It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ... bee?

Carnival (Carnaval, Καρναβάλι (Carnavali), Carnevale, Carnestoltes, Carnaval, Karneval, Carnaval and Karnawał in Portuguese, Greek, Italian, Catalan, French, Dutch, German, Spanish and Polish languages) is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February.

Carnival typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, masque and public street party. People often dress up during the celebrations, which mark an overturning of daily life.

The origin of the name "carnival" is disputed. Variants in Italian dialects suggest that the name comes from the Italian carne levare or similar, meaning "to remove meat" since meat is prohibited during Lent.

A different explanation states that the word comes from the late Latin expression carne vale, which means "farewell to meat", signifying that those were the last days when one could eat meat before the fasting of Lent. Yet another translation depicts carne vale as "a farewell to the flesh", a phrase embraced by certain carnival celebrations that encourage letting go of your former (or everyday) self and embracing the carefree nature of the festival.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

And now, what you've all been waiting for, the letting go of our everyday selves ...

Twelve days of Christmas ... in photos

The 2009 annual three-day-weekend-German-Christmas-market-extravaganza took us to ... (da da da dum) Munich--where people, brats (as in bratwursts) and lights abound.

Gluwein. Litres and litres of gluwein. Nothing says Christmas in Europe more than that hot, mulled cinnamon wine. The North Americans still don't know just what they are missing.

Rahmfleckl. The best of the Christmas markets ... like a personal sour cream pizza, only better. Far better. Would love to show a picture of what the things actually are, but a certain co-eater wouldn't let me ... "But it'll get cooolllddd!"

Christmas tree ornaments. The proud result of three hours of friendly negotiation, and one wall climb for the last remaining box hidden on the top shelf. (He wanted tinsel; I said no way. I wanted multicolors; he said no way. I wanted silver; he wanted gold ...)
The lights. After the dollar store mishap (neon white and flashing), warm, peaceful white lights. Except that they came in a "loop". Which meant putting them on and taking them off not once, but twice ... amid ample debate on the "proper" way to hang lights.
Warm reminders of Christmas-market-extravaganza 2008: Hamburg, Germany. Last year, we bought the ornament, but had no tree. This year, it found its place, just where it was meant to be.

Prized stars from Munich ... "to hang in the windows just like Mama does".

The tree. Topped with our Munich mistletoe "bulb" and beautiful as ever.

The stockings are hung by the entry with care, in the hopes that all'll notice Marcel's door-swag hanging near ...

Christmas cards. Made with love and a (couple) glasses of wine. Coming soon to a mailbox near you.

And the love of all loves, packaged and sent with care--the Christmas wreath made with treasured childhood ornaments collected over the years ...

Christmas tree 2008. We've come a long way.

Up where the air is clear

Lost your sense of childhood wonder? Check the basket - you may well have forgotten it back at the Annual International Hot Air Balloon Festival. Dozens of ballons, dozens of acrobatic sky divers and mountaintop bands to boot makes for one heck of an excursion, and some mighty fun PHOTOS.

Up where the air is clear

Lost your sense of childhood wonder?  Check the basket - you may well have forgotten it back at the Annual International Hot Air Balloon Festival.  Dozens of ballons, dozens of acrobatic sky divers and mountaintop bands to boot makes for one heck of an excursion, and some mighty fun PHOTOS.

While visions of gluwein danced in their heads

OK, so this is my THIRD attempt at this blog ... it started with an entirely too cheesy description of the weekend put to the lyrics of "the Twelve Days of Christmas", then got converted into a haiku collection of random words describing the trip that no one but us would surely ever understand ... and now all my creative energy is spent. Why is it that the truly exciting life moments are far more difficult to blog about than the mundane sillies?

I guess we'll just have to put it this way ... after more than three and a half years together and averaging, between the two of us, nearly 100 flights per year, we FINALLY checked-in, went through customs and immigration and boarded a plane TOGETHER for a birthday/Christmas weekend away in Hamburg, Germany. What a concept.

As proud new owners of two hilarious books - The Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans and The Xenophobe's Guide to the Swiss (HIGHLY recommended to anyone with a good sense of humour and a decent sense of potentially self-critical reality ... and/or anyone considering getting into a bi-national relationship ...), we cracked them open as soon as the aircraft doors were closed and did nothing but laugh at each other til landing ...

Checked into a super cool art deco hotel with different color rooms and wall mounted toilet plungers (as coat hangers) and rodent traps (magazine holders), we quickly scuttled out into the cold to attack the Christmas markets ... doing little other than be carried along by the crowds through stall after stall of good food and handicrafts. Four curry wursts, twenty plus gluwein with rum/amaretto, BBQ meat sticks, flamenkuchen and half a dozen delicious delicacies later, we oohed and ahhed over the truly amazing carved wood nativity scenes, pouted that we couldn't afford the one we wanted (600CHF!!) and settled on a really beautiful Christmas tree ornament instead before sneaking over for just one more gluwein (after all, we had to complete our set of Santa boot mugs!)

Finish the weekend out with an early Sunday morning rise to meander through the infamous 300 year-old Hamburg fish market with the other 70,000 morning marketeers, a mid-morning harbour tour, a night out to see the broadway musical of The Lion King from some killer seats (an AMAZING show if you ever get the chance to see it ...) and a last minute visit to the excellent Emigration City migration museum... and the return to "reality" couldn't be less appealing.

Alperchilbi what?

If a single sentence sums this weekend up in a nutshell, it shall be as follows: "You've earned your authentic Swiss certificate!" (Thank you, Petra, for the accolades). In short, between a wedding, a fair, a cows-come-home-from-the-Alps festival, raclette, yodelling, Alp horns, cows, sheep and goats and adorable little kids with perfect little braids in the mountains, you simply can't get much more Swiss tradition packed into a single weekend. Check out the cool pictures HERE (and yes, that is a 120 pound cheese round in the photo...)

A little round ball and the craze of a continent

No, it's not a UFO, it's a 1.5 MILLION DOLLAR balloon that someone had the brilliant idea to float on top of the infamous Geneva fountain in honor of the Euro Cup football championships (as seen from my house ... ). I should try and dig up a photo as it appears from its "rightful" place on top of the fountain, but in the meantime I'll put it this way - the first time I saw it walking out of the office, my first thought was "how the hell did THAT get by the city beauty committee??" And that was BEFORE I knew how much money was being spent on it.

Make matters worse, the thing has to be lowered any time the wind picks up to more than 10 knots (not an infrequent phenomenon when you're talking about a lake in a valley in the alps ...) - and my trusty source of morning news has reported that it's costing them 10,000 CHF every time it has to be raised or lowered. And that was before it got a hole in it and had to be sent to London for repairs ..... (wish I could say I had been the one to put a BB gun to it!)

If nothing else though, the event is providing plenty of entertainment. As one poster I saw today said, the once-every-four-years EuroCup does not equal party, it equals business, and business it has been (though there's certainly been a fair share of party too :-) . Soccer balls are appearing in all shapes and forms, and national flags and clothing everywhere you turn ... the city lampposts have had their covers replaced with ones in a soccer ball form, the tourist info center has laid down astro turf and constructed a giant goal post as an entry, the chocolotiers are producing nothing but balls, all of the flower boquets at the florists have balls attached to them, every other balcony has a flag hanging down, school kids dressed in the jersey and long socks of their favorite football idol run rampant, air horns and ceaseless honking is heard all day - only to quadruple in force at 20h and 22h when the two games of the night are over, tour buses roll into town from all over Europe carrying crazed fans with banners plastered to the windows and luxurious buses carrying the teams are followed by police escorts and more crazed fans at every turn.

Too bad the Swiss are already out of the runnin' ....

Hopp Schwiiz!!

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