Just one bit of a huge carnival, I mean "Christmas market," set up at Alexanderplatz right now.
Because nothing says Christmas like a massive, light-up carnival (apparently)!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
ALSO: I didn't get a picture of it, but the other night as I passed by the blinking, neon explosion of carnival rides and beer that is Alexanderplatz right now, I was tickled to see that one of the many and bizarre activities on offer appeared to be...curling. That most Canadian of sports. (Okay, yes, I see that it was apparently invented in Scotland, but still. Very Canadian...and I've never heard of it over here.)
BUT just now I went and looked this up (the thing at Alexanderplatz was labeled "Eisstockschiessen," literally "ice stick shooting") and find that this is in fact a separate sport from curling, and indeed quite German. In English, apparently, we call it "ice stock sport" or "Bavarian curling." Oh, the things you can learn!
(In Ithaca, because Ithaca is particularly awesome like that, every year the Farmers' Market hosts the "International Rutabaga Curl," in which, yes, participants play something loosely resembling curling, except with rutabagas. The vegetable. And rutabaga in German is apparently "Kohlrübe," so now you've learned that too.)
We just came from the Rutabaga Curl! Ian competed respectably but didn't go on to the final heat. One of the refs had a box grater on one arm to grate the rutabagas of any competitors who weren't competing fairly, but this seemed to be sort of arbitrary, and not really much of a punishment because he just grated a little bit off and they were still allowed to compete. Ian overheard a woman telling a man whose rutabaga had been grated, "Oh, you're in trouble!" And he said, "All I was did was have a styled mustache!"
ReplyDeleteThis is AWESOME. No, I'm sorry, it's beyond awesome. Thank you for keeping me updated :-)
DeleteBTW, your photo is absolutely intense, professional-level good. Maybe consider a new career selling it as a screen saver?
ReplyDeleteWow, thank you, K! I'll stick to blogging for free, though...maybe I just don't have enough entrepreneurial drive?
Delete