Spit and ...#718

....Polish.

And I think she was, too, from the accent.

But doesn't the cathedral scrub up nicely?

Of course, they have to keep it spick and span, given that they're celebrating for a whole year.

Not like around here.

Our windows get cleaned twice a year.

Whether they need it or not...

Ear, ear - #717

No sooner have we got Karneval behind us than Easter's just around the corner.

Thinks: Would be, given that Karneval marks the start of Lent and Lent finishes at Easter.

WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR WHAT YOU'RE SAYING!

Oh.

Missing an aural appendage, are we?

Then "Ear, ear" is probably discriminatory and quite hurtful.

Sorry about that.

I'll start again.

Ear.

Alohol - #716

Know a word without "c"?

"Alohol"

And I tell you what - Mainz went through copious quantities of this stuff on Monday

Monday being Rosenmontag - Rose Monday: the culmination of Karneval.

Day before yesterday - Fat Tuesday in New Orleans, Shrove Tuesday and Pancake Tuesday pretty much everywhere else - is the last day to really pig out before yesterday - Ash Wednesday - when you start doing penance for all your excesses.

Like consuming copious quantities of this stuff.

Something like that, anyway...

This way...-#715

if you're 25.

And can add up without a calculator.....

Signage at Mainz Main Station

I could get used to this.... - #714

It's not that I don't LIKE Karneval.

It's just that I have NO IDEA about what's going on.

I'm rather partial to some aspects of the madness, though

Apfelkrapfen, for example.

Donut-type thingie, with chunks of apple mixed in the dough and then deep fried and dredged with sugar and cinammon.

Yummy

What do you want ....#713

...to make those eyes at me for.....?

Emile Ford and the Checkmates - 1959 [Listen]

Town's chock full of places selling Karneval kit.

This place is normally an ice cream parlour, but given the temperature-driven drop off in demand for their core product, a lot of the purveyors shut up shop for winter which nicely coincides with a MASSIVE demand for

	20s Costumes 50s Costumes 60s Costumes 70s Costumes 80s Costumes Adult Costumes Alice In Wonderland Angel Costumes Animal Costumes Batgirl Costumes Batman Costumes Belly Dance Costumes Butterfly Costumes Cat Costumes Catwoman Costumes Cheap Costumes Cinderella Costumes Cleopatra Costumes Clone Trooper Costumes Clown Costumes Colonial Costumes Cop Costumes Cowboy Costumes Cowgirl Costumes Darth Vader Costumes Devil Costumes Dinosaur Costumes Disco Costumes Dorothy Costumes Egyptian Costumes	Elvis Costumes Fairy Costumes Fantasy Costumes Flapper Costumes French Maid Costumes Funny Costumes Gangster Costumes Geisha Costumes Genie Costumes Gothic Costumes Grease Costumes Greek Costumes Grim Reaper Costumes Group Costumes Gypsy Costumes Harry Potter Costumes Hippie Costumes Ho Costumes Hot Costumes Indian Costumes Inflatable Costumes Jester Costumes Little Red Riding Hood Marilyn Monroe Costumes Medieval Costumes Mermaid Costumes Monkey Costumes Movie Costumes Naughty Costumes Ninja Costumes	Nurse Costumes Phantom of the Opera Pimp Costumes Pirate Costumes Playboy Bunny Costumes Police Costumes Power Ranger Costumes Princess Costumes Princess Leia Costumes Queen of Hearts Costumes Referee Costumes Renaissance Costumes Roman Costumes Saloon Girl Costumes Scary Costumes Schoolgirl Costumes Sexy Adult Costumes Sexy Teen Costumes Skeleton Costumes Snow White Costumes Spiderman Costumes Star Wars Costumes Super Hero Costumes Tinkerbell Costumes Vampire Costumes Wench Costumes Witch Costumes Wizard Of Oz Womens Costumes Wonder Woman

it certainly makes sense to diversify for the season.

Not that I have ANY idea abouit what's going on around here....

Just think - #712

If the cheese lady hadn't put out free samples at the market the other day, I would never have discovered Gourmino, a really stunning Swiss cheese.

Mature but not too in-yer-face. Textured, but not a denture threat. And with minute salt crystals.

Even bought some.

After I finished off the free samples, that is.....

Talk about iconic...#711

Carnival AND Ditsch's pretzels in a single image.

Can't get much hardcore Mainz that that, eh?

Talking of icons. Or "Ike and"s

Went to see Tina Turner last night in a NQM moment.

Ike obviously not in the plot, given that he shuffled off to the Great Hall of Fame in the Sky a while back, but what a crash-hot bird that Tina is.

If I'm as good as she is when I'm 70, I'll be well pleased.

My legs are definitely as shapely as hers, though..

So I'm told.....

Writ large - #710

Not that I can read it, of course.

Not even the bits that are in focus...

Thinks: Wasn't there a TV series with Tom Selleck...?

Inscription in the cathedral

I spy.....#709

...with my little eye
Something beginning with "P"

"Poplars!"
No, they're birches.
"Plue sky!"
Stop being silly
"Post with a lamp on!"
Now you're being REALLY silly
"OK, I give up..."

It's a pollutant measuring station, actually

"But last time you wrote about it, you said it was an EMISSION monitoring station. That's not FAIR...."

Well, you don't have to start CRYING.....

[Wailing noises]

OK. Look, if you stop crying, I'll buy you an ice cream. OK? Give us a smile.

"3 scoops?"

3 scoops.

I got a fast car... - #708

....it's a Jaguar, and I'll get you to the plane on time
Drinkin' Lone Star, play guitar, we'll have a real good time

Texas Rose Cafe - Little Feat [Listen]

From the incomparable pen of the incomparable Lowell George, who once incorporated the words

apprehension
defenceless
dined
eloquent
independence
profanity
temptress
tension
vagabond

into a single 3 minute song.

Not that all this has anything to do with the image, but a wise man once told me that there’s no such thing as trivia...

Oh, and yet another unsold car on the lot in Hechtsheim

Consider thyselves......#707

...valentined.

OK.

So it's a couple of days late.

So....?

The soundtrack of my childhood - #706

OK, so this is definitely NQM (Not Quite Mainz) and decidely waaay off track, but it's too good to just skim past.

Jan Liefers is a German actor with cult status.

Classic descriptions - minor roles in major films, major roles in minor films, television actor - don't do him justice.

Think: the rapid-fire delivery (without the self-satisfaction) and eloquence of Billy Crystal, the wit of Woody Allen and the ironic, self-effacing nature of the young Michael Caine or the mature Albert Finney.("OK, those of you with seats - share them with the folks who are standing in the true Socialist spirit...")

That comes fairly close.

He's best known for his role as a criminal pathologist in a prime time series that drip-feeds you an episode every 6 months or so and totally unknown for his lead role in a black comedy ("Bis zum Ellenbogen") that attracted all of 5 punters (only 2 of whom laughed at all, 1 of whom continuously - and has the bruises to prove it...) at an art cinema in Mainz on the night we went.

He also had a childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in East Germany and - together with his (bloody good) band "Oblivion" - he revisits the "Soundtrack of my childhood", playing the songs that your love of music indelibly stamps on your psyche.

You have to understand what it must be like to grow up in a numbingly stultifying dictatorship like the 40 odd years that East Germans had to endure:

Parents are intellectuals? You can't study. That's reserved for the workers
Want to study anyway? Join the army and we guarantee that you can. Except that you can't trust us to keep our word.
Want to play music? We have to approve it. Except that we won't.
Want a phone? Wait until we've bugged the line. 7 years.
Want to travel outside the country? How about Bulgaria?
Want to emigrate? Apply here. Oh, and by the way, you're now unemployed. And unemployable.

It's not as if Honecker and his evil crew had mass graves of opposition activists like in Chile or took radicals up in helicopters and dropped them off over the ocean like the Argentinean junta.

Just 1984 with a twist of Catch 22 for good measure.

Every day.

For 40 odd years.

Jan Liefers says that he doesn't miss it for a second.

That, I can believe.

But if you see his concert, you can perhaps just START to imagine what it was like.

And it's not REALLY a concert. It's more of an amalgam of personal experiences, political leanings, family Super 8 film clips as a light show and the music from East German bands that comprises the soundtrack of his childhood, underpinned by Muzak/Tin Pan Alley-like patriotic songs of the era and clips of the inane spoutings of political leaders.

Phenomenal just begins to describe it.

A couple of tracks (and I know he'll be cool with that) from his album. I went into fan boy boring old fart mode and got him to sign my copy. (THAT's a keeper, for sure)

Als ich wie ein Vogel war - Jan Josef Liefers and Oblivion - Soundtrack meiner Kindheit
(Original by Renft)
Mein Herz soll ein Wasser sein - Jan Josef Liefers and Oblivion - Soundtrack meiner Kindheit
(Original by Lift)
Wenn ein Mensch lebt - Jan Josef Liefers and Oblivion - Soundtrack meiner Kindheit
(Original by Puhdys, melody shamelessly nicked from the Bee Gees' "Spicks and Specks", lyrics from the Byrds'/Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn" - Ecclesiates 3.1, actually.. and bits of the Beatles' "All you need is love" at the end)

Forget the translation.

Just accept the universality of music.

It all looks the same, anyway

Quaint traditions - #705

On regular occasions, you'd be forgiven for thinking that whole suburbs are being evicted on the same day.

Nothing of the kind.

It'll be Sperrmülltag - the inorganic waste collection for stuff that you can't get rid of in the normal rubbish collection.

It's recycling to the power of 10.

In these globalised affluent times (ignoring current recessionary trends for a minute), the folks who take greatest interest in picking over the piles of goodies are folks from Germany's Eastern European neighbours (Poland, Czech Republic) who descend like locusts, load everything that's resalable into their vans and they're off to Warzsawa or wherever.

Wasn't always like that.

In my impoverished youth, I virtually furnished my apartment from the detritus of the flash subdivision where the landlord lived.
Found a very serviceable sofa once. Didn't smell too badly, not too many holes, only missing 2 legs, interesting list to the front which resulted in Cousin Graham's rolling off onto the floor in the middle of the night.

After the third gravity-induced excursion (never was the sharpest knife in the drawer...), he insisted on commissioning the inflatable (deflatable, actually - had a puncture) camping mattress.

He refused to come a stay again until I'd de-sofad my life...

1000 years old. Yeah right... - #704

Don't believe a word of it.

BITS of the cathedral are 1000 years old - this tower and the matching one on the other side, for instance - but given that it

• Burned down on the day of its inauguration in.....yes, 1009....., which meant that there was nowhere appropriate to bury Bishop Willigis when he fell off the perch 2 years later. (He ended up at the top of the Gaustrasse in St Stephan, but folk lost track of his bones over the centuries, so it's pretty much a guessing game as to where he is these days. Or was that St Martin? Whatever...)
  
• Burned down again in 1081
• Was struck by lightning and damaged in 1767
• Was attacked by the French in 1793, who used it as an army camp and burned the wooden interior for fuel
• Had incredibly ugly bits added and removed on various occasions
  
• Got thumped by the Allies in the 1942 air raids

you can only REALLY say that - on average - it's FAIRLY old.

But who wants to quibble over a century or two...?

Rundgang 2 - #703

This is one of the less WTF installations at Mainz's Art College - a Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg contraption with an endless film loop projecting a marginally moving image onto a white wall.

Nice and clickety-clackety .....

Audi doodie - #702

Not actually flying off the lot at the moment.....

Must be going nuts - #701

All for you, as Sister Hazel would say....

Prey tell....#700

...what manner of feathered creature be this?

It's always a good idea to keep moving when one's out and about in the fields around here.

Not if this is a vulture or something  ....

Rundgang - #699

Who says advertising doesn't work?

The Art College in Mainz plastered their exceptionally eye-catching poster for their "Rundgang" ("Doing the rounds") open day all over the city and it certainly won the battle for our eyeballs.

Not many others, though, which is marginally tragic, because there's some seriously GOOD STUFF being done there and if there was any justice in the world, it should have been packed.

Students with family in tow, of course.

Parents ("That's very NICE, dear, but what IS it"), younger siblings ("You MUST be joking. You call this ART? Is THIS what you do...?") and grandparents ("Susanne dear, I'm a bit confused....")

Well, yes.

Some not-entirely-unexpectedly seriously WTF stuff, too, but it all had an unencumbered freshness to it, without the trying-too-hard earnestness of established artists.


AND for free, to the visible relief of the other members of the team who go into instant "DISOWN" mode when I start trying to negotiate pensioner admission rates.....

Priceless....#698

Saturday morning grocery bill: €46.23

Having the cashier say "Unbezahlbar" when she scans your little boy and hands him back to you: Priceless.

There are some things money can't buy.

For everything else, there's the old dude with the crappy VGA camera phone.....

Count them - #697

There should be 1000.

That's how old Mainz's cathedral (built by Bishop Willigis, who practiced with St Stephan first) is and 2009 is going be one big bash (sort of...) to celebrate it.

Prepare thyselves for a significantly serious series of sombre snaps.

Good thing we're not alliterate, eh...

Cafe olé - #696

 

Difficult times around here, what with caffeine withdrawal symptoms and stuff.....

The TSOW has been noticeably absent for a bit while the proprietors splurge their profits in Capetown and it's alright for YOU to say that there are alternatives, but they're limited

The café in the Augustinerstrasse - having turned into a den of enicotinity - is out, Capelli's gets fairly close and the rest of them are mostly purveyors of Vampire Coffee - pushbutton stuff that dribbles listlessly into the cup and leaves 2 holes in the foam, looking as if that's where the teeth pierced the surface.

So I was mildly chuffed to hear about a new Spanish place that had opened and I thought that I'd stumbled across it when I saw this sign.

You know - Café Olé....

Turns out it was just Fielmann's new window display.

What a disappointment.....

Hot stuff II- #694

The Big Dig - #693

The SATTOTH (Subdivision At The Top Of The Hill) is coming along quite spiffingly.

The big machines at rest look quite pastoral compared with what they've done to the rest of the 3 hectares/7.5 acres/something-or-other Fahrenheit.

It looks like a bad day on the Somme.

Not quite as many bodies, though....

This is a pot - #692

My mate Frank the Potter is a magician, really.

He takes a lump of soggy clay, puts it on a rotating wheel and makes a pot.

With his hands.

Plus a sponge, a cut-down credit card and a garrotte...

Get yer millions here..#691

The queue almost went out of the door and around the block.

The state lottery's jackpot was up to €35/$50 million/£40 million/NZ¢100 million and the place went mad.

Someone told me that they'd queued for 30 minutes to drop off their betting slip.

Thinks: $100,000,00 for an hour's hanging around.

Beats working.....

February Theme Day - Paths and passages - #690

As I was pathing (sorry about that - irresistible...) through town the other day, I reflected on the wisdom (or lack of) of getting out your shovel and having a prod around at the Earth's epidermis ANYWHERE in Mainz.

You're quite likely to stumble across something ancient and then you're really up whatsit in a barbed wire canoe sans paddle, because the archaeologists will be on you in a flash and put a rapid stop to your construction ambitions.

As in the case of this place: a covered arcade that's about as upmarket as Mainz gets (but doesn't really quite coupez the moutarde..) and was destined to be rather naffly named "Lothar Passage" after the alley that it covered, which in turn was named after a Holy Roman Emperor from 800-and-a-bit AD

Did they stumble upon a simple mediaeval midden or perchance a Roman shipyard from the turn of the last milennium-but-one?

No they did not.

Did they stumble upon a temple to the Goddesses Isis (his Bobness even wote a song ) and Magna Mater AND - below that - Celtic graves from 800BC ?

Yes, they bloody well did and the temple really is quite sensational, being one of only 2 north of the Alps and the only one in a presentable condition.

So they decided that an underground car park precisely in this spot wouldn't be a good idea after all and maybe we should have ruins where the cars were going to live and make a museum out of it.

Which is what they did.

Quite excellent it is, too, and it's all happening under the feet of the pathers-by passers-by.

(And remind me to tell you the joke sometime about the doctor and the girl with a lisp......)

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