Culture

Best Christmas Tradition We Didn’t Steal

We stole most of our favorite holiday traditions from other cultures. The Christmas tree, the hiding of treats in footwear (many cultures use shoes instead of stockings), and of course, everyone’s favorite…Santa Claus.

But the best Christmas tradition that we didn’t steal is the German Christmas Market.

These outdoor markets brim with crafts and goodies. Vendors nestle inside quaint booths topped with exquisite manger or winter scenes. They have old-fashioned carousels, ice skating rinks, gigantic nutcrackers, and lights and ornaments galore.

So what gives?

 

Who doesn’t need a heart-shaped gingerbread (lebkuchen) cookie to hang around her neck?

Or a chocolate-drizzled dessert that doubles as an awesome snowball (schneeball)?

We had no problem stealing the Oktoberfest idea and running with it. So why not Christmas Markets? After all, eating cookies and chocolate is way more fun than brats and sauerkraut.

It’s too cold, you say?

The Germans have that all figured out. While the kids get hyped up on sugar, the grownups stay toasty warm by drinking mugs of hot spiced wine known as glühwein (pronounced gluevine).

Eating cookies and drinking wine in the streets? Sign me up!

This year, whatever your favorite holiday traditions may be, I hope you enjoy them and have a very Merry Christmas (Frohe Weihnachten!)

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Life

I’m a Lousy Blogger

My friend called the other day. “Aurora,” she said. “Something’s wrong. I think I dropped off your blog subscription. I haven’t seen any posts since the 4th of July.”

I gulped and spouted something about listservs and ISPs and HTML.

My friend wasn’t fooled. “You haven’t written any more posts, have you?”

I stammered about how I’d been immersed in my latest assignment, diligently writing about my newest adventure (which, by the way, is set in Patagonia), and how hard I’d been…

My friend cut me off. “Aurora,” she said. “Admit it. You’re a lousy blogger.”

So, here I am, admitting it: I’m a lousy blogger!

Now that we have that out of the way, I have two important pieces of news to share. First, See Before You Die: Patagonia will be released early next year. Second, I received a new assignment: 3 years in Europe!

It will take some time for my stories to catch up to all of this, but as a reader of my heretofore lousy blog, you will see sneak peaks of adventures to come. Stay tuned for live updates from Europe. I’m no Rick Steves, but I’m betting you’re not the shirt-buttoned-to-the-top kind of traveler either.

So here’s the inside scoop for the six loyal readers of my blog: I am now based in Germany! Who can resist a land where beer is cheaper than bottled water and the people are comfortable using words like fahrt and badgasse in everyday conversation?

What’s my New Years resolution? To not be a lousy blogger! (What’s yours??)

Auf Wiedersehen

German lessons start right away. This is pronounced owf veederzayhen and it means Goodbye!

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Life

8 Travel Lessons from Dad – A Father’s Day Tribute

This Father’s Day, as a special tribute to my Dad, I would like to share some of the valuable lessons I’ve learned from him over the years about traveling:

1.  Don’t bring so much flippin’ crap. You don’t need it.

2.  Never ask anyone for directions, just see where the road takes you.

3.  Forget all those new fangled gadgets. Nothing is better than a real map.

4.  If you don’t have any luck at this fishing hole, move on to the next one.

5.  Roll down the windows and feel the wind on your face. Who cares if your hair gets messed up?

6.  Don’t tell your mother you ate chocolate ice cream for dinner.

7.  From the zillions of times my dad and I watched Star Wars together: There is no try, only do.

8.  And from his Vietnam days: If no one is shooting at you, the situation can’t be that bad.


 

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Culture

Do You Have A Stretched Ego?

I have bad news. If you live in the northern hemisphere, where most of the earth’s land mass is located, you probably have a stretched ego.

Now, don’t be offended. It’s not really your fault. If you went to school prior to about 1993, you probably saw a map hanging on the classroom wall that looked like something this:

Mercator Map (www.odtmaps.com)

Because the earth is round like a ball, when map makers convert the earth into a flat map, they have to distort things to make it fill up a rectangle. To see how hard this is to do, try taking the peel off an orange in one piece and stretching it out into a rectangle.

The further north you go on some maps – like the Mercator map above – the more stretched out the earth becomes. This makes Greenland, North America, Europe, and Asia look ginormous, while the continents in the southern hemisphere look relatively tiny. Some people say this gives us northeners a stretched ego.

Fortunately, the cure is simple. We can use maps that shrink us north-types back down to size, like this one:

To discover more about seeing the world in a less distorted way, check out this site.


 

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Life

6 Sinful Summer Photo Tips

Now that summer’s finally here, people will be dragging out their cameras and dusting them off in the hopes of capturing some fun summer photos.

Unfortunately, the results of these warm-weather photo shoots are often a little disappointing.

The reason for these less-than-exciting pictures is that most photographers seem to think they must follow a set of rules when taking photos. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

This summer, drastically improve your photos by tossing the rules aside and commiting the following 6 photo-taking sins:

1.  Don’t center your subject. Framing a shot is not like aiming a gun. You don’t need to center your sites on the target. Imagine a set of crosshairs on the photo. Now instead of using the crosshairs to center your subject, use them to place your subject on either side (or above or below) the center of the picture. The baby on the bench in an example.

2.  Knock it off kilter. Instead of taking the typical “photo-taking stance” with feet shoulder-with apart, etc, etc, try a radically different position. Get down on the ground, stand on a chair, or tilt your camera at a diagonal to find an interesting new perspective.

3.  Stop shooting scenics. People flip through scenic pictures faster than light can travel into your camera lens. To make your scenic shots more exciting, put something or someone in the foreground. This adds depth to a photo and creates human interest.

4.  Banish the pose. Avoid those fake-cheese smiles. Photograph both children and adults while they are actively exploring. Shots like this create more personalized memories than staged “portraits.”

5.  Shun sunny days. Our natural response to sun-shiny days is to grab the camera and head outside. Yet full sun can create unsightly shadows and squinty eyes. Overcast days offer a far softer and more flattering light for taking pictures.

6.  Chop off the head. We’ve all made fun of photos where freakishly-tall Uncle Al’s head has been cut off, but sometimes “chopping” off part of the photo can be a good thing. Picture-takers tend to include too much stuff in their photos. Zooming in closer and creating a tighter shot can create a less-cluttered photo. Children’s faces are wonderful subjects – as long as you have the eyes, you will get a great shot.

 

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