Frohliche Freitag
Happy Friday!
I hope you all had a good week. My week was relatively quiet. Wednesday night I met my DAAD mentor for a short excursion through the Bonn Christmas market. Otherwise I mostly sat around my apartment, read a book, and played cards with my roommate.
Work was rather frustrating. In my last post I mentioned that I managed to successfully program a memory register and was rather pleased with myself. As it turned out, I fooled myself into thinking that. In reality I had not. Or at least the test I did to check the contents of the register was not fool proof. So after three long days fighting with VHDL, I'm now mostly convinced that I've successfully set some registers. This required me to completely re-think my code. VHDL is a strange, strange beast.
Anyho! Enough techno-babble.
As of last weekend the advent season has begun. Culturally advent is celebrated here more than in the US. The Christmas markets are a good example. Most started on our around the first weekend of advent. Also, everyone has an advent wreath (Adventkranz) at home with four candles, and they light a new candle each Sunday. In fact my lab has an advent wreath, and we light it during coffee. In the US I've only seen advent wreaths in churches. It's also traditional to make your own, but of course it's becoming more common to buy one.
Next week should be interesting. Tuesday my lab travels to Koeln for our Christmas celebration. I'm sure there will be pictures, but only from early in the tour. :-)
Schoenes Wochenende!
I hope you all had a good week. My week was relatively quiet. Wednesday night I met my DAAD mentor for a short excursion through the Bonn Christmas market. Otherwise I mostly sat around my apartment, read a book, and played cards with my roommate.
Work was rather frustrating. In my last post I mentioned that I managed to successfully program a memory register and was rather pleased with myself. As it turned out, I fooled myself into thinking that. In reality I had not. Or at least the test I did to check the contents of the register was not fool proof. So after three long days fighting with VHDL, I'm now mostly convinced that I've successfully set some registers. This required me to completely re-think my code. VHDL is a strange, strange beast.
Anyho! Enough techno-babble.
As of last weekend the advent season has begun. Culturally advent is celebrated here more than in the US. The Christmas markets are a good example. Most started on our around the first weekend of advent. Also, everyone has an advent wreath (Adventkranz) at home with four candles, and they light a new candle each Sunday. In fact my lab has an advent wreath, and we light it during coffee. In the US I've only seen advent wreaths in churches. It's also traditional to make your own, but of course it's becoming more common to buy one.
Next week should be interesting. Tuesday my lab travels to Koeln for our Christmas celebration. I'm sure there will be pictures, but only from early in the tour. :-)
Schoenes Wochenende!
posted by laura s at 9:05 AM
2 Comments:
My family has always had an Adventkrantz. We'd get an iron ring with spots for four taper candles on it (purple is the traditional color; deep blue is the modern color. See historical explanation at http://apmethodist.org/advent-idx.htm) and decorate it with sprigs of pine. Every night at dinner we'd light it, with a new candle each Sunday just as you described, and a big pillar candle at the center (the Christ candle) after sunset on Christmas Eve.
I vaguely remember having this conversation before now that you mention it. That makes you the only person that I can think of whose family has their own Advents wreath. In any case my observation that they're more common here still stands.
Thanks for the link. I found it interesting that a wreath (or at least some form of ring) with four candles dates back to before Christianity.
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