My Little Non-Birthday "Do"

Although I love having guests, it is not that often that I manage to get a group of people together at my place. Last Sunday was such a rare and most appreciated occasion.

It was my birthday on Monday, but Mondays are very inconvenient for such things - I leave work rather late, and by the time I get home, it is too late to start on anything nice like home-made pizza, what with the dough needing to rise and all.

Instead, I decided to invite my parents, my sister and some of my closest friends for Sunday evening.

Preparations were easy and did not take very long; all I had to do was to put enough chairs in the living room, get the glasses out (I borrowed a set of six champagne glasses and six wine glasses from my mum, as I own only six of each myself), buy the drinks and the ingredients for the food, and give the place its usual Saturday cleaning.

My guests were treated to my home-made pizza and tiramisu. One of my friends had offered to make lasagne - and who am I to decline an offer made by a friend? My mum brought a giant bowl of salad as well as a dessert / cake kind of thing that we call "Cold Dog" (I will ask her for the recipe and some pictures to post it on here, if anyone is interested - it is very fattening and very yummy!), and so there was plenty to eat & drink for everyone.

For musical backdrop, I had asked for advice in a forum where I usually get helpful answers to all my questions. At first, I was thinking of internet radio; I do have a big collection of CDs, but I did not want to keep interrupting conversations and eating by having to faff with the stereo, and to be honest, there are only a few CDs in my collection which could be used as a gentle backdrop for pleasant conversation - most of it is meant for me to dance and / or sing along to (and I certainly did not want to scare my guests away!).
Someone told me of www.musicovery.com - a very interesting tool: you can set the dials on one or more different styles (my choice were funk, latin and jazz), on the general mood of the tracks (my choice was "positive"), and even on a specific year or period; I set that on "all", meaning the program would choose tracks from all available years.
It proved to be an excellent suggestion, and I must not forget to post my thanks to the person who directed me to the website.

All in all, there were ten guests, myself and my cat. I was given the most beautiful flowers (of course I ran out of vases, so that one bouquet had to go into a plastic water jug) and lovely presents, along with many hugs and compliments for the food.
I provided some more entertainment by showing the pictures I took during my recent mini holiday in Nice on the Côte d'Azur.

Shortly before midnight, everyone was gone, the dishwasher was humming away in the kitchen and the few leftovers were neatly wrapped up in my fridge. It was a wonderful evening, and, as always after such an occasion, I am telling myself I really should do this more often.

Monday morning saw the living room almost back to normal with the glasses back in the cabinet, the plates stacked away in the kitchen cupboard, and only the flowers and cards left to remind me that this was, in fact, my birthday.

An Unlikely Sight

When you live in South Germany and it is only March, with the trees still bare and only some of the most daring spring flowers out in the gardens, you certainly do not expect to come across parrots - and yet, that is exactly what I saw today.

Yes, you have heard right, parrots.
Three of them sitting cosily in the tree on the corner of the street where I live.
Very obviously feeling very much at home (I observed them for quite a while), not as if they had escaped from somewhere, but like natives.

They reminded me of the Alexander-Sittiche (sorry, don't know the English name), a kind of parrot, who are thriving in Wiesbaden. About 5 years ago, I had to go to Wiesbaden for several weeks into a rehab clinic (for my back, in case you were wondering), and one of the first things I noticed were the green parrots everywhere in the trees.
One of the doctors in the clinic explained their history to me; from a few escaped birds, in the span of only a few decades, the parrots grew in numbers and formed colonies (as they do in their natural habitat), and have developed enough resistence to survive German winters; some even consider them a new kind and not exactly the same species anymore as the one they originally started out as.

Today, when I walked home from the gym, I noticed these three. My neighbours noticed them, too, and one of them said that apparently there is a small colony in Stuttgart. Stuttgart is only 14 km away from here, so I suppose the three birds in our tree have either been on a day trip to my home town or are the first foreboders of more to come.

We'll see!

In the meantime, here is my photographic evidence, in case you think that maybe there was something not quite right with my coffee this afternoon:

Einbahnstraße

Einbahnstraße is the German word for one-way road, and this is what the road sign looks like in this country:





It is also how I often feel these days when it comes to communicating (or, rather, trying to communicate) with some of my friends.
Sending messages that remain unanswered, suggesting things we could do together that are met with a shrug (if there is any reaction at all), asking questions that are never replied to.

They are busy, yes; aren't we all?
They are too busy for me - ok, that explains it.

Of course there are other people in their lives who are a lot worthier of their time and attention than I am; and yet, to be forgotten or dismissed in such an obvious manner has me wondering what makes my value as a friend so much lower than theirs.

When it comes to being busy, I am no exception. There is a long mental list of things I'd love to do "one day", of places I'd like to see "one day", of people I want to meet again "one day" and of languages and other skills I wish to learn "one day".
That "one day" might never come, though, if I wait too long.

My husband lived here for almost 10 years; none of his friends or family ever came to see him while he was still alive, although England is less than 2 hours on a plane from here. There was always the possibility to do this "one day", while everybody was busily getting on with their everyday lives. When he died, both his sisters and his niece came over for the funeral; all of a sudden, it was possible, and the things that had kept them from making the trip earlier, like work and school and other obligations, took a back seat on the list of priorities.

I am mentioning this here only as an example of how we should never take our friends for granted. They may continue making an effort in being in touch with us for another while, even for years to come, but if we never return their calls or messages, one day they might give up on us, and eventually we possibly wake up to regret that we have been too busy for them, and it is too late.

Honestly, I do not want that to happen with my friends.
They are far too precious to me - even though, sadly, I appear not to be for them.

On the other hand, if I have simply been to thick to get the message all this time, maybe now is the right moment to leave it, and finally become self-sufficient.

Notes To Self III

Many thoughts about possible blog entries have been (and still are) floating about in my mind recently, but none of them is ripe yet to be put into written form.

Instead, several notes to myself are waiting to be on here, if you are still interested.

Since it has been so long since "Notes To Self I" and "Notes To Self II", this time I am posting a two in one, so to speak.

First, the actual notes:

Starting on the top right corner of the white note, it gives you an idea of how long this has been around - I was planning to go to the pub quiz at my local on Monday, 15th of February. The emphasis was on MONDAY because usually, quiz night is Tuesdays.

Sadly, nobody was willing to go with me, and it is not much fun on my own.

The following are train times, referring to how I was possibly going to get home after meeting a close friend who I had not seen in more than a year and who finally happened to be in my area again. Since the last train from where we met would have left at 11.38 pm, that would have given us only about 2 hours together - too short when it is someone you care about and who you hardly ever get to see. The next train after that would have been at 5.08 the next morning - so in the end, it was a taxi that took me home somewhere in between those impossible train times.

"WÄSCHE", the word I have circled, means washing in German, and its only reason there was to remind me to take the washing out of the machine before leaving for work; I don't like my clothes to be crumpled beyond recognition when they stay in there for too long.

"Why I don't drive" was, as my dear elite few readers may remember, the title of a relatively recent blog entry. I did not want to forget writing it and so it ended up on this note.

The phone number is my aunt's in the Provence (Southern France). Of course it is not the full number; although I trust my readers here and am not much worried about anyone "strange" reading my blog and misusing the number, there is such a thing as data protection.

My aunt is providing her flat in Nice (Nizza) on the Côte d'Azur for me, my sister and two friends; we are taking the plane there this coming Sunday and will be back end of next week. It is a holiday I am very, very much looking forward to - not only because temperatures there will be a lot nicer than what we have to endure here at the moment, but also because I am convinced that a change of scene, even if only for a short time, will do me good.

Below that number you can (maybe) decipher a name: Mel Ramos.

He is an artist whose work I have known for a very long time without knowing his name. An art gallery not too far from where I live is currently showing his works; the exhibition is open until mid-April, and I do hope to find the time and occasion to go and see it.

At the bottom of the note there is another phone number. This is a friend of my sister's who has the idea of cooperating with her Italian language teacher to organize a monthly wine tasting (in Italian, with Italian wines) in her cellar, and she wants me to moderate the event (I am fluent in Italian and am used to moderate small scale events, so I understand why she wants me to do it).

So far, I have not been in touch with her about it, but I guess I will.

The first line on the yellow note is easily recognizable as the link to a website. If you want to have a look at http://www.eco-tecnologia.com/, you will find that it is about a building project: Houses, water reservoirs and other structures built using PET bottles and rubble, drawing on the local community for the actual work, thus enabling those who otherwise would not be able to afford a house worth the name to live in a their own home, at the same time doing something positive for the environment and the community they live in.
The man behind the idea is Andreas Froese, a 53-year-old German who has been working in South America since the 80s. In 2001, he founded ECO-TEC, and the company have since realized more than 50 projects in third world countries and poor communities.
If there is anything in abundance in those areas, it is rubbish, and a lot of that rubbish are PET bottles.
So, why not use what is there?
This is how it works:
empty PET bottles are filled with rubble and then used as building bricks. The finished walls can be painted in any colour the inhabitants like, and there is another big advantage apart from the building materials being cheap and easy to find: the finished structure withstands earthquakes a lot better than a concrete wall.
Another positive side effect is what happens in the community. The local people have reasons to cooperate, they learn new skills, they have a tangible result of their manual labor, and sometimes young people who have started out by helping filling the empty bottles with rubble have gone on to learn the trade of carpenter or builder, thus having a better perspective for their own future and that of their families.

(Sorry, this was a bit long. But I am truly impressed by the whole idea and the spirit behind it and think it deserves attention.)

Next is the name of a plant, Myrmecodia pentasperma. The little "thing" next to the word is supposed to be an ant - to help me remind what Myrmecodia pentasperma is: a plant which provides ready-made "houses" for ants, thus forming a symbiosis with those specific ants. I came across it in the book "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins, which I highly recommend to anyone who likes a good science book with its own entertaining value.

Volvox is a multi-cellular organism and was mentioned in the same book. I have yet to investigate this particular kind of organism further.

The second half of the yellow note is the contact details for the porcellain manufacture in my hometown's castle; they provide guided tours for groups, and I am probably going to organise one. You can get an impression of what they do here: www.schlossmanufaktur-ludwigsburg.de.

That's it for today - and I think I have just broken my personal record of longest blog entry!

Have you fallen asleep yet? :-)

Spring Things

After a glorious Saturday (see my previous entry), Sunday was still mild at 15 Celsius, but very windy, and so I decided to stay indoors and enjoy the sunshine from my window sill.

I did some spring things like eating raw yellow pepper (have I ever mentioned that I love yellow pepper?), and in the evening, my sister came to watch a DVD together and eat a pizza that I had made specifically on her request.

She brought the lovely tulips you see in the picture.

Shame I am at the office all day and only get to see the flowers in the morning and evening!

Today, I am going to walk to work again, as I often do on Mondays when I do not have to start until 1.00 pm. It will be good to be out on the fields and observe what progress the hedgerows have made since I walked there last.

The First Bee!

Winter has had a firm grip on my part of the world for way too long (for my liking, anyway), and today was not only a gorgeous day of blue skies and a stroll in the park, but I also saw my first bee of this year!


I think this is well worth its own blog entry :-)

If it is as gorgeous tomorrow as it has been today, I think I might get started on running again.

The Longing

We have been very busy at work as of late, and I have been accumulating many extra hours that I am not paid for. Usually, I do not have a problem with that - mostly, I can put those hours to good use on a day when I want to leave the office earlier. But now, for four weeks in a row, it is not possible to leave early, as we are short of staff. Instead, my boss has agreed to me coming in as late as 10 or 11 in the morning.
And this morning, I took the chance and walked to work (yes, I know. I have been writing about walking to and from work many times on here, but maybe you are not too bored with my ramblings yet).

For the first time in what feels like ages, we had rather mild temperatures of about 8 C, and there were bits of blue between the grey clouds. It was windy but, even so, a lot more pleasant to be outside than what it has been for the past weeks and months.

When I reached the fields that I need to cross in order to get to the small town where I work, I saw and heard a couple of buzzards. They were circling around each other, sometimes breaking the circle and taking a long, elegant swoop, to then take up the circular pattern again.

Their cries filled me with a longing that made my chest hurt.
A longing for what, my precious few readers might ask.

Such is the nature of The Longing that I can hardly put my finger to it; I wish I knew - because if I did, that could mean the first step towards fulfilling it.

Maybe it is the longing for adventures and travelling to places far and wide; maybe it is the longing for someone who treasures me and who is interested enough in me to keep the lines of communication open on both sides, someone with who it is not always me who needs to make the effort to stay in touch, someone who does respond to my messages and not lose interest after a certain time, someone for whom talking to me and spending time with me is not burden but joy.

You may have noticed that I am avoiding the term "love"; I simply can not imagine this - if it does exist, actually - ever coming my way.
I am far too much lacking in character for that, and possess only the most rudimentary of morals and conscience.
But friendship I value, and very highly at that.

And who knows - it may just be the longing for this winter to truly end, and spring to arrive with all its light and colours and scents, and the possibilities it seems to open up for me all of a sudden.

Blame the buzzards, anyway - they couldn't care less, and rightly so :-)