Place Settings #45: February 1, 2015

Eat | Definitely a what’s-left-in-my-refrigerator kind of breakfast. Egg-in-a-hole, avocado, and bacon.

Drink | It looks like a beer, but it’s not. It’s a can of Guayaki yerba mate in a pretty glass. Yerba mate is a plant in the holly family that can be brewed like tea to make a tasty beverage. I wasn’t really familiar with it until I spent a month in Berlin and was converted into a Club Mate addict. Club Mate is head and shoulders and torso above any other yerba mate drink I’ve ever encountered and it’s very difficult to find in the US, a fact that makes me cry every so often.

Place Settings #44: January 25, 2015

Eat | These are bacon pancakes with a blob of avocado mash. They were delicious and super easy to make: I just chopped up some bacon, cooked it, and added it to the pancake mix.

Drink | More Baruir’s coffee.

Read | Still going strong with Moby Dick. As I read, this book keeps getting higher on my list of favorite books. Whales are constantly on my mind — I went on an extended YouTube deep dive of whale documentaries — and the infamous whale chapters are actually the best ones.

Place Settings #43: January 18, 2015

Hello! We’re back

Eat | A wheat berry and brussels sprouts salad (recipe here).

Drink | Coffee from Baruirs Coffee, a 45-year-old, family-run coffee store around the corner from me. 

On The Love of the Game

It didn’t help that we stayed out until 8am that morning and only got two hours of sleep, but how many times were we going to be in Berlin to watch Germany play for a World Cup title? We made a bedraggled little quartet, a bit damp from the afternoon downpour, wedged into a nook of the bar as much by exhaustion as by determination. We ordered beers and waited for the game to begin.

I love the World Cup, though I don’t follow any football leagues during the rest of the four-year cycle. I owe this partially to my English father and childhood summers in Europe, but I think also to my fascination with sports fandom. I grew up in the heart of North Carolina, a region in which you are often defined by your college basketball allegiance (mine is Duke, the only acceptable option). Basketball agnosticism is not an option when you live in the eight mile stretch between Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium and UNC’s Dean Dome, even if you don’t actually like basketball. I remember being astounded when I went to college and met people who had never been a sports fan of any sort and did not seem to find their lives emotionally deficient.

Like the Last Note of a Love Song

Today is my last day in Paris, a fact that sends more emotions through my body than I am equipped to process. Despite devoting my life to language, this is one of the moments when words completely fail me; I have no idea what to say. Instead, I picked up my camera and did the same thing I did when I arrived: I went for a walk through my neighborhood. Here, presented without commentary because I have none to provide, is what I saw.

1996 David Foster Wallace Interview

Hello all,

It seems that I am experiencing an input phase, rather than an output phase right now, which is why I’ve been so shamefully absent. Don’t worry, I’ll be back on here soon; just needed a breather and a moment to focus on consuming creative works to improve my own production.

I did want to stop in briefly to share this 1996 radio interview with David Foster Wallace though. It’s just 36 minutes long, but it’s wonderful, if also a little sad and incredibly poignant. Thank you, Open Source!

xo,

A

Place Settings #42: June 22, 2014

Eat: Camembert and baguette.

Drink: Hold on to your hats, everyone, I have finally assembled a pour-over coffee station for myself. After a friend sent me some Blue Bottle beans from New York and I stumbled upon a ceramic Melitta cone in Berlin, I picked up the Hario hand grinder (daily arm workout included) and a small travel scale to complete the set. The Nespresso machine is sitting glumly in the back of a cabinet now. This morning I’m drinking Small World House Blend.

Read: During my travels to various English-speaking countries, I was able to pick up two copies of The New Yorker, a magazine that isn’t really available over here. I’ve been working my way through these two issues slowly, trying to drag out the experience for as long as possible.

Coffee Catch Up

Grab a cup of coffee and your pastry of choice while I give you a quick catch-up on my life.

o n e || Obviously, I have been really bad at posting the past two weeks! After I got back from Berlin, it was my Paris best friend’s last weekend in town and then it was time to pack up and fly back to the States for my 5th college reunion. As is typical for alumni of my school, I have a huge amount of love — bordering on obsession — for my college days; I’ve been waiting for my 5th reunion since the moment I graduated. I got back to France on Monday afternoon and have been wallowing in nostalgia and mild depression ever since. In any case, we’re back on track now!

t w o || In other big news, I only have about a month left in Paris — everything is beginning to take on the tinge of nostalgia, even my laundromat. On July 10, I have a one-way ticket from Charles de Gaulle to Berlin Tegel Airport where I’ll be spending a month living with one of my best friends, whom I somehow convinced to join me from New York. I love Paris very much, but I’m also beyond excited to get to know Berlin.

t h r e e || A final life update: I’m moving back to New York in August to go back to school! I’m not too excited about the idea of returning to New York (I know, I know, I’m trying to adjust my attitude), but I’m very excited to be hitting the classroom again, especially to study creative writing.

Thanks for bearing with absent me the past few weeks, and hold onto your hats as we go to London this weekend, Paris for a few more weeks, off to Berlin for a month, and then back to the Big Apple!

xo,

Alyx

The Laziest Sunday

I missed Place Settings yesterday, so I wanted to make up for it with this picture of the Eiffel Tower from my friend’s kitchen window. Sometimes one of your best Paris friends is leaving the city, possibly permanently, so you get everyone together and have a party and watch the sun rise from the roof and then Sunday is not for home cooking or fancy brunches and pretty photographs, but for sleeping and pretending that you were just part of that scene from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette where they all party through the night.

Know what I mean?

xo,

Alyx

A Weekend in Berlin

As I mentioned on Sunday, I was in Berlin over the weekend for an all-too-brief visit. I flew in early Saturday morning and left midday Monday and felt like I saw only a tiny fraction of what I wanted to see. That being said, I did cover a lot of ground for what was basically 48 hours and wanted to share the highlights with you.

Obviously above we have the Brandenburger Tor, which is actually the closest I ever got to West Berlin (other than riding the bus through it en route to/from Tegel Airport). When you spend a lot of time in Paris, I think you fall victim to something I’ll call the Triomphe Effect; the afflicted lose all sense of scale when it comes to arches and gates because the Arc de Triomphe is so huge. To me, the Washington Square Park arch in New York now seems laughably tiny and when I visited the Tor in Berlin, I was also surprised by its size. In my head it was much larger — and less cluttered with inebriated Borussia Dortmund and Bayern München fans who nobly took it upon themselves to prepare for the 20h Germany Cup final from the early morning hours (I’m happy to report that BM won, as my childhood Germany stints took place in Bayern). Despite the Triomphe Effect and the football horde, the historical symbolism of the Tor is still palpable.