traded one friend for a wily, piss-and-vinegar grandma (not to mention Jeb’s horizons were broadened when he was introduced to Rebecca Black’s “Friday” for the first time).

I don’t know what this year will bring, but if our first day on the slopes in Chamonix is any indication, I’m looking forward to a little slice of heaven.

Staring into the Vallee Blanche from the top of Flegere. 

Through the years

Jeremy and I celebrated our sixth Christmas together this year, which was surprising as we both thought it was five until we glanced into the rearview mirror that is the buddymollys' holiday cards.

What began in Hawaii turned heavenly as it shifted to Bavaria; it was monumental, but never a drag (well ...) and was always served with a healthy dose of love.

Happy holidays from the buddymollys.

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

The arts have it

It’s been nearly a year since a simple facebook post ignited a surge of creative endeavors.

It read like this: The first five people to comment on this status will receive a homemade gift from me throughout the year. They must repost this status and too make five homemade gifts for the first five people to comment on their status.

It’s pay it forward, art-style.

The five folks who signed up were as unique as they were distantly located – so I needed some extra time to process proper gifts. I was a bit unprepared, so I created the simple above-pictured mixed media painting to air my apprehensions before getting down to business.

The first handmade items completed were for my friend Lauren, a Northern Ireland resident who was about to get married. I made an espresso body scrub to be used on her wedding day. It provided both soft skin and a boost of energy needed for special day exhaustion. I also threw in a homemade candle, red and white to symbolize lovely-dovey stuff.

(As an aside, I tested out the body scrub product before sending it, stupidly at 9 p.m. I was up until nearly 6 a.m. Conclusion: I found the gift to be effective).

My second attempt at art was a painting made for my friend Corki – a serpent for a serpent. 

The third gift soon followed, and I must admit, I had help on this one. For Jaleh, a librarian and fellow book nerd, I commissioned Jeremy’s help in making her an invisible bookshelf, courtesy of instructables.

The fourth gift was a new attempt for me. Finding a strange looking toy at the thrift store, I turned it into a snow globe. It’s weird, so am I, and so is my friend Tom, so it seemed like a good fit. The use of glitter proved troublesome though. It’s been said that glitter is the herpes of craft supplies and five months later, I’m still finding it in places I simply shouldn’t.

For my final art attempt, I collected sticks for a few weeks on my daily walks with Skydog to create a flower vase for my BFF and bona fide earth goddess, Crystal. After she received it, she commented that she’d like to live in house like that someday. It will take a few more walks, but I’ll see if I can make it happen dear friend. Perhaps that will be next year’s art endeavor.

I received a special piece of art from STL’s own Jeff Miller well before I started my projects. And Jeremy, who also signed up to create five homemade gifts, has yet to finish his. But, the year’s not quite over, and sliding in minutes before deadline is par for the course with a house full of journalists.

Deadlines are kind of our thing; art, however, is everyone’s thing.  

Distilling the perfect adventure

Every time I visit Scotland I wish I could stay longer.

Though it’s always cold (the average temperature in the height of summer is just under 60 degrees), Scotland’s gregarious people more than make up for the chill in the air -- and after a few whisky tastings you might not even need your jacket anyway.  

The key to any visit, like adding those critical drops of water to a dram, is finding the right balance.

Building on last year’s five-day, whirlwind man-trip to sample Islay’s finest (and peatiest) whiskies, we decided to shift gears to the lighter, sweeter Speyside spirits of Moray County, which sits about three hours north of Edinburgh.

The Speyside region boasts nearly half of all the whisky distilleries in Scotland, and a majority of those lie within a 20-mile radius of each other.

We had our work cut out for us, but could have done a better job planning.

Scant public transportation and figuring out ways to not drive while intoxicated proved to be formidable obstacles, but could not compete with 4 science brains and 4 of average Trivial Pursuit intelligence.

Though many of the distilleries weren’t open on the weekends (a fact that remained obscured until a few days before we flew out), and one distillery closed for the summer for the first time in its 188-year history just two days before we arrived, we still managed to visit eight distilleries in six days.

(Note: The number of tastings we sampled in the Edinburgh airport while waiting to depart could have bumped that number to 12).

And although the process is almost exactly the same from distillery to distillery, we learned to pick up on the nuances and appreciate the subtle effects each factor, like the shape of still or the barrel’s composition, contributed to making an impression on our taste buds.

Other than that, nothing exciting happened.

We didn’t cross paths with the world's only blue-haired Asian bartender with a Scottish accent; there were no near-death collisions caused by a driver starring at sheep; we never figured out what possessed our car radio; none of the tour guides ever answered JR’s infamous “methanol” question to his satisfaction; and a Chinese man definitely did not fart on one of us (ahem, Michael Kreis) in the passport line.

There’s always next year.

Belgian Blitz

booty.

As part of my mid-30s birthday celebration this weekend, we hopped a train bound for Belgium, the land famous for its delicious beer and out-of-this-world fries. Apparently they have chocolate, too.

As opposed to German beer, which honors the simplicity of making the most out of four ingredients, Belgian beer celebrates various styles from light and fruity to dark and make-you-forget-your name, along with every permutation in-between.

We blazed through Brussels, Bruges and Ghent over a long weekend but never felt like we were rushing. Between the museums, architecture and historic sites, there were plenty of distractions, but, as you can see by Molly’s photo essay below, we maintained our focus.

round one: cafe in Brussels

round two: pouring like a pro

round three: dinner in Bruges

round four: bike ride to Damme

round five: kwak and a Bruges tripel

round six: put your leffe in, put your leffe out

round seven: mussels in beer (and beer) in Bruges

round 8: cold chillin' at the train station

round 9: a day in the life in Ghent

round 10: sidewalk sale

round 11: back in Brussels

round 12: still thirsty

round 13: it's getting darker

round 14: Brussels bar, repeated

round 15: designated "regulars"

round 16: unpack, move in

Another trip to Dresden; So it goes ...

The New Town, in all its hip glory.

I went to Dresden. Again. Last weekend was my 6^th trip in the past four years to the Vonnegut-famed city, including a two-week stint for a German course in February highlighted by a monumental, albeit brief, run in with Bill Murray. 

But I still went. Again. I grabbed my friend Caroline, left Jeremy to hone is hausfrau skills, and went. Again.

Graffiti dances over the New Town

Our time in Europe is coming to an end; and we wrestle with trying something new versus revisiting our favorite places. We have so much earth in Europe we haven’t walked on, new cultures (and food!) to experience. So why visit somewhere you’ve been many times before?

It’s simple. When you revisit a city, your surroundings become more vivid. It’s like watching a movie more than once – your understanding of the plot deepens, you notice secondary nuances.

Likewise, with a city, you begin to learn the culture outside of museums and tourist-packed walkways. The city becomes more familiar and you become more familiar in it - people stop to ask you for directions; glances and friendly smiles from passersby on the backstreets become commonplace.

You are in it. And Dresden in one of favorite places to be “in it.”

A glimpse at the Old Town from the Elbe River.

The city was completely destroyed during World War II, and until the ‘90s, remained in a somewhat state of devastation. Now, it is a rebuilt version of its historic self. The baroque architecture is peppered with new innovative structures creating a unique mix of old and new.

Vonnegut's protector.

The Elbe River separates the New and Old towns. The New Town is actually the eldest, as it endured the least bit of destruction and was rebuilt first. But it appears newer with its gridlocked rows of concrete communist-era buildings, tagged with elaborate works of graffiti. 

The Old Town was built with new materials masked by the rubble of its former self to give that old town feel. The Frauenkirchen, a beautiful church in the center of the Old Town, was rebuilt meticulously using original pieces placed in the exact same spot as it stood in the former structure.

And it works. It all works. The city is inviting. The New Town is hip and fresh, full of artists and hippies, bars and vintage clothing store. The locals of the New Town refer to their side of the river as "the dark side." 

The Old Town is refined with quiet restaurants and quaint shops lining cobble-stoned streets, flushed with churches, monuments of yesteryear, and an impressive castle once belonging to Augustus the Strong. 

Nightlife.

It is without a doubt worth a visit to Dresden if you find yourself in Germany. For me, it may even warrant a move. Because like St. Louis and Honolulu, Dresden feels like home - not just “a” home, but home. 

And sometimes it feels good to just go home.

O’zapft is? Yeah, we tapped it.

The first mass of the morning is always the best. 

Over time, after you’ve lived in a place for a while, you become in tune with the rhythm of the seasons. 

So as fall approached and the warm sun began to succumb to the inevitable nip in the air, we knew it was time to break out the dirndl and lederhosen, and practice heaving those maß beers high in the air.

Three years ago when we were just learning the Oktoberfest ropes, it wasn’t pretty: Out of the four in our group, three threw up and one was forcibly divested of his underwear – all before noon.

Not about to repeat our inaugural performance, this year we set about to plan a dignified, respectable day at Oktoberfest, where 6 million people consume nearly 7.5 million liters of bier, 500,000 chickens, 58,000 pork knuckles and countless pretzels over the course of 16 days.*

The dignified plan included several “nice to haves” we never considered in years past.

For instance, rather than crashing in the Turkish hotel (an unusually tall 1980s-era VW bus), we booked a hotel. We left all keys and unnecessary but easily misplaceable objects in the room.

A stellar example of dignified prosting.

We established a game plan at the outset for where to meet if we lost each other.

And since we arrived just after 9:30 a.m. and didn’t leave till about midnight, a comfortable “maß consumption” pace interspersed with water served us well.

Thanks in part to our mental preparation, Molly also conquered an arch-nemesis – the cantankerous, 80-year-old Toboggan Rutschbahn – which left her limping two years ago, and I even left with every article of clothing I brought (although the next day I was still removing glass shards from my lederhosen, a byproduct of some overzealous prosting).

All in all, we opened and closed Oktoberfest on the opening weekend with a sophisticated level of intoxication, and that’s more than we can say for the rest of the fest’s 6 million people. 

* From the Munich Tourist Office website. Additional interesting fun facts included the number of vendors (Germans actually refer one group as “carneys”) and the following lost items of 2012, which were listed under “curiosities”: leg warmers (a pair of dress pants and two pairs of “unusual” traditional pants), two wedding rings, five notebook computers, two license plates, sheet music, two French horns, a hearing aid, a handicraft box, eyeglasses with Swarovski crystals, a pair of leg cuffs, a baby phone, a ping-pong racket, a Playboy magazine (with a personal autograph from the current Wies’n playmate) and a dog. The delivery rate was 19 per cent.