vino & books (pics included!)

check out the pictures here!
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/319002/index.html
(copy/paste)

After receiving 100 books last week, I’ve realized that my reading frenzy hadn’t vanished, it was just “on a break”. I’ve read 3 books from this new collection already (in 1 week), and there’s 97 more to go! Gera is very impressed by my reading speed, and thinks that I secretly skip pages just to pretend I read fast (haha). I read a couple of books the a British comedian Arabella Weir: “Does my bum look big in this” and “onwards and upwards.” The first is a very short book very a-la-Bridget-Jones-diary, the second is more of a novel about 3 friends growing up together; and they’re both very funny. The third book, which I just finished this morning, is very a-la-Da-Vinci-Code. “The rule of four”, by in Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, is very smart and very good. Its about the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (a very, very old book printed in Italy a long time ago) and the secrets it contains hidden by codes within the text (those former S250 instructors know exactly which book it is!). I haven’t yet picked my next “victim”, I’ll tell you about it next week.

We went to a wine festival Saturday night, and it was fun! Expovina takes place once a year in Zürich, and I read it the world’s largest wine-tasting festival for non-professionals (whatever that means, I suspect: “people who don’t know much a bout wine but pretend they do just to get drunk tasting a bunch of them”). Anyways, there were thousands of wines to taste from all over the world, and it all took place on board a bunch of ships all docked together (great! like feeling drunk and dizzy on land is not enough, they had to do it on water!). We made it to 38 wines in about 4 hours (with a brat and lots of bread and water in between). I think it was quite an accomplishment, and we even made it home alright, although we did forget our usual stop to change trams, but we managed alright (it was hilarious!). And to top it off, the morning after was pretty decent: no headache, no hung-over feeling. In my books it was a total success! (http://expovina.ch/)

On Sunday we went to a little Bazaar-type thing. I read about it on an expat message board, and they mentioned the magic word: henna. So we were there, pretty much just for the henna, but I was disappointed to see a nonprofessional doing it, and the whole time I was thinking “I can do this much better myself”. I did get a design on my hand, and after talking to the woman a bit, she mentioned she might need help for a gig next year, so I was glad that I at least made a “henna contact.”

We bought our tickets to go to Italy next year! We’ll be going to Sicily mid-end February. Very exciting! Will keep you posted on the progress.