Cheryl on the Web

Tim and I ate breakfast this morning at Dunkin’ Donuts. Most of you are probably familiar with this donut-slash-bagel chain that, at many American locations, is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The orange-pink branding of the place is hard to miss, so even if you aren’t planning to stop by, it is easy to be lead astray by the attractive, even festive exterior and the promise of scrumptious donuts or fresh bagels with cream cheese.

Today was Tim’s first time to eat at Dunkin’ Donuts! As an American, it is of course my duty to make sure he is at least to a small degree familiar with this super-American concept. We ordered two bagels, a donut and a big coffee and sat outside to enjoy the food with our German newspaper (in the shade, it is already warm today). The bagels were perfect: appropriately toasted, still warm, with just the right amount of cream cheese. The donut was also nice, fresh, but a little standard (Tim picked it out:P): cinnamon-sugar coated and filled with apple. Naturally, the let-down was the coffee: pure American-style, weak and tasteless! The Haagen-Dazs coffee is much better.

I think before we leave we will get a double-chocolate donut. Or maybe a butternut-coated one. Mmmmmm. But no coffee. For that we will stop somewhere else!

When we moved to Aschaffenburg, we discovered pretty quickly it is famous for three things: the Johannesburg castle, lots of churches, and beautiful parks. With the good weather we have had this weekend and the friends we had visiting from Holland, we were really able to enjoy the parks at their best, and that just reminded us how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful area. (more…)

This Easter weekend, according to our tradition, Tim and I got away for the weekend; actually, just one night this time, instead of a whole weekend. The destination? Not London, not Paris, not Maastricht (where Tim proposed 2 years ago), but Mespelbrunn, a whole 30 kilometer (19 miles) out of Aschaffenburg and into the adjoining nature territory called “Spessart”. When we checked into the hotel, they noticed our accent and hesitant German; we explained we were from Holland. When we checked out, our hostess noticed my ATM card is from Aschaffenburg - caught in the act! I think she thought it was funny we stayed in a hotel so relatively close to our house. But in the end, we said it felt like we’d been away forever, and traveled a long way - so in the end, it’s just a matter of perception.

Mespelbrunn was a great place for a weekend away. We hiked both yesterday and today and enjoyed being close to nature in such great weather on such a special Sunday. We highly recommend the Waldhaus hotel and the Mespelbrunn castle (”Schloss”) (go early to avoid the tourist crowds).

There haven’t been any blog posts recently because I was traveling on business this week and only arrived home on Friday morning. I was lucky enough to be in Budapest, which is a beautiful city, surrounded by sociable, interesting colleagues, in generally good weather. If I could have, I would have made this blog post after having arrived at my hotel in Budapest on Tuesday night at midnight, but hopefully I can recount my story with a similar passion this long after-the-fact.

Did you know you can drive to Budapest from Aschaffenburg (where I live) in 8 hours? It took me 6.8 hours to go there by plane and, to be honest, I would have rather driven the 8 hours. This is why flying is for birds: (more…)

Today Tim and I both worked until around 7pm, then he got on our exercise machine and I took the car to the grocery store. While Tim was running 3 miles in our livingroom to a DVD of Motley Crue, I planned and bought 5 days worth of food in 30 minutes flat. When I got home, I got on the exercise machine and Tim unpacked the groceries and cooked dinner while I showered. We ate dinner at around 8:15pm and still had the whole evening before us! That’s what I call life on the run.

So what, you might ask, do people who work 50 hours a week cook in the evening? (more…)

The kitchen is installed and working! Amazing the things you can take for granted until you don’t have them for 3 weeks, and then they suddenly return, even better than they were before.

(more…)

This picture doesn’t do the chaos in our house yesterday justice. The place was so crowded and disorganized that you could barely get anywhere; the word “walk” didn’t apply - try “climb”, “crawl”, or “jump”. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself… (more…)