I’m spending a week or so in Slovenia’s Soča valley, one of Europe’s best spots for whitewater kayaking.
Before sunrise
This morning, we had a lovely fun run on the Koritnica river this morning. Good water level at 126cm / 7m3.
Checking out the first rapid
This is such a beautiful creek! It starts out with a rapid. At the end, you want to catch the eddy on the left, get your bearings, and then head into the gorge.
Off into the gorge
There’s two waves in there, and the second one flipped me over today. Annoyingly, I somehow slipped out of the boat before I got much of a chance to roll, so I ended up swimming. Thanks to my mates who caught the boat!
The rest of the run was two wonderful hours just jumping from one eddy to the next. With the clear turquoise water and the lush green forest, this is one of my favorite places on earth.
Content warning: Blatant consumerism. This is a post about espresso machines. Nobody NEEDS an espresso machine in their home. These things are an expensive luxury, and a superfluous indulgence. There are better ways to spend your money, for example by giving it to people who have less than you. The decision to buy one isn’t easy to reconcile with the desire for a better world where resources are more fairly distributed. Seen that way, buying this sort of thing is a moral failing, which I’m guilty of.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in his middle age, whether or not he is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of an espresso machine.
I like espresso. Indeed, I like espresso so much that over time, I’ve learned to distinguish good espresso from bad. In 2007 I picked up a Pavoni Europiccola on eBay. It’s perhaps the simplest possible portafilter machine out there. Here’s a short video of James Bond using one to make an amazingly bad espresso.
It’s not just a design classic. It also taught me a lot, especially about all the things that can go wrong when making espresso: machine not hot enough; machine too hot; wrong amount of water; wrong amount of pressure; and so forth. Through all the wrestling, I really grew to like my Europiccola. Plural, actually: I ended up buying a couple more, and using them for parts, ending up with something like Theseus’ espresso machine.
Longing for comfort
Still, after about 15 years of pulling on the Europiccola’s lever, I felt it was time for an upgrade. As one does, I spent a lot of time online, looking for the right thing. That involved deciding what I actually wanted and needed.
Did it need to be large? No. I’m currently more or less the only person in the house who drinks coffee. It should be able to serve a few guests without breaking a sweat; but I certainly don’t need a café-level device. Quite to the contrary: our kitchen is pretty small. Space is at a premium, and I can’t be blocking a metre of counter space with an oversized machine that doubles as a space heater.
Of course, I wanted something that makes a good espresso, as well as milk foam. How much control do I really want, though? Some machines will ask you to adjust the water temperature, the pressure coming from the pump, and other parameters.
I decided that I didn’t want that. I want to drink coffee, not write a dissertation about it. This let me cross a whole bunch of machines off the list.
Enter the Zuriga
Finally, I stumbled on the Zuriga E2-S. It’s developed and built by a startup in Switzerland who seem to be doing generally solid work, and it matched what I wanted: a small machine without too many bells and whistles.
Yes, it was (and is) comparatively expensive. On the other hand, we’re talking about home espresso machines — a product category that is the very embodiment of pointless luxury. If you’ve decided to drop a stack of bills on one, there’s not much use in pinching pennies. If you want to save money, just don’t buy an espresso machine. You’ll be fine, I promise.
Aaaanyway. At the time, Zuriga would build your machine only after you’d ordered it, and paid for it. I did that, and after about two months, my machine arrived by mail. The unboxing experience was actually fun: The packaging was entirely plastic-free. They’ve designed the box such that you can use it to ship the machine back to them for maintenance. Smart!
The machine itself is built like a rock. Most of the body is formed from a single thick sheet of stainless steel. When the apocalypse comes, I’ll be using this for cover as I shelter from the bullets of roving bandits, until they’ve come close enough for me to bash their heads in with my trusty ThinkPad.
The water tank is made of glass, not plastic. The tank cover is just a (nice!) piece of wood. It’s all very simple, and fits together very well.
Unlike a lot of machines in the price range, this one comes with pretty much all the accessories you’d want: A little jug for frothing milk, a tamper, small and large sieve, single and double runouts for the coffee, as well as a blind sieve (needed for cleaning).
The manual is a thing of beauty: Not only is it actually useful, it’s also designed by someone who knows about layout and typography. I frankly didn’t expect to come across a manual like this in the 21st century anymore.
Let’s have some espresso!
After the first-run ceremony described in the manual, it turned out that making espresso on the Zuriga really is as simple as I hoped it would be.
The machine takes just two minutes to heat up. There’s no need to leave it on all the time, so it won’t consume much power. In fact, after 15 minutes it goes to sleep.
It’s a single-circuit design. But in practice, this isn’t a disadvantage. To make milk foam, you just flip out the nozzle. The LEDs on the machine go from white to orange, letting you know that the steam mechanism is engaged. It takes about 20 seconds to heat up — just enough time to get the milk from the fridge, pour it in the jug, and wipe your counter a little. And then it’s ready to blast your milk. Once you’re done, just flip the nozzle back. The Zuriga will immediately be ready to make more coffee.
Every 4-8 weeks, it’s a good idea to clean the brewing group. This is no trouble at all. Just take away all the loose parts, flip the machine on its head, and open a single Allen head screw. Wash everything, and put it back. Taking out the seal can be a bit fiddly, but otherwise the process couldn’t be easier. This is what good design does.
The way the machine is designed, it should last a long time. There are no moving parts except the pump. There’s nothing that’s pressed into anything else, where you’d have mechanical wear and tear. Everything is either a fixed part of the machine, or is held in place by gravity alone.
…but my fiddles!
There’s nothing to adjust here, nothing to tweak. The Zuriga will always deliver water at 93°C and 15 bars of pressure.
The parameters you can influence are outside the machine: How finely you grind the coffee; how much you tamp it; for how long you let the water run.
If you want to have more control over every detail, the Zuriga isn’t the device for you. Buy something else.
That’s probably not enough for a dedicated coffee freak. But for me, it’s plenty. I can get pretty much everything I want out of that machine. The Zuriga is a paragon of Swiss stolidity. It does this one thing, exceedingly well.
Compared to the Europiccola with its volatile temper, the Zuriga is much less brutal with the coffee’s aromas, and I’ve ended up using ligher roasts for the most part.
So, in sum
After two years of daily use, I’m still in love with the Zuriga. There’s a few things one might quibble with, though none of them are a dealbreaker for me:
Yeah, it’s expensive for what it does. See above. Also, you might discover that your grinder isn’t as good as you thought it was, and you need a better one.
There’s a little basin for water that the machine expels as it works. This is made of plastic, and feels a little cheap. It’s invisible during normal operation though.
The cover over the tank is just held in place by gravity. It also has the job of pushing the silicon water hose down into the tank. This works, but is considerably less refined than the overall design. On the plus side, it’s definitely not more complicated than it needs to be.
I’m really happy with this machine. It makes very good coffee. It’s nice to look at, and it’s fun to use. It doesn’t use much space or energy. It causes no trouble. It’s a reliably happy part of my day.
Note that according to the website, the company currently only sells to Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. I’m not sure how to get one if you’re not in one of those countries, but maybe talk to them?
One of the people I follow on the Fedi shared a food pic of a starter they’d had in a vegan restaurant in Lisbon. I was hungry, so I decided to reverse engineer the thing. As it happened, I had almost all required ingredients around.
This is a starter that comes with strong flavours. It should be brightly acid, salty, spicy and umami. It should combine crunchy and soft textures.
No worries though, this one’s really easy to prepare, provided you’re minimally competent at deep-frying.
Use rice paper for a vegan recipe (and check your kimchi for fish sauce, if you didn´t make it yourself. Which you should, cause it’s easy and fun.)
(JFC, I suck as a recipe writer. Let’s skip the poetry, and head straight for the prose.)
Stuff you need
Rice paper in pieces, or shrimp chips (what are these called in English?). You’ll want 2-3 per person.
Oil for frying
a small carrot
a stalk of celery
a couple of bell peppers (red and green. In a pinch, just one will do)
spring onions
a lemon
kimchi
How to prepare
Heat the oil, and deep-fry the rice paper or shrimp chips
Julienne the veggies, and dump them all into one small bowl.
Squeeze the lemon, and pour the juice over the veggies. Stir.
Cut the spring onion into fine diagonal slices – it’s more of a decoration here.
Chop the kimchi.
From now on, timing matters: don’t start putting anything on the chips / rice paper until everything else is ready, and your hungry people are seated at the table. You don’t want things to go soggy.
Put some chopped kimchi on the rice paper / shrimp chips
Ladle some julienned veggies on top
Put a couple of spring onion slices on it
Repeat for the rest of the chips / rice paper pieces.
You’re done! Now, serve the whole thing quickly.
Once you’ve practiced this a couple of times, you’ll probably want to adjust the flavour by seasoning the veggie julienne, with whatever sauces / spices you think make sense.
Let me start with a confession. I’m a lazy dresser, even by German standards. Ideally, I don’t need to spend much (or any) time thinking about what to wear. And I’m certainly not very aware of trends.1
I’m also trying to buy fewer clothes, and wear them for longer. When I heard about dry selvage jeans, I dismissed the idea at first. It sounded so… fashionable:
Dry denim, also referred to as “raw” denim or unwashed denim, refers to a pair of untreated denim, which means they have not been washed or bleached. So instead of creating a worn-in look at the laundry facility you break in these jeans yourself. It’s a long term commitment and the outcome will depend on how much you wear them. With time you’ll get a personal pair of jeans with whiskers, honeycombs and fading created by your lifestyle.
Eventually, the concept grew on me. Just one pair of jeans, that I wear always, for everything? No more thinking about what to put on? Sign me up.
Through a friend I hit upon Nudie Jeans. They’re a Swedish company that’s been going for a while, and they seem ok. Also, free lifetime repairs! In the end, I bought a pair of Grim Tims.
Kinda what they looked like when new, though it’s not the exact model. Pic: Nudie
This is what they looked like when new:
A grim start
The first few weeks (or was it months?) were grim indeed. The jeans were quite tight, and made some movements hard. But I did like them. They looked great, and something about their austerity spoke to me.
I wore them on most days for a year, no washing. (It’s not as gross as it sounds, trust me.) The trousers became softer, smoother. And eventually they took on the shape of my body.
Jeans at two years
The color gets worn away in some places more than others, and the material takes on a life of its own. I really love the result.
Wear and repair
When the jeans started developing tears and holes, I took them to the Nudie shop in Munich. (They don’t have many physical shops, I’m just lucky.) You can clearly see where I carry my phone.
The guy in the shop listened to my story about how hard the first few months were. He said: “Yeah, I can imagine. That’s one of the first models, before we started adding a little stretch to the material.” Oh ok… Then he repaired them for free, within a few days. Amazing!
By now this pair is probably beyond repair. But I’ve come to love this approach to clothing. So I’ll be buying a new pair soon. And I’ll hand in the old one, because Nudie uses those as repair materials, and gives me a 20% discount on the new ones. Nice!
(You may have gathered that I’m not exactly fashion influencer material, and the company isn’t paying me anything for this post. They hardly know I exist.)
I don’t mean to bash people who are into fashion. That’s a great passion to have. I wish I, and many others, were more like these awesome guys. ↩︎
When December comes in Germany, mulled wine is everywhere. Every town has its Christmas market, and at each of them, you´ll find several stalls that sell the cheap red plonk with a few spices and lots of sugar.
But there´s a cup of mulled wine that is especially dear to my heart. Let me tell you about it.
More than twenty years ago, living in Madrid on a student exchange program, I went to visit my friend Sebastian in Bilbao. Together, we went to spend a weekend in the Basque mountains.
Spain’s northern cost is gloriously rugged and earthy. It’s a world away from the cheap resorts full of drunk tourists on the Mediterranean coastline, and even farther from the endless expanses of plastic in the country’s south-east, where immigrants from the poorest parts of the planet work in terrible condition to supply Europe with cheap tomatoes and cucumbers.
Sebastian’s flatmates, proud Basques, knew their region very well, and supplied us with helpful hints. We set off by bus on mid-Friday, riding through a torrential downpour towards the natural park of Gorbeia. We entered the park, found a shelter to spend the night in, and roasted chicken legs in the fireplace.
Setting off on Saturday morning, we figured we had taken too much food. So we ditched some canned beans. Someone else had left a carton of red wine, and we took that in return on our hike up the mountain.
It was early May. The weather in the Biscay region changes rapidly. A sunny morning quickly became overcast, and worse. By the time we reached Gorbeia´s summit, there was a snowstorm. The wind was blowing so hard that the crucifix at the top of the mountain had horizontal icicles on it.
We clearly weren´t equipped for this sort of thing. We were cold and wet. We hadn´t even brought enough water, and it wasn´t clear when we would find any. We packed our bottles full of snow, in the hope that it would melt later, giving us a minimal supply.
Fortunately, the weather improved a bit when we hiked down the other side of the mountain. But there was a new worry. Sebastian´s flatmate had told us about a cave where we could spend the night. No need to bring a tent! He had given us a fairly good description, and pointed at our map. But as we were standing there, trousers streaked with mud, we realized that finding the cave was going to be difficult.
The forest was no doubt beautiful. Yet in our condition – tired, wet, cold, thirsty -, it started looking a tiny bit inhospitable. We searched and roamed, trying to find the cave that would give us shelter for the night. It was somewhere around here, but where?
Suddenly, Sebastian spotted a horse in the forest. To all appearances, it was just roaming free. Do they keep semi-wild horses in the Basque country? We didn’t know. We decided to take a closer look, and slowly walked towards the animal. When we were close enough, we realized that it was standing right in front of our cave!
Relieved, and with many good words for the horse (which left of its own accord), we occupied the cave and made ourselves at home. In the late afternoon of a long day, the fire we built was a wonderful source of warmth and comfort. The appearance of the horse gave the whole evening a magical air, as if we had been guided by a unicorn. We put a couple tins of ravioli on the fire, and when they were hot, we found them a meal fit for a king.
Then we recalled the carton of red wine. We poured it into one of the tins. We found an orange in our backpacks. We squeezed its juice into the wine, and threw some peel in for good measure. Then the tin went back onto the fire.
And that cup of mulled wine was the most magical I’ve ever tasted.
The night was quiet. In the morning, we were awoken by a hiker who climbed up to the cave and greeted us with “Egun on” – “good morning” in Basque. We packed our bags, and hiked the rest of the way out of the national park.
It´s been over two decades. In the meantime, Sebastian and I have grown from boys into men. We´ve found partners, had kids, built lives. We still go on mountain adventures together, and each one is magical in its own way. There’s a mutual trust that comes from hiking through a snowstorm and finding what is to all intents and purposes a unicorn.
The mulled wine at the Christmas markets? That always falls short of what my heart expects.
