Approaching mid-August already, Franzi spend another week in Madison and Alex worked based out of New York. After flying out to Madison Monday evening and working throughout the week, Franzi’s project team had a team meeting in Utah. Thus, she flew out to Utah Thursday early morning and enjoyed a bit of Utah sun while working by the pool. In the evening, the team had a lovely dinner by the hotel.
Friday kicked-off with a content session for account development. After lunch, there were two activities to choose from – wine tasting and an ATV adventure. Of course, Franzi went for the ATV adventure which was actually a blast with Wasatch Excursions. We drove through beautiful landscapes, enjoyed lovely mountain views and could really test out the ATVs in heavy terrain.
After dusting off, the day finished with a nice dinner and a Utah club visit. Fun fact: Utah has rather restrictive alcohol laws – you are not allowed to hold two drinks at the same time. Also, when buying a bottle in the club it cannot be left on the table openly but has to be locked away! Very odd, but definitely an experience.
Saturday was a travel day from Salt Lake City back to New York, 4.5-hour flight & 2-hour time difference make a long way home.
During the adventure in Utah, Alex finally received his Christmas present from Franzi – a bag to mount to the motorcycle. Alex cooperated with a Belgium-based designer to design the perfect solution for his Scrambler. After quite some work on it after it arrived to make sure it fits perfectly, Alex is now very happy with the solution!
Once Franzi was back from Utah, she quickly refreshed, and we were off to Brooklyn. We visited Oleg & Karol in their apartment who invited us for a cooking session – we made Pierogi from scratch, which were a delight. We made some innovative fillings (props to Oleg) – (1) potatoes, sauerkraut, dill, onions and mushrooms; (2) sweet potatoes, chickpeas, sage, chili and garlic; (3) red beet, goat cheese, spinach, walnuts and spring onions. We mixed, cut and spiced over white wine and good conversations until we could enjoy the final product.
Since Wednesday we had a visitor from Germany in town – one of Franzi’s best friends Svenja who she has known since she was three years old. Svenja came over for tea on Sunday morning. After some long overdue catching up, the three of us ventured out for brunch at Mud spot.
Afterwards, Franzi and Svenja took the subway over to Dumbo where they walked around Mainstreet and the Pebble Beach promenade towards the famous Jane’s Carousel. After strolling around for a bit and capturing some snapshots of the skyline, they walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn bridge and enjoyed the wind and views. Once back on the other side of the East river, Svenja and Franzi enjoyed a refreshing drink in Little Italy at Gelso & Grand and had some more girl-time.
After the break they walked back to the East village through Soho and across the Broadway. On the way, they stopped at Strand bookstore to find an antique book for Svenja’s boyfriend. Afterwards we all took a break and some time to just hang out at our place before we closed the day off with an Indian dinner at Malai Marke and some good Naan bread.
