Weiberfastnacht

I am learning about German Fasching, which is the Lent season. Today was Weiberfastnacht, the Eve of the Women's Fast - when the women get to cut off a man's tie ... in exchange for a kiss. One of my colleagues was a good sport and constructed a paper tie.

Watch out - I have scissors and I know how to use them!

lokal Kultur

I was taken out for a taste of Saarlandisch culture by a couple of friends on Valentine's Day. Michael made traditional Dibbelabbes, which he claimed involved a day of shredding potatoes. Sabine and I chose the dinner music from his vast cd library - Koyaanisqatsi was a perfect accompaniment to the hearty homemade fare and Michael's description of seeing this film at the Volklingen Hütte World Heritage Site.
Following dinner, we popped downtown to a tiny side room of a tiny pub to see German folk music live. This trio delighted a packed room with funny and sad songs from the Middle Ages to the mid-20th century. Click on the pic to hear a few of their songs!
Good night - Ich bin sat. (I'm full.)

the latest scoop

Finally got a few things added in here - if you haven't read this lately, go back to Dec. 28 ... no less than 3 trips in the last month! And more to come in a couple weeks ... stay tuned!

ISU mini-reunion in Jura - the Soundtrack

This weekend was a mash-up of team cooking, intense eating, downhill skiing, playing le chapeau. But what tied everything together was the music. Here for your listening pleasure is our playlist, beginning of course with the song that danced half the night away and we woke up in the morning dreaming to.

One more time ... Miriam Makeba and pata pata

We passed the time with Jean Dubois V'a l'temps qui passe
melting under the spell of Aznavour's La Bohême
jazzed things up with one-note wonder Stan Getz and the Samba de una nota and the Girl from Ipanema
a strange bit of Jay Jay Johanson
the sweet enticing beat of Cesaria Evora - Sodade
orchestrating dinner to Carmina Burana's O Fortuna
from dancing all night to some unidentified Brazilian beat
to a Nora Jones Sunrise
We only talked about playing Tracy Chapman

Sunday was a Brand new day with Sting - perfect for knitting by the fire ... and cooking over it when the power failed.

But we ended as we began with the pata pata of our boots on wooden planks dashing out the door to catch a train and a plane by the skin of our teeth.

ISU mini-reunion à Jura

What a relaxing weekend! Just staggered in the door after my second multi-connection international 10-hour train ride this weekend. Thank goodness for SNCF, else the Deutsche Bahn would have taken me through 3 other provinces for a marathon 13-hour, 6-transfer ride!

And it was worth every minute! I met up with 5 of my former ISU masters classmates in a log cabin on top of a hill in the forested French foothills of Jura. We danced, we ate pungent French cheese, drank wine, cooked, ate and played le chapeau, a game I suspect Thomas invented. It involved my red hat, some progressively less legible words on scraps of paper and a lot of exasperated exclaiming in several languages as we tried to explain, guess and finally mime our new-found vocabulary. There was cheating, recriminations and a lot of name-calling - badger cougar sasquatch! But it was so much fun we were still playing it on the train home - much to the amusement of the French passengers, I'm sure.

The weekend began with Dag's birthday and ended with a mad dash for the borders. There was a critical juncture involving a train, a 100-meter dash across a closed crossing, 2 police and a 1-way road. In the end, I learned art of survival French includes being able to sweet-talk a conductor into waiting for your luggage to join you on the platform in the company of your panting friends.

In the middle of it, my friends threw themselves off a mountain on little wooden sticks while I explored les Cernois from hilltop to lakeside. There was a lot of food involved - authentic raclette a.k.a. the French ritual suicide by cheese, endive and fennouil, quiche, pain de l'ail, comte with a rack-full of wine ...

...
... I'm back, just had a sudden craving for cheese.

Exploring the Jura countryside, I had a good dose of proper winter - sliding down a snow hillside, skirting a frozen lake, tracking rabbits, deer, lynx through the conifers, and knitting next to a roaring fireplace.

(more pics here)

In the end we all made it home in good time and good spirits. Thanks to Thomas for preparing a sumptuous spread, Dag and Dave for delivering Rodolphe, and Annelie for supplying Belgian chocolates.