Got an inch or so last night of the wet stuff, good for snowballs and tiny snowmen. Not so hot for driving, so the ride to work took longer but that was okay because I had just that much longer to listen to Austrian radio, which is as scintillating as you could imagine. At one point an announcer, she does the traffic news and celebrity gossip, sang a Christmas carol. The DJ joined in. One of them played the guitar as well. Someone once said he imagined me here, doing a lot of singing with the family, due to the Sound of Music image thing. And we do sing quite a bit, especially around Christmas, but not in harmony and not lined up and not in uniforms. We sit down around the table and light the advent wreath – the candles on the wreath that is, between one and four depending on which week of advent it is – and sing. Except yesterday evening, we’d been sitting around the woodstove all day warming up and were so relaxed by the time we lit the candles that we blew them out again after fifteen minutes or so, too lazy to sing anything.
Rumor has it that Austria is one of the few places in Europe where people sing more than Swedish people do. I like a culture of social singing, it’s a bit charming and sometimes a bit kitch, but all in all quite pleasing.
Stop it! You are totally spoiling my fantasy image of you!
Line up dammit, and have the nanny make you all suits out of the drapes! And SING!!!
Hot little nuns, heh.
And if they’re not lined up in time, I summon them all with my shrill little whistle.
Well, in the US I was in the church choir for a while as a lad. and in school for a year or two. but no one I know sings now, in the US, but for one blogger. That I know of. Here, on the other hand, I know several people who are fairly seriously into choir singing, one in the St. Stephen’s Cathedral choir in Vienna (no idea if that is a big deal) and several in the town near us. Beta sings in the choir at school. I’m really not sure how Austria compares to other countries social singing-wise… I can say that I’ve never seen anyone else playing the tin whistle at traffic lights here, besides myself.
In Belgium on the other hand, we sing before lunch and after, we sing in traffic and before the workday starts. Belgium is the singing nation, especially after some beers. Which reminds me: Belgian beer rocks, d00d :)
come to think of it: it’s probably the Habsburg domination thing that did that to us.
And Austria was invaded by Sweden a long time ago. So ultimately it can be attributed to them.
I love the sound of music. I just watched it again last week. plus the dvd has all these extras, like a tourist plug for salzburg that the oldest girl in the family made while she was there, and some behind the scenes stuff and all that. It rocks.
Sew, a needle pulling threaaaaaaaaad…
*hehe* just imagine those vikings singing and plundering. More metal than a Norwegian pacemaker, for sure!
“The Sound of Music: Director’s Cut” with ten minutes of Vikings cut from the original.
Viking: “Ya, I give you needle pulling thread, alright, boo-ha!”
Austrian, in outfit made of drapery: “Arrrgh.”
etc.
Spam spam spam lovely etc :)