Sorry, still no DSLR pics, just some snapshots that I take with the S50 during my walk to work in the morning. Hopefully there's an opportunity this weekend. Happy Fourth for everybody in the U.S.!

Shiny, Shiny

Times Square! Some unmistakenly New York City sight: the yellow cabs. Which COLOR are the taxis in YOUR CITY? Let me know - maybe you even have a Fotolog link to share? Can't wait to see YOUR cabs :) Have a great weekend, and to all US residents - Happy 4th of July!

Flying is No Fun Anymore!

Choosing a destination for vacation gets harder every year. The Dollar exchange rate continues to suck and flying gets more unpleasant by the month (unless you're able to spend a fortune). So we decided to keep traveling easy this year.

For summer we're returning to our favorite hangout in Montauk, Long Island. We tried to avoid the peak months so far, because they're charging fantasy rates for relatively basic rooms, but the $30, 3-hour train ride is unbeatable. And it's so beautiful there. Yes, it's the HAMPTONS, but a fairly quiet part and, frankly, I don't have anything against the rich and beautiful.

Maybe that's why we take on a cruise again this fall. It'll be for our 10 year wedding anniversary, so it should be something special and what could be a better fit than then continuation of our honeymoon that took us across the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth 2. This time it's the Queen Mary 2, a far more modern and comfortable ship, but presumably with less maritime flair than the QE2, which started her career as an ocean liner rather than a cruise ship. There we tiny cabin with bunk beds and a porthole (“How's the accommodation in steerage Mr. Dawson?”), while the QM2 sports hotel-like rooms with balconies. But of course who wouldn't like to sit on a private balcony while Manhattan passed by in front of a sunset?

And that's the other nice thing: we leave from Brooklyn, so we have to endure only one flight back from Ft. Lauderdale. And we hate it already.

The picture, btw, is from May 2002, when we travelled to New Jersey to see the Queen Elizabeth 2 leave New York City.

Nothing prevents us from having our BBQ

So, Spain has won the Euro Championship. Congrats! It's over and I finally can focus on other things again. Tennis for example. 'nough sports already! Where are the arts? Here you see Volkmar, Oliver, Tatiana and Broc on our patio celebrating despite the constant thunderstorms that New York is seeing lately. We had lots of fun - can you tell?

Update on mozy.com

I'm doing the mozy backup now for three weeks and so far so good. Every evening I select about 1 GB of new data and start the backup, so it runs while I'm at work. Some 14 GB are now (hopefully) save in some EMC data center. That's three years worth of photos and all my purchased music. Of course this will slow down as we bought cameras with more megapixels.
The Mac client is quite cumbersome, however. It contains some presets and before you can do anything with it, it wants to calculate the file sizes, which takes some time. For example, scanning my Aperture library takes around 15 minutes. Fortunately the presets can be deleted, but then they are gone and I may need them again later. Also, the Mac client misses a scheduler and the backup starts at a time still unknown to me. I'm sure this will be fixed in a later version.
Now I can just wait for Verizon to install FIOS in my area, which has a 20 times faster upload channel (for $30/month more). The news are somewhat promising in this regard...

Go SPAIN!

Oliver and I just agreed that we're rooting for SPAIN when we're watching the game in less than 1 hour. Are we traitors? I don't think so. Germany is just sooo far away for us now, living in the US, and the Spanish team played the prettiest football so far. To all those Catalanian members here on Fotolog who left nasty comments on my guestbook - you better don't. I am not really in your local politics and this is not the right place either. Gracias.

Waiting for the Euro Final

This was a couple of weeks ago, while it was unbearable hot. We have far more pleasant summer weather this weekend, just in time for the Euro final with a subsequent BBQ. Who will win the final? Who knows, but I won't be terribly sad if Spain makes it - after all it starts getting boring if the same three, four nations always win the big tournaments.

Who would have thought? Germany vs Spain

That's almost a [b]dream[/b] finale! My country's team and the team that played the most beautiful games and should win. Since I am not in Germany, it doesn't mean so much to me anyway. I can't celebrate on the streets and party all night long. So I'd rather see the Spanish team win. They deserve it. Haven't won the Euro Cup since 1964 - a good year that was :) (little insider joke!) The following question is pretty much needless to ask since I know the answer but who are YOU rooting for?

Monday - Pasta and Chicken

Remember? My "smart cooking" from Sunday evening? http://www.fotolog.com/elkes_kitchen/32755305 On Monday, I used part of the past from Sunday, but one step after the other. I cut an onion, glaze it, add chicken stripes, season them, cook them. Once the chicken is done, I remove half for it to have the base for another dinner on Tuesday. Then I add a little white wine and sun dried tomatoes (that were soaked in hot water for about 20 minutes) together with their liquid to the chicken and the onions. Eventually, I add some cut endive and the cooked spaghetti from Sunday. Everything cooks through for a couple of minutes, seasoned with some herbs and black pepper - ready! Bon Appetit!

An Evening at the MoMA

In New York City you quickly bump into the limit of what you can afford, but there are opportunities that at least make it easy to pretend moving among the rich, famous and beautiful. In that regard the Fellow membership at the MoMA ($300/year) is an excellent deal. Besides the obvious advantage to visit the museum at any time without ever standing in line, you get invited to opening of "select exhibitions".

To be sure, these are not the real openings - for those you need a much higher and more expensive membership tier. But it is a nice event at the museum, with an open bar, lots of artist types and many beautiful women. Yesterday it was also the perfect weather to sip some red wine in the sculpture garden, surrounded by the skyscrapers of Midtown and of course sculptures. This was so pleasant that we skipped the exhibition, which is not a problem due to another membership perk: members-only viewing hours.

So for anybody who's into MoMA-style art, I can only recommend a museum membership.

Who wants to change at GUN HILL ROAD?

Last Saturday, Oliver and I took a lot of different subways and of course our legs as well to make it to the Bronx Zoo's grande [b]Madagaskar[/b] opening. More on that later. On our way back home, we couldn't just take the train back to the city but had to take one that went even further North and then eventually at Gun Hill Road we could change and take a train that would take us back to Manhattan. Luckily, the weather was quite pleasant that day. And the train station had nice mosaics to offer.

Elke's Kitchen Revived

I just started freshed up my cooking blog again. Please check it out here: http://www.fotolog.com/elkes_kitchen/32755305 And what you see here is Sunday evening's dinner table on our private roof top terace, after having watched the Spain:Italy game which Spain won. Tomorrow's Germany up for winning, yeah, that's what I hope for anyway... So, let me know what you think of my cooking blog. Thanks :)

Sunday - Pasta Marinara with Littleneck Clams

Those who know me, know that I cook from scratch. Well, not fully. I do buy pasta (always Barilla or freshly made one) and canned tomatoes (preferably diced without any further additions) but that's about it. My latest personal challenge is to bring great home made food to the table without spending too much time in the kitchen. Hey, after all it's summer! I want to enjoy the outdoors too. So, on Sunday I've ordered through freshdirect.com fresh, beautifully pre-cleaned local littleneck clams. Less work! I cooked a whole box of pasta and divided it in 2 portions, that way I had a base for yesterday's dinner (which I'll blog about tomorrow). Then I heated olive oil in a pan, put thinly cut onions in there, after a while I added the tomatoes, fresh Basil from my herb garden, little salt, much ground pepper and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. In a pot, I once again heated olive oil, added onions, some white whine and the cleaned clams and cooked them for about 7 minutes while shaking the pot with its lid on. Then, everything was done! The spaghetti cooked, the sugo reduced, the clams ready. I put the pasta onto two plates, gave the sugo on top, the clams around it and the wine-mussel broth on top of it all. Voila! Tomorrow, I'll show you what I prepared with the rest of the pasta. So, come back :) Gracias!

Madagascar Exhibit Opens at Bronx Zoo

There's a new attraction at the Bronx Zoo: at beautifully outfitted display of some of the species, some of them living exclusively in Madagascar. This includes of course Lemurs, such as the pictures ring-tailed lemur, two huge Nile crocodiles, some fish and creepy, creepy hissing cockroaches that make you think immediately about cage security. Of course this is brought into the context of the destruction of the environment in Madagascar that endangers many of the species. It's the same sad story everywhere on the planet and that's why we support the WCS as much as we can.

In any case the Bronx Zoo is definitely worth a visit, even though getting there is a long trip, but also a change to see something of New York's roughest borough, which is by far more mellow than its reputation. More on the bronx zoo and Madagascar on http://www.bronxzoo.com/ . We'll also collect our NYC Zoo pictures in a growing photo set.

Public Art in NYC

We love big art installations in the city and there's a really big one coming up for June 26th: The New York City Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson. For towers are installaed along the downtown section on the East River and during the last couple of days they all were tested and the water started falling, for example under the Brooklyn Bridge.

It's right in our neighborhood, so be prepared for some pictures about it. In the meantime, please enjoy some photo frenzies about past art events: The Gates and Chihuly at the Botanical Garden.

New York City Waterfall

Today they tested at least two more waterfall towers, the one on Governor's Island and this one, which is the closest to us, right where Rutger's St. meets the East River.

Suspense is in the Air

I have a confession to make. Today, I am not rooting for my country. For my country's football aka "soccer" team that is. When I first discovered my interest for football (thanks to Oliver http://www.fotolog.com/unterwegs), it was a nobrainer to root for my country's team. After all they took the trophy home after beating Argentina 0:1 However, 2 years later, the Euro Cup was on and I fell in love with the Portuguese team and have been ever since. We can discuss in detail why this is so but there are some obvious reasons and those in the know, know. :) And yet another confession, sort of. I love the new Coldplay album. No wonder that it is terrific. It's been produced by Brian Eno - hello U2! I'll get back to some of the very nice commenters from my last posting soon. It's been super hectic here recently, sorry. And I have a little riddle for YOU: WHAT IS THE COLOR OF THE CAR ON THE RIGHT?

On the Rooftop

Well, the real thing would have been, if somebody invited us to a swanky party on a Manhattan rooftop, but since this hasn't happened we had to pay $50 for getting into an event organized by the Time Out New York magazine. We got two hours open bar and a goody bag for this, which was all in all not a bad deal.

The venue was the Empire Hotel on 63rd and Broadway, which has a nice rooftop bar. The view is not the grandest you can have in Manhattan. The hotel is surrounded by typical Upper West Side apartment buildings, so most you can do is watching is other people apartments and muse about how much they're paying for it.

The really cool thing is the larger than life neon sign, tough. At least for me, for some reason nothing speaks louder of a big city as being close to a neon sign that is made to be seen from far away. Countless movies pop into my mind, but the only I could name right now is Highlander, where the namesake hero frees his love interest from such a sign and does a lot of damage to it in the process.

Anyway, if you are into neon signs - Empire Hotel Rooftop Bar is the place to be

Waterfalls on the East River

Olafur Eliasson's waterfall installation on the East River has been visible for a while now, but so far there hasn't been any water falling. And there shouldn't be any water falling until the 26th, but for some reason one of the towers was already doing its thing today. Some pictures from Olfaur Eliassons' exhibition at the MoMA: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nydiscovery/sets/72157605687814224/

And History Wasn't Made

Sometimes in football (the one that's played by foot, aka soccer) everything comes together for a historic game. After 30 years Austria's team had the chance to kick out the far more experienced and talented Germans out of the Euro 2008. It didn't happen.
By heart, of course, I root for Germany, but it would have been such a good story. Austria beats Germany in a major tournament! Germany has to return home early! What an upset! And against those Portugese Germany's journey won't last long, anyway.

All pictures

nydiscovery posted a photo: