My sleeping schedule has somehow shifted a few hours so that I usually can't get to sleep before 1 or 2 and it takes a lot of self-persuasion to haul myself out of bed by 9 am. I think it is partly to do with the fact that the sun doesn't actually rise here until that late hour of nearly 9, and if the sun's not up, I see no reason why I should be!
The (good?) side about this new schedule is that it gives me an opportunity to listen to late night radio on France Inter, roughly the equivalent to NPR. At around 1:30 last night I was laying there trying to think myself to sleep when the song "Au Champs Elysées" came on the radio. Now if you never took French in junior high or high school, you have probably never heard this song. And I have to say this is the first time I have ever heard it outside of my high school French class. But it reminded me of how cheesy European songs are all the rage in language programs. In addition to the venerable "Au Champs Elysées," French teachers often bring out "Frère Jacques" or "Alouette" or even Johnny Hallyday when they're desperate (previous postings have already outlined my opinions on his musical talent).
But as I was lying there thinking about these songs, I suddenly remembered that, while French songs kind of suck, Dutch songs are horrible! When I did my language course in the Netherlands a few years ago, everyday we could look forward to some sort of awful sing along in pronunciation class and at the organized events planned for us (and you all know how I feel about forced groupy-groupiness and organized events - if they'd made us wear matching t-shirts I would have gone AWOL to Amsterdam!). Since it was the 50th year or something of this organization's international language school, they brought several Dutch "celebrities" to entertain us, including the Netherlands' most famous novelist of World War II ( and since they can never move beyond WWII, he probably will be forever), and some old pop singer who must have really been desperate to come sing in our cafeteria/ping pong room with a band of dirty old men who in the bar later were hitting on the beautiful Russian girls with astonishing tactics. But her most famous song, apparently, is one of the Dutch people's favorites because it is all about the smell of the canals in Amsterdam. I don't remember the canals smelling all that bad, but apparently sometimes they do and it must be immortalized in song!
But by far the worst offender, in my mind, in the cheesy European song department, is the song titled "'t Is altijd lente in de ogen van de tandartsassistente," which translates to "It is always springtime in the eyes of the dental hygienist." If the Dental hygienist union ever needed a theme song, this would be it! I wonder if this song ever made it to Eurovision... I think it might have fit in beautifully!
Do any of my fellow foreign travelers have any classic songs to add to the list?
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3 comments:
While on a tour of the Rhine, they not only sang the Lorelei, but had a woman dressed as such.
However, SMELLS OF CANALS? I'm shocked that this is the first mention I've heard. Indignant, almost...but I got up too early to really muster any strong emotions.
Whenever we got on the bus at some god awful early hour on my Birthright trip, our tourleader would make us sing a Hebrew song called "Eze Yom". It basically means "Oh, what a day!" We would also then have the sing the song after he would wake us up on the bus after we all had fallen asleep. Ran also would usually have awoken us with cries of "Wakey wakey!".
I really hate group trips.
Wow, you heard that song in real-life France. Wow. They made us sing it in French class. Did you have to do a skit afterwards, like with real French people? About ordering in a restaurant? Ordering the "Mr. Cock" sandwich?
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