Socialising Week

It is very rare that a whole week passes without me seeing my family or some friends or other, but not all weeks are so full of socialising than the last one, where I was out and about four evenings out of five.

Early on Monday (9 February) morning, O.K. took me to the station in Offenburg as usual. Normally, that is a drive of maybe 15 minutes, leaving me plenty of time to buy myself a freshly baked and buttered Brezel to enjoy during my journey; it is too early for me to eat anything before leaving the house, but by the time I board the train I am very hungry.

Things turned out a little different that morning, though. Just after leaving the village and getting on to the major road leading to the city, we were stopped short by a hold-up. Neither the cause nor how long it might take were obvious. Nothing was said on the traffic news on the radio. We inched forward for a few minutes, then O.K. made a u-turn, doubled back part of the short way we had come so far, and drove into the city from a different direction. It was the best decision he could have taken, because no way would we have made it in time to the station otherwise; we later learned that there had been an accident, and it took hours for the hold-up to clear and traffic to move normally again.

The bakery at the station was very busy with a long queue, and for fear of missing my train, I headed to the platform straight away without having bought my customary Butterbrezel, hoping to get something aboard the train.

I found my booked seat, left my luggage there and went in search for what nowadays is called the "Board Bistro" on German long-distance trains. A very friendly man who was singing along to the radio confirmed that he did indeed have a Butterbrezel for me, and did I want it warmed? I found that a good idea, and after a few minutes of waiting, I went back to my seat with a warm Brezel in a brown paper bag. It was pricey (more than twice what it costs at the bakery), but I needed something to eat, and I enjoyed the journey knowing that I wasn't going to feel queasy for lack of food.

After work, I went for a walk with my sister. Those 1 1/2 hours in the fresh air felt very good, as did our chat.

It was Pub Quiz Night again for our team on Tuesday (10 February). We were one point short of the winning team, but so was one other team, and they won the tie question, which meant we came third - no problem for us, and we'd had once again a fun-filled evening with friends.

Wednesday (11 February) was the warmest day of the week; wet but as mild as 12C/53F. Leaving the office in Weilimdorf at 5:00 pm, I made it in time back to Ludwigsburg with about 15 minutes to spare: I had booked a seat for a talk at the local history museum. The headline was "Little America", and the knowledgeable lady spoke about Pattonville, the US-American "village" on the outskirts of Ludwigsburg that was built in the 1950s to house the military families.

I have mentioned Pattonville on my blog before, and it has its own wikipedia article. 

The talk was illustrated with photos, and after about half an hour, the speaker ended and handed things over to the audience. Many (myself included) shared personal memories of the time when Ludwigsburg still had a very strong and visible American presence. It was interesting and fascinating to compare notes, and I even met a lady who I once worked with at the library and who used to live in Pattonville with her American boyfriend and father of her sons.

Working from home on Thursday (12 February) allowed me to pop into town during my lunch break to get flowers for later. I chose three bunches of tulips in white, pink and yellow. After work, my sister picked me up and drove us to Markgröningen, a small town roughly 10 km away. 

We were invited there to a birthday party of one of our oldest friends. I have mentioned the two sisters who lived next door to us in the terraced houses for most of our childhood and youth; it was the younger sister's birthday.

There was plenty of food and drink, and more guests arrived over the next couple of hours. I always enjoy meeting "new" people as well as seeing my friends, and good fun was had by all.

Friday (13 February) saw me staying at home; O.K. and I spent the weekend separately. It being Carnival time, he was busy with the village band, and I opted to stay in Ludwigsburg so that I could see my cousins who were stopping here for one night on their way home to Paris.

In the afternoon, my sister and I met the three of them (two cousins - sister and brother - and the brother's wife) at their hotel within easy walking distance from us. We briefly went into town because they needed to buy a few things, then we bought cake at the bakery down the road from where I live and had coffee and cake at my place.

A little after 6:00 pm, we went to my Mum's. She had prepared a large pot of goulash, another pot of a vegetarian variety and bowls of dumplings. There was also a nice fresh salad for starters. To begin with, we had sparkling wine and good reasons to raise our glasses: My engagement as well as all of us meeting, something that does not happen very often with us living so far apart.

It was a lively evening with great food and free-flowing conversation in German, English and French.

After the week described so far, I am sure you'll understand how much I appreciated having a quiet Saturday and Sunday (14 and 15 February) entirely to myself. Of course I spoke to O.K. on the phone every day, and I also went for walks - a brief one on Saturday, cut even shorter because of the rain, and a longer one on Sunday, when it remained dry until the evening.

It looked rather drab on the fields between Ludwigsburg and Freiberg, but at least it wasn't raining.

Small patches of blue were showing by the time I was approaching Benningen, but the sun never really made it through.

I spent several hours watching the 4th season of "All Creatures Great and Small" on DVD, a Christmas present from my sister - it was the perfect weather for cosy TV, wrapped in a blanket and with a mug of tea ready.

This part of the opening of each episode reminded me of our visit to Ribblehead Viaduct last summer.

Not long before 9:00 pm on Sunday night, it started to snow, and kept snowing for about three hours before the snow turned into rain. Before I went to bed, the world outside was all covered in white, but when I got up during the night, the rain had begun to wash it off, and by Monday morning nothing was left.

Read in 2026 - 6: The Netanyahus

The Netanyahus

Joshua Cohen

My book-swapping friend lent me this paperback, deliberately not telling me anything about it; she only said, somewhat cryptically, "I am really interested to hear what you make of this one."

And that's just it - I am not at all sure what I make of it. What I can say with certainty is that it is not a book I recommend.

The sub-title says "An account of a minor and ultimately even negligible episode in the history of a very famous family" - does that help?

Maybe it helps when I give you a brief summary of the story: In the winter of 1959/60, a Jewish historian at a college in the U.S. is asked to help assess Professor Benzion Netanyahu, an exiled Israeli scholar applying for tenure at the college. 

We learn a little bit about the historian's relationships with his colleagues and get some background about his family life. Two letters arrive for him from Israel, one endorsing the professor, the other one warning against him. These letters take up an entire chapter each, and are very lengthy and... sprawling, is the term that first comes to my mind.

Then the Professor himself arrives at the house of the historian and his family - but he's not alone: Unexpectedly, his wife and three sons are with him. The sons are 7, 10 and 13 years old and are Iddo, Benjamin and Jonathan. 

According to the information given on the back of the book, it is a "wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending identity, and politics". I'm afraid that almost all of the comedy was lost on me - there was exactly ONE sentence uttered by the historian's visiting mother-in-law that made me laugh out loud. I don't find pushy, demanding people humorous, nor do I chuckle when visitors don't know how to behave and wreak havoc with their hosts' belongings. 

It may be a case of me not fully grasping the intellectual depth of it all; in any case, what kept me reading was the relative shortness of the book and wanting to know where it was all heading.

The author mixes fact and fiction; the characters of Professor Netanyahu, his wife and sons are real, with their real names, and the middle boy, Benjamin, is the man we know today as Israel's Prime Minister. The last few pages of the book (called "Credit & Extra Credit" shed some light on what's fact and what the author imagined, and I looked up the Professor and his family members on wikipedia to find out more.

But I can not say this is a book I'd list for the Pulitzer Prize (it won in "Fiction") or see it as one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2021 - admittedly, taste and opinion varies from one reader to the next, but this reader was left more or less shrugging by the end of the book, and feeling some relief at finishing it.

You can learn more about the author and his work here on Wikipedia, or here on his own website.

A Good Walking Week

...is what I had last week. The weather was rather mixed; we saw everything from a flurry of snow (which didn't last) to sun and rain, a rainbow and sun again, as well as thick grey fog. By the way, in the post about last week of January I forgot to mention that on the Sunday walk with O.K., I spotted the first snowdrops and yellow eranthis in a garden - for me, the very first signs of spring, along with the first blackbird singing.

On Monday (2 February), I was working from home as usual and also as usual spent part of my lunch break having a back & shoulders massage at the nearby day spa. At temperatures around freezing point, mid-morning rain turned into a brief flurry of snow, but later the sun put in an appearance and the afternoon remained dry.

View from my kitchen at about 10 to 8 on Monday morning...

...and the same view at about 10:30 am.

This was welcome, since I was meeting a friend for an after-work walk. She lives in the same town, but we usually manage only two or three meetings a year; our last one was at the Christmas market in December. 1.5 hours of walking was a great opportunity to catch up with each other's news.

Tuesday (3 February) pretended to be a sunny day, luring me out for my customary walk to Benningen. 

Good job I was wearing my padded winter jacket with a hood, because light rain started to fall halfway into the walk. The sun was never entirely gone, though, and I kept checking the sky for a rainbow. I finally saw it, and it was perfect, reaching from one end of the horizon to the other. But it remained very pale and disappeared quickly so that I did not take a picture. 

Still, the light was beautiful all evening, as you can see from my photos (and of course, it was even more beautiful in real life).

My regular day at the office followed on Wednesday (4 February). Afterwards, I went to see my Mum. On my request, she had prepared a fresh salad for the two of us. When I've had lunch at work at the canteen, something light is all I need in the evening, and this was just right.

Thursday (5 February) saw me again working from home. I started very early and didn't have any meetings in the afternoon, which allowed me to wrap up work at 4:00 pm and set off to the train station where I took a local train to Benningen - not because I wanted to repeat Tuesday's walk in reverse, but I intended to go along the river.

Back in October (click here for that post), I had last tried to walk that lane but found it blocked for all traffic including pedestrians because of construction work. The signs that explained the blocking back then said "until December"; now, about two months later, I thought the lane would be open again.

Well, it wasn't. 

Instead, I crossed the footbridge to the other side of the river and walked to Ludwigsburg from there. Only the very first part was in the sun; then the angle of the sun and the path being at the bottom of the river valley meant that I was almost completely in the shade for the rest of the way. Never mind, it still was a good substantial walk, and 2 1/2 hours later I was home.

Above the river Neckar on the footbridge leading to Marbach.

My occasional work place, the Schiller Museum in Marbach.

The "rocket" coming into view.

On top of the hill to the right, you can just about make out the small ruined castle where O.K. and I enjoyed a wine tasting last summer.

Back across the Neckar, still about 45 minutes from home.

I had a quiet day on Friday (6 February), working from home and then going about my weekly cleaning etc. until it was time to pack my suitcase for the weekend and go to the station. My trains were on time - in fact, I arrived in Offenburg about FOUR minutes EARLY, much to the astonishment of O.K. Of course I said I'd told the driver to hurry up a bit because I was hungry (which I was - on those Fridays, we don't get to sit down for our evening meal until about 9:00 pm).

In Ludwigsburg, the day had been beautiful and sunny, but it was raining in Offenburg.

Saturday (7 February) was spring-like with wall-to-wall sunshine and temperatures as mild as 12C/53F, which felt even warmer in the sun when there was no wind. 

It would have been perfect for a good hike, but O.K. wanted to take advantage of the weather by cutting the hedge behind his mother's house. And just as I knew I couldn't persuade him to join me for a walk, he could not persuade me to stay put for longer than I needed to get the ironing done and get us a midday snack from the bakery.

Storks are back on the roof of the vicarage!

Carnival bunting has been strung across all the length of the village road.

Just after 1:00 pm, I left O.K. to his hedge-trimming and went to take in all the beauty of that day - sunshine, birdsong, early spring flowers, and more sunshine!

Looking back towards the village.

The vines have been cut and tidied.

Snowdrops!

The first crocus I have seen this year!

Back towards the village, just round the bend from here.

Late afternoon, we both changed into nicer clothes. O.K. drove us to a nearby village where we had booked a table for the evening to test a restaurant in view of our wedding. The food was very good and the service friendly if a little slow at times. But I have to concede that they were rather busy. I am now in the process of booking our small wedding party with them.

On Sunday (8 February), we woke up to a thick fog and cooler temperatures. We were still determined to go for a walk together, and when O.K. checked the weather map, he saw that there was no fog less than 20 km away from us along the Kinzig valley.

After about half an hour's drive, we parked the car in Hausach and climbed the path to the ruined castle.

According to Wikipedia, a first castle has been there as early as the 12th century.

The tower is only open for visitors in the summer.

View from the castle across the town of Hausach.

From there, we walked into the woods, past a playground (where of course I could not resist a bit of silliness) and a chapel, and back down into the town, where we had a stroll among historical buildings and a look into the neo-Gothic church.

I like playgrounds, especially when there is nobody else about!

The door was locked; I would have liked to have a look inside.

Not a small castle, only an old water reservoir!

St. Mauritius, built in 1896 from the red sandstone typical for the Black Forest region.

While we were still out, O.K.'s sister texted us with an invitation for coffee and cake at her place, and so we spent the rest of the afternoon with them. Her freshly baked apple pie was very nice!

Back at the cottage, we had our usual quiet evening with early bedtime in view of Monday's early start.