Dienstag, 30. Dezember 2014

Beerdigungen, Mumien, Mägen

Bei Fischbeerdigungen wird dem Beerdigenden wärmstens empfohlen auf eine ausreichende Tiefe des Loches zu achten, um Ausgrabungsversuche seitens wilder Tiere zu vermeiden.

Karl hatte da ein ganz anderes Problem.

Er hatte vor kurzer Zeit seinen Job als Ananasmesser verloren. Für Laien: Dieser Beruf ist damit verbunden, in Landwirtschaftsbetrieben und Fruchtverarbeitungsfabriken die Grösse der Ananasse von Hand auf äusserst akkurate Art und Weise von Hand zu bestimmen. Leider hatte Karls Arbeitgeber sich zum Kauf eines modernen Laser-Messgerätes entschieden. Karls Freunde Fridolin, Max und Werner, ihrerseits Orangenmesser, Bananenmesser und Heidelbeermesser (ja, das Mitleid ist durchaus angebracht) hatten dasselbe Schicksal erleiden müssen.

Wer auf die Beerdigung des Fisches lieber verzichten möchte, kann auf die Mumifizierung und anschliessende Aufbewahrung im Sarkophag zurückgreifen. Ein eindrückliches Beispiel zu dieser Technik findet sich im British Museum in London.

An dieser Stelle ist es durchaus angebracht, kurz zu erläutern wie Karl überhaupt zum Ananasmesser geworden war. Seine Eltern, beide professionelle Wasserbett-Tester waren geschäftlich in Algerien und hatten Karl mitgeschleppt. Ja, eigentlich ist es schon äusserst pervers dass in der Wüste Wasserbetten verkauft werden aber laut Albert  sind ja nur zwei Dinge unendlich: Das Universum und die menschliche Dummheit. Wobei das mit dem Universum noch nicht ganz geklärt sein soll. Während die Eltern also ihrer Arbeit nachgingen amüsierte sich der kleine Karl beim Herumspringen auf  perversen Wüsten-Wasserbetten. Diese Aktivität macht durchaus müde und so kam es dann dass der junge Springinsfeld sich auf einem der Betten zum Ausruhen niederlegte. Unglücklicherweise handelte es sich dabei um das Modell „Treibsand“ und so passierte es dass der junge Karl in dem Bett versank und von seinen Eltern nie mehr aufgefunden wurde. Es muss gesagt werden, dass Karl an dieser Situation durchaus Gefallen fand. Die Familiensituation war nämlich aufgrund des Alkoholismus des Vaters und Analkolismus der Mutter stets sehr angespannt gewesen. Es fand sich schnell eine Pflegefamilie auf einer Ananasfarm in Thailand und so verbrachte Karl eine unbeschwerte Kindheit inmitten dieser herrlichen Früchte. Als er etwa zwanzig Jahre alt war kam dann ein Brief aus seiner Heimat. Darin wurde ihm mittgeteilt das sein Vater an einer Leberzirrhose und seine Mutter an Nierenversagen wegen ihres mit Analkoholismus verbundenen übermässigen Orangensaftkonsums gestorben waren und er ein ordentliches Sümmchen Geld geerbt hatte. So entschied sich Karl nach minimaler Bedenkzeit dazu, Thailand und der Ananasfarm den Rücken zuzukehren und in die Schweiz zurückzukehren. Mit zwanzig war er sowieso langsam aber sicher auf der Suche nach einer Frau fürs Leben und in Thailand wurde er des stetigen bösen Erwachens langsam aber sicher überdrüssig. In der Schweiz kaufte er sich ein kleines nettes Eigenheim inklusive Eigengrün und fand dank seiner langjährigen internationalen Erfahrung im Bereich der Ananasindustrie schnell eine Stelle als Ananasmesser. Und so war sein Leben vollkommen. Bis eben das Laser-messgerät ihm einen Strich durch die Rechnung machte.

Es gibt Fische ohne Magen.


Der Jobverlust traf die vier Freunde Karl, Fridolin, Max und Werner äusserst hart. Eine neue Stelle zu finden schien ein Ding der Unmöglichkeit. Trotzdem versuchten sie es monatelang. Zudem gründeten sie eine Art Selbsthilfegruppe für arbeitslose Obstmesser. Um nicht aus der Übung zu kommen traffen sie sich jeweils Mittwochs in Karls zu einer Art Clubraum umfunktionierten Garage und vermassen Früchte. Man weiss ja schliesslich nie! Nach getaner Arbeit gab es jeweils einen schönen Fruchtsalat. Karl achtete dabei stets darauf, nicht zu viele Früchte zu konsumieren, um nicht das Schicksal seiner Mutter zu erleiden. Dieses Obstgemesse in der Garage ging einige Wochen lang gut doch die nach wie vor scheiternde Jobsuche nagte an der Stimmung der vier Freunde und so verfielen sie langsam aber sicher in die Depression. Sie wurden träge. Anstatt Obst vermassen sie nur noch Bilder von Obst, wodurch der 3D Effekt natürlich völlig verloren ging. Und anstatt Fruchtsalat konsumierten sie jetzt LSD.

Freitag, 19. Dezember 2014

Bike lights and cats with variable numbers of legs



I leave my house, knowing that my friends are there, in the car, waiting to pick me up to go to another friend’s house for a couple of drinks and chats.
What do I see: They are holding bike lights in their hands, reaching far out, onto the roof of the car. It looks kinda like a police car.
I’m like: What the f is going on.
I get into the car.
I ask.
They go: Our car’s lights are broken, so we need to do this.
And they start driving.
So we drive down my street, with bike lights on the roof of a car. Red one on the left, white one on the right.
My belly hurts so much because I laugh so hard and it’s just so crazy. And kinda scary?!?
They ask me if there is a way to avoid the main street on the way to this other friend’s house.
There isn’t.
So they are like: Shit. We’ll have to go on the main street like this then.
I go crazy. We cannot do that!!!!! Even what we are doing on this small street is nuts.
They go: Well. Either we go on a secret path. Or we walk. But the place is far away...
Or we switch on the lights.
Gosh. What a prank.
Haven’t laughed this hard in a while.
Thanks guys!!!!

Other hilarious aspects of the evening: A cat with three legs. (I DO feel sorry but it also just looks outrageous, like, it puts the third leg in the middle of its body and is actually really good at walking!!!!) A cat with two legs (less good at walking). And a HSG student spelling Xylophone with a Z. (The cat with two legs was just a literary tool to make this text funnier, sorry to disappoint)

Donnerstag, 18. Dezember 2014

Things I love about swimming

Things I love about swimming

I love to feel the resistance of the water.
I love to feel my muscles win against the water.
I love the sight of an empty pool.
Especially when it’s dark outside.
I love to be the only one in front of the block.
Nobody watching.
I love to jump off the block, use all my power, dive into the cold water
I love the first five strokes of a race of freestyle
I love the underwater phase of a race of breaststroke
I love it when fly feels like flying
I don’t love anything about backstroke.
But
I would love to swim backstroke underneath a sky of stars
I’ve never seen a shooting star.
But I imagine they are really beautiful.
And fast.
I’d love to swim as fast as a shooting star.

Maybe, when I see one, I’ll wish for that.

Montag, 15. Dezember 2014

A Moment

A Moment

complete darkness outside
bright water, blue
long nails of the same color
one lane
just for me
tension
power
a splash
energy
speed
exhaustion
a brief moment

but so happy

Sonntag, 20. April 2014

Of Eggs, Baskets and Dramatic Biographies... HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!!!!

My mom is Polish, my dad is Swiss. The good thing about being a mix is that I get to pick and match the best traditions out of two cultures while leaving out the crap boring stuff. The downside is that people don’t understand each other at our dinner table (only my brother and I speak all three languages used in my family: german, swiss german and polish. Yes you Germans out there, Swiss German is a language shut up. And yep. I have to translate stuff often. And yes. It’s annoying. But then, apparently polish is extremely hard to learn so I do forgive my dad. Occasionally.) Anyway today I will, as it is in fact Easter, tell you about Swiss and Polish Easter traditions. As you might know, most people in Switzerland care about roughly four things: chocolate, cheese, money and keeping strangers out. Ok yeah I do admit it, I tend to paint a rather dark picture of the country but that might just be because I like painters (and composers) with a dark biography, like Vincent van Gogh (Fun fact: My parents wanted to call me Vincent, had i been born a boy. Gosh that man cut off his own EAR!). Anyway. What do we Swiss do for Easter? We eat chocolate and eggs. In fact, the only really big thing is the Sunday midday meal. We have eggs in all shapes and colors. We take great pride in decorating hard-boiled eggs during hours of careful work only to use them for a game called „Eiertätsch“ where two eggs are hit against each other and the owner of the intact egg wins. The prize of the winner is only the victory itself. (I know you expected it to be money but HA! You lose!) Both eggs are then destroyed and eaten. Another popular egg game is „Eierlaufe“, a relay where the contestants have to run around while balancing a spoon with a raw egg on it. It can look quite ridiculous and (omg) in this case the winners DO get a prize. Woohoo! So yeah, we eat eggs (has anyone ever had an ostrich egg? There is an ostrich farm near my parents’ house in Switzerland but I’ve never had an egg. And the ostriches look SO evil.) and there is also an Easter egg hunt. In this case, the eggs are in fact chocolate eggs, made of the finest and most delicious Swiss chocolate. If there is one thing I want you to take away from this text it is that Swiss chocolate is indeed the best chocolate in the world. And when it is molded into an oval shape and wrapped in a colorful aluminium foil it can indeed be considered both a food- and an eye-orgasm.  Oh yeah and one last thing: We eat this very nice Easter cake (recipe below). So there you go, Swiss Easter traditions: Cake. eating eggs (both from hens, ostriches and chocolate), running around with them, and hitting them against each other. Now let’s move to Poland. Now if there is one thing you need to know it’s that many Poles like Catholicism very much. And thus most Polish Easter traditions are very much religious. Around the time of Easter there are around 1000 different days where you do different crazy stuff like take a palm tree to church, eat fish (good Friday), go to church a LOT, eat some more fish (every Friday basically, I kinda lied about it being just good Friday), go to church some more, have a massive meal on Sunday and splash people with water on the Monday. There is one funky tradition that I wanna highlight because you can modify it and it’s just funny. On Holy Saturday, we take this basked full of random stuff to church to get it blessed by the priest. The traditional components are salt, ham, bread, horseradish, water, eggs and a little figure of a lamb. And the priest says some amazing blessing and then we take the basket home, let the stuff stand around and spread all the fantastic blessing around the house and on Sunday we eat everything (I lied. again We don’t eat the plastic lamb.) and thus the blessed molecules get integrated into our bodies and it just feels so great! Yeah. And here comes the fun: You can obviously put anything you like in the basket and the priest will bless it. You can play really fun games, like hide a condom in there and have sex with a blessed condom. I have not actually done that. But you could. Also Polish Easter is a lot about decorations. We make some of the nicest decorated eggs (But they are wooden, we don’t destroy them and eat them like those Swiss barbarians.) called Pisanki. It is a tradition to get a branch from a tree and hang them on it. In fact, we once had one of those branches for so long that it grew roots and we ended up planting it and it’s now a big tree in our garden.
That is basically all I wanted to tell you about Swiss and Polish Easter. If you may excuse me now, I have to go and paint some more hard-boiled eggs while listening to Chopin. That is the composer I hinted at earlier. A genius. Died at the age of 39. And most interestingly, he was also a mix: Half French and half Polish. So he probably did the basket thing, too! Who knows, maybe he added some sheet music to his basket? Or a mini-Eiffel tower? Oh wait… that wasn’t built yet. Ach I should just go back to my eggs…

SWISS EASTER CAKE RECIPE

For the dough:
200g flower
½ teaspoon salt
100g butter
40g sugar
½ lemon: grated skin
1 egg: beaten, not stirred

For the filling:
3 tablespoons apricot jam
400 ml milk
pinch of salt (preferrably blessed by the priest)
55g semolina
50g butter
45g sugar
½ lemon: zest and grated skin
40g sultanas
20g almonds, ground
3 eggs, yolk and white separated

To make the cake:
For the dough just mix all the stuff and use it to cover the bottom and sides of a 24cm diameter baking pan

To make the filling
Bring milk to a boil. Add semolina, simmer at low heat for 15-20min.
Pre-heat oven to 220°C
Add lemon, butter, sugar, sultanas and almonds to the semolina mix, let cool down.
Add the egg yolks
Beat the egg whites until stiff, add to the mix

Finish and bake:
Spread the apricot jam on the bottom of the cake, pour the filling into the baking pan, bake for roughly 30min. let cool down. Use icing sugar and all your amazing imagination to decorate this delicious treat!
EN GUETE!