Tag Archives: culture

Culture

The Real Reason for Castles

As a newcomer to Europe, castles are a complete novelty to me. All my life, I imagined that castles were grand places where princesses held court, kings defended their people, and knights gathered at round tables. Now I know the truth.

I recently visited this castle:

It’s called the Castle Lichtenstein and it’s located near Stuttgart, Germany. Since this was my very first European castle, I entered with the appropriate amount of wonder and awe. I was impressed by the grand library, the room filled with armor and scary-looking implements of war, and the chapel filled with ancient religious paintings and statues of saints.

But as the tour progressed, our guide led us further up into the castle and I discovered the real reason the castle had been built…

The Drinking Room (no photographs allowed!). Above the door to this room, was a sign our guide translated as:

Many more drown in beer and wine than in the Danube and in the Rhine.

Inside the room, a champagne glass hung from the ceiling that was taller than me and could hold three liters of alcohol. How many Germans did it take to drink from the glass?

Three. One to hold the glass, one to drink the champagne, and one to keep the drinker from falling over.

The castle’s drinking room hosted so many parties that an adjoining “pass out” room was needed. Here, the women slept in chair-like beds that kept them upright so they wouldn’t experience bed spins and wake up looking less than their best (I suppose drinking a little less wasn’t an option).

And where did the men sleep? I’m guessing that after a night of bawdy revelry, the women banished the men and made them sleep here…

In the castle doghouse.

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Culture

Do You Have A Stretched Ego?

I have bad news. If you live in the northern hemisphere, where most of the earth’s land mass is located, you probably have a stretched ego.

Now, don’t be offended. It’s not really your fault. If you went to school prior to about 1993, you probably saw a map hanging on the classroom wall that looked like something this:

Mercator Map (www.odtmaps.com)

Because the earth is round like a ball, when map makers convert the earth into a flat map, they have to distort things to make it fill up a rectangle. To see how hard this is to do, try taking the peel off an orange in one piece and stretching it out into a rectangle.

The further north you go on some maps – like the Mercator map above – the more stretched out the earth becomes. This makes Greenland, North America, Europe, and Asia look ginormous, while the continents in the southern hemisphere look relatively tiny. Some people say this gives us northeners a stretched ego.

Fortunately, the cure is simple. We can use maps that shrink us north-types back down to size, like this one:

To discover more about seeing the world in a less distorted way, check out this site.


 

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Culture

In Costa Rica, Order a Married Man

Next time you’re in Costa Rica, find a restaurant that serves comida tipica, or typical Costa Rican cuisine. Pick up your menu, browse through the selections, and choose the dish that offers rice, beans, salad, and meat. Then put the menu down, look bravely at your waiter, and ask for the married man. It’s that simple.

Of course, you might want to use the Spanish word for this: casado. This is the Costa Rican equivalent of a blue plate special. Why do they call it a casado, or married man? I’ve heard a couple of versions of this story.

One version says that in the past, Costa Rican wives would pack this meal in their husbands’ lunch boxes when they sent them off to work. Here’s another:

(From the novel, See Before You Die: Costa Rica)

“Married.”

I jumped at the smooth voice over my shoulder. I turned and there he was—Mr. Ripped—smiling down at me with a plate in his hand. Did he just say something about marriage?

“Excuse me?”

“Casado.” He pointed at the table. “Traditional Costa Rican cuisine. Black beans. Rice. Meat. Cabbage. Tomatoes. It’s known as casado. The word translates as married, or more specifically, married man. It means the boring daily fare a man can expect to eat after he’s been snagged into marriage.”

“Nice.”

“What can I say? These Ticos have a wicked sense of humor…” 

 



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