Christmas Disagreement

In spite of my total lack of religious knowledge, tonight I had an argument with someone (several people, actually) about the alleged date of Jesus' birth. I don't think I have ever heard anyone suggest it was any time other than the 25th of December, but now apparently the 24th of Dec has been thrown into the ring, and now that I look at Wikipedia I see that any time between October and January, or maybe May or August, is also arguable.

Did anyone else know that this is controversial?

Switzerland Day

Reto and I went to his sister and brother-in-law's new (and I mean brand new; they picked up the keys that day) house for a Switzerland Day barbeque, which was great. The house, in proper Swiss style, has a bunker to save them all (and 2 of the neighbours, apparently) when the revolution comes (although recent slackening of the rules re having to keep a year's supply of tinned peaches and cervelat (seemingly indestructible sausages) or whatever in your bunker means, I suppose, that if the revolution does come they will all have to survive on vast quantites of wine (because everyone uses their bunker as a cellar) and then they will have to resort to cannibalism. Which I guess would be less confronting if you were drunk, but still. They really should make sure they have a little camping stove or something, because I'm sure it would be much nicer to eat a cooked person than a raw one. Maybe some herbs and spices would be good, too).

Anyway, the party was super. The garden of the new house is full of fruit trees, so I spent a lot of time picking and scoffing blackberries and raspberries, wondering about making wine out of all the grapes, trying to talk the new owners out of chopping down the plum and cherry trees, and wondering what "holunderbeere" is in english (elderberry, apparently, but since I have no idea what they look or taste like, I couldn't tell at the time). As it turns out, though, no one else is as interested in the edible parts of the garden, so I left with vast quantites of blackberries and raspberries that were too ripe to leave on the bushes (yay!).

The other highlight of the night (apart from the fruit) was the fireworks. As I have mentioned, people buy their own fireworks and let them off whenever they want to, but there are also organised firework events in the towns. From where we were we had a huge view over lots of different towns, and so from about 9pm onwards (when it was sort of dark-ish, or at least enough so that people were starting to set off their firecrackers in earnest, and to light their insanely ginormous bonfires) we had a 180 degree view of pyromania at its prettiest. The best aspects of which, in my opinion, were the massive bonfire in a field nearby (too far away to really appreciate, but it definitely brought back the memories of last year on Switzerland Day, when I had just arrived here for a holiday and I was taken, all jet-lagged and bedraggled, to see this HUGE fire that the town was putting on, that was ENORMOUS and HOT and only about 10m away from where a bunch of cars were parked. No one else, apart from the other token foreigner, seemed to think this was strange), the official fireworks display of the closest town (which was pretty and organised and much grander than all the individual efforts), the huge fires that were burning on big mountains in the distance (because of all the smoky haze you couldn't actually see the mountains any more, so it looked as though there were fires suspended in the sky), and the fireworks that someone had brought to the party, that were let off in the backyard (especially the last one which seemed to be sort of broken and kept flaring a bit then sputtering and half dying before flaring a bit again, and ended up as a few pathetic (but still kind of enormous) tongues of flame shooting up a metre or so then sort of collapsing on the lawn. Fortunately nothing got set on fire that shouldn't have).

Ve Haff Vays Off Making You Talk

Last night we went out for dinner with Reto's entire family. We went to a restaurant, and dinner involved cooking meat ourselves on a thing that looked like some sort of medieval torture item but is apparently called a Tatarenhut, or rather a Tatar's Hat (since presumably there is no reason for it to be named in german). It was weird, and ridiculously meat-heavy.

There was bacon (and incidentally, bacon here is not like what I would call bacon at all. It's more like proscuitto or something, and seems to be comprised far more of fat than of meat. And it tastes really, really meaty), there was veal, there was pork, there was chicken, there was beef. As well as all that meaty abundance, there were hot chips, thousands of mayonnaisey sauces, and assorted types of tinned fruit (lychees, peaches etc). Strange.

The idea was that you hook your chosen meat item onto one of the confession-inducing spikes (there are fires lit beneath) and cook it to your liking. All the fat and whatever that comes out of the meat while it is cooking falls down into the brim of the hat, which is like a little moat filled with vegetables and stock, and when you have finished with the meat the staff there offer to serve up the remaining stock/veggies/meat residue as a soup. We didn't have the soup, but I did eat some of the vegetables, and they were the meatiest vegetables I have ever tasted.

I like the way that Switzies seem to be so into communal activity type meals, like fondue and raclette, where everyone is doing something as they eat and there's a sort of jovial sense of shared food fate (because everyone is eating the same swimming pool of cheese, or because everyone is uncoordinated and dropping meat in the vegetable moat). I like the way that there is something else to focus on if you have run out of conversation. What I don't like is the way these meals generally rely so heavily on one particular ingredient (cheese, meat. And before you say that 'meat' is not one ingredient, I refuse to acknowledge that). Why couldn't I have tortured some slabs of capsicum or asparagus or onion on the Hat of Pain as well?

More Swiss Wildlife

Apparently Switzerland is the place to be if you are into religious public holidays. Today is ascension day, which you would think would make very little difference to my unemployed household, except that all the shops are shut. As it turned out I narrowly avoided having to go to church this morning (! Church! It would have been the first time since the early 90s when I stayed the night at a friend's place and her family made me go with them) when Reto and I failed to get out of bed early enough to get there on time. Instead we showed up for the raclette-athon that was on afterwards as some sort of fundraising event for the choir that Reto's mum is in. Which was delicious.

On the way home, our trip was delayed by a herd of cows that was being moved from one paddock to another. They dawdled up the road eating people's lawns, and we stood in the rain like morons waiting for them to pass. Welcome to my hectic lifestyle.

Can Anyone Give Me Wood?

Switzerland is apparently the home of board games, card games, any sort of distraction that is sociable but that means you don't have to make conversation. Reto's family is obsessed (well, possibly that is a bit harsh but they are definitely enthusiastic) with playing a boardgame called Die Siedler von Catan which is all about colonising a new country or something similar. The game involves building bridges and houses (or something) by trading cards representing things (such as brick and grains and wood and sheep) with the other players.

The other day I was listening to Reto and assorted others playing this game (I was taking part in the less sociable but more entertaining pasttime of reading my book because I am the sort of spoilsport party-pooper who can't stand board games or card games or any type of organised activity at all), and it seemed to me that every minute or so, someone would earnestly say "Does anyone have wood?", "Does anyone want to give me wood?", "I've got wood but I've got no stones". This was a largely ESL* crowd, and possibly they might not appreciate the humour in these statements, but I was quietly giggling to myself until I could take it no more. "What the hell is wrong with you people? Don't you realise how hilarious this is?" I yelled at them, and they stared at me blankly, before ignoring me and carrying on.

"I need some weed" said the next player, pronouncing "wheat" slightly strangely.

These foreigners are crazy.



* English as a Second Language