I am so behind with posting! Trying to keep things short should be helpful, so let's see how short I can make this breezing through another week with me:
Monday, the 12th of June, saw me working from home; a series of appointments/calls kept me tied to the screen until 5:00 pm. All the more did I enjoy the after-work walk with my sister.
I was working on-site in Marbach on Tuesday (June 13) during the morning but had to head home quickly in order to be at my desk for an online meeting at 2:00 pm. A massage for my tense neck, shoulders and back at 6:30 pm helped, as did the sunset walk with my friend, starting at 9:00 pm from her house.
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| View from the German Literature Archive in Marbach across the river towards Benningen |
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| 20 past 9 pm on the same day |
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| Lunchtime walk. I work in that long building, but my window is at the back. |
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| On my way to Benningen, just after 8:00 pm |
On Saturday morning, some from my volunteer group met for breakfast at "Bubbles", one of our favourite cafés in town. My sister, a friend of ours and I met at our Mum's for pizza in the evening.
I spent the day quietly at home on Sunday, going for a walk only in the evening when the heat of the day subsided somewhat. Because O.K. and I could not spend the weekend together for "musical" reasons (engagements with the village band), we spoke on the phone several times a day.
All week was sunny and getting warmer towards the weekend; Monday started at around 27 Celsius, reaching around 30 by Friday. Not a drop of rain fell since the brief thunderstorm and shower on the 8th of June.
That was short, wasn't it?
Sunset walk. Red kites circling in the sky. An epiphany.
ReplyDeleteView from Marbach's Literary Archive is epiphanic. No concrete jungle here.
Your workplace enjoys open space and golden fields; and a works' party too.
We all hope your tension subsides. Consider the red kites if not the lilies !
There are daylilies in full bloom in many gardens right now, too!
DeleteIt's a great season for considering.
You can't see it in my pictures, but believe me, there is more than enough concrete around. My part of Germany is one of the most densely built-up ones. I treasure every little bit of unsealed surface.
Like Graham (below) I thought your bailiwick was semi-rural.
DeleteAlice Munro wrote a story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, filmed as
Away From Her (2001) with Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent.
I watched a video tour (YouTube) of that part of Ontario and was disappointed.
The film had cherry picked the prettiest locations; the reality was duller.
Your photos are seductive (Vosges Mountains shimmering on the horizon).
Bailiwick as a word has its roots in Sicily & Swabia, not Scotland as I thought.
Alice Munro was born in Wingham, Huron County, southeasternm Ontario.
DeleteMy den has stacks of back copies of The New Yorker with her short stories.
No Vosges in the photos on this post, Jack; they are all from around my place. We can see the Vosges from the hill behind O.K.'s village, 150 km from Ludwigsburg.
DeleteI didn't know the roots of the word bailiwick but the combination of Sicily and Swabia makes me think of the Staufer-Kaiser like Friedrich II who spoke many languages better than German, having grown up on the streets of Palermo.
The First Vatican Council of 1870 was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War
Deleteso the Vosges Mountains, on the upper Rhine plain, fascinated me.
(I sided with J.H. Newman against the rushed vote declaring the
pope to be infallible on matters of faith & morals though the declaration was
couched in so many qualifications that someone said Jesus would not get it.)
The classroom walls where I studied French were adorned with Air France
posters: Auvergne-Rhone, Haute-Savoie, Franche Comte, Auvergne where
Pere Teilhard de Chardin came from, Dordogne and the Vosges.
Friedrich II on the streets of Palermo, what a cultural cross current !
Nancy Mitford's sparkling bio of Frederick the Great is the only one I have.
*Evening in the Palace of Reason* by James R Gaines is about Frederick
and my musical idol Bach.
O.K. has a view that is like one of my school history & French lessons.
The Franche Comté is a region where my family and I spent many a holiday from when I was about 5. We had friends there, and an old farmhouse stood empty most of the year, happily accomodating the four (and often more) of us.
Delete"My" Friedrich is not Friedrich the Great, but the Stauferkaiser who lived centuries before him. See my review of one of the biographies I read about him:
https://librarianwithsecrets.blogspot.com/2011/11/read-in-2011-26-friedrich-ii.html
He has been fascinating me since my late teens.
It sounds to have been a very sociable week, so you could describe your write-up as short and sweet! The evenings are beautiful just now as the wind dies away and the temperature becomes gentle.
ReplyDeleteIt was good to meet friends and spend time with my family. I will miss those long evening walks when darkness sets in earlier again, but I know they'll be back.
DeleteI always so love reading about your life. There is happiness that comes right through. Very cheering blog!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Nan. Last I checked your blog it seemed there were no new posts for quite a while. I am going to pop over in a bit; hope you and yours are well.
DeleteThere appear to be two hot air balloons on my way to Benningen.
ReplyDeleteCould be, Tasker, but I think they were birds. The camera on my phone is not the best, and I am not a good photographer anyway, and so the birds appear like blobs.
DeleteHow fresh and clean it all looks! Love your descriptions of your life and the photos to back it up! Musical reasons, those are good reasons!😊
ReplyDeleteFresh and clean? My photos give the wrong impression; it's all rather dusty and dry here now.
DeleteHad O.K.'s band engagements been scheduled differently, I would have liked to attend, but they coincided with what would have been my travel times and O.K. picking me up at the station etc.
Beautiful sunset views but I can see it's dry there, as it is here too. We got a little rain here yesterday pm/evening but less than predicted.
ReplyDeleteWe had a little rain here last week on the 20th, 21st and 22nd; not much, but better than nothing. It's been very windy on the hot days, though, so any moisture disappeared very quickly.
DeleteI came over to check your blog because it's stopped appearing in my reading list. I have just discovered that it's not alone. So I've some catching up to do (again!).
ReplyDeleteI never realised that your part of Germany was one of it's most densely built up. I've always thought of it as being semi-rural. One lives and one learns.
There is a big difference between where I live and where O.K. lives. The Greater Stuttgart area is heavily industrialised and densely built up, while O.K.'s part includes the Black Forest and smaller towns and villages with plenty of orchards and vineyards.
DeleteI'd be interested in your opinion of my ghost story in 100 words, Graham.
Those sunset walks are so lovely, Meike. What a nice, calming way to end your busy days!
ReplyDeleteThey are lovely and important - if I can't go for a few days in a row, I can tell!
DeleteI wish I could learn to recognize temperature in Celsius without using an online calculator! I checked to see what your temperatures have been like, and I see they were between 80 and 86 degrees. Pretty warm, but not too bad! It's been about the same here, which is actually on the cool side for the end of June. (Not really cool, but you know what I mean!) Do you have much humidity? That's the main problem here, the humidity, which makes it feel so much worse outside.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a place to walk to easily from my home besides just around our neighborhood. The highway that runs parallel to us has lots of traffic and no sidewalks. We're not really a walker (or biker) friendly city!
I hope you're doing well, and enjoying your summer!
Thank you, Jennifer, I am doing well, just really, really busy all the time (and I never wanted to be one of those people who rush around and plop into bed all exhausted and way too late - and much of it is my own doing).
DeleteTemperatures in the low 30s Celsius (80s F) may not seem all that high to you, but it's hot for us here in central Europe - even though we've had many a hot summer now to get used to it. Still, very few people have A/C in their homes (or offices, for that matter!), since it was never necessary here with usually only a handful of days in high summer when it would be really HOT.
When it does not cool off during the night, sleeping is difficult. Humidity is high usually before a thunderstorm, but most of the time it is dry - way too dry, and I worry about what harvests will be like in this area this year. My cherry tree has almost no fruit at all, and that is just one very small example.
Good part of my after work walks are through industrial estates and residential areas; out on the fields is the smallest (and favourite) part - but I am glad I have at least that!