Binding

This is the binding of the quilt on the clothes line.

It’s long. At least I think so. But it is about 3 feet (1m) too long. The binding is the part that goes aroung the perimeter of the quilt joining the top and the backing. It’s also the last step and it’s about 85% sewn on already.

Gardening update

When I got back from Pomquete there was a poppy out.

Unfortunately, it was one of the seedling that was already on the verge of blooming when I bought it and not one of the seeds that was planted or any of the other seedlings that might be the right colour (red). This one also didn’t have a picture of the flower with it when I bought it and when I asked someone what it was to make sure it was a poppy the endless fountain of knowledge that was serving me answered “They’re perennials!”, which was what was written on the label in the biggest lettering. The other ones don’t seem to be flowering unfortunately L.

Here’s the garden with lots of basil and other herbs as well as tomatoes, peas, onions, cucumbers, beans and spinach.

A bed of poppies that doesn’t look hopeful.

Herbs, herbs and herbs

Pomquet Fun

Two weekends ago, Marie, Ian, Jennifer and I went to Pomquet. Pomquet is where Marie grew up so her lovely parents, Michael and Lorraine, were forced to put up with our wacky antics. Jennifer is from Antigonish and spent the weekend with her family.

The first night we had a few drinks and played some Trivial Pursuit. It was an edition from the 70s (early?), so we were absolutely awesome at it (sarcastic tone). Eventually I passed out and the others went to bed.

On Saturday we went to the beach. Unfortunately it was quite windy and Maricicle (Marie + icicle), Marie’s frozen persona, came out. So we retreated to the boardwalk that's a little more inland and tried to hangover-read the interpretive signs.

Later we went to see Marie’s grandmother at her Rockathon, a social event to raise money for the community. There were finger sandwiches and several squares, cakes and other assorted desserts. We also got to hear Marie’s aunt Joanne sing beautifully. Her and her accompanists were kind enough to supply background music, as she called it, for the event.

We went to the local Sobey’s to stock up on supplies for the night and, in full Neo-Scotian form, there were highland dancers there dancing to raise money for something.

And yes Julia, I did give them some money for taking this picture.

That night we had a big spaghetti supper with everyone mentioned so far plus Veronica and Paul. Delicious.

Then it was off to Marie’s grandmother’s house for a night of song and hanging out. Sylvain, Marie’s uncle, has an extensive record collection and rather eclectic taste, so there was something for everyone, or almost. We also had Paul, Veronica and Marie who played guitar and sang awesomely. And drunker on me and Ian dragged everyone through all of American Pie while trying to remember the lyrics. Scenes from the night.

After the night was over (3:30ish) we went back to Marie’s parents place which was across the street. Marie jokingly remarked of a car that was turning onto the road from a neighbouring driveway that the driver was probably drunk and we would have to jump in the rather deep and wet, and thus muddy, ditch. Ian unfortunately didn’t detect the lack of seriousness in Marie’s voice and promptly threw himself in. This did not help his already sore back. I went in shortly after to help him get up. He didn’t need my help but I did get to experience the incredible muddiness of the ditch.

Sunday was father's day and we had a steak fest at Marie’s grandmothers house.

The steak was prepared by Sylvain and was well-seasoned, beautifully charred on the outside and perfectly raw on the inside. They were also huge.

We had a lovely late lunch with all the fixings and hung out on the back porch and enjoyed the view.

Before leaving we went on a short hike to Brown’s beach.

Fun weekend.

A crazy amazing Swedish midsummer's party

Last Friday I was invited, along with some other German Stammtisch-related people, to attend a Swedish midsummer's party in Hütten, which is really as close to the middle of nowhere as I think you can get in Germany. Amanda, who is Swedish, and who I met at the Stammtisch in Jena, has been spending the last while doing volunteer service at a youth hostel-education centre where they run workshops for school groups and interested people on environmental topics. (At least that's what I understand of it, I may not have all the details right.)

In any case, it's a lovely place for a party, as it has a nice courtyard, an industrial-sized kitchen, and plenty of beds for everyone to sleep over. Her parents were visiting from Sweden, and they helped prepare the party as well, even bringing special decorations.

The central decoration was this:
I'm not sure what it's called, but it's not a Christian cross with a couple of wreaths on it as I'd originally thought - rather a giant phallic symbol with wreaths for testicles. They built it themselves, and it was decorated with leaves and flowers that are in season. (The pink ones are digitalis.)

Here in the foreground you can see a little model of what it traditionally looks like - I'd say they got it pretty well perfect!
And the whole decorated table... (Yes, that's my knitting on the left.)
And of course we had lots of traditional Swedish food as well, such as a gratin with potatoes, anchovies, and cream (called frestelse in Swedish), and this most beautiful smorgastarta (savory sandwich torte), which contained layers of bread and creamy fillings like egg salad, smoked salmon and creme fraiche, shrimp, capers, etc.
Not to mention the incredible decorations on the outside...
As the night grew darker we started learning a Swedish drinking song, which Amanda had written out for all of us on sheets. I can still remember the tune, but not the words so well. I think it's called "Halun gor" (with a little circle on top of the "o"), but I might be wrong. What I do remember for sure is that everytime you finish it you have to drain your shot glass of vodka. We sang it several times.
Valentina is seen at the left, committing the song to memory...
They also had these nice burning logs which I've seen a few times now in Germany. They cut the logs down crosswise, deeply in 2 perpendicular lines, and then not so deeply in two other directions. Then they get the fire started with some paper or lighter fluid inside, and it makes a nice lantern. Apparently they're called Swedish something-or-other in German, but the Swedes there had only ever seen them in Germany.
And again without the flash - much blurrier, but it gives a better idea of what they really look like.
And then we began to dance around the phallic symbol, singing a song in Swedish about having no ears and no tail, with actions to match.
Pagan much?
There were a couple other circular dances...
...and then we all went back to drinking and learning German songs. (While there were a number of foreigners there, German was still the language of the evening.) We sang a few rounds, including a quadrilingual version of Frère Jacques, and passed around the flower crown. I think that Valentina definitely deserved to be crowned the Midsommerkönigen of Hütten, however.
Although there were competing bids from me,
Chiara,
Jörg and Grit,
and the lovely Marie.
And here's a rather off-centre self-portrait of Frank (the teacher of the German songs) and Valentina, quite late in the evening at this point.
In all, it was a wonderful party, and a great way to spend the shortest night of the year, even if Saturday was a complete write-off. But more on Saturday and my disastrous cooking in the next post.

Brent's karaoke extravaganza, and football-crazy Germans

A Canadian friend of ours here in Germany, Brent, ran into some bad luck. The hose that drained out of the back of his washing machine came disconnected while he was taking his turn washing the gear of the rugby team for which he and Jer play, and the water drained all over the floor, soaking through into the storage room below and through the walls into the bathroom of the mattress store next door. (Luckily it didn't soak into any mattresses, as I think that would have been even more expensive.)

Now everyone in Germany has personal liability insurance (Haftpflichtversicherung), which I was thankfully advised to buy by the woman at the bank when I opened my account. I thought she was just trying to get the stupid foreigner to spend money on something useless (who needs liability insurance if they don't have a car???), but she wrote it down on a paper and told me to ask my colleagues. It turns out that everyone has it here, and they recommended coverage up to 10 million euros. The worst-case scenario that everyone gave me was that I hit someone while riding my bike, and they were injured in such a way that they could never work again. This way, my insurance would pay for their living costs for the rest of their life. I have to admit that I never really thought about what would happen in this situation in Canada. I just think it doesn't come up all that often.

But, I think partly because everyone here has this insurance, it was fully expected that Brent pay the full cost of the damages. This includes the rental of drying machines that were run for several days (at a cost of a few hundred euros in electricity alone), and repainting/refinishing of all the affected areas. His landlord was nice enough to let him do the work himself, which saves some of the costs of professional labour, but it's still a fair bit of money. Being a PhD student, he hasn't got tonnes to spare, so he's been looking for innovative ways to raise some.

I suggested a karaoke night where people could make Brent sing whatever song they liked for money, which happened last Thursday. It started a bit late as Germany was playing Romania, and every German was watching the game. When I went to meet people at the arranged spot, I went by several large outdoor viewing areas. This is a really terrible picture, but it's more for Jeremi to see where they've set up a big screen by the remaining section of the city wall (at the left) at the Johannesturm. The area was packed, as were all the bars, cafes, and ice cream shops downtown. There was even a crowd gathered outside looking in the window at Lieders coffee shop because it was too packed inside. (Again, this likely only means anything to Jeremi - sorry.)
And then Germany won! And suddenly there were people everywhere, drinking, singing near-tuneless cheers, wearing German flags as capes... There really have been an awful lot of German flags everywhere. I was told that until the World Cup was held here two years ago it wasn't so common to have big displays of nationalism in Germany, as that hasn't ended well in the past, but that it's become okay again. Personally, I think they're taking it a little too far, but they may be overcompensating for feeling guilty about being German for so long, and the pendulum will take a while to find a reasonable level.

This picture shows the middle of the road at the mouth of Wagnergasse, and though it's hard to tell, there's a firetruck parked in the middle of the crowd. I thought at first that it was there for crowd control, but it was also covered with flags, and from time to time someone would climb on top to wave some more flags, and everyone would cheer.
And then, on to the karaoke. It's a bit of a funny set-up at Havana Bar where they have it - they project the video with the words onto the wall so that you have to face the wall rather than the crowd when you sing, which everyone does as if that's perfectly normal. Brent was doing his best to sing to the audience, only looking back to get the words, but the DJ was even telling him to turn around. Weird.

Here he is singing my first selection, some good Canadian fare: Shania Twain's "Man! I feel like a woman!"
Other highlights from the evening include Cindi Lauper's "Girls just want to have fun", and Whitney Houston's "I want to dance with somebody". Good times all around. The pictures don't really do him justice either, he was dancing too. He's a pretty good sport, really.

In more recent football news, tonight Germany is playing Turkey in the semi-final, and there are some concerns that this could lead to violence. There's a large Turkish population here as West Germany invited a lot of guest workers from Turkey here after the war, and while some have been here for decades, and even more born here, only very recently (since 2003) has it become possible for people born here from foreign parents to become citizens, and even that's not automatic. Since they could never become German, there's almost an entire subculture, which it seems sometimes only meets at the donair stand. There's some animosity between the two cultures, and there are some fears that thousands of drunken football fans might not behave so well. Here's a BBC article about the situation in Berlin, where half a million people are expected to watch the game at the Brandenburg Gate. I liked it too because it begins by interviewing people at the restaurant that we ate at back in November when we were in Berlin with Calin, Susanne, Brandy, and Bruce. As for me, I'll be safe at home, not watching the game.

my institute retreat

Last week I was at an institute retreat from Monday through Thursday. Last year it was only three days, but they decided to extend it so that it was less hours of sitting through non-stop presentations per day. It was less, and the day was more pleasantly broken up, but it was still a lot of presentations...The location was pretty nice though, the Ringberg Hotel in Suhl, in the Thueringian forest. The hotel was right at the top of a hill, which made for lovely views, but it was a bit of a hike into town. Unfortunately it really felt like a waste of time, as it really didn't foster the sort of interaction that I think is supposed to come out of this sort of event, and many people were so intent on presenting all the results that they had that they forgot the audience, which ranged from people working with soil microbes to people interpreting satellite data to people designing lightweight sensors to fly aboard aircraft. It's all in one institute, but it doesn't mean that we actually know that much about what the other people are doing.

It would have felt sort of like a vacation were it not for the extraordinary amount of thing I have to finish both at work and at home before I leave next week. At least I got a lot of knitting done during the talks. I didn't take too many pictures, but here are three from when Dabang, Valentina and I were waiting for the bus, some small photographic record of four days that I'll never get back.