Rainy Week

We really, really needed some rain and finally got some last week. Hand in hand with that came cooler temperatures; some mornings it was so cold that I switched the heating on in my bathroom for a while before I went in to shower. When it's 8C/46F in February, I use the heating, too, so I felt justified to use it now even though it is June and officially early summer.

On Monday (8 June 2026), the return trip from Offenburg to Ludwigsburg was a bit different than usual. The regular connection where I can stay put for about an hour and only have to change in Stuttgart for the last 15 minutes to Ludwigsburg wasn't running. Instead, I had to change trains twice, first in Karlsruhe and then again in Stuttgart. No big deal, and all went well. It was, however, a rather noisy journey; both times the trains were full of teenagers on school trips. Oh, the joys of puberty...!! They weren't unruly or totally daft, just talking loudly and giggling, as is any group of teenager's duty. On a Monday morning, having gotten up at 5:20 am, I would have welcomed a quieter journey, but that's just the grumpy old woman in me.

I worked from home, enjoyed a massage mid-afternoon and my customary walk to Benningen in the evening. It was warm at 27C/80F and humid with rain about to fall, but I only caught the very first drops as I was rounding the corner to my house.

For a change, I went to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (9, 10 and 11 June), not just on the Wednesday. On the Tuesday morning, as part of a small group of colleagues I was booked for a very special appointment: Meet the bees!

The company I work for does a lot to keep energy and water consumption low, cause little waste and generally manage the building in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. One of many things contributing to that end is that pollinator-friendly plants grow around the canteen's patio and on the flat roof. Another one is that the company pays a beekeeper to look after two bee colonies. Once a year, a small batch of "our" own honey can be bought by us for 5 euros a jar. 

The beekeeper was visiting that day, and we had been invited to meet him for a talk in the canteen and then go out to look at the two hives.

It was VERY interesting - bees are such fascinating animals! - and although I had known some of what the friendly beekeeper told us, I learned many new things, too. It is amazing how much beekeepers need to know and do, all at the right time to suit the "bee year"!

The patio outside our canteen. I have drawn a red frame around my windows to show you where I usually am on Wednesdays.

Showing us the queen

Explaining which of the wooden frames in the hive serves what purpose

We learned why beekeepers use smoke to calm the bees.

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After work, I walked home from Zuffenhausen, since the intermittent rain had stopped. It was windy so that the 20C/68F felt like 13C/55F, but it was a good walk nonetheless.

A thunderstorm cooled the air even more on Wednesday; it didn't get warmer than 13C/55F all day, and with the wind and some rain, I went straight to my Mum's after work without putting in any extra walking.

Thursday was the week's coldest day at 8C/46F in the morning. It was dry by the time I left the office, and so no problem to walk about half an hour to a shop where my former upstairs neighbour now works. I have not met her in almost a year, and we had arranged for me to come to the shop by the time she finished work. Driving us both back to Ludwigsburg gave us about half an hour's time to catch up. It was good to see her. She didn't know yet that O.K. and I got married last month, and she was as happy to receive the news as I was to give them :-)

Friday (12 June) was another chilly, grey, wet day. At a max of 12C/53F under a grey sky it felt more like November than June, but all the green outside and of course the long daylight hours were proof that it actually was summer.

The neighbour whose cat and two rabbits I had been looking after for two weeks came over for coffee and a chat, and she brought me a small bag of gifts - absolutely not necessary, but a very nice surprise.

Because of O.K. being on a day trip on Saturday with his year from school, we spent the weekend separately. The weather made it more attractive to stay inside once work and housework were done, and I had a quiet evening on my own.

I have mentioned a few times that my Mum knits and crochets socks, hats, scarves and other things and sells them at a pre-Christmas market in town every year. On Saturday (13 June), a small crafts & gifts "summer market" was held in the former industrial estate near the station, and my Mum had a stall in one of the buildings.

My sister and I set up the tables and chairs for her and then took turns to sit with her for a while. Later, a friend joined our Mum, and my sister and I went for ice creams - it was nice and warm again (26C/79F), although VERY windy. 

One happy customer - a lady bought a baby blanket for her dog; they had a stall outside and used the blanket right away :-)

Sunday (14 June) was sunny and still windy but not quite as much, and at a high of 22C/71F ideal walking weather.

For a while, I had meant to revisit my grandparents' former allotment, just waiting for a good opportunity. Now that I had all day to myself and the weather was good, I prepared a sandwich and my water flask, put on walk-friendly shoes and set off to the station.

At 1:00 pm I got off the train in Backnang and had my mobile phone direct me to the village of Steinbach (not to be mistaken with Steinheim, where my parents used to have their allotment), about 4.5 km away. It was easy to find, and once I was there, I had no trouble remembering the exact way up the hill behind the village and into woods. 

After 15 or 20 minutes, I arrived at the allotment... it looked completely different, with only a few subtle signs to show me that it was indeed the same place where I spent a lot of time as a child and later (I had not been there since about 1990).

Partly sad that it had changed almost beyond recognition, partly relieved that I now knew and would not feel the need to come here again, I walked to the nearest bench to eat my sandwich, enjoy the view and reminisce a little.

The view I had from near the bench.

I sat there for maybe 20 minutes before I walked back down into the village and on to Backnang to catch a train home. The way back was much nicer than the way in, down in the valley along the river Murr (incidentally, the same river that goes through Steinheim, as seen in my posts about walking there, for instance here).

At the station, I had less than 15 minutes to wait for the train to Ludwigsburg, and was home well before 5:00 pm.

It had been a good walk up (not down!) memory lane (the path to the woods went quite steeply uphill for a bit), but while the area is beautiful for walking, I don't think I'll come back; chapter closed.

Read in 2026 - 18: The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

Although this was a highly acclaimed bestseller in the late 1990s, I've never read it until my book-swapping friend A. lent it to me a while ago. Unintentionally, it is very rare for me to read a book either by an Indian author or set in India - or both; the last one I can remember was "The White Tiger" by  Aravind Adiga, read in 2010 and strangely enough not reviewed on my blog.

The God of Small Things has its own wikipedia entry here.

It is a great book, but also a terrible one; I felt the same with "The White Tiger" and also with the two books I have read by Khaled Hosseini ("The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns") and never written reviews on my blog, so I guess it must have been before 2010. Yes, I know it's a different country and different culture, but there are parallels.

Back to the story:

Twins Rahel and Estha are raised by their mother, divorced from their father, in the family home in southern India with their grandmother, uncle and great-aunt. The family are reasonably well off, owing a small pickles factory.

Their uncle studied in Oxford, married an English woman and they had a daughter; when they divorced, he returned to India. When his ex-wife's second husband dies in a car crash, the uncle invites her and their daughter to India for a holiday.

From the start of the book - which jumps back and forth between the 1960s and the 1990s - it is clear that terrible things will happen, and the lives of everyone who survives will be changed forever, including the twins.

But what actually DOES happen and how the family and others around them handle those events is revealed slowly, with the reader having that feeling of inevitability, like a river running its unstoppable course to a waterfall.

The author uses language like architecture, with recurring elements and designing known words into different spellings; for example, to describe a child waking up from her afternoon nap as being A Live, A Wake, A Lert.

Much of what the children think, feel and do is plausible, based on my own experience as a child; you understand some things instinctively on a deep level while others remain a mystery; you use some words the way they are supposed to bbut at the same time create your own; you do as your told but you also do what YOU think you have to do; you get into trouble without meaning to but you can also mischievously create trouble deliberately.

I am not going to tell you more about the plot, in case you wish to read this for yourself. Look up Arundhati Roy on wikipedia to learn more about her and her work; she is a fascinating person. 

Read in 2026 - 17: Murder at the Hedgerow

Thistlewood Manor: Murder at the Hedgerow 

(An Eliza Montagu Cozy Mystery, Book 1)

Fiona Grace

 

Once more, on my trips to and from work and O.K.’s, I’ve been reading a free ebook on my Kindle, the first in a series to get readers interested so that they’ll buy more.

This was a bit different to most of my “first for free” reads,in that it was set in the 1920s, not in our time.

 

Eliza Montagu is one of four grown-up children of a wealthy English family, but unlike her siblings she has left Thistlewood Manor, the opulent family home, in order to escape the restrictions and expectations put on her by society in general and her mother in particular.

Living in a flat in London and financed by her father, she spends her time painting and supporting the Sufragette movement, happily believing she can make a real difference.

Then a letter from her mother arrives, summoning her urgently back to the manor, and she returns home for the first time in three years.

 

The reason for the urgent summons was not the emergency Eliza imagined and worried about. Instead, she finds herself at the centre of her family’s attention more than ever before and is on the brink of returning to London in a huff when an important house guest is found dead – and she appears to be the main suspect.

 

Of course this would not be the first in a series if Eliza really was convicted for the murder, and of course she solves the mystery while at the same time uncovering more secrets.

The author prepares the ground for new mysteries, because not everything that is hinted at in this book is entirely explained, and not all threads end.

 

I did enjoy this but not enough to buy the next books in the series. The writing style was pleasant enough, but thoughts and observations were sometimes repeated unnecessarily, as if readers are prone to forget things from one chapter to the next.

Still, it was easy entertainment with little challenge except for my patience when another repetitive paragraph came up and I sighed inwardly, thinking along the lines of “Yes, I know – you already said that”.

 

The 1920s setting made for some interesting elements such as how different life was for men and women, members of wealthy families as opposed to servants and workers.

We certainly have our share of current day problems, but honestly – I believe that most of us are much better off nowadays. Or can you imagine your parents choosing your spouse for you, you not being able to vote, have a decent job and your own place to live in just the way you like?

 

Fiona Grace is a very prolific writer; unknown to me until now. Her website is here.

First Week of June

The first week of June is over. For me, it was the second week of looking after my neighbours' pets (one cat and two rabbits), and because it was the second week of mid-term school holidays with many of my colleagues and clients away, it was also the second quiet-ish week at work in a row. The weather was a mix of sunshine and rain, plenty of wind, chilly mornings and nights but mostly warm days.

On Monday (1st of June), I arrived home on time from my weekend at O.K.'s. I picked up my neighbours' key from another neighbour who had been taking care of the pets on Saturday and Sunday. All was well except for Neo (the cat) having lost his tracker; the collar is designed so that it opens easily when it catches on a fence or in a dense hedge, avoiding potentially deadly accidents.

Neo was at home and eating with good appetite, and so while it was unfortunate that the tracker was nowhere to be found, we didn't need to worry about the cat.

I enjoyed my customary after-work walk to Benningen.

Tuesday (2nd of June) was uneventfully spent working from home, looking after my furry little charges and NOT going for a walk because of the unpredictable showery weather.

The usual day at the office followed on Wednesday (3rd of June). I had arranged to visit a former neighbour after work (she doesn't know yet that O.K. and I got married), but while I was still at the office, she sent me a text that she had forgotten that she already had an appointment and would not be at home that evening. We quickly agreed on a new date next week, and I took advantage of the sudden gap in my diary and walked home from Zuffenhausen.

That evening, when I was cleaning the rabbit hutch, Neo came running from one of the surrounding gardens, clearly happy to see me. He ate quickly, and then he insisted on being on my lap (for the first time). I sat on the step at the front door, Neo purring loudly as I was stroking and petting him. He closed his eyes, and at first his ears were still twitching and moving when he heard a bird twitter or a rustle in the shrubs, but after maybe five minutes he fell asleep. I sat there with him sleeping soundly on my lap for about half an hour, but when the church bells were chiming 9:00 pm (I had not had anything to eat since lunch at work), I gently woke him up, carried him inside to his refilled food dish, and as soon as he started eating again, I left.

It was a very sweet moment, a proof of trust and affection from the young black cat I've been looking after for a little and probably will do so again next time the family go on holiday.

Believe it or not, but Thursday (4th of June) was another public holiday in Germany - the last until October. Rain was forecast for late afternoon, but the morning was fine, and so I went to my Mum's and we walked the short distance to the gardening club's garden, where they were holding their annual summer fest. We found a table, and I brought our drinks and food for me; we listened to the music, talked to a few people we knew and a bit later were joined by Mum's friend R who had come by bike.

Before we could be caught in a shower, my Mum and I were back at her place where we had coffee and watched some TV together until I went home.

As had become my habit over the last 1 1/2 weeks, I had been over at my neighbours' to take care of the pets twice a day, but on this day, I did not see Neo at all, just filled his dishes.

Friday (5th of June) was the last day I was responsible for the cat and rabbits; the family were to return from their holiday late that night. Neo was in the house when I opened the door. He ate well and then went out with me, but once he realised I was busy cleaning the rabbit hutch, he looked for his own adventures and was gone by the time I finished.

I worked and then did my usual round of cleaning before packing my little red suitcase. The regular train connection was not running that evening, but a good one was going earlier than normal, and so I arranged with O.K. to meet me in Offenburg at 7:00 pm instead of 8:30 pm.

Since it was still sunny and warm then, we decided to have our meal not at the cottage but at a restaurant/beer garden with beautiful views of the area.

The Vosges mountains (France) are on the horizon.

Afterwards, O.K. drove us back into town where we had ice cream for dessert - very nice, and a true "summer feel" to it all.

Because O.K. was gardening around his Mum's house for much of Saturday (6th of June), I busied myself with a few household things, walked to the bank for some cash, walked to the bakery and to the fruit & veg hut just outside the village for fresh strawberries and green asparagus and spent good part of the afternoon resting and reading.

In the evening, O.K. and I went for a walk around the village before we prepared a large tray of oven-grilled vegetables.

Sunday (7th of June) was perfect hiking weather, and that was exactly what we did - not just the two of us, but with a couple of friends for a change. They had suggested the tour, and although I knew some parts from previous hikes, the tour as such was new to me, and I was really looking forward to the day.

We drove a short distance to pick them up and left the car on a parking space near a place called Höllhof ("Hell Farm") - nothing hellish about it, but a well-cared for picturesque cluster of farm and other buildings where aspiring foresters are trained, among other things. It being Sunday, all was quiet of course.

From Höllhof to Kalikutt (an odd name for a restaurant/hotel in the Black Forest, but it's been that for a long time) took us under two hours, and our friends had booked a table for the four of us for lunch, which by that time was welcome :-)

Foxgloves give a splash of colour in the otherwise very green Black Forest this time of year.

Approaching Kalikutt

Looking back at the restaurant; our table was with a view of the forest to the right.

I had Black Forest trout, freshly caught and grilled - very nice!

After our meal, we walked on towards the Moosturm, a place O.K. and I have been to a few times in the past but not since August 2024. You can look at the photos from that day here. Our visit now was almost exactly ten years since my very first visit, as you can see here.

Moosturm

A short rest, and on we went, arriving back at the car mid-afternoon. We drove our friends home and then went home ourselves. Because we'd had such a sumptuous lunch (it is unusual for us to have Sunday lunch, since we mostly have a proper meal in the evening), neither of us felt like eating much that evening. Instead, we sat on the balcony with a well-chilled rosé and snacking on crisps, bits of cheese and tomato, enjoying the evening light.

June has indeed started very well for me, wouldn't you say :-)

Read in 2026 - 16: The Predicament

The Predicament

William Boyd

This is the second novel of a yet-to-be completed trilogy featuring Gabriel Dax, travel writer and involuntary spy. I read the first book, "Gabriel's Moon", last year; click here for my review if you are interested.

Because I liked the first book so much, my sister gave me this one for my birthday in March, and I enjoyed it maybe even more - a delight to read, very well written, meticulously researched, and leaving me looking forward to the third book (which I wouldn't mind not being the last).

Just like before, the characters are fully fleshed-out and (mostly) plausible in their actions. We meet some of the key figures of the first book again, but new people are also introduced. Gabriel is his usual self; wanting to go back to his normal life where he travels not for some mission or other he is asked to accomplish for the MI6 (or the Russians), but to do research and take photos for his successful travel books. He is a decent man with a compassionate heart, a good example being the way he deals with another author who accuses him of plagiarism. 

But once a spy, always a spy, it seems, and so he finds himself in Guatemala first and in Berlin later, both trips only outwardly having to do with his next book.

His stay in Berlin is planned to coincide with John F. Kennedy's speech there, and although I am nowhere near as familiar with my country's capital as my sister, I can relate to much of what is described in the book (of course, it is a very different place now than what it was like in 1963, but I know enough history to perceive the atmosphere as quite authentic).

If I may point out just one minor error I noticed: On a day in late June 1963, Gabriel participates in a raid where the police hope to get hold of a suspect planning an attack on Kennedy during his speech. He meets his fellow spies at 5:00 am and describes the morning as completely dark, pre-dawn. Now, I was reading this particular chapter in late May, and I knew that it was definitely NOT dark anymore at 5:00 am, and would have been even less so in late June. The internet is very useful for such things, and I found out that in late June in 1963, sunrise in Berlin was at around 4:40 am - meaning that 5:00 am will have been nice and bright, not dark at all. This error surprised me, because it doesn't fit in with the otherwise very precise and accurate detail William Boyd provides - and it would have been so easy to get it right.

But this is just me being picky, and rest assured that it did not diminuish my pleasure in reading "The Predicament".

I really am looking forward to Gabriel Dax' next adventure!