I’ve now finished this novel. I took some advice from the internet to split it in two and also split the footnotes in two, although my copy did not have as many pages as the hardback, but the pages were more closely printed. The only reason I went on reading till the end was because some of the reviews said that people who have read the whole thing then want to start reading it again. I can reveal that the only reason for this is that the plot is left completely in the air, so maybe people want to read again to see if they can find any clues.

Clues to potential later events, including spoilers, at Notes and Speculations. Many other links too here.

This book appeared in a German translation earlier this year. The translation was clearly very good. At the time, there was also high praise for the novel – see Iris Radisch here (German).

Wer den Beckmesser spielen wollte, müsste sagen: Als Roman ist das Ding aus dem Ruder gelaufen. Aber es handelt sich, gerade deshalb, um große Kunst. Es ist komisch bis zum Kalauer und erschütternd bis zum schwer Erträglichen. Wer es gelesen hat, ist danach ein anderer.

I have severe doubts about that.

Bavarian cowshed (or similar):

Bavarian cows:

Bavarian satellite dish:

Two Bavarian nuns carrying Nordic walking poles:

Old and new:

Sascha Stocker Legal English Dictionary – you might have seen this mentioned in a comment to an earlier entry. Sascha Stocker is a Swiss lawyer who has just started putting a DE-EN-DE dictionary of Swiss legal language online. I haven’t had much time to look at it so can’t say much (I am being subjected to various therapies in Teletubby country near Lake Constance). Contributions are possible and will be vetted by the author. Today there are 545 terms in the dictionary, but it is growing, and there’s a forum there too.

It would be great to have such a dictionary, although a German-Swiss one would do just as well. I use a variety of books – see earlier entry on Swiss German dictionaries.

I am just looking at the very beginning: Absicht and Vorsatz both translated as intention. That is quite correct. However, there are times in criminal law where a distinction has to be made. Vorsatz and intention are very wide terms, whereas Absicht is like the English specific intention. That’s why legal German (not just Swiss) has two terms – because they have two meanings. You might be convicted of murder under English law although your intention (mens rea) was developed only a second before the act, in a fight. But if you planned a murder, it would be a case of specific intention / intent.

That’s not really a criticism, just a comment.

Henry Porter in the Observer, under the heading I love Europe, but I despair of the EU – yet another journalist gets it wrong.

When the European Court of Human Rights announces a ban on crucifixes in Italian schools, you can either celebrate the liberal march of secularism or deplore the illiberal attack on religious expression and national tradition.

The first one is clear – yellow turnips or beets (Rüben).

The second one means ‘turnip lights’, because they aren’t eaten, but hollowed out by children as lanterns.

See the very nice pictures on flickr. Procession is on St. Martin’s Day, November 11.

Or so I was told in St. Gallen. I also saw a copy of something I think I’ve seen in a book before – a very early diagram of an ideal monastery, the St. Galler Klosterplan (website in German and English).