Big day for a little man

My little button of a nephew, BabyG

Coming from a fairly new country, lacking in historical traditions, I am sometimes perplexed by the little rituals and expectations that I encounter on my travels. Particularly, I find Catholicism a mix of awesome (the fantastic churches),  icky (saintly body parts?), out-of-touch (rules around contraception and divorce, homophobia), deceptive (sexual abuse) and misogynist (where do I start??).

Although the BIL's family is Catholic to the core, there was a serious disenchantment that occurred when the Bishop refused to sanctify Sistasana's marriage (she has been married before) or allow the couple to marry on any Catholic property. This last directive came down from above just four days before the event, resulting in a last minute panic and change of venue. Just to rub it in, the Bishop then also banned the local Catholic priest, who is a family friend, from facilitating the service in any venue, or from even being in the vicinity (in case this accidentally suggested God's approval, maybe?). Luckily, the Baptist pastor from St Gallens, Switzerland (Ernst) was fully ready to strut his non-Catholic stuff, both as marriage celebrant and, on Sunday, at the dedication of the first offspring. He didn't even bat an eyelid that this is obviously a miracle child that gestated for only 7 months. :D

As Baptists do not do anything similar to a Catholic 'christening', with holy water and so on, they improvised with props such as a large squishy globe on which Ernst pointed out New Zealand, and by coming up with some English songs, like 'he's got the whole world in his hand'. I generally am not a fan of churches, or religion, but this was a sweet service and being mostly in German, was very bearable. I joked to Sistasana that if they started 'speaking in tongues' I wouldn't even notice.  As a teenager I experienced some really radical, scary and pushy churches and even a sniff of religious fanatacism still makes me want to run away screaming that I'm in the presence of evil, save me god.

Nothing happened in this service to tweak my 'weird-o-meter'. The important people - Sistasana, BIL, BabyG, Gotta (Godmother - Me), Götte (Godfather - Sigmund) and Miss J, went up on stage and an enthusiastic prayer was said asking for God's protection and blessing over BabyG. The Baptists in St Gallens are not into ponderous, they seem to be into grinning and.. wearing sandals with socks. Although I tend to feel that babies are naturally spiritual, it was very moving to have Ernst raving on about the wonderfulness of babies. Certainly I agree 100% with celebrating the arrival of a newbie to the family.  After the service we went downstairs to the church coffee bar, which is an innovation that I would recommend to all churches, everywhere.

Being a Godmother is a very big deal over here, even if in this case, we do not have the official piece of (Catholic) paper to certify it. My job is to look after BabyG's spiritual progress (what were they thinking??). I was seriously, really seriously hoping that I did not have to oath or promise to help him be Christian. It would have been a super embarrassing moment. I am also Miss J's 'Godmother' (unofficial) and have reinterpreted the role as helping them learn to live their own truth and be good, non-judgemental people. That seems important. Or, perhaps, we could all just imagine the word 'fairy' in front of my new job desciption?

Excuse photo quality, I was trying to be secretive, shoot from the hip, not use flash.

After the post-church caffeination, we all headed off to continue festivities at an Austrian restaurant that serves up a fantastic Argentinian menu. The meal did involve a fair amount of vino in the middle of the day. By the end of it, I was definitely feeling my Fairy Godmother wings!

Here are some pics from lunch at Patagonia Argentinisches Steakhaus:

The size of the steak knife suggested big things were to come

The 500g steak. You order the steak by weight and then add whatever you want to eat with it.

My meal - a 200g steak with broccoli and wild rice. Unpictured - both Champagne and a fine Malbec (one for each hand..).

The mushroom sauce that I ordered with my meal. I love it when the sauce is not already all over the food. It's a sign that they know the sauce is a condiment to enhance the already tasty food, not there as a cover-up.

The man of the moment and his Granddaddy (Opi).

Feldkirch Wildpark

Just over the Austrian border from Liechtenstein, is the mediaeval town of Feldkirch. We headed there by car yesterday, but not to visit the town. We went in search of Der Luchs.

Feldkirch wildpark has a lot going for it, not the least of which being that it is entry by donation and has a large, shady kinderspiel area for kids to go feral. The park features lots of animals typical of the region, including many types of goats - as would be expected so close to the Swiss Alps. Check out this horny beast!

Being summer, there were lots of friendly babies.

The path wanders through a mature forest and at certain points it is possible to get a good view of famous buildings in Feldkirch.

This is Schattenburg, a castle lately famous for housing a fantastic restaurant, where the Wiener Schnitzel is bigger than the plate it comes on.

And yes, we did find ourselves a Luchs (Lynx). Two, even. Mission accomplished.

Today, I have plans to finish up my tour of the Kulturweg in Schaan and then head to Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. My Kulturweg walk kept coming unstuck by virtue of the fact that it is actually not well signposted. I found myself wandering aimlessly until I came across another signpost which inevitably pointed me back in the direction I had just arrived from. I gave up and headed to the Italian coffee shop, La Golosa. At least they speak Italian there and I don't have to mess around with my 'Ich's' and 'spreche's' - which, when put together in a sentence by my mouth just seem to come out like a long-winded sneeze.

More tomorrow!

Im Palast

On the way home from Spieleland (yesterday's post) we stopped for dinner at the Im Palast restaurant. This is located in a mediaeval palace in Hohenems, Austria - quite close to the Liechtenstein border.

Apparently it has a hausgeist (ghost). We didn't see him, but we did see the biggest beer I've ever encountered outside of a coming of age party.

Funky beer glasses seem to be a feature of the restaurant. Here is the bro-in-law with his one.

While eating, we were 'serenaded' by some sort of wild beer party going on in a pub across the road. It seemed to be a loud mix of German Folk Music and American Rock Classics, all sung at loud volume by what sounded to be a large crowd having a sehr gut time.

Over in the biergarten, we were eyeing up the menu. Seeing too many unfamiliar words, I cheated and asked for an English version. I was pleased to see that all over the menu were little boxes explaining how much care they take to use spring water and various specialised, healthy condiments, such Himilayan rock salt.

Sistasana and I ordered the 'wheelbarrow', which was a seafood dish for two. It arrived in a wheelbarrow, which is probably the traditional mediaeval way of delivering fish.... (?)

I forgot to photograph it before we dug in, but the selection was impressive - perch, salmon, tuna and prawns, on a steamed rice with veges.

We had a little language problem when, in attempting to order white wine, we actually ordered the white wine foam - a sort of sauce for the fish. 

As you can see on the Im Palast website (www.palast.at), one of the cool things that happens at this palace is mediaeval nights, where you party like it's 1499. Lots of meat on the bone and wine goes down with a side of authentic palace atmosphere and properly dressed serving wenches. I'm not sure if we will get to do that this trip, but it's been put on the 'to-do if time and budget allows it' list.  Maybe (if the wine is flowing like it should) we will see the hausegeist! I hope he is not camera shy. Ghost pics would add that little extra something to my blogging.