Day 3: Needs more Alphorn

There's been a nice trend at the latest round of meetings to feature some traditional music, such as the German band at the beerkeller in Bayern, and the traditional asian-instrument sounds at the Korean tRNA-synthetase meeting. This meeting was no different, as it featured an attractive young Alpine Horn player. Her poster promised that she had brought the instrument into modern times, by doing some funk, jazz and blues variations in addition to the normal Riccola commercial style music. I was looking forward to it.

The dinner table was laid out with a collection of various spiny fruits from around the region. I guess buckeyes aren't the only thing that have had to develop some sort of defence against tenacious brids over here.

The food was good, the wine was flowing and the music was...well a little disappointing. The blues numbers were the best, as the jazz tended toward the Kenny G(blows) variety. She sang a couple of songs as well, and had a costume change between every course (hopefully Liz's photo's came out better than mine, as some of the outfits were rather spicy dear reader). I hope her lyrics in german were better because "I'm the swiss lady, and you can take me as I am baby" and "Everyone is trying hard to be cool/trying to be cool isn't so cool" made me feel like a third grade teacher hearing yet another book report about "Treasure Island".

At the end of her show, she offered the chance to let some people give the Alpine horn a chance. Nothing like sharing spit at an Adenovirus meeting. Our Man Morris gave it a try:

Morris Jones appears courtesy of George W. Bush Records

I forgot to mention that after Dave's morning scouting report, we ditched the last few evening talks and headed to the Clock museum in downtown Zurich. Small, but pretty darn cool. My favorite were the mystery clocks, with no visible means of moving the hands:

I'm on time homie, that's how it goes

Turns out there are two or more glass plates that slide up and down ever so slightly to turn the hands. The mechanism is hidden in the glass frame, which also hides the glass edges, so you can't tell there is more than one pane. Clever.