Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned

Here's an appalling story which rocked Europe for the last couple of days. No, it's not the bank situation, although that's a pretty hot topic right about now too. This story is as unbelievable as it is disgusting and if my meme didn't do it for you, this one WILL turn your stomachs, that's a promise.

In 1984 in Austria, a very sick man locked his 18 year-old daughter in a cellar underneath his house. He kept her there and had 7 kids with her during all those years. One of the kids died at birth and sicko burned the body. Three of the kids went to live "upstairs" with the wife and him. The story is that the wife had no idea what was going on. Pervo told everyone the 18 year-old daughter went missing. Later, he told his wife those three children were his, from another woman who died and now he has to take care of them. The other three kids lived in the cellar with their mother, uhr, sister, uhr...well, with the woman who gave birth to them. They had never seen daylight until they brought them out a couple of days ago.

There are many missing pieces of the puzzle still and the whole story is not entirely clear as of yet. The Austrian police are hard at work trying to figure it all out. The children are all under the care of child psychologists undergoing all kinds of tests and, of course, therapy. They're gonna need it!

Paul, I think suicide may not have been such a bad idea in this case, don't you agree?

Me!Me!

It’s actually a Meme, but I’m supposed to write eight facts about myself here so that’s why I call it Me!Me!

I started this blog to keep my parents (who live far away from us) informed about what’s going on in our lives and now, look what it’s come to. I’m doing memes! I’m doing it because I’ve been tagged by a friend and I don’t wish to break the chain and be the dead end. So, here it is and at the end, I’m supposed to tag another eight people (can you say “chain letter” lol) so if you happen to be one of those, please be a good sport and do the meme. If I’ve tagged you, it’s because I think your meme would be an interesting one and worth reading. So, without further adieu, here are eight things you may not have known about me:

1. I’ve never broken any bone in my body. Ever. I also have an unusually high white blood cell count. Always. Doctors have checked me out but haven’t been able to find any reason as to why the elevated white blood cell count. I almost never get sick.

2. WARNING! If you are about to eat or have just eaten, please skip to number 3!

I have a very, very strong stomach. I have been known to eat spoiled food and never even realized it. I will try anything out there once. I’ve eaten horse (as has been pointed out by my friend Peri already), frogs, kangaroo, crocodile, brains, tongue, eye balls, intestines/stomach to name a few. You were warned! We lived in a poor country when I was young and my grandparents owned a farm. In the fall, when they would slaughter the pigs and the goats, nothing ever went to waste. I have never been sick to my stomach or had diarrhea caused by food. Well, I’m sure if you fed me 100 year old oysters, I’d spend some extra time in the toilet but in general, day to day life, bring it on…I’ll eat it!

3. When I was a child, my Grandma, forcefully, dragged me to an audition for the leading role in a movie. That was the closest I’ve gotten to being a movie star. Very needless to say, they didn’t pick me. But I felt so humiliated standing there in a lineup of girls while the producer or director or whomever stared at us with a big camera pointed in our faces. I have to say here that he did pick me out of the rest and posed some sort of question to me (maybe it was a little test) but I was so nervous and embarrassed that I just mumbled something and that was that. No red carpet for me.

4. I’ve been banned from a bar after being kicked out of it for being rowdy, stoned, drunk and making out in the boy’s washroom with my friend’s cousin. (Oh God, my Mother reads this blog!)

5. I’ve had sex (with my husband, but he was not my husband at the time) in the bathroom of a train while coming back from a trip. (Oh, God, my Mother reads this blog!)

6. I’ve spent one night in a minimum security facility. Still though, bars on the windows, no shoes or belts, and a police officer guard. (Oh, God, my …. No, wait, my Mother knows about that one!)

7. I got married twice to the same man. First, we eloped, then we had a big church wedding. Let me explain, in Switzerland, a church wedding alone is not recognized by the authorities/government (yes, Switzerland is, in some ways, quite behind the times) so people must get married in a civil ceremony in City Hall first. Then, if they wish to have a church wedding, they can. I came to Switzerland on a one year work contract. I then met, dated, got engaged to and married my husband without my parents ever meeting him. We got married in City Hall on a quiet Thursday afternoon, in a very small ceremony (only my husband and I with a witness each) which lasted a little less than 10 min. The four of us then went to lunch and that was it. We went to work the next day. A week later, my Mother arrived and I had to introduced her to my husband for the first time. Two weeks later, we had a big, beautiful church wedding. I wore a wedding dress, bla, bla, the whole shebang.

8. I cannot speak a language perfectly. I speak three. Bulgarian, (my mother tongue), English, and German/Swiss German but none of them perfectly. My mother tongue I hardly use and haven’t done so in years. As a result, it has deteriorated. I have lost close to 50% of my vocabulary and my grammar is poor. When I go back to visit and speak with people, they ask me where I come from. English I speak the best, but not nearly as well as a native English speaker. I have an accent which I have never been able to loose and when I speak with English people they ask me where I come from. German I have started to learn only 3 years ago. I speak enough to be able to get by and watch TV but it’s my third and worst spoken language of all. When I speak to people here, they ask me where I come from. Chances are, in 20 years, German will be my best spoken language, then English, and I’m not sure if I’d still be able to string two words together in Bulgarian, but for now my language of communication is English and I’m glad I could speak it well enough to write this meme!

Thanks everyone for your time. Now, the tags:

Calculus, http://www.endodontics.ca/;

Jenny, http://thingstoreadanddo.blogspot.com/;

Ki, http://ki-briefs.blogspot.com/;

Adrian, on Facebook;

Deana, on Facebook;

Shamina, on Facebook;

Heidi, on Facebook;

and Kathy, on Facebook

The Grip of the Green Monster

Last weekend, a dear friend of mine came up to visit us on top of our mountain. We didn't force her to eat horse. We didn't have to because she had cooked and brought with her a most yummy spaghetti sauce and Cesar salad. She also brought a little after dinner treat for desert. Absinthe.


The stuff is illegal in many countries across the world (and rightfully so) but not in Switzerland. It originated in Switzerland as a matter of fact. Yeah, cheese, chocolate and .... absinthe. Nice. Anyway, we were not sure exactly how to consume the green stuff. I had had it once before, quite a long time ago, with two equally crazy friends of mine so I called them up to ask them if they remembered how we drank it then. My friend responded with a link to a very informative site on the internet which explained everything we needed to know.


Apparently, there are more than one ways to drink Absinthe as well as more than one sorts of the stuff. We liked the Czech method which called for placing a sugar cube on a special absinthe spoon, dipping the sugar cube in the absinthe and letting it soak up the liquor, then lighting the sugar cube on fire and letting it burn and melt the sugar. As the sugar melts, it drips into the absinthe, since the absinthe spoon has holes in it. The trouble was we didn't have sugar cubes or the special absinthe spoon. So we improvised.


We filled a normal tea spoon with normal grain sugar. We (carefully) dipped the spoon with the sugar into the absinthe and let it soak up the alcohol. We then lit the sugar up and let it melt and drip into the absinthe. And we drank.


It tasted quite awful. At 55% alcohol, it was super strong and the anise taste was overpowering. My friend poured Sprite in her absinthe and attempted to drink it that way. She did but had to hold her nose while doing it. I tried to be the brave one but after a few sips, followed by violent shaking after swallowing, I reached for the Sprite too. It didn't help much. I could only finish about half my drink. I should have followed my friend's method of holding my nose cuz apparently that worked. She had three (Sprite infused) shots.


Did we experience any of the "hallucinogenic" effects the Green Monster promises? Yes and no, i guess. I thought I saw a fruit fly, mind you it wasn't green, so can't call it the "green fairy". My friend said she saw nothing, but her comments on a movie we were watching while drinking the absinthe tell me she saw much more than I did. I remember writing everything she said down because I thought (at the time) that it was the most hilarious thing ever. We read my notes the next morning. Here are a couple of lines. Can you guess which movie we were watching??


"A woman, while in labour, is shooting at this guy who just drop-kicked a tiger! Look at the tiger go! He's riding that bike all the way up the stairs! I wonder if it's a famous tiger, you know, like Benny The Bear? We'll have to watch the credits."

The Green Culprit

Our version of the Czech method


See the fairy in the spoon??

Relatively Speaking

It's 6pm. Do you know who your relatives are?

Apparently, I don't. Here's the thing: A patient of mine looks at my name tag today and says: "Oh, you're a ...(last name here). Are you at all related to Reto (last name here)?" And I say: "I'm very related to Reto (last name here). I'm his wife." And then the patient says (jokingly, I think?): "Ah well, his wife, then you're technically not related to him, are you? Not in blood, you know what I mean, like a sister or a cousin, etc."

What? Now, I'm not related to my own husband? Well, after very careful consideration of the issue, I come to agree with the patient. Genetically, I am not related to my husband (thank God), so I guess he's not a "relative" of mine. But then again, when someone asks you if you have any relatives, don't you think ... well, spouse, kids, parents, siblings. And even though spouse is "technically" the odd one out, a.k.a. not a blood relative, aren't they your relative anyway???

Someone help me!?!

"Blonde" Moment

Bloody TV again.

Last night, we were watching a show where some guy was trying to compliment his wife by saying something like: "Your hair is so ... beautiful, the colour is like ... well, like the colour of my beer, so ... beautiful." I laughed at that and said to my husband, jokingly: "I'm happy you don't tell me my hair is the colour of your beer." His reply: "Oh, that would be really bad beer then, strange beer, you know."

Right. I know. I was hoping for a reply somewhere in the vicinity of, ... oh, say, "Oh, no, your hair is sooooo gorgeous, not like beer at all. You are gorgeous. The most gorgeous in the whole world. No one has hair like yours, so gorgeous. You are so gorgeous...." and so on, you know, but ah well, maybe it's a good thing beer is not the colour of my hair, i don't think it'll sell too well at all.

Cheers!

Tommy's Quick Fingers

Thomas Vogel is quick! How quick? Well, can you undo 60 bras in 60 seconds? Didn't think so. Tom can't either, but close.

Just to give you some sort of idea what kind of shows they broadcast on German television, last night my husband and I watched a guy by the name of Thomas Vogel try and beat his own record of undoing 60 bras in 60 seconds with only the fingers of one hand. I don't have to tell you that's one bra per second. The man had done it before on some other show where all the girls participating in the "experiment" were lined up in a straight line. He started on one end and unclasped his way all the way to the other end in one minute. The catch was, the girls were all wearing the exact same bra with the exact same clasp. In last night's show, the girls had their own bras on which meant all kinds of colours, all kinds of designs, all kinds of shapes and sizes and all kinds of different bra clasps in the back.

Could Tom do it? Nopers. He only got about 46 undone in the 60 seconds. Which is still pretty impressive, no? Tom also gives lessons to any oh-so-eager guy who wants to be able to unclasp a lady's bra with the fingers of one hand as quickly as possible. Any takers??