Frankfurt Book Fair Day 3

I didn't have any events to go to on day 3 so I wasn't sure I would even go, but Lin decided she wanted to go so we met at 1 pm, picked up some lunch and headed over. Andrea's program (which I borrowed and never gave back - sorry....) led us to a book signing of a German children's book author Philip Waechter. The publisher, Beltz, had sent out vouchers for free books for the signing. Of course since neither of us have anything to do with publishing or book selling, we did not have vouchers. But a very nice rep from Beltz gave us each a book anyway. Philip then signed our books - Lin's for her daughter and mine for Daniel :)

We also went around at looked at the design books in 4.1 and collected magazines. The Economist was free. The Spiegel was free (sadly Daniel had already bought the issue). Focus was free to take only if you signed up for a nine week subscription, but I told her (in my best "broken German") I could only read one in 9 weeks, so she just gave it to me. Stern had a huge stand filled with copies but they wouldn't give any out at all.

After all our walking around, we just wanted to relax a bit, so we found comfy seats in the FAZ (Frankfurt newspaper) forum. They even brought us free water!

I then had to go pick up Pete (who we know from virtual tourist) in Hall 8.0 to go out to dinner and Lin left.

Daniel met us at the Fressgasse ("pig out alley") at a German restaurant where we ate lots of spatzle - yum!

Frankfurt Book Fair Day 2

On Day 2, my objectives were to attend a couple of children's book events. The first was in the film forum at 11 am - a panel discussing the multimedia possibilities for children's books. It was all very Web 2.0 and the bulk of it was about an author Andy Briggs who will utilize viral, web, and mobile marketing to build up interest in the launch of his new book series. Since I do a lot of work for multimedia agencies, it was nothing new to me, but I do think his book project sounds interesting and he says he plans to do a "making of" video (along the lines of what Peter Jackson did while he was making King Kong) so we could follow him through the whole process of writing, marketing, etc.

The second event I went to was in the Reading Tent at 2 pm. It was advertised as a discussion of writing good children's books but... I got nothing out of it. Oh well.

I also visited Florian's girlfriend Alice at her stand in Hall 4 briefly (she is working at a Swiss publishing house in Zurich right now) and walked around in Hall 3 looking at German children's books. I happened to walk past the Langenscheidt stand and saw that they distribute bags on the hour, every hour. Since it was nearly time, I joined the small crowd that had gathered - I mean these were "high quality" plastic - not just paper like other stands were giving away. After a few minutes, a sales rep came out and dumped a whole bunch of bags on the floor and ran away. That's when people began pushing and shoving from all directions trying to get at the bags!!! It was unreal. I did get a bag and a couple of bruises as well. If I had known it would go down like that, I would have just watched from a distance.

After that, I just wanted to get home quickly, but had to walk all the way through the hall to get to the subway. I happened to see that German publisher Goldmann was giving away reader's copies, but it didn't look like something I would read (especially since I have only ever read 2 novels in German). I asked the rep if it was easy to read and he said that I shouldn't read that one since it was translated from English and he gave me a book from a German author Leonie Swann. It's published in English as "Three Bags Full - A Sheep Detective Story". Looks pretty interesting - and free is always good :)

In the evening we went to a children's book launch at a gallery here with our new neighbor who has a baby, Jonah. It was a joint Spanish/German effort and since they just moved to Frankfurt after living in Barcelona for 3 years, I thought they might enjoy it. The illustrations were quite nice, but they story itself was rather bizzare. We left after an hour since Jonah was getting restless.


Daniel, Kerstin and Jonah with book illustrations in background

Frankfurt Book Fair Day 1

I met Charlotte T at 11:30 and we walked in together. She wanted to show a couple of publishers her mother's poetry, and though I told her Frankfurt is a rights fair and editors usually don't come, apparently she was able to drum up a bit of interest. I went straight to my favorite hall - 8.0 where all the publishers from the US and UK are.

My first mission was to find ARC (Advanced Reader Copies - proofs of books yet to be published). Last year I got around 10, mostly thrillers, but this year I only got four: Sara Paretsky's new standalone "Bleeding Kansas" to be released in Jan 2008, "The Almost Moon" by Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold (comes out in a few days), "Devil's Peak" by Deon Meyer to be released in March 2008, and a debut novel by 25 yr old Texan Stefan Merrill Block called "The story of forgetting" set for April 2008.

I also collected a few children's book catalogues until I could carry no more, walked around and visited some friendly faces from last year and chatted a while with a couple of reps from Lonely Planet about the Burma situation (LP publishes one of the only travel guides to Burma and are under pressure to pull it to discourage travel there. While I agree that package tours are irresponsible, I think it is essential that independent travellers keep making the trek) and our trip to Zimbabwe earlier this year.

At 3 pm, I met Tracy at the entrance and we went to the Comics section in Hall 3.0 because one of Daniel's favorite illustrators, Ralf Koenig, was signing books there. We waited in line a good half hour before meeting him. He drew a genie for Daniel which Tracy thought looked like her brother-in-law Murray Happer (type his name into wikipedia for a picture) so she got him to draw her one too on a page she ripped off of one of my catalogues.

Then we went to Hall 5.0 because she wanted to look at some Slovakian books for a friend. By this time, my feet and back were about to give out, so I went home.

Guy, my friend Synne's husband, had some meetings at the book fair and since he lives in London, we invited him to stay in our new guest room. So he came around 7 pm and we went out to dinner at our favorite Sushi place. I'm afraid we stayed up a bit too late because we were having so much fun - so I'm exhausted for Day 2... stay tuned.

Daniel and Guy

NO SMOKING!

Those of you who know me know that the main thing that has always bothered me about living in Europe is that everyone smokes everywhere. Often times, I have not attended social events because I did not want to breathe in secondhand smoke. It always annoyed me to go to a restaurant and not be able to enjoy my meal because someone was smoking. So you can imagine my joy at Hessen forbidding smoking in public places effective Oct. 1! Last night, for the first time, Daniel I were at a restaurant and I saw smokers get up from their table and go outside to smoke. All of Germany should be smoke free by Jan. 1st next year (except for Oktoberfest).
By the way, the restaurant we were at is called Pistazie - a place in Bornheim specializing in persian food - very delicious. We will go back.
The Frankfurt book fair starts this week - it is one of my favorite things about Frankfurt so I bought a season ticket good for all 5 days. Can't wait!

Kartoffelfest

Germany is known for its many festivals celebrating everything from holidays (Christmas market, carnival) to alcohol (Oktoberfest, wine festivals in the Rheingau). We went to Hausen (where Daniel's mother lives) yesterday to its famous potato festival. Stands were set up selling potatoes in all their incarnations and you could buy an orange sack and harvest your own potatoes from the fields. We didn't get any, because as much as I like potatoes, I don't like to keep them around due to my irrational fear of potato eyes.

On our way back to Frankfurt, we stopped by the side of the road and bought some Federweisser (fermenting grape juice) and Zwiebelkuchen (onion cake) - one of the best parts of autumn in my opinion. We also enjoyed driving through the forests with all the leaves on the trees changing colors - very pretty!

The Decemberists at Batschkapp, Frankfurt

After a pretty lazy weekend where I mostly vegged (Daniel was more active - and we did have Daria over for lunch on Sunday), we ventured out once again last night to that hot, loud concert venue, the Batschkapp (we saw the Lemonheads there a few months ago, you might recall), to see the Decemberists - an indie folk-rock band who just had their major label release "The Crane Wife". We don't have that CD, we only have "Her Majesty the Decemberists" and naturally, they did not play anything from that album. But I have to say, these guys put on an entertaining show. Even though I did not recognize a single song, I still had a really good time and was very impressed. Daniel also really enjoyed it and we'll definately be getting some more of their music.

The lead singer was also really talkative and funny. Here's a quote - "Thanks for coming out tonight. It might have been embarrassing for us if you hadn't. Of course you'd have been a lot more comfortable at home, sitting on a sofa. But we're glad you came."

The setlist (I might have missed a song or two):
Oceanside (***)
Close to you (short, playful cover of the carpenters song - incomplete)
July, July (***)
We both go down together (****)
Engine Driver (****)
Shankhill butchers (****)
Crane Wife 1 + 2 (***)
Island (**)
The Perfect Crime #2 (**)
O Valencia (***)
Sixteen Military Wives (**)
After the bombs (***)

Encore:
Glacier Bay (cover?)
The Mariner's Revenge (**)

**** Exellent - going to buy on itunes now - I recommend you check it out
*** Very entertaining live and will probably buy
** Good song but probably wouldn't listen to it very often

It's always inspiring to see great shows - whether it be concerts, art exhibitions, book readings, etc.

Oh - I also finished a book this weekend - Michael Palmer's The Fifth Vial (Thanks Linda!). It was sooo exciting I didn't put it down until it was finished. More fodder for those organ harvesting urban legends :)

Rudi and Nicole's Wedding

Let me tell you a few things about German weddings (I have now been to a few). There is always someone who is organizing activities for the guests that have to do with giving something to the bridal couple. The most popular activity is the guest book picture album. They set up an area where attendees get their picture taken, usually with a theme (not something the bride picked out, don't worry) and "fun" costumes.

Can you guess the theme at Rudi's wedding from this picture of us?

Another popular activity is the "postcard a week for a year" where each attendee takes a postcard and sends it to the couple on the week indicated so that they can remember the joy of their wedding the whole year long. This time, we even got a blank postcard that Daniel can draw on.

A couple of times (including this time) we've gotten to do the "wedding time capsule" in which everyone is given a questionaire about what the bridal pair's future life will be like. Then, responses are locked away in a box and the couple opens it years later and presumably hilarity ensues.

What else? Oh there are the speeches given by the parents with pictures of the couple as kids (we did this too - Daniel's father is German after all!). And if "scouts" are guests, then the couple is serenaded for anywhere from 10 minutes (the length of last Saturday's concert) to more than half an hour (at Craig and Heike's wedding).

Not at this wedding, but I have also experienced puppet shows, belly dancers and an amateur painter activity.

This was the 3rd wedding we've been to that was done as a two for one with a baptism. Rudi and Nicole's daughter is named Sophia Nora, is 6 months old, and has an awesome stroller with cup holders (bought in Canada - where they've been living the past 3 years). She is such a sweet baby. Here's a picture of her with her cousin Jaron:

Farewell to Steve

So we've said goodbye to many good friends over the past couple of years...

Jeremy moved to London, Chris moved to Cologne (and maybe we'd even see him more often if he wasn't always going to the Congo), Heather moved to D.C. in January, Kelly moved to D.C. this summer and now Steve is going (to D.C. of course, you did see that they got married?).

For his last evening, we went to the Greek restaurant near his place in Dornbusch which he calls Giorgio's (not the real name). Giorgio got so excited when I recited the "bean soup poem" my mother taught me in Greek - it was so cute. Anyway, we had good food and great conversation. We're going to miss you Steve!

See you in D.C. at the end of October...

Tax time

Been busy sorting everything out for my German taxes the past week (due at the end of the month) as well as working and polishing all the wood floors. Very exciting stuff!

Just finished Two Caravans (a.k.a Strawberry Fields in the US) by Marina Lewycka. Charlotte gave it to me for my birthday this year. It's about exploiting illegal immigrants in the UK - a hot topic these days - and focuses on several characters of various nationalities and their experiences in different industries (the poultry industry especially is not shown in the best light - it's almost enough turn me off chicken forever...). The plot is a pretty convoluted and a lot of sad events are described in an almost comical tone which can be a bit off-putting, but it is a page turner and worth a read. I can also recommend the movie "Dirty Pretty Things" which is on the same topic and quite a thriller.

We're off to another wedding tomorrow! This time it's Daniel's cousin Rudolf and the location is Bonn...

Craig and Heike's wedding

We know Craig from the Zentropy Partners days (also where Daniel and I met) and though he lives in Chicago now, we keep in touch. He came to our wedding last year, so you might recognize him from there (if you were there). He actually married Heike 2 years ago in the states, but they wanted to do a church wedding in Germany for her family and friends so they organized an event in the Bodensee area (extreme south of Germany on Swiss border) where she is from.

We drove down with Felix (also from the ZP era) and Sara, and though we thought we had plenty of time to get there, we got stuck in a long STAU (traffic jams common here) and were not doing well on time at all. We ended up changing our clothes for the wedding at a wooded rest area and arriving at the church about 20 minutes late. Not that we missed much since it was a catholic wedding and nearly 2 hours long (included a baptism for their 2 1/2 month old daughter Zoe).

They had a great getaway car - a 1930 Ford! We were lucky enough to also get a short ride around town in it. Here are a couple of pictures:

Felix in the front seat

Daniel, Lenore and Sara in the back

The reception was in a church that instead of being restored was simply made into a banquet hall. It looked really cool. And the food was amazing. I was full after the appetizer course, but since the main course was veal with spatzle and chantrelle mushrooms - I ate even more. And then the desserts!! Dancing started around midnight. We left about 2:30 am but Felx and Sara stayed til the end, about 4 am.

We also got a chance to walk around the boardwalk at the lake which was nice. It's an area that's worth going back to, for sure.

The mini-ZP reunion picture