Krampus!

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Krampus:

In Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure who, during the Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved, in contrast with Saint Nicholas, who rewards the well-behaved with gifts. Regions in Austria feature similar figures and, more widely, Krampus is one of a number of Companions of Saint Nicholas in regions of Europe. The origin of the figure is unclear; some folklorists and anthropologists have postulated a pre-Christian origin for the figure (see Germanic paganism).

For several years now, I have heard about the Krampus festivities, mostly in the Salzkammergut in Austria, and have wanted to make the trip in early December to take part. The reminder has been in my calendar 3 months in advance of Dec. 6th for the last couple years, and this year I finally decided it would happen. We had done some research, and found out that the Krampus festivities were happening across several days in many villages throughout Austria, and they seemed to culminate in a huge parade in Bad Goisern on Dec. 7th. With that in mind, we booked flights to Munich arriving several days in advance, rented a car and drove towards Salzburg.

In Salzburg, there was a Krampus parade happening at the Schloß Helbrunn Christmas market, which was our first taste of Krampus. This was a very theatrical Krampus parade. There was music, and the red glow of road flares as the beasts burst into the courtyard of the castle grounds, flowing around the festively-decorated Christmas market, circling a few times, scaring children and adults alike, before the crowd converged awards one end and a cramps dance of some sort proceeded. Since we didn't know this would happen, we were not well positioned and I couldn't really see what was going on. After this, the various troupes of Krampuses were herded off to another part of the castle grounds for a massive group photo. We barely made it there in time before it dispersed. The crowd seemed to know where and when things were happening, but we apparently didn't get the memo, so we were always barely catching the festivities.
The next day, we moseyed through Salzburg, and were surprised with how much Krampus stuff we saw - the bakeries had Krampus pastries. Like gingerbread men, I suppose, but more puffy. I didn't taste one, so don't know what it was like. There were also people selling Krampuses made from plums, dates and raisins.

After we left Salzburg, we went to Bad Gastein, which was up in the Alps in the center of Austria. Here, we were told, the Krampus costumes were more traditional, the masks made of wood and the costumes were made from real pelts and horns. Here, as the sun went down, St. Nikolaus would travel from house to house with an angel and a few Krampuses. The Krampuses would dance in the streets, outside the house, until they were let inside. We don't really know what happened in the house, but St. Nikolaus and the Krampuses would eventually come out again, and move on to the next house.

The next day, we went to a Krampusrummel in Dorfgastein, a nearby village. There, the people in town waited in the central park for St. Nikolaus and the Krampuses to arrive. Nikolaus would give a little speech and then the kids would get chased by Krampus or given candy.
We really liked these small village Krampus festivities - they were very fun, encouraged participation, and they could be scary, without getting mean.

We ended our Krampus tour with the massive 1000+ Krampus parade in Bad Goisern. Here, the fire department barricaded off the street that this throng of demons would amble through, and we drank Glühwein while waiting in the chilly weather for the festivities to start.

Eventually the "Kinderkrampus" started - several young children in Krampus costumes marched down, and for a moment there we thought, oh, isn't Krampus cute.

Soon, the real thing started. Hundreds of monsters, each costume different, flooded the streets along with flares providing eerie illumination, fireworks crackling and Rammstein blaring. At the beginning, the antics of Krampus were more subdued - they would playfully steal kids hats and the swats from the switches were light taps. As the night went on, the Krampuses were more bold, grabbing for people farther back in the crowd, with the fire department members having to pull them off the barricades.



At the end of the night, we were cold and slightly bruised from the whips of various Krampus incarnations, but I was quite happy to see this display. The Bad Goisern parade had Krampuses from all over the country, and many were reaching Hollywood SFX levels of scary masks. It was interesting and amazing to see the crazy things they wore, did and got away with. But I think I like the traditional village Krampus better.

Lebkuchenherzen

At most (all?) festivals in Germany, at least Southern Germany (I haven't spent much time in the North, especially Northeast), there are stands that sell Lebkuchenherzen - essentially gingerbread hearts with frosting and sappy phrases. Usually they say things like "I love you" or "my sweetie" or "Grandma's little sweetheart" or "my sunshine". They include holes & a ribbon so they can be worn around the neck, and everyone can see that you are daddy's little princess or treasure or whatever. Usually they are written in German too, but at some places, especially more touristy spots, there will be plenty of english as well.

At the Bad Canstatter Volksfest in Stuttgart this year, we spotted, amongst the German "I love you" and "I'm easy" hearts, the classic English "I have the tits, so I make the rules". Jeannette grabbed the camera and ran over to take the shot.

6 Months With Ipernity

So, it has been about six months since Flickr loved me so much that I had to leave for Ipernity. For the most part, it is a good alternative. It has many of the same features as Flickr, and one can post documents other than photos (though I primarily use it for photos, and will comment based on that), but there are some long-standing issues that I have that would make it so much better. I have brought most of these to the attention of Ipernity or the appropriate 3rd party developer, and hopefully someday they'll get fixed.

First, the good stuff:

* Works quite well as a photo sharing site. Great metadata support, commenting (and nested comments), search-ability, licensing options,
* No annoying animated gifs to invite your photos to groups.
* Well tuned in to the world outside the USA from the start.

The bad:
* No automatic geotagging on upload. If I have GPS EXIF metadata in my photos, they are not automatically placed on the map. I have asked about this, and was told it doesn't make sense to have automatic geotagging because it just adds too many points. Uh, why support it at all if you don't want us to have multiple points on the map??? This is my #1 gripe. Either support it or don't, don't wrap a lame excuse around a half-baked implementation!
* Ipernity supports additional metadata about your geo points. Click the little dot on the map, and you get more info in addition to the photo. It is cool, except that for some reason whenever I upload an image, and geotag it by hand, for some reason the location name and country are automatically filled in as France (yes, both of them) no matter where the photo was taken (or where it was slapped down on the map). This is such a simple thing! Use the IPTC location information already provided in the photo for this stuff. If it isn't there, just leave it blank! Or, if they want to get fancy, they could grab the location from the map and query the GeoNames database. It's free and creative commons licensed.

Update 21.12.2007: I uploaded some pictures with GPS metadata this morning, and after manually geotagging them, the location metadata showed up correctly - no longer is everything located in France! However, I have noticed that on the few older pictures I checked, which were right in the middle of Stuttgart, the location metadata says they are in Ghana, not Germany. Hmm...

* There is no batch editor for the location information I mention above. And one must be zoomed in quite close, and only in the geotagging part of the doc manager, before the option to edit it becomes available. Makes editing a lot of information a chore, so a lot of the time I don't even bother. Why not let me change it from the doc's "home" page"?

Update 21.12.2007:One can now edit location properties while zoomed out all the way (assuming the selected dot has only one location in it). A good start. Hopefully they'll address the other issues as well.

* Stop nagging me about not using Firefox in the DocManager. I know Firefox is great, but I chose to use OmniWeb instead. Along the same lines, when I am looking at geotagged photos, why do you insist on saying "the mini-map cannot be displayed in this browser", which is 100% false. When I change my browser identification to Firefox, it displays just fine. I know you are a small team and can't try it on everything out there, but why not give it a try? Most browsers out there are not that broken.

* This isn't Ipernity's fault, but there are no (that I know of) fun sites like Big Huge Labs' "Fd's Flickr Toys" for Ipernity.
* Again, not a fault of Ipernity, but the variety of upload tools is lacking. I really, really, like Connected Flow's "Flickr Export for Aperture" a plugin for Aperture that really makes it easy to upload photos from within my preferred photo management and editing software. Picturesync from uVerse is a decent stopgap measure, but it is an extra, clunky step along the way. And the interface, IMHO, is quite horrible. Maybe I just need to write the Aperture to Ipernity export plugin myself...

Flea Markets

Jeannette has always been a big fan of going to flea markets in Germany. Before moving here, we went to them when we happened upon them, but never really found much to buy. Upon moving here, we've been to the Heilbronn Flohmarkt many times, and I am usually pretty unimpressed. Every once in a while, when there is something we need, like light-bulbs, we can pick them up for slightly cheaper and possibly with more convenience. But for the most part, the Heilbronner Flohmarkt is dominated by people selling Russian DVDs and CDs (completely useless due to my due to my linguistic limitations) and a few other things that don't interest me all that much. It isn't that often that I need a 30 cm bolt. (Of course, when I need one, I know where I can go.) Even the Skittles I bought on the cheap one time, despite having a familiar package, had a horrible taste. Because of this, I have had a negative attitude towards flea markets lately.

Last weekend, we were in Frankfurt and, in addition to finding a restaurant with the best Pad Thai I have ever had (at least in Germany - the next best I remember having was in Austin, and that was a long time ago), we had a positive flea market experience. Again, I found several cheapo CDs and Jeannette got a couple pairs of Levi's. And they were good CDs - typically flea market CD sellers have 87 copies of one-hit-wonder pop music drivel sampler CDs, a huge selection of CD singles that are occasionally interesting but cost 6 euros each, and the one good CD they have is inevitably R.E.M.'s Monster, and we already have 2 copies of that.

Yesterday we hit the flea market in Stuttgart, about 20-30 minutes before it officially closed (many people had packed up and left already). Despite that, I found some cheap and good used CDs (I would have liked to listen to about 30 of them, but stuck to buying 3) and Jeannette found a good lead on an Indian-style ring she has been trying to find. Overall positive experience.

Before last weekend, I had decided that I really didn't like flea markets. Now I know it's just that Heilbronn's flea market is not up to par.