Coming Soon...

Actual blogging!

We have been running around America like (insert pithy observation here) and hence have been too lazy to blog. But, soon, I hope to post a few Christmas delicacies and spare you the mildly nightmarish story of our extended stay in the Newark Airport.

I hope everyone is having fun out there!

Place your orders now!

Jeremy and I are unbelievably excited to go back to America... which reminds me, if you want anything from Europe (chocolate-- curry ketchup (I've already received Chuckie's request)-- Pannetone, etc. etc.) let me know now! We still have room in our bag for a few more small items.

(I am such a liar. I have no idea how much room is left in our bags.)

Proof that we truly miss NYC, we made a reservation at a restaurant called Dirt Candy. Jeremy wanted to go, too, so there.

It's a Wonderful Life (Profound bagatelle Update #2)

I'm feeling embraced by the Europeans right now, making me all gushing and Pollyanna-y--

I've already started the media blitz (such as a dance project without funding can muster), and have gotten lovely responses. Stefan at early-dance.de (the website for information on the baroque/renaissance/19th c. dance scene in Europe), is promoting my show on the front page of his site, instead of just in the calendar section! I also sent out the website announcement to the Euro crowd, and my first two congratulatory emails were from French baroque dancers! Quel Suprise!

Check it out! www.thepunksdelight.com

Swiss Wrap-up and Happy December!

I finished my last Harlequin performance in Switzerland on Sunday. Everything went pretty smashingly, and after the show, one of the actors, Dani, invited us all to fondue at his house. Here's how you make real Swiss fondue:

1. the pot-- ceramic, wide, and shallow
You heat up/melt the cheese on the stovetop, and then transfer it to the sterno apparatus on the table to keep it warm while you are eating (OK, this may be self-explanatory to you, but I recall waiting hours for the cheese to melt over that little sterno fire.)
2. the cheese-- I couldn't get much information about that because there you just go to the cheese guy in the grocery store and tell him what kind of fondue you want to make. Then, he makes a nice, shredded blend all ready for you!

3. the alcohol-- The fondue we had was called "Half-Half", and I am not sure if this referred to the cheeses or that it seemed to be half wine and half cheese. Also, the real Swiss way of adding Kirschwasser (cherry schnapps) to the fondue is to have a small glass next to your plate -- first you dip the bread in the schnapps and then in the cheese. This was new to the Germans-- I am really sharing a Swiss secret with you!

4. The accoutrements-- tiny pickles, pearl onions, pickled baby corn, and a salad



Yesterday, I had my first "Profound Bagatelle" rehearsal with the dancers! Baroque dance is like something from another planet if you have never done it before, so it is going to take a little while before they are comfortable. Luckily, most of the show is modern dance, anyway. It is so great to be back in the studio!!

However, my way to the studio was very "Typisch Kölsch". I was sitting next to a guy on the train nursing his morning beer. When I put on my headphones, I heard him muttering about it, so I just switched off the "translating German" part of my mind in order not to understand him.

Not Cornish Hen!

Ugh, it was pheasant. Really, that is the last time I try to cook wild game. We always end up finding the shot in the meat, and it tastes so, well, gamey. It's too bad, because I want to like game... I think I will leave it to the professionals.

Progress Report #1

Sometimes, I have to admit, I really love messing around on Photoshop (Lynch family members will attest to my recent postings in our Joyce Lynch posse). And so, I just have to share the mock-up of the front of our postcard. I had to do a lot of weird stuff to be able to post it here (it's originally in CMYK color and that caused strange effects when I first tried to post it). Comments/Suggestions welcome!


Also, since I am going to be on tour for Thanksgiving again, I've decided to try to make a little mini-Thanksgiving dinner tonight for me and Jeremy: Cornish hen, sweet potato risotto, and cranberry sauce! Hopefully the thing I bought at the store is indeed a Cornish hen-- at least it looks decidedly poultry-like.

Request

I have to admit that I find it somewhat gauche to ask for things for Christmas, but I have decided to go all the way and be ultra-gauche by publishing my request on the internet.

Dear people who would have bought me a Christmas present anyway,

I would love a donation to my show (that's happening in February, here in Cologne) more than anything else in the world. It looks like we've applied for German funding too late, and so we won't be getting any of that famous European support for the arts. (Next time!!)

Plus, the airlines are all being crazy with their new rules for checked baggage-- charging for a second bag!

OK, sorry for that breach of good taste.

Yours truly,

Henrietta von Gravlax

Here come the Weinachtsmarkts!

Here in Germany, we really have no Christmas 'brake' holidays-- no Halloween, no Thanksgiving (sigh), and All Saints' Day doesn't really do the job.

And so, they are starting to build the Christmas Markets in the public squares! I love the Christmas Markets- you hang around outside with piping hot spiced wine (glühwein) looking at the lights and shops while eating food that is hideously unhealthy.

Things have been a wee bit Christmas-y around here since the beginning of October, when the grocery stores began stocking the candy and stollen and chocolate Advent calendars and pine wreaths. Oh, and speaking of Advent calendars, I saw one the other day with 24 cans of BEER (Kölsch, naturally) tucked inside the tiny doors. Whoa.


Here's what the Gaffel Brewery has to say:

"Wir haben ein interessantes, innovatives Produkt produziert, das eine optimale Geschenk-Alternative zu konventionellen Kalendern darstellt", sagt Thomas Deloy, Marketingverantwortlicher der Privatbrauerei Gaffel.

Die stabile Kartonage mit einer Höhe von knapp einem halben Meter ist trotz des Gewichts von ca. neun Kilo durch einen Haltegriff unkompliziert transportierbar.

"Die Vorgespräche im Handel liefen allesamt sehr positiv. Nun können wir mit der Kombination aus Sonderdose und Adventskalender das Warten auf das Christkind allen besonderes schmackhaft machen", meint Andreas Lesche, Verkaufsleiter Handel. "Parallel werden wir auch die 0,33 Liter Sonderdose dauerhaft anbieten.

In English:

"We have produced an interesting, innovative product, that presents the optimal gift alternative to conventional Advent calendars," said Thomas Deloy, who is responsible for marketing at Gaffel Brewery.

The stable cardboard box, which is just under a meter high, is easy to transport with its special handle, despite its weight of 9 kilos (about 18 pounds).

"The preliminary reactions in the stores have been very positive. With the combination of our special cans and the calendar, we can now make waiting for the Christchild exceptionally delicious," believes Andreas Lesche, the chief of sales for Gaffel. In parallel, we will also continue to offer the .33 liter cans (this is the size of an American beer bottle. Normally kölsch is sold in .5 liter bottles-- about the size of a pint).

But I love Glühwein.

Pictures from Switzerland

It appears I still have not figured out how to successfully insert many photos into blogger. So, I will just give you some clues about the pictures and you can mix and match: Zürich old town, Raclette dinner at my choreographer's house, fatty Späzli and Röstli (everything is Swiss-German adorably ends in -li) lunch drowning in cheese before the 1st performance, an initative to stop clear-cutting forests with a sad tree that seems to be bleeding,a detail from Rodin's The Gates of Hell at the Zürich Kunsthaus, and the McEmmentaler.

OMG I am Roasting Potatoes in Duck Fat

I was too lazy to go to the grocery store after coming back from Switzerland today, and this is what happens.

Pictures coming soon!

I can't believe they scooped Jeremy!

Genetic Scientists Develop Sheep With Brain Of A Goat

A small example of the weird Middle Ages

Even though my description of the stigmata paintings in the museum in Cologne was quite descriptive, I felt like searching Google images to see if I could give you a better taste of the real deal. I found this on the Templars website (whoa.)-- because this painting of St. Francis receiving the stigmata is Italian (Giotto), it is not quite as gorey as those blood-thirsty (Reformation, anyone?) German paintings. But you get the idea.

My Image in Switzerland

We are really gearing up for the world-premiere of our Lambranzi show in Switzerland right now... Tomorrow is the dress rehearsal (and Jeremy is coming--yay!) and the premiere is on Monday (really? Monday? Oh, well.).

And my picture was in the Zürich newspaper last Sunday! Here's the picture:









Yes, we are in the rare and exotic "double travestie", and, yes, I am trying to lick my dance partner's painted nipple. Also, yes, that was entirely my idea and not directed by the choreographer. Hee, hee.

But don't I kind of look like the Hamburgler?

Here's the link if you want to see the small article.

Good Morning, America!

It's going to be a great day!

I have to say that I am glad the campaign is over-- I spent way too much time trolling the internet for information, including one night when I discovered that you can watch a lot of MSNBC online.
America came through! Yipee!!

Last night we went to an election party hosted by some German university students. It was pretty low-key- we mostly switched back and forth between CNN and a German election special from NYC. CNN is impossibly annoying (especially when you are breathlessly waiting for information, but they don't have any to give you), but the German show at least mildly funny. They had on some supposed famous Hollywood actor who was German that no one at the party had ever heard of and a few Americans who could speak German.

Art happenings

A new mini-teeny-eesy-weesny art space opened up around the corner from us! It's called Elfenbeinturmchen ("Little Ivory Tower"-- the word for ivory directly translated is elf leg. Weird.) and bills itself as a "living room movie theater/art room/alternative theater". I went there last night and saw Chocolat in German! It was so charming, and they gave the 4 of us who showed up a little bowl of chocolate. Awww. Ghostbusters is playing on Friday. Unfortunately the space is too small for my baroque dance cabaret act...

On the other end of the spectrum, Jer and I went to the "Long Night at the Museum" last Saturday, and I thought that was a total bust. It was insanely crowded, and even though there were buses to take you around to the different galleries and museums, it still took a long time to go from place to place. It boasted a lot of fun "activities" (sound art, perfume making, etc) and DJs, but we couldn't really enjoy them. At the end of the night, we ended up looking at our favorite gorey Renaissance paintings in order to make it worthwhile. (How gorey, you ask? We discovered a whole new genre where a saint is receiving stigmata from a hovering Jesus. This has the odd effect of making Jesus look like a kite held by blood-red strings.)

I think I just like going to museums by myself when no one else is there.

Neither Yacht Rock nor Politics (sort of)

Oooh! New Post!

Are you thinking this will be exciting and filled with pithy insights about the world or art or foreign languages or funny food? Well, wipe those hopes out of your mind because Jeremy and I are feeling kind of boring and slow-- it's winter hibernation time and the Gluhwein hasn't even hit the streets. The weather is gray and rainy, and we had the daylight savings thing last weekend, so it is dark at 5:30. Waaaah.

Oh wait! This is fun! With Funny Food! Last weekend we took advantage of actual sun to ride our bikes to Bonn, a mere 36 kilometers away. Since the trams go to Bonn, I thought it was somewhat closer, and we didn't even check the distance before heading out. Crazy kids! We stumbled, exhausted, into the first brauhaus on the market square and ate up a delicious quantity of Rheinland homecookin': Himmel und Äd (remember the apple post?) and a pancake packed with fried potatoes and bacon. We took a look at the outdoor flea market, ate some cake, and then hit the road again. Somehow we took a wrong turn as night fell, and we ended up taking the train back home from Bruhl, home of the backyard baroque palace. It was actually not dificult to take the bikes on the train on a Sunday evening.... duly noted.

We are, in an undisciplined fashion, getting ready for our spring trip down the Mosel River from Trier (home of Germany's most famous Roman ruins) through Luxemburg to Metz, France. Now I know that I can do about 40 km per day easily, but 70 makes me a bit brain-dead.

I had wanted to host a fabulous "European Elites for Obama Election Night Soirée", but I realized today that having a party in one's apartment on a Tuesday night is not very polite. So, hopefully we can find some CNN-playing kneipe...

anyway...

For those of you who are truly sick of politics, here is how I while away my free hours:
Yacht Rock!
I have already watched all of them at least 3 times, but at least I don't have to hear about pitbulls, acorns, lipstick, weathermen, plumbers or any other such nonsense. Here are a couple of my favorites (warning the following videos contain some piquant language, and adult themes).

I may be Imaginary

Am I a Real American?

I grew up in Mecca, OH which had 3000 residents in the 2000 census compared to Wasilla's 7000 residents. Therefore, Mecca is twice as much a Small Town, and therefore I am undeniably a Real American.

However, I lived in NYC very happily for 6 years. NYC is, of course, the sinful epicenter of Fake America, but does that cancel out the 18 years I lived in Mecca?

Oh, but I live in Europe now. I am most definitely, then, not a Real American.

Case in Point

I really don't want to turn this into a political blog, but Colin Powell is just so brilliant in his statement endorsing Barak Obama that I couldn't help myself. You Americans have probably seen this 800 times by now, but if you haven't, make sure you scroll to minute 4:30.

Substitution News

More Switzerland!

I had a deeelicious dinner in Switzerland that consisted of Rotkohl (red cabbage sort of pickled and cooked), Glazed Chestnuts (chestnuts again!), and Mashed Potatoes. I wanted to make the same thing for Jeremy in order to spread the culinary delight around, but I ended up making Sauerkraut, Purple Mashed Potaotes (yay Greenmarket! Ummm, except that you shouldn't mash them...too waxy), and Swiss Dried/Cured Meat (those chestnuts are always letting me down). I wanted to take a picture, but Jeremy didn't want to scare you.

Sorry, this has been a slow news weekend in the Edgar/Lynch household.

Oh, and I am now hopelessly addicted to the election coverage.

What Heidi Saw...

Ok, so I've just been in Switzerland for a week, but it is indeed full of cheese and chocolate and money and cowbells and goats and rolling hills with trees turning yummy fall colors. Ahhhh...

I took a walk in the woods on my birthday, and found quite a few little friends:
(by the way, the German word for hike is "wandern"-- so perfect)

































































































And my personal favorite:

Die Bahn/Notes on Switzerland

Dear Deutsche Bahn,

Please accept my deepest apologies for saying bad things about your service on this blog. In reality, I love you and your comfortable, fast trains with every fiber of my being. Let's just put my last post under a "lovers' spat" and please, please, please, do not send the fates against me again.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Sarah Edgar


Oh, hi there, blog readers.
I'm just trying to cover my behind against future mishaps because on Saturday I missed my train. It went down like this--- Early Saturday morning, I went on an airplane from Zürich to Köln (as per my new policy of only being on the train a max of 8 hours per day) in order to teach my contredanse class at the Cologne TANZhautnah festival. The class went very well, and in 6 people I may have awakened a new passion for nerdy dancing! After the class, Beate and Jeremy and I had a refreshing beverage (1st mistake) and talked about the funding possibilities for our show in Feb. (2nd mistake). After we paid for the drinks, I only had a 1/2 hour to get to the train station, and on a weekday this would be ok. But it was SATURDAY-- the train was running 10 minutes late and I missed my train back to Switzerland by 2 min. I tried to tell my sob story to the ticket desk, but I had to end up buying a ticket for early the next morning for an insane price that I won't write here because I want to forget it as soon as possible.

But I got to spend the evening with Jeremy! Totally worth it.

Notes on Switzerland:

1. It is a rich, rich country. The airport in Zürich is filled with fancy wooden modern-art design desks, and the seats are leather. The Swiss franc is almost worth the same as the dollar (1.13 francs = 1 dollar), but it is kind of crazy expensive here. Example: a Starbucks coffee at the airport costs 7 francs, a cocktail at the bar in Winterthur costs about 25 franks (I didn't buy either of those things, FYI)

2. The choreographer and his husband have made me feel completely at home-- they cook for me, borrowed a bike for me to ride around town, and I even have my own bathroom. And they gave me a jar of jam (homemade from their own grapes) for my birthday!

3. I am speaking German A LOT. Yay! It has become my fall-back language because I can't speak the local dialect.

More later--- I can't wait to explore the medieval castle and hike in the woods and see Zürich and etc etc.

Some Bundeslands just don't like me

I went to Kassel on Sunday for an audition-- this meant leaving the house at 6am to travel 4 hours by train, forgetting to eat lunch, and then not getting the job. And it was COLD! I was walking through the town in the drizzling rain after the audition, when I spied a fabulous yellow palace (I think 75% of the baroque palaces in Germany are painted yellow-- why?), so I high-tailed it over for a little baroque nerdiness. And let me tell you, inside it was indeed nerdy, but not in the way I expected-- the museum inside the palace is the Astronomical-Physics Cabinet! There were globes from the 15th and 16th centuries, astrolabes, weird surveying equiptment, alchemy vessels, card-punching computers, a movable-type machine, and....
a microscope from 1700!











After that delicious dose of culture that I wish I could have shared with Jeremy (duh), I sat around the train station for an hour because the weather was wretched. When I was finally able to get on my train, I luckily found a seat next to a crowd of jolly beer-drinking men. Everything went smoothly for 2 stops... and then... one of the train doors refused to close. They tried to fix it for an hour and a half (during which time I made friends with the several children bouncing around the train) before making us all get off the train in order to get on another train. Another piece of luck-- this train was going straight to Cologne. Only 2 1/4 hours after I would have originally gotten home.

The thing is, Kassel is in the state (Bundesland) of Hessen-- the same Bundesland where you will find Göttingen (remember that sitting-on-the-floor-with-giant-costume-boxes fiasco?). I don't know what Hessen has against me, but every time I try to leave that place, it takes me twice as long as I planned to get home.



I am writing now from Winterthur, Switzerland (which is not the home of breast-milk cuisine, and the choreographer gagged when I told him about it), where I am doing funny dances with a couple of tall actors and trying to look manly.

The search for Apfelkuchen

Oh, yes, ladies and gents, it is that time of year when a girl's fancy turns to baking and eating all manner of fatty things. We had pâté and cheese for dinner last night-- but I digress. On a whim, I picked up a kilo of apples at the store with a vague idea to make Apelkuchen. Of course, on the internet, there are about 8 million recipes, leaving me feeling rather confused and uninspired. I may make "Himmel und Erde" (Heaven and Earth), a traditional Cologne dish, instead. Here's the what you do if you feel similarly inspired:

Heaven and Earth

Ingredients:
2 pounds potatoes
salt
1 1/2 pounds apples
2 T. lemon juice
4 oz. bacon, in pieces
small onion, chopped
1/2 cup milk
pepper
nutmeg
1 1/2 pounds blood sausage (haha! I bet you could use some other sausage instead...), sliced
2 T oil

Wash, peel, and quarter the potatoes, then cook in salted water for 15-20 min. Wash, peel, take out the seeds, and cut the apples into eighths. Combine 1/2 water and the lemon juice and bring to a boil. Add the apples and cook for 10 min. In another pan, fry the bacon, and then add the onions, frying them together for 10 min. In a separate pan, scald the milk (What?!?! another pan! oy.)

Drain the apples and the potatoes. Puree the potatoes, then add the apples (leaving a couple of pieces aside) and mash them (it seems the apples are supposed to be less mashed than the potatoes...). Add the milk and combine. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Fry the sausage in oil until crispy (another pan!!! NOOOO!).

Serve the apple/potato puree with the onions and bacon on top, and the sausage with the remaining apple pieces on the side.



OH, heavens, after writing that out it seems like a lot of work... If anyone makes it let me know!

silly internet fun

This is from wordle.net-- you plug in a text and it randomizes the words. I copied into the system the little bit of explanation I wrote for the upcoming Punks Delight website. I know, total nerd.


I'm just sitting here, enjoying our brand-new heat and waiting for Jeremy to come home from England. I hope he brings me some bangers. Or mash.

Final Kastanien Update

I now have it from a German authority that the 'chestnuts' that we gathered in the park are, in fact, poison.

When it rains....

Is it just me, or are the Swiss now totally insane?

Is it only because I am now aware of the craziness of the Swiss that I am seeing evidence everywhere?

Sometimes it pays to poop around on the internet.

Another disappointment for me-- when I work in Switzerland next month, I won't be able to feast on human breast milk.

Kastanien Update

I know, it was heartily disappointing not to be able to scavenge food from the park, but Jeremy and I are both now agreed that the whole chestnut business is too much of a pain. When he came home last night, I had roasted the suckers for an additional half an hour to try to take away the bitter flavor. I gave my darling husband a crack at peeling the horrid nuts, but he also recoiled in disgust at the evil taste. Hmmmm. I think grilling may be the best way... with plenty of kölsch, naturally. These nuts were so bitter, that they made everything else taste horribly sweet-- like if you eat too much artichoke.

By the way, as we search for the best and cheapest flights home for Christmas, we are running into the dismaying problem of flights from Germany to America suddenly discontinuing after November. Of course, it must be the economy, stupid. We may have to take a boat.

Ich hasse diese verdammte Kastanien;

or, I hate these damned chestnuts.

Oh, how they mock me with their dark, shiny, wooden exteriors (who doesn't love shiny dark wooden things?) How they call to me with their siren song of chestnut chocolate cake!

Ok, so, it is indeed difficult to be Nature Girl when you have no idea what you are doing. After roasting the chestnuts in the oven, I struggled to peel one, and then I tasted it. NOOOOOO! It tasted really bitter. This led to a panic that we had collected horse chestnuts, but a Wikipedia search only confused me because the true chestnuts and the horse chestnuts looked REALLY similar, AND it said that the taste of raw chestnuts can be "astringent". I was somewhat buoyed by Jeremy's claim that he ate chestnuts from the park (without dying) two years ago by grilling them with his friends. But did he eat from that tree? Could they have mixed horse chestnut trees and true chestnut trees in the park (ooooh, that is evil)? I then tried another peeling method, but the horridly bitter taste in my mouth really took the zap out of the impending hour of manual labor, so I gave up. I just got over being a little sick, I don't feel like have food poisoning in the same week.

Kastanien!

Ok, so after all that excitement last weekend in which I didn't really participate because I didn't understand what all was happening until it was too late, I managed to become ill. I think it might be because the heat in our apartment is not yet on coupled with the fact that Jeremy and I stayed out really late on Saturday chatting it up in our own special German/English cocktail with the cool cats at the Indonesian restaurant near the movie theater where we saw "Tropic Thunder". Ahem. I have been in bed watching the Simpsons for hours, and perhaps my mind is a bit soft-- the perfect moment to compose a blog entry, no?

Which brings me to the curious title of this entry: Chestnuts! This weekend we plucked a few kilos off the grass at the Volksgarten park, and I am still trying to decide what to do with them. I wanted to make this kind of chestnut dessert puree, but now the temptations of chestnut soup, red cabbage with chestnuts, or chestnut chocolate cake are calling out to me. And, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I now know that these babies have to be used fast! They don't keep so long, especially if there is no room in your shoebox freezer because it is completely full of frost. Just moments ago I was tempted by a recipe from the middle ages for "Chicken Broth with Chestnuts" that calls for (besides the aforementioned ingredients) chicken livers, a hard boiled egg, ginger, nutmeg, cardamon, cinnamon, saffron, and cayenne pepper. Whoa.

So they don't like Nazis in Cologne...

I'll start with something light:

I WON at Ping Pong Thursday!!! It was 20-20, and then I made 2 points in a row. Oh, it is so on now! Of course, yesterday I lost 3 games in a row, but no one can take away my glorious victory.

I also had to buy a new bike yesterday. The blue goo problem was not fixed by changing the inner tube (I know how to do that now! Yay!)... Two completely flat tires (complete with hearing the air escape in a cartoon-like sound effect) in 2 weeks seems to point to a more systemic problem. My new used bike is green and says 'Hercules' on the side. You can call her Madam Hercules, the Incredible Bike.


Now for the serious news:

On Saturday in Köln was the "Anti-Islam Conference" in which people were supposed to be coming from France, Italy, Grest Britian, and other parts of Germany in order to protest the building of a mosque in Köln. Naturally, this is causing a wave of counter-protests, which were more popular than the "Conference" (Gott sei Dank). I'm hearing a lot of words like "Rassismus" and "Faschismus". On Friday I saw tons of police and even a few tanks on the street.

CNN has done a story on the demonstrations:


To give you a little more information, at the beginning the demonstrators are saying "Nazis Raus" or "Nazis Out". It is, to my knowledge, illegal to build anything that is taller than the Cathedral now. I personally think that they should of course build the mosque, but that one should respect the cultural history of Germany and not make the minarets taller than the spires of the Cathedral.

Also, my friend Beate lives very close to Heumarkt, and could not get back home last night (she had to teach in another town during the day) because the police told her people were throwing stones.

The Odd and the End

Hello folks! I am finding it hard to be interesting every week...

We are basically just plugging away at our respective careers here in Cologne. Jeremy, as you know, is super fancy, and maybe if you ask him real nice, he will explain what he is doing himself. I am going to ballet class more or less everyday, working on the show for February (this entails a lot of jumping around in the apartment and talking to myself), riding my bike to the grocery store twice a week, etc., etc., etc. All of this routine seems so appropriate in the fall, no?

Anyway, here is a picture of some knitting that I finished in April from the yummy sock yarn Karen gave me:
Now it is cold enough to wear them again, and my calves are so happy to be coated in wool. As you can see, I tried to be a little fancy with my lacey-seam design.

Right now, I am learning fair isle knitting- it's fun!






I also feel it is my duty to tell everyone about the wondrous joy that is shopping at etsy.
It's a site where people sell their handmade and unbelievably cool items (silkscreen t-shirts, pottery, art prints, jewelry, etc). I've bought presents for people on the site three times, and every experience has been great. This last time, I requested that the price not be included in the box because it was a birthday gift, and the artist emailed me to ask if I wanted a hand-written note included! What service! Vive le reverse industrial revolution!

My German Dopplegänger better shape up

I had a meeting on Tuesday for Tanzhautnah (that class I am teaching in October) along with all the people dancing and teaching in the festival this year. Oy, my German was so bad that night-- all mispronounced words and forgetting what crazy verb I had to stick at the end of the sentence. NOOOOOOO! Plus, I had to explain in German what a contredanse class is and why it is so fun, and I can barely do that in English. The best I could come up with is 'folk dance', 'square dance', 'two lines', 'jumpy', and 'pas de bouree'. Some perople did seem pretty interested in baroque dance anyway, as much as they could understand from my mangled German.

It also seems that the German Sarah Edgar still does not know how to take the subway. I mastered the NYC subway in about 2 months, but since I ride my bike all the time, the trains here are still a bit of a mystery. I did manage to memorize the number of the line that passes by my apartment, but I still get confused about the direction. That means that since my bike is currently a little under the weather (blue stuff was gushing out of the tire when I tried to put more air in it... not a good sign, eh?), I took TWO wrong trains today, and got lost while walking. Luckily I walked in a big (half an hour) circle, and could start again from the beginning.

By the way, Jeremy is doing fantastic with all the science. He's such a fancy pants that he is giving a talk at Cambridge in a couple of weeks. Yay!

Ping

Pong!

Jeremy and I are now avid ping-pong players. Every day, I would ride past the tables in the park, and watch the kids chasing their tiny plastic ball as it rolls into the path of my oncoming bike. Now we are the ones dodging bikes! I have finally found a sport that I can kind of play-- it's exhilarating! Of course, I haven't won a game against Jeremy yet, but this is only a matter of time. Although he did say that as I improve, he also improves, so it may be an ever-retreating fantasy. I will just be content to bask in the joy of improving my hand/eye coordination, in that case.

Last weekend, Jeremy and I went to my friend Roman's studio (the guy I am still supposed to make a video with... apparently these things take forever) to provide audience support while they taped a youtube video. It was a glimpse inside how a band works... pretty fascinating. Here are the two videos they put up:



This one led to discussions of the "kitsch gland".

My German Döpplegänger...

is me!

I'm teaching a contredance class at a modern dance festival, TANZhautnah, in Cologne this October. It remains to be seen whether I will actually be paid for this endeavor, or if bringing baroque to all those modern kids will be its own reward. I just saw that they put up info about the classes, and thought ya'll might like to see me all German-ized.

Click here, then scroll down to "Kontratänze aus dem 18. Jahrhundert" and you can even click on "Infos zum Workshop" to see the description and bio that I wrote all by myself (and only needed 3 different people to correct).

Super news!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to announce that The New Baroque Dance is about to infiltrate the Old World! I have a Show!

After sending out many packets and annoying a few theaters with semi-constant phone calls, one finally took the bait and offered me a slot in the spring line-up.

My European group is called The Punks Delight (named after a 17th c. English country dance), and I am running it with my baroque-flute-wielding friend, Beate Alsdorf. We have decided that our show will be a mix of 'traditional' and 'neo' baroque dances with all live music. I'll have three dancers (including myself) with 4 musicians-- flute, harpsichord, viola de gamba, and a singer! I'm going to try my hand at choreographing some luscious cantatas.

It is going to be a crazy amount of work, and I am going to once-again exploit everyone I know (watch out!), but I am trembling with excitement and totally ready to get back out there.


The show is at Arkadas Theater in Köln February 4th and 5th!

Pictures from the Sibling Germany Festival

Hi! I finally edited and captioned the heck out of our pictures from the trip with Chuckie and Elaina around Germany. Unfortunately, Jeremy and I forgot our camera in the hotel room in Heidelberg (note that I didn't say that I forgot the camera. Just trying to be fair).

Here are a few pictures from Chuckie and Elaina's fancy-pants-super-professional-and-makes-all-our-pictures-look-like-a-six-year-old-drew-them camera:

Enjoy!









in front of the gardens at the baroque palace next door
(Kathy, I had to do simultaneous translation for them too-- now that my German is better, I found out that people used a sort of tea-ball filled with blood-soaked cotton tucked away in their wigs to trap the ever-present ticks and lice. Aren't you glad you now know that?)

















Up on the Philosophers' Walk Lookout in Heidelberg













The gate on the old bridge in Heidelberg









Wow! Chuckie has more gray hairs than me!

Schnitzel Tonight!

Today is the last day for Chuckie and Elaina to soak up the deliciousness of German culture, so naturally we are taking them to the very fine restaurant Oma's ('Grandma's') for the best schnitzel in town.

Jeremy and I ran those poor kids ragged: riding bikes to the Palace near Cologne (a 1.5 hour ride instead of 45 minutes. Oops!), hiking the 'Philosopher's Path' in Heidelberg, gawking at the immensity of the English Garden in Munich (they cried Uncle and went back to the hotel, unfortately missing MORE NAKED GERMANS. One part of the park is clothing-optional. Now it seems like Jer and I can no longer avoid seeing naked Germans. Once you start, it seems hard to stop!!), and walking through all of the awesomeness that is Berlin while staying in a hostel barely within the town (and while we were there I saw about 10 hostels MUCH closer to the action. Waah!).

Quotes from the exhausted kids themselves:
Elaina-- "Germany is pretty, too bad the sky looks like Northeast Ohio. And what's up with having to pay for the bathroom and no water fountains and no free water with dinner?"
Chuckie-- "Ich bin ein Strudel."

My highlight of the trip was eating calves' hearts for the first time in Munich. Kinda gamey.

Naked Germans Galore; or, How to Spend your Sixth Wedding Anniversary

Deutsche Badekultur!

Jeremy and I celebrated last Sunday with our first trip to the German Sauna. It was unbelievably relaxing--- 5 different saunas and pools with different temperatures. There was one sauna that smelled citrusy, one that was menthey, and one where a worker put water on the coals and then flung a towel at us to make it even hotter. In this super-hot sauna, we also received a skewer of fruit in-between the towel-flinging. And eating a 'skewer' of fruit in a room that is 100 degrees with 30 other naked people is not only pretty funny, but also extremely delicious.
This brings me to the most famous aspect of the German Sauna System: Nakedness. The place is decidedly co-ed (even the changing rooms!), and one MUST be naked when sitting in the sauna (on a towel). You also go in the pools naked, after taking a shower to get rid of the sweat. When you are walking around between saunas or relaxing on a deck chair, the choice of nakedness is yours.













Chuckie and Elaina come to visit tomorrow! Jeremy and I are going to jet them around Germany-- we'll go to Heidelberg, München, and Berlin. Kind of ambitious (these places are not close together!), but it should be fun.

Meet Arlecchino

As I mentioned last time, the morning after we came home from Belgium, I had to hightail it to Switzerland. I had an interview with the choregrapher Berhard Gertsch for his commedia dell'arte/funny dance show in November. He was desperate to find a professional baroque dancer who could also play Harlequin.

This whole situation rather clearly explains the mix of preparation, waiting, and crazy luck that goes into getting a dance job. Last February, I sent an email with my CV to all of the European baroque choreographers I could find. I heard back from quite a few, but no immediate job offers or auditions. Then, in May, I went to the Rothenfels baroque dance conference and handed out DVD samples of my dancing to the choreogrpahers I thought most likely to be able to give me a job. (There is a lot of baroque dancing in Europe, but most of it seems to be unpaid amateurs dancing in castles) The Monday before last, I get an email from Berhard (who was not at Rothenfels) asking if I could play Harlequin in his show. A choreographer who was at Rothenfels suggested me for the job after watching my DVD.

I told Berhard that I would happily dance in his show, but then I got an email back that he was still looking at other people because he really wanted a man to play Harlequin. I then wrote back emphasising my modern dance experience which would make me a superior Harlequin. Then he said he had to meet me. Hence the loooong trip to Switzerland and back in one day (11 hours total on the train).

Sound crazy? Were you actually able to read all of that?

I am incredibly excited to do this show-- not only do I get to play Harlequin, I also will be a young farmer, a gypsy, a ghost, a statue, and a baccante!


This is a page from the book, "The New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing" by Gregorio Lambranzi. All of the dances in this show will be reconstructions of the crazy and silly dances in this book. Since the indivisual talents of the performers are so important in making a comic dance, the book only has engravings that show different senarios with suggestions on how they could be performed and what sort of steps to do. The rest is left up to the choreographer and performers!

Ghent!

Ladies and Gentleman, Ghent really deserves its hype. Perhaps this hype doesn't reach all the way to America, but whenever Belgium was mentioned someone would say, "Oh, you have to go to Ghent/Brugges. Those are the pretty cities." We didn't get to Brugges this time, but it is now on the weekend trip list (only 3 hours away!!).


In Ghent they speak Flemish which is kinda like Dutch which is kinda like some weirdly spelled mix of English and German. I was so embarrassed that I didn't learn even how to say "please/thank you/I would like" before we got there, but then when I asked someone how to say "please" it turned out to be stunningly difficult to remember, anyway.

While there, I met up with a baroque choreographer that I first met in Rothenfels in May, Sigrid T'Hooft. We had a great talk about theatricality in baroque dance, and she showed me the Beijnhofs (Beguinage). These were sort of feminist religious communes in Belgium, the Netherlands, and northern France begun in about 1100 and lasting until 4 years ago (when the last woman died). The women would live in a gated, walled enclave in the city by themselves. They dressed like nuns, had a chapel in the center of the enclave, and took a vow of chastity, but were NOT nuns. They kept their property/money instead of giving it to the Church. There were a mix of rich and poor-- the rich ones having their own houses and the poor ones living together with about 4 women per house. I have to learn more about it... Sigrid actually lives in one, and when she moved in, the last woman was still alive. She had to be interviewed, even though it wasn't the same kind of religious community anymore.


On the last day, Jeremy and I were just wandering around, taking in the sights and drinking beer. I thought I had the schedule to get to our train in Brussels all worked out, but we ended up running through town and catching the last bus to the train station (Sunday! Aaargh!). We arrived at the train station in Ghent with only 3 MINUTES to catch the train to Brussels. We didn't have tickets yet, and the train was a Thalys-- you can't buy a ticket on the train. Jeremy had sprained his knee a little last week, so I left him on the platform and RAN to the ticket booth at the OTHER END of the train station. Luckily there wasn't a line, I bought the ticket, and RAN back to the platform. The train was sitting there, and Jeremy and I rushed on board with 30 seconds to spare. YES!

{Jeremy's knee is feeling better now.}

If we had missed that train we would have missed our train back to Cologne, and I had to go to Switzerland the next morning at 7am... But that is a story for another blog.

Please look at the photo album because I just spent 40 minutes writing captions, and that will basically tell you the whole story of our trip, if you are interested.

When the husband is away...

Ha, just kidding. And I promise that in this post there will be no mention of supposed "dangerous" activities because I didn't participate in any, ok?

Anyway, Jeremy is in Ghent, Belgium, right now at another science conference. This time he is giving a new talk and with fancy animated powerpoint slides. I'm quite sad to report that he has not yet found where the Belgians are keeping the good french fries. Come on, people!! When I was working in Liège last year, I was so heartily disappointed by the wan, tasteless fries that I thought the delicious ones were surely hiding in the north of the country (Liège is in the French-speaking south and Ghent is in the Flemish north). But if we cannot find those mythical Belgian frites, then we will be forced to conclude that they are an American delicacy dressed in foreign clothes, like Chinese food. So far, the best "frites" are to be had on 7th St and 2nd Ave in NYC.

I'll join him tomorrow evening for the frite hunt! Putting aside ruminations of tasty potatoes for a moment, the city is supposed to be very beautiful. We are staying in a converted 13th century monastery! Here is a little taste of the Gothic craziness from Google Images:












The past week has brought pretty gorgeous, warm weather to Cologne, and I have been taking a few afternoons a week to go on long bike rides. It is amazing how fast you leave the city here and wind up either in industrial wasteland (à la Queens) or suburbia. I did find an interesting café or two and the Belgian supermarket (Belgium again! My goodness, that tiny country is everywhere) on my jaunts.

Has everyone seen the movie Juno? And The Namesake? Both are completely brilliant.

And finally-- Karen!! I forgot to go to the crypt in Paris! I will have to remember next time.

Die seltsame Welt der Mitfahrgelegenheit

Or, the strange world of the German Ride-Share.

You can pay lots of money and sit in the civilized, non-awkward environment of the train where you can go to the bathroom whenever you want (even if it is a mite stinky now and then), or you can save your money and be crammed into a car with college-age strangers and alternately hurdle and crawl on the Autobahn. The choice is yours. Lately, I have been trying to save by taking the crammed car method-- this Friday, I made a quick trip to Frankfurt (2 hours away, 100€ with the train, 25€ with the ride-share) in order to see a show of my friend Brian Novatny's paintings in Galerie Schuster (their website is a little wonky right now).
On the way from Cologne to Frankfurt, I arranged a ride with a guy named "Jens" in a silver Saab. Because I stink at reognizing cars (although I now know that the Saab hood ornament conveniently says "Saab"), I was asking every guy with a Silver car if he was Jens. This is especially embarrassing if you do it 5 times. Anyway, the real Jens finally showed up and I was stuffed into the car with 4 other people. The first 5 minutes pass and nobody speaks to anyone else. The silence is oppressive, so I turn to the girl next to me and ask her name. We strike up a little conversation (in German-- yay! I still can't get over being able to speak) because she used to study ballet at lot, etc, etc. We chat off and on during the 2 hour ride, but we are the only people talking in the car. There was also a girl sitting on my other side in the car, but I never spoke to her because after about a half an hour it seemed too weird to strike up a conversation.

Frankfurt is beautiful-- although I only saw the area around the river:


On the way back, I was in a car with only two other people (a different car, you book each way separately) who apparently took quite a shine to each other. I have really never felt more invisible in my life. But that was ok-- I sat in the back and worked on my knitting, and they dropped me off right outside my house.



It is finally kind of hot here in Cologne-- oooh! 80 degrees! So, inspired by my beloved Thalys meal, I made a Salade Niçoise:

I make it in the simplest way possible-- boil the potatoes and then use the same water to cook the beans, buy hardboiled eggs from the grocery store (I have gotten over my aversion to purchasing already boiled eggs), chop up the other veggies, dump the tuna out of a can, and make a quick vinagrette. OK, so it does require a lot of steps, but just look how pretty!







And Jeremy ate it all up.











Our bountiful harvest has begun-- just look at those precious little 'maters.

The coolest cities in Europe

I have to admit that I am rather partial to Berlin and Paris, so I was so happy to go to both of those cities last week to work on some baroque dancing!

I went to Berlin to work with Klaus Abromeit on the grotesque style of the 18th c. Grotesque dance can be described as "extreme exaggeration and contortion, acrobatic"-- like what ballet is today!

To get to Berlin, I took what they call here "mitfahrengelegenheit" or organized hitchhiking. There is an internet site where you can see who is driving from a certain city to another city, and then you call the person to pay for a spot in their car. It is soooo much cheaper than the train, especially to a popular place like Berlin. I was in a car with 3 college-age boys, one of whom was Belgian and just got back from a trip to China. He was there doing some work for an Agricultural Engineering degree, but the bureaucracy in China was so horrible that he didn't get anything done. The trip was fine, except it took us 6 hours to get there (compared with 4 hours on the train).

In Berlin, I was sleeping in Klaus's artist studio-- that was a blast. You had to wash the dishes in the bathroom sink, crouch in the bath tub to take a shower, and the kitchen had a fabulous red 50's refrigerator and a hot plate for making coffee. My baroque dance friends took me to the most adorable old bar near the studio (Chuckie and Elaina watch out!), and the whole night the bartender called me the "amerikanerin" and decorated our table with an American flag stuck in an old beer bottle. People of a certain age in Berlin really and truly love the Americans. We also went to a fish restaurant where you can eat tiny deep-fried sardines like french fries.

After all that, I came back to Cologne early on the train, watered the plants, and left the same evening for Paris. Now, to go to Paris, you take the Thalys train (not Die Bahn) which always makes me so happy. This time, the 1st class tickets were cheaper than the 2nd class, so I traveled in style. They served dinner, too-- Salade Niçoise!

I went to Paris to work on elements of the late 18th c. style... In Paris I was staying at a friend of a friend's house in Montematre. I ate dinner in the neighborhood a couple of nights-- the most fabulous Rabbit in Fig Sauce and Duck in Blackberry Sauce (fruit sauce season!) at this tiny local restaurant that was not expensive. I didn't see any monuments this time, except for the Sacre Cour, but mostly walked around getting lost and seeing neighborhoods far off the tourist track.

Horray for the Reasonable Germans

After my flitting about Europe last week (more in the next post!), I came home to a strange bill-- 102 euros for taking three ballet classes in Göttingen when I was working there this spring!! See, I had found a place to take ballet, but it was kind of like a gym that offered ballet classes, so this bill was to become a member of the gym. As you can imagine, I really do not want to be a member of some crappy gym in a town 3 hours away by train. I called the gym, expecting to argue and cry and switch to speaking English, but the secretary very simply said, "Oh, you only took 3 classes and live in Köln? I'll just erase the charges for you." Whoa.

I just flew in from Africa, and boy are my arms tired, or "I went all the way to Africa, and all I got was this stupid malaria

I'm pretty sure that the second part of the title is not true, but I am feeling a bit under the weather, so apologies if this entry is not as sparkling as you have come to expect.
Anyway, over the past week or so I was visiting South Africa in conjunction with attending the International Congress on Entomology in Durban. It was a bit of a strange experience, as I do not consider myself so much of an entomologist, but there were some interesting things. For example, there was a talk about polydnaviruses in parasitic wasps (I hate to keep harping on how cool these animals are, but I can't help it). The viruses are integrated into the wasp genome, and can't replicate on their own, but when a wasp stings its host, the virus particles made in the wasp reproductive tract go along with the venom and the egg. Once inside the host, the virus expresses genes that basically shut down the host immune system, allowing the egg to grow comfortably into a larva.
Another cool thing was there was a special session on the Mantophasmatodea (don't ask), which were "discovered" in 2002, and are the first new order of insects described in almos 100 years. Conveniently they are native to Southern Africa so at the end of the session, the chair invited people to come take a look at a live example. There was a lot of nerdy jostling to get a look at the creature, which in the end was pretty underwhelming.





I took a day off from the conference to go on a game drive in Hluhluwe park with some colleagues. We managed to see four of the "Big five", a kind of annoying term for the animals are hardest to spot, or are big or something. (Wikipedia tells me that the term comes from the 5 animals that are most difficult to hunt on foot. Fine.) We saw the cape buffalo, white rhino, elephants, and leopard, only missing lions. You can check out the pictures on the picture page link at the top left. My personal favorites were the warthogs. It was also cool to see cheetahs, I wonder why the are not hard enough to hunt to be included in the big 5? They're fast, right?
After the conference, I went to Johannesburg. For anyone wanting to go to South Africa, I will let you know that this is not a big tourist destination. However, we did manage to go to a cool place outside of the city (by "cab", the journey was an adventure in itself) called the sterkfontein caverns, where they have found several Australopithecine skeletons. Also went to the Apartheid museum, which was also pretty eye opening.

New Inspiration

I said I was going to infect pop with baroque, but it appears that the French have already done this-- and the infection is kind of oozing.

May I present to you, Le Roi Soleil!

totally professional

You may not know, but the past few months I have been really working like mad to get more dance work here in Cologne. This means wading through acres of German to try to figure out which dance festivals and residencies I can apply for and sizing up everyone I meet for performance possibilities. Some of it has paid off!

The first thing is that I am choreographing a pop music video! The shooting keeps getting delayed, but I really think this thing will happen end of July/early August. The artist is a local Cologne guy, and his name (and the name of the band) is Roman. I'm making 3 different dances about 30 seconds each-- one athletic modern sequence, one sexy Cabaret sequence, and one contredanse. That's right, baroque is going to infect pop!

Here is the fabulous Roman demo from youtube:



My friend Beate from ballet class-- who just happens to be a professional baroque flute player!-- and I met with two other musicians (viola de gamba and theorbo/baroque guitar) this morning to work out what kind of show we can put together. I was dancing around this couple's living room, and it was rockin'. We are going to try to get something off the ground this fall.

And I'm going to Berlin July 10-15 and Paris July 15-19 to work on more baroque stuff...

Yay!

There is a baby in the family!!

Jeremy's brother Kris and his wife Stephanie had a baby this afternoon! Mr. Benjamin Philip Lynch. Check out their blog on the side for up-to-the-minute pictures and a squealing video. I cannot believe they were blogging during this process (sooo much more dedicated than I am), but I am grateful.

We are totally ready to be Crazy Aunt Sarah and Wacky Uncle Jeremy.

Random Events, plus Gay-Pride

Hallo faithful readers!

Jeremy is in Durban, South Africa this very second. He's at an embryology conference as a fancy-pants special speaker.

He's been gone only 24 hours, but I think I have already used my time somewhat wisely. Last night, I went with my friend Beate to a harpsichord concert and met quite a few adorable young baroque kids. They were all flabbergasted by the idea of baroque dance, so it looks like I should really petition the Musikhochschule into letting me teach those impressionable minds the proper way to do the minuet.

This morning, I realized it was the Christopher Street Parade day (aka Gay Pride, named after the street in NYC), so I hopped on my bike to check it out. It was, I'll admit, mostly like gay Pride everywhere-- disco techno music, rainbows, plentiful sequins, wacky baroque costumes that make me totally jealous, feathers à la Rio, and chaps-- but with a few charming kölsch additions. I should just realize that every big event in Cologne will have Karneval songs and groups of people dressed in red and white (the colors of our fair city). Also, there were 2 fabulous drag queens dressed as Saint Gereon and Saint Ursula. Saint Ursula, as you may recall, along with her entourage of 10,000 virgins, saved the city of Cologne during a seige by the barbarians by sailing up the Rhein and getting slaughtered. The barbarians' blood lust was sated and they returned from whence they came.













My other favorite float was from Ikea-- "Leb mit wem du willst!" (Live with who you want!). They were throwing tablecloths and kazoos into the crowd.

There were a few dance teams, but I couldn't see them because I am a midget. Too bad.