fliegen??

If all goes well, this weekend will be our first weekend of *flying* in the glider club, after a winter of maintenance activities. I am very much looking forward to being shot into the air in an engineless fiberglass contraption!

Alas, it appears the weather might not cooperate. It's been miraculously sunny for the last 2 weeks, but today the gloom has returned with a chance of snow showers tomorrow, and, worse, a warning about high winds.

My parents are arriving on Monday for a 2-week visit, in which they have plans to visit various distant family members and old friends of my dad's, scattered around northern Germany.

the german formula for pricing paintings

One of my friends from my German class had an art gallery opening a few weeks ago.

She told us how one of the German gallery people had caught her musing about what prices at which to list her various paintings.

"Oh, but you just use the formula," the German gallery person responded.

"Errrr?"

It turns out that there is a formula for the price of artwork in Germany (???), at least for paintings. (Or maybe just at this gallery?) It is:

(your factor) * ((width in cm) + (height in cm)) = (price in EUR)

where

(your factor) = 8 for your first gallery show
= 10 for successive gallery shoes
and some higher numbers if you get various formal degrees in art.

Since this was my friend's first show, her factor was 8. So a 1 m x 1 m painting would be priced at 8 * (100 cm + 100 cm) = EUR 1600.

The ridiculousness of this system boggles the mind. Nonetheless, there is something "highly German" about it.