young, ambitious...and happy OR the sauerkraut incident

Life is sweet
While cooking dinner tonight, Anne and I were talking about the different kinds of crisis we are all exposed between the age of 23 and 35. She told me about a girl she knows from University, this girl is 23 and is incredibly ambitious and has such self-esteem, that she assures never to have suffered a rebound; she has never failed, and will achieve all her goals in life.

My favourite sauerkraut recipe
I love sauerkraut. I am the only Mexican I know who enjoys eating it. My favourite way of eating it is cooking it slowly with whole cumin seeds and juniper berry (the stuff they make gin with – in Spanish it’s “enebro” in German “Wacholderbeere”), then I add some sour cream and eat it with fried dough.

Regional ingredients are important
I buy my groceries mainly at a farmer’s market. By doing it, I can be sure that the vegetables and fruits were harvested ripe and they are season products. Many fruits and vegetables are harvested when still green and they mature while being transported in trucks. The farmer, from whom I buy my food, had fresh sauerkraut among her products, without hesitating, I bought 600 grams.

Life cannot always be sweet
Early today, when I came back from the office, I only had something in mind: Sauerkraut with fried dough. I cooked my sauerkraut slowly, as I always do. I fried the dough and chatted with Anne. When it was ready, I served a huge portion on my plate and sat on the table only to realise the sauerkraut tasted awful. That farmer messed up what could have been the best moment of the day. I was starving, so I ate the sauerkraut anyway, but I added massive amounts of Dijon mustard to make it edible. Right now, I am stuffed and upset. I hope my digestion starts soon so I can eat chocolate and get rid of the taste on my mouth.

Young, ambitious...and happy
I just realised I will never be like that 23-year old girl Anne told me. I will never achieve all goals in my life, surely not as long as a portion of sauerkraut can ruin my day.

we are not alcoholics, we are only in our thirties!

Yesterday I got a call from my very friend Mai. She asked me how was I doing, how was work in the office, about my weekend and when my turn to ask questions came, I heard her new born baby on the background.

Yesterday, her child was only 72 hours old, and the baby sounded so wonderful! I can’t remember hearing a child as young as Mai’s son. When my brother was born I was five and very attached to my mom, so attached that my parents feared I could suffer a jealousy attack. When my mom and my new-born brother came home from the hospital, my father sent me to my cousin’s place to spend the night there. I only saw Tomás on the second or third night he was home.

After hanging up with Mai, I nearly stared to sob. I don’t know why, but I was extremely happy to know that the “strange thing” inside Mai’s body, came out and started living, eating, breathing…This was the first time I heard someone at the beginning of life.

Today was not a cool day, at work my computer wasn’t working properly, so I had to read documents while my PC was being updated (the IT guys did several updated in the course of the afternoon). I came home tired as hell wanting to see an episode of twin peaks, just to discover that I finished the first season and had no episodes left, Hannes has the second season at home; I hope I get more DVDs tomorrow.

Just some minutes ago, my flatmate came home and saw me with a glass of Grüner Veltliner; and the “Groovie”, as they call “Grüner Veltliner” in NY, is, together with Chardonnay, the wine I usually drink when I write my blog.

I have the slight feeling that Anne (I am allowed to use my flatmate’s real name on my blog) thinks I am an alcoholic. This Monday Anne, Verena, Hannes and I dine together. Before starting to eat we had Prosecco, then red wine, and after dinner we had gin sours…we, means all but Anne. When preparing the gins, I felt like clarifying something to Anne, so I told her that we are not alcoholics, we are only on our thirties.

I am having a last sip…before finishing this entry...oh yeah!

14 years in Innsbruck

This week I am celebrating 14 years in Austria. For the statistic freaks: I have lived 45% of my life in Austria. For the fact freaks: I had my first real girlfriend here and I ate tomato for the first time in Innsbruck. And in those 14 years I have had 29 flat mates! Here the list:

1st Flat all people from Chihuahua!
1996: Else (cool), Arturo (cool), Holguer (weird), Jesús (...), Germán (cool)
Summer 1997: Laura (...), Alejandra (ex-girlfriend, no-comment), Billy (my best
friend back then)
Winter 1997: Carla (my cool cousin), Tita (my very cool sister), Emilia (cool),
Kenneth (my best friend for many years), Alejandro (cool) and Daniel (weird, but
very cool!)

2nd Flat (1997-1999):
Christoph and Uschi from Salzburg, and a German girl...I forgot her name, they were
all cool

3rd Flat (1999):
I lived on my own some months and then with my former girlfriend (not cool at all!)

4th Flat (the actual one)
1999: Tomás (my very cool brother) and two weird guys from South-Tyrol...and not cool
2000: Christian (cool, still one of my best friends) and Petra (weird, I am happy I
never saw her since then)
2001: Wolfgang (cool, I still see him every now and then) and Hannes (my very cool
sidekick)
2002-2004: Gimm (cool) and Hannes
2007: Mihow (cool snowboarder), Hannes moved out before Mihow moved in.
2008: Felicia (cool and funny Italian girl!)
2009-2010: Marina (cool, the French touch the flat needed!)
2010: A German girl (cool), I don't know her so well, so I won't publish her name ;-)

By the way, last weekend was great. Kathrin and Luisa came along, followed by Christian, Sonja and their son Jonathan. On Sunday, I went to the mountain with
Conny and Kathrin (both have children as well). Hannes finally came back from Scandinavia, we went for a pizza on Sunday and later for some drinks at a street party, oh yeah!

Actually this week won’t be so bad…

This afternoon, on my way home, Lindsey called me and invited me to the cinema. We saw „Marie and Max“, a lovely stop-motion movie about two lonely people (a young girl and a getting-old man) who maintain a very long letter-relationship between a small town in Australia and New York. The film is both, naïve and dark, funny and melancholic. Kind of the way I’ve been feeling these last days…

When I feel weird, like now, I call ex-girlfriends. After walking Lindsey home, I called Carol, but she was in a hurry (over the years, she’s has mastered the art of being late) and had to hang up after some seconds. Then I took a look to the phone list on my mobile and one of the first names I saw was Alauda. She is a wonderful Spanish girl I met in a bar in Innsbruck many years ago. I can say that she was to me what the synthesiser was for the dance floor in the 70’s. I didn’t hesitate to call her.

My uncontrollable desire for flirting made me ask her if she had a boyfriend, and her answer was the predictable and disappointing “yes”. After chatting for a while, she hung up and instantly I scored her name off my ex-girlfriend’s list. Yes, I have an ex-girlfriends-I-should-call-and-ask-for-a-revival-list.

It’s sad to see the small amount of names left in this virtual list – I say virtual because the list exists only on my head.

Seconds after scratching Alauda’s name, Kathrin phoned me and asked me something about a word she needed to translate (she is a translator) and that was it, the day was saved! I suddenly remembered that Kathrin and Luisa (that curly Tyrolean princess I made the piñata for) are coming this Saturday for lunch.

And tomorrow won’t be bad at all: We are rehearsing for the hip-hop gig. Yes, I sometimes do music and even perform. The concert will be on October 2nd, if you live in Innsbruck that night, the PMK will be the place to be!

Actually this week won’t be so bad…and by the way, I love spending the night writing for the blog, having a drink (in this case prosecco-aperol) and hearing to nice music, right now Blondie’s sound is rocking my speakers!!!

P.S. The pick is Matilda, a girl printed on the box of a delicious Danish chocolate-milk brand.

In October, I kind of get anxious to get nostalgic, but this year everything was way too fast

Today, the weather forecasts exterminated my last hope of a smooth summer ending. Yes, today is the last day of summer according to meteorologist…and also the day my little sister flew back to Mexico, my mother already left Innsbruck yesterday.

This June was the coldest in Austria for over three decades, July was the hottest since the 1960’s, and this august was the worst I’ve experienced (with daily temperatures under 20°C).

This summer’s highlights are few, but great: In July we picked up chanterells, I travelled to Barcelona to meet my and I stayed with old, good friends. Two weeks later, my mom and I picked up my sister at Munich’s airport and drove to Berlin, where we stayed from Saturday to Tuesday with temperatures around 30°C…sweet!

I see autumn as a catharsis. In spring, bodies and hormones explode, during summer I sleep less, I am happier, I meet many people and go at least twice a week to the theatre square and drink wine with Hannes, Isabella, Verena, Lisa…and this year even my mom.

But in autumn everything becomes slower, the days turn shorter and the raindrops are no longer warm.

My mom and my sister just left, Hannes is in Norway and Verena is leaving to Italy with her boyfriend this Saturday.

Next week will be hard. I will come back from work and I won’t dine with 66% of my family and my two sidekicks will be only reachable via SMS.

Normally, around October, I kind of get anxious to get nostalgic, but this year everything was way too fast…I am still not prepared…this fucking summer was way too short :-(

el blog de oscar, the sort of marie claire for men

Bert, a friend of mine, told me that my blog was a sort of “marie claire” for men. That was an interesting remark. I once read in a Nick Hornby book that woman’s magazines have been publishing the same content on each issue for decades: you will always find a diet, tips about fashion, an article on health/beauty and another one about sex.

By taking a look to my blog entries, I can surely recognize many of those themes.

Eating and drinking are essential parts of my blog entries; I simply cannot imagine my blog without recipes or experiences about the best thing on earth: food!

Health and beauty have also been issues in my blog. My anti-ageing body lotion is one example; my problem zones are also well-known by the blog readers.

Fashion is something I do care, but I have never written about it. However, I change my profile picture almost each time I write an entry. Gimm and Lea, two friends, told me years ago that I had a fixation for ugliness. I agree, and many of my profile pics have shown me from my ugliest angle. Take as an example the pale guy on the beach ;-)

The last theme of a woman’s magazine my blog should cover in order to be a woman’s magazine for men is sex. I am afraid I will never reveal funny experiences with the opposite sex (there are only funny things), but I was once close to do so. When I was in Nicaragua, Sarah convinced me not to write about those “not existing activities”. I am glad I didn’t, however, I think that my non-existing sex life is implicit in many of my entries; just recall the “emotional chastity”, a friend of mine loved those two words put together and used them as a message on her skype account.

Thanks for reading el blog de oscar germes, the sort of marie claire for men...even if you are are a she :-)

I wasn't the palest person in Sitges, but surely the whitest man

Long time no blog…I will start with a mushroom experience two weeks ago: Alethia, a girl from Mexico; Verena from Innsbruck, an English guy who was raised in Kenya and myself went to a forest near Innsbruck to gather chantarels, a yellow mushroom which grows through all Europe; well at least I know it grows in Cataluña, Germany, Slovakia and Lithuania.

The four of us got together three kilos of mushrooms (it is allowed to take up to one kilo per person). It was enough to cook for some 10 people, and we did it. We prepared a chantarel stew, in German called Eierschwammerlgulasch. The main ingredients are chantarels, white wine and crème fraîche (Verena used less cream to maintain the mushrooms taste, but I prefer it creamier). We also prepared Knödels (bread dumplings/albondigas). Those are peach-sized balls made out of dried bread cubes, eggs, onions, garlic and loads of fresh parsley.

The dinner was fantastic: we were ten people in my backyard. As starters we had grilled cherry tomatoes with fresh-grated parmesan, green beans with balsamic and chilli and grilled spring onions with lemon juice.

That was on Sunday; on Thursday I flew to Barcelona and stayed there until Tuesday. It was my first time since January 2007, when I was there with Hannes and Verena (after that trip Verena and I broke up). The last days in Barcelona were great; I stayed with my good old friends Sara and Carol and also met David twice. In Barcelona I also met my mom, who is now chilling in Innsbruck for some weeks.

Since my mom was in Barcelona only once in 1970, she wanted to see the city’s tourist spots (those I wanted to avoid). Carol and I came along with her so see Gracia, el Borne, el Raval, el Barri Gotic, we were also in Montjuïc, Parc Güell and the Barceloneta.

On Sunday we spent the afternoon in Sitges, were I swam using my underwear (I forgot my legendary swim trunks in Innsbruck); that day I was proudly the whitest man on the beach, but not the whitest person, there was an unbeatable girl, I think she was English, on her early 20's and was whiter than milk.