German Wedding Bells

"It's all Greek to me." "Are you Dutch?" "This is a Spanish village." No matter what the idiom, it all comes out as a bit confusing. Our own idiom for last weekend could have been, "It's a German wedding." because we attended a wedding consisting of a German groom, New Zealand bride and guests from three continents (American, Europe and New Zealand). What an adventure in culture!

Highlights:

-H and I drove 10 hours across the whole of Germany. This might sound boring to some, but given that most of it was on the Autobahn (German highway) that only has a "suggested" speed limit, we were able to entertain ourselves.

-We stayed in a lovely pension/guest house stocked with snacks and drinks. But at around 11pm the night before the wedding we decided we needed pizza. With a stack of tourist brochures and a GPS, we found our little hole-in-the-wall diner/pizzeria. It was American style and decked out in Halloween decorations. Tacky and yet so cool!

-Wedding: Beautiful! I loved that the poor town hall officiant who preformed the ceremony apologized at the beginning for being nervous in front of all the foreigners...in German, of course. We foreigners were half the guests.

-Clown car and the German police: The town of Kalkar where our friends got hitched is on the border of the Netherlands. So in the evening, we took advantage of the proximity of the border and headed over the university town of Najmagen for a walk, a look and a drink. We found a cute little bar, enjoyed the atmosphere for a few hours and then headed back to Germany. Due to the Netherlands liberal cannabis laws, the German police often check vehicles returning to their territory (although all European Union borders should be open with no controls).

We pulled over and the policeman asked for our documents. We promptly handed him a New Zealand passport, German passport, American passport and Czech passport. He shined the light in the car, "Anything in this car I should know about?" was his reply. "No, officer, just us."

As the first policeman went to scan our documents in his car, his colleague stayed around for a chat. Our German friend explained it was his wedding day and we crossed the border just to find a nice bar. "You had your honeymoon in Najmagen??" the policeman asked. "Well, if it's your wedding day, then let me go see if I can speed this up a bit." He came back a few seconds later, handed us our passports and wished us a pleasant evening.

-And then we drove home...full of food, happiness, love and friendship.


True love stories never have endings. ~Richard Bach

Photo studio weekend

I have a friend. We'll call him R. I've known him as long as I've lived in this city. I don't remember meeting, I don't remember becoming friends. I just know that R has been in my life as long as my life has been in Prague, and I'd be a little lost without him.

R is the one who introduced me to the world of photography. We took a workshop together a couple years ago and those eight weeks opened a beautiful world framed through a camera lens for me. A couple weekends ago we went for a "photo studio weekend". We took off to the mountains in the north, seeking castles and autumn leaves falling.

Here are some of the fruits of our labour:

There's nothing like fair food

Every autumn the quiet monastery across the street hosts a "pouť". This is a festival or fair that has its origins in the medieval pilgrimages. This pouť was dedicated to Saint Margaret and occurs every October. The piety of the occasion has been lost in time and replaced with twirling fair rides, flashing lights, fried foods and lots of alcohol.

I have several favorites that keep me coming back every year. I love the small market of handmade crafts, including candles, jewelery, glass and ornaments. Fresh baked goods, smoked cheeses, hot crepes, spicy sausages all make my mouth water and my tummy happy. The bumper cars are a family tradition with H's brothers and sisters. Small paper flowers won every year from the fairground shooting stand. Fireworks sparkling and dancing over the ancient monastery.

Bookworm: Krakow

I had a student once who would buy a cookbook as a souvenir from every country she visited. I loved this creative idea. I decided to adopt it and make it mine...but I gave it a Tasci twist.

I began buying famous authors translated into English from each country I traveled to. It gave me a great chance to have an insight into the culture, give me some familiarity with the local concerns and read some books I'd have never found otherwise.

In Krakow I picked up Mercedes-Benz by Pawel Huelle. I sought out the English bookstore Massolit Books and Cafe (www.massolit.com). I had stopped by this amazing two-room collection stuffed and overflowing with books books and books last time I was in Krakow, and left a little piece of my heart there.

I asked the shop assistant to recommend a Polish author that was well-liked and respected among Poles, and who could give me a nice insight into Polish culture. He offered me several books by Pawel Huelle. It struck me as just the thing I was looking for. The novel is based loosely on the author's own family story and background.

A young man is taking driving lessons in Gdansk after the fall of the Communist government. As a way to entertain his pretty driving instructor, he tells her tales of his grandfather's Mercedes-Benz.

One of the most surprising, and serendipitous, details of the novel is that it opens with a sentence written in Czech. This is because the novel is written as a letter to the Czech author Bohumil Hrabal. Mercedes-Benz gives a unique glimpse into a pre-war Poland where people moved freely and expected much. And it ties together a Central European history that is deep and heart-breaking and human.



Buy at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mercedes-Benz-Pawel-Huelle/dp/1852428694

Bookworm

I've decided to add in a little section to this blog called "Bookworm". I firmly believe that books can make you live and travel and grow and love and learn just as much as any plane ticket. When a book particularly moves me and brings some place or some time alive, you'll hear about it under "Bookworm"....

Stay tuned