Where I've been All Weekend

Two posts back, I showed you pictures of the beautiful region "Bregenzerwald" in Austria. You can find some facts about the area in English on Wikipedia. On the list of places listed there for "Upper Bregenz Forest", No. 9 (Au) is the place we were staying at.

O.K. had been there already since Monday, and I joined him on Friday afternoon. While he had the most gorgeous weather with blue skies and temperatures of up to 28 Celsius, it was much cooler with grey skies and some rain (although not as much as it may look like in my pictures) by the time I arrived - as had been forecast. I did not mind, though; we still were out and about during the day, and were just happy to spend time together in such beautiful surroundings.

Here are some impressions for you.

Our hotel (picture taken the next morning - when I arrived Friday afternoon, it had not yet been raining):

Again, these were taken the next morning. It had been raining for most of the night, but by the time we'd finished breakfast, it had stopped. We went out walking until the early afternoon, when we were due to have our pre-booked massages at the hotel spa.

Views from our balcony - compare them with the pictures two posts back! 

The river is called Bregenzer Ach. I liked listening to the water at night before falling asleep.

The "Kanisfluh" (again, see two posts back for a proper view...) is right behind this bank of clouds:

Of course I would have liked it to be still sunny, but actually, this was very atmospheric, and the mountains rising out of the mist or shrouded in clouds had something - you knew they were there.

Read in 2016 - 30: The Feelgood Factory on Looking Gorgeous

"Drink plenty of water", "Eat less carbs and fat, but more fruit and veg"; "Sleep more - exercise more", "Dress in layers when it is cold and wet outside" ... this type of advice is the most banal, the kind we all know because we've heard it endless times, some of us probably since childhood.

And yet it is (largely) just this kind of most banal advice I found in the electronic pages of "The Feelgood Factory on Looking Gorgeous", the book out of the "Infinite Ideas" series I finished reading some time last week.

Every now and then, there were some make-up tips or other (more or less) useful bits of advice such as exercises for a better posture sprinkled across the chapters, but honestly, they are hardly worth downloading this book, let alone reading it - even though it was for free.

Maybe some women nod enthusiastically when they read sentences such as "We know the bust size of every Hollywood actress and soap star on the box" - sorry, I'm not one of them.

And what about advising women to touch the people they are talking to on the arm, while flashing smiles at them, making sure those smiles wrinkle your eyes so that its fakeness is not instantly obvious? What does it reveal about an  author's* self-perception as a woman when each and every tip comes with the label "to make yourself attractive to men", "to look your best so that men will notice you"?

Of course I want to be attractive, and of course I want to look my best according to each situation - a different kind of look for, say, when I'm out running with my friend than to what I wear to the office where I want the visual impression of me match the skill and experience I have acquired in my line of work.

But believe it or not, I am not constantly wondering what impression I am making on men, and when I eat or drink, it is not with a constantly nagging voice in my head, telling me that this is unhealthy and will go straight to my hips.

Some of us actually do like themselves, you know, and are not permanently trying to optimize their looks - in spite of me really, really liking nice clothes, especially dresses.

On the whole, I found the advice given here way too banal (beauty "secrets"? I didn't come across any) and what the author obviously expects to be the average woman's motivation for wanting to look and feel good surprisingly shallow.

I enjoyed previously read books from the "Infinite Ideas" series. This one was disappointing. Entirely my own fault, of course - what else did I expect from a book of that title? And I could have simply stopped reading as soon as I realized which way this was heading. Why I still continued until the end of this (fortunately short) book is anyone's guess, mine including.

* The book was co-authored by several women, led by Elisabeth Wilson.

Where I Will Be All Weekend

In about two hours, I'll board a train to Stuttgart where I'll change to one to Lindau (Lake Constance) and there to another one to Dornbirn in Austria. O.K. will meet me there and take me to the place in Bregenz Forest (which is, by the way, not a forest but the name of the entire region there) where he's been staying since Monday afternoon.
I'll be joining him for a long weekend, having taken today and Monday off. Our hotel has a spa and the meals are luxurious; even if the weather foreacst should be true and it rains all Saturday and Sunday, we won't get bored anytime soon - the most important thing is that we get to spend time together.

Up until now, it's been gorgeous weather there, too, and O.K. has sent me photos of the mountain hikes he's been on every day. With his permission, I am showing you what it looks like there:

When I saw this in one of O.K.'s emails, it looked familiar. And sure enough - this is the Kanisfluh, a mountain I flew past  back in April this year! Click here if you want to see the pictures from that flight.

The valley where our hotel is:

One morning, the bus O.K. had planned to get on (to get to the bottom of another mountain to climb) was half an hour late. The reason? See for yourself:

I am very much looking forward to this weekend - never mind the weather forecast!

It's been so long...

...since my last fashion post that I can neither remember when it was, nor what outfit I was showing you then. Never mind, there were so many far more interesting things to blog about (travels, mostly) that I have not missed putting anything "fashionable" on here (and you haven't, either, I dare say).

This week, to work I wore an outfit built around a top my sister bought for me (thank you, sis!) while we were in Ripon. I really like the pattern and the colours, and find it versatile enough to be worn to the office as well as with more casual items:

We've had unusually warm days for mid-September; almost every day temperatures were around 30 Celsius. Soon, this is going to change; actually, already today the afternoon turned considerably cooler with a few drops of rain, grey clouds and a breeze.

So this may have well been the last time for me to have worn my new top this season.

Time to (slowly but surely) get the jumpers out...!

Read in 2016 - 29: Stilettos and Scoundrels

Normally, I try to be nice in my book reviews and hope that even when I have something negative to say about a book, it does not come across as too harsh. Admittedly, I can be a bit on the persnickety side when it comes to spelling and grammar, but I don't think I should be apologetic about wanting things to be done (i.e. written) properly and correctly.

With "Stilettos & Scoundrels" by Laina Turner, I can't be all that nice, because it really wasn't a good read. Sorry - I assume the author has put a lot of effort into making her dream of being a writer come true (this was her very first book), but just a little bit more of that effort, preferably when it came to editing, would have made a noteable difference.

The idea for the story isn't bad at all: Presley, a woman in her 30s, fashionista (and coming across as rather shallow, so I can relate to that...) and recently out of a relationship, is fired from her job when she finally makes it clear to her boss that she is never ever going to succumb to his advances.

A friend asks her to write an article about a Senator who happens to live in the small town she grew up in, and Presley jumps at the chance to not only earn some badly needed money but also to turn her back on the big city for a while and regroup in the homely environment of her parents' house.

When she arrives at her home town, she finds some of her old friends and school mates changed, while with some she can instantly pick up where they left off ten years ago.

She has an interview with the Senator - only to learn the next morning that he was murdered the same night, and she was probably one of the last people to have seen him alive. Does that make her a suspect? What's going to happen with the article she was supposed to be writing about the man?

Presley's curiosity makes her turn into her very own version of a private investigator. She finds out people's hidden agendas, secrets in their past and present, and gets herself (and others) into real danger more than once.

It is self-understood that a love interest becomes part of the story early on.

That does not sound too bad, does it? It could have been a nice, easy, "cosy mystery" type of read. But it wasn't, because I was constantly annoyed by the bad writing style, the heroine's behaviour and the "surprises" which weren't really surprising.

I would have actually done myself a favour if I had simply stopped reading after the first few chapters, but somehow I was still hoping for the book to improve, and the story to grip me. My train trips to and from work happen anyway, so I did not waste too much time, but I can only recommend NOT to read this.

Hopefully, Laina Turner's writing (or the skill of her editor) has improved; according to her own website, she is a "best-selling" author now. Can so many readers be wrong, or am I the one to be too picky?

PS: After having checked the reviews on Amazon (where I got this book as a free kindle version), I find that I am not alone in my assessment.

A Sunday in September

On SUNday morning, we woke up to yet another very warm and sunny day fully deserving its name. After a lazy breakfast on the balcony, we went on a little drive around some of the pretty villages before reaching a parking lot at the bottom of a hill. On top of the hill sit the impressive ruins of a castle, Hohengeroldseck (literally "Gerold's High Corner").

The castle was built between 1250 and 1260, and for a long time was the living quarters of the noble families of two brothers, Georg and Heinrich. In 1390, lightning hit the castle and caused extensive damage. After the rebuild, nearly another 100 years of more or less undisturbed life at the castle before it was conquered after a siege in 1486.
The castle then changed hands a few times, mainly as it was given to noblemen who had been loyal and useful to whoever happened to be emperor at the time. In 1599, it was largely abandoned when the then lord of the castle moved to a modern palace, leaving only a small crew behind.
Finally, Louis XIV (the French king's) troups destroyed the castle in 1689 and it became a quarry for everyone else around.

This small building contains a well - the only fresh water supply for the entire castle, which is why it was specially protected:

Since 1819, the castle has been property of the same family. Restoration work (not really rebuilding, mainly making sure the remaining walls would not be ruined any further) began in 1892 and was taken up in earnest in the 1950s, and again in 2011.

Nowadays, it is safe to access even the highest part of the huge building - except for the incredible number of wasps we found swarming the walls! Much as we would have loved to enjoy the great views from the top, we really only dared to stick our heads out of the stairwell for about three seconds, take one or two pictures and then quickly head back down again.

We went back down the hill on a slightly different path and then had a nice meal in a garden café at the bottom. There were ice creams later for us in the picturesque town of Gengenbach (which I showed you here in June) before we headed home.

Once again, I chose the late train for travelling back to Ludwigsburg, arriving there at a quarter past 11, having reached my connecting train without any problem. Another wonderful weekend was over.