Egypt Fest but No Serbian Fest

 

Today was certainly eventful. Travalon and I got up and went to the 9 am Mass at the second-closest church to us, but a couple of Nigerian nuns talked before Mass about their order, so Mass was ten minutes late, and we wondered if we would get done in time to get to Cecil Markovitch's house by 10:30. Fortunately the priest, who is from India and always starts his homily with a dad joke or two, didn't say too much beyond his two dad jokes today, so we were done by 10. Then Cecil drove us and the Single B-Boy to Milwaukee to go to Egypt Fest. 

Egypt Fest was at the St. Antonius Coptic Church.

They had a beautiful olive wood model of the Church of the Nativity.

They had camel rides.

They had an Egyptian Bazaar, and I bought a few items: yet another Anglican (?) rosary (Coptic?), a rubber band bracelet, and a necklace, all of which set me back $21.

I know you're wondering, "Famous, does that rubber band bracelet some kid talked you into buying for a dollar glow under blacklight, as well as that rosary you got at Ukrainian Fest yesterday and forgot to post a photo of?"

You know it!

And the food at Egypt Fest! Three of us had the Cairo Street Food Sampler of all vegetarian food: falafel, spanakopita (which they called something else), and the Egyptian National Dish of koshari, a casserole of noodles, rice, fried onions, tomato sauce, cheese, lentils, and chickpeas. Travalon had a custard casserole thing with meat in it and some grilled chicken. We also had Egyptian coffee, which is a lot like Turkish coffee. Then after the church tour, we had some baklava and something else with custard and pistachios, and some mint tea. We took the mint tea to go, since Cecil was eager to get to Serbian Fest... and that's where things went from wonderful to weird.

Cecil tried to make a lefthand turn onto a busy road, but he crashed into another car that we think changed lanes unexpectedly, though we're not quite sure what happened. Her car was pushed up onto the median, knocking over a sign. Cecil pulled up onto the median behind her, and we all got out and surveyed the damage. The MIRmobile was all smashed in the front, and the girl's driver side door was dented so she couldn't open it. Both cars had to be towed away. Of course everyone at the festival could see what disaster had befallen us, so we went back to the shade in the church yard, sat down, and found a Badger Bus back to Madison. The B-Boy summoned an Uber to take us to the airport to catch the bus, and he made the same left but ironically at that time there was no traffic in either direction. We had an hour before the bus got there, so we explored a museum and a bookstore at the airport, and Travalon bought a book about train posters. At first the bus was uncrowded, so we each took our own seat, but downtown a bunch of people got on, so Travalon shared a seat with me and gave his up to a delightful undergrad who I chatted with for a lot of the ride. I asked the Night Prayer group to pray for us, and Rich offered to pick us up from the bus stop and bring us back to Cecil's house. By then it was almost 8:00, so Travalon and I went to Baked Wings on State Street and sat outside, eating our late dinner, before we headed home.  Oh well, maybe next year we will make it to Serbian Fest.

Oh yeah, at the downtown stop we saw an AmTrak train stopped on the tracks, and also a very cool old car with a beautiful skylight. We don't know what it's for, but we'd like to ride on it!

Famous Hat

Ukrainian Fest and the Lone Girl Rooftop

 

This morning Travalon watched his Wolves win 3-1 while I did DuoLingo. We took a walk at Jackson's Landing, which is open again, then we ran errands. We had to hurry to Olin-Turville Park to play for the Ukrainian Festival before it opened, which I thought was really weird. I was running a bit late and Hardingfele got mad, but it was still before we were starting... and then they cut into our time for a sound check for someone else anyway. After we played, one of the organizers gave Hardingfele cash to give each of us, so we each got $6, which was enough to buy borscht. Cecil Markovitch came too, and he sat next to us eating borscht as we listened to Yid Vicious play many of the tunes we had just played, but much better. We stayed to hear a few tunes from the following band, then Travalon and I recycled the plastic at our church and went home. We couldn't think what we wanted to do, but Travalon suggested the roof of the Lone Girl, and I've missed that place since there was no ukulele strum in July, and the one in August was during Irish Fest. (Also, it was at some American Legion post, not the Lone Girl.) As you can see, it was very beautiful on the Lone Girl roof.

I forgot to post this yesterday. We saw it in downtown Pewaukee. It reminds me of the Martians from Sesame Street.

Here are more photos from Travalon's train day on Thursday. He went to Astico County Park.

At the Portage rail yard he saw four different types of engines hooked together, and some graffiti.

Yesterday morning I finished the weekend quest on DuoLingo.

Then, before we headed out of town, Travalon took photos of the graffiti off Fair Oaks Avenue.

Some of these were at the rail yard earlier, so Travalon had already photographed them, but this is a better angle. Here are some more photos from yesterday. First, a mourning dove on the tracks in Duplainville.

The diamond in Duplainville.

Famous Hat in Duplainville.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to make a compilation of Travalon's videos and grab some screenshots from them, so watch for that.

Famous Hat

Ten Train Day

 

Today I took the day off of work because Travalon had it off, and we went to Duplainville (or, as he and his buddies called it, Dupeyville) to watch trains. We stopped for a non-Mediterranean lunch of pizza and lattes at the Concord General Store with the Moose Cafe, then we got to Duplainville and saw a train on the Canadian National line. There is a diamond there with the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific lines crossing each other. We decided to move closer to the diamond and were stopped by a CN train, and then we parked and saw a CP train. It started to rain really hard, and another CN train came by, but due to the weather Travalon couldn't make a video of that one. There was a nearby park called Wagner Park with a very nice restroom and also this cute snail.

Then we drove to Frame Park in Waukesha, where we saw a CN train at the crossing right by the entrance to the park. Then we drove deeper into the park to where we were parked right in front of the train track, and I suddenly realized one of my earrings was missing. I went back to the restroom near the entrance to the park but didn't see the earring, so I used it again, and just as I flushed, I spotted the earring in the toilet. I reached in and grabbed it, and the suction from the flush tried to pull my hand off, but I clung to my poor earring and saved it, then I washed it really well. (It was only pee on it.) Here you can see the other earring; the one that fell in the toilet is on the other side.

Then we saw another CN train go by at the spot right by the track. We went to where two tracks met in downtown Waukesha but didn't see any trains, so we went to another park, Springs City Park, with a view of the tracks, but we didn't see a train there either. We went back to Duplainville and saw the tail end of an AmTrak train, and then another one passed by not long after. At that point the battery on Travalon's good camera died. Then we drove to downtown Pewaukee but didn't see any trains there. The view of Pewaukee Lake was gorgeous.

Travalon used to go to a bar called Loppy's that was right by the CP track, but now they're trying to class themselves up so they call themselves von Loppy's and claimed to have ice cream drinks and baked cod and homemade potato pancakes on the menu. However, when we got there, they had none of those things available, so Travalon had deep-fried fish and I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of chili. For some reason they brought us two kinds of French fries, so I ate some of those too. It was a perfect spot to watch trains.

There was a woman there who used to bartend at a bar Travalon used to hang out at before we were married, and she used to spoil his poodle Rodney. She recognized me from social media, since I had never met her before. When we said we liked the graffiti on the trains, she noted that they have been getting more artistic lately. A train came by even before we had ordered our food, and Travalon made a video with his phone. I took some photos but missed a lot of it, so I'll make screenshots from his videos, hopefully tomorrow. (Once again it has gotten late.) 

As you can see, this train was going by so fast that sometimes I estimated wrong when to take the photo, and I missed some even better graffiti while taking a photo of some good graffiti. While we were waiting for our food, a second train came by. I see this tag quite a bit.

Then when we got done eating, we saw the sunset behind some sunflowers.

Here is another view of it that we saw as we headed home.

Lots more photos to come!

Famous Hat