Some photos of the German club's Austria dinner on Saturday. I had been very much looking forward to it as I'd heard a lot of good things about it - the "Bauernschmaus" is supposedly the best of the three or so Austrian and German restaurants in Edmonton ..



The interior and some German club people:



My fellow Austrians Manu and Michael with their Stiegl. But we all agreed that it tastes different. i think they Canadianised it a bit (I think the Austrian beers are a bit more intense and bitter then the Canadian)



But we didn't have liquid food only..


Yummy! That's what I ordered: Bauernschmaus. The Sauerkraut wasn't perfect but the rest was great. Knödel. Mhhhh!



Not the best combination of course, but Manu wanted both dumplings and Wiener Schnitzel..



Of course I couldn't resist the dessert. Good decision - the Apfelstrudel was the best part of the whole meal. Yuuummmyyy!

I'm sure that's not at all impressive for you snow-less people but: Ohhhh! :-)

Today - on the second consecutive day with temperatures of about 9 degrees (above zero!!!) and sunshine - was the first time since months that I could see again what the grass on campus looks like. Well, what dead brown grass looks like. But still. Grass and gravel and puddles of melting water and mud.

I know, very likely this is just a break and not the end of this year's ice age. Nevertheless, it's a very welcome break!

Just a couple of pictures from yesterday's little walk with the international centre. We visited the Silver Skate festival in Hawrelak park (which in summer was the location of the Heritage festival I failed to report on).

They had sculptures, but in contrast to Ice on Whyte they looked more like made of snow than of ice. I really liked this one, a combination of a female dancer and an eagle.

Then we also had a version of bannock, a traditional food of the natives. A dough of flour and water (ours was sweetened with cinnamon or sugar) is wrapped around a stick and cooked over open fire.

Actually I had planned to return today evening to see the sculptures in the dark but dismissed the plan because I caught a little cough. I'm sure it was the skating. Yep, skating. For the first time since more than ten years I stood on skates. Terrible. Well, I managed to survive the whole hour without falling a single time but I was close quite often. I'm sure you can see on my posethat I was not very stable. It definitely was an experience for Ali, who arrived here from Iran only a couple of weeks ago. For the first time he did a good job and at least he tried unlike his countryman didn't dare. Despite my insecurity I enjoyed it very much. I really should go again - preferably earlier than in 10 years time...

For technical reasons I couldn't use a slide-show.. sorry you have to click on each photo separately..

Yesterday Kinga and I went to "Ice on Whyte" (the webpage should be www.iceonwhyte.ca but apparently it broke down a couple of days ago.) For about two weeks every year ice sculptures are displayed in a park close to Whyte Avenue. The first days one could have watched the artists building the sculptures - but as always I waited until almost the last possibility - today is the last day. (And if Kinga hadn't called me I think I would have forgotten.) So here are the photos:


Are? Yes indeed! You can see only one? Well, just click on the picture. I've opened an flickr account to have a bit more space and possibilities for pictures. Unfortunately my description for the individual photos is not displayed during the slide show (how stupid!) so if you want to read them you have to have a look at the Detail view (bottom left) - before or after the slideshow (top right).. Enjoy! (We did for sure!)

Enjoy watching rather than reading today: I want you to show you some pictures from my winter walk Saturday afternoon which helped to clear my head from the Scandinavian and the German club's Christmas party the night before (and - less successfully - from an absolutely adorable girl I met there who unfortunately disappeared far too early). I took roughly the same route of my summer walk with Lucka, so revisit that entry to for the map and for comparison.

I took some pictures at roughly the same spots I did earlier this year. First of all I'm sure you remember the Great Divide Waterfall!? Here (No 1) / (No 2) are the pictures I took during the summer - and this is what it looks like now: Yep, the Saskatchewan is frozen. Since weeks. Unfortunately I missed the time when it was in the process of freezing and when you could see all the ice. Now it hardly looks like a river anymore..

And this is a view of downtown from a spot Lucka showed me during that walk. Now this looks sooo different than the summer photo! (I’m yearning for spring when I compare.)


And a last one: This is again the Muttart conservatory - the botanical garden. Unfortunately the picture didn't work out completely due to the dark glass - the idea was to catch both the outside (snow and ice) and the inside (palm trees and cactuses). At least I know now where I’ll go if I happen to be completely fed up with ice and snow in April or so and desperate for a break.. :-)

My favourite part of the news these days: the weather forecast. It's just so weird to see the map from Alberta, from Fort McMurray to Lethbridge, from Jasper to Lloydminster - the whole province has temperatures of -20 degree Celsius and below. Unfortunately I couldn't find such a map online. So funny.

In Edmonton the current temperature is -28, including wind chill, (i.e. the felt temperature) it's about -41. Now it's definitely time to buy and wear longjohns (good old childhood memories) - jeans just aren't enough anymore. But apart from that I'm very comfortable walking outside; scarf and tuque, my nice anorak, the usual three layers clothes below, and I'm fine although I left my warmest pullovers in Austria.

The only thing that's a bit scary is the thought that we've been through only one month of winter but there are four or five more to come. I guess by then I'll be pretty pissed off by that white desert..

.. minus 7 Grad jetzt in der frueh, Tageshoechstwerte minus 3 Grad. Juhu!? Es ist ja noch nicht einmal November! Ich haette nichts dagegen, noch ein bisschen Herbst zu haben, um mich auf den minus 30 Grad Winter vorzubereiten. Gerade am Freitag hab ich ein Foto von des Bosses juengster Europareise gesehen, die suedliche Steiermark vor einer Woche: Sonne, gruen und Sonnenblumen. Was fuer ein Unterschied! Das Troestliche ist, dass auch die Natur noch nicht auf Winter eingestellt war. Viele Baeume trugen noch ihr herbstlich rotes oder goldenes Blaetterkleid, und ueber Nacht hat ihnen der Schnee einen grossen Teil davon geraubt. Und die Kanadier selbst waren offensichtlich auch nicht bestens vorbereitet, zumindest gab eine Reihe von Unfaellen und auf den Strassen herrschte zunaechst einmal Chaos. Leif meinte gestern aber, dass das beim ersten Schnee immer so ist, egal wann er faellt, weil die Leute anscheinend von einem Jahr aufs andere (von einem halben Jahr aufs andere wuerde ich eher sagen) vergessen, dass man bei Schnee vorsichtiger fahren sollte. Vor allem dann, wenn - man glaubt es kaum aber es ist wahr - das Konzept von Sommerreifen und Winterreifen nicht wirklich verbreitet ist. Reifenwechsel? "Some people do", antwortete Leif auf meine Frage. OK!? Ich hab natuerlich keine Ahnung, wie gut das Profil der kanadischen Ganzjahresreifen im Vergleich zu unseren Winterreifen ist, aber ich haette schon erwartet, dass man die beste Ausruestung waehlt, um Schnee und Eis gut zu ueberstehen. Naja, vielleicht tue ich ihnen unrecht und sie fahren hier einfach das ganze Jahr lang mit dem Profil von Winterreifen?

Sorry friends, I'm too lazy these days, I just don't feel like writing, neither E-Mails nor Blog.. I'm having a pretty quiet weekend (today is holiday as well, Thanksgiving, which is celebrated in Canada on a different day than in the US) . Yesterday afternoon we went to a concert which was sponsored by the institute, listening to - among other things - Haydn's Heiligmesse, well it was OK. This is the location, the Winspear Centre for music, nice..

Yesterday I realised the plan (actually both plans), I mentioned more than a month ago: Cycling up and down 96 Street (which - for obvious reasons - used to be named Church Street) and taking photos of all the churches. Just to give you an idea about the area: The following 12 buildings are all right and left of the red marked line, which is a distance of only about 1.3km, and as you can see on the map almost all of them actually cluster in the northern half of it. There for example you have Queen of Martyrs Vietnamese Catholic Church on the left side, just opposite the street is Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples and again opposite the crossing avenue is Ansgar Danish Lutheran Church. (Actually now that I try to find it I'm not entirely convinced that this map is completely correct, but anyway.) The area as such is very poor (many homeless people) but generally interesting: 96 Street is located just in between Little Italy (95 Street) and Chinatown (97 Street). And here are the churches. (Note that the order is not according to the churches' location on 96 Street but according to their colour and the format of the photo.)

left: Mustard Seed Church (Baptist I suppose)
middle: St Peter Lutheran Church (formerly German, that's the one I've been to for the lecture)
right: Sacred Heart Catholic Church of the First Peoples (the church most to tell about because we - the Hungarian colleague Kinga and I - not only visited it but attended a service, which was incredibly interesting. But that's a separate entry which will hopefully follow soon. - I wonder how often I have already announced reports which I then never managed to finish..)


left: Edmonton Family Worship Centre
right: St John's Evangelical Lutheran Church


left: Queen of Martyrs Vietnamese Catholic Church
middle: St. Stephen the Martyr Anglican Church of Canada
right: Holy Trinity. Canadian Orthodox Church


left: Ansgar Danish Lutheran Church,
right: First Christian Reformed Church


The last two are a little bit outsiders.
left: St Barbara Russo-Greek Catholic Orthodox Church because of it's location. Being the starting point of the red line in the south it is separated from the main Church Street through Jasper Avenue.
right: Mui Kwok Buddhist Temple obviously because it's the only non Christian place of worship in Church Street, located at the northern end of the red line.

Und ich bleibe bei den, aehm, Naturschoenheiten Edmontons.. (Was die Kanadierinnen betrifft sollte ich uebrigens nachtragen, dass mir allgemein das Woertchen "natur" nur bedingt zutreffend scheint, weil viele beim Fortgehen so dick Makeup auftragen, dass ich mich oft frage, wie sie wohl "wirklich" aussehen..)

Am Sonntag gab es (anlaesslich des gestern gefeierten Labour Day)zum letzten Mal in diesem Jahr - und damit wohl zum letzten Mal fuer mich - den Great Divide Waterfall (hier die beiden Eintraege vom letzten Mal: Text, Bilder) Ein Arbeiter hat uns uebrigens erklaert, dass das Wasser zwar aus dem Fluss gepumpt wird, dann jedoch zuerst in die Wasseraufbereitungsanlage um schliesslich als Trinkwasserfall in den Fluss zurueck zu fliessen.. Dieses Mal hatte ich genug Batterie um Nachtfotos zu machen - vor allem war es dieses Mal bereits zu zu Beginn, um neun Uhr, merklich dunkler als noch vor ein paar Wochen. Zwar musste ich wohl mehr als die Haelfte der Bilder im Nachhinein loeschen weil sie sich als unscharf erwiesen, aber diese zwei find ich genial.

Damit will ich natuerlich keineswegs die angeregte Diskussion stoeren, wo ich doch nach dem ersten Beitrag mit einer zweistelligen Anzahl an Kommentaren lechze. Damit es sich wenigstens ausgezahlt hat, dass ich jetzt nie wieder ins O'Byrne's kann.. :-)