Spring Forward Smørrebrød

This was my nod to the all-too-premature "spring forward" Daylight Saving Time command last night--a spring-like addition to our regular Saturday evening Danish smørrebrød, simply because I happened to have fresh asparagus in the house. Asparagus is not a usual accompaniment to Danish open-faced sandwiches, though it does appear occasionally on ham with Italian salad, I now recall. But it is not usual with us, since we concentrate more on good, healthy herring (shown here in the five smaller tidbits circling the spring sandwich).

We washed down our five different herring and the spinach-egg-tomato-asparagus-shrimp-dill mayonnaise concoction with a less healthy Carlsberg beer and aquavit. It was delicious, as always. I have been doing some thinking this weekend about the distinction between a habit, a tradition, and a ritual. A habit is done regularly, but without thinking. A tradition has been done before--a few times anyway--and tends to acquire meaning in the fact of being handed down. A ritual is also performed on a regular basis and has meaning; it is ceremonial and, according to Merriam-Webster, has "religious, courtly, social, or tribal significance."

I have been making smørrebrød for almost fifty years. It wasn't until we lived in Spain and had easy access to the ingredients (yes, Spain) that we started to enjoy it every week. Now, back in Cincinnati, we also have easy access to many, though not all, ingredients (bless Ikea and Jungle Jim's). Our Saturday evening dinners go beyond habit to tradition and ritual.

Turning the clocks forward or backward is just an annoying habit.

So Many Books ... More Time to Read

Each month in our Scandinavian Scribblers writing group we read aloud during the meeting what we have written at home. You learn something about your fellow writers when you hear them share their stories month after month. Their selection of topics, the details of what they relate, and the way they say it all contribute to the experience.  Most often we write personal stories, and therefore we have learned about our fellow members, their arenas and grandparents, their children, their work, avocations, and travel. This past Monday one of our members, who worked for many years as a scientist, reported on a technical study of the effects of reading on longevity.

The provenance of the report is amusing. Our Scribbler found the story in a Danish language newspapers, published in the U.S. Essentially he translated the brief article from Danish to English for us. It told of a Yale study of 3600 people over 50 years of age that concluded that book readers lived longer than people who did not read.  Subjects were divided into three groups: those who did not read books at all, those who read 3 1/2 hours per week, and those who read more. People who read for up to 3 1/2 hours per week were 17 percent less likely to die during the 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. On average, book readers lived two years longer than those who did not read at all. Although a similar correlation existed for those who read newspapers and magazines but not books, it was weaker than for those who read books.

I did not catch all the details of the report during the meeting, but I congratulated myself for taking a picture of the news article tom the Bien newspaper so I could read it later. Unfortunately, my photo wasn't good enough for me to really read all the details. I noticed that the Bien article had gotten its facts from the New York Times. It was a simple matter, therefore, to run a Google search and find the New York Times story as well as other coverage in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and professional literature and sites as well. Most of the coverage was markedly similar--three or four paragraphs, all with the same facts, descriptions, and quotes.Occasionally some analysis or even questioning would be added and a longer article ensued. Several of the articles named the original journal in which the results had been reported: Social Science & Medicine, September 2016 issue. I followed the links through to see whether I could get to the article, but no, it was behind a pay wall. The abstract was available for free, however:

Abstract
Although books can expose people to new people and places, whether books also have health benefits beyond other types of reading materials is not known. This study examined whether those who read books have a survival advantage over those who do not read books and over those who read other types of materials, and if so, whether cognition mediates this book reading effect. The cohort consisted of 3635 participants in the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study who provided information about their reading patterns at baseline. Cox proportional hazards models were based on survival information up to 12 years after baseline. A dose-response survival advantage was found for book reading by tertile (HRT2 = 0.83, p < 0.001, HRT3 = 0.77, p < 0.001), after adjusting for relevant covariates including age, sex, race, education, comorbidities, self-rated health, wealth, marital status, and depression. Book reading contributed to a survival advantage that was significantly greater than that observed for reading newspapers or magazines (tT2 = 90.6, p < 0.001; tT3 = 67.9, p < 0.001). Compared to non-book readers, book readers had a 23-month survival advantage at the point of 80% survival in the unadjusted model. A survival advantage persisted after adjustment for all covariates (HR = .80, p < .01), indicating book readers experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers. Cognition mediated the book reading-survival advantage (p = 0.04). These findings suggest that the benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read them.

After I read it, I determined that I need not try the original article. The level of scholarly description and statistical analysis was more than I can comfortably tackle. I sure would hate to use up my "extra" two hours of life reading academic jargon when it would be much more beneficial and fun to read a book.

Celebrating Leap Day

A story for children of all ages, by Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen, 1805-1875

Once upon a time, the days of the week wanted to cut loose, get together, and have a party. Every day was so busy that throughout the year they never had any free time left over; they needed a whole day. And  then they realized they had one every four years: Leap Day, which is added to February every leap year to keep order in the calendar.

So they decided to get together on February 29 for the party, and since February is also the month of Mardi Gras and Carnival, they decided to show up in carnival costumes of their own choice and inclination. They would eat well, drink well, make speeches, and tell each other the good and the bad in open friendship. In the old days, the Vikings tossed gnawed bones at each others’ heads during a banquet; the days of the week, on the other hand, would pelt each other with puns and sharp satire, all in the innocent spirit of carnival fun.

Leap day came, and so did the days of the week.

Sunday, the chairman of the days, showed up in black silk. Pious people might think that he was dressed as a minister going to church, but the worldly saw that he was dressed in festive garb to go out on the town, and that the red carnation he had in his button hole was a symbol of the little red light that they turn on at the theater ticket box to indicate that a performance has no empty seats: “All sold out! Now be sure to have a good time, everyone!”

Monday, a young person and a relative of Sunday, and very fun-loving, followed behind. He left work, he said, at the changing of the guard. “I must go out to hear the music of Offenbach,” he said. “It doesn’t go to my head or to my heart; it tickles my leg muscles, and then I must dance, have some drinks, get a black eye, sleep it off, and then go back to work the next day. I am the youngster in the week.”

Tuesday is the day of the bull, the day of strength. “Yes, that’s me,” said Tuesday. “I do my work with a firm hand. I put Mercury’s wings on the shopkeepers’ boots, see that the factory wheels are well-oiled and turning, make sure that the tailor is sitting at his bench and the street repairmen are repairing the streets. Everyone does his job! I oversee everything, and that is why I am dressed in a police uniform and call myself Polituesday. If that is a bad pun, you try to find one that is better!”

“Now  it’s my turn,” said Wednesday. “I stand in the middle of the week. The Germans call me Herr Mittwoch (Mr. Midweek).  I stand as the floorwalker in the shop, like a flower in between the other honorable days of the week. When we all march together I have three days in front of me and three days behind me; it’s like an honor guard. I just have to believe that I am the most esteemed day in the week.”

Thursday came dressed as a copper smith with a hammer and copper kettle, the symbols of his noble descent. “I am of the highest birth. Pagan and divine.  In the northern European countries I am named for Thor, and in the southern countries for Jupiter. They both knew how to thunder and lighten, and this remains in the family!” Then he banged on his copper kettle to show his great nobility.

Friday was dressed as a young girl and called herself Freya, and also sometimes Venus (it depends on which language was used in whatever country she happened to be in). She was usually quiet and mild, she said, but today she was smart and lively. After all it was leap day, and that frees women. So she can dare, according to the old custom, to take the initiative to propose and not wait to be proposed to.

Saturday turned up as an old housekeeper with broom and cleaning supplies. Her favorite dish was beer and bread porridge, but she didn’t insist, at this festive occasion, that it be set on the table for everyone, just for her. And she got it.

Then the days of the week took their places at the table.

Now all seven have been presented for a family tableau. We give them here simply as a jest in February, the only month that has an extra day.

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Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a prolific Danish author in many genres, but is known today mostly for his tales told to children. This is one of the lesser-known of the 212 eventyrer. “Ugedagene” was published in 1872; the first mentions of the story in Andersen’s diary are in March of 1868, a leap year. Translated from the Danish by Susanne Bjørner with reference to an English translation by Jean Hersholt (1886-1956).

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"On Learning Norwegian"

As usual on my recent travels through the Dayton airport, I visited the excellent small bookstore in the terminal, and this time I came away with three books. I got through one (An Uncomplicated Life: A Father's Memoir of His Exceptional Daughter, by Paul Daugherty) and left it with an enthusiastic recommendation to my friend in Aalborg. I still had five that I had acquired in Dayton and Denmark--and we are talking physical books here--so you would think that I wouldn't need to buy another on the trip back from Orlando to Dayton. However, I walked into the Hudson book shop in Orlando and fell over a new release called Freeman's Arrival. It is a collection of short stories by various authors, described on the cover as "The Best New Writing on Arrival." I was captivated by the idea of having a whole book about arrivals in the departure lounge of an airport, and when I saw that one of the pieces was "On Learning Norwegian," by Lydia Davis, my will power disintegrated.

I did not know Lydia Davis before I picked up this book, but remembering my own long (and continuing) efforts to learn Danish, I thought I could understand why "On Learning Norwegian" might represent an arrival of sorts. Davis learning Norwegian was not like me learning Danish, however. Her story recounts her own experience in reading a 426-page (plus appendix) "novel" by Dag Solstad that "gives detailed accounts of the births, marriages, deaths, and property transactions of Solstad's ancestors in Telemark from 1691 to 1896." She read this book without previously knowing a word of Norwegian, and she didn't use a dictionary.

By the time she finished the book, she knew some Norwegian, and she understood the narrative. The story that fascinates me lies in her reflections of how she successfully (and sometimes unsuccessfully) puzzled out meaning from letters on a page.

It took her over a year to read the book. It took me less than two hours to read the 56-page story. I finished the last paragraph about a minute before we touched down and arrived at the Dayton airport.

Home for the Holidays

We are home in Cincinnati, having touched down at the Dayton airport on Thursday morning after a short trip to Denmark by way of Orlando. We spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Copenhagen. We didn't sit down for the traditional turkey dinner on Thursday with family, but we did sit down for a very good dinner and warm evening conversation with cousins of Johannes earlier in the week, and later in the week we enjoyed several days with old and good friends in Aalborg. And we had taken advantage of our Orlando safe departure point (safe because we thought we might not have to fight bad weather if leaving from Chicago or the northeast, and we were right) to spend a day with my aunt, who is approaching 92 and still living independently in Kissimmee. Good visits, all.

Now I have done three loads of laundry, and most of the books, DVDs, recipes, clothing, Christmas decorations, and food that we acquired in Denmark have found their proper places. Well, the Christmas material is in a staging area until I pack the fall decorations away--they were out a very short time this year. And yes, I did carefully avoid the customs' officer's question "Did you bring any food with you?" and waited to answer "no" until he specified "fruit, vegetables, meat." We declared the two bottles of aquavit, and I kept my mouth shut, until now, about the seven packages of kransekager that I was bringing back to the julefest of the Scribblers and Readers groups of the Scandinavian Society of Cincinnati. I honestly forgot about the ham bouillon cubes, the cardamom, and the yellow dried peas for soup that I had purchased the week before. (It's hard to believe that I blanked out about the cardamom after the security agent in Copenhagen airport had thoroughly disrupted my carry-on bag, searching for a container the size of a roll-on deodorant, and came up with a spice jar instead, but these lapses happen when you travel over time zones.)

In addition to catching up with work, I have spent time creating a fun quiz for the Scandinavian fest on Monday. It has been interesting to have thoughts of, for the most part, descendants of Scandinavians who formerly immigrated to the U.S. and of friends and family who are presently living in Denmark all going through my head at the same time. Thoughts of those journeys and those efforts to create home shuffle around with thoughts generated by the book, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia (Michael Booth), which we discussed at Readers and which I am using as a springboard for the Christmas party quiz. Part of the conversation with others and with myself over the past two weeks has been a new awareness of immigrants who returned to their home country--and we could include expats in that group--and why and how. And so I woke this morning with a deep appreciation of the experience of living in this modern world that now makes it relatively easy to travel periodically from one home to another and to enable individuals to preserve and strengthen ties with friends and family no matter where they live.

Immigration Crises and Family Values

In between the gross excesses of the U.S. political campaigns blared daily on the evening news programs you might find a few minutes, or occasionally a longer, thoughtful story, on the unending immigration crisis. I mean the immigration crisis playing itself out in Europe, though I can think of no reason why it should end there. Earlier we saw huge boatloads of refugees from war, crossing treacherous waters and arriving on land, and the ensuing chaos as the people tried to move farther along in their journey but were stopped by bureaucracies and fear. Many of these first arrivals were men who had left early and were trying to find a new home for their families. Now the families have joined the journey, and we tend to see unending lines, comparatively orderly, of men, women, and children walking hundreds of miles in long queues, still on their way north, still trying to find countries that will take them in, if only for the length of time it takes to pass through to a place that will accept them legally.

Here in the U.S. we tend to focus on our own immigration crisis. I have been dipping into an extraordinary book about the toll that illegal status places on children in families in the U.S. The author, Joanna Dreby, speaks about families in New Jersey and in Ohio. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families is an academic book; her research is thorough, but imparted in plain English. What makes this academic title also a book for general audiences, however, is her recounting of her own story and that of her two children, who somehow entered into the uncertainty of a family living with illegality through some mishandling of paperwork discovered in a divorce transaction. There are hundreds of gotchas that affect thousands of children, and this book shows in painful detail how families can be torn apart in our own immigration crisis.

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Even though I haven't read it all, I need to take this book back to the library soon. I've already renewed it once and I just don't think it's right to keep it longer. But it's worth mentioning that getting the book represents a minor everyday miracle of the library system in Ohio. This title was not available through the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library system, but it came to my local public library from Capitol University, via OhioLINK, the consortium that links many libraries of different types in the state. I worked for multitype library lending and cooperation many years ago (in Massachusetts) and Ohio was a best practices model then. It is nice to see that the system still works. And it's always nice to see my tax dollars going for something good.

Book Binge

Half Price Books, a store that I have sold to and bought from liberally over the years, had announced a clearance sale at Wright State University in Dayton this weekend. The last thing I need is more books, but I was intrigued by a reason to go to Wright State University, a college that I think did not exist during the years I was growing up just 40 miles to the north, and which now has actor Tom Hanks as a long-term supporter and co-chair of a major fund-raising program for the university, according to the ads I see during the news on my television most mornings.

So off we went to Wright State on Saturday morning. I did not expect to run into Tom Hanks, but I did think I might find a few books, and how could I go wrong when nothing would cost more than two dollars?

It took only 40 minutes to find our way up I-75 and I-675 to the Nutter Center, where the sale was. Once inside this sports arena, there were tons of books, all on 30 or more tables, each marked by subject: Fiction, Children, Young Adult, History, Cookbooks, Home and Garden,  DVDs, and more. I have to admit that I went crazy at the cookbook tables. I was probably inspired by the Food History lecture I had listened to on Friday, as well as by my preparations for both a Danish smørrebrød and a Spanish tapas dinner next month. I didn't find any cookbooks to complicate my already-planned menus, but I did see a few to feed my addiction to "company cookbooks" sponsored by the big food brands. Here's a selection of what I spent two dollars apiece on:

• The Heinz Tomato Ketchup Cookbook (complete with a little Heinz history).
• Betty Crocker Ultimate Bisquick Cookbook (a heavy volume of over 400 pages with, surprisingly, a handy metric conversion guide on the back page).
• Great American Favorite Brand Name Cookbook, Collector's Edition. This 600-page giant has recipes for brands that I may never buy, but the recipe is not the thing--it's the indication that those brands probably created their own cookbooks that I can be on the lookout for in the future.
• The Garlic Lovers' Cookbook, volume II, from Gilroy, California, the Garlic Capital of the World.
• Flavoring with Olive Oil, a small volume with nice pictures. I can't imagine how I can use more olive oil than I already do, but maybe...
• Cooking in Style the Costco Way and A Decade of Cooking the Costco Way. Who knows whether any of the Costco products in these books from 2006 and 2011 are still in Costco's inventory, or if I would want to buy them, but I love company histories!
• The Food and Cooking of Malaysia & Singapore. I rejected purchasing this big book--or one very similar to it--when we were in Malaysia and Singapore two years ago, because it was too heavy to carry back. Now it was not.
• La Cocina Cubana Sencilla / Simple Cuban Cooking. Even though I have not yet gotten to Cuba, I can start looking forward to it.
• Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, by Mark Pendergast. Definitely in line with the food and world history theme I had experienced the day before. And besides that, I like coffee.

We never got to the main campus of Wright State. By the time we emerged from the book sale we were dying for coffee, and in the words of one of us: "There were two long tables marked Coffee Table but no coffee anywhere to be seen!" We escaped and made straight for coffee. The rest of Wright State will have to wait until another day.

Beginning Anew

It's been a week filled with comings and goings: a visit to the eye doctor, a late afternoon at the movies for Woman in Gold, meeting with out-of-town cousins for a supper visit, a day out for the  symphony and lunch, and a Sisters' gathering for brunch, not to mention overdue trips to the grocery store, library, bank, and Ikea food shop. The weather has been changeable, too; some days sun, alternating with cold and rain showers, but there was only one day of really unpleasant rain, and thankfully I could stay home for that. The other times that I was out and about driving to the various appointments and errands, I relished the view of spring flowers and the greening of lawns and foliage. The daffodils are gone now, replaced by tulips and multitudes of flowering trees in white and pink. The lawns have turned from blah to light yellow-green and now to a rich, deep green, and the trees separating our neighborhood from the little commercial area to the south have sprouted blades so the view is no longer as stark as it was during the winter. Soon we won't be able to tell that there is anything but forest between us and the main road. I walked that area on Saturday during a quick trip  to Walgreen's for the batteries I needed to get my mouse working again, and the weather was clear and fresh and sunny on the way out, though a few raindrops moved in by the time I had made my purchase. Today we drove west to our favorite superstore to get groceries and curtains for my office, deliberately taking the slower town road instead of the interstate so we could view the gardens along the way.

This afternoon we installed the curtains that I desperately need to shield my desk and computer from too much sun coming in through the venetian blinds on my south-facing window. Then I got energetic enough to put together a new floor lamp that I hope is going to encourage me to sit in an easy chair in my office to read, rather than relegating all my pleasure reading to the bedroom. I have been mindful since we moved in of the opportunity to reshape old habits, and I am attempting to define certain areas for certain types of reading. My reading is dependent on good light, and I now have several places in the house with good light, so I am reconsidering what I read where, both to foster the reading and to manage the clutter. I just might be able to keep the newspaper in the kitchen, I think,  or failing that, on the dining room table, instead of spread over the living room couch or my bedside stand. I'm trying hard not to bring magazines and recipes and cookbooks into my office at all, as they will only get lost there. And I'm trying to keep work-related paper only in the office, not just to reduce chances of losing them throughout the house, but to reduce the encroachment of work into other aspects of my life. I am not forbidding myself the pleasure of reading in bed entirely, though--that would be a real hardship and counter productive for the imagination. But I am trying to limit the objects on my night table to one book and one tablet at a time. That is going to take some discipline. But new environments can help to form new habits.

"The Lives We Live in Houses"

One snowy Sunday afternoon a month ago, I spent time in the Joseph Beth bookstore in Crestview, Kentucky and happened across a slim volume of poetry that has been haunting me. It is The Lives We Live in Houses, by Pauletta Hansel, a poet and native of eastern Kentucky, who now lives and practices her art in the Cincinnati area. Hansel's poems in this book are all short enough to be printed on one page, so it is excellent for dipping into whenever there is a free moment. I had read several while standing at the Kentucky authors section of the bookstore. Since then I find myself reading one or two before going to sleep or before starting preparations for a meal, which is when I have contemplative time.

I was attracted initially by the title, for I knew then that I would be moving into a new house in the near future. I had been packing up belongings for weeks and planning where to locate them in my new home, and in that ritual of sorting, selecting, packing, and wondering I was reliving the lives I had lived in the many houses I have occupied during my lifetime.

But it is not houses per se that Hansel writes about; it is the lives lived therein, the various persons that we remember, long for, are, and become. Many poems evoke her childhood and early experiences growing up; "Doppelgänger" posits an unusual and shocking origin; "Class Lessons" shows the long reach of a teacher's thoughtless comment.

In a section titled "Blood Line," she remembers her parents with "My Father's Ghost" and the humorous and touching "Boxes," and "Becoming My Mother." Other intriguing sections called "Dance Lessons" and "The Stepmother in Fact and Fiction" reveal an interesting life made more so by her consideration of it and the word images she creates.

As I now unpack the boxes of things that I have brought from the many lives I have lived in previous houses, I read Pauletta Hansel and gather the courage to contemplate and the acceptance of remembering.

Go Metro

We had to chase the bus around Tri-County Mall to find the bus stop. Fortunately, there was a very polite driver who rolled down his window during his rest stop between runs at this end point and advised us where to drive to (at the other end of the mall parking lot) to park our car and get on at the official start of the downtown route.

Yesterday morning arrived with sun and warmer weather than we had had during most of the week, and we had heard that there was a book festival in downtown Cincinnati--Books by the Banks, though it was held in the Duke Energy Convention Center rather than at The Banks, the trendy new area fronting the Ohio River where I would have expected it to be by virtue of its name. We had been thinking of trying out the Cincinnati Metro public transportation from our northern suburb to the city, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

The first thing we noticed after we got on the bus and it started its route was that there were two other stops for this and two other lines closer to our house than the one we had found at the mall--one within walking distance. We were familiar with the route for the first half of the tour--this was all area that we drive through for shopping and general days out. We had also driven down the lower part of Winton Road just a week ago to go to an evening dinner and auction in Clifton. Then we passed Findlay Market and the area leading up to Music Hall, and then, suddenly we were in what I would term "downtown." The driver had promised to tell us when we should get off so that we would have only a couple blocks to walk to the convention center. We noted the "end point" of the route at Government Square, but we didn't get off there--we continued on the "return" journey, which seemed to criss-cross over many of the downtown streets, partially to facilitate downtown transit, but also due to the inconvenience of road construction for a new trolley.

The book festival was a noisy to-do. We visited several of the tables staffed by representatives from the various libraries and arts organizations throughout the Greater Cincinnati region. I replenished my pen and pencil, post-it note, and bookmark collections and picked up a lot of information about the organizations that contribute to cultural life in the area. We also wandered though the new book displays and chatted with some of the authors, but we did not manage to hear any of the scheduled talks and panel discussions. W left the convention center and went looking for a place for lunch. We soon found ourselves headed toward Fountain Square but ran into a detour at the 5th Street Gallery and discussed art with this month's guest artist Tom Pope, an interesting photographer.

After a light lunch at Potbelly's, we decided to head back to the bus stop but first happened upon an office of Cincinnati's tourist bureau, where we picked up some good maps and brochures and chatted with a woman who remembered a couple places that we knew from our limited time in Cincinnati eons ago: Avco Electronics, where Johannes worked, and Wiggins Restaurant, where we went on our first date. Both exist only in memory now.

We discovered that Government Square, that end point terminal of the bus line that we had passed through on our trip down, was just behind Fountain Square, and we only had to wait seven minutes before the next bus came. The trip back seemed longer than the one-hour trip down, for we were tired now, but we still watched carefully and observed the route, thinking that there may be times when we want to take in an event downtown and leave the driving to someone else.

Sunday in MainStrasse

After the morning news program this Sunday morning we felt the need to get out of the house and see something different. Where to? Anything but shopping, we both agreed! A little investigation and MainStrasse Village, in Covington, Kentucky, seemed like a good idea.

We took the long way around. Instead of driving straight south on i-75 or even diagonally on I-71, we took I-275, which runs in a circle all the way around Cincinnati--through Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. We drove  first  toward the east, and then eventually south and back west before crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky. After all, the objective was to see something new, and I had never been on this stretch of I-275 before, or at least so that I remembered it. We got off the highway shortly after crossing into Kentucky and set the GPS for Philadelphia Street in Covington, because though I could easily find Covington on the Cincinnati map, I could not read the fine print for Philadelphia Street.

Though we were already on the outskirts of Covington, Gladys Perry Smith (cousin of Gloria Pérez Sanchez, our GPS lady in Spain) sent us in a convoluted way back out and around Covington, the better to use the interstate highway rather than city roads, unfortunately. Nevertheless we arrived soon, just one exit south of the Ohio River. From there it was an easy two turns to the free parking lot of MainStrasse Village, which is a lovely neighborhood, larger than I had pictured, with unique house styles and interesting shops and restaurants. A nice and helpful gentleman taking a break outside the Magic Shop told us that not a lot would be open on Sunday, but that it was well worth strolling down a few blocks on Sixth Street until we got to Main Street. So that is what we did.

It was warm though not sunny, and by the time we came to the corner of Sixth and Main, we were ready for a bathroom break and a bite to eat. We stopped at the Cock & Bull Public House--not very German, we thought, but there were lots of people sitting at tables outside next to the Goose Girl fountain (inspired by the Grimms' fairy tale) but still with tables to spare. After our necessary visits inside we decided to join those outside--the air conditioning was too cold for us and it was not humid. It could have been really hard to choose from the beer menu--the Cock & Bull has 50 beers on tap!--but Carlsberg is one of them. We matched that up with a shared plate of two fish sliders, accompanied by "pub chips,"also described by our server as Saratoga chips. The fried fish was as good as I've ever had in England, and since it was a slider, I didn't feel guilty for eating too much,

While we ate and drank we browsed the two pieces of literature we had picked up at a sidewalk information center: one glossy brochure from the MainStrasse Association and another plain paper flyer depicting a MainStrasse Walking Tour, complete with an excellent map, architectural descriptions of 25 or so buildings, and a few pictures. The MainStrasse area stems from the 1840s, when German immigrants started arriving in Covington due to promotion of the similarities in typography between the Rhine River Valley and the Ohio River Valley. Most of the 800 buildings surviving today were built by the late 1870s, and though a large number are still residences, many have been converted into the restaurants and shops that make this an active urban entertainment district.

We walked around several blocks after our little lunch but did not do the full architectural tour. That will have to wait for another day, which may come a bit sooner than we had expected. Two people told us that, not surprisingly, MainStrasse has an excellent Oktoberfest each year. And one wisely informed us that it comes in September.

We also learned, from a card on the table at the Cock & Bull, that the MainStrasse pub is not unique. There are four in the Cincinnati area, and one, it turns out, is in our neighboring village, but in the village center, off the "beaten path" that we traverse frequently between towns. So now we have another place to explore.