On the Day that Conny Kramer died

Until just this week it has been in the 50s and 60s (I guess I should say the teens) here. But it has turned cold - 30s and low 40s. On Monday and Tuesday we had a strong wind storm, so most of the leaves have suddenly fallen and that makes it feel very winterish. I think that the change is especially noticeable to us because the bare trees are opening views that are totally new to us around town.  We are wearing only winter jackets now and are scrambling to find our hats and mittens. I'm not sure I brought enough. L has already managed to lose a very cute hat and outgrew her warmest coat before she ever wore it.

The weather forecasts here are interesting. Today the low will be 2, the high 5. That kind of small range makes me feel pretty confident even though I know that half the time when they predict rain it doesn't. The warnings are the best, though. When we had the wind storm we were in the stormy winds and continuous rain categories. Just one notch up from continuous rain is "permanent rain"! That is bad enough, but they have two categories that are even worse.

Yesterday we went to the market in Oerlikon. It is already somewhat small because I go on Wednesdays as opposed to Saturdays, but yesterday was even smaller than usual. My favorite vendor wasn't there. But maybe I have a new favorite - a man who looks like a walrus, is crazy about L, and who lets me try to speak German. When I asked for a head of lettuce he gave me one that was so big it looked like three heads in one. I left the market with two resolutions: to see it on Saturday sometime, and to try to blog everyday. It would probably be my New Year's resolution anyway since blogging gives me an incentive to get out and do things even in nasty weather. I might as well start it now, especially since E is coming home with a wonderful birthday present I got from my Uncle J and Aunt K - a rain cover for the stroller which will also help with wind. Thank you Uncle J and Aunt K - we will dedicate our next rainy day post to you!



The Oerlikon market is the first place we went when we arrived in August, and being there really emphasizes how much time has passed. It had been very hot with tomatoes, plums, and zinnias everywhere. Now it is so cold that T didn't even want to go on the see saw and the main attractions are turnips, squash, and potatoes. But there is something interesting and new - really beautiful wreaths and table arrangements. The wreaths are pretty simple - mostly just greens and pinecones - but they are the prettiest wreaths I've ever seen. They are put together with absolute precision and have perfect mixes of silvery and green needles and different textures. The cost is crazy, though, considering that the materials are pretty much free. I guess for the average person in Zurich there is no good way to get greens since a tiny bundle the size of my hand (not a swag, just a small branch you decorate yourself) costs seventy five cents. Still, I have decided to buy a wreath. I will get it as soon as I think it will make it through the season. And I will put in on the INSIDE of our door so we can see it all the time. And, to make sure I really get my money's worth, I will take photos of every wreath for sale that day so I will have wreath making inspiration enough to last a couple of decades.

Many of the arrangements are square, which would make more sense to me if they were modern in any other way. Lots of the arrangements have crosses stuck in them. Why not a tiny manger instead? I hope that at the onion festival there are arrangements with tiny mangers and onion babies inside.

Speaking of festivals... S is going to write about the turnip festival as soon as E gets back from PA with the pictures. Today she is on a field trip. I hope. She came home yesterday with a letter telling me that if  she wasn't going to do Zukunftstag (google translate doesn't know what this is) then she would do the Alternativprogramm. It sounds so menacing in German, but S says it is just a trip to the science museum. However, as usual, S's information was spotty and my translation of the letter raised more questions than it answered. I sent her off to school early with lunch, a train ticket, and twenty francs. The littles and I are hanging around town today so we can meet the train this afternoon and see if she makes it home.

While we were at the festival I was reminded of something I wanted to mention on the blog. Anyone my age knows popular songs that have been translated into English: 99 red balloon, der kommissar. Laura Brannigan was the queen of this. Gloria and Self Control were remakes from Italian, and she took a crack at Der Kommissar, too. Anyway, I never thought much about it going in the opposite direction. Fair enough, right? But while here I've heard a few songs for which I think translation from English makes no sense at all. A couple I can't remember now. At the turnip festival it was YMCA. I thought that was enough of a stadium song that it was beyond requiring translation.

The weirdest, though, was The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. I spent a a lot of time thinking about that. In this case, because it is a story song, translation makes sense. BUT does it make sense to bother translating a song about the American Civil War? Are Swiss or German people familiar enough with it to care? Would Americans listen to a translated song about the Sonderbund War? Listening to the song I figured that the German version of the song must be completely different. I couldn't make out any words I thought I'd recognise: tracks, Robert E Lee, hungry just barely alive. Not even Dixie.  I could only guess that someone took the tune and made up a new story to go with it - maybe one about the Sonderbund War. Which made me wonder why co-opt that particular tune, and how popular was the new song in Switzerland that it was being played on the radio now?

So I heard the song on my way up a skilift and thought about it for a good part of my hike around Flumserberg. Why do I do that sort of thing? I could have filed it away and spend 30 seconds on google later on to find this on wiki. If you like disorientation, go ahead and listen to it on the youtube link. It came out a year after Joan Baez's version and they didn't change much other than the words.

In 1972, a cover of the song called "Am Tag als Conny Kramer starb" (translation: "On the Day that Conny Kramer Died") was a number-one hit in West Germany for singer Juliane Werding. For this version, the lyrics were not translated but rather changed completely to an anti-drug anthem about a young man dying because of his drug addiction - an extremely hot topic in that year, when heroin was making the first big inroads in Germany.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hoeDuMGtCY