Purification Rituals and Stupid Subways

Well, I have a small presentation to do in class on Monday morning on a chapter out of a dissertation from the University of Vienna. Needless to say, I've been getting lots of cleaning done. I need to sit my ass down and read it, so I will try and keep this short.

I went to a house party last night with a bunch of Geology/Geophysics students. The reason for the party was that there was a guy named Alfonso who just recently got his PhD and is moving to California. The official going away party is tonight, but last night was the official pre-going away party and purification ritual. Without going into every detail of it, Alfonso is from a region in Spain called Galicia (sp?) and this is one of their traditional things. More or less, you get a pot and some candles, some honey, lemons, apples, coffee beans, very strong clear alcohol (was it vodka?) and white sugar. Then, you put the honey and alcohol in the pot, add a big spoonful of sugar, and light the whole thing on fire. You keep adding sugar and all of the other ingredients in a particular order all the while stirring this concoction - which is still on fire - and say some verses along with it. The idea is that you purify all seven regions of Galicia and we added an extra coffee bean for Germany, since that's where we were. There is a lot of symbolism, like the pot is clay (earth), the candles (fire) and the alcohol (water), then, in the end, when you put out the fire (the one in the pot, not the candles) everyone has a drink of the concoction. You are supposed to have 3 drinks of it, each one symbolizes the 3 uses of fire: purification, light and heat. That was my favourite part because they say that you shouldn't have more than 3 because outside of it's three main uses, fire is destructive and having more than the 3 drinks, it will bring destruction as well. It was fun.

Erika and I also helped this Italian guy make pasta for everyone because we were all getting a little hungry. I found out something very interesting: you're not supposed to put oregano in pasta sauce. Now, maybe I'm the only one who didn't know this, but I figured that you put oregano in pretty much everything Italian. That's wrong, apparently; you put oregano in pizza sauce, but not in pasta sauce. What Fabio actually added to the sauce to give it flavour, was a fair amount of salt. Erika made the comment that she had learned so much because she would have put in very little salt but a lot of oregano, whereas Fabio put in a lot of salt and no oregano and it tasted great. I don't know, though. The sauce did taste quite good - pretty darn good considering that it was just spur of the moment, actually, but I don't know if I'm convinced that oregano would have spoiled it like Fabio insinuated. Maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn't have. I just like oregano. I also use pasta sauce as pizza sauce sometimes. Don't tell the Italians that I know, I get the feeling they'd get upset about it.

Anyways, I may have complained about this before and I may not have: While I love the trains in this city in terms of frequency and range, I don't think they run late enough, especially on the weekends. If you don't want to leave before about 1:00 or so, then you are out of luck until the trains start up again at about 4:30ish. Anyways, I checked online for those of us who needed to catch the first train, and it started running at 4:26. I didn't think that was that bad. I would just take the U1 or U2 (they run on the same track) to Sendlinger Tor and catch the U6 straight up to Studentenstadt. I didn't technically check when the U6 was running because it really didn't matter to me, anyways. Besides, it has to start running about the same time, right?

Well, it did start running at the same time; the first U6 hit Sendlinger Tor at 4:32, but I wasn't there yet; I was still on the U1. The second U6 didn't head through Sendlinger Tor until 5:21. That's right folks!! FORTY-NINE MINUTES LATER!! And I had to sit there waiting for it. It was brutal!! I had my mp3 player and that was it! I got home at, like, 6:00am. I was not impressed. So, as I was saying, I have to go read this stupid dissertation on verbal valence and case in Ful. Have a nice day, all!