Dear Reader

Like most of you, we at Echo Germanica had hoped that we would be spared a long lasting and nasty winter spell. Unfortunately our wish was not granted. Like our cats I dislike anything below 10 degrees Celsius in the minus range. If you have a look at our front page you will see Smokey Wolf turning towards me in disbelief as he spots a squirrel steeling from the bird feeder.

All the animals in the neighbourhood became pretty brazen as the air turned to ice. Luckily I built all sorts of shelters for the various critters and feeding stations where they can pick up the necessary sustenance to stay warm.

If you remember, we moved house and office a year ago in February 2006. Since then I had phone calls from ex-neighbours who are telling me that squirrels are now digging up their gardens looking for bulbs. This is something that never happened when I lived there because I was feeding the birds, and therefore the squirrels too. Now that I am gone the critters get hungry and turn back to old habits. I noticed that squirrels also started to dig up my freshly planted crocus bulbs in the front of the house. Therefore I doubled the peanut dose in the back and they stopped. Now everyone is happy, even if Smokey does not believe that squirrels are entitled to some of the bird feed.

On the inside there is a lot of entertaining going on. Operettas, TOT’s Gypsy Violins, Alicier’s Arts Schubert Valentine, Opera York’s La Traviata, which we will see on March 1^st in Markham, Soul Pepper’s Three Penny Opera, reviewed by Lucille De St. Andre and others.

We missed out on some of it, like the Gypsy Violins, but we did go to The Schubert Valentine Concert. Read my review in Sybille reports.

We also went to the Oscars for you; well, we watched it just like you probably did on TV and admired the beautiful dresses and hoped for our choice to win that coveted gold statue. We especially kept our fingers crossed for the German entry "The Lives of Others" and were ecstatic when Florian von Donnersmark was called to the stage for best foreign movie.

I played a few online prediction games and saw that this film was not on top of the list for experts and the public alike. Thus it is with even more fervour that I hoped and with even more excitement that I celebrate the win I predicted despite some of the presented odds. I admit, there is a fiendish pleasure in being right.

A thought-provoking preview came our way, called "Hitler’s Canadians". Anyone interested in seeing an account of what it was like to be a German POW in Canada should watch this well balanced film on History TV channel March 11, 8 pm. "Einer kam durch", the film with Hardy Krueger – a few decades ago - was just a weak entertainer in comparison to this documentary. Consult your program for exact times.

There is another bit of interesting news: Anton Kuerti, the fabulous Austrian born Canadian pianist, whom we have much admired for quite some time, is winning a Schubert Award in Germany. CONGRATULATIONS!

As you can see, "things" German have a way of perpetuating culture in many places. That truly is something to be proud of!