It's time to play Name That Obscure German Holiday

Anyone have a guess at what today is? That's right: Fronleichnam*! It just sounds fun, doesn't it? You know you've plumbed the depths of obscurity when even the Italians haven't heard of your Catholic excuse for a day off of work. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I think all countries could benefit from the addition of more obscure holidays, especially when those holidays mean days off of work.

These holidays keep sneaking up on us when we least expect them. Time to enter all the German holidays into my Outlook calendar so we can start making the most of our time off.

*That's Corpus Christi in English. I didn't bother to read the whole Wikipedia article, but it sounds like yet another day dedicated to the Catholic obsession with dead bodies. Now get celebrating!

Big fat Tuesday in Munich

The city center in Munich gets a little crazy for the last three days of carnival. The locals don costumes and down lots of booze in one big street party (and at lots of littler parties). It’s fun to see an entire city party together.

The costumes people were wearing were much more... themed than the ones I remember from carnivals in Halle. There the idea was merely to dress weirdly, not necessarily as something or someone. Put on a pink feather boa, wrap some aluminum foil around your arms, and stick a pipe cleaner out of your ponytail and you were good to go.

Popular costumes that we saw this year included Mexicans, Chinese, and anything involving black face. The Mexicans wore blankets and sombreros (and probably would have been kicked right off a Zurich tram). Naturally the Chinese wore clothing with random Chinese characters all over the place – as all Chinese people tend to wear. The black face costumes were the most bizarre – while some donned afro wigs or tribal hunting gear, other folks seemed to be wearing completely normal clothing, but just with black face paint. And then there was a herd of Smurfs.

I sent Scott out alone to watch the famed dance of the market ladies on Tuesday morning. I skipped it because 1) someone had to wait for our Ikea delivery to come and 2) I'm not a big fan of crowds. Instead I ventured out later in the day, when the crowd had spread out a bit (and gotten significantly drunker). The amount of broken glass all over the ground was unnerving, at least to us - it didn't seem to be bothering the revelers prancing through it on all sides of us. We, on the other hand, were plotting out each step as if walking through a snake pit. I'm taking this as proof that we were much too sober for the situation at hand. Next year we’ll know to drink ahead.

Christmas in New York

Hi there. This week I'm in New York City, one of my favorite places to spend Christmas. I'm a couple trips behind on my blogging, but here are a few New York Christmas photos to keep you entertained until I have a chance to catch up.



Merry Christmas, if you're into that kind of thing. More photos at my Flickr.

Christopher Street Day in Zurich

On Saturday I rolled my jetlagged behind out of bed and headed out to the Christopher Street Day (CSD) celebrations that were taking place in downtown Zurich. CSD is the local version of a Gay Pride parade, and gets its name from the NYC street where a major police raid took place in 1969.


Despite the gray skies and drizzle, a good-sized crowd had turned out for the afternoon speeches at Helvetiaplatz. One of the featured speakers was the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, a famously 'out' German politician.

After the speeches, it was time for the parade, which wound its way through downtown. It was pretty small-scale compared to other parades we've been to in Zurich (and other Gay Pride parades I've been to in other cities), with just a few small floats blaring all forms of dance music. In between the floats marched various local groups.


My favorite by far was this group from a gay sports club, dancing up a choreographed storm to various disco standards:


Kudos to UBS for a big group of paraders (and an even bigger bunch of balloons).


I was surprised to see how many religious groups were participating in the festivities. Having just gotten back from the US, where Christian groups are vocally and aggressively trying to take away gay rights (or better yet, trying to convert homosexuals with programs that 'pray the gay away'), I just didn't expect it. Maybe it was the jetlag, but I got a little teary-eyed thinking about how happy I was to be in the middle of this celebration that was focusing on acceptance rather than hate.

Not that it's all sunshine and roses for gays in Switzerland. Although civil unions have been legally recognized here since the beginning of the year, the protest signs being carried by many of the parade participants made it clear that discrimination still persists.

My TravelBox articles

My four weeks at TravelBox on Slate.com are coming to an end. Here's a round-up of all my posts over there, for your reading pleasure:

Italy
A culinary layover in Milan
There's more to the Veneto than Venice

Austria
An Easter weekend in Vienna
Seeking out wine in Vienna (or Wein in Wien)

Switzerland
Switzerland's answer to Groundhog Day
Switzerland's off season

Germany
Discovering Berlin's divided past
Dresden rising

Buona Pasqua

Easter in Italy is always marked by the omnipresent giant chocolate eggs. No bunnies, no peeps, just big chocolate eggs. If you're lucky, there's an exciting surprise awaiting you inside your giant chocolate egg. These surprises can range from cheap plastic toys to fine jewelry, depending on where your egg came from. They're kind of like giant Kinder Surprise eggs.*

Easter in Europe can be tricky, as Heather recently discussed. On one hand, it's a four-day weekend. On the other, it seems like all of Europe is closed. It's like having four Sundays in a row: no groceries, no shopping, and limited restaurants. That makes it a little difficult to pick a destination for the weekend. It would have been nice to go skiing, but we're done with fighting the bad snow. Last year we went to Berlin, and the year before that we came to Zurich for the first time (having no idea that we would eventually move here). This year we opted to continue our success with 'big' cities, and head to Vienna. It turned out to be a good choice, as pretty much everything was open as if it were a normal weekend. Plus we got colored eggs and chocolate lamb-shaped cake for breakfast. What more could you ask for?

Speaking of religious holidays, this article about the recent marketing efforts of Swiss churches caught my eye this morning. As in many European countries, funding for churches (well, mainstream Christian churches anyway) is done through taxes collected by the government here.

* remind me to tell you a funny story about Kinder Surprise eggs.

St. Patrick's Day in the Quarter

My trip to New Orleans happened to coincide with St. Patrick's Day, and thus the St. Patrick's Day parade. This holiday in the French Quarter is much like it is in other cities in the US, with green beer, green clothing, green kilts, and green drunks.

The parade is nowhere near the grand scale of the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations, but it does include the all-important Distribution Of Beads By Parading Drunk People. Apparently tit-showing is not a requirement during this particular parade, but be prepared to receive many kisses on the cheek along with those green and white necklaces.

The music was fabulous, with many floats transporting entire bands. This was one of the more practical floats, with a beer tap in front and port-a-potty in the back - everything you need for an all-night party...


This guy was so thrilled I took his picture that he did a little dance that involved wiggling his butt a lot for me and the crowd. And of course, I got me some beads as a reward for watching said dance.


Overall it was a really fun, lighthearted atmosphere, at least until around midnight or so when I headed to bed. I have a feeling it was a good idea to cut out before the jolly good-natured drinkers morphed into less-jolly drunks...

Carnival, Italo-Swiss style

After last year's lackluster parade in Zurich, I was beginning to think the Swiss just didn't know how to do carnival. I mean, a correct carnival celebration does involve a certain amount of coming out of oneself, public silliness, and, (gasp!) messiness. Oh yes, I've heard about how in Basel there is 'craziness' in the form of costumed people telling jokes in local dialect in restaurants starting at 4 AM, but somehow that doesn't exactly scream 'good party' to me (although if anyone wants to volunteer to interpret said Swiss German jokes for me one year, I'm there). Shouldn't celebrations last until 4 AM, not start then?

Luckily the Swiss redeemed themselves this weekend in Bellinzona, the home of a five-day carnival celebration called Rabadan. The parade was a million times better than Zurich's, with floats dedicated to all kinds of important themes, including (but not limited to) the Swiss Post, Pluto (the cartoon dog, not the former planet), Playboy, CSI, Scooby Doo, and EPO (a form of doping for cyclists, which I had never heard of before - see, it was educational, too!).

The celebrations include parades, confetti, marching bands, costumes, fried foods, drinking, silly-string, and more parades. Sunday's parade went from 1:30 until around 4:30, after which the various floats and marching bands dispersed to various points around the old town, where they hosted dance parties or gave spontaneous concerts. The streets were covered in confetti, and the mood was light and fun. The woman behind the desk of one of the museums we went to lamented that carnevale made everyone crazy, but we didn't find it to be such a bad thing. After all, it was only crazy by Swiss standards.

OK, so the costumes weren't quite as beautiful or elegant as those at carnevale in Venice, but it also wasn't as painfully crowded as Venice is during this time of year. Plus, Bellizona is a comfortable 2.5-hour train ride from Zurich. I highly recommend Rabadan to anyone who needs a dose of real carnival fun (and don't worry, you can even be back in time for Zurich's Fasnacht, which isn't until the weekend after Fat Tuesday).



More about our weekend in Ticino coming soon...

Es guets neus!

Despite the rain, last night we ventured out with the rest of Zurich to go see the New Year's fireworks display over the lake. After dinner at home (restaurants in Zurich get even more expensive on New Year's Eve, with set meals starting at around CHF 80, not including alcohol), we headed to the tram stop with an umbrella, a bottle of champagne, and the camera. It was unseasonably warm, so we weren't nearly as bundled up as one would expect to be when walking around at midnight in December in Switzerland.

There were a lot of people waiting for a tram with us, but only one or two of them managed to squeeze on the first tram to pass by, which was as full as I've ever seem a Zurich tram. We managed to get on a second tram which was headed to Central (the wrong end of downtown, but it's a small city and we didn't have much time). Less than a minute after we got off the tram, it was New Year, and the crowd started cheering and kissing and spraying champagne. It's about as rowdy as I've ever seen a Swiss crowd get. Luckily the rain had stopped by this point, but it was still too warm.

We could hear the big fireworks in the distance over the lake, but only see the occasional top of one. We started walking with the crowd along the river towards the lake, taking swigs out of our champagne bottle and occasionally jumping out of the way of the fireworks that were being set off all around us. I wonder how many people lost fingers last night. (When we lived in Italy, this figure was always reported in the newspapers the next day. Maybe the Swiss are better at fireworks than the Italians?)

I'm not a huge fan of crowds, but we managed to see about half the main fireworks show and walk around with the crowds without my claustrophobia kicking in. The big show lasted for over 30 minutes, and then the parties started, with loud music being blasted from many downtown locales.

We wandered around some more through the old town and had some Glühwein. Deciding that the trams home would probably be even fuller than the ones from earlier, we decided to walk home. It was a nice walk.

International Glühwein Tour 2006 (part 3: Dresden)

From Berlin, we took a train down to Dresden for a day in the deep east. Dresden is a beautiful city even when it's not decked out in its Christmas finery, and it drew us in with its promise of the Oldest Christmas Market in Europe, which is in its 572nd year. That's a lot of Glühweins.

In addition to Glühwein in several variations, we encountered a couple other tasty hot seasonal beverages at the Christmas markets, as well. one was Eierpunsch ('egg punch'), which was (not surprisingly) pretty similar to eggnog. The husband liked it, but I wasn't so impressed. The other was Lumumba, a suspiciously foreign-sounding name for hot chocolate with rum or amaretto in it. Good stuff.

International Glühwein Tour 2006 (part 2: Berlin)

The last couple days of Glühwein tourism brought us back to Germany - specifically, Berlin and Dresden. I'm pleased to report we had great success in both cities, which offered up a variety of hot, seasonal beverages in a variety of Christmas markets.

First we headed to the 'nostalgia market' at Gendarmenmarkt, a relatively new Christmas Market that was specifically designed to be as cute and perfect as possible. Instead of Glühwein, many of the stands were advertising Feuerzangenbowle, which my extensive research revealed to be remarkably similar to Glühwein.

We also hit many other Christmas Markets around Berlin, including one on Unter den Linden and the one around the Gedächtniskirche. So many that after a while, they began to run together a little bit. One that stood out, at least by name, wasn't a Christmas Market at all, but rather a Hanukkah Market. This took place in the courtyard of Berlin's Jewish Museum.
We had to go through a metal detector to reach it (as everyone does to gain entrance into the museum). Around the market there were plaques in English and German which explained about Hanukkah and the holiday traditions of German Jews, which had developed into a sort of 'Chrismukka' ('Weihnukka' in German) - a combination of Hanukkah and Christmas traditions that incorporated both their religion and the local celebrations that were mainstream in their country (something that occurs in the US, too). And of course, there was Glühwein.

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Swissmas!

OK, so I've noticed that I've been getting a lot of traffic from people searching the web for how to say things such as "Merry Christmas" in Swiss German. I thought I'd help you out by posting this little nugget of information, but then I realized that I didn't know the answer. So I had my husband consult his bevy of Swiss colleagues to find out. Here is just part of the response:

It's somehow difficult to write that down, but here is my attempt.
The following is to be pronounced as German words:

"Schöni Wiehnachte"

Here the first 'e' in 'Wiehnachte' is not only a long 'i' but has to be pronounced as an 'e'. The last 'e' is pronounced only short, sometimes it is that short that it can not be heard at all or it is totally left away.

Helpful colleague goes on to report that "Happy New Year" is "Es guets neus." He adds that "Here the 'ue' in 'guets' is not pronounced as an 'ü' but as an 'u' followed by an 'e'." Got that?

My Züritüütsch (Zurich Swiss German - yep it's different in every city) textbook adds the following "Happy New Year"-type greetings:

• Vil Glück zum nöie Jaar!
• E guets nöis Jaar!
• En guete Rutsch!

The last one has a High German equivalent (Einen guten Rutsch!) and has always cracked me up. It literally translate to something like "have a good slide [into the new year]!"

So, Dear Readers, here's wishing a good slide to you all, and of course a very schöni Wiehnachte.

International Glühwein Tour 2006 (part 1)

We spent the weekend Christmas-market-hopping around our little corner of Europe. On Friday I introduced fellow blogger Ali and my mother-in-law to that most delicious of Christmas treats, Glühwein (hot spiced wine, for those who haven’t been following along). This took place in the courtyard of the Landesmuseum, a large castle right next to the Zurich train station. In December, the courtyard becomes a little winter paradise, complete with ice skating rink and multiple food and drink stands serving up hot beverages and raclette.

I’m happy to report that the Glühwein was a hit all around (unlike last year when I made Swiss Mrs. try it for the first time – she found it vile. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, either.)

On Saturday we headed north to Baden Baden (not to be confused with Baden), a medium-sized town in Germany with a cute walking-district in the center and a big outdoor Christmas market (as opposed to the Zurich market, which loses quaintness points for being indoors). We spent the day wandering around and sampling various German Christmas treats, such as Glühwein, Magenbrot, Glühwein, roasted chestnuts, and Glühwein.

We were impressed with the wide variety of Glühwein variants on offer, such as white Glühwein, Glühwein with amaretto and oranges, Glühwein with Kirsch, and Glühwein with Jägermeister, just to name a few. We also liked that it was served in real mugs rather than styrofoam cups. One pays a Pfand, or deposit, on the mugs, and can choose to keep them as souvenirs or return them to the Glühwein stand to retrieve this deposit.

The next day we took the train over to France to check out the famous Strasbourg Christmas market. It was certainly the most crowded Christmas market I have ever been to, and probably the largest, as well. The large gothic cathedral in the center of town reminded me a little of Milan’s, and looked quite picturesque surrounded by a sea of Christmas market stands and an ice skating rink. The Glühwein (or vin chaud, as it is called in France) was served in horribly flimsy plastic cups, but at least it tasted pretty good. We had some delicious cheese and walnut savory crepes for lunch at a stand run by a very entertaining French couple. I also found a stand selling a delicious white Glühwein, which outdid even the German version.

Overall Germany is winning the international Glühwein competition, with Switzerland coming in a not-so-close second. France didn’t do so badly, but it lost major points for the flimsy hard-to-handle plastic cups. Don’t the French understand the importance of presentation?

Swiss Christmas Party, strike two

We went to a second Swiss Christmas party last week, thrown by my husband’s company. The owner of this company loves to force his employees to endure spring surprises on his employees, even though the Swiss ones (ie, everyone except my husband) seem to not be too fond of being surprised.

I, on the other hand, think these surprise adventures are great, and I enthusiastically attended this one despite the fact that I was feeling quite under the weather (ie, too sick to safely leave the house).

The Christmas party adventure started with a train ride out of the city to a semi-remote location up on a ridge. I’m sure there would have been a beautiful view had we actually been able to see anything (which we couldn’t, because it was night). When we got off the train we were handed torches, and then headed off uphill through a nice subdivision and then the woods, on a half-hour hike. This hike would have been a lot more fun if there had been, say, snow on the ground, but with the cold drizzle it was a little less than ideal.

When we arrived at our destination, we exchanged our torches for hot mugs of Glühwein and watched a tongue-in-cheek instructional video about the adventure that was before us: we were going to form groups around some sort of heat source, stick out our right hands and move them in circles, and feel an inner warmth.

But first, bowling! OK, actually it was Kegeln, a German version of bowling with 9 pins in a diamond shape and strange scoring rules. There were two lanes in the basement of the restaurant. After about 20 minutes of this, it was upstairs to the dining room, where another instructional video informed the two people who hadn’t yet figured it out that the activity at hand was fondue-eating. It was good, too.

The after-dinner entertainment was a montage video of past mystery trips and company Christmas parties. It included footage from our great Jungfrau adventure from the summer, but the vast majority of the video was of last year’s Christmas party, where employees had performed Beatles songs with delightfully amusing Swiss-German lyrics about things only they understood. At this point I turned to the person next to me and asked whether next year’s Christmas party would feature video of us watching video of last year’s Christmas party. He didn’t seem to understand me.

OK, so for a mystery event, this outing was somewhat sub-par. I’m looking forward to the next one to make up for this one’s shortfalls. I'm still hoping we'll visit the monks at their pagoda...

You seriously expect me to shop on this street?

“Sorry dear, I didn’t get you a present this year. It’s… it’s… those damn Christmas lights on Bahnhofstrasse! How was I supposed to get in the Christmas shopping mood with those ghastly things overshadowing the whole scene? They totally ruined everything. Next year, I'll buy you something in Chicago. Promise.”

And so the Great Zurich Christmas Decoration Controversy continues. Advertisements in the trams of Zurich declare, “Zurich: Neon light shopping. Chicago: Christmas shopping!” The advertisements are for a travel agent, Skytours, which specializes in travel to the US. According to the free newspaper 20 Minuten, the ad campaign is stirring up a lot of interest in Chicago as a Christmas-shopping destination.

OK, I admit, I’ve made fun of them, too. But an intercontinental trip just to escape the Bahnhofstrasse lights? Honestly, I’m starting to feel sorry for them, and maybe even like them a little… perhaps the lights are just misunderstood?

Does your Weihnachtsmarkt have a disco ball?

Mine does!
Because what says "Christmas" more than a disco ball?(Despite all this evidence to the contrary, the Swiss really do do a good job at Christmas. I swear.)

Swiss Christmas Party, take one

The other night we went to a Christmas party thrown by the language school where my husband is taking German classes. The party was held at a Mexican restaurant here in Zurich (in case you’re wondering what Mexican food in Zurich is like, click here), and was attended by around 80 adult students of this language school, who hailed from all over the world.

I point out that these were adult students because the party itself felt like it was planned for a bunch of 8-year-olds. I’m convinced that whoever organized this evening started out with the following assumption: because these foreigners speak German like children, surely they must have the same taste in entertainment…

The entertainment for the evening was a magician. A bad magician. A bad magician who thought he was funny. The audience had no idea if he was funny, because he did the first half of his act in Swiss German, a language that almost no one there could understand. About halfway through the show someone must have clued him in to this, because he switched to High German (which did not necessarily improve the show). To give you an idea of how bad this magician was, his grand finale involved ripping up a tissue, wadding it into a ball in his hand, and then hocus pocus it was all in one piece again. The wonder!

But still, I felt sorry for the guy. He was young and obviously nervous. I’m thinking he was just an apprentice magician (I’m sure there’s such a thing as magician apprenticeships here – they have apprenticeships for everything).

After tricking the audience into standing up and clapping for him (perhaps his most successful trick), the magician magically disappeared and was replaced by Santa (Samiclaus in Zurich) and his helper, Schmutzli. They made two members of the audience come up on stage and dress up like a donkey, since they had ‘forgotten’ theirs (in Switzerland, Samichlaus always travels with a donkey and at least one Schmutzli).


Then they all went around the room handing out little bags of peanuts, cookies, and chocolates to everyone there, as Samichlaus and Schmutzli are known to do. So at least we got a little Christmas booty as a reward for sitting through that magic show.

The Great Swiss Christmas Decoration Controversy

For the second year in a row, great controversy has befallen the normally tranquil city of Zurich. The offense is so bold and egregious that it threatens to dampen the holiday spirits of anyone who approaches. I am speaking, of course, of the Bahnhofstrasse Christmas lights.

Bahnhofstrasse, for those unfamiliar with downtown Zurich, is the main shopping street through the center of the city, leading from the main train station (or Bahnhof) all the way to the lake. It is lined with fancy shops and is the heart of holiday activities, such as… shopping.

But starting last year, the otherwise jovial Swiss shoppers have been forced to endure unthinkable horror dare they traverse Bahnhofstrasse in the weeks leading up to Christmas: unattractive Christmas lights. More than a handful of concerned citizens have gone so far as to pen angry letters to the editors of local newspapers, demanding that the stark eyesores be replaced with something more festive. Even public figures are calling the lights ugly.

Personally, I don’t think they’re ugly. I just think they’re not in the least bit… Christmassy. Which is odd in a city that otherwise does Christmas so well. So what do you think? Anyone want to fess up to having written one of those entertaining letters to the editor?

[photo courtesy of GenevaGal]

Crazy fun with onions. In Bern.

Today fellow blogger Jill and I headed to Bern for the Bern Onion Market (or Zibelemärit in the ridiculous local language). This is a festival that happens once a year in the Swiss capital to celebrate onions and the silly things you can do with them.

From what we saw, little old ladies and men must start making things out of onions months in advance to prepare for this one day. The creativity that went into this was evident in the wide variety of things made out of onions that were on display. Things that normal people like you or I would never consider making out of onions. Like fake clocks. And Mickey Mouse.

Both of us went into the experience hoping to actually get to consume some onions, but apparently it’s just not that kind of onion festival. The vast majority of the onions there were purely for decoration. After wandering around for quite a while (and drowning our frustrations with a couple of glasses of Glühwein), we finally found a couple stands selling freshly-made cheese and onion pies, which we enjoyed greatly.

Besides onions, the main appeal of the festival appeared to be the freedom to walk around assaulting complete strangers by either bopping them with plastic squeaky mallets or pelting them with a handful of colorful confetti. There were areas of the city where we were practically wading through confetti. It was on (and in) everything.

The combination of the noise, mess, and environmental-unfriendliness of the tons of confetti made the entire thing seem distinctly non-Swiss. I’m thinking this must be their way of letting loose.

Thanksgiving, expat-style

I’ve spent at least a half-dozen Thanksgivings outside of the US, most of which have been celebrated in one form or another in the company of other expats. There’s usually a scramble to find cranberries, or canned pumpkin, or even sweet potatoes, depending on what country we’re in. Whole turkeys are also not always easy to come by, nor is it always easy to find someone with an oven big enough to cook it in. Indeed, one year in Germany my oven was elected for turkey duty (despite the fact that I don’t eat it) because the guy who was in charge of making it didn’t even have an oven in his apartment.

This year we were invited to a pot-luck Thanksgiving at the home of an American/German couple we know here. There were about 30 people present, but very few who were actually American or who had ever attended a Thanksgiving dinner before. Most of the essential foods were represented – a big roasted turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, potatoes (mashed and sweet), green beans, pumpkin pie…

But, given that most of the crowd wasn’t familiar with what one eats on Thanksgiving, there were several unexpected dishes that made appearances, too (ham, tortilla chips, scalloped potatoes). The one that made me laugh the most was cole slaw. I guess whoever brought it was thinking, “hey, it’s American…”