Wine Tasting

One of my faculty colleagues thought we should start the academic year off with some fun. She arranged for us to have a wine tasting. (We did this after our work day closed. No tax money spent on this. Rather for anything we bought, we paid tax just like anyone else!).

We were given a glass of wine when we arrived and then walked to a nearby area to see how the grapes are managed. We all liked the wine we started with -- Frontenac Gris. This grape is one that has been bred to survive the Minnesota winters. It is a mutation of the Frontenac Red.

Our guide did a very nice job explaining all the work it takes to first grow the vines, and then have them produce grapes, and then the work of the grape harvest. Wine won't seem so expensive to me now!

Then we went back into the buildings to learn about the fermentation processes. This is a crusher that is not used often anymore, but it is more interesting than plastic tanks! After following the grapes from crushing to when wine appears in a bottle, we returned to the show room for a tasting of many different kinds of wine. I'll definitely go back. This group is making very good wine.

After the wine tasting, we drove into Stillwater and had dinner at the Kitchen Restaurant. The food here was very good. Of course, we were given one check and then it took forever to work out the check!

Boat on St. Croix River

When I was walking back to my car, I saw the nice scene. The St. Croix River forms the boundary between Minnesota and Wisconsin. It enters the Mississippi River about 40 miles south of Stillwater. It is quite a larger river here. Many times I've been on planes making a landing from the east into the airport, and when we go over this river, many people oh and ah over the Mississippi, not knowing it is really the St. Croix River!

Sheer Luck

Taking excellent photos is a hard job. I've learned that by having friends who are professional. Yesterday I went for a walk and got a nice photo by sheer luck.

This is shadow of the High Bridge over the Mississippi River. I have taken photos of reflection bridges, but this the first time I've seen a shadow and also got the picture. Hope you enjoy.

Can't Get Lost!

There is a park with equipment for young children up the street from my apartment. Something new has been added since last summer.

Last summer there was a pond of water collecting in a very wrong place. The construction fairies have added stairs and a rotunda. The rotunda has the longitude and latitude of the space. So I can't get lost. Turns out I'm south of Pecs by a bit, and way south of the locations that I go to in Poland. So why is it colder in the winter? Well I know. We are too far from any body of water to mediate the weather -- us and Siberia, too far from an ocean.

Polish Festival Adventure

Social networking is wonderful. I would never have known about this had it not shown up on my Facebook page connected to the title, Polish. I wandered over to Minneapolis yesterday to find the Polish Festival.

I arrived at lunch time so the first order of business was getting something to eat.

 I chose potato and cheese pierogies and a pascki.  I sat down at a table to eat, knowing no one at a the table. A man asked me what kind of pierogies and when I told him, he said, "Well, you know they are supposed to have sauerkraut in them." I told him I had eaten pierogies just like these in Poland many times. When I went on to describe the marvelous plum pierogies I had eaten at the B&B in Kieslany in 2009, the people looked at me as if I had arrived from Mars.

I noticed the "dance "lessons being offered were for the polka. I remarked that one didn't see the polka in Poland. That was also an amazing statement. I began to understand I knew about Polish culture from having been in Poland, while these people knew about Polish culture from what they remembered from their grandparents. How the polka became so attached to Polish-American culture is a mystery to me. I have seem Americans in Poland react to the fact that bands there will not play a polka with equal amazement, and one unfortunately even stomped off in a temper tantrum because the band didn't play polkas. (That's when one wants to curl up and not be noticed as an American!)

My viewpoint about pierogies was vindicated when I got to the Zupa cookbook and turned to the back and found many different kind of pieorgie recipes. Pieorgies are only limited by the imagination! 

My friends in Poland have told me that we can buy Polish pottery in versions never seen in Poland. I think I found something not sold in Poland.

I was rather amazed to see dog dishes! This booth had many patterns in dishes that were new to me as well, but my cupboards are about as full of Polish pottery as is possible in a small apartment.

All of this was taking place on the banks of the Mississippi River. No mistaking this for the Vistula. I've never seen a place where the Vistula looks this wild, let alone this wild in the middle of a city.

Across the street there was a wonderful exhibit centered on Katyn. This exhibit has been many places in the United States including in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. I enjoyed seeing it and it made me feel for a few minutes like I was back in Europe again. The display style was European rather than American.

When I got back outside, all I could hear from both entertainment stages was polka music, so I wandered back to the car and headed home.

It is surely ethnic festival time here. Across the river from the apartment is a huge Irish festival. And on the way home yesterday I encountered signs directing me to the Igbo Festival.

The Wonderful and the Mundane

First the mundane. I managed to launder my car key apparatus. I had a spare and have been using that. However, I had this one in my bag for it also has my library key card on the ring. Today I grabbed for it by mistake and lo and behold! It works. I thought the battery would be killed for sure, but it opened the locks on the car just fine. What a surprise.

Now for the wonderful. I was on the couch this afternoon, just staring out the window at the somewhat stormy clouds. I saw an eagle circling. It managed to entertain me for almost 10 minutes. One thing that's right with the world is that the river is becoming cleaner and cleaner and the pesticides are coming out of the environment and the eagles are doing better and better! 

Publish Post

Adventure Outside the Window

So my older daughter and I are having a quiet Saturday afternoon, when suddenly I see something strange outside the window.

What is the blue hose outside the window? Investigation revealed it was coming from the apartment above and attached to a carpet cleaning van on the ground. Oh, that's how it's done. Since I will be staying another year I can have my carpets cleaned sometime. I'm going to wait until sometime about a year from now. I've not lived in this apartment very long considering in Hungary for a long time. And I have a granddaughter who is now 14 months old. I'll wait until after events such as Thanksgiving and Christmas for those seem like times that might end up with a little girl accident of some sort.

So chalk this up with an observation of the mundane.

Printing Adventures

I bought a new computer late last fall and could not find the printer driver CD after my earlier move in the fall. So printing has been a bit of hassle. I would have to hook up the old computer which runs very, very slow now. Also I no longer had a good place to put it.

Today I hit the end of my rope with using the business center in my building and went out to Best Buy and bought a new wireless printer. I can't quite make it work around the firewall to be totally wireless, but it works flawlessly with the UBS connection.

The clerk who helped me wondered if I was going to have a print party. Oh, yes, I have a backlog of journal articles to print that relate to a course I'm creating for fall, as well as a few online documents needed to finish up my 2009 tax documents.

It's heaven to have things rocket out of the printer! Now back to changing things around a bit to make the spaces fit right.