From My Mental Library

An Update and Questions To You

2012-01-27T09:32:00.001+01:00

Good morning!

(Yes, I know; it won't be morning for everyone who reads this, when they read it, but I am typing this at 9.00 in the morning, just before I'll start work, and therefore, good morning it is!)

Quite a long time ago, I posted about the blogs I follow, and a bit about the stats regarding my own blog. Strangely enough, that particular post has proved to be, to this day, the most popular one on my blog, even though it only received four comments back then.

A lot has happened since then; I have started following many more blogs and the number of those who follow my blog has increased to 60 (although I must admit one of them is myself, and some others never show up and have probably long left the blogosphere since having clicked the "Follow" button on my blog), something I am well chuffed about!

I have published 240 posts (this one being No. 241), and there have been a bit over 20.000 page views.

What I still find really interesting, and I do that about once a week, is to check on my stats under "traffic sources" what search words people have used that eventually lead them to my blog.

Presently, the search words are:

old armchair

porto empédocle

my bikini friends

old armchairs

talk to the hand lynne truss

armchair reading

old arm chair

palermo

polishing shoes

small castle

Interesting, isn't it? I am especially intrigued by "my bikini friends" - to my knowledge, there isn't any post about "bikini friends" here, unless I am suffering a severe bout of blog-amnesia. That so many people have stumbled on here while looking for old armchairs is funny - and I did indeed post about my grandma's armchair from the 1950s which was given to me by my parents in the spring of last year. It still is my preferred reading and eating place for my lunch break, when I am not going out.

And now for the questions, which I hope some of you will take the time to answer:

1. Would you like me to change the font size on my blog? Would you prefer my typing to be larger? Or smaller?

2. Someone recently asked whether my blog was turning into a cookery column. The question surprised me, because I actually have not that many recipes on here; a lot less than some of the blogs I follow. But it made me think, and so I am asking you:

Should I sort my blog into categories, such as "recipes", "book/film reviews", "travel reports", "general musings", "shallow fashion posts" etc.?

After all, my blog is called "From My Mental Library", and every library should have some kind of systematic to it, some order to allow the reader to find quickly what they are looking for.

3. If your answer to #2 was "yes", please tell me how to do that. I've seen it on some of the blogs I follow, but I have not discovered yet how it works, although I have looked at all the options under "layout".

And now, it is your turn!

Quiche, Quickly!

2012-01-25T20:08:00.000+01:00

Quickly made, but not quickly done: Quiche Lorraine.

You'll see what I mean by this apparent contradiction when you read the recipe.

I had been wanting to make a quiche in a long time; my last one was at least 5 or 6 years ago, and I threw out my old baking form some time after moving to this place in 2003 and never bought a new one. Last week, then, my mum kindly gave me one of hers (still brand new and unused, in its original packing), and so on Saturday, I made Quiche Lorraine for RJ and my dinner.

You need for the crust:

200 g flour

100 g soft butter or margarine (I used the latter)

1 egg

a pinch of salt

For the filling:

around 200 g of ham or bacon (again, I used the latter, and the laziest option at that, readily diced)

150 g Emmental cheese (lazy again - I bought it already grated)

3 eggs

200 g cream

pepper, salt, nutmeg

(You can find a very useful converting tool for weights, measures and temperatures here)

Put the flour in a dish and add the margarine or butter in bits. Then add the one egg and pinch of salt. For the first bit, it is best to use a kneading mixer, like the one in the picture above, until the mixture is crumbly like this:

From there, using your hands works best. Work the dough into a nice, homogenous buttery (or margariney) ball like the one below, and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (see what I mean? Although it is quickly made, it is not quickly done, because the dough needs to rest, you can not use it instantly upon making it).

Grease your baking form.

When the dough has rested in the fridge long enough, work it into the form. You will need a bit more than half of it for the bottom, and a bit less than half of it for the rim.

Now comes the mysterious bit; I found this instruction in the recipe and have no idea why it is necessary, but I did it anyway: take a fork and make tiny holes into the bottom, like this:

Put half of the bacon or ham bits on the bottom.

Add half of the cheese, and repeat until you have used up all the bacon/ham and cheese.

Mix the three eggs and the cream, spice with salt, pepper and nutmeg (I use fresh nutmeg, as you can see). Caution: go easy on the salt, the ham/bacon will be salty already.

Pour the mixture over the quiche and put into the oven at 175 Celsius for about 45 minutes - but keep checking after 30 minutes.

The Quiche is ready when it looks like this:

We had salad with it, and enjoyed our dinner very much!

And the nice thing about quiches (just as with pizzas) is that you can use just about anything you find in your kitchen and larder for the filling; you can make it a vegetable one, for instance, by using brokkoli and sundried tomato bits, or green asparagus, or whatever you prefer.

Read in 2012 - 2: The House By The Sea

2012-01-21T16:57:00.001+01:00

After the non-fiction book about Russia which was my first read this year, I was happy to spend several cosy evenings tucked up in bed with my duvet and heavy blanket, balancing a plate of sandwiches on my knees and reading "The House By The Sea" by Santa Montefiore.

It was one of two books sent to me a few weeks before Christmas by my mother-in-law from England, the other one being "The Lady's Maid", with its review to be found here on my blog.

"The House By The Sea" is, essentially, a love story. Or, rather, several love stories in one. I won't say too much, because it would mean spoiling it for you in case you wish to read it. Let it suffice to say that the story moves between the 1960s and the year 2009, between a magnificent country palace and its even more magnificent gardens in Tuscany and an old mansion, converted into what sounds a truly wonderful hotel, on the coast of Devon. The places are described in a manner that allows you to see them in front of you, and also hear and smell them. Yes, the author is, in my opinion, very good at describing places and their atmosphere, as well as people.

The plot is predictable, and it was quite obvious from the start who the people really were, with plenty of hints for the reader to have an idea of the "secrets" the main characters are carrying. The only surprise for me came when, quite towards the end of the book, the identity of a "gentleman thief" haunting big houses and posh hotels along the Devon coast is revealed.

This predictability does not deter the book from being a very pleasant read, and I like Santa Montefiore's style and her choice of words, most of the time. Although I gathered the meaning from the context, I looked up several words - something I do not need to do very often. Those words were, for instance, "cerulean" and "foppish". The overall feel at the end is rather a bit too sweet - everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, works out well, for everybody, and that simply does not happen in real life, much as we wish it did.

Here are some bits I liked enough for wanting to share them with you:

"I don't know you well enough to know if you're being ungrateful. But I know human nature enough to know that you will never be happy living your life for other people. You have to go your own way and work it all out for yourself."

When I read that, I was reminded of a close friend of mine who has been struggling with the tough decision between staying in an unhappy marriage or starting anew, alone.

This little gem I find very true - even though I am still decades from being really considered "old" by others:

"You know, when you're young you don't ever imagine you're going to be old. But it falls upon you quite unexpectedly and then, there you are: one of the old people you rather despised."

(Note: I do NOT despise old people, but I think you get the idea, why I chose to quote this bit.)

One of the characters falls in love and this is how it makes her feel:

Above all, she liked who she was when she was with him, as if, in his eyes, she was a better version of herself: braver, wittier, prettier.

The personal philosphy of one of the characters is, I think, something most of you will agree to:

"During our lifetime we have many choices which affect those around us as well as our own futures. Imagine a pebble dropped into a pond. You may think that the pebble simply sinks to the bottom, but you are wrong. The pebble causes ripples that run to the edge, where they nudge a leaf off the bank. A bumble bee is drowning in the water, but now he is able to climb onto the leaf and save himself. The bumble bee flies off and lands on the arm of a child, who watches in wonder and thus develops a love of nature. The child's parents are fighting, but the mother sees the bee and panics that her child will be stung. Both parents ruhs to help the child and forget their argument, united in their love for their child. The bee flies off and... well, you can invent whatever story you like."

If you want to know more about the author, her website is informative and set up well.

Thunder, Lightning and Self-Discipline

2012-01-20T09:37:00.002+01:00

What do these have to do with each other, you may wonder. Let me explain.

The very first post I ever published on here was about sleep, which goes to show how important that is to me. Maybe I do need a bit more of it than others; I can function with 5 hours, but only for a few days, then I need to get up to my 7-8 hours again, otherwise I'll be useless and walk around all day like a zombie.

Usually, during the week, I switch the lamp on my bedside table off between 11.00 pm and midnight, most of the time quite close to 11.00. When I have had a particularly exhausting day, or the night before was too short and I am very tired, it is lights out earlier, sometimes as early as 10.00 pm.
Sounds like plenty of sleep until 7.00 am, when I wake up from the sound of the bells from the nearby church that serves as my alarm clock, doesn't it?
And yet, there are times when it is nowhere near enough.

Take last night.
I went to bed, read a little, and switched the light off at half eleven. For a few nights in a row now, my mind has been whirling with fragments of thoughts and ideas; nothing troubling or worrying, but apparently enough to keep me from sinking into my friend Morpheus' arms as quickly as I'd like to. The same happened again last night, but eventually, of course I did fall asleep.

As is my habit, the bedroom window was open to a crack; I was warm and comfortable enough underneath my duvet plus a heavy blanket. On falling asleep, the last thing I consciously heard was the sound of rain, something I find very cosy when I can snuggle deeper under my duvet and do not need to be out there in the cold and rain. It had been quite windy all afternoon and evening, and the pattern of the rain changed with each gust blowing between my house and the neighbour's.

At some stage very early this morning, I woke up because the sound had changed yet again: now it was a prattle of what I am sure was icy rain, clattering on the roof of my neighbour's bike shed and my metal window sills only a few metres away from me. The blinds where moving with the wind, too, and then the thunder and lightning started, all at once.
There was no slow approach, with the gap between thunder and lightning narrowing as the thunderstorm came closer, no, it was right there on top of us when it broke loose.
I was too comfortable to get up and watch the spectacle from my kitchen window, so I stayed in bed, awake and listening.

By the time the church bells chimed seven, I was so tired the temptation to stay in bed for another half hour at least was really big. But - and this is where the self-discipline comes into play - I got up.

When I first started working from home back in May 2011, I was determined to stick to a realistic schedule of working hours, and so far, I have not had any trouble doing just that. By the time I start making my phone calls at around 9.00 am, I have already been up for two hours, having coffee, reading and replying to emails (business as well as personal ones), reading (and sometimes writing) blogs, I have fed the cat, showered and dressed properly, had breakfast and washed the few dishes I used for my muesli and coffee.
This morning, the temptation to get up later was certainly there, but that's the point of self-discipline - you just don't. (Or, depending on what it is about, you just DO).

By the way, this is what I saw when I came into the kitchen a few minutes after seven this morning:

Moon Show

2012-01-16T18:00:00.002+01:00

Who reads my blog more or less regularly may be under the impression that my flat only has one window, facing East from my kitchen. Well, it is not so; there are two in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one in the livingroom (where I work during the day), two in the bedroom and one in The Third Room.

But the view from my kitchen window is simply the best one, and that is why it features on here so often.

The other night, I was watching a spectacular full moon show from it.

My camera (or, rather, the photographer, i.e. myself) was not capable to really show 1:1 what my eyes saw, but hopefully these three pictures give you an idea of just how spectacular it was. They were taken within seconds from each other; it was a very windy night and the clouds were moving rapidly across the nightly sky. I did try to take a close-up one of the moon, but not having a tripod, even with the anti-wobble-thingy on (don't know what that feature of my camera is actually called), all I managed was at best an egg-shaped white blog instead of the beautiful silvery sphere I saw with the naked (well, not totally - I was still wearing my specs!) eye.

It is times like this I wish I could paint.

Read in 2012 - 1: Russland

2012-01-13T08:30:00.000+01:00

Russland is the German term for Russia, as you have probably guessed if you didn't know already anyway. This book about Russia was written by Thomas Roth, a German journalist who worked and lived in Russia for years, being the official correspondent of one of Germany's national TV stations.

(At present, he is head said national TV station's office in New York.)

This gives him the unique position of knowing a lot more about the country and its people than an average tourist or business traveller would know, but at the same time still keeping an outsider's perspective.

At no time in the book does the author pretend to know something he can not prove; there is an appendix of foot notes with information regarding the documents, articles, books and TV programs he quotes.

The book is mostly well-written - I say "mostly", because there are bits I find surprisingly bumpy for someone who is a professional writer and has been doing this for a living for many years.

In German, there are two forms of addressing someone; the informal "Du" for people who we are on first names terms with, and the formal "Sie" we use when we address someone as Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so. This difference in adressing others is not exclusive to German; many other languages know it, too. In German, the third person plural is also "sie", but with a small s, as opposed to the capital S in the formal address.

Now, throughout this book, only the "sie" with the small s is used, even where it should correctly be a "Sie" because a person is directly addressed.

At first, I thought this was an error of typesetting, but as it never changed, I now believe this was done on purpose - for whatever reason, I can not fathom. It did bother me.

On the other hand, the whole book is very interesting and fascinating. I learnt a lot about how events past and present influence not only everyday life in Russia, but how that influence stretches to all of Europe, including, of course, Germany. The author manages to bring the big picture into an understandable context with the small detail, and I enjoyed reading it.

The book is not a travel guide. The subtitle reads "The True Face of a World Power", and that is what Mr. Roth has attempted, and, as far as I can tell, well achieved.

More Glimpses

2012-01-11T17:54:00.000+01:00

Several times on my blog, I have written about glimpses we catch of other people's lives, in various circumstances. And today, while I was waiting at the checkout queue at Aldi's during my lunch break, I realized what a good occasion for such glimpses a visit to the supermarket or groceries store is.

While you wait your turn, you can't help but notice what the person in front of you is putting from their trolley on the conveyor. But have you actually ever stopped to think about the items others buy, having exactly the same choice of products as you have? And what their choice reveals about them?

Take the contents of my shopping trolley, for instance; most of the time, when I am on my own and do not expect anyone for dinner, mine is the typical middle-aged-single-woman-with-cat kind of mixture: cat food (always!), yoghurts, chocolate, bread, cheese, the odd shower gel or washing up liquid in between. Nothing exciting, nothing expensive, nothing that will take a long time to prepare.

When I have guests, it is a different matter entirely, not only in that there is more of everything, but also healthier stuff such as fresh vegetable and fruit, eggs and so on.

What would you think if you saw me putting a packet of finger bisquits, mascarpone, sugar, eggs and a bottle of amaretto on the conveyor? Or a packet of flour, yeast, tomato, mozzarella and a potted basil plant? You would rightly conclude that the woman buying these items is about to make a Tirami-Su or, in the second case, a pizza.

Sometimes there are whole families doing their shopping together, but sometimes you can tell from the sheer amount of things as well as the kind of products that the one person doing the shopping has a family in the background who will consume all this - at least that is what I assume. I could be wrong, of course, and the person buying a lot of food is just a hearty eater and stocking up the larder.

Today, the customer in front of me, a woman of more or less my age, very skinny, unremarkably dressed, put a packet of ham, two nets of clementines and two large parsnips on the conveyor, as well as a set of 50 envelopes that came from the special offer section of the super market. Nothing else.

My mind instantly started to spin out possible scenarios for her rather unusual mixture of products; was she just going to get the envelopes and then saw the clementines and the parsnips and the ham and thought, 'hmm... I haven't had any of this in a while, they look nice,' and taken them? Or did she have a particular dish in mind to prepare with the parsnips and the ham, and while she was there, saw the cheerful colour of the clementines and couldn't resist, and the envelopes were the kind of thing one can always use anyway?

There were more such mini-stories playing in my head, but then she paid and left and it was my turn.

Fashion Calendar: January

2012-01-07T13:50:00.000+01:00

Months ago, fellow blogger Frances wrote something about clothes that made me start to collect pictures for my very own "Autumn Wardrobe" post - the pictures are all here on my computer, taken over the course of several months during autumn and winter 2011, but somehow* I never wrote that post.

Now, 2012 is already seven days "old", and I think it is as good a day as anyone to start on my own personal fashion calendar. As much as showing off in a rather childish manner, this is supposed to serve also to keep track of how much I actually spend on clothes, regardless of whether I "need" them or not. Maybe it will help me remember, looking back, how many nice things I already have in my wardrobe, and that I really do not need any more.

On the 2nd of January, RJ and I went for a walk; as it was quite wet and windy out there, we decided against the fields and walked into town centre instead. As is probably the case for most of the areas where you live, sales have already started in the shops; they all want to get rid of what was not sold before Christmas, to make room for the stuff that is specifically ordered and produced for the "proper" Winter Sales.

Without actually looking for anything specific, I found this dress at half price (50 Euros instead of 99) at the comma shop - and in my size, too, which is not to be taken for granted, because I am of such average size that it is, most of the time, the first to be sold out.

I tried it on, liked it, and bought it. Only later I looked it up on the internet, and saw what horrible, absolutely non-matching shoes they made the model wear with it - would anyone in their right mind wear such ugly shoes in the first place, and then with this dress?

Instead, I am going to wear it with the shoes I wore on New Year's Eve, so that it looks like this:

Now, of course my hair and face were not "done" for the photo, but I guess you'll agree with me that it is a versatile dress that can be toned up or down according to the occasion and fits both work and play. Does a new dress (or, if you are male, a new suit, shirt or anything else) also fill you with anticipation? Do you know the feeling as if a new piece has been yours for a long time already, and you feel very much at home in it? That is exactly what my new dress, my first fashion acquisition in 2012, is like!

*That "somehow" actually means fear of criticism. I have had many (at times rather harsh) critical comments from family members who read my blog and are either of the opinion that what I write is of no interest to anyone else or they think it is downright ridiculous. So far, said critique has not deterred me from keeping to write what I want to write about, with the exception of information such as personal names and pictures of those who have expressively forbidden me to reveal anything about them. Let me assure you (you = anyone who happens to read this) that, whenever I sit here at my computer to write on my blog, I never, NEVER set out to hurt anyone or spread private information about them. This is my blog, a mixture of journal, book and film reviews, recipes, musings inspired by my hardly very exciting, but comfortable daily life, and by what I read, see or hear elsewhere, and a few short stories (the oldest entries).

Perl wrote about his reasons for blogging here, and what he says expresses a lot better than I can in my own words what is, in part, my motiviation for keeping this going. Oh yes, there is a portion of narcissism in me, more than maybe in a lot of other people, and it would be a lie to say that the attention I get here through your kind comments was not most welcome. But, writing for the reader (who I can never be entirely sure of, really) is only one half of the story. More importantly, I write because I need to, I enjoy it, and as I lack other talents such as painting or composing music, it is my creative outlet (not very creative when it comes to listing recipes and books I've read, I can hear you say, and you are right - but I think you still get the idea).

Filling My Diary

2012-01-05T17:18:00.001+01:00

Although I have all the technical possibilities to keep a paper-free diary for my business and private appointments, I still work best with an old-fashioned paper one.

The one I used all of 2011 was originally given to me as a Christmas present by one of the suppliers at the company were I worked until March of last year.

It came in very handy, especially when I quit the former company and was off work for seven weeks from the middle of March until my first day on the new job, on the 2nd of May 2011.

During those seven weeks, I did a lot - I travelled, I worked (playing secretary for a friend and earning a little extra money, which was very welcome!), I blogged, I saw friends, started to train for the CityRun, and more.

It would have been difficult to keep track of everything without the help of my diary.

And when I started working for the new company, I began using the diary for business, too.

My job mainly consists in keeping in touch with my customers by ringing them and, every now and then, acquire new customers from various sources, such as after I have met them for the first time at a trade show or conference. It is important to stay in touch with them after the initial contact, and I always put the customer's name down in my diary on the day I plan to ring them again.

Not only is this - for me - a much better way of planning my work than putting appointments into Outlook, where they would just keep popping up, only to be clicked away by me and eventually forgotten, but this system also gives me the satisfaction of "seeing" my work getting done, because every time I have made a call and reached the person I wanted to speak to, I cross their name out.

Something else this diary allows me to do is keeping small reminders of special events, such as tickets for an exhibition my sister invited us all to on her birthday, or the fireworks display in the summer, and so on.

The menu of the posh dinner we attended on New Year's Eve is in there now as well!

For 2012, there are already quite a few entries in my diary, the cover of which is currently making my header picture (as you have undoubtedly guessed).

The ones I am most looking foward to this month are my sister's birthday on Tuesday and my dad's 70th birthday on the 31st.

How do you keep track of all the minor and major events and appointments in your day-to-day life?

Four Days Ago...

2012-01-04T15:35:00.000+01:00

...it was the last day of 2011, and I was getting ready for New Year's Eve.

As mentioned a few posts back, one of my Christmas presents was a dress I chose with New Year's Eve in mind, and another present was going to a posh restaurant here in town with RJ for a 6-course dinner. Pictures of the restaurant can be found on their website. This picture from the outside was obviously not taken on New Year's Eve (and not by me), but it gives a pretty good impression of the kind of place it is:

I love clothes, and most of all, I love dresses. And of course, any occasion for dressing up is most welcome! And so I got my brand new dress and brand new shoes and brand new pair of tights out (even make-up!) and got ready for New Year's Eve:

RJ and I were placed at a table large enough to seat four (I hate it when they cram people in at restaurants), and there was plenty of space between the tables, so that nobody was listening in on conversations at other tables, and the staff was able to move around well while serving and removing used plates etc.

The menu was very good; it was nothing of the utterly ridiculous kind like "stuffed pea on jus of some-unheard-of-exotic-stuff" (although I must admit I am not opposed to culinary experiments as such). It was plenty, and fresh, and delicious. One course I found very special and refreshing was a sherbet of quinces and calvados.

Twice during the evening, the chef came to every table to ask if we were happy with everything. The lady who owns (?) the restaurant greeted everyone personally and also came to every table to ensure all was well.

The meal ended at about 11.00 pm, and there wasn't anything else planned from the restaurant's part, such as music or fireworks. So we drove to my parents' and sat with them and my sister and a friend of my parents and waited until it was time to get the champagne out. At midnight, we stood on the balcony, clinking glasses on 2012 and watching the fireworks all around.

It was beautiful and moving.

And now, 2012 is already 4 days "old"!

Read in 2011 - 30: Die Ruine am See

2011-12-31T14:08:00.000+01:00

Just this morning, I finished my last book for 2011, and I can't believe there weren't more than 30 - there used to be a time when I did a lot more reading, but back then, I was less involved in other activities, and my day, just like yours, still has only 24 hours, some of which (and those are not wasted) I spend asleep.

"Belle Ruin" (the original title) by Martha Grimes is the 3rd in a series of - so far - four books featuring Emma Graham, who is introduced on the author's website with this brief summary of the first book, "Hotel Paradise":

A once-fashionable now fading resort hotel. A spinster aunt living in the attic. Dirt roads that lead to dead ends. A house full of secrets and old, dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost half a century. A twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas, and decaying lake-fronts, and an obsession with the death by drowning of another young girl, forty years before.

Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America. It is a look at the difficult decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult and the choices she must make between right and wrong, between love and truth, between life and death.

The first book was published in 1996, and I read it some time later. The second one came out in 2000, and I am pretty sure I've read that one, too. And now the third one, published in 2005. Although publication of the first three parts of this series spans almost an entire decade, time does not move ahead that much for Emma Graham. She is still 12 years old in the third book, as she was in the first. She still does not seem to have to go to school (school is mentioned, as far as I remember, only once in a half-sentence), and she still makes the salads and serves tables at the hotel where her mother is cook.

Emma is, in many ways, a convincing character as a 12-year-old. There are people she likes, and people she fantasizes about being blown to bits. She never really describes herself, and while we hear a lot about other people's clothes, we do not know what Emma looks like, except for her hair being held back from her face by four small barrettes. She is still very much a kid in that she does not think she should use make-up or dress to impress, and although she knows an attractive man when she sees one, she is not interested in boys yet; in fact, she muses about turning thirteen and what it will mean to grow up, and rather dreads the thought. There are things in her life she simply accepts with the readiness of a child not questioning what has always been like that, for instance the alcoholism of Mrs. Davidow, who co-owns (? I am not entirely sure about that) the hotel.

Although Emma has solved two crimes in the past (one of which nearly resulted in her own murder), there is still more, there are still many unanswered questions, and the girl is determined to find those answers. She knows she can not rely on anyone else but herself, because her current "case", the kidnapping of a baby more than 20 years ago, has long been closed and nobody really understands her obsession with it, or with the ruin of the once glamorous hotel where it all happened.

Expectations for the reader do build up, but I'm afraid to say we are nowhere nearer the solution at the end of the book than we are on the first page.

The fourth in the series came out last February, and I've read a brief summary which leads me to believe that it still does not contain the answer(s).

Nonetheless, I like Martha Grimes' writing, and although I do not always see eye-to-eye with her characters (which is clearly not intended to happen anyway), I enjoyed this book. If I had the opportunity to talk to the author, I'd have many questions. None of them would be about the actual plot, but more of a general nature, such as, why does Emma not go to school? What are the Heather Gay Struther dresses mentioned so often in the book? (I googled Heather Gay Struther and came up with nothing except for someone else here on blogger who posted a review of one of the Emma Graham books.) What year is the series actually set in? Sometimes there is, at least to me, a definite 1960s-feel to the whole atmosphere, but we are never really told.

Something I very much like about this book is the role food plays in it. Emma's mother is, as I said, cook at the hotel where the family live and work. What she does in the kitchen features a lot, and Emma herself loves food and the excellent cooking of her mother's. She also pays many a visit to the Rainbow Café and some other places where she eats donuts and chocolate sodas, or chilli, talking to her adult friends - there is nobody her age she really spends any significant time with.

Here is an example of one such delightful descriptions of the food served at the hotel, in this case, for a cocktail party:

slices of ham, spread with a mixture of mango, pecan and cream cheese and rolled up, as well as little sausages, served with a rum-orange-dip.

Sometimes while I was reading about all that food, I had to interrupt and go to the kitchen and get myself something to eat.

It is difficult to really recommend this book. Someone who has not read the first two will hardly know what Emma is talking about for at least half of the time. Someone who expects a solution to the unsolved crime(s) will be disappointed. Someone who likes reading from a different perspective, and, like myself, has a penchant for neglected and run-down places, might like it.

We've had...

2011-12-25T10:52:00.000+01:00

...a cosy Christmas Eve last night with the family, as always, at my parents'.

And as always, we had spuds salad (two kinds, one with mayonnaise and one without) and sausages. I have probably mentioned this before, but there is no spuds salad like the one my dad makes!

Mum made baked apples for dessert. This is a traditional winter dessert in Germany. The core is taken out and the apples are then stuffed with a mixture of raisins, almonds and/or nuts, as well as some sugar (I think) and, if desired, some brandy or other alcoholic drink. If anyone is interested, I can of course ask my mum for her recipe. The apples were from the garden, and my mum brought the pan to the table with sparklers on top, which made for a very pretty effect à la "Captain's Dinner" :-)

The (real) candles on the (artificial) tree were lit after that, and we exchanged our gifts.

Every year, I wonder at the amount of parcels piling up under the tree, with there being seven adults each giving each other (normally) just ONE present. Well, I should not be surprised - simple maths show that 7 x 6 (because nobody brings a parcel for themselves, obviously) makes 42, and if you consider that sometimes there is more than one parcel from one to the other, we easily get to somewhere around 50!

This year, I had some things I'd already known about, because I had either said I needed it (such as the pretty Cath Kidston toiletries bag, a gift from my sister, and the cushions for my kitchen chairs, from my parents) or because I had chosen it for myself (such as the fluffy red zip-up and the dress I am going to wear on New Year's Eve). Most of the other presents I received are useful and much appreciated, such as the wild rose shower gel (I like the scent, and it is going to be used up and not stand around for ever) and the assortment of kitchen ingredients (a jar each of pesto, a bruschetta spread and aioli).

When I unwrapped the presents from England this morning, at first I thought "oh no! nobody has sent me any chocolate this year...", but then I opened the handbag (not really my style) from my mother-in-law and found inside a box of Cadbury's Roses, a Terry's Orange and a box of Maltesers (all very much my style!).

A gift I can not wait to make use of are the two vouchers for the nearby beauty-and-wellness "temple"! I love going there for a massage or a pedicure or some other treatment, but I never buy any of their treatments for myself. They will definitely have a phone call from me next week!

Hope everyone had a time as lovely as I did.

Getting Ready

2011-12-23T11:05:00.000+01:00

...for Christmas is what our weather here was really trying, but unlike last year, when we had a proper White Christmas like the one you see on postcards and hear about in songs, we'll have a grey-green-brown one by the looks of it.

At the beginning of this month, we still had some rather mild days and - finally! - some badly needed rain. Most days, the sun came out at some stage, and it often made for beautiful and unusual light outside, as I hope this picture of the well-known view from my kitchen window, taken on the 6th, shows:

When I woke up on the 20th and went to the kitchen to feed the cat and get myself a mug of coffee, I was pleased to see this:

It did not stop snowing until about 3.00 in the afternoon, and shortly after noon, the view was this:

Now, I am absolutely no fan of winter and cold and snow, but so close to Christmas and it being the first proper snow in our area for the season, I quite liked it and wished for it to stay until the 26th or so.

Well, it did not do me that favour, but that does not mean I am not very much looking forward to Christmas Eve and the TWO WEEKS I have time off after that!

On Monday night, a friend and I did our annual shift on the Christmas market. My friend is, unlike me, quite religious and involved in church activities. Her brother works for a charity project called Tarango; you can find out more about it on the project website here. Some years ago, she asked me whether I'd like to help her sell some of the products the Bangladeshi women have made, and I thought, why not? Ever since, it has become our own tradition to do this once a year for a few hours. It is not much, but it is what I can do to calm my guilty conscience a little towards all those bitterly poor and disadvantaged people out there, and because I know some of the people involved personally, I trust that in this case, the money really goes to those who need it and is spent wisely.

Here I am at our stall; I must admit I do not buy any of the tablecloths, coasters, bags, scarves and knick-knacks myself; they are just not my style (and you all know I don't like clutter), but I still want to contribute in a small way, offering my free time once a year. It has the added benefit of spending time with my friend, who, although we do not live far from each other, I only see about twice a year.

Today is my last working day for this year; not much is happening, and there aren't many customers I can still call, so I am allowing myself to write this post. And later, I am going to wrap the presents I will take to my parents' tomorrow night.

The ones that came from England are already waiting here to be opened on Christmas morning:

Merry Christmas everyone!

Behind the Scenes...

2011-12-21T08:31:00.001+01:00

...at Kessler's, makers of sparkling wine since 1826, is where we went last Saturday.

"We" means my parents, my sister and three of our friends. This was our birthday present for our mum back in August, it just took us a while to find a date and time where all of us could make it and there was room for seven people at one of the guided tours they offer.

We went there by train; Esslingen is a medieval town on the river Neckar, a lot older than Ludwigsburg (which was only founded in 1704). There are many beautifully restored buildings around; these alone would make for a great day out, looking at them and taking pictures. But that was not what we were here for.

Instead, this building, the foundations of which are from the early 1200s, was where we were headed: seat of Kessler, Germany's oldest manufacturers of sparkling wine.

A close-up of the entrance. You know I have a thing for doors and doorways.

Inside, we were greeted by an elegant elderly lady who was to be our guide. She took our group of about 20 through the production (not working on a Saturday; otherwise, a tour would not be possible), explaining not only how sparkling wine is made here, but also talking about the history of Kessler. Sadly, the family were unable to keep the company going and had to declare bankruptcy in 2004. Since then, the manufactury is not owned by family members any longer, but the way the sparkling wine is made here has not changed; they still use the traditional methods and the expertise of more than 180 years of making fine sparkling wines.

During the 1950s, at all banquets held by the German government, Kessler's sparkling wine was served; that was their heyday, and somehow they missed the change of times after that, resting on their laurels, so to speak. But they have been back in full swing since 2005, and are a healthy company again.

After leading us through the production and explaining about how the yeast is taken out of the bottles, how much sugar is added to the various products, how the cork is put in and so on, we arrived at the steps leading down into the deep stone cellars.

They had made it quite atmospherical by using only candles down there, no electric light.

Here is where the sparkling wine is left to "ripen" in the bottles, they are turned by a few degrees every few days for about three weeks before the yeast is taken out.

A long time ago, people were told by their doctors to drink champagne for medical purposes, and in fact apothecaries sold it under the label of medicinal champagne, as this old shop sign shows.

Also down in the cellar was this plaque on the wall, commemorating two royal visits by the then King and Queen of Württemberg; Karl and Olga in 1865, and Wilhelm and Charlotte in 1893. It meant a lot back then to any manufacturer to be endorsed by the royal court as one of their suppliers.

One of the things we learnt was that, in Germany, we have not been allowed to call our sparkling wines champagne anymore since 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. I didn't know that; I always thought this had come along much later, with some EU regulation or other. Nowadays, here in Europe, only the sparkling wine made from grapes growing in a very limited area in France, the Champagne, and produced in that same area, is allowed to carry the name "champagne". All other sparkling wines in France have to be called vin crémant. In the U.S., you are allowed to call any sparkling wine champagne, because you are not under the same treaty as we are.

After the tour, we were given three different sparkling wines to taste - but not only a few drops in a tiny glass, it was a proper glass, well filled. Our tour guide explained about each specific product before we drank, then talked some more before she gave us the next one to try, so all in all we were there for about another hour.

We walked across the Christmas market afterwards, had something to eat there and later coffee (we all needed that after three glasses of sparkling wine in the middle of the afternoon!) before we took the train back home.

It was a lovely time out with friends and family, and I think it made for a great present to our mum.

Read in 2011 - 29: The Lady's Maid

2011-12-20T08:27:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law, who often provides me with reading material, has done it again: she sent a small parcel from England and told me it was not for Christmas, so I did not have to wait, and opened it immediately. It contained two books, one of which I finished reading last night: "The Lady's Maid - My Life in Service" by Rosina Harrison.

Rosina (called Rose by most people) Harrison was born in 1899 in a small village in Yorkshire, near Ripon, an area I know quite well because my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law and her family live there.
She came from a hard-working family, her mother doing the laundry for the family at the "big house" (Studley Royal) and her father working as a stonemason, topping the family's small income with the occasional tolerated poaching on the vast grounds of Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey.
Rose had two sisters and a brother, and all were expected to do their significant part to keep things going for the household, and they did. She describes the atmosphere in the family a very loving one, and remained a devoted daughter until both her parents died.
At school, Rose turned out to be so intelligent and eager to learn that she soon learnt everything the humble village teacher in Aldfield could teach her. She had an ambition: she wanted to travel and see the world. One day, she confided in her mother, who soon came up with a solution: Rose was to smarten herself up and go into service, not as some house or kitchen maid, but as a Lady's maid, which would mean she would accompany her Lady everywhere, including her travels.

About her parents, Rose says:

"They could walk head high. They worked hard, they lived well, they looked after their own and helped others, they brought up a happy family, they gave us all the will to work hard and the knowledge of the satisfaction of a job well done. It wasn#t the kind of teaching that was going to bring us a fortune, but it was a good grounding for the sort of jobs that were available to us at that time and it must have been rewarding to them both that they had their children's love and affection to the end."

At 18, Rose started her first job in service, as what was then called a Young Lady's maid, or sometimes a schoolroom maid, her charges being the 18- and 12-year-old daughters of a Lady Tufton.
About four years later, she went to work for Lady Cranborne, feeling she was now ready to be a fully fledged Lady's Maid, and hoping for a better paid and more interesting job. After five years with Lady Cranborne, she was still earning the same, and since her requests for a raise were rudely refused, she decided it was time to move on. She did travel to Italy and other places with Lady Cranborne, though, so the ambition she'd had as a young girl started to be fulfilled.

By chance, she happened to come across Lady Astor during Ascot week which her employer, Lady Cranborne, spent at the Astor's country estate in Cliveden. Little did she know that this was going to be one of the places she would live at most frequently for more than 35 years!
Lady Astor employed Rose first for her daughter, and it was with her that Rose first crossed the Atlantic ocean and went to America.
In 1929, Lady Astor decided she wanted Rose to work for herself, and it was going to stay that way for 35 years, until Lady Astor's death.

A lot has been written about Lady Astor. She was the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat and wife of one of England's wealthiest lords. By many of her contemporaries, she was described not only as very beautiful, but as arrogant, headstrong, unloving and tempestuous, and Rose came to experience all this first hand.
But she knew her Lady also as a kind and caring woman, who would go to great lengths to help a friend in need, and especially the way she treated Rose's mother showed her soft side.

While the two women often had fierce rows, proving that Rose's wit was just as sharp as Lady Astor's, over the years a friendship developed that made it nearly impossible for the two of them to be seperate from each other.
One of the things that influenced this strong bond between the two women most was the war.
During the 2nd World War, the family mostly stayed in Plymouth, where Lord Astor was Mayor. Several times they were in real danger for their lives, but that never stopped the couple to go out and make sure help went to the people who needed it most.

After the war, Lady Astor resumed her extensive travelling, with Rose always in tow. Neither got any younger, and eventually, travelling became less and less frequent, as did entertaining.
Lady Astor died in 1964 at 84. Rose retired to Worthing, to live in the bungalow she had bought for her mother from her wages, and died in 1989.

While this book does nothing to endear Lady Astor to its readers, it is an honest and interesting account of what life was like in service. This was a different era, and a way of life so different of what most of us have today, that it sometimes leaves you wanting to cry out at the injustice and offense a lot of these people endured.
It is interesting to learn about how a big estate was run, what travelling with a Lady meant in terms of preparation and during the actual trip, how many people worked behind the scenes to make entertainment on a big scale possible, and what was implied in taking care of a lady's wardrobe at the time.

The book is easy to read, like a novel, but it is an autobiography, and one I truly enjoyed reading.

Just Right!

2011-12-17T20:10:00.000+01:00

For two days in a row, we've had stormy, wet weather which made one want to stay indoors, and so that is what we did on Friday night.

As mentioned in my "Making Do" post, I like to use whatever I find in my fridge, and yesterday, those findings included several large carrots and some sausages plus a few remaining spuds in a bag in the cellar that really needed using up (the spuds, not the bag).

I had plenty of time, and so I thought why not try something I've never made before, something that is just right for a stormy evening in late autumn - soup!

(Not that I have never ever made soup before, just not of this kind.)

The spuds and carrots were peeled and diced and put into a pot with water just about covering them.

After I had let them boil for about an hour (I told you, I had plenty of time), with me replenishing the water twice so that the bits were always covered, they were soft enough to be easily mashed up with a spuds masher.

And then came the part where I cheated: instead of making this soup with home-made vegetable or chicken or any other kind of broth, I used the instant vegetable broth they sell at the supermarket. Sometimes when I am cold but too lazy to cook, I have a mug of this broth to warm me up and a slice of bread with it.

But the "cheating" broth was not the only spice for my wintery soup, of course. I had brought nutmeg and ground ginger from the Christmas market a few days before, and I used that, the result being a delicious but not over-spiced, warm taste and scent.

The soup needed to boil a bit longer, and RJ was not here yet anyway, so I used the time to dice a few slices of untoasted bread and fry it in a pan with some oil to make croutons.

I had also fried a package of sausages I still had in the fridge, and we put those in our plates before the soup was added, and then the croutons. We had salad with that, and ice cream for dessert.

Although I'd never made this kind of soup before, I think this will not have been the last time; the result was really good.

Similar But Different

2011-12-15T17:29:00.001+01:00

Two films I've watched a while ago, with a week or two apart from each other; the similarity between them was not intended, but they both made me think and stayed with me for a while, which is what any good film should do.

The first one was "Lakeview Terrace" and the second one "Gran Torino". You can find summaries, lists of cast and production team etc. for both of them on wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet, but maybe they have not been compared like this before.

Let me start with what both films have in common:
A great leading actor (Samuel L. Jackson in "Lakeview Terrace" and Clint Eastwood in "Gran Tornio"), a main character who is bitter and lonely and has his life changed considerably through the moving in of new neighbours, and the big, big topics of racism and tolerance.

Each film deals with these topics in a very different manner, although from the start it is not obvious (at least not to me) in either which direction the plot is going to take, although a bit easier to guess in "Gran Torino".

In "Lakeview Terrace", Samuel L. Jackson plays a widowed police officer who works very hard to raise his two children, teenage daughter and younger son, alone. He keeps not only his own house spic and span, but also goes to great lengths to ensure his children have good manners, clean and wholesome entertainment, do well at school and not fall in with the wrong crowd. On top of that, he feels responsible for the safety of the whole neighbourhood, patrolling the surrounding streets on foot every night to check things are as they should be.
Sounds good to have such a respectable neighbour, doesn't it?
Well, the young couple moving in next door think so at first, too. But they quickly change their minds when they find out what a narrow-minded racist he is: he hates it that the African-American woman is married to a white man, he hates it that they enjoy each other's company (which leads them one evening to having sex in their own swimming pool, where they think nobody can see them) - in short, he hates the sheer sight of them.
And so he sets out to make their lives miserable.

Still, there are times when one can't help but sympathize with the man. There is a scene, for instance, where, as a police officer, he is called upon a case of domestic abuse in a bad part of town, and the way he handles that situation is, although rather brutal, admirable in a way and makes you believe in his good intentions - for a moment, until he goes back home and back on his crusade against the couple next door.

One thing leads to the other, and all attempts of talking and reasoning go horribly wrong, until the big escalation. I am not going to tell you how it really ends, but it does not end well, and leaves you sad and wondering why this man did not appreciate the good things he had achieved in life, all because he could not overcome the mental barriers he had erected around himself.

In "Gran Torino", we have another widower who hates the sight of the people moved in next door: Clint Eastwood is bitter and lonely, with his grown sons living elsewhere and only turning to him when they need something, his grandchildren showing no affection at all, and his best friend being his old dog - and his Gran Torino, a classic car he built with his own hands when he was still working.

The new neighbours are an Asian family, and the old man sees them through the distorted glasses of racism - until, completely involuntarily, he saves the fatherless boy from gang criminality and becomes, against everything he stands for, the hero not only of this family, but of their extensive clan of friends and relatives, too.

As the events unfold, so does the old man - he becomes more approachable and strucks up an unlikely friendship with the boy and his sister. Some terrible things happen, and the old man understands there is only one way he can give this family back their peace, and at the same time create a realistic chance for a better life for the boy.

Dramatic situations call for dramatic means, and Clint Eastwood's character chooses the most dramatic means of all. The result is as planned, and the film leaves you sad but also hopeful that not all racists are so firmly set in their minds that they can not change, and change the lives of those around them for the better, too.

What I also like about "Gran Torino" is the way it deals with the subject of getting old. It takes courage to look and act like an old man - especially when you ARE an old man, as Mr. Eastwood certainly is.

Whether you watch just one or both these films, let me know your opinion on them, please.

Like Leek?

2011-12-13T20:21:00.000+01:00

I certainly do! When I brought some leek a while ago, having in mind that RJ and I were going to cook together again on the weekend, I ended up eating it alone - RJ's cold had gone from better to worse, and we did not see each other at all for two weeks. Of course I did not want to let the leek and mushrooms and eggs to waste, so I threw everything together on the Sunday for myself.

The leek had to go into the pan with a bit of oil first, because it takes longest.

No need to add any liquid; once the mushrooms go in and heat up, they will release enough moisture to avoid sticking to the pan and burning (keep stirring, though).

While leek and mushrooms were making themselves comfortable, I put the eggs in a small bowl and added salt, pepper and some herbs, and then poured the egg mixture over the leek and mushrooms.

From then on, it is non-stop stirring until the egg has the right texture; of course it only takes a few minutes, so the mushrooms and leek should be as good as done before the eggs are added.

Nothing further was needed, since this was rather a large portion; it would have easily fed two, with the addition of a few slices of bread maybe, and/or sausage or anything else.

Instead, I ate it just as it was, and finished my Sunday lunch with a cup of coffee and a selection of Christmas cookies, home-made by a dear family friend who was, once upon a time, a baker and does not have to think twice about making 14 different kinds of cookies in one single afternoon (I kid you not!).

Fun With Friends

2011-12-10T12:52:00.001+01:00

Back in August, I wrote about the once-a-month meetings with my friends here, and of course we've had our regular get-togethers in the months in between, too.

Last night, we were at my place for something that in German is called Schrottwichteln; I've heard the expression "Trash Yulklapp", too: Everyone brings one nicely wrapped up unwanted present - it has to be something clean and not broken, but unwanted; maybe simply because it is not your style or not needed, or because you don't have the room or don't particularly like the person who gave it to you, or because it really was a rubbish present in the first place.

Before I explain about the Schrottwichteln, let me show you the quick and easy preparations I made:

(That bottle is one of three in my fridge, all pub quiz wins)

For a change, I did not make pizza (it does get a bit boring since I almost always make pizza when I have guests), but opted for an old party classic: Toast Hawaii!

Until last night, I think I have not had this for about 20 years - it used to be so popular, and now most people seem to have forgotten about it.

Pukky couldn't believe she wasn't getting any of the ham - but I'm afraid it all went on the toast!

Of course, I didn't just make one toast per person, but two rounds (with the possibility of more for those who wanted a third helping), plus salad, and one of my friends brought mousse vanille and mousse au chocolat for dessert:

And then the Schrottwichteln began!

Sitting around a table, everyone put their parcel in front of them, and then the rolling of the dices started. With every roll (one after the other, starting clock-wise), the parcels were moved one place further on. When someone threw a double, moving the parcels changed direction. That's the basic rules; of course you can elaborate on it, and you should set a time limit. We rolled the dices and shifted the parcels for 15 minutes, and then the moment of truth came :-)
I opened the parcel that had ended up in front of me...

...and wondered, what IS this??? (No, not what you think. Yes, it does look like a part of female anatomy.)

A hanging flower-pot - just what I always wanted ;-)

And so versatile - it can be used as a hat, too!

The evening went on with lots of laughter and talk, and when my friends left at 1.30 am, we all agreed that we're going to to this again next year.

Making Do

2011-12-08T17:37:00.000+01:00

Making do is something I usually do not find hard at all. It applies to many areas of my life, and is not always due to my, admittedly, rather precarious financial situation or lack of opportunity, but often brought about by myself quite deliberately, because I actually enjoy the challenge of making do, while a huge range of options and choices can be somewhat overwhelming at times.

Much as I like new things - who doesn't? - especially clothes (these will one day be my downfall, I predict!), I do not always want new stuff. Instead, I really like using things until they literally fall apart, and if I was better (and had more patience) at mending and repairing, hardly anything would ever get replaced in my flat. For instance, part of my furniture belonged to my grandparents, bought in the 1930s when they got married; some of my kitchen tools (such as my favourite wooden spoon) are way older than myself, and appliances like my washing machine and microwave were bought in the 1990s for my grandma and used by her until she died in 2001. Only in 2008, when I turned 40, I changed my bedroom to new furniture I'd bought for myself - up until then, I had been making do with hand-me-downs from other family members and leftovers from my first marriage.

The area where I "make do" most often is in the kitchen.

When my husband was still alive, it was his pride and joy to make sure our fridge and the food cupboards were always well stocked, and he did almost all the cooking, with a few exceptions that were clearly my resort, such as Spätzle or pizza. So, after he died, getting used to providing my own meals was more difficult than I would have imagined, and while I never ran out of cat food, it did happen a few times that I did not have a single piece of bread left in the house, and it took a while before the simple fact of there not being any bread unless I got some sunk in.

Two years later, I have become better at keeping provisions, but there are still times when I open my fridge and it lookes like the typical single-household fridge, containing not much more than a few bottles of sparkling wine, a yoghurt or two, and a chunk of cheese.

Sometimes, after a weekend with RJ (when he is here, we always have proper meals, since we enjoy both the cooking and the eating together), I have leftovers that we did not use, and since I hate throwing food away, I like to make something with whatever I find in my fridge during the week.

A while ago, those findings included a small zucchini and (not surprisingly) some cheese, and I knew just what this was going to become:

While I was boiling some pasta, I grated the zucchini into a pan with a little olive oil and added some salt and pepper as well as a dried herbs mixture (containing, among others, Oregano).

By the time the pasta was ready, I had diced the cheese and stirred the grated zucchini a few times. Now I added the pasta and the diced cheese and kept stirring until the cheese was melted.

It smelled and looked quite nice, and was tasty, too!

For dessert, I had coffee and a slice of my mum's home baked apple bread (more a tea cake than a bread, very delicious and sweet).

Yes, I like to make do - every time I start, the result is a surprise, but so far, it has always been a pleasant one.

Read in 2011 - 28: Secrets of Lost Empires

2011-12-06T12:36:00.002+01:00

This well-written and illustrated BBC book I found in my local library in the (sadly, very small) non-fiction section of books in English. It is based on a TV series that, I think, aired in the 1990s (but I had never heard about it until I found the book).
I've been interested in (especially ancient) history for almost as long as I can remember. When my sister was about 9, she developped a love for ancient Egypt and everything Egyptian, and for a while, we both read every single book about that long period we could get our hands on at the school's library (it helped that our mum used to work there until her retirement some years ago!).
For one of her birthdays (was it her 10th?), we even travelled to Munich to see an exhibition of items from Tut-Ankh-Amun's tomb, which would have been really really beautiful and impressive, had it not been totally overcrowded, and I panicked, squeezed in between loads of adults, unable to see much, and (feeling) unable to breathe.

This love for ancient history has never left me, and so I simply had to take this book out.

I was not disappointed.
The authors - Michael Barnes, Robin Brightwell, Adriana von Hagen, Mark Lehner and Cynthia Page - are a mix of TV producers, writers specialized in archaelogy, Professors and teachers who draw on a number of other experts in an attempt to re-create past monuments using the tools and methods available at the time of their original construction.
No mean feat, as you can imagine!

The book's chapters are about Stonehenge, the Giza pyramids, the Egyptian obelisks, the Colosseum (I have seen it spelt Coliseum, too, but I prefer Colosseum as it is the same in German and in the BBC book), and the Incas. Now, probably everybody knows that the wheel had not been yet invented when any of these monuments, except for the Colosseum, were erected - and try to imagine putting such enormous amounts of stone together with no machines to help, just human labour and cleverly devised systems of ropes and rollers, wooden sleds and levers. It seems nearly impossible, and yet we know it WAS possible - otherwise none of those stony witnesses from those days would be there for us to see.

Every now and then, one comes across the theories of people who insist that Aliens from outer space have visited our planet and taught our ancestors how to do it, or even did it for them. And although I admit some of these theories have a certain entertaining value, I much prefer sound reasoning based on scientific, historic and practical evidence, as here in this book, at the end of the chapter about the pyramids:

But even this limited experiment made it abundantly clear that the pyramids are very human monuments, created through long experience and tremendous skill, but without any kind of secret sophistication. More than we could capture on film, our trials resulted in many insights and deep admiration for the skill of ancient builders. ... Where we ... failed to match their best results..., it was due to the lack of several lifetimes of practice and not because we were missing some mysterious technology.

Some scenes are described in a way that you'd expect more in a work of fiction - making this book all the more of a good read:

Ali walked up on to the ramp of the partially built sandpit. The 13-metre obelisk was sitting on sled and rollers behind him. He stood at the edge of the pit, a thin, serious man in a flapping, flowing galabiyya, lighthing a cigarette in cupped hands and looking out over the desert. The breeze blew away the pungent Egyptian tobacco smoke. He was putting together an idea.

Towards the end of the book, in the chapter about the Inca, there is some more I want to share here. The crew of film makers and experts usually draw on local people to put their plans into reality, and freeing a huge block of stone that was quarried by the Inca but never made it to the construction site saw the enlisting of a whole nearby village.

Did the people of Ollantaytambo ever doubt their ability to free the Inca block? [They were] surprised by the idea. "No, of course not, ... people like us put it there, so people like us can make it move."

This experiment had ably demonstrated one of the true legacies of the Inca empire: Throughout the Andes, large groups of men and women still assemble to perform the community labour tax which they levy upon themselves, combining work and festivities for the common good. In Inca times, labour for the state was socially based rather than an individual burden.

This and a lot more I learnt from "Secrets of Lost Empires"; I was a bit bored and disappointed with the chapter about the Colosseum, but that may well have been because I read so much about the Romans earlier this year and the chapter largely focused on things I already knew instead of providing me with new and interesting facts and context.
My favourite chapter was the last one, about the Inca.

And now, I think it is time for fiction again.

Changing Faces

2011-12-03T12:47:00.001+01:00

Credit for this post clearly goes to my blogger friend Mel, whose post here made me comment, and the more I was thinking about the subject, the more I wanted to write about it.

Actually, this is not my first post brushing the topic of self-perception and how it so often widely differs from how others perceive us; two years ago, I wrote this.

As I said in my comment on Mel's post, I know what she means and often find the woman who looks back at me in the mirror has a different face on different days of the week and at different times of the day.

Sometimes, as mentioned in my comment, Mirror-Woman gets me by surprise - quite nastily, too, like on that day when I was waiting for the train home after a particularly exhausting day at the office some years ago.

When the train pulled in, I stood aside on the platform to let passengers get off, and incidentally caught my own reflection in the glass panel of the door. What I saw was an old woman, her face lined with tiredness, the corners of her mouth turned down and her eyes weary. It was NOT a pretty sight, and I was quite shocked.

I am 43 now and certainly entitled to a wrinkle or two, but there and then I looked a lot older - to be honest, I looked as old and knackered as I felt at that moment.

Since then, a lot has happened; two years ago, the sudden death of my husband meant not only a big change in my life, but also a total shift in perspective - among other things, I have elminated unhealthy stress from my life, and feel (and hopefully look!) a lot better for it.

Still, there are times when, for instance, I am getting ready for an evening out, even putting some make-up on (which is a rare occurrance for me, and there is nothing on my skin, obviously no powder or cream, just a dab of lipstick and some mascara on my eyelashes), and feel pretty enough to attempt taking a new self-portrait to use as my profile picture on a social platform (not FaceBook, I am not there and will never be).

So I go about taking the picture with the help of my camera's self-timer, but when I see the result, I think no, that's not the face I should have - I feel not as ugly as this.

Then, a few days later, I take another picture, for no special reason, simply because I feel like it, with no make-up on, dressed in my most comfy house clothes, and find it does not make a difference whether I make an effort or not, this one is not uglier than the first one.

My face is probably that part of myself I will never feel really, really good about, as opposed to most of the rest of me, which I quite like showing off (you'll see what I mean once I get my "Autumn Wardrobe" post up). And there is, I guess, the biggest difference in self-perception and how others see me: I do not think I am downright ugly, but I think my face is the part of me least worth looking at. My self-esteem is by no means low (quite the contrary, which some people find rather off-putting), but I have no idea of what is more realistic - how I perceive myself, or how others see me? And what is the secret in making others see me the way I think I am?

So far, I have not found an answer to either question, but the topic continues to fascinate me.

November Summary

2011-11-30T09:28:00.001+01:00

Several times on my blog, I have gone on about how I feel about the beginning of a new month, but I think a summary at the end of a month can also be good.

During November, I worked mostly from home, as usual; went to the office for a day, took a business trip to Austria, read a few books, worked out at the gym, had lunch at my parents' place three or four times, walked across the Christmas market on the opening night, shed some tears around the 2nd anniversary of my husband's death, learnt quite a lot from what I was reading in my weekly paper, on the blogs I am following and also from the comments some of you are kind enough to leave here, enjoyed the mostly mild and sunny weather, went on a family outing, came 2nd with my team at the pub quiz, made a Hefezopf and generally had a good time.

(Most of what I have summarized here can be found in the posts I have written this month)

A "classic" for November in this part of the globe, but such foggy, mysterious mornings like this view from my kitchen window were quite rare this year.

The clear, frosty mornings were more frequent, looking just as beautiful in their own different way.

A close-up of my neighbour's frost-covered roses.

And then there were quinces!

We have a tree in the back garden; it has grown quite out of hand, really, not letting any sunshine through to the ground around it. And every year, it produces an abundance of this delicious looking fruit - trouble is, they can not be eaten just like that; they are rock-hard and need boiling for hours and hours and hours before they turn into anything edible, such as jam, and not many people are willing to go to such lenghts.

Still, because yellow is my favourite colour and these quinces were just so beautiful, I took one and am using it now as one of the very few decorative items in my flat.

These pictures show quite well what the colour of this year's November is in my mind - certainly not the grey typically associated with the month!

Hefezopf - a Classic Swabian Tea (or Coffee) Cake

2011-11-27T17:47:00.000+01:00

Time for another recipe!

This one is for Hefezopf (literally "Yeast Plait"), a typical Swabian cake usually had with coffee or tea, no matter what the occasion. It is served in my region all year round, and an all-time favourite for funerals, birthdays, baptisms, weddings, gatherings without any particular reason; for breakfeast or in the afternoon.

Today, my parents had invited all of us (meaning the closest circle of family and friends) to meet for brunch at their place, to start off the Christmas season, since it is the first of the four Advent Sundays today, and everyone was asked to bring something.

My contribution was the Hefezopf, and here is how I made it this morning just before setting off to their house:

You need

500 g plain flour (not of the self-raising kind!)

20 g yeast

80 g sugar

1/4 litre of milk

100 g butter

a pinch of salt

one or two eggs, depending on their size (I used two small ones)

about 100 g raisins

Mix the dry ingredients first. Then add the yeast.

Before you add the eggs, make sure they do not come straight from the fridge but are at room temperature.

Make sure the milk is luke-warm before adding it.

Melt the butter in a pan or in the microwave before adding it.

Do not yet add the raisins.

Mix well. I did not use an electric mixer, but my favourite, very old wooden spoon (I am not sure whether it is from my grandmother's or my mother's household, but I've had it "forever" and it has served me well over the years).

Cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place for at least an hour.

When the dough has had time to rise a bit, add the raisins and prepare your baking board or table top or kitchen counter work surface or whereever you wish to make the plait on by spreading some flour on it. Add one or two handfuls of flour to the dough as well, and make sure your hands are well covered in flour.

Knead and beat the dough with your hands until it is smooth and does not stick to your hands anymore, at the same time working the raisins into the dough.

When that's done, divide the lump of dough into three parts.

Roll out the three strands into oblong bits of more or less the same length. They really do not have to look perfect, so don't worry if they are a bit uneven or lumpy, as long as the dough in itself is smooth.

Now join the three strands at one end and plait them as you would do with three strands of hair when making a plait, and join them again at the end.

Put into the oven for about 40 minutes at 200 Celsius; of course I do not need to tell you to check after 30 and 35 minutes, because no two ovens are exactly the same.

The Hefezopf is tasty enough on its own, but it is at its best when you spread some butter on it as you would on a slice of bread, and have coffee or tea or hot chocolate with it.

It made a nice additon to our brunch!

Read in 2011 - 27: As the Pig Turns

2011-11-20T09:28:00.000+01:00

Years ago, my mother-in-law sent me the first three of four books of a series I have come to really enjoy: the Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton.

There is an official website for all things Agatha, and other series by the same author. Now, if you are looking for the most elaborate plots, the most descriptive landscape scenes, the most atmospheric places and high-brow literature, you will be disappointed.

But if you are looking for fast-paced, entertaining and sometimes rather comical "Cosy Mysteries", then I think you will like Agatha Raisin.

"As the Pig Turns" is the latest in the series, and if there is one thing I don't like about these books is that I finish them so quickly.

Things really do happen fast, and sometimes M.C. Beaton (real name Marion Chesney) skips through several months in one brief paragraph. Still, the recurring cast of characters is, in the course of the series, portrayed deeply enough to make you think you "know" those people, and can get a rather clear image in your mind of what they look and speak and move like.

This time, a murder is committed in the nearby Cotswolds village of Winter Parva (it does not really exist, just as Agatha's chosen home village of Carsely does not exist, but the way these villages are described, you can tell they are modeled on real life). The dead body is displayed in the most gruesome fashion, and turns out to be that of a policeman generally hated by everyone - but hated enough to be murdered?

Agatha is set to find out, and in the course of her investigation, unlike in most of the other parts of the series, she herself is never really in danger, but several of her friends and staff at her detective agency are almost killed.

Agatha is famous for always needing a man she can be obsessed about in her life. Her ex-husband makes an appearance, as does her ex-(? really?)lover Charles (I still think she should set up shop with him for good; he is my favourite male character in the series and I know exactly what he looks and speaks like). In the last chapter of the book, though, we witness the start of something new - the author clearly leaves room here for the next instalment, which I am already looking forward to.

Let me give you a few examples of typical Agatha-Raisin-style bits:

While Agatha and her ex-husband James (he had helped her in the past with her investigations) have a meal at a restaurant together, they discuss the latest developments in the case:

"Did Gary Beech leave a will?" asked James.
"Yes. He left everything to Amy." She pulled out her mobile and dialled Patrick [an employee at her detective agency]. When she rang off, she said: "No further news. There are the diamonds, of course. That's probably what they were looking for. Maybe Amy put the house up for sale. The police have surely finished with it."
"Let's just enjoy our dinner, go home and change, and then we'll break in."
Agatha grinned happily. "Quite like old times."

A short but nice description of Agatha's surroundings:

Agatha could almost smell the countryside coming to life after the bitter winter. The sky above was pale blue, and somewhere nearby a blackbird poured down its song.
It was on mornings like this that Agatha realized why she loved living in the Cotswolds so much. Perhaps, she thought, there is nowhere more beautiful in Britain than this man-made piece of England with its thatched cottages and gardens crammed with flowers.

At a banquet held to honour the "Woman of the Year", the "host" is described in a way I can really see and hear him:

Guy Brandon took the microphone. [He] was wearing a pale blue sweater over a striped shirt and very tight jeans.
He began to 'amuse'. He twittered, he clowned, he laughed hilariously at his own jokes, and in all, thought Agatha, he bored for Britain.

One of Agatha's employees, 18-year-old Toni, features quite a lot in this book. She has a rather different life from that of many other 18-year-olds, taking her work seriously:

She often felt quite lonely in the evenings these days. Her old school friends seemed like strangers. She felt she had moved on out of their world: a world of discos and binge drinking and dreaming of becoming celebrities without getting any skills such as acting, singing or dancing.

While I fear this really is true for many teenagers (not only in Britain), I know there are still some Toni-like, responsible and level-headed girls and boys out there; one of them being, for instance, my niece Beth - she takes school seriously, works at a book shop in her spare time and still does not forget to have fun. Last month, she turned 18; next year, she is going to start at Liverpool Uni (if all goes well), to study Egyptology.

Well, this was not intended to be about my family, but simply the book review of my latest read.

And now, I am turning to non-fiction again.

Read in 2011 - 26: Friedrich II.

2011-11-18T15:35:00.000+01:00

Friedrich II. (born 1196, died 1250) is someone I have been fascinated with since my teenage years, when I first read a biography of him. For Christmas 1985 (I was 17 then), my parents gave me a historic novel (much more a history book than a novel, really, since everything was well researched and based on facts) about Friedrich. Only 3 months before, I had travelled rather extensively on Sicily and seen for myself many of the places where Friedrich lived, and I had stood at his tomb in the cathedral of Palermo (I have written about that here).
More than 25 years later, in the literature section of my weekly newspaper, the ZEIT, was a short article about a new Friedrich biography. Since I still had a gift certificate for one of the book shops in my town, I decided to use it on that biography: "Friedrich II." by Olaf B. Rader.

It would be too much to go into all the detail here of Friedrich's life and death and the times he lived in; for a summary, you can go to the wikipedia article about him.

Professor Rader did, in my opinion, a very good job in that he does not simply repeat what others had written before him (and believe me, a great deal has been written about Friedrich!) but he puts the contrasting descriptions, legends and myths that started to form even while the man himself was still alive in context with what we actually do know as historically secure information.
A lot of the legends are explained that way; not much different from today's journalism, the "facts" presented about a certain topic, a person or a country dipend very much from the writer's perspective and opinion.

The book is non-fiction, but written so well and entertaining it is not boring for a second. There are illustrations and a map at the end as well as a very useful family tree - with so many Friedrichs and Heinrichs and the succession of wives "our" Friedrich had, it is easy to get confused.
Equally useful is the timeline at the end of the book.

The author looks at Friedrich's life not just from one angle, but scrutinizes his subject under various aspects such as "The Seafarer", "The Lover", "The Poet", "The Tyrant", "The Antichrist", "The Emperor", "The Falconer" and many more. The picture that emerges is that of a highly complex character who lived and ruled in a very complex environment - certainly not an easy life, in spite of all the wealth, and also certainly never boring.

I learnt some (to me) astonishing things about how the administration of an empire and the royal court was organised in the Middle Ages, and how advanced some of the ideas back then were.

This was a book I do not regret having spent a gift certificate on - I am definitely going to read it again at some stage.

Look Above!

2011-11-16T08:11:00.001+01:00

No matter where I am, in a private home or a stately one, in a concert hall or a shopping mall, at the hairdresser's or in an office, I look at the ceiling.

My interest in ceilings stems from a time when I was so bored (today people would say I was "underchallenged") at school that I invented a game that helped me through seemingly endless lessons, and it soon developed into something I still do today, not only to keep my mind occupied when there is not much else I can do, but also because it is fun:

In any room, in any building, imagine the room was upside down and the ceiling was the floor, complete with all its arches, stukko ornaments, beams, fire alarms, sound and light systems and so on. Where would you sit? Which part of the room would you explore first? How would you get from one corner to the other? Would you have to jump or climb your way across?

Last Sunday I had the chance to visit parts of Ludwigsburg's castle/stately home I had never been to before (see my previous post for more info), and of course I looked at the ceilings.

Here is some of what I found - not all pictures show the colours as bright as they really are, since lighting was not always ideal for taking pictures.

Let me start with some typical baroque detail; these are, of course, no real jewels; they are made of plaster. What IS real, though, is the gold. All throughout Ludwigsburg castle, the gold ornaments you see on ceilings and walls are covered in 22 1/2 carat cold leaf.

I guess you can easily spot where the detail in the first picture is taken from here on the bigger picture. Good job my camera can zoom in!

All around the room, there are portraits of, I believe, allegories for the arts and crafts, or maybe they are supposed to be muses.

Some of the portraits deserve a closer llook, such as this beautiful lady.

Or look at him! That haughty look on his face is excellent, isn't it! I like to think the artist portrayed people known to him in real life.

Another typical baroque ceiling.

Don't you wish you could join the lady on the balustrade?

One of many doors that are usually closed to the public. I am 5' 8'' and I reach about half way up that door.

Whoever painted this did not forget to give the owl its dinner!

Detail from the door picture. Now, I usually do have a thing for fauns (I just wish they weren't so hairy), but the wide mouth and big moustache and beard on this one are a bit too much.

Tucked away in a corner of a staircase normally not open to the public, I found this dog.

The condition in which they found some of the doors before starting to restore them.

One last look at some roof detail. See Father Time sat beneath the clock? A good reminder right now that it is time for me to get a shower and get dressed and start working!

A Family Outing

2011-11-15T08:05:00.001+01:00

On one of the blogs I have recently begun to follow, the author shows pictures of his family which, even without the accompanying quotes and comments, reveal his love for them. Now, I'd love to show you a picture I took of my parents and my sister on Sunday, but they won't have it - I am strictly forbidden to post pictures of people other than myself, and of course I respect their decision in spite of not fully understanding it.

Still, I can tell you about what we did on Sunday, and show pictures of the event without letting you see my Mystery Family :-)

My home town Ludwigsburg is famous for its castle; I've posted pictures of it several times before, for instance here and here.

It is said to be Germany's biggest Baroque castle still standing, and visitors can go for a guided tour in the state rooms, something I have done so many times (and will keep doing) that I could be a tour guide myself.

Last Sunday, though, a small trade fair was held in and around the castle: several companies of Ludwigsburg and the surrounding area presented themselves and their products. There were stalls where you could buy food, such as the delicious Flammkuchen being baked on site in a big wood oven, jewellery, toys, clothes, Christmas and other ornaments, wine, cosmetics, lingerie and more; there was also a stall of one of several dance schools, advertising for new participants in their courses, a choir, a band and an exhibition about the challenges encountered and the methods used in restoring to their former glory the wall paintings, wooden doors and printed wallpaper serveral centuries old that adorn the castle.

Most interesting for me were not the people or the companies and their products, but the rooms we got to see - these are rooms not normally part of the tour, and I was able to see corners and stair cases and small rooms in the castle where I have never set foot before.

It was lovely to spend this sunny but cold November afternoon with my family, just the four of us, and I hope to convey some of it with these pictures - without acutally showing the most important people attending :-)

View from the South terrace/balcony towards the "tiny hunting lodge" that was built there in order for the Duke of Württemberg to have parties and dinners with his hunting friends and other guests.
It was still overcast when we arrived at around noon. The dinosaurs to the left are the remnants of the pumpkin exhibition and will not stay there.

The same view, zoomed in.

Flammkuchen, straight from the oven! There is mulled wine in the glass behind it.

A little later, the sun came out, and it turned out be yet another glorious SUNday. Cars are not permitted into the inner courtyard of the castle; the one you can see to the left is part of a car dealer's exhibition that was allowed for the day.

Ever wanted a red Porsche? Well, you probably didn't have this one in mind :-)

There will be a seperate post about some of the odd or beautiful detail I photographed, as well as the ceiling and wall paintings.

Read in 2011 - 25: Der Verräter von Westminster

2011-11-13T09:16:00.000+01:00

After "The Audacity of Hope" was such a remarkable, interesting and at the same time pleasant read, my next book was somehow doomed to be a bit disappointing - and sadly, "Der Verräter von Westminster" by Anne Perry was just that.

Having read several parts of Anne Perry's series starring Thomas Pitt and his clever, unconventional wife Charlotte before - and enjoyed them -, I now wonder whether I simply never noticed the shortcomings in the actual writing, or my personal standards of what makes a good book have risen lately, or this one is just not quite as good as the others.

The series featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, plus a cast of recurring characters such as the street-wise, clever and pragmatic house maid Gracie; Charlotte's majestic, beautiful and extremely well-connected octogenarian Great-Aunt Vespasia and Thomas' boss, the lonely Victor Narraway who is secretly in love with Charlotte, is mainly set in Victorian London, with the exception of trips abroad or to places outside London on their various quests. Thomas starts out as a policeman, and later on in the series he is asked to join Her Majesty's secret service. Charlotte married him out of love, below her rank, but because she still has all those contacts in London's High Society, she is often able to help her husband with his inquiries by informally getting information from people who would never speak to him confidentially and in places where he would never be allowed in as a guest, only as a policeman.

You can read more about the series and the author on her website.

Sounds quite good, doesn't it? Well, until recently, I thought it was; I liked the thorough but unpretentious way Victorian life in various households of different class was portrayed, against the backdrop of political, social and economical realities of the time, something that is only possible with a lot of research.

But in this book of the series, by the original title "Betrayal at Lisson Grove" (why on earth did the German publishers think it fit to change this into "Der Verräter von Westminster", which literally means "The Traitor from Westminster"?), for the first time I noticed something odd about Anne Perry's style, and I'm afraid it is not the translator's fault; I guess I would have felt the same had I read the book in English:

The characters seem to have a rather strange way of dealing with their feelings and emotions. No, I do not mean the restrictions Victorian society placed upon men and women alike, only allowing what was deemed "proper conduct" between people who met at parties, at the theatre, on the street or at work. That would have fitted the story well and would have been perfectly explainable.

But every five pages or so (I did not actually count), any one of the characters "shudders" or "shivers" or "quivers" or "twitches" - no matter whether what has been said or thought justifies such a shock. Thomas and Charlotte, Victor Narraway and many others shudder and shiver their way through the elaborate story of a plot directed against Her Majesty and, ultimately, the whole order of the Great British Empire.

At first, I merely felt mildly irritated by all the quivering and trembling, but after a while, I'm afraid I have to say it started to become a bit ridiculous. I even began to wait for the next shudder running down someone's spine, and I was never disappointed. Only towards the end, when the story picks up speed and the plot is uncovered and now must be stopped before anything too dramatic happens, the shivering stops - maybe there wasn't enough time, or maybe the author forgot about it.

I guess I'll read one more book from the series, in order to find out whether that is her "mark" and I just never noticed it or this book was an exception and she tried something new.

Anyway, if you like more or less cosy Victorian mysteries, you will like this book - hopefully, you are less picky than I am :-)

Salzburg Sunrise

2011-11-12T10:34:00.002+01:00

Today, I want to show you the view I had from my hotel room in Salzburg, Austria, on Wednesday morning. Don't ask me the name of the mountain - Salzburg is surrounded by similarly dramatic and beautiful formations on all sides, but I am not very good at the geography of the place, I'm afraid.

Salzburg was a business trip; the biggest fair for the gastronomical and hotel industry was held there, and since I provide the point of sale hardware everyone who runs a hotel or restaurant, pub, coffee bar, night club etc. needs, and several of my customers were exhibiting at the fair, I took the train to Austria on Tuesday afternoon and spent Wednesday at the fair.

My hotel room was nice, surprisingly spacious, very clean and I liked the striped curtains (while I do not have any curtains anywhere in my home, I do like them in other people's places).

Something about the rug in my room struck me as odd, and then I realized what it was: among the usual camels, hyenas, llamas and other desert motifs, there was what can only represent a Rubik's cube - see for yourself! Do you remember them from the 1980s?

A cross on the wall is something you'll only find in Bavarian or Austrian hotel rooms (Italy and Spain, too, I guess); I don't think I have seen one anywhere else, and I have seen my fair share of hotel rooms in various parts of Germany.

As mentioned, the fair is all about what people in a restaurant or hotel could ever possibly need, from hair dryers to table cloths to huge industrial dishwashers to scents for the air condition to special pillows for people with back problems to the aprons waiters wear to china and cutlery to hotel room keys and security systems to napkins to lighting to steam cookers to furniture to cakes and meats and pasta and sauces and and and... the list is long, the halls were large and brimming with people and booths, and I had a good time. Anytime I felt a bit hungry, I simply went to one of the stalls where some cooking show or other was going on, patiently listened and watched through the presentation and then had a sample of what they had just made, from burgers to ice cream, it was all there. And of course there were the manufacturers of coffee machines and the companies who roast and sell coffee beans and other coffee products - so, no shortage of that all day, either!

This huge stag (about twice as tall as I) was quite an eyecatcher in one of the halls. I think it is very kitschy - but so kitschy it is cool! I asked the lady at the booth whether it was OK if I took a picture, and she had nothing against it. There; some Christmassy glamour, posted less than two weeks before the Christmas market in my home town begins!

Read in 2011 - 24: The Audacity of Hope

2011-11-08T15:04:00.003+01:00

For a long time, I have meant to read Michelle Obama's biography, but you know what it's like with books on your "To Be Read" list (either physically on a piece of paper or mentally, like mine); sometimes you simply do not happen to come across it at your local library, and you do not feel like buying yet another book that will leave you with even less of the precious space on your shelf.
Therefore, I was pleased to take Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" home from the library some weeks ago, and it was a good choice, a very good choice actually.

Barack Obama wrote this in 2006, when he was the junior U.S. senator from Illinois and lived in Chicago. It wasn't his first book; he had previously published "Dreams from My Father" (which I have not read), a book that made it to the New York Times beststeller list.

The book is divided into nine chapters with headlines such as "Values", "Faith", "Race", "The World Beyond Our Borders" and "Family". The writing is personal and fluent; you can tell the words come from one person and not from a team of ghostwriters. It is a pleasure to read, and (for me) a rather instructive pleasure at that.
Of course I did learn something about the political system in the U.S. back at school, but there, more emphasis was placed on learning about our own country, and I must admit I can not remember in detail the lessons about political systems in other countries.
So this book gave me an insight not only into the structure of politics in the U.S. but also into the way an American perceives his own country, and the place of that country in relation to the rest of the world.

Some passages I found so remarkable for one reason or other that I want to share them here.
Let me begin at the beginning. When I started reading this, I showed the book to RJ and he asked what it was about. This bit from the prologue is what I read to him:

That's the topic of this book: how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life. This isn't to say that I know exactly how to do it. I don't. Although I discuss in each chapter a number of our most pressing policy challenges, and suggest in broad strokes the path I believe we should follow, my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete. I offer no unifying theory of American government, nor do these pages provide a manifesto for action, complete with charts and graphs, timetables and ten-point-plans.

Instead what I offer is something more modest: personal reflections on those values and ideals that have led me to public life, some thoughts on the ways that our current political discourse unnecessarily divides us, and my own best assessment - based on my experience as a senator and lawyer, husband and father, Christian and skeptic - of the ways we can ground our politics in the notion of a common good.

Quite a bit further into the book, under the chapter named "Opportunity", I found this interesting bit about oil:

The United States has 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. We use 25 percent of the world's oil. We can't drill our way out of the problem.

What we can do is create renewable, cleaner energy sources for the twenty-first century.

Obama says about his mother:

...she possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a reverence for life and its precious, tranistory nature that could properly be described as devotional. During the course of the day, she might come across a painting, read a line of poetry, or hear a piece of music, and I would see tears well up in her eyes. Sometimes, as I was growing up, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to have me gaze at a particularly spectacular moon, or she would have me close my eyes as we walked together at twilight to the rustle of leaves.

Throughout the book, we catch glimpses of home life at the Obama's (while the most personal chapter is the last one, titled "Family"), such as this one:

Later that night, back home in Chicago, I sat at the dinner table, watching Malia and Sasha as they laughed and bickered and resisted their string beans before their mother chased them up the stairs and to their baths. Alone in the kitchen washing the dishes, I imagined my two girls growing up, and I felt the ache that every parent must feel at one time or another, that desire to snatch up each moment of your child's presence, and never let go...

The home life bits are never there simply to show us "this is what we live like, we are just an ordinary family"; instead, they are used to introduce or conclude a specific thought or idea, and are always imbedded in the context of the whole chapter.

Some very honest and clear words about U.S. foreign policy can be found in the chapter "The World Beyond Our Borders", for instance:

Indonesia also provides a handy record of U.S. foreign policy over the past fifty years. In broad outline at least, it's all there: our role in liberating former colonies and creating international institutions to help manage the post-World War II order; our tendency to view nations and conflicts through the prism of the Cold War; our tireless promotion of American-style capitalism and multinational corporations; the tolerance and occasional encouragement of tyranny, corruption, and environmental degradation when it served our interest; our optimism once the Cold War ended that Big Macs and the Internet would lead to the end of historical conflicts; [...] the realization that the wonders of globalization might also facilitate economic volatility, the spread of pandemics, and terrorism.

I recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their political orientation or the country they live in. There is, I believe, something in it for all of us.
(And I still want to read Michelle Obama's biography)

Lunch at my Mum's

2011-11-07T18:04:00.001+01:00

Less than a month ago, I posted about having lunch at my mum's already; you can find the Sauerkraut recipe and pictures here.

Today, as every week (mostly on Mondays or Tuesdays), I found myself walking over to my parents' place at a quarter to one, once again looking forward to what would no doubt be yet another lovely lunch hour, spent eating the most delicious home-made food while chatting to my mum.

She made waffles today, but not like the very lovely-looking ones Nan made Sunday night and showed us on her blog; instead, my mum's waffles were salty ones, meant as my main course and served with a salad consisting of lettuce and radishes that was lip-lickingly well made with croutons and a mustard-spiced dressing.

For starters, we had Hugo - THE cocktail of Summer 2011 in our area, having replaced the formerly most popular Aperol Spritz, which in turn had replaced Caipirinha (you'll still find those two served at any imaginable occasion, but Hugo is certainly No. 1 of the current drinks chart here). Hugo is made of prosecco, elderflower syrup, garnished with slices of lime and leaves of peppermint and sometimes made a little less sweet and strong by adding some sparkling mineral water. It is very refreshing, and we quite like it.

Dessert was a piece of Linzer Torte, a rather rich cake my mum made on the weekend.

Now for the waffles - here is my mum's recipe:

You need

125 g flour

1/2 tea spoon salt

1 table spoon mixed herbs

50 g soft lard

75 g sour cream

4 table spoons grated cheese

2 eggs

some sparkling mineral water

50 g ham or bacon, chopped up

Mix well in a blender or using a mixer. Add the ham or bacon at the very end. The dough should be "viscous", neither too thick nor too thin, sort of half-liquid. To make it right and add that extra bit of "fluff", add a bit of sparkling water (maybe 4 or 5 table spoons).

Of course you can make it without the ham / bacon, if you prefer your food to be vegetarian or if you don't have any at hand.

Put some lard on the waffle iron and, when it is hot, spread about 3 table spoons of dough onto the iron, then close the iron and bake until golden-brown (with crispy edges, yummmmm!!!).

The amount described here is enough for about 6 to 7 waffles, depending on their size. I am not ashamed to tell you that I ate 5 of those lovelies today for lunch!

Thank you, mum, for another delightful meal with you!

By the way, ever since we started this in May of this year, I have not had the same dish twice yet. Don't you wish you had my mum living close to your place? :-)

Since everyone seems to be showing their colours...

2011-11-06T17:24:00.001+01:00

...let me show you mine, too:

This is what the weather has been like for the past few weeks here, and not much change is forecast for the coming week. It has been unusually sunny and mild for November which is typically a cold, dark and wet month here in Germany.

The view from my kitchen window (facing East) shows all sorts of colours and still a surprising amount of green.

The cherry tree in front of the North-facing window has turned a yellow so bright it lights up the whole kitchen - almost like the foamy cloud of white blossoms it boasts for about two weeks in the spring.

And I liked this beautiful sunrise so much I simply had to try and capture it on camera:

By the Sound of the Bell

2011-11-03T08:17:00.000+01:00

Since my childhood, I've always loved the sound of church bells, and in spite of me not being a religious person anymore, I still like it, and maybe writing this down helps me to understand better why that is so.
My home town has somewhere around 89.000 inhabitants, and in the small area that I consider my neighbourhood, there are two churches close enough for me to hear their bells. There are three more in town centre, a bit further away from my house, but still within hearing distance when the wind is right. And while you'll hardly ever see me inside any of those buildings, I like the fact that they are there and add to the orderly structure of my everyday life which is so important to me. I need the tidy, stable outer frame to keep the rather chaotic, whirling and colourful wilderness of my mind within acceptable borders, I guess, and the bells contribute to that.

This has been so particularly since I have started working from home earlier this year, as explained in this post (and mentioned in some others; if you want to know more, simply put "working from home" in the search bar on my blog).

With the exception of the days when I have to get up really early to catch a train or plane, I do not set my alarm clock anymore; instead, I let the church bells wake me.
This is, I think, common in most towns nowadays, at least in Germany: The bells chime only from 6.00 or 7.00 in the morning until 11.00 pm or midnight, but not during the night. In my town, they start at 7.00 - just right for me to get up and begin the working day with enough time to have a mug of coffee, read the blogs I am following, sort through the first batch of emails for the day, have a shower, get dressed and eat my muesli.

The bells announce every quarter of the hour with one, two, three and four chimes. After the fourth chime, the full hour is struck. And after the seven, noon and six p.m. chimes, there is a pause of maybe half a minute or less, and then a long, resounding chime announces that it is now time to begin the working day, or have your lunch break, or end the working day. It is those long chimes I particularly like; I don't know how better to describe them than as a soft, dark red velvety carpet of sound covering, at least for a little while, the neighbourhood, muffling all the noise our busy daily lives create.

Much to my dismay, at the end of summer I suddenly noticed the long morning chime was gone. The noon one is still "on", and I am ashamed to say that I am not sure about the 6.00 pm one, but the morning one is definitely gone. Now I am wondering whether that is a seasonal thing, and hope it will be back in the spring. Maybe the authorities regulating (like ALL things in Germany are regulated, one way or other!) church bells have determined that in this town, people should not be "disturbed" by the long morning chime during the winter, when it is bad enough having to get up while it is still dark outside? I really don't know, and wonder who I could ask to find out.

Anyway, the bells at 7.00 in the morning start me off a lot less apruptly than any alarm clock could do, in a gentle manner as if saying "Look, the day is starting, how about you?". Then, while I am at work, during the afternoon I usually allow myself a little coffee break. When the weather is fine, I will sit on my window sill (there are several pictures of that on my blog) and enjoy a few sunrays. This coffee break is always measured by the quarter hour bells of the church closest to my home, not by some boss telling me to get back to work now.
And in the evening, sometimes at 5.00, more often at 6.00, along with the bell I greet the beginning of leisure time, often leaving the house going to the gym or (only in summer) for a run to the sound of the bell.
When on weekends I occasionally lay down for a little nap, these naps are also measured by the sound of the bell.

I like it that way, and hopefully, will be able to enjoy this peaceful pacemaker of my days and nights for many years to come.

Before October Ends...

2011-10-29T12:15:00.000+02:00

...let me show you the marvellous sunrise I observed yesterday morning just before 8.00 from my kitchen window.

The saying goes that such a colourful sunrise means bad weather, but all of yesterday was sunny and mild. Today looks a bit overcast, and at only 10 Celsius (50 F), it is cooler than yesterday, so maybe the saying is right.

My parents and I are going to visit my godmother and her family in a nearby small town this afternoon, to uphold the lovely German tradition of meeting for coffee and (preferably home-made) cake.

Her daughter, who I have not seen in - I think - 10 years, will also be there, and I am quite looking forward to this.

Since Monday night, my computer is back up and running! I can play my games again, and of course there is now nothing that keeps me from blogging more (I didn't really want to use the corporate laptop for that; my previous post was from there and it was NOT done during working hours, but still...).

Enjoy the weekend, whatever you'll be doing!

I've Been Watching...

2011-10-20T21:30:00.000+02:00

...more telly during this week than usual (I usually don't watch TV at all), mostly because I can not use my personal computer these days (the HDD is gone and I may or may not lose some pictures, saved games and other stuff, entirely due to me being lazy about regularly backing it up) to play my favourite computer game, and because I was in between books.

Last night, I happened to come across a movie that had already started; the first 15 minutes or so were over by the time I got there. What I saw was a youngish man sitting next to a life-size, life-like doll (the kind that is sold as sex doll) at the dinner table, and another man and woman (both real, not dolls) sitting opposite. They were eating, and talking, and it quickly transpired from the conversation that the man with the doll was firmly convinced that the doll was a real woman, while the couple (obviously close friends or relatives to him) were, for some as yet unknown to me reason, playing along with him, also acting as if the doll was real.

This bit I found intriguing enough to stay on that channel and watch the whole movie, which was "Lars and the Real Girl" from 2007, starring Ryan Goslin, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson, many other people and, of course, a "Real Doll" (as they are really called).

I had not known of or heard about this movie before, and so I had no idea what it really was about. Instead, for a long time I was waiting for the doll actually coming to life - do you remember the 80s movie in which a shop mannequin comes alive? Or "Splash", also from the 80s, which features Daryl Hannah as a real mermaid? There were quite a few such fairytale stories in those days, and although they are all more or less silly, they make for an entertaining two hours or so, and so I thought, why not, and kept watching.

Well, in "Lars and the Real Girl", the doll does not come alive. Never. The young man who is convinced she is his living, breathing girlfriend is the only one who sees her like that; to everyone else, she is just a doll. At least to begin with.

Lars is a bit of a loner and has problems with social interactions; at home, at work, and at the church he regularly attends. As the story develops, we learn that these problems stem from an unhappy childhood. Lars has reached a point where nobody can even touch him - literally. It hurts him, he says, as when you've been out in the cold for too long and your frozen limbs slowly warm up again.

Because Lars has become so delusional about "Bianca", and his brother and sister-in-law deeply care about him and worry about his mental health, they agree to atheir doctor's suggestion to play along with it, pretending to welcome Lars' "girlfriend" into the family. Bianca gets to sleep in the guest room; her inability to move on her own is explained by Lars with an illness and very low blood pressure, and she is taken around in a wheel chair all day. Because of her "illness", Lars and Bianca go to see the doctor (played by the wonderful and wonderfully beautiful Patricia Clarkson) regularly, and while Bianca has to "rest" after her "treatment", the doctor talks to Lars, trying to get to the root of the problem.

In their day to day lives, Lars works at an office where a young woman is clearly interested in him. He shies away from her, and yet it bothers him when eventually she has a boyfriend. Lars' brother and sister-in-law are going to have their first child, and their daily and weekly routine quickly incorporates Bianca, as it would if she was a real human being with special needs. She is washed and clothed, "fed", taken out for shopping and to church, and put to bed like a child at night.

The small town community soon adopt her for Lars' sake, who introduces the doll to everyone as his girlfriend. They welcome the couple at church with a bunch of flowers for Bianca, and they even take her out for some volunteer work such as reading to a group of children, or for a haircut at the beauty salon.

Nobody has any idea where it is all going to lead, and, frankly, I found it at times rather too unrealistic how everybody rallies round and joins the pretend play. In all communities, no matter how big or small, there is bound to be someone who won't do what everybody else sees as the decent thing to do, and I would have expected Lars and Bianca to be ridiculed by some people.

Eventually, through all the interactions brought on through Bianca with his neighbours, co-workers and church members, Lars becomes less of a loner and his social interactions less awkward.
How he finds his way back into the real world, where dolls are just dolls and neither can nor should replace human friends, I won't tell you here, because it would mean to spoil it for you, should you decide to watch the movie yourself.

It is a rather sweet story about friendship and love, in the family and out, and worth watching, I think.

The season and the weather are used as dramatic devices. When the story begins, it is winter, with deep snow everywhere, and people all dressed in heavy coats and woolly hats, scarves and gloves. With the unfolding of events, there is a subtle change in the weather, even a day or two of thawing, before frost hits again and it snows once more. However, the film ends with the first fine days of warmer weather and a promise of spring and better times to come. All this is subtly related to what happens with Lars and Bianca and Lars' colleague.

If you happen to come across it somewhere, maybe you'll see what I mean.

Let The Music Play

2011-10-18T18:58:00.002+02:00

This post is going to be a bit different in that I will "show" you some music (one can't really "show" music, because music is not visual but acoustic, right?), so if you are generally not too keen on clicking youtube videos, just skip this post and wait for the next one.
Some of you may remember that I was telling you about my first dance lesson ever back in March. There has been some progress since, in spite of a 2 1/2 month break during The Summer We Did Not Have, mainly due to a different schedule for the dance parties.
By now, I am quite able to spend two thirds of the time on the dance floor when we go to the Saturday night dance; I can now do Tango, Slow Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Rumba, Cha Cha, Disco Fox, and a tiny bit of Bachata. Sunday afternoon's lesson in my living room included Samba and Blues, but I am not ready to do those in public yet - at least not before 11.00 pm, when my favourite hour at the party begins:
many couples leave by then, and there are only a few left. The DJ takes requests, and usually by then I am in such a "couldn't care less" mood that I am ready to try something new there and then, without having been taught first in the comfort of my living room with nobody watching.

Last Saturday, we had once again so much fun, and the DJ played our favourite Bachata song:

Mind you, it looks slightly different when we do the Bachata - for one thing, we are not dancing barefoot on sand ;-)

While I'm at it, let me also show you my favourite Cha Cha track:
(just skip the first 30 seconds, they're just babble)

And although I am now risking to have everybody incredulously shake their heads at me for the cheesiness of the next track - it's a Rumba, nice and easy to do (the first two minutes, that is - the rest is just for fun):

This song was also played last Saturday; it is (surprise, surprise!) a Disco Fox:

Oh, I could go on and on now that I've started youtubing for my favourite dance tracks! This one was played at the first dance party I ever went to, on June 11th of this year - it is another Cha Cha:

A lot of the songs they play at the Saturday dance parties are not at all my taste, and I find it difficult to dance to music I don't like. But I have become better at regarding them more as pace makers to practice the various dances than as music to be enjoyed per se; there are still songs I will refuse to dance to (much to the chagrin of RJ), but I keep learning new steps and so we do not have to sit at the side much anymore.

Saturday nights have truly become something to look forward to!

Read in 2011 - 23: Wenn die Dämmerung naht

2011-10-13T09:07:00.000+02:00

Every now and then, I read a book in German, which was the case with this one, "Wenn die Dämmerung naht" by Peter Robinson. And throughout the book, I kept wishing I'd been reading the original English version - because while I did not find any type setting errors (and if you have been reading my blog for a while, you'll know how meticulous I am about those), more than once I read the German sentence and just KNEW what it must have been in English, and found the translation lacking. Overall, the lady who translated the book still did a good job, just not a brilliant one.

If you have read any of the books by Peter Robinson, you are familiar with DCI Alan Banks and DI Annie Cabbot, as well as with quite a few other characters you'll meet again in this story, such as Winsome Jackman, the athletic and beautiful Detective Constable, and Kevin Templeton, who manages to be so NOT politically correct all the time that his colleagues truly despair.

The original title of this book is "Friend of the Devil". It is, as all the Alan Banks series, set in Yorkshire, with the main locations being Eastvale and Whitby. Leeds and Scarborough are also mentioned, and especially the scenes set in the latter evoked quite a bit of nostalgia in me; with my late husband, I went to Scarborough on holiday for many years, and with every name of a street or a place I had a clear picture in my mind of what it looked, smelled and sounded like.

Annie Cabbot has been transferred to a different police unit than Alan Banks, and the two of them do not see or hear a lot of each other. This changes when their current cases show a link - a link that leads 18 years in the past.
Annie's case is that of a woman in a wheelchair, found murdered at the edge of a cliff, and Alan has to deal with a dead girl found in the "Labyrinth", an area of dark, narrow alleyways between ancient houses either empty or used as storage sheds, just behind Eastvale's market square. At first glance, they seem to have nothing to do with each other, but once the connection is made, Alan and Annie and their teams work together, and the deeper they dig in the past, the more mysterious it gets. A member of their team falls victim to the murderer, and we read how police men and women react when a colleague is killed. During the "showdown" with the murderer, it seems like Annie is going to be next, but in the end it turns out that she never was in any danger. Not this time, at least.

The personal lives of the main characters also feature in the story. Alan falls in love again, but the direction of the relationship is unknown. Annie gets herself into some trouble, and her drinking causes problems to herself and to others.

As with the other Alan Banks stories, this one is a good read and there is plenty of suspense. It took me almost as long as it took Annie to figure out who the murderer of the woman in the wheelchair was, and I was surprised at the turn of events that lead to Alan finding the murderer of the girl in the Labyrinth.
There are some gruesome events, but they are not described in such detail that I found it unbearable to read. The setting is atmospheric and (most of) the characters act credibly.

Next time I come across an Alan Banks book, I am definitely going to read that, too - preferably in English :-)

This one is for Kay: Sauerkraut!

2011-10-11T20:57:00.001+02:00

Ever since I have started working from home, I've been to my parents' for lunch once a week, with the exception of those few weeks during which I was travelling.

My mum is an excellent cook, and a few years ago, she became moderator at one of Germany's biggest cooking forums on the internet. She regularly posts her recipes there, always using her own photos, and she has kindly allowed me to use them on here as well.

Not long ago, we had Sauerkraut for lunch, and I mentioned this to Kay who is one of my most regular readers on here. She asked for the recipe - here it is!

Meike's Mum's Sauerkraut with apple and pineapple

You need (to serve four):

500 g Sauerkraut

2 middle sized apples

1 small tin chopped pineapple

1 tablespoon butter

1 laurel leaf

8 juniper berries

1 teaspoon cumin

2 teaspoons instant broth

If anyone needs an explanation for what Sauerkraut actually is: raw white cabbage, shredded and salted, and left to ferment. With fermentation, not only does the cabbage become easier to digest, it also acquires a very nice "sour" taste - that's why in German it is called Sauerkraut.

Melt the butter and lightly stew the peeled and chopped up apples in it.

Add the Sauerkraut and pour some of the pineapple juice from the tin on it. The spices (laurel, juniper and cumin) need to go in now as well. Depending on the type of Sauerkraut you bought, simmering could take as little as 20 minutes or a lot longer for the kraut to be ready.

When the kraut turns soft and a nice golden colour, add about 4 tablespoons of chopped pineapple and the instant broth (or, if you are not happy about using anything "instant", salt). Stir well and let boil properly once more.

Sauerkraut and mashed spuds, along with sausages, are an unbeatable combination, but of course the kraut goes very well with many kinds of poultry, such as pheasant or partridge.

It is quite the typical autumn and winter dish, and I must confess I have never cooked it myself - not once! And why should I, when my mum makes it much better than I ever could :-)

The Park Without Pumpkins

2011-10-10T09:22:00.001+02:00

As mentioned in the previous post, here are the pictures showing the (larger) part of the park where no pumpkins are on display. This was only a week ago, and yet the season has truly changed since then. It is much colder now, and when I leave the house, instead of skipping about short-sleeved and bare-legged, I need my coat, proper shoes, and a dress or skirt is only possible in combination with warm tights.

Have a look at the park (it is the one I walk through on my way to the other park; I showed you some bits of it here back in August) - it is one of the things that makes my home town most worth living in (of course, my family and friends being top of that list).

This enchanted little stone cottage was originally built not only to adorn the park, but also to house the head gardener. As far as I know, its current residents still work in the castle grounds. Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by this house, and imagined what it would be like to live there - in the middle of the vast park, when all the visitors have gone and it is getting dark. Would the statues come alive? I was convinced they would!

Raised beds in the "teaching garden". They show all sorts of herbs and spices there, accompanied by short explanations of their use in medicine and in the kitchen.

There is also this beautiful raised bed of seasonal fruit, flowers and vegetables.

This building was never actually a viaduct, it was built as a ruin on purpose. In those days, it was fashionable for rich people (like the duke who owned the castle and park by then) to have some picturesque "ruins" dotted about their land. Today, the building behind the arches is a café, and quite popular for weddings and other functions.

The orangerie (glass house) holds various exhibitions throughout the year. At the moment, you can walk through scenes from the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty". This table with the golden plates is supposed to be the dinner hold in celebration of the little princess' birth, when her parents offended one of the fairies by having the table laid for only 12 guests and she, as the 13th, had to stay away.

The perfect place for a little rest before we left the park and walked back home!

Pumpkins Everywhere!

2011-10-08T13:29:00.000+02:00

No, not quite. There are still large parts of the beautiful castle grounds of my town that are not, one way or other, affected by what the organizers dub "The World's Largest Pumpkin Festival".

Saturday a week ago, my mum and I decided to have a walk round the park and the exhibition. We have, as good Ludwigsburgians, season's tickets and therefore do not have to pay admission to look at a few pumpkins. Also, it was a gorgeous day of blue skies, warm and sunny, just perfect for the park.

We had the most pleasant surprise before we even got to the exhibition: From afar, we could hear music. It sounded a bit like classical music, and we were quite sure it was live. We could hear a violin, but weren't quite able yet to make out where exactly it came from. Then, as we walked on, all of a sudden, at the exact same moment, both my mum and I recognized a tune, looked at each other wide-eyed, and exclaimed: "Cobario!!!"

And that's right, it were indeed Cobario playing - one of our favourite live bands. They are three young men from Austria, and we've seen and heard them for a few years now at the International Street Music Festival in Ludwigsburg. This year, they won the 1st prize, and I guess that made the organizers of the pumpkin exhibition invite them to play that weekend, too. Well, we'd had no idea, so it really was a big surprise for us.

We went and got ourselves something to eat and drink (all pumpkin-themed, of course), and sat and listened to them. If you want to have a taste of their music, you can find clips on their website: http://www.cobario.at/

When they took a break and we had finished eating, we chatted a bit, and then they moved on and so did we.

There will be more pictures (without pumpkins) from the park in a separate post; adding these here would have just been too many.

Spätzle For Dummies :-)

2011-10-04T17:32:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since my last installment of recipes for dummies; pizza for dummies was, I just discovered, in January 2010. Therefore, it is time for another recipe, and on Sunday night, I decided to make Spätzle. Kässpätzle, to be more precise.

Spätzle is the Swabian staple food - or at least it used to be. Of course it has been replaced by more or less the same combination of convenience food and fashionable ingredients you will find almost everywhere in Europe, not just in Germany, and not just in the South West, where I was born and (mostly) raised and still live. But a good Swabian Hausfrau still takes her pride in making her own Spätzle, and it is not difficult at all - if you have the right equipment.

But what exactly are Spätzle? The term literally means "little sparrows", but don't worry - we do not really eat sparrows, let alone the little ones! They are not pasta, either, although they go well with most pasta sauces, with gravy or just topped with some butter and roasted breadcrumbs.

Kässpätzle are Spätzle baked with cheese (Käse = cheese) in the oven, and although I did not do that the entirely classic way, the result was still very nice, and RJ (who helped and took all the pictures) and I finished the whole lot along with a big bowl of lettuce.

You need (as either a side dish for four or a main dish for two):
300 g flour
3 eggs
salt
warm water

Start by putting a big pot of water on the stove. I can not tell you how many litres of water I use, but it is my biggest pot - the Spätzle have to "swim". Add salt and put on maximum heat. At the same time, switch the oven on to somewhere around 200 Celsius.

While the water is taking care of itself, mix the flour, a pinch or two of salt (this is really up to your own taste, but don't make them too bland or you won't like them) and the eggs in a bowl. You do not need a mixer, just use a wooden spoon - it gives you a much better feeling for the texture of the dough.

The eggs alone do not provide enough liquid, and to use another egg would only make the dough too thick, so use several table spoons full of warm water instead. The amount varies and depends mainly on the size of the eggs. In this case, I used 9 spoons full, first adding three and stirring the dough, adding another three, and so on, until the dough felt and looked right, as in the picture above: smooth but not liquid, and not too firm, either.

And here is the "Spätzles-Drucker", the press you need to make Spätzle (there is another method of making them without the press, but I can't do it and therefore won't show it here). Usually, when a Swabian girl got married, she brought her own Spatzedrucker into the household, but I doubt this is still the case nowadays. My mum still has and uses her original one, and my parents were married in 1965. Mine is newer, I bought it for myself maybe 20 years ago.

Fill the dough into the press. It won't all fit in in one go, but that does not matter (see - one really needs both hands to do this, and because the dough is not firm, it has to happen rather quickly; therefore, taking pictures at this stage was only possible with RJ's help).

By now, the water in the pot should be boiling. Properly boiling, not just simmering. Hold the press above the water and press down - what's coming out at the bottom are the raw Spätzle.

Now stay there and watch the Spätzle - they only take a minute or so in the boiling water! As soon as they rise to the surface, get them out with the thing I do not have an English name for - it is a bit like a strainer, but on a long handle, and essential for making Spätzle just like the press is essential.

If you want to eat the Spätzle with gravy or lentils or roast onions or any other way, they are ready to eat right now. But if you want to make Kässpätzle, they need to go into a deep baking tray.

The classic way is to mix grated cheese into the Spätzle, but we put slices of cheese and ham on the first layer.

The second layer was covered by more cheese, and then the whole thing went into the oven for somewhere around 15 minutes. Just keep on checking that the cheese does not get too brown and bitter; use that time to start washing up :-) or lay the table and put the vinaigrette on the lettuce.

It was just right when it looked like that...

...and on the plate, it looked like that.
A very, very filling dish - you will only want a very small dessert after that :-)

By the way, Spatz or Spätzle (sparrow or little sparrow) is also used as a term of endearment for a child, a girlfriend or... a cat (I often call mine Spätzle and she does not seem to mind).

Read in 2011 - 22: Blackthorn Winter

2011-10-01T09:22:00.000+02:00

The subtitle reads "A village, a secret, a woman hiding from her past", and naturally, the past the woman is trying to hide from eventually catches up with her. That is the story in this book by Sarah Challis in a nutshell.

There are, of course, more things happening, some rather dramatic, especially in the last quarter of the book, which make for an unexpected bit of suspense, but (almost) everything turns out well in the end.

What I like about the book is that it follows the main character for an entire year, which in a typical English village is marked by the changeing of the seasons visibly in the countryside, in farmer's endless activities and in village life itself with its events and festivities.

The writing is good without being truly remarkable, and I have found only a few errors; for instance, there is a character named Julia who on one page suddenly is "Julie", and there are a few "thans" that should correctly be "thens". Some editing should have been done on sentences like this one on page 8:

The pile of circulars and junk mail had been neatly stacked in a pile inside the front door...

Now, had I written anything like that in an essay at school, my teacher would have underlined the two "piles" and remarked "repetition!". Why not put "The heap of circulars and junk mail had been neatly stacked in a pile"?

Here are some bits I particularly liked and want to share with you because I do agree with them:

With a genuine pang of guilt Julia realised that she had never asked Lila how he [meaning her brother] was, or indeed telephoned Claudia to say how sorry she was. Glancing at her watch she decided she would do so when her guests had gone. Really, she could be an altogether nicer person if there were more hours in the day.

Don't you sometimes find yourself in a similar situation? So many people to talk to, personally or on the phone, write to and keep in touch with - you really want to, but another day or week or month goes by and you still have not sent that card or made that phone call.

This bit about village life strikes me as well-observed:

"Once the press have gone away, everything can get back to normal... half the people in this village won't ever know. Things are different these days. People move in and out and no one even gets to know their names. Both adults out at work, just coming and going, morning and evening, shopping at the supermarkets in towns, not drinking in the pub, not churchgoers. Think round the village. There are as many people like that as there are of the old sort."

The main character has two grown-up children, Jerome and Lila. Lila lives in New York and Jerome has spent a long time in India, so the siblings do not see each other often. One evening they talk on the phone, and the call ends on what I found a rather unrealistic note:

"Just a minute, Jerome. There's something I want to tell you".
"Lila, it'll have to wait. I must go and find Finn [a dog]. Speak to you soon. Bye."

Now, if you were on the phone to anyone, and they said "there's something I want to tell you", you wouldn't just ring off, would you? Maybe you would let the other person know that you didn't have much time for some reason or other, and they would make it short, but you wouldn't just hang up on them, would you? And even less so if the person on the other end was your sister who you had not seen in a long time. Ah well, nobody is perfect, so I should not expect it from an author :-)

Altogether, the book made a pleasant, relaxing read, even with a lot of the events being neither pleasant nor relaxing. It was just right for the evenings to unwind after a mentally challenging day at work.

Next, I would like to read some non-fiction, but I have a Peter Robinson from the library which needs going back, so I'll read that one first.

September...

2011-09-29T20:41:00.000+02:00

...is coming to an end, and even though we are now having all the sun we were so NOT getting in July and August, the days are shorter and the mornings crisper, and everything points to the undeniable fact that The Summer We Did Not Have is well and truly over.

For two weeks or more now, we've had the most wonderful weather; it has been around and above 25 Celsius (that's 77 Fahrenheit, the very useful conversion tool I found on the internet tells me) most days, today being no exception.

This gave everybody, myself included, the chance to wear their summer dresses, skirts, short-sleeved tops and sandals, and the street cafés and icecream parlours in town still attract quite a crowd.

Of course I am very grateful for this belated summer, and as far as I am concerned, it can keep going for another month - the cold, wet days and weeks will be here soon enough.

These pictures capture, I think, quite well what it is like here these days:

Asters from my parents' garden.

A butterfly - it is an Admiral, I think - near my bedroom window (the picture is so lopsided because it wasn't easy to take; I did not want to go too close with the camera so as not to scare the butterfly off).

Warming Up Round

2011-09-28T08:59:00.000+02:00

It's that time of the year again - the pub quiz is back after the summer break!

My local is an Irish pub; I am friends with the landlord and it is at least twice a month that I spend and evening there. Chris, the landlord, has established Tuesday nights as pub quiz nights, and they have become so popular it is impossible to find a seat if you do not book a table in advance.

Over the past two years, a group of friends and I have evolved into a really good team, each of us with their own special area of knowledge:

There is Brian, who travels loads, both for business and leisure, and knows plenty about sports. Chris (not the landlord) is really good at politics and current affairs. Gary is our expert for Roman and other ancient history, as well as being unbeatable in Maths. Martin speaks Russian and several other languages fluently, also knows a lot about sports, and is interested in what's going on in the world every day. Robert is very knowledgeable about movies and TV series, names of film directors, actors and so on. And myself - well, I read a lot, I know bits and bobs about history and geography and languages, but there is no area where I truly excel, it is more general knowledge, and lots of trivia floating about in my mind, which is precisely what is needed for the quiz. What we lack of is someone who is up to date with modern music - what is playing in the charts; neither of us truly follows that, so the music questions are always a bit tricky for us.

As we have a favourite round table in a corner of the pub, we call ourselves The Corner Shop.

The Corner Shop has come first in the quiz a few times already, and we're one of the top three almost every time. First prize is a bottle of (relatively expensive) whiskey; I don't drink that, and the bottle usually goes to the team member who made the decisive point. Second prize is four bottles of sparkling wine - now, that is a prize after my own heart! I really like sparkling wine, and with four bottles, I always get one, sometimes even two, because the men say they don't drink the stuff. Last year, my complete stock of sparkling wine for Christmas and New Year came from pub quiz wins. Third prize is two bottles of sparkling wine.

And last night, there were only the three of us - Brian, Gary, and myself -, so we considered it a warming up round. We came 2nd!!!

We really did well, and had it not been for the Lone Star team (our "eternal rivals") being about three times as big as our team, we would have come first. Four bottles for a team of three - well, we decided we keep one bottle each and give the fourth one to the third team, since they were in a tie with us and we won the tie question. They were very pleased and said how generous we are (we were indeed, weren't we!), and much fun was had by all.

It was a great night out with my friends, and I am looking forward to the next pub quiz; of course we can't make it every Tuesday, but I think in about three weeks we'll go again.

Me and my prize, last night.

Even More Catching Up: GamesCom 2011

2011-09-22T19:29:00.001+02:00

So, it seems I am finally sitting down to start writing about one of the topics I already mentioned here, the GamesCom 2011, which took place in August.

Don't worry - in this post, I do not intend to bore you to death with an endless succession of pictures and details about Europe's biggest computer games show; if you really do want to see all the snaps I took in 2011 and previous years, you can do so here in the photobucket album, and all the official stuff can be found here:

http://www.gamescom-cologne.com/en/gamescom/home/index.php

Maybe not all of you know that one of my favourite pastimes is to play The Sims, namely The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. Like a true Simmer, I started with the first game, and this is how it all came about:

In November 2000, my husband (who back then was not yet my husband) moved from England to Germany to join me here. He was an avid computer games player and had been ever since his teenage years. I, on the other hand, had so far only used my computer to go on the internet, write emails and chat (that was, by the way, how Steve and I had got to know each other: in a Star Trek chat room in September 1999). When we started to live together, he introduced me to computer games - and soon we found out that I didn't like most of the ones he preferred. For some games, it was simply a question of not liking the idea of the game (to this day, I can't see the point of sneaking around corners and shooting monsters; this sort of thing does not give me a thrill), whereas in other games, I saw how limited I was by my lack of hand-eye-coordination. "Midtown Madness" was a game I sometimes played for a few minutes, since in that game, you are expected to race your car through, for instance, a digitalized version of London and deliberately crash into walls, lamp posts and other cars - that IS fun for a few minutes, because you fully well know you can never do that in real life and get away with it (and why should you want to, actually?).

Still, Steve wanted me to have more fun on the computer, and so when in one of the games-related email newsletters he regularly got they talked about "The Sims", a new game, he thought it sounded like something I would enjoy and bought it for me in January 2001.

And the rest, as they say, is history!

At first, it took us both some time to work out the game, but we soon found we both liked it, and it seemed to be made for the likes of me. Everytime a new expansion pack was released (twice a year), he bought it for me. It became "my" game a lot more than his, and in 2002, I signed up at the newly opened online forum on the official website. I liked reading about how others played their game, and often, I was able to help when they had game-related questions or technical issues.

This, unknown to me, did not go unnoticed, and after some time I was approached by someone from the company who produced the game, EA (Electronic Arts). They asked me whether I wanted to become part of the moderating team for the forum, and after I had talked it through with Steve, I accepted.

Well, some time later, EA decided they wanted members from the gaming community to promote the game on the show (back then, it was still called Games Convention) once a year, and I was approached once again. After I had gotten the OK from my boss (I had to take a week off, because the show is always from Wednesday to Sunday, and the Tuesday is needed to get everyone ready and up for their tasks), I accepted, and have worked at the fair ever since.

It is the biggest event for gamers in Europe, and it truly IS big.

Let me show you some pictures:

My working outfit for the whole week. Believe me, it can be quite nice not having to think about what to wear, for a change! But it also feels good getting into one's own clothes again when the job is done and the week is over.

My colleagues - the (mostly) visible part of the team working on EA's booth alone, almost 100 people. Not counted are the technicians and other people working behind the scenes. And that is just one (albeit the biggest) exhibitor at the show.

The part of the team responsible for the section of the booth dedicated to The Sims. I am about twice their average age, but that did not stop us from working together really well.

View of the Sims section of the booth, before the fair opened. We had 20 places (consoles and computers) for people to play the game at.

Of course, EA does a lot more than just produce The Sims. The Battlefield series is one of the most popular ones. No visitor was going to get such a good, unobstructed view of the plane - this was just possible if you worked there and were there before the opening.

This is what it was like for the visitors. Honestly, if it wasn't for me working there and getting paid, I'd not set a foot in there! Admission is not very high (10 Euro per person I think), but on a beautiful summer's day like we had there, I'd have 1000 ideas how to spend my time, and queuing for 3 hours to be allowed to play a game for 5 minutes (I'm not kidding you, that is what my colleagues had to put through where Battlefield, Mass Effect and Need For Speed were played) is certainly not one of them!
On the Saturday, which is traditionally the busiest day of the show, the gates were closed some time before noon because of safety concerns. Tens of thousands of visitors were turned away.

We didn't have quite such long queues, but we could not complain about lack of interest, either :-)

Before the show opened each morning, there were photo opportunities for us, the staff. My colleague here was one of our walking acts (yes, the Star Wars games come from the same company).

In the evenings, I was usually expected at some event or other, but I couldn't always be bothered and sometimes just went to relax, put my feet up and read in my hotel room. When you've stood on your feet for about 12 hours and have talked (or, rather, shouted - the noise level in the halls is quite high) to hundreds of people, you do not necessarily feel much like partying. But I went to the Community Party, and took this picture on the way there: Cologne's cathedral, seen from across the Rhine, at sunset.

For me, the job ended every evening when the fair closed - for others, it only just began - the cleaners were at work all night to get everything shiny and ready again for the next morning.

Another year has gone by, and I have no idea how many more GamesComs I will work at. Of course I will eventually either feel too old for that kind of fun myself, or EA simply won't ask me anymore - whichever happens first!

Read in 2011 - 21: Smart Choices

2011-09-17T08:56:00.000+02:00

Was it a smart choice to read this book? Well, I needed some non-fiction to clear my mind of too much shallow sweetness and to engage it in something more challenging, and this "Smart Choices" by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney and Howard Raiffa certainly did.

The big challenge came after I was about half way through and felt, frankly, bored with it. This is not due to the book being actually boring, but to me having had enough of the subject while at the same time still wanting to get to the last page without giving up.

It was part of the generous present given to me by a friend earlier this year, mentioned in my "Read in 2011"-posts before, and what prompted me to read it was not that I wanted or felt the need to learn how to make better decisions, but the hope that the book would give me some insight into how the human mind works when faced with decision-making. One or two years ago, I read Jonathan Lehrer's "How We Decide" and found it very, very interesting, and I suppose I was looking to repeat the experience with this work of three authors.

This time around, though, as the subtitle says ("A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions"), the emphasis is not so much on the neuro-scientific part of the process but on the practical application.

On that field, the book is doing very well. It shows a step-by-step procedure that can be followed for all kinds of decisions, whether they are of a personal nature or relate to one's professional life. Some parts of the process seem a bit more complicated and time-consuming than others, but later on it is explained that we should still strive to keep the whole thing simple and "know when to quit" - a very useful advice indeed!

I like the examples of how people have dealt with complex decisions. We meet, for instance, the Mather family who are faced with the question whether to move or renovate, something many of us have had to think about. Darlene, Drew and their son John reappear at the end of several chapters, applying that part of the process the chapter explained to their problem, and in the end they make a smart choice.

To avoid making this post overly long, let me just quote two short bits, one from the preface and one from towards the end:

We wrote Smart Choices to bridge the gap between how people actually do make decisions and what researches - including the three of us - have discovered over the last 50 years about how they should make decisions.

... always remember: the only way to exert control over your life is through your decision making. The rest just happens to you. Be proactive, take charge of your decision making, strive to make good decisions and to develop good decision-making habits. You'll be rewarded with a fuller, more satisfying life.

Oh, and there was one little paragraph that made me chuckle - it was as if the authors were saying their services (they all work in teaching and consulting institutions, companies and individuals regarding important decisions) were actually superfluous:

Our advice: find someone to talk to about your decision problem - let your mouth start your mind. Once you get talking, you'll see connections you never saw before. All the better if you prepare for the session by jotting down notes beforehand. ... Often we find that our consulting clients benefit more from preparing to meet with us and from the self-generated insights that result from explaining their problem than from any direct advice.

And on this amusing note, my review ends here, and I'll move to what I found when I first opened the book: A book marker from a library in a place I've never heard of (see picture).

Things like that intrigue me, and my mind instantly starts to spin a story around the book, the library that once handed out these book markers, and the previous reader of the book. Finding out about the library was the easiest bit - a quick internet search lead me to their home page: http://www.belvoirmwr.com/Facilities/Library/

But who was Van Noy? And how did the book make the long journey from Fort Belvoir to my book shelf in a small town in South Germany?

That is, of course, a different story :-)

Taking a Break

2011-09-06T19:47:00.000+02:00

As mentioned earlier this month, there is still some catching up to do (yes, I still want to tell you more about the GamesCom and write about Patience, and Gratitude, and some other stuff such as Lost in Time and Space), but tomorrow afternoon, RJ and I will board the plane that is supposed to take us to Mallorca (or Majorca, as the island is probably named on your maps if you are neither German nor Spanish).

Ever since I have started on the new job on the 2nd of May, I have not had a proper break - the week in Cologne was too exhausting to count as a break, and although I am by no means stressed out (that's the great thing about my job: I can pace my tasks as I see them necessary, and even though I am employed, it often feels as if I am self-employed, or working free-lance, with no boss constantly looking over my shoulder. And believe me, I do work, even though urban legend has it that I do nothing but sunbathe on my window sill all day, coffe mug in hand), it will be nice to add another week to The Summer We Did Not Have, and have no worry in the world except for getting up in time so as not to miss breakfast.

Pukky will take care of everything here (well, she will have some help from my parents; she does not have thumbs, after all - which reminds me, have you ever had the chance to read my short story, "How the Cat Lost Its Thumbs"? - oh, look, I'm doing it again - digressing... just goes to show, I really can do with a break!).

And you can be certain my camera will be going with me!

Regarding Mallorca as a place for vacation - I have never been there, and must confess I have lots of prejudice against it. Every time someone asks me where I'm going, I hesitate to tell them and feel almost as if I had to publicly admit that I am an avid reader of Germany's BILD paper (which I am NOT) - the BILD being the equivalent of the UK's SUN (sorry, don't know the equivalent for other countries; just imagine the worst tabloid piece possible). And then, every time I do admit that I am going, in fact, to Mallorca, I get the same reaction: Everonye invariably tells me what a great place they've heard (or experienced) the island is, as long as one does not go to the infamous place where the sunburnt Brits and Germans drink Sangria from buckets (I am not kidding you!) through long straws and are drunk non-stop for the entire duration of their stay.

Just as you can be certain that I'll take my camera, you can be certain that I am not going to drink Sangria at all (don't like the stuff), let alone with a straw out of a bucket. Instead, RJ and I are looking forward to walks on the beach and in the nature reserve close to the village where we are staying, the occasional dip in the Mediterranean (if it is warm enough for my liking) or the hotel pool, and generally doing NOTHING.

So, until next week Wednesday or so, I'll say good-bye!

Walk With Me

2011-09-04T11:31:00.000+02:00

Last time I took you for a walk with me, most of you seemed to quite enjoy that, and so, if you like, you are welcome to join me again - this time, for a longer walk, so this post will beome a bit long with more pictures than what I usually post.

By now, I think all of my readers know about my parents' allotment - I have certainly mentioned it often enough here recently :-)

And almost exactly a year ago, my mum and I did just what we did yesterday: take the train from our home town to the town closest to where the allotment is, and walk the rest. You can compare the pictures from a year ago to current ones here.

This time, though, I wanted to document more of the actual walk, and show you who we met on our way.

Shall we set off, then?

Starting out maybe half a mile after the train station, towards the vineyards. Look at that glorious cloudless sky!

These will be turned into Trollinger. For now, they just need a few more such sunny days!

We met this fellow in the vineyards. He wasn't bothered at all and simply walked away calmly when we got too close for his liking.

Just some shots of the vineyards. I love those old dry stone walls.

Reaching the top of the slope, a bench awaits those who need a break (we didn't, not yet).

What an abundance of apples! I hope they'll get picked and won't be left to rot, as sadly sometimes is the case when people can't be bothered to look after their orchards.

On we walk across the sunlit fields...

...down through a little valley and uphill again...

...and from the top of the hill, we can already see the village where, a bit further out, the allotment is.

We take to the right...

...and at the bottom of the hill we meet some horses:

Walking on towards the village...

...and to the bridge that leads into the village, crossing a river called Murr.

It is not deep enough for boats, at least not here, which is partly responsible for it being so clean and healthy.

Healthy enough for trouts! Can you spot them? There is one very clearly visible towards the top right corner of the picture, but if you look closely, you will find lots more.

The heron patiently waits for some careless trout swimming his way.

Almost exactly a year ago, my mum took a picture of me at almost exactly the same spot. A lot has happened since then!

Coming into the village.

Entrance to their Town Hall, built in 1580.

A typical house for this area.

We cross the village...

...and get out at the other end...

...past more vineyards.

These geeze were not too keen on having their picture taken!

But the beautiful flowers (are these called Morning Glory in English?) didn't mind.

More uphill - but this is the last bit, there's only another 15 minutes or so to walk from here.

Not going past without saying hello to the donkeys! They are very friendly, obviously used to being treated kindly by humans, and their fur is very well groomed.

Right! Last bit uphill...

Almost there!

This is the path in the allotment area, my parents' is the second to last off the right side.

All in all, the walk had, once again, taken us about 2 hours for the 10 or so kilometers, at a leisurely pace, with two short breaks and some photo stops.

We were ready for coffee and cake now!

The fig tree is still here (see last year's post).

And so are the flowers...

...apples...

...raspberries...

...and peppers. My dad grows black, green and red ones.

View from the bottom of the garden towards the patio; you can just about make out the blue table cloth on the table where we sat for our coffee.

I am so glad that I spent this beautiful day mostly outdoors - we didn't have that many this summer, and who knows how many more there will be before it turns too cold for such a long walk.

Read in 2011 - 20: Time For Bed

2011-09-03T09:37:00.001+02:00

The subtitle of this book by David Baddiel says "A Novel About Sleep, Sex and Skewed Clocks", and also on the cover, it says "Very, Very Funny..." Roddy Doyle.

Now, we've been talking about book reviews about a week ago here on Frances Garrood's blog, and I guess most of you will agree with me when I say that book reviews are very much a matter of personal taste and mood. What one would enjoy reading in a certain situation may be put down with a shrug, not speaking to the reader, a year earlier or later, due to different experiences and situations in life.

Therefore, when I read something like the "Very, Very Funny..." comment on the cover of a book, I never simply trust it, and such comments usually do not induce me to read or buy a book.

What does make me want to read a book, though, are the reviews of my fellow bloglanders here, or when my mum or my sister have read something and tell me about it. Also, the reviews I find in my weekly newspaper, the ZEIT, are often interesting, and I have read and/or bought books more than once because of something I found there.

"Time For Bed" was given to me by my mum some time ago. Back then, she told me how she'd come into its possession, but I must admit I've forgotten the story; all I know is that she didn't want to read it and so gave it to me. She does read English books, but not almost all the time like I do, and I don't think she would have liked this one anyway.

Why not? Because it is rather vulgar, and I find the main character hard to sympathize with. Gabriel Jacoby is an insomniac in, I think, his thirties, who shares a flat in London with a guy who is just as un-indearing as he is. The place is described as teeming with dirty dishes, dying potted plants and heaps of useless clutter that I know I'd go insane about after just stepping through the front door. He does not work apart from writing the occasional bit for his brother's paper, and generally just drifts along in his life, being as obsessed about his not-sleeping as his mother is about the Hindenburg (you can find out about that here on Wikipedia). His father apparently does nothing but yell abuse at his mother all day, something that I did not find funny at all, but quite upsetting for the sheer idea of it and the over-use of really nasty swear words.

Don't get me wrong - I am certainly not a prude, and not alien to use a less-than-white word every now and then myself if something or someone makes me very angry, but I do not enjoy vulgarity and obscenity. The sex scenes (there are not quite as many as the subtitle would want us to believe) are alright, if you do not mind rather explicit (but short) descriptions.

The story itself develops as Gabriel tells the reader that he is in love with his brother's wife. Really, deeply in love - he just happened to meet her after his brother had already met her. Had it been the other way round, he is convinced Alice would be his wife now, and not Ben's.

Then Alice's sister returns after several years in the US, and the inevitable happens: Gabriel and Dina become an item.

Quite far into the book, in chapter 22 (of 25), we're in for a surprise (at least I didn't see it coming). The way the book ends nicely rounds up the plot, and is it only my impression or is there a lot less of the swearing and vulgar language going on? Some scenes in the second half of the book were really quite funny, and some bits I even found touching.

Here is how Gabriel describes his feelings for Dina after they have been together for some time:

I feel more and more that I respond towards her without reference to her sister; that, weighing up the matter rationally, taking into account her complexity and her sarcasm and her secrecy and her skin, I am probably more compatible with tight and wound-up Dina than with slack Alice. Of course, the employment of rationality is surely the biggest cliché of romance: we all know that there is no better indication that the lovelorn hero really wants to be with X than telling hismelf that, rationally, he is better of with Y. But in reality, calibration can be made, and, in this case, the calibration is the difference between reality and fantsay; I know now that it's stupid to try and compare my feelings for Dina with my feelings for Alice because they live in different emotions compartments.

Some pages later, there is a whole paragraph dedicated to Dina's eyebrows:

Her eyebrows lift together in the middle, giving her a troubled, slightly pleading look which makes my chest ache. I've learnt, now, that the range of Dina's eyebrow movements extends far beyond ironic arching. They can bend to indicate interest, dive together for convern, flip for amusement, and much more: they are two synchronised swimmers on her forehead. Much of the beauty of her face, in fact, lies in its mobility, a mobility which is happy to run the risk of occasional ugliness, as opposed to Alice, whose face is constantly beautiful, but constant to the point of stasis.

That bit goes to show how well David Baddiel can write - even more of a shame, then, that he has not put it to better use in this book.

Oh, and I can't believe this is only my 20th book this year! Hardly impressive for someone who calls herself Librarian :-)

More Catching Up

2011-09-02T09:27:00.000+02:00

One year ago, I wrote about how the beginning of a new month feels for me here, and somehow, this is especially true for September.

This year, I am in quite a different situation; for one thing, work has changed for the better. There are a number of other changes that happened in the course of the year, most of which my regular readers know about.

Work and other things have kept me busy; there are several things lined up in my mind I want to blog about during this month, such as Gratitude, Patience, the GamesCom 2011, my autumn wardrobe (this post has given me the idea for that), some recipes and book reviews - quite what you are used to read from me.

But for now, I am only going to show you some pictures I took three weeks ago (I told you there is a lot to catch up with!), because they fit the mood and feel of these last days of summer so well:

The plum tree at my parents' allotment, full of delicious plums on August 12th - now, at the beginning of September, my parents have so much fruit they hardly know what to do with it! There is, believe me, a limit to the amount of plums I can eat, and to the number of cakes my mum can bake and we can eat :-) She has now started on a plum liqueur, spiced with cinammom. Sounds good, doesn't it?

A close up of some of the plums before they were ready to be picked.

Buzzards. It wasn't easy to zoom in on both of them at the same time with my camera. My fascination with these beautiful birds is as big as when I wrote this; and I am happy to let you know that The Longing - or at least one important part of it - has been fulfilled this year.

Then, there are the wasps... obviously conferring on the tip of my small yellow plastic watering can whether it is worth bothering me or not. "Shall we bug Meks a bit, what do you think?" - "Nah, she just turns hysterical, it's not much fun to watch her flailing her arms and running from the kitchen." - "You're right, won't do us any good if there isn't some food in it for us." And off they took, once I had opened the kitchen window as widely as possible.

There should be a book review soon, as I am on the last few pages of my current read, and maybe I'll manage to write some more over the weekend.

Catching Up: A Birthday Party

2011-08-23T23:06:00.002+02:00

What with me having been away for a week to work at the GamesCom in Cologne and having RJ staying with me for several days before that, I have some catching up to do not only blog-wise, but obviously with some household stuff such as washing and ironing as well, while at the same time getting back into my normal pattern of work and sleep, sports and play.

Therefore, only now, more than ten days after the actual event, am I posting about my mum's birthday party.

All of July and August, the weather here was very unreliable and mostly way too cold with a lot of rain. Some mornings in July, I even had the heating on for a little while! So we had to plan things in a way that bad weather would not mean the end of the party.

I have written about my parents' allotment several times before, for instance here, showing pictures of the garden and the shed they have there. For smaller gatherings, we often use the patio in front of the shed, but for mum's birthday, there would not have been enough room for the roughly 20 party guests (ourselves included).

The allotment is part of a larger area of similar gardens, and everyone who has a garden there has to be a member of the local gardening club. Now, this wouldn't be for me (too many rules and regulations to observe), but there are some advantages to it, such as having a fence around the perimeter, a parking space and well-maintained paths as well as running water and toilets, and although my parents are not happy about each and every rule, they have adapted to it and made some good friends among the other garden owners there.

Another advantage is that there is a communal area the members can use for free: tables, chairs, a fully equipped kitchen, a bar, and enough space to have rather big "dos" indoors as well as outdoors, and my mother chose to have her party there.

At first, my sister and I were not particularly enthusiastic about the idea, because, frankly, we thought the place looked a bit shabby, not pretty enough to celebrate such an important event. But there simply were no alternatives, and since it was of course for our mum to decide where she wanted to have her party, we organized everything to make it a really beautiful day.

We were lucky with the weather - as you can see in this picture of the allotment, it wasn't overly sunny and hot, but dry and warm enough for us to set up the tables and chairs outside.

We put up some decoration as well, like this "Happy Birthday" garland. There was a lot more; we had candles and lanterns everywhere, but there are people with their faces visible on those pictures, so that I can not show them here - most people are very sensitive about their pictures being posted on the internet, and I have to respect their wish. In this case, the two men in the background are not recognizable except to those people who know them anyway, and therefore I have decided to use this picture.

The tables and chairs...

...and some decoration on the tables, flowers from the garden and citronella candles (these are supposed to keep flying insects away).

My mum had sent out her party invitation by email, asking everyone to not give her any presents, but to bring food instead and get in touch with me, so that I could keep track of what was going to be there - we didn't want to end up with 5 bowls of the same kind of salad and nothing else! As you can see, we had plenty of cake :-) (From left to right: apple, plum, pear, peaches & cream, poppy seed)

As the afternoon wore on and everyone had had some cake, we got the food ready for the evening. I do not have pictures of all of it, only of the starters which consisted of Caprese (tomato, mozzarella, basil) and melons & ham as well as some mediterranean-type vegetable antipasti and baguette bread.

For the main course, there was plenty of meat (chicken legs and others), spuds salad, pasta salad, and at least two other types of salads.

My contribution to the buffet was one of the salads and, for dessert, fruit salad which I made out of what you can see here:

It looked like this when I was finished chopping everything up, which took me about 3/4 of an hour :-)

It was the wonderful afternoon and evening my mum deserved, and we all had plenty of fun (and plenty to eat!).

PS: It was pointed out to me that, in fact, making use of the communal area did not come for free. My parents paid a small fee for using the place, including water (no electricity, since there is only a generator which we did not want to use for the noise it makes). It still was a lot less than what it would have cost to have the party at a restaurant, and it was more fun that way.

An Afternoon in the Park

2011-08-14T13:14:00.000+02:00

After an evening with friends, I welcomed the possibility to spend an afternoon in the park all on my own on the next day.

The weather was fantastic, and since some of you liked to "join" me on my walk up the hill and around the castle walls to the restaurant on Friday night, why not join me again for a walk - this time, through the centre of my home town, across the castle grounds and to the park where I love to spend time, no matter the season or the weather.

This beautiful borders of flowers greets the visitor shortly after entering the castle grounds by the main gates.

Once you manage to lift your gaze from the abundance of colours and shapes in the flower bed, you have this rather grand view of the South front of Ludwigsburg castle in front of you.

Along the way behind the hedges, some more modest, but not less beautiful gardens lay quietly in the early afternoon sun on that sunny Saturday.

The castle is not where I am headed today, instead I walk past it, along more beautiful flower beds.

A view across the "Valley of Birdsong"; the castle is right behind me from where I took this picture.

See the small castle in the back? This is where I'm going.

A closer view of the small castle. It belonged to the same man (the Duke of Wuerttemberg) who lived in the big castle; this small one was never inhabited but used for festivities such as balls and dinners after a day out hunting. Today, like the big castle, it is open to visitors, but only by guided tour.

Again, I am walking past it, to the right, to find the wide open space behind it - this is where I have spent many a sunny afternoon on my own last year in the summer, and had precious little occasion to do so this summer (mainly because of the weather not being in favour).

I get out my blanket, my magazines, sandwiches, bottle of water, fruit and mobile - that's all I need (ok, I do not absolutely NEED the mobile, but it is good to have one at hand when I am out on my own; you never know - I could trip up on the path and hurt my ankle and have to call someone to pick me up, for instance. Besides, I am a communication junkie and feel incomplete without my mobile - even though I very rarely use it to actually make phone calls.).

Before I left from home, I put my bikini on underneath the dress, because I want to make as much use as possible of this rare occasion when I can actually sunbathe this summer!

High above, I hear the cries of a buzzard. It is difficult to capture him in-flight, but the camera zoom works rather well.

Someone joins me on my blanket - or, rather, on one of the magazines I've brought.

Hello! Nice weather today, isn't it!

The view from my blanket, away from the castle. As you can see, nobody but me seems to be in the park, which is exactly how I like it.

One of the big old trees. These are the reason why visitors to the park are not allowed off the paths - except for the lawn where I am on.

My little companion has, apparently, tired of looking at me and has brought a friend.

You can't hear it, but maybe you can tell from the way he (? or she?) positions the back legs that he is making that grasshopper sound that, to me, is part of the sound of summer itself.

Only when the clouds became too threatening towards the end of the afternoon did I pack my things and walked home; right on the last half mile or so before reaching my house, the first raindrops began to fall.

I am glad I did not let other things I could have done get into the way but enjoyed this quiet and peaceful afternoon on my own in the park.

Next week, I will be away to work at a fair, so this is the last post for at least one week - I hope my dashboard here on blogger will be filled to the brim with interesting, touching, entertaining and beautiful posts from all of you!