Yes. Looks ridiculous, doesn't it.Algot Runeman wrote:E.P.S.
Is this sort of thing common in your part of the world?
Martelange is another example:The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian side.
The Wikipedia states that there are more such aberrant situations. Notably in the USA/Canada, France/Spain and India/Bangladesh.For some 1.8 km the N4 Brussels to Arlon road, which passes through the village, forms the border with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Because fuel, tobacco, and alcohol taxes are lower in Luxembourg than in Belgium, the eastern, Luxembourgish side of this stretch of road has become lined with numerous filling stations and liquor stores.
The Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River is notorious for this. Many of the privately owned islands are cut through by the U.S. - Canada border. Property tax disputes are amusing annual entertainments -- for those not directly involved, that is.E Pericoloso Sporgersi wrote:The Wikipedia states that there are more such aberrant situations. Notably in the USA/Canada, France/Spain and India/Bangladesh.
With a cup of coffee and a shot of Carlos I brandy, I was contentedly digesting lunch on a little restaurant's shaded terrace in Terrassa, Spain.Algot Runeman wrote:epilogue
Algot Runeman wrote:charrette
It doesn't need an ocean. A few hundred kilometers and a French/Flemish border suffice, though the word's meaning remains close to the original.voralfred wrote:Interesting how a word's meaning can evolve when crossing an ocean.
I always confuse Charade and Arabesque. The movies, I mean. I wonder why.Algot Runeman wrote:charade
So: since it was the first time I heard the phrase, I asked him to explain, and what he meant was he had to work full time to meet a deadline. It was very clear that the word "charrette" referred to the period of stress before the deadline. The idea that the deadline was related to a meeting he might have to attend (meeting where he would have to present the result of this amount of work, for instance) was totally absent from his explanation.voralfred wrote:Interesting how a word's meaning can evolve when crossing an ocean.
"charrette" as argot of the architecture students does not mean a meeting to present the project, but rather, the stress period before the deadline, when everyone is (of course) late and working like crazy to meet the deadline.
When I was a student, but not or architecture, I had a close friend who was, and once I asked him some evening on a week-end to join me (and maybe others, that was long ago, I forgot the unimportant details) but he told me "I cannot, I have a charrette". SInce that was the first time I heard this word (besides in its normal meaning, namely a cart, of course)
Every time grandma visited her fur couturier's atelier, she was amazed and bewildered by the incomprehensible contraptions displayed.Algot Runeman wrote:contraption
Already as a child, though I did not know the englsih term, I knew about the concept. My mother used to tell me about Rube Goldberg engines, which she described by memory as well as she could. We did n't have Wikipedia, then...Algot Runeman wrote:contraption
Pronunciation: /kənˈtrapSHən/
noun
a machine or device that appears strange or unnecessarily complicated, and often badly made or unsafe.
Origin:
early 19th century: perhaps from contrive (on the pattern of pairs such as conceive, conception), by association with trap1
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