A weekend of culture.

On Friday this week, I got to attend a ballet (modern-esque ballet) of one of my favorite children's books - Momo, a German novel by Michael Ende. While sitting here this afternoon, I have tried several times to come up with an adequate summary of Momo and I keep disappointing myself, so I won't really try. I'll just say that it's about a girl named Momo and a mysterious and dangerous group of beings called the Grey Gentlemen, who come into the world and try to convince all the people to "save time" by investing it in the Time Bank, but as most of us know, when you try to 'save time' you don't have a big pile of time waiting for you at the end of the day, or week, or month, or year. Most of the people in the world start to be driven mad by this constant rush, trying to be productive all the time and save as much time as they can - and Momo has to try and stop the Grey Gentlemen. I haven't been to a dance performance in years. After all my dancing in my youth, they always really affect me deeply, and this one was no exception. Plus, I think the experience of begin at a live performance of any kind can be so fascinating, from seeing the transformation of the performers in character (acting, dancing, singing, etc.) to them just being people when they take their bows, and when the house lights come up and you realize you are surrounded by strangers but you still just shared something with them by watching collectively. And dance. We should just dance more. I should dance more. Period.

  Click here if you want to see the preview of the ballet (try to guess which ones are the Grey Gentlemen :) ), and if you have a young child who you really like and who could use a new book for whatever reason, I really recommend Momo. (I have not read the English version, but I think it would be good, too. )

Then, on Saturday, I visited the Frankfurt Buchmesse, or Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the world's largest book trade fair (according to google). After being there during the day, being overwhelmed but enjoying ourselves, Claudia and I watched the news the next day and heard about the attendance for that very day we were there (somewhere in the 10s of thousands)--- no wonder it had felt so crowded!

There was everything at this fair. Some kind of comic book convention so that we saw at least three different Pikachus walking around in the train station on the way there, stands for self-publishers or those who hope to do so, stands with all kinds of subject-specific books from various publishers (for math, astrophysics, cooking, computer science), and rows and rows of stationary (!!!! If you know me at all, you'll know that this was one area I would not miss) and book binding companies, new education technology companies showing off their developments -- oh, and stands with ice cream and pretzels every now and then. :)

But during the day, we saw two rather spectacular things. One was a live cooking demonstration from an Indonesian chef, a charismatic woman who cooked three dishes and a dessert (I know for a fact that two were delicious, didn't get to try the other two)  the space of an hour and had drawn an enormous crowd of people from the enormous exhibition hall (there were eight such halls, with multiple levels. So many books!) and we were riveted for the hour! After that, we went and saw a 'Translation Slam' -- something I've never heard of before but Claudia was interested to see. It was three professional translators sitting on armchairs in front of the small crowd who had gathered and a screen behind them that showed various quotes (in English). Then, on the spot (alone and in collaboration with the others) the translators had to translate those lines into German. And they weren't easy things like, "Wow, the sky is blue today".

No, we are talking about elements from music with tricky wordplay:

"But in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."- The Beatles 

Positively crazy and fantastic sentences like:

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on nothing new." - Samuel Beckett

"You used to be much more...muchier. You've lost your muchness." - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

And, to our positive delight, the best chunk of the Monty Python 'Dead Parrot' Sketch. You know it, but I'll put it here anyway:

" 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!"

And to wrap it all up, there were a series of Shakespeare quotes that the professionals had to translate but in a particular style drawn from a hat - including the beloved 'that which we call a rose' quote in the style of today's young people's German slang, and 'If music be the food of love, play on' in the style of a children's book. Quite a fantastic and impressive presentation!