Since everyone seems to be showing their colours...

...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

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...

...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...

...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

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

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!

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 :-)