It might be considered strange to write the blog post about the place you're going before actually going there, but all's fair in the world of blogging especially because I don't even think people use that term anymore. Blogs used to be the Feuilleton of the early 2000's: kind of short, easy to digest, not full of complex or important thoughts, etc. But now, even Blogs are too long. We have dumbed-down even the standard information-point from Books to Magazines to Blogs and now to pictures (Instagram) but even that required you to read the caption sometimes to get more full content so now the current it verb is TikTok-ing and it's like a 15 second video. I'm sure there's some study that says 15 seconds is the perfect amount of time for someone to watch the whole thing even if it's not good and then it's so easy to go on to the next one and you just never stop. But anyways, though it's not updated that often, we still have the Blog and there are currently no plans at GWMD headquarters to put anyone on the TikTok file.
If all goes according to plan (a big "if" with most parents sending their small children as sick as dogs to the daycare everyday resulting in Heinrich being perpetually ill and our headfirst sprint towards the 4th [or is it 5th?] wave coming on strong) then the Pemulis Family will soon find themselves high in the Austrian mountains at the historic spa town of Bad Gastein. Bad Gastein was of course the fashionable 19th century resort frequented by European monarchs such as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria and the German Emperor Wilhelm I with his chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Before our Austrian trip arrives, we have 14 months of chores to catch up on. Helga has just finished her second swimming course of the summer, and we took out a second mortgage on our apartment so that we could afford the specific backpack that kids are supposed to have for starting grade 1 / erste Klasse / CP ("cours préparatoire"). Interesting life experience Helga and her parents are getting in this whole school thing. As most dedicated readers will know, while Helga is according to international law a Canadian Citizen, and meanwhile was dismayed that Andre de Grasse blew away the field in the 200m finals ("awwww I wanted the German to win!"), she also for some reason attends school through the local Lycée run by the Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, de la Jeunesse et des Sports. Quite a mix of France and Germany you get there. One recent humorous example involved the list of required items to start CP. Amongst items that one can only obtain in France (or, thank goodness, through amazon-dot-F-R), there is the bullet-point entry "1 SH noir pour les évaluations". The list is written in French (as you can see). We had no idea what an SH was. So we asked a friend in France. She had no idea but asked a friend of hers with children. The guesses came back: "Steak Haché; Super Hero; Soupe de Hérisson; ...". None seemed likely. We eventually somehow realized that this was a classic example of mixing German with French. SH means "Schnellheft" (or "leaflet") and is basically what I would probably call a "duotang". Lo and behold, no one has ever heard of a duotang and thanks to the Internet I know why: "Duo-Tang was a brand name for paper folders made of cardstock paper." Who knew!?
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