Birthday girl

Yesterday was Saori's birthday. It's odd to think that our birthdays are a month apart, but we will be celebrating mine in very different conditions.

It was a fun day- we started the day with late breakfast of waffles and scrambled eggs at Metzgerei, a trendy cafe on the corner. We sat outside on picnic tables under the big tree at the edge of the square and watched all the other non-working people go about their days.

After breakfast, we swung by the apartment and Saori was able to call her grandma, who shares a birthday with her, and they had a really great long chat. She commended my patience for waiting ten years to marry Saori, which I'm happy to hear but I think every other family member on both sides of our families has more of the "what took so fucking long?!" mentality. But I'm happy to hear she is doing well- she was joking with Saori that she was disappointed her scores in cognizance have been so high: it means she only goes to a clinic once a week, which means she's bored more often.

Two weeks to the day before we leave Stuttgart, we took an open top sightseeing tour on one of those double decker busses. We wore our cheap paper fedoras and cameras, tourists all the way. It was nice. I smuggled on a beer, and we took a leisurely drive over an hour and a half, hitting the highlights of the city. I still learned a few new facts about Stuttgart, and was amused to see that while "Japanese" was not on the language dial for the recorded tour, "Schwäbisch" was. (local German dialect, comparable to the standard German like British English differs from Deep South). I tuned into that channel for awhile. I may even miss it- it was the language of my office and the local villagers.

After the tour, we took a short stroll for a sandwich in the city center, and watched the final preparations for Sommerfest, another giant festival filling the greenspaces of the city center. For the next four days, there will be music, stands selling food, tents for dining, and tons of booths for a wide array of wine, beer, and cocktails. It is something we will miss in the US.

We went back home after stopping for some gelato, and then I disappeared back to the city center to buy Saori a birthday cake. Breuningers is a local, very large department store- sort of Macy's and Sak's 5th Avenue together, and in addition to its jewellery shops, plant shops, news stand, cafes, champagne bar, etc. They also have a confiserie, which is a chocolate and pastry shop. They sell the best macarons in town and also cakes and torts. The macarons are really expensive but the cakes are relatively cheap given the freshness, quality of ingredients, presentation, etc. I bought Saori a kind of fruit tart cake- glazed fresh sliced local kiwi, pineapple, strawberry, fig, pear, and berry on a vanilla cream filled shortbread crust. Absolutely hit the spot on a muggy summer night.

After much consideration, I booked a table at an Italian restaurant not far from where we live for dinner. Neither of us will miss German food much, but with a large local Italian population and access to great fresh ingredients, the Italian food here is the closest you can get (literally) to Italy without actually being there. Our reserved table was a small collapsible wooden one with two small chairs on the sidewalk, packed with all the other diners. The restaurant was hopping, even on a midweek night. I'm glad we made reservations. The interior was nearly empty- without air conditioning, everyone wants to eat outside.

Dinner was great- antipasta plate with tomatoes, fresh bread, buffalo milk mozzarella, olives, cured meats, etc. Saori and I both got pasta- Saori had a linguine with small mushrooms in a mushroom cream sauce and I got some homemade spiral pasta with cherry tomatoes and spicy sausage. Dinner took awhile- we were seated at 8, and didn't get the main until 9:15, but it's just how dinner life is here. We took a leisurely stroll back home, had some very thin slices of the cake/torte, and ended in bed watching Kirk, Spock, and McCoy save the galaxy from a giant space amoeba. It was a good day.