Time Capsule: A Letter to the Future Owners of Camp Doug
Dear Future Owners of Camp Doug,If you are reading this it means you are either remodeling the kitchen (and thus gutting it to the studs) or you are tearing down the house (or a tornado finally took it out) and you found this letter in the pile of rubble. Either way, a warm hello from […]
Is World Peace Possible?
This past summer I left my home in Donnellson, Iowa and traveled all the way around the world, baking American pie in 10 countries as a way to promote cultural tolerance. I returned with the intention of writing a book about my experience. I already had the title: World Piece, spelled p-i-e-c-e. But it is […]
World Piece: The Homecoming…But Where is Home?
Goodbye, Frankfurt! My very last stop on my World Piece itinerary was Frankfurt, Germany. This was where my flight would take off for Los Angeles. LA was the place where I started, the place where three months earlier I said a tearful goodbye to my parents as they waved to me from the other side […]
World Piece: Budapest (And a few other thoughts)
It is ironic that I was traveling around the world with the goal of spreading peace, love, comfort and community building through pie, yet in my wake so many troubling events unfolded. A month after I was in Bangkok, Thailand, a bomb exploded at the Erawan Shrine, killing 20 people and injuring 125. It detonated […]
World Piece: Aachen, Germany
Two months ago today I was in Aachen, Germany. Two months ago today was the six-year anniversary of Marcus’s death. I was in the town of his cousin, Claudia, staying in her home with her husband Edgar and 2 of their 3 kids. I borrowed Claudia’s bicycle and spent August 19 alone, riding on the […]
World Piece: Germany’s Black Forest
I had had talks with several friends over the course of my travels about Marcus, about how I was going to teach a pie class in the Black Forest village of Alpirsbach where we got married (in 2003). I was going to stay at the same hotel where we had our reception and spent our […]
World Piece: Two Weeks in Switzerland
I left off with my blogging (and again, my apologies for not keeping up with it!) in Switzerland, where I arrived on July 29. I landed in the country’s capital of Bern, depleted from a debilitating stomach bug I picked up somewhere between Lebanon and Greece, and stayed with my lifelong friend Uschi Kamer for […]
World Piece Recap — 2/3 of the way through
I’m two-thirds of the way through my 3-month World Piece journey and I finally have a moment to update my blog. I had every intention of posting here regularly but the trip got away from me and there was never enough time, energy or Internet connections. I have, however, managed to post on my Facebook […]
The Start of Leg 2: Surreal Times in Sydney, Australia
What the earth looks like betweenAuckland and Sydney. I flew into Sydney, Australia from Auckland on my birthday, June 14. When I got off the plane and came out of customs there was a camera crew waiting with my friend Kate standing behind them. When Kate told me she was going to try to get […]
First Pie Class of the World Piece Journey: New Zealand
My first pie class of the World Piece tour was in Napier, New Zealand. Brett Zimmerman (aka Mr. Z), a friend of Louise Watts (my host Grace’s daughter), is a cooking teacher at a local college. (College in NZ is high school in US terms.) Mr. Z offered use of his classroom — 6 large […]