The Llama Whisperer

For some time now, I’ve wanted a couple of llamas. Two, to be exact. I have names for them already: Dolly and Lo. Llama Lo means “Why not?” in Hebrew. And Dolly, well, if you don’t get why I want to name my llama Dolly, then I don’t even know you. I figure the llamas …


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Holiday on Ice

Now that we’re done roaming for a while, we’re back to our normal, sleeply life. Here are the Saturday highlights: 1. Ice skating for a few hours in the middle of the day. The ice is perfect, the best it’s been in years. The last two winters we had only a day or two of …


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It means “snowshoe” in Italian

We got back from Italy last night. It took us about an hour to unload the car and find places to stow to the olives and biscotti and other treats we’d bought at a supermarket near the Austrian border. Even the drive home was amazing. We drove through Sudtirol, crossing the Dolomites. This part of …


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Bathing at Dawn

If a local tells you that you must get up at half past five to drive for an hour so you can have a bath, your best course of action is to believe her. Our friend Sabine said we needed to be there at daybreak and repressing our skepticism, we believed her. It was in …


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The Tuscan Outback

We spent our first night in Tuscany at the home of an old friend of a friend, Hannes, and his wife, Margit. They have a midsized farm where they rent out holidaycottages and they grow olives for oil. Shortly after we arrived we were in the barn helping Hannes clean the leaves out of that …


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Medieval fantasy: Steyr

Last year when Christian and Sabine tried to take us on a little walking tour of their nearby city, Steyr, it poured with rain. Instead of sightseeing, we ate cookies and read books to their little girls and frittered away the afternoon in a gemuetlich (cozy) way. This year we did that too, but in …


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