Friday 9 November 2007

New Things That Have Happened Lately ..

1. I saw a woodpecker. Well, apparently Reto had to learn all about identifying birds when he was a schoolkiddy (he has surprisingly strong opinions on types of ducks) and he said it was a woodpecker, so I am giving him the benefit of the doubt.

2. I cooked chestnuts. Which was far less annoying than I imagined it might be. Actually, all I had to do was boil them for about half a second and then peel them (ouch) and chuck them in a frying pan with some brussels sprouts (cooking brussels sprouts was also a bit of a novelty for me, and yielded surprisingly delicious results. I think the chestnuts were a bit of an unnecessary addition to the meal, though).

3. I embraced german-speaking culture (sort of). Because we had a free ticket, we went and saw an Austrian production of The Importance Of Being Earnest last night (in german, although happily extremely well-enunciated german). I had swotted up for this by buying a copy of the play (in english! at the second hand bookshop the other day. Honestly I love that place and I will miss it enormously when we leave in 3 SHORT WEEKS!), so understanding it was no problem, but it was a bit dreary to read it and then watch it in the space of about 3 days. Interesting points to note are that, Lady Bracknell was played by a (large and extremely manly) man, and that basically the entire audience was 80+.

4. I saw kiddies doing the hokey pokey* in swiss german. Apparently that's what it's all about over here.

In other news, it's supposed to snow tonight, I think! Although apparently only above 600m, and a quick look at wikipedia shows me that Aarau has an elevation of only 381m. Sigh, but I am taking it a a promising sign of things to come.



UPDATE: Just now as Reto and I were out on my daily constitutional (which really is mine, he just trails along) it snowed on us! And it's still snowing now! Yay, and brr!


* Look at that link! Apparently they call it the "hokey cokey" in England. Is this true?

4 comments:

MissS said...

Snow! We had a smattering this morning in Zurich. I watched it fall through the window at work then when I popped outside to grab some cough lozengers it snowed ON ME! I had like three tiny flakes on my coat! Not very exciting for Europeans I'm sure but I found it a novelty :)

rswb said...

I know! I'm sure it's hopelessly dorky to be so excited about snow, but I love it! And especially because it's the first snow I've seen so far this winter (autumn). I'm also glad that I'm back home now, where it's warm and I have easy access to a nice cup of tea.

Nick Jensen said...

Brussel sprouts?!? First it's soapy chocolate and now brussel sprouts? And at the same time you dislike marzipan? I'm beginning to wonder if you even HAVE taste buds. Or maybe your tastebuds have been fooled somehow? Maybe when you eat chicken, you actually taste what is octopus to the rest of us?

I get goosebumps just thinking about the horror of brussel sprouts. Add fried liver to the same plate, and you'll see me looping around on the floor like a wing shot pelican...

*brrrr* - did the temperature just drop 8 degrees?

rswb said...

Yeah, the brussels sprouts thing was a bit of a surprise to me too. A few weeks ago we were at some restaurant and my meal was served with brussels sprouts and Reto went into some sort of slavering hysteria state (something like that, anyway), insisting that I give him at least half of them because they are his favourite vegtable ever, or something. Anyway, I had no problem with that because I had no intention of enjoying them (having never really eaten them before, but having heard all the stories about how much everyone hates them), but later I bought some from the supermarket (because I am such a nice girlfriend. See also the incident where I made a carrot cake for Reto. Carrot cake, blergh), and as it turns out they are delicious fried up with a bit of onion, a bit of bacon, a bit of garlic and possibly also a few chestnuts. Possibly the fact that they are heavily sliced in that recipe (and therefore unrecognisable as brussels sprouts) helps.

I'm definitely with you on the liver thing, though.