Meine Welt...

 

 

 

 

The ultimate break for fish fans.

I know the basics about Iceland – spectacular volcanoes, Bjork, the glaciers, Reykjavik’s famous nightlife and the good-looking locals. I’m just not sure what the nation is like, how the people live and what makes them tick. Turns out, the answer is fish.

Fish are everywhere – on posters, T-shirts, on all the coins in my pockets and, of course, every menu and breakfast buffet. It’s understandable for a country that at one point owed half of its export income to herring fishing alone, and the connection to fish and fishing goes deep into this nation’s culture.

It’s not surprising when you see the landscape of the north. It’s stunning but harsh, and fish were at one point the only reliable local source of food and income as the lack of decent topsoil makes growing crops tough here.

The sights, smells and sounds are like nothing else on the planet, with geysers and boiling mud pools spewing steam into the air and yellow residue all over an alien landscape. I’m staring out at a horizon of cracked lava stone jutting up through green pastures. It’s lunchtime and to the right of me is a glass wall with cows and milking equipment on the other side.

My host strikes up a conversation with the owner of The Cowshed (a working farm, café and guesthouse that has got the Slow Food concept right) on how they may be related through a mutual great-grandfather.

The café is an amazing concept in a land with so little farming. Impressively, it provides customers with meals of almost exclusively locally sourced food, including butter, cheese and skyr – an Icelandic cheese similar to strained yogurt. Guests are invited to enjoy the scenery while sipping a latté, made with milk from the cow of your choice, which you can milk yourself. It really would be impossible to get ingredients any fresher.

The café’s owner has brought the menu for me to enjoy. It consists of local smoked trout, wild salmon gravlax, their own smoked, raw Icelandic lamb and geyser-steamed bread.

We’re almost finished when the owner comes to ask how everything was. The tender, subtly flavoured smoked lamb is my favourite. When asked what kind of smoke has been used, she nods at the remaining pieces on the plate and says she’ll tell me when I’m finished. With the last piece polished off on a corner of geyser bread she says, with the subtlest hint of a wry smile, “cow dung”.

She goes on to explain how the dung is dried for well over a year and, of course, burned, producing a bacteria-free and very well-rounded smoke, using an environmentally-friendly technique. The revelation doesn’t actually cause much shock. It makes sense in a country of rich, clean, geothermal energy (so abundant there are serious discussions about running a line all the way to Scotland to sell the surplus) that respect for the environment is a part of the culture. It’s not just respect for Icelanders’ natural resources that you can sense; it’s a respect for most things, especially other people.

Moving on, it turns out I’m just in time for the Dalvik annual fish festival. Here is where the present-day connection between fish and community shines, or maybe shimmers.

The festival started three days ago with a neighbourhood fish-soup swap. Participating homes tie balloons (taking the place of jack-o’-lanterns) to the mailbox at the end of their drives, indicating that anyone is welcome to join their table for a bowl of their fish soup.

The main event is at the port and centre of the small fishing village. Here, the entire population and several thousand visitors celebrate all things fish each year. Exhibits displaying the local species, examples of them on ice and multiple food stands abound and gourmet restaurants and local producers show off their piscine prowess to locals and visitors. The mayor – a confident and attractive woman with long blond hair – explains that the official opening of the festival consists of the village people and their guests linking arms side-by-side and listening to a speech on friendship.

It all comes back to fish, in the end. While herring fishing wrapped up in the late 1960s due to overfishing by more than one Nordic country, almost all the approximately 320,000 inhabitants of Iceland have their traditions and their family history anchored in the sea. It’s a shared heritage that is literally bound in blood, with most Icelanders able to trace their families back to the same handful of settlers in the late ninth century.

I don’t know if it’s the size of the population, their common roots or their intimate connection to their stark environment, but the result is a comfortable and proud people without bravado or pretension. They are just Icelanders. They are happy to be Icelanders, and happy to share their stories, their homes and their tables without any agenda.

The next morning I am champing at the bit for the day’s fishing trip. I get up at the more reasonable time of 8am, avoiding a 4am start and spoiling my chance of gaining an authentic Icelandic fisherman’s experience from the off. I skip my breakfast of geyser-bread and pickled herring as penance and head to the coast.

A charming sea-savvy man named Freyr Antonsson greets our group at his fishing boat around 9am and we are off. The day begins with whale watching, with a few Minke sightings and a couple of pods of white-sided dolphins.

Then Antonsson collects and prepares the fishing lines. When asked what our chances are of catching anything today, he replies in a soft, friendly tone, “about one hundred percent.” The engines slow and we halt in the middle of the fjord.

I’m amazed when Antonsson demonstrates to me how the line is dropped into the water, hands me the rod and informs me a fish has already taken the lure. He’s not kidding, and as soon as I haul in the first fish and examine it for size and species, another one is on the hook. An hour later and we have caught more than enough to feed everyone on the tour, and then some.

Filleting the fish on the boat shows how plentiful supplies are, as large portions of fillet are discarded because “they have bones”. Returning to port, fish filleted, foiled, and brushed with garlic and herb butters, our catch is slapped onto a barbecue, pre-heated and awaiting our arrival. Within seven minutes the fish (caught not half an hour ago) are pleasing our palates with delicate and gorgeously fresh flavours.

Having experienced the plenitude of the Icelandic fish stocks at first hand, it’s easy to understand why few people believed the authorities in the 1960s when they said the herring were being depleted. It just didn’t seem possible. Now that it has had 40 years to bounce back, aided by environmentally conscious line-catching techniques, fishing in Iceland can be a much more sustainable industry.

Northern fjords, fish festivals and lunar landscapes behind me, the twin-propeller plane casts its shadow on miniature fishing boats hauling in trout, salmon, cod, haddock and herring for the next days’ meals. The flight to Reykjavik from Akureyri, the main city in the north, takes us over miles of uninhabited land, flat, glacier-scraped mountains and snow-filled, long-extinct craters.

Compared with the tiny population of the north, Reykjavik is teeming with life. Boasting two-thirds of Iceland’s inhabitants, Greater Reykjavik has a 200,000-strong population. This is Iceland’s cultural heart. It’s home to many of the nation’s writers, artists, architects and musicians.

Reykjavik’s nightlife is also world-famous, with foreign party-goers trying to keep up with locals until 10am. I pass on this and make my way to a few of Reykjavik’s culinary favourites.

Iceland has a flair for the quirky and unique and its restaurants rarely disappoint. The Sjavarkjallarinn seafood cellar restaurant on Aoalstraeti serves eccentric flavour combinations like salted cod in a papaya sauce with figs and polenta or whale sashimi (a non-endangered, abundant species) with spiced sesame oil and scallions. Dishes are served on large, amorphous ceramic plates, presented in bite-sized portions to be eaten with chopsticks as a shared experience.

Icelandic cuisine is unique and can be subtle or equally intense in its style and flavourings but I wouldn’t recommend the fermented shark. It is buried to get rid of toxic levels of ammonia but tastes like someone is removing nail varnish under your nose as you eat. My only regret? I never got a chance to try puffin.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/travel-outdoors/iceland-uncovered-1.825428

还记得那天的谈话。。。。

也许是你真的太不了解我，都把我想成什么了。。。。。真是被你气死！

你知道吗，我从来都不觉得漂亮是一种资本，肤发受之于父母，只要是父母给的，不管怎样都是好的，不管怎样都得感谢自己的父母给与自己的一切！但天生丽质并不能代表一切，相反，我认为这最多只能占百分之十，如果用以评价一个人的话。。。。。看一个人，最重要的是其内在，而不是肤浅的外表，外表并不代表什么，它只是一个躯壳而已，一个象征而已，再好看的外表都有一个期限，也许只是一瞬间，亦或更长一点，可那毕竟是短暂的。。。。而人格魅力却是持久而耐人寻味的。有人说美女就像一个美丽而易碎的花瓶，随着岁月的流逝，容颜也会沧桑，终究一天都会失去美丽的面庞，而一颗心，一种富有人格魅力的思想却是越活越美丽，越活越年轻，越看越精彩。不是吗？而我所追求的也是那种最真实的，靠自己不断积蓄的内在美！为什么西方讲求有意思的人，而中国讲求大家闺秀，我想这也是人格魅力的一种体现吧！

你很渺小，你知道嗎？你是多麼的愚蠢，你是那麼的白癡。明知要高瞻遠矚，卻不肯費點力向上爬一爬；明知自己可以做到，卻心存疑慮躊躊躇躇。你就像一只被關在瓶蓋下的小螞蟻，理不清思緒下不了決定的在裡面打轉。急速的行走未能使你走出瓶蓋，急促的呼吸未能使你得到足夠的氧氣，你明知你可以頂開瓶蓋看到一個新的世界，但你卻懶到更是吝嗇到不愿去找那唯有的縫隙，你竟是那么的安於現狀甚至出乎你的預料。如此了解自己卻如此不把真實的自己放在眼裡。是的，現在的你就是如此的渺小，小到你自己都可以忽視自己。。。。小到寧可在蓋裡轉到累死都不愿費那么一點點力，想辦法逃生。。。。。無知的傢伙。。。。。

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Fernando Torres finally lived up to his billing as one of the world's great strikers Sunday by scoring to give Spain a 1-0 win over Germany and the European Championship title.

Torres, who had been overshadowed by teammate David Villa all tournament, scored in the 33rd minute of the final to down the three-time European champions and earn his nation's first major title in 44 years.

 

Touching a sliding pass from Xavi Hernandez past Philipp Lahm, Torres ran past his marker on the opposite side, collected the ball and lifted a shot over sliding goalkeeper Jens Lehmann and into the far corner.

Euro Final by the Numbers

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If there was ever any doubt the economy has moved to center stage in the Presidential campaign, this was the week that dispelled it. Coming on the heels of the Bear Stearns (BSC) rescue and deepening worries about the state of the housing and financial markets, all three contenders in the race, Senators Hillary Clinton [D-N.Y.], John McCain [R-Ariz.], and Barack Obama [D-Ill.] hit the hustings to give major speeches outlining their views on what needs to be done to revive the economy.

"It's getting to the point where I can't keep up anymore," says Daniel Clifton, head of Washington research for investment firm Strategas Research.

Indeed, in the rhetorical equivalent of one-upsmanship, Clinton gave not one but two major addresses. After a speech she gave on Mar. 24 in Philadelphia on the housing crisis, Obama was in lower New York on Mar. 27, at the Cooper Union, to offer his views on how to improve the broad regulatory structure governing the financial markets and stem the problems in the housing markets. And just a few hours later, Clinton was back again, this time outlining her plan to bolster training and education programs for workers who lose their jobs.

In between, McCain also laid out his views on the crisis hitting housing and the financial markets.

"The No. 1 Issue"

"They are all trying to have an 'I feel your pain' moment with voters, although they're going about it in somewhat different ways," says Ann Mathias, the head of Washington research for the Stanford Group, an investment adviser.

The shift into high gear on the economy should come as little surprise: With each passing day, pollsters say, voters are becoming increasingly worried. "First and foremost, the economy is the No. 1 issue now," says Democratic pollster Peter Hart. And he argues it's no longer just a long-term or vague worry. Not only does the majority of the country believe the U.S. will go into a recession, if it is not there already, about 55% of those surveyed in March say the slowing economy has already affected them in a major way. Sixty-five percent say they have been greatly affected by rising gasoline and home heating oil prices, for instance, and 33% say the economy is having an impact on their retirement savings. "The problems are impacting real people's lives in real ways," says Hart.

Clinton's Plan to Help the Unemployed

Those issues clearly play to Clinton's strengths with struggling working- and middle-class voters -- a key reason she has upped the ante with a handful of proposals aimed at showing her leadership and command of policy detail. Analysts say such an emphasis could help increase her lead in the critical Apr. 22 Pennsylvania primary. If successful, that message could provide some momentum going into Indiana, North Carolina, and the other remaining states. While that alone wouldn't be enough to win her the delegates needed to beat Obama, Clinton is clearly counting on it to help in her fight to win superdelegates to back her campaign.

"For Hillary the economic issue is obviously a godsend," says Hart. "It gives her a way of relating to the voters she's done best with, a way of talking about their concrete problems."

That aim was on full display in her Mar. 27 speech. Having devoted her earlier talk to the housing crisis, this time Clinton used a broad speech on the economy to introduce new proposals to spend $10 billion over five years on improving education and training programs, particularly for displaced workers. Clinton pledged to expand current government retraining programs, which are now targeted only to those who lose their jobs due to trade, to be available to all workers, regardless of how they ended up unemployed.

Every dislocated worker would be eligible for basic training, job search benefits, and other assistance. Clinton also promised to expand the existing Pell Grant program, which provides federal financial aid to students, to workers who enroll in education or training programs to bolster their skills after losing their jobs.

"We may be competing in a new global economy, but our policies to equip American workers for the 21st century are stuck back in the 20th century," Clinton told an audience in Raleigh, N.C.

Obama Favors a Stricter Regulatory Environment

For Obama, the challenge was clear: Step up and offer voters a more detailed view of how he'd handle the current problems. "Hillary trumped him on the economy in recent days," says Clifton. "He has to regain the upper hand and say, 'Here's my solution.'"

Much of Obama's emphasis was on the measures needed to shore up the regulatory structure surrounding financial markets. In his New York speech, Obama called for new standards for transparency and improved oversight of the financial sector to prevent the sort of crisis now roiling the markets. He argued that the deregulatory emphasis of the last decade has left the economy vulnerable to bubbles and special interests that have shaped the economy for their own benefit.

"Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices," Obama said. "We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth."

To reduce the risks that have been created as a result, Obama argued a new regulatory structure is needed that would include strengthening the liquidity and capital requirements for financial institutions, streamlining the overlapping regulatory agencies that oversee them, and increasing government oversight of the risks many institutions are taking.

To deal with the housing crisis, Obama renewed his support for legislation currently before Congress that would provide government backing for new mortgages if lenders agree to reduce the principal value to what the homes are currently worth. Nearly 9% of today's homes carry mortgages that are worth more than the house's market value, which raises fears that many homeowners will walk away from their mortgages. Obama also proposed a $10 billion Foreclosure Prevention Fund that would help homeowners who are victims of fraud refinance their homes. He called for a modification of bankruptcy laws to help victims of predatory lending remain in their homes and for a significant extension of unemployment insurance.

McCain Dismisses Expanded Role for Government

For all their efforts to differentiate themselves as the heated Democratic race continues, however, the two Democrats have strikingly similar approaches to the financial crisis. Moreover, pollster Hart says Clinton's recent heavy emphasis on lunch-bucket economics does not show signs of bolstering her polling numbers.

The real difference that is becoming increasingly obvious, says Mathias, is between the two Democratic candidates on one side, and McCain, the Bush Administration, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the other. In his Mar. 25 speech, McCain argued against an expansive role for the government in responding to the crisis. And in a statement on Mar. 27, he added he believed "the role of the government is to help the truly needy, prevent systemic economic risk, and enact reforms that prevent the kind of crisis we are currently experiencing from ever happening again."

McCain derided the Democrats' proposals as little more than multibillion-dollar bailouts for big banks and speculators. "There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face," he said.

Copyright 2008 BusinessWeek

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