A friend of a friend says the wasp will lay its eggs in the tarantula so the kiddies have something to eat when they hatch.  Creepy … and awesome.

And here’s a moving picture!:

After taking a bunch of pictures and the one video I turned to leave, then remembered I had Batman in my pocket.  Hmmmm…

Carefully, I knelt down to place Batman at a safe distance:

But the wasp was climbing a slight incline and suddenly lost its footing, tumbling down to Batman’s exact level.  It changed its course which happened to lead RIGHT ACROSS BATMAN:

(No superheroes were harmed in the making of this post.  The tarantula, however, is very much dead.)

Update:  Actually it’s not dead.  A friend pointed out that this is a Tarantula Hawk Wasp and that the tarantula is just paralyzed.  Apparently it eventually gets eaten alive… yikes.  (Thanks Fosphor for the info!)

I’ve dragged my feet on getting this last day of our Valdivia trip posted – a lot has been going on and now I’m in another country – but now I’m going to wrap it up:

For our third day, we set out to do everything the weather had stopped us from doing previously.  After breakfast, we headed downtown, hitched the No. 20 to Niebla and then sat back and drank in the beautiful scenery along the river banks.

We weren’t quite sure where to get off the bus because the area was spotted with small homes, boats and fields but nothing really looked like the make up of a town.  So when we came to an intersection where both roads were paved, we thanked the driver, hopped off the bus and began walking in an agreed-upon direction.  We were looking for a) a ferry to take us to Corral, b) a ferry to take us to Isla Mancera, or c) a castle.  When we found a fort instead, we started there.

As always, my sister quickly made a new friend:

If only he knew her true nature:

Naturally, Batman came along for the trip:

We finally found the ferry to Isla Mancera, but by this time were tired of wandering around, so we started to make our way back to the bus stop.  Along the way, another one of my sister’s fans showed up.

We took the bus back to the Kuntzmann brewery so we could “rest our legs” for a bit.  While I had a piece of coconut pie, my sister and her bf (… and Batman) ordered the much anticipated beer tower, La Columna:

After waddling out of the cervezeria, we took the bus back to town and spent the remainder of our trip wandering around Valdivia, upsetting some of the locals along the way:

before making one last trip to the grocery store (for dinner food) where I found this:

The German influence runs deep here.

And of course, we had to do a photo op with Batman:

Then we pretty much headed straight for the Kuntzmann brewery.  We had to walk downtown and across the river to the university where we caught the No. 20 bus heading to Niebla.  The brewery isn’t too far outside of  Valdivia – less than 10 minutes by bus – so we arrived a little early.

So we took some time to take pictures while waiting for the restaurant to open.

Just before they opened the doors, a bus pulled up and unloaded about 30 Chilean senior citizens who were there for a tour.  (I guess they like to start their drinking early too.)  We were finally let inside and after meandering around, sneaking some samples, finding the museum closed for the day and watching old women buy beer -labeled souvenirs, we were finally seated.  Of course the food prices were through the roof, so my sister and her man ordered their beer and I just got some cheese empanadas.

We sat and talked, discussing what to do with our day when it started to rain outside.  With our decision made for us, we caught the bus returning to Valdivia and after picking up some fish for dinner from the market and laughing at the local beggars, headed back to the hostel.

We spent most of the afternoon in the hostel since it was cold and rainy outside.  Made a little excursion downtown to attempt to catch some of the weekend’s cultural celebration, but only lasted about 15 minutes before my sister and her guy decided to head back.  I stayed to take some pictures:

I wandered around downtown in the rain then ended up in a local chocolate shop and what a wonderful smell!  Rows and cases and shelves of truffles and cakes.  I selected a semi-random sampling of the truffles (“I’ll take two of those and two of those and two of those. Oh those look good – two of those, too.”) without really knowing what was inside them and took them to my travel buddies back at the hostel.

After finishing our dessert, I got started on our dinner for the evening while my sister’s boyfriend watched Chile’s final World Cup qualifying match with two other guys staying in the hostel.

The night’s main dish – fish tacos with a radish salsa – was adopted from this recipe.  Since I didn’t have access to all the ingredients or all the necessary tools, I just did what I could and came out with this:

I’ve made these a few times and I don’t even bother making the salsa verde anymore. I just cook the fish with oil, cumin, salt and pepper and make the radish salad with radishes, onions, cilantro, oil and lime or lemon juice.  It’s a lot faster and even allows the flavor of the radishes to come out more.  (I’d never expect to like radishes – especially in tacos – but trust me on this one. Give it a try.  Of all the people who have tasted these, almost everyone has commented with surprise at how much they enjoy the presence of the radishes.)  We had some extras, so we gave them to the two other guys watching the game.

Now, normally during a Chilean game, we’d be in my sister’s apartment which overlooks Plaza Italia and Plaza Baquedano in Santiago.  Before every previous game, we were warned not to walk through those plazas on the nights of a game because they get crowded with crazed futbol fans and people have died in the mayhem.  We never got to see this infamous frenzy having witnessed one game tied and another one lost.  But as luck would have it, the first time I am finally out of Santiago, Chile wins and we miss the legendary pandemonium.

We watched it on TV though.  They showed flags flying everywhere, fans screaming, horns honking, confetti flying, people hanging from the plaza statues and out of the over-looking windows.  It was quite a sight.

We got a little taste of the chaos in Valdivia too.  For the next four hours or so following the game, cars were honking their horns throughout the town.  Since there was no sleep to be had, we played Jenga (I forget the name in Spanish. It’s “Torre” something – “Tower” something) and, thankfully, soon after I lost, the two guys from earlier came in to invite us to go dancing.  It was pretty nasty out, but the town was alive from the team’s win and we found a great time at a nearby salsa bar despite the rain and cold.  Thanks guys!

According to the website, you can take the blue line from the Tobalaba station and get off at the Quilín station then walk east on Quilín for about 30 minutes.  For two relatively healthy girls on a beautiful day, we figured it’d be no problem, especially when we emerged from the station onto the parking lot of a gigantic outdoor mall.  With all the color and concrete, we expected to find subdivisions and sidewalks, moms with strollers and dogs with owners, but after we circumvented the huge home improvement portion of the mall, the development tapered off quickly.

Within two blocks of the mall the concrete sidewalk was swapped out from under us for a smooth, wide, level dirt path and within several blocks of that for a rocky path, then a bouldered, uneven, elevated path then a small landslide at which point we decided we’d need to call a cab for our return trip (if it’s difficult to navigate sober, it’ll probably be much worse when you’ve been drinking).

We arrived at the vineyard and met our tour guide (who had come in on his sick day to give us our tour since the other English speaking guide couldn’t make it), then headed off with tasting glasses in hand.

We had booked the earliest tour (which meant yes, we would be drinking before noon) and ended up having the guide to ourselves.  His English was very good but he had a funny habit of saying “It’s complicated” whenever he meant to describe a difficult, delicate, vague or proprietary process.  At first, the recurring response threw us since it didn’t quite fit our questions, but my sister and I caught onto the pattern at about the same time and got a little giggle out of every “Eets COMpleecated” thereafter.

He first took us to see the old, gigantic fermenting casks, which are no longer in use (the active equipment is all stainless steel):

We found out on the tour that according to the recorded date of it’s establishment it’s one of the oldest wineries in Chile, however, according to our guide, their vineyards are the oldest in the area.  Furthermore, it’s still a family owned operation (going on six generations or so).

He told us that in the late 80′s they started to notice that the increasing pollution from Santiago was altering the taste of the grapes, so they moved most of their vineyards and operations a little further out to an area called Buín where they process all their mainstream products.  Only two wines, the special blend (Finis Terrae) and the extra-special super-expensive blend (Lota) are still grown and processed in the original, pollution-blanketed winery.  Go figure.

He showed us the room with the stainless steel barrels where the grapes for Finis Terrae and Lota are hand selected (by old women with nimble fingers), partially pressed and fermented.  I asked what guides the grape selection process both at the time of harvest and just prior to pressing (“How do they know which grapes are the best?”), but the only answer he could give was, “It’s complicated.”  Ah. Of course.

We were then led to their room of relics which formerly served as the bottling room.  Prior to bottling, the wine had to be hand pumped through a filter (the red cylinder on the right):

and though originally everything was bottled by hand, eventually they bought a 6-slot bottling machine (which helped prevent the problems they were having with missing wine and tipsy bottling employees):

After the mini-museum tour, we headed to the cellar:

The foundation and lower 3 feet (or so) of the walls are of stone while the rest of the walls and the domes are of brick.  Everything was mortared together, interestingly enough, with egg whites.  Naturally, my immediate question was “What did they do with all of the yolks?”  He replied that there’s a saying that’s something along the lines of “cooking like a nun” which means cooking with egg yolks, so I guess they just donated the yolks to the convents. Or perhaps the whites were donated by the nuns?  Who knows?  It’s complicated.

At the end of the cellar pictured above, there is another, gated room which houses the family’s private collection.  Normally we would be able to peek in on the collection through the gates, but last week a visiting Brazilian decided to chuck a rock in between the bars and in doing so broke two of the family’s bottles.  Our guide didn’t tell us what they were valued at, but he did say that both bottles were of an older French reserve.  The family must have been pretty livid because these normally laidback employers threatened that they would fire any guide who let their tourists near the gates.  Why the Brazilian was urged to throw a rock at a practically priceless, incredibly fragile collection, I don’t know.  Just because Brazilians are beautiful and speak Portuguese, they think they can get away with everything… and sometimes they do! It’s complicated.

While in the cellar, we sampled one of their varietal wines – Gris – which starts as a Cabernet Sauvignon but is separated from the skins after 40 minutes into fermentation.  It comes out a copper color, but is technically a Rosé. The first sip was a vividly interesting taste, completely different than what I’m used to, and the rest of glass was delicious so later we picked up two bottles (at about $4 a bottle).  We drank one yesterday evening during a homemade fish tacos night (more to come on the tacos in the Valdivia post) and look forward to enjoying the next one soon (but not before classes – it’s complicated).

We also sampled a (you guessed it) complex Cabernet Sauvignon but couldn’t afford to bring it home.  Meanwhile, our guide had offered to take a picture of us.  We stood for it, then he asked if we wanted a black and white photo as well murmuring something about how the job sometime gets boring and how he likes to mix it up occasionally.  It’s complicated.

Having had more wine than food in the first half of our day (breakfast was just a bowl of oatmeal around 8 in the morning), we staggered a bit while leaving the vineyard a little after noon.

Lucikly, my sister realized we were less than a block from a major street and a bus route that would take us directly back to where we needed to be in Santiago, saving us from having to retrace our steps or catch a cab to the metro stop.  She’s a smart one!

Without the benefit of a scale for “before” and “after” measurements we can’t be sure, but our clothes seemed to hint that they didn’t appreciate us trying to smuggle in a few extra kilos apiece.  So we decided to get some exercise with a little sightseeing.

With one of the most beautiful days I’ve seen since my arrival in Chile laid out for us, my sister, her pololo (boyfriend) and I set out for Los Cementarios.  We walked to El Cementerio General and spent the whole afternoon wandering around.  The place seems endless!  We walked for hours and only found one boundary other than the one we crossed upon entry.  According to Wikipedia, it’s over 85 hectares of markers, monuments and mausoleums and is home to all but two of Chile’s former presidents.

Obviously, most of the names have no significance to us, but the sheer magnitude was astounding.  Here’s my photo tour:

For those of you who know my sister, you’re aware of her animal magnetism.  Creatures of all types are inexplicably drawn to her.  At first we thought it was because she likes to (somewhat good-naturedly) torment them; our pets seemed to love being harassed by her and would return again and again for more attention.  Our dogs would love it when she pinched or wrestled with them, our cats let her dust the floors with their backs and allowed her to wrap them in towel-slings and swing them around in grand arcs.  In fact, our cockatiel was the only warm-blooded pet that she didn’t physically pick on because he had a tendency to sporadically bite anyone who happened to offer their flesh (particularly fingers and ears).  But he still delighted in her sarcastic comments and ironic mimicry, and may have, in fact loved her and bonded more strongly with her because of them.

But over the past several years, we noticed that animals who had never before met her are drawn to her in the same manner.  For example, recently while my mom, dad, sister, her boyfriend and I were travelling in Florida, we visited a park in Tarpon Springs.  While walking to the picnic benches, a dog approached.  He passed my mom and the boyfriend without a second glance, then laid down and rolled belly-up at my sister’s feet begging, specifically, for her attention.

On another leg of the trip, we pulled into a reststop.  We had the side door of the minivan open while my mom was in the restrooms.  I was in the front seat, my sister was in the back seat and the boyfriend was standing outside the van.  Someone’s young pet boxer got loose, ran across the parking lot, around the van, past the boyfriend and jumped through the open door and into my sister’s lap, uncontainably delighted to see, specifically, her.*

In the cemetery, it happened again and this time we got photographic evidence:

Animal enters the picture.

He fakes to the right.

But goes left, like we all knew he would.

The sister is annoyed that we called it.

Wherever she goes...

...he's not far behind.

She's ignoring him, but he is content to be near her.

In light of this last picture, maybe we should revisit one of the previous ones:

She's ignoring him, but he is content to be near her.

(Too much?)

——————

*If you have any stories about my sister interacting with animals that you’d like to share, send them my way and I’ll happily post them.  Mom? Dad? Hank? I know you’ve got some.

So, being the poor wanderers that we are, my sister, her boyfriend and I did without for nearly a month.  Almost a month without peanut butter.  Excepting those who hate peanut butter or have peanut allergies, please take a moment to imagine a month without peanut butter.  (To the allergy sufferers, I have my own autoimmune disorder, so I feel your pain.  If you miss peanut butter, just skip this post and read this instead.)

During this long, peanut-butterless month, we talked a lot about how we missed PB&J sandwiches, PB cookies, PB and bananas, PB and apples, PB and chocolate – I may have left something out, but you can be sure we discussed it.  Then when we finally became desperate enough to spend $4 on a jar of peanut butter, we found, tucked away on a shelf in a grocery store near my sister’s apartment, this:

a Safeway Brand jar o’ creamy peanut butter (or pasta de maní or mantequilla de maní, depending on who you’re speaking Castillano with).  There are other peanut butters available – I even found a Chinese brand in a Chinese food store – but the unique thing about this one is that the price was mislabeled.  While the shelf tag read 1.700 (1,700 Chilean Pesos), the product rang up as 1.000!  $2 peanut butter! Needless to say, we returned to the store several times over the next few days and bought them out of all of their largely unwanted imported peanut butter.  (We weren’t afraid the locals would buy them, but we were afraid other Americans might catch on.)

Unfortunately, they recently rearranged the store and we’ve not seen our trusty Safeway jars since, but we received a tip from a close friend saying we can find them elsewhere. So here’s hoping, especially since I used half a jar to make a small batch of delicious, warm & creamy, flour-free peanut butter cookies tonight:

The recipe is as follows and came directly from this page.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

One cup creamy peanut butter
One cup white sugar
One teaspoon baking powder
One egg

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Cream the peanut butter and sugar in a bowl. (As much as I love my KitchenAid, I have found that this is a hand-stirring job). Beat in the baking powder. Add the egg. Mix until it is all well combined.

The dough will be sticky, so be prepared to get your hands messy. Roll some dough into a ball. (How big? That depends on you. I have found, however, that the smaller these cookies are, the better they hold together. Eat two instead of one!) Roll the ball into white sugar. Line a baking sheet, covered in parchment paper, with sugary balls of dough.

Bake in the oven for about ten minutes. You will know the cookies are done when they feel coherent, but still a little soft. Take the tray out of the oven and let the cookies rest for at least five minutes. Afterwards, carefully transfer them to a cooling rack. After ten minutes or so, they will have hardened and be glistening with sugar.

Eat them.

Makes ten to twelve cookies.

As all the ovens (los hornos) we’ve encountered here are gas ovens without temperature settings or readings, I used the toaster-oven-of-limited-capacity in my sister’s apartment, baking 6 cookies at a time.

We had plans to share the cookies with my sister’s housemates, but didn’t really get around to it. They probably wouldn’t have liked them anyway… right?  (Previously, I witnessed a girl take then request a piece of our (relatively) expensive dark chocolate – which we customarily dip in peanut butter, of course – and fervently refuse to try it à notre mode.  When in Rome, stealing chocolate, do as.  Everyone knows this.)  Nevertheless, I have a plan to further corrupt foreign lands with our contaminating Western Ways.

They’re somewhat fond of Nutella crepes here, and although Nutella runs $4-5 per jar, we may have to take a hit on the rest of our meals for a bit and experiment with Peanut Butter/Nutella Cookies.  I’d start with a large Nutella-to-peanut-butter ratio to hook them, then gradually phase out the Nutella and increase the relative amount of peanut butter.  Yes, the good old bait and switch. We’ll have Chileans craving peanut butter (and stores competitvely stocking and pricing it) in no time.  Bwahahahahaaa!  Or as they say here: Bwajajajajaaa!

Bring on the revolution.

Last time we were there, we had noticed something interesting on top of her fridge and vowed to convince Batman to come with us on our next visit for a photo shoot.

We headed over to her place just after work, and while we began preparations for making sushi and chicken lettuce wraps, my sister and I took these photos of Batman and his new-found avestruz (Castillano (or Spanish) for “ostrich”):

Oh, and you have to promise not to tell the guys we let Batman join us for Girls’ Night. (They might feel left out.)

]]> http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/2009/09/the-taming-of-the-struz/feed/ 0 http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/2009/09/que-un-mundo-maravi-lloso/ http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/2009/09/que-un-mundo-maravi-lloso/#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:04:49 +0000 admin http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/?p=638 So for my next Spanish lesson my teacher asked me to translate one of my favorite songs into Spanish.  I considered translating La Vie En Rose, Volare or Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema) since they’re from other Latin-based languages, (figuring that grammar would already be in place and I’d just have to change the words) but she specified that it should be an Engligh song, so since I already had La Vie En Rose stuck in my head I went with another Louis Armstrong song:  What a Wonderful World.

My Spanish skills are pretty basic, so if you speak Spanish, feel free to submit corrections, suggestions or comments (I always welcome free help on my homework!).  Here are the original lyrics I used:

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces of people going by

I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do

They’re really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow

They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know

And I think to myself what a wonderful world

Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

and my translation:

Veo arboles de verdes, rosas rojas támbien

Las veo abrirse por mi y ti

Y pienso para mí que un mundo maravilloso

Veo cielos de azules y nubes de blancos

Días brillantes y bienaventurados, noches oscuros y sagrados

Y pienso para mí que un mundo maravilloso

Los colores de un arco iris tan bonitos en el cielo

Támbien están en las caras de la gente quien está pasando

Veo amigos quien están se dando las manos dicendo “¿como estás?”

Realmente están diciendo “te amo”.

Oigo bebés llorar, les observo crecer

Aprenederán mucho mas que nunca sabré

Y pienso para mí que un mundo maravilloso.

Sí pienso para mí que un mundo maravilloso.

I took a stab at the “friends shaking hands” part, but I’m pretty sure it’s not right and will take any advice on the matter.

But what a fun exercise!  It’s especially entertaining when you attempt to sing the translation.  I sang it for my sister and her boyfriend, trying to hold notes long enough to fit the Spanish to the meter of the English lyrics and desperately seeking any potential rhymes along the way.  The “bright blessed days, dark sacred nights” line come out extra lengthy (22 syllables in Spanish as opposed to the original eight in English). I was laughing so hard I couldn’t make it through a single verse without crying a little.  And we all got the giggles from the title line, which almost makes a nice couplet:

Y pienso para mí / que un mundo maravi … lloso.

Now I just need to translate another song to get this one out of my head.

——————————–

9/10/09 Update:  A friend helped me improve upon some of the translations:

“I see them bloom for me and you” should be <<Las veo florecer por mi y por ti>>, and

“They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know” should be <<Aprenderán mucho mas de lo que yo nunca sabre>>.

Finally, regarding the big one: “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world,” should be <<Y pienso para mi mismo, que mundo tan maravilloso>> which, unfortunately, renders my near-couplet moot.  Nevertheless, thank you Jano for your help!

…which happens to be falling down:

The scary thing is that while writing this post, I went to resize one of the pictures and found some text in the edit box.  I have absolutely NO idea where it came from and no idea what it means, but I think it is Latin.  Just to be safe, whatever you do don’t read this aloud:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer velit pretium euismod ipsum enim. Mi cursus at a mollis senectus id arcu gravida quis urna. Sed et felis id tempus Morbi mauris tincidunt enim In mauris. Pede eu risus velit libero natoque enim lorem adipiscing ipsum consequat. In malesuada et sociis tincidunt tempus pellentesque cursus convallis ipsum Suspendisse. Risus In ac quis ut Nunc convallis laoreet ante Suspendisse Nam. Amet amet urna condimentum Vestibulum sem at Curabitur lorem et cursus. Sodales tortor fermentum leo dui habitant Nunc Sed Vestibulum. Ut lorem In penatibus libero id ipsum sagittis nec elit Sed. Condimentum eget Vivamus vel consectetuer lorem molestie turpis amet tellus id. Condimentum vel ridiculus Fusce sed pede Nam nunc sodales eros tempor. Sit lacus magna dictumst Curabitur fringilla auctor id vitae wisi facilisi. Fermentum eget turpis felis velit leo Nunc Proin orci molestie Praesent.  Curabitur tellus scelerisque suscipit ut sem amet cursus mi Morbi eu. Donec libero Vestibulum augue et mollis accumsan ornare condimentum In enim. Leo eget ac consectetuer quis condimentum malesuada.

I’m starting to think I should not have taken those pictures…

Using a free online translator, I got this translation:

Lorem itself pain he is amet consectetuer skirmish price euismod itself in fact. Mi a race but a soft old age this bow pregnant anyone urna. But and lucky this time Sickness mauris tincidunt in fact Upon mauris. Pede good laughter skirmish to set free natoque in fact lorem to come up to itself according to reason. Upon malesuada and fellowship tincidunt time pellentesque a race to grow strong itself To suspend. Laughter Upon and anyone when Now to grow strong laoreet before To suspend For. Amet amet urna condimentum Vestibulum prefix meaning half- but Curabitur lorem and a race. Fellowship tortor fermentum lion dui to have frequently Now But Vestibulum. When lorem Upon penatibus to set free this itself sagittis and not elit But. Condimentum eget Vivamus or consectetuer lorem annoyance unseemly amet region this. Condimentum or facetious Fusce but pede For now fellowship eros transitory. He is a hollow magna word Curabitur fringilla person responsible this life wisi easy. Fermentum eget unseemly lucky skirmish lion Now Consequently orci annoyance With a ready. Curabitur region crime to raise up when prefix meaning half- amet a race mi Sickness good. Up to the time when to set free Vestibulum augue and soft to add to a heap ornare condimentum Upon in fact. Lion eget and consectetuer anyone condimentum malesuada.

I don’t know what to say to that.  Anyone here read Latin?

8/23/09 – Update (or “How I Just Got Schooled”)

My dad and a friend, both of whom are much more versed on these matters (and most others, too), cleared up this mystery for me.  Thanks fellas.

]]> http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/2009/08/possessed-pictures/feed/ 0 http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/2009/08/speaking-of-ognika-eps/ http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/2009/08/speaking-of-ognika-eps/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:36:01 +0000 admin http://www.ifyouwerewondering.com/wordpress/?p=494 While writing my last post, I unintentionally took off a big chunk of time to wander over to Wikipedia (as is usually the case when I’m trying to get something done) to look into palindromes.

Apparently, the Finnish language has some famously long palindromic words:

solutomaattimittaamotulos [25 letters] – “the measurement laboratory result for tomato cells”

[does anyone know what a tomato cell is?]

saippuakuppinippukauppias [25] – “soap cup batch trader”

saippuakalasalakauppias [23] – “soapfish smuggler”

[I'd hate to have a business card for these professions.]

But here are some of my other favorites (also taken from Wikipedia):

Bulgarian:

напипан – “found by touching”

лапал – “one who has gobbled

шириш – “you are living in a wide space”

Dutch:

nepparterrestaalplaatserretrappen (33 letters) – “fake stairways from the ground floor to the sun lounge, made of steel plate”

[what?!]

German: [try pronouncing these out loud ... then try memorizing them]

Nebelregennegerleben (20 letters) – “the life of a black man in rain and fog”

Lagertonnennotregal (19 letters) – “emergency storage rack for barrels”

Legovogel (9) – “a bird made of lego”

Hebrew:

ולכשתשכלו – “and when you will bereave” (the longest palindromic word in Hebrew with meaning)

[Perhaps it says something about the culture when there is a single word for the inclusion of the assumption that you will rob someone of something at sometime.  Or perhaps I have this wrong and it means you will be robbed of something by someone at sometime - still a situation I'd rather not know is in my future.]

Hungarian:

sörös – “beery”

[In which case my palindrome would be "Mmm, sörös. Mmm." or if it's really good beer: "Mmmmmmmmm, sörös. Mmmmmmmmm!"]

Norwegian:

Leseesel – “reading donkey”

[... Does anyone know what a reading donkey does?  Is that like a reading lamp or reading glasses? Basically a donkey who assists you in reading? Or is it a description of an action: "I often find myself reading donkey."]

Swedish:

ABBA – (stands for Agneta, Björn, Benny and Annefrid, the members of the Swedish popgroup called ABBA)

[Included cause I know you were wondering about that one.]

Turkish:

acıca – “almost spicy”

[I wish English had a word for this.  I would use it a lot.  I could also use a word meaning "almost correct" and one for "nearly died" and one for "somewhere between nerdy and cool, but just shy of both".]