Christi Himmelfahrt

Today is Christi Himmelfahrt aka Ascension Day, and therefore a public holiday in Germany. It's also a Thursday (obviously enough, being the fortieth day after Easter Sunday). You might think, "How silly to have a holiday on a Thursday, you have to go back to work for a single day and then it's the weekend." This is correct as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far at all: almost all Germans take tomorrow off, and so get a four-day-weekend for the price of a single day's holiday entitlement. It's a pretty good deal.

Not for me, alas, I was as usual too honest for my own good and said without thinking that I'd expected to be at work on Friday, which G and U greeted with relief and enthusiasm. Damned fool. It's a three-step process, boy: close mouth, think, open mouth; and the first step is by far the most important.

This weekend is the finale of the Spring race meeting at Baden-Baden, and we are planning to go on Sunday. Weather forecast is for 21° and a mix of sun and light clouds, should be a fine day as usual. Any blogreaders in the vicinity are invited to join us there, send me an e-mail (eyes left!) and we'll find a way to meet.

Today is also Vatertag, the celebration of which in Germany is rather different to what I grew up with:

The day is particularly in Northern Germany characterized by the gentleman portion in such a way specified, which is attributed to heidnische corridor committing. The participants (predominantly male) make thereby usually one Migration, while that is often consumed much alcohol, why frequently Bollerwagen, Kremserwagen (Kutschen), Fahrradanhänger or barrows, sometimes trailer even tractor-pulled are carried forward, in order to be able to transport beverages better. Take in the recent generations increasingly also women in father tag trips part or organize own, exclusively out participant inside existing trips.

That, my dears, is the Google automatic translator's version of the second paragraph of the Wikipedia article linked above. What Google is clumsily attempting to say, is that Vatertag is not a day for visiting your father, but rather his day to get away from you and go boozing in the woods with his mates. Günter Grass describes the general atmosphere of such a Völkerwanderung in a chapter of Der Butt (up to the point at which it turns sour and violent - or even thereafter: there are three times as many alcohol-related incidents and accidents on Vatertag as on any other day of the year, including New Year's Eve).

The soundtrack to this is "Love letter" from Nick Cave's wonderful album No more shall we part, a collection of songs about coming to terms with the various limits to our existence.

It's 11° and cloudy but not yet raining, and so time for my own small-scale Völkerwanderung, alone and without alcohol. I will arise and go now, and go for a walk by the river.

[Updated at noon] I have just turned on the central heating. It is so miserably cold! I didn't make it to the river, a cold and windy rain started as I got downtown, so I bought a raspberry-cream cake instead.