A few odds and ends to followup on some recent posts:

Bat Bridge Update

Thanks go to my mother for taking the time to find this article about research done in England about the effectiveness of the bat bridges. The article includes a photo of what a bat bridge looks like, btw, in case you’re curious.

Anyway, the British researchers came to the  conclusion that the bat bridges don’t work: bats seem to prefer to fly lower than the bridges. Quick — somebody contact those folks in Germany, although I think they’ve already spent the 400,000 Euros on the new bat bridges. Maybe German bats will fly higher than their British cousins?

BTW, one of the researchers noted that she felt bats might be wiling to use special underpasses, even though they don’t use the bridges; she would like to do some research into that.

Dare I say that sounds like yet another batty idea?

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Margarete Steiff TV movie

I finally had a chance to watch the first 2/3rds of a 2005 TV movie about the life of Margarete Steiff – I am hoping to finish off the rest of it this weekend. It was definitely a fictionalized version of her life, given that it posits she went to Vienna to find a cure for her paralysis, along the way fell in love with a sewing machine salesman who helped her start her sewing company, and eventually, as a rather young women, was a dreamer who came up with the idea for the teddy bear stuffed animal by herself,  against the wishes of her brother who thought it would be too expensive to make.

Now, according to the official bio on the Steiff Company website, the first item definitely isn’t true, the second probably isn’t true, and the third directly contradicts the idea that she was a capable business woman who decided to go along with the idea of making these expensive bear toys at the urging of her favorite nephew, whose design it was. She, however, was really the one who thought it was a crazy idea initially, since it would be so expensive to make and therefore expensive for people to buy.

However, I did enjoy the scene in the movie where the evil bankers storm into her office (like something straight out of a Disney movie, these guys had “evil bankers” written all over them). They want her to sign away the rights to her company, and one of them comes over to her desk and puts the paper next to her right hand and tells her to sign it. But her right hand was her bad hand, and she says something like “I can not sign it with my right hand.” And the evil banker moves the paper across the desk to be next to her left hand, and she says “I will not sign it with my left hand.” And she doesn’t sign it. Hah – take that evil bankers!

Anyway, the TV movie is fun as a little bit of fiction about Margarete Steiff, but I find her real-life story more compelling. So, I’m hoping my German will be good enough to tackle a regular book biography of her next year.

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Quarkteigmännchen Name: Revealed

So, today at the bakery they had the quark pastry men again, so I bought one. There was no sign, so I asked the woman behind the counter if that was indeed a Quarkteigmännchen. And she gave me a funny look and said it was a “Quark Nicholas”, yes. So, I guess it’s supposed to be a pastry formed in the shape of St. Nicholas.

Now, Chris swears that last week the sign said these pastries were called Quarkteigmännchen, and never mentioned anything about Nicholas. Which is funny, since St. Nicholas’ Day was last week – you’d have thought he would have rated a mention then, eh?

Anyway, let’s take another look at our Quarkteigmännchen:

Quark man pastry

And let’s look at how St. Nicholas dresses around here. The two photos below were taken last week in Rottenberg am Neckar (a neighboring town) at their St. Nicholas market. Nicholas is accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht. Ruprecht, not Nicholas, asks kids if they’ve been good or not. If not, he hits them with that branch. If they’ve been good, though, they get a present from his sack.

St. Nicholas and Knecht Ruprecht, Rottenberg am Neckar, Germany

St. Nicholas and Knecht Ruprecht headed down the street

I can’t say I see the resemblance between our Quarkteigmännchen and St. Nicholas. But whatever they want to call them, I’d call them tasty.