Gans!

Yesterday was Martinstag (St. Martin's Day), which is celebrated in certain parts of the world, including Austria.  I'm still trying to fully understand all the backstory and customs surrounding this holiday, and what I have so far is a mixture of information from talking to friends and reading some things online and trying to take that collection and make sense of it.  For the purposes of this blog entry...it has to do with food...and the sort of "Austrian Thanksgiving" element of it.  Basically though, Martin was hesitant about becoming a Bishop, so he hid in a cave or something, but there were geese nearby who started making all sorts of noise and he was found and then ordained.  That's the way oversimplified version anyway.  What it translates to though, is all sorts of restaurants serving this "Martingans" (Martin - goose) dinner during the weeks surrounding Martinstag.  So some Austrian friends invited me to join them for this goose dinner last week at a local restaurant in Grinzing.  

Definitely not the most attractive picture by any means, but we were each served these large portions of goose, with bread dumplings, sort of a baked apple with cranberries on top, and spiced red cabbage in a little dish on the side.  It was super delicious, but there is no real civilized way to get meat off this giant section of goose!  Thankfully we were all in the same situation I guess, so nobody seemed to mind much as we're all pulling these things apart.  

I'm definitely thankful to have wonderful friends here who invite me to share in these traditions, and answer my endless ridiculous questions as I try to understand what exactly is going on.  

Martinstag also a component where children walk around with lanterns and sing little songs...but I still have no real idea why...I'm working on figuring that out and will update this when I do :)