Fruit Festival
Link: http://dnagardens.com/sunday_august_7th.htm
We just got back from the Alberta Prairie Fruit Festival up by Elnora, at one of our favourite garden haunts, D'n'A Gardens. This was a friendly little festival, with some surprisingly entertaining and informative speakers.
Zuerich - The Cursed City
Arguably, and inexplicably, the worst destination of the lot. It had a good side, but as you will be able to tell through my tale, behind this fair city lies a strange, brooding chaos... the mirror image of "having all one's ducks in a row"...
München - Part II
Two tours of foot-pounding duty have we accomplished so far. Two days ago, we went on the Dachau tour. Our tour guide was excellent, if a little far to the side of making sure we fully-imagined every conceivable horror as we went along (I wish I knew where he was from; sounded sort of Irish and said "gyawrds" for "guards"). He did a great job of filling in all the details as we went along. It still leaves unanswered in a larger context - how could this happen in a civilized society? The little pieces we heard from Günther in Salzburg piqued our interest. The Dachau tour was simply... mind-blowing.
Salzburg
Our next destination after Veneza was Salzburg, city founded on a fortune made from mining salt (there is no corresponding Pfefferburg for any pepper mines that I can tell), a destination recommended by Dena´s parents for its "Salzerlebnis" (salt experience) at the salt mines, and a good interim spot on our slow circle into Zürich, Switzerland.
It was quite a bit more interesting than we had accounted for.
München - Part I?
Okay, perhaps this is a little premature, seeing as we just got here, but I´m in an Internet cafe with a 24-hour time window, so I´ll tell you about München so far :)
This is such a familiar style of city. Bigger and busier than home, but surprisingly homey-feeling. Big department stores, transit running every which way... yet there are some good old European pieces around.
Veneza
After Geneva, our travel plans were somewhat open; I had asked for an extra week in the middle, and they gave it to us. I had in mind some sort of lazy ellipse around Europe, either around to the north (through France, maybe Holland... though that was a bit of a stretch), or around south through Italy. Italy sounded the most appealing - I´d never been there, I know a few words of Italian, and Armando, my best man, has family that hails from there.
There were so many choices of destination... every major Italian city has so much history in it... Bologna, Trieste, Milano... but Dena hit upon the idea of going to Venice, or Veneza in the local tongue. We only had a few pictures in our minds and the escapades of Sylvester the Cat around the canals to go on, but it sounded pretty exciting.
Geneva and Lyon
The first part of our trip is going extremely well so far. Garnier paid for 7 nights of accomodations and the flights to and from Switzerland, so we took four nights in Geneva to get our feet, and spent the time planning the spare unpaid-for week in the middle. (Thank you for allowing us the time, Lara!)
Mouse Races
I was changing the mice cages just yesterday, and thought I'd try the movie feature of the Fuji Finepix 440 (a tiny camera; great for travel).
I had just put the female mice in a new terrarium, and had moved over their wheel. This sole piece of furnishing was just irresistable, apparently...
...well, a movie is worth many words and pixels... :)
Colloquial Hindi : Tej K. Bhatia
Link: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415110874/thecerealkill-20
I have always found books on the Indian/Pakistani language to be close to insufferable. They always take the training wheels off too fast, leaving you spinning in mid-air wondering in Chapter 4 what all these words are supposed to be. In short, they seldom feel like they were written for English speakers actually learning Hindi. I have six or so books (mostly on Hindi, but one on Panjabi and another on Bengali), and they're all like that.
This was the book that finally got me past whatever mental block it was preventing me from getting past the beginnings of these books. As a matter of fact, I managed to get all the way to the end of the book, which is something I can claim for maybe one or two language books.
Fragrant Perennial Nursery & Nature's Studio Raku Pottery
Link: http://www.boomtowntrail.com/treasurehunting/display_merch.php?cat_id=4
We were going back out to D'n'A Gardens for to get Dena some more Martagon Lilies. However, despite our best efforts on the road, we made it in time, technically speaking, before closing time, but at a mere eight minutes before closing - I surmise they'd packed up early on a slow day.
So, we went into town in Elnora and ate at the small café, and asked where the Raku Pottery and perennials place was (we had looked for it last time we were up in the area, but couldn't see it). After a good chat with Louise (and her husband?), and finding out that they knew Dena's great aunt and uncle (you can always count on that everyone-knows-everyone phenomenon in a small town), we made our way over to the pottery and perennial place, a mere block and a half away.
Non-Construction Zones
Just a small rant this time.
Construction speed zone signs. Definitely saw, this weekend, an utter lack of respect for them.
Was it, however, a deserved lack of respect?
For We Are Living... In An Empirical World
I've wanted to spill my personal philosophy for some time now. It's made a little harder in that, not having taken Philosophy of any sort, I lack some of the spot-on philosophy - I wouldn't know Logical Positivism from a hole in the ground.
That said, I think in many ways, Empiricism is as good a label as any, but even Empiricism casts a pretty wide net, so I'm going to have to chip at the sides of the stone to get the shape I wish to convey.
The Great GuZoo
Gustafson's zoo, a.k.a. the "GuZoo", just north of Three Hills, Alberta, has had more than its share of controversy. It has been accused of neglect, inadequate shelter, and the like. It's still on the dirty side in a number of spots, but in general feels more like a farm. It didn't seem all that bad in person, though certain not comparable to the Calgary Zoo, and it's much more hands-on than any other zoo is likely to be, so I'll just report on my experience there.
D'n'A Gardens
Link: http://www.dnagardens.com/
We set out early on Saturday, dropped the doggles off with Dena's parents, and headed north on Highway 21 to Elnora. Our destination: D'n'A Gardens, purveyors of prairie-hardy fruit trees.
Coke of the Clones
Just a little something that always creeps me out in movie theaters...
They often have slides of trivia, ads and the like before the movie starts...
...but watch. Look at the cups of pop. Now wait. Look at the next cups of pop you see. See the splash? It's the same splash. They've been using the same splash on their cups of cola for years. Oooooo, scary!
How hard could it be to make cola do a cool splash? Why is it the same one (they even edit the darned cup, but not the splash!) after all these years?
