Watching The British Baking Show on Netflix brings back so many memories of cakes, pies, and Torten my Grandma used to make. Turns out they actually have names, and it’s not just the pear-thing-with the-funny-shape I remember eating as a child. Pastries from the UK, Belgium, Poland and the rest of the world -even Austria where I happen to be from- are introduced in the baking competition, and I am having a good time watching it.
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When people ask me, “Where are you from?” their reaction to my answer is always the same. “Aaaaaaaaaahhh,” and then they list the names of famous people from Austria. 90% of the time it’s, Hitler and Schwarzenegger.
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We watched too much TV during self-isolation, there was nothing else we could do. The Coronavirus comes with a heavy dose of fatigue, and we did not even try to fight it. We started watching “Saving Grace” with Holly Hunter, who we both happen to like, but soon my husband got tired of the never-ending sex scenes.
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According to my Grandma, the best chicken noodle soup starts with sharpening the ax and getting the old woodblock ready. Then you pick out a chicken and after you catch it, you talk to it nicely, you pet it one last time and you say THANK YOU, after all, it has given you plenty of eggs throughout the years and now it will continue to give you one last meal. You cover the chicken with your old cardigan and carry it to the old barn, where the axe and the woodblock are waiting.
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Some things only happen on TV. The bad things, even when based on a true story, never happen in our own neighborhoods. We live in a safe cocoon. Crime and violence happen somewhere else, until one day when it sets foot in your own neighborhood.
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“Mama said we are Republicans,” one of my helpers told me the other day and I could not help but smile. “How old were you?” I asked curiously and he said he didn’t know. Somewhere in between child and teenager, he became a Republican, because his mother said they were. Continue reading
I just finished reading Derick’s blog and when he mentioned his dinner -a Tandoori take out- I couldn’t help but smile and my mind wandered down on memory lane. Continue reading
I suppose we all have a celebrity crush when we are young. At 14 I admired John Travolta, just like so many other girls like me. I went with a girlfriend to the movie theater in Austria. We got tickets for the show, sat down, unpacked our cigarettes and got lost in Grease. Continue reading
Sometimes, very seldom, I feel something like homesickness, even though it’s not for a home or family, but rather for a tradition and or perhaps rituals I remember so vividly. Right about now, at the beginning of summer, I was always called back home to our farm in Austria. I got an extra week of vacation, like so many of us farm-children who had to help. Continue reading
“You are going to England for the summer,” my Grandma surprised me and she would spend my favorite time of the year with two children from Italy. She had been given a pamphlet of EF a student summer exchange program -which is still existing to this day. She had liked the idea to send me off so it seems because she had signed up for it months before. Continue reading
