Wednesday 4 January 2017

How 2017 Began

For millions of people, I guess 2017 began worse than I can imagine. There was the shooting at the night club in Istanbul, fatal car accidents induced by either drunk driving or heavy fog and icy roads and undoubtedly unrelented atrocities going on in many parts of the world.

In contrast, my year was off to a good start - just look at the view from my kitchen window on January 1st. This is what it was like at just before 12:00:


And here is (almost) the same view less than an hour later:


By then, we had finished a late, lazy breakfast and were ready to go for a walk. I did not have my camera with me, but O.K. was kind enough not only to take the following pictures but also to allow me to show them here.





It was cold, especially when we reached a windy corner. But the sun, while it was out, was beautiful, and the contrast between the fog and the sun made it all the more interesting.

Later on, we drove the roughly 1 1/2 hours to O.K.'s home, where we were invited with his family for an excellent meal and clinking glasses with them. (New Year's Eve had been with my family, at my sister's, for a fun-filled party with music, food and drink - and listening to invisible fire works at midnight, because of the dense fog.)

I stayed at O.K.'s until last night. We went for more walks during the two days I was there, and I am going to show you pictures straight from Winter Wonderland in my next posts.

Hopefully, you are all well, and 2017 began at a pleasant pace for you.

13 comments:

  1. We are now four days into 2017 and the world has not ended yet. It is sunny outside. For the last few nights our garden has been visited by a badger. He or she has made a latrine in one of our borders and he /she has ripped up grass in search of grubs and insects. I shall call this badger Trump - such is the devastation.

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    1. Much as I like badgers, I prefer them to live in woodland where they belong and would probably not be happy to have them in my garden (if I had a garden to begin with). Have you actually seen Mr or Mrs Trump, or is it from the traces that you know it must be a badger?

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    2. I wouldn't name a cockroach after the Trumps. And I hate cockroaches. Haha!

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  2. How beautiful, Meike! Your village is so pretty in the wintertime! Guess what...we may actually get some SNOW here this weekend...I'm really excited. No matter how old I get, there's a little Southern girl deep inside me that gets excited at the prospect of snow since it's so rare here.

    I've been meaning to ask you...have you ever read Elizabeth and her German Garden? You can read it for free at the Gutenberg website (it's in the public domain). It's one of my favorite books and when I discovered it I felt like I had met a kindred spirit in the author. It's by Elizabeth Von Arnim, who as you may know was an English author that married a German count and wrote about her home life in Germany long ago.

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    1. Thank you, Jennifer! Just to clarify: Where I live is not a village. Ludwigsburg has just above 90.000 inhabiants. O.K.'s home is in a village - maybe that is what got you mixed up. The pictures in this post are from my hometown; one of my next posts will show pictures from near O.K.'s place.

      The book sounds very interesting, I think I will go and see if I can find it for my kindle, too. When I was studying to become a Librarian, the Von Arnims featured several times in our lessons.

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  3. Glad you had a good start to 2017. We have a thin layer of white today - on top of icy streets around here I'm afraid, so no long walks for me...

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    1. It has been snowing on and off most of the day today, but hasn't stuck to the ground here much. We're supposed to get a rather cold spell soon, though. It is winter, after all!

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  4. I'm glad that your start to 2017 has been good. Mine has been one of the quietest I can ever remember. I'm not complaining I should add and I have use the time well. I have little doubt that things will get much busier from now on. As for world affairs (and the world includes the UK!) my usually positive outlook is being sorely tested.

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    1. Still on holiday this week; work starts again on Monday. That will be my "proper" return to the real world. Until then, I can look at the news with a bit more distance than usual. Besides, there were some rather good news in Germany, for instance the number of unemployed being lower in 2016 than in 2015, in spite (!) of all the refugees having come in.

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  5. I have only seen the sun shining upon snow just a few times in my life so it is a most unusual thing and therefore very memorable!
    We have a good chance of having some snow this weekend. We will have to wait and see! It probably will snow and then, a few days later it will go up to 65 degrees or something!

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    1. I didn't even think Georgia would usually get to see snow in an average winter! Sun on snow is beautiful, but dangerous if you're out there too long without proper protection. People have become "snow-blind" from the glare. It wasn't like that when we were out, so we were safe :-)

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  6. Lovely pictures. Really, I could look out that window in your home for ages. So pretty.

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    1. Thank you, Nan! I love that view and never tire of it, even though I have been seeing it nearly every morning for 13 years now.

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