Caledonian Club, London, 11 February 2005
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Lords and Ladies, Highlanders and Rabbie-like Lowlanders, Waiters and Waitresses, … and uhm, ahh yes, native English people. Continue reading
Caledonian Club, London, 11 February 2005
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Lords and Ladies, Highlanders and Rabbie-like Lowlanders, Waiters and Waitresses, … and uhm, ahh yes, native English people. Continue reading
Selected Translation Tidbits
from Le Royal Tour Restaurant menu by the Eiffel Tower, 23 Avenue La Bourdonnais, 75007 Paris, France, +33 1 45 51 38 04
All entries are absolutely true – heck you couldn’t make this up – i.e. the first line is the French, the second was the restaurant’s translation, the third in brackets is a helpful, cultural interpretation (all right, perhaps they were my comments).
Tartare d’avocat et crevettes sauce cocktail
Lawyer Tartar, shrimps sauce cocktail
(kinda makes you want to turn cannibal)
Salade Estivale (Mesclun de salade, saumon fumé, avocat, pâtes, vinaigre de xérès
Salad, smoked salmon, lawyer, warp ends, vinegar of Jerez
(bit ends? warp speed? it’s lawyers Jim, but not as we know ‘em)
Salade frisée aux lardons et oeuf poche
Salad with lardoons and poached egg
(we don’ take to lardoons round these here parts…)
Croustillant au chèvre chaud sur lit de salade
Crusty with the goat heat on salad
(well, without any bucks, what do you expect?)
L’entrecôte du boucher
Sirloin fashin, garnish and sauce with the choice
(if Billy’s off the menu, this must be in fash)
Côte de boeuf au four pour deux personnes
Coast of boeuf for two people
(no gastronomic girly-men these Frenchies; an entire coast)
Trio de côtes d’agneau grillés garniture au choix
Roasted coasts of lamb garnish to the choice
(continental drift is verging on extinction)
Escalope de dinde à la normande, spaghetti
Poultry scallop with spaghetti
(and you thought genetically-modified was safe?)
And our all-time favourite:
Viande de boeuf fraîchement hachée avec machine réfrigérée à la commande
Beef codly chopped has the order with cooled machine
(a chilling view of the future as slave human chefs wield frozen fish carcasses to splinter beef under the domination of cryogenically-refrigerated computers)
Professor Michael Mainelli on location in Paris … taking diplomacy lessons from Jed Babbin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense from the first Bush administration on 30 January 2003 – “… you know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.”
[This article was published by Yachting World, on the official Cowes site (www.cowesweek.co.uk) – Monday 4 Aug 2003]
Barge matches date back to the late 1700s, even if their meetings were not known by that name then, but it took until 2000 for this particularly challenging form of sail racing to make an appearance within Skandia Cowes Week.
This year’s event became a match race between Daphne (built 1923) and Kitty (built 1895) because a number of engine and weather problems kept other potential contenders away. But the pair still managed to show 870 other Cowes competitors a thing or two on Saturday by getting away on a very light breeze at 1000, three hours before the main classes commenced their starts.
Starting these vessels in tide without wind requires an extremely conservative approach to avoid being over the line. Intent on reversing her fortunes this year after striking a yacht and retiring in 2002, Kitty quickly crossed the line within a minute or so of the gun and struck out on a tight reach for the first mark, Marsh, over on the eastern shore. Lady Daphne followed about six lengths behind. Both boats managed to keep their momentum despite the light breezes, no bad thing as you don’t restart over 80 tons of boat lightly.
Gordon Diffey used to be a trading bargeman in the 1960s and crewed on Lady Daphne on Saturday. Despite his age, he was remarkable at showing the young, amateur crew what it really takes to sail these creatures. With such light winds, there was time for a few tales, including the race Gordon had won when the skipper had taken to his bunk due to sickness.
Lady Daphne managed to keep nipping at Kitty, but Kitty kept her well covered. Just before the first rounding, Lady Daphne attempted to overtake. Kitty vigorously defended her position with an assertive luff, costing Lady Daphne a few lengths at the first rounding. Lady Daphne sought shallower waters by the shore to cheat the tide while Kitty took the direct line to the next mark, Royal Southern. As both boats came into the mark, neither strategy had paid off and Kitty held an almost identical lead.
Things got very interesting at the Royal Southern rounding. Kitty misjudged a difficult tack in tide, hitting the mark. Her skipper, Wayne Norris, took the rounding mark penalty and then struck out for the island shore, apparently counting on winds freshening rapidly. Lady Daphne, skippered by James Kent, went north to Calshot to play with small tidal differences and gambling on the wind building slowly. The strongly diverging strategies led to over three miles of separation at one point. Both boats seemed to sail in and out of wind holes and pockets.
The result? Lady Daphne stormed down from the north with increasing wind and tide to emerge some 12 minutes in front and tacked ‘nimbly’ (two minutes on a Thames barge!) across the finish line.
The informal match chairman, Roger Marriott, hosted the prize-giving on Kitty, which he owns, returning the match cups to Lady Daphne.
There have been a number of improvements to the Thames Sailing Barge racing at Cowes over the last four years to ensure that port-starboard incidents with yachts are minimised. The barge course is now separate from the smaller boats and the finish line has been moved away from the front of the Royal Yacht Squadron. These two changes have been strongly supported by the barge skippers and are likely to lead to quite a number of vessels returning to Cowes for 2004. There is also talk of introducing a handicap system that has been successful for a few years at the Thames Match. See http://www.thamesmatch.co.uk for more details.
[This article was published on the official Cowes site (www.cowesweek.co.uk) – Monday 5 Aug 2002]
Barge ‘matches’, a phrase dating back to Queen Victoria’s era, constitute the oldest continuous racing series after the America’s Cup. The Solent’s largest match so far was in 2001 with six of these enormous boats. On the Kent, Essex and Suffolk coasts, barge matches can attract nearly 20 vessels, with an average size near 80 tons and a typical length about 85ft. Nevertheless, the three who made the Skandia Life Cowes Week start line on Saturday morning, the 1923-built Lady Daphne, old-timer Kitty (1895) and youngster Alice (1954), still made the lengthy Squadron start line seem small. It’s tough to get any boat that size moving when the airs are at their softest, but the barges managed to set off on a rainy run down the west Solent at 1000 when later classes had to wait some hours for wind. From the start, Lady Daphne and Kitty gained and lost the lead numerous times in a close tacking duel that had the tacticians biting their nails on the way down to the Skandia Life mark. Tacking these big vessels through 110 degrees takes several lengths and a few minutes, making tactics quite complicated.
SB Lady Daphne ahead of SB Kitty heading for the finish
Alice was an unknown quantity in her first-ever match outing under skipper Sean Jacob, but held close enough to worry the leaders as they tried to hold cover.
At first the duel was out in the deep water with the tide. As the tide began to flood, the fight moved to the shallows on the Hampshire shore. When the light winds stopped, the tide could be cheated no longer and the barges took to kedging, twice hoisting their anchors to grasp at hopeful puffs. Two ton leeboards are raised and lowered on each tack, so during kedging pauses, the crews tried to catch their breaths, only to lose them again winding anchor windlasses.
After the second kedge, Lady Daphne and Kitty set out again chasing another zephyr, still neck-and-neck. Just one tack afterwards, Kitty had an unfortunate port-starboard incident with a yacht. The yacht was on starboard, but failed to realise that while tonnage can move swiftly, it turns slowly. Kitty was unable to avoid piercing the yacht’s mainsail with her bowsprit. Fortunately, there were no injuries.
With Kitty disqualified, Lady Daphne held a commanding lead over Alice and, given the weak breeze, the course was shortened at 1500.
Two bargemen who served in trade decades ago took part in the race, Jimmy Lawrence on Kitty and Gordon Diffey on Lady Daphne. Both commented on how little had changed in barge racing since their youth – “although we could have really used GPS in a London fog.”
At a remarkably jolly prize-giving for such a gruelling, wet race, Jimmy Lawrence presented the winning trophy to James Kent, skipper of Lady Daphne.
These ochre-sailed, majestic boats are a welcome reminder that age is no barrier to a competitive boat race. You can view further details of them at www.sailingbargekitty.com (Kitty) and www.4charter.co.uk (Alice).
Sailors are only young once – for this sailor it’s once a year at Kiel Week. An old J-24, old sails and a 43 year old man felt young again from 22 to 25 June. Kiel is tremendous – 6,000 competitors and 2,000 boats, double the size of Cowes. We are sailing at the 1972 Olympic center on the northwest side of the bay. Kiel also hosted the 1936 Olypmics and is making an impressive bid to so again in 2012. Submarines and square riggers are out in numbers. A few kilometers away in the old Hanseatic city there is an enormous annual festival with some hundreds of thousands of people participating in a four kilometer party (www.kieler-woche.de), but I don’t have the time to visit given all the sailing and partying here, and this is my third Kiel Week in a row!
The Kiel Week organisers seem obsessed with reminding you of the years they take away by posting the birth dates of all skippers and crews with each set of results. Looking back to 50-something Horst Rieckborn at the helm of his J-24, I remember that he is the oldest J-24 skipper, competing in his 25th Kiel Week. Axel is the 39 year old youngster hopping around the cockpit doing all the winching. Hans is my 49 year old buddy scrambling across the deck at each shout of “Wende!” (tack!) while Volker’s weight on the foredeck is another reminder of some of the disadvantages of age. Our boat is named Pathétique. I reckon that Horst added up the age of his crew and arrived at a number near the year when Beethoven composed his eponymous sonata. I’m told the name sounds better in German, but surely they’re referring to the music?
My notional job is tactics and navigation up on the rail. Notionally, I speak a form of halting German that becomes abrupt, braking German when things get hectic. In all the confusion and fun, I manage to throw a few suggestions in and, as is usual with tacticians, remember making a massive contribution to successes and no contribution to failures. Off the course, the organisers and competitors couldn’t be more welcoming to non-German speakers. Everything is provided in English and German.
While I enjoy the majesty of Brest, the warm welcome of Cork, the thrills of the Solent and the fun of local regattas, Kiel has become my annual highpoint. Three things stand out – keen competition, fantastic organisation and good value. Starting with the keen competition, in truth, Kiel Week might be more accurately called the Two Kiel Half-weeks. The first four day regatta comprises various international classes with 2 races on the first day, 3 on the second, 3 on the third and 1 race on the fourth. The second four day regatta comprises the Olympic classes. Throughout there are classic and offshore races. Professional committee boat starts in several separate areas are a far cry from the self-centredness of the RYS line at Cowes. The racing is very international. Most of our competitors are top sailors in their own countries. Sailors from over 70 countries are competing in various classes, for example the Chinese windsurfing team. This year our class of 36 J-24’s has Dutch and Swedish entries alongside the top German sailors. In previous years we’ve had US, French, Swiss, Italian and other nations. In the bars on Monday and Tuesday sailing gods such as Sailing Hall of Fame’s Mark Reynolds rub shoulders with mortals out for some good fun. The blend of competition and camaraderie leads to genuine convivialité or gemütlichkeit depending on your linguistic preference.
For once a national stereotype has a very positive side – fantastic organisation. The support Kiel’s organisers provide to competitors makes you feel special. There is a detailed weather briefing each morning from a national TV weatherman, complete with handouts so you don’t need notes. The race results are efficient and timely. The cars to and from the car parks are frequent, with televisions so you don’t miss World Cup games, although because the television only operates when the car is stopped there tends to be a bit of stop-start braking of the shuttle cars in time with radio announcements of things worth watching. There is a wide, varied selection of food, from fast food of all sorts to restaurants.
As the Rolling Stones prove, with enough drink, it’s never a drag getting old. While I know little about “mother’s little helper”, there is an even better selection of drink, drunk from glass not plastic. The varied evening entertainments are a wonderful combination of music and humour. One group, United Four, seems to have become an annual double fixture singing cover tunes with an enthusiasm that has an audience of several hundred chanting along till past midnight. Seeing their six and half foot lead singer do a very passable vocal and visual send-up of Britney Spears brings tears, of humour, to your eyes. Their self-deprecating humour makes you question other German stereotypes.
To address good value, €180 provides all race fees for the 9 races, berthing, boat lifts, car parking, very frequent shuttles back to the car for forgotten possessions and hats for the crew. Contrast this with €260 or more for an equivalent Cowes entry for 7 races without berthing, lifts, parking, etc. Hotel accommodation less than five minutes walk from the boat set us back €50 per evening. Two beers, a steak, salad and chips in a nice restaurant set our budget back a chilling €18, and, no, we hadn’t made reservations a year in advance. True, you have to get to Kiel, but with discount flights to Hamburg, Bremen or Lűbeck often running at £120 or less it looks competitive with public transport to Cowes.
Sure, there are some problems. Three Musto dealers were of no use on a problem with Musto’s HPX gear, although Musto UK sorted it out gratis. The committee boat tangled a start of one class with the finish of another, wasting an hour. The tideless Baltic will never match the complexity of the Solent. I think the final word on Kiel ought to go to old-timer Horst, who has seen the racing double in size over the last quarter of a century. Asked about his plans for his 26th year, Horst said, “I couldn’t miss the best competition in all of Europe”.
So how did we do? Well to use an old Irish expression, it took a lot of people to beat us. We tried to help them by being too lazy to change up to the genoa when the breeze reduced in one race (age you know), or by diving overboard in disgust at having to take a 720 penalty (well, I may have not quite understood the German warning that the 720 was about to start). Despite our best efforts, we placed a credible 15th against the 35 other youngsters. More importantly, we placed our reservation for next year.
Michael Mainelli has been racing traditional craft and plastic boats with equal enjoyment for over 30 years. He is a Royal Corinthian Yacht Club member and a committee member of the Thames Match. Michael has been racing at Cowes since 1990, much of that in the Sigma 33 fleet. Since 1996 Michael and his wife Elisabeth have owned S.B. Lady Daphne, see www.lady-daphne.co.uk or call (020) 7562-7656 or email michael_mainelli@zyen.com.
[originally published by “Yachting World,” IPC Media, Spring 2002 online]
Photo: Pre-race Manoeuvres, courtesy Marc Schlossman, www.marcschlossman.com
“Free the wang (sic)”, “keep the horse clear (ditto)”, “babies below (what?)” and “shall I serve lunch before the next tack (yes!)” are not the sort of phrases one expects to hear during a race. However, this is fairly common racing patter in the midst of a barge match. Races of enormous, graceful classic boats haven’t left Britain since last summer’s wonderful J-Class events; after 158 years Thames sailing barge matches are here to stay. Many people don’t realise that the oldest continuous racing after the America’s Cup (1851) is the Thames Match every year from Gravesend round a mark off Southend and back (1863).
Sailing barge history is fascinating both economically and nautically. Estimates of the number of barges built over the centuries range up to 10,000. In 1910, there were 2,100 on the Merchant Navy Register, but numbers were declining such that at the end of World War I there were about 1,650 barges in trade and by the beginning of World War II only 600 remained. The barges themselves contributed to this steep decline, having “dug their own graves” by carrying the materials which built the roads for the lorries which replaced them. The last wooden barges were built in the 1920’s, the last steel barges in the 1930’s. Today, there are about 45 remaining hulls but only about 20 Thames sailing barges are in race-able condition around the UK. With a few charming exceptions such as the tiny barge Cygnet, Thames barges range from 50 to 100 tonnes and from 80 to 95 feet.
Thames sailing barge designs date from the seventeenth century when the English began modifying Dutch spritsail designs. The spritsail rig consists of a mast with a permanent sprit (or boom) mounted at about 60 degrees vertical. This contrasts with a gaff rig which is more like raising or lowering a telephone pole perpendicular to the mast for each sailing. The permanent sprit, combined with some early, but efficient, winches gave the sailing barges their distinct advantage, an ability to carry around 200 tonnes of cargo with two crew (“a man, a boy and a dog”). When this cargo is contrasted with, say, 200 ox carts and drivers, the advantages are clear. When this trade is centred on the Thames, where tides can guarantee delivery less than 48 hours from Suffolk, Kent or Essex to London, these are the makings of a fantastic industry. London was the only major European city other than Hamburg on a tidal river, and Hamburg didn’t control the Netherlands or Denmark while London could be fed by Suffolk, Kent and Essex. Thames sailing barges were the only technology of the time capable of feeding a metropolis before the advent of the railways. As late as 1903 a Joint Select Committee of Lords and Commons estimated that 75% to 80% of the whole traffic of London was carried by barges.
Thames sailing barges are distinctive in other ways – they are self tacking on the foresail and mainsail “horses”, typically draw less than four feet, can lower their masts to pass beneath bridges and use leeboards rather than a keel. These characteristics were all crucial to the development of Thames waters with their tight, shallow estuaries, bridges and mud flats providing food and materials for the capital with its fast tides. Their 3,500 square foot ochre sailplan was also highly distinctive, as recorded in numerous London paintings and early photographs. The heyday of sailing barges was the latter half of the nineteenth century. By this time the design was so stable that bargemen could board a new vessel in the middle of the night and find everything in the same place. Thames barges sailed throughout the south and east coast, from the Scillies to Newcastle, as well as conducting a thriving trade with the Continent.
Records of barge racing start in Harwich in 1844. The most famous race, the Thames Match (see www.thamesmatch.co.uk), was begun by Mr Henry Dodd (1801–1881) with the support of the Prince of Wales Yacht Club. Having made a fortune in waste removal using five barges of his own, Dodd was an enterprising person both in business and socially. He knew Charles Dickens and is believed to be the inspiration for the “Golden Dustman” character, Mr Boffin, in “Our Mutual Friend”. Dodd wished to show, in his own words, “the value of the races, not only as sporting events, but as a means of advertising their usefulness as a means of transport and bringing to the public eye a better picture of what a sailing barge can do in the way of speed”.
Yachties who race “plastic boats” may be surprised to discover that classic boat races are extremely competitive. Barges in the faster classes travel at anywhere from 8 to 10 knots in a Force 4 or above and all the barges are reasonable to windward with tacking angles from 100 to 120 degrees. With many of the barges exceeding 100 years in age, the extant Thames barges have been racing each other for at least 70 years, so every nuance of performance is known, and not just one’s own boat but that of most of the competition. The courses are familiar, down to the last eddy at each state of the tide, and comments such as “that won’t work, remember when Harry tried it in 1928” are not uncommon. For those who think they might miss physical labour on a self-tacking rig, there are the joys of winching up a 1.5 tonne leeboard on each tack, a delight only to be compared with “coffee-grinding”.
The crews compete for prestigious “silverware” using effectively the same rules as the IYRR. Interestingly, class rules limit crew to 5 and passengers to 12, although the rules in some matches have been extended so that any 5 of 17 can perform a manoeuvre. A few races are handicapped, with seconds deciding the results. Modifications for racing include changes to the sailplan, removal of the propeller and even the addition of “racing” leeboards, hydrodynamically-shaped boards that push the boat upwind which may date back to the 1880’s. Naturally, in a tradition pre-dating the first yacht club, barge folk discuss a day’s race in the time-honoured way, over several beers in the bar (often the inbuilt bar all barges seem to have).
There is a well-established series of matches, some particularly convenient for east coast sailors. More history and other links are available at www.thamesbarge.org.uk and www.sailingbargeassociation.co.uk.
Of the above fixtures, perhaps the most convenient for many sailors will be watching the Thames sailing barges open Cowes week racing for the third year in a row, the Solent Match. The Solent Millennium Match 2000, saw three barges in the first official Cowes week race, Kitty, Lady Daphne and Victor in order of place. Last year’s Solent Match 2001 was more exciting with Ironsides, Cabby, Kitty, Lady Daphne, Victor and Thistle all participating. Sadly, Thistle retired to give assistance to a “plastic boat” on port tack whom she had dismasted after the “plastic boat” failed to appreciate the speed of these large vessels.
Many of the barges can be hired for a match. 12 charterers combine with 5 crew for an exciting race. Probably the only drawback to racing a barge is the distance from the water and the rather dry condition (moisture-wise) when one returns to port; guess it’s those babies on board. Typically barges are used on the Thames and Solent for corporate entertainment – team building, cocktail parties or clay pigeon shooting (indeed). A few barges have Class V or Class VI passenger certificates and can carry up to 54 people. And, in case you’re curious, yes, we do sail with four settees and sometimes use that fire after a mid-summer’s race!
Michael Mainelli has been racing traditional craft and plastic boats with equal enjoyment for over 30 years. He is a Royal Corinthian Yacht Club member and a committee member of the Thames Match. Michael and his wife Elisabeth own S.B. Lady Daphne at 91 feet, 76 registered tonnes, built 1923 by Short Bros in Rochester. Elisabeth and Michael charter S.B. Lady Daphne for up to 54 people. All proceeds go to S.B. Lady Daphne’s restoration. A highlight of S.B. Lady Daphne’s 2001 season was winning the Thames Match Coasting Class last season with 12 charterers on board.
Those who know me, know my weakness:
“The problem is all inside your bread”, she said to me,
That mustard will stick if you add it liberally
Smother that sausage so it cannot wriggle free
There must be fifty ways to cut your mustard
She said “it’s really not my habit to extrude”
Furthermore, maximum strength will ne’er be weak nor misconstrued
So I repeat myself, at the risk of Dijon vu
There must be fifty ways to cut your mustard, fifty ways to cut your mustard
Just slap on the flap, Jack, add some more ham, Sam
No need for the soy, Roy, just mustard for me
Pop on more juice, Bruce, and cut your gut loose
Just add some more Keen-Lee, more mustard for me
She said “it grieves me so to see such little pain,
I think more mustard would make you smile again”
I said “I appreciate that, but would you increase the gain, about some fifty ways”
She said, “why don’t we do ten jars or more tonight
I believe that in the morning you’ll begin to feel quite light”
And then she kissed me and I realised she probably was tight
There are only fifty ways to cut your mustard, fifty ways to cut your mustard
Just slap on the flap, Jack, add to the spam, Sam
You’ve got to be keen, Gene, just mustard for me
Pop on more juice, Bruce, and cut your gut loose
Just add some more Keen-Lee, more mustard for me
© Michael Mainelli, 2001
Apologies to Paul Simon – “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover“
Imagine my delight when a major concern over etiquette is finally resolved:
6 June 2001
Mrs Mills
The Sunday Times
Style
1 Pennington Street
London E98 1ST
Dear Mrs Mills,
Revolving doors are in constant conflict with courtesy and common sense. As I cannot hold a stationary revolving door “open” for a lady, should I still let her go first although then she makes all the effort to get the door going, or follow her and run the risk of pushing the door over her heels? If the door is already revolving, should I precede her to show it’s safe although at the risk of terrifying her with the resultant speed from my superior strength, or follow her to extricate her handbag if it gets caught? These gargantuan automatic doors at supermarkets and airports are even worse. Should I precede her to prevent her the embarrassment of tripping the beam which halts the motor, or follow her and pull her back if she looks like getting close? I’m going round in circles on this.
My solution (when not parking the car or nipping back for something I think she forgot) has been to follow her on manual doors while holding them back to give her a bit of needed exercise, and to precede her on automatic doors by making her push the supermarket or airport trolley (women just love driving these things, must be the maternal instinct). Do you think I’m following a suitable protocol?
And her reply? 12 August 2001
Life’s Too Short
I have shortened your letter because it was sapping me of the will to live. I would like you to spend the next few weekends sitting by revolving doors recording users’ habits and to let us know the results of your survey, not because it will serve any purpose, but simply as a punishment for wondering about this question in the first place and then writing to me at length about it. Anyway, there is really no answer, because, with a revolving door, you can enter first and still come out last by staying in for another revolution.
HAXEN MARIA
Pfersdorfer warten schon morgens
Auf ihre Güterlieferung
Wie Afrikaner voll Sorgen
Ohne Essen-Versicherung
Aber in der Hohgasse Eins
Gibt es wie immer was feins
Enten Maria
Wir lieben Enten, Maria
Enten Maria
Wir essen Enten, Maria
Die Rhöner Alpen sind so hoch
Um ein Geheimnis zu wahren
Eisbein und Linsensupp’ vom Koch
Wir essen gern Kreuzberg Waren
Trotzdem eilen wir nach Hause
Zur Kaffee und Kuchen Jause
Kuchen Maria
Wir lieben Kuchen, Maria
Kuchen Maria
Wir essen Kuchen, Maria
Uns’re Brauerei seit Jahren
Ist Teil von uns’rem Speiseplan
Nach Poppenhausen wir fahren
Und bleiben nahe am Bierhahn
Und wenn wir zu Maria z’ruckwanken
Haben wir nur ein’ Gedanken
Haxen Maria
Warum nicht Haxen, Maria?
Haxen Maria
Kochst du uns Haxen, Maria?
(Dedicated to the Memories of Markus Reuß and Various Other Prejudices)
ABOUT FRANKEN (FRANCONIA)
For those still geographically challenged finding Transylvania, Franconia borders on the terrifying. A quick canter through two thousand years of European history reveals little except that the appellation d’origine contrôlée has a legitimate interest in the connection between Franken, the Franks, Frankreich, and France. After the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, the Franconians – unable to unite upper, middle, and lower separatists; rejecting French labelling requirements; fearful of being branded a suburb of Hamburg; and desperate to belong to something with a mutually intelligible tongue – launched a love-in with the Bavarians to the south. So intense was this crush that the Franconians believe that they have been united with Bavaria for some time. The infatuation is partially reciprocated by Munich 300 kilometers to the south, at least at tax time. The Franconian colours are even the same as the Bavarian ones, blue diamonds on a field of white tablecloth, except that there are no diamonds and the blue is red.
Continue reading