In About 24 Hours...

...my sister and I will be up in the air, on our way to Manchester Airport.

From there, first the Transpennine Express, then a local train and finally my sister-in-law and her car will take us to Ripon, where we'll be staying at the same lovely cottage we had last year until the 27th.

We are very much looking forwrad to our Yorkshire holiday, and a few things have already been set up with friends and family. Most of the time, though, we will just decide on the spur of a moment what to do and where to go (depending on the weather, of course), and we intend to spend at least one full day just relaxing in the garden that belongs to the cottage, doing NOTHING.

For the next 1 1/2 weeks, I won't have many - if any - occasions for visiting blogland. But you can be sure that I will be back and catch up with your blogs soon after our return - and you can brace yourselves for a series of posts about Yorkshire.

[Picture from June 2014, taken near High Bradfield, South Yorkshire.]

Summer in My Wardrobe

So far, summer here in my area (south Germany) has been what could very well become another record summer after the "Jahrhundertsommer" ("One in a century summer") of 2003. It's been hot, hot, hot. On the first weekend of July (while I was having fun at, in and on the water, spending time with friends living at a lake in northern Germany), my Mum measured 41 Celsius on her balcony one afternoon - in the shade.

Most days we've had temperatures of 33 to 38 Celsius during the day, and for many people it was/is a problem that it does not really cool off all that much during the night.
It is a challenge looking smart and working well in this heat at my customer's office - I am on the 4th floor there, with no AC... But I'm not complaining! Soon enough, the time will be here when I'll be standing on the platform, waiting for my train in the morning, shivering in the cold in spite of my coat, and then I'll long for the weather we have now.
Also, this sunshine day after day gives me a chance to wear my favourite summer outfits. I remember summers when I didn't even get round to wear each of my dresses once, because it simply wasn't warm and nice enough.

Here are some of the outfits I have been wearing this summer.

These were both worn to work. The black cardigan was, of course, not needed all day, only until the sun had come out properly.

 Definitely NOT worn to the office:

One of my favourite dresses (you've seen it on this blog before). It's a Laura Ashley, and I wore it to a wedding in July where RJ and I were guests. It has a stiff tulle petticoat underneath and looks great on the dancefloor:
 

In contrast, the long 80s-style t-shirt and capri jeans are from Aldi, the cardigan from H&M. This entire outfit cost under 50 Euros, I think - minus the handbag, which was a gift. (Not a business outfit, obviously.)

This wouldn't be a complete fashion post without my favourite colour - yellow:

I doubt I'll need many of these items for the next two weeks... as far as I can tell, it won't get much above 20 Celsius in Yorkshire. Perfect for all the walks and hikes my sister and I want to go on!

Spätzle in Space

Those of you who have been reading my blog for some years have probably come across the word "Spätzle" before; it is a traditional Swabian dish, and as I am born and bred Swabian, of course I not only like Spätzle very much, but I also know how to make them myself. To find out more, you can click here and read the description and see the pictures on an older post of mine.

But what do Spätzle have to do with Space, and why is this post called "Spätzle in Space"?
Well, you know I have a "thing" for Space in general, and human spaceflight in particular. I read books on the subject (such as this one and this one, the latest one having been this one. 

Every now and then, I watch a documentary about Space on telly. This week, I happened to come across one just when I was about to go to bed and thought I'd flick through the channels one last time before switching off. It was about Dr. Alexander Gerst, a young German astronaut who spent half a year aboard the ISS last year. 

It is not necessary to repeat his biography or mission details here on the blog; you can read all that on the internet for yourself, if you are interested; for instance, here on ESA's homepage.
I can't remember how I first learned of Dr. Gerst, but I do remember that I followed his progress some time before he flew his "Blue Dot" mission, and kept watching out for mission news.
The town where he was born is about 1 hour's drive from my hometown, and the Technical Institute where he graduated before studying geophysics at Karlsruhe University is even closer. So, by all means, he is a Swabian like me, even though you can hardly detect the accent when he speaks German.

The documentary I watched this week dealt with the preparation of the mission and then the actual mission; what life is like aboard the ISS. Food, going to the toilet, sleeping, working out, conducting experiments, housekeeping... there is certainly never a minute to get bored up there! And in the unlikely event you were indeed getting bored, you could always float to the cupola and enjoy the breathtaking panoramic view of Earth in all its fascinating, fragile beauty.

When talking about food, the documentary showed how food in space is rehydrated and heated. It said that the astronauts do not have to miss out on their favourite dishes, and then it mentioned that, for Alexander Gerst, there were of course packets of Spätzle on board.
Now you know what it was that prompted me to write this blog post and name it "Spätzle in Space"! Surprisingly, when I typed "Alexander Gerst Spätzle" in google's search bar, more than 4.000 hits came up - so I'm not the only one to have written about "Spätzle in Space"!

I've often read that the way astronauts perceive the taste of a certain food or spice changes in space. (Credits for the picture below: ISSSpaceFoodsAssortment" by NASA - http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/presskits/spacefood/gallery_jsc2003e63875.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.)

This wikipedia article about space food is really interesting! If you don't want to read it all, here is a bit I didn't know about yet:

Commercial firms Lavazza and Argotec developed an espresso machine, called ISSpresso, for the International Space Station. It can also brew other hot drinks, such as tea, hot chocolate, and broth. On 3 May 2015, Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti became the first person to drink freshly brewed coffee in space. While the device serves as a quality-of-life improvement aboard the station, it is also an experiment in fluid dynamics in space. The brewing machine and drinking cups were specially designed to work with fluids in low gravity.

Anyway - I do hope Alexander Gerst enjoyed his Spätzle up there! If he ever feels like eating good home-made Spätzle and happens to be near Ludwigsburg, he'll definitely be welcome as my guest.

A Family Visit

In July, we had family visiting here for two weeks: One of my cousins and her 10-year-old son stayed with my sister for part of their summer holiday. To make sure the boy had a great time here with his elderly relatives, my sister constantly thought of things to do he would enjoy. One of those activities was a visit to the zoo in Stuttgart.

I've briefly mentioned the zoo (called "Wilhelma" after its founder, King William [Wilhelm] of Wuerttemberg) in this post. Although I have mixed feelings about zoos, the Wilhelma is always worth a visit. Even if one would not want to look at the animals (and believe me, everything is done to ensure they live under the best possible conditions), the buildings and gardens alone are wonderful.

Living so close to Stuttgart, of course I've been to the Wilhelma many times, from a very early age. And yet I still discover things I have not noticed before, such as the star-studded ceiling painting in this building (part of a covered walkway, steps and a gallery connecting different levels of the park):

Most of the animals we saw were familiar from many previous visits. But one of the buildings from the late 1960s/early 70s is closed for renovation, and the animals who had their quarters there are moved to other houses. One such group are the bats I'd never seen in daylight before:

These are called "Flughunde" in German, "flying dogs". They look indeed a bit like small dogs - or, rather, cats - with their furry bodies, pointed ears and cute faces. It's a type of bat that lives on fruit; they present no danger at all to other animals or humans. The house they have been moved to temporarily is the Butterfly House. Visitors walk in, and there are no bars, no glass panels, no barriers at all between them and the many beautiful, jewel-like huge tropical butterflies living in the glass house. And now, they have new company in the shape of those bats. I really like them and would have so loved to stroke their soft fur, but of course they kept out of the way up on the higher branches of a tree. 

Maybe if you look closely you can spot the little one that kept very close to one of the adults. The mother (I assume it was the mother, as it is the female of the species looking after the little ones with most mammals) clearly wanted to sleep, but the little one was restless and kept somewhat clumsily climbing up and down, not leaving mother in peace... most human mothers are familiar with such a situation, I guess!

Anyway, it was a long, good, interesting day with a lot of fun, for the boy as well as for us. After nearly 7 1/2 hours at the zoo (with two or three breaks for a drink and a meal), we got back to the car. The adults were all shattered - the 10-year-old wasn't! He still had enough energy to go and play with the neighbours' daughter after we returned home.

Read in 2015 - 23: History of Phoenicia

George Rawlinson's "History of Phoenicia" was first published in 1889 (mine was, of course, a free ebook from Amazon's Kindle shop). Many of the methods historians and archaeologists use nowadays to learn more about the past were not yet invented, and some key finds had not yet been discovered. But there existed already enough material to provide the interested reader with a wide range of information about this ancient people.

The Bible makes frequent mention of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians. Cities like Tyre and Sidon were well established and known throughout the world in which those who penned prophecies and the gospels moved.

The author bases his work on many more sources, though: Apart from the Bible, he cites numerous other authors (both ancient and modern), and of course he relies on buildings and objects found to describe the Phoenicians in much detail.

The book is neatly seperated into chapters, covering subjects such as the geography of the place associated with "Phoenicia", the origins of the "Phoenician race" (considered without any doubt a Semitic people), their architecture, arts, daily lives, religion, politics, commercial success and much more.

I must admit that I quick-read some of the chapters. Lengthy descriptions of each valley and for how many miles it runs west or south and how far it is from one river to the next were not what I was really interested in, nor was I keen on learning each and every battle all those city-kings fought against each other, or in changing alliances. But the chapters that described the ingenious way of building ports and walls, the way the Phoenicians tried to (successfully) establish peaceful commercial relations with most other people rather than attacking and destroying them, or risk being attacked and destroyed themselves; what we can deduct about their way of thinking from inscriptions in temples and on burial monuments; how modern some of their objects of daily use appear, how they simplified the more complicated alphabets and sylabets of great empires that existed before them; all this made for interesting reading on my way to and from work.

The author, George Rawlinson, lived from 1812 to 1902. He was thorough and clearly knew what he was writing about; whenever something could not be proved, he said so, and was not given to mere speculation. The last 20 % of the book consists of footnotes, giving the interested reader ample opportunity to learn more or conduct their own research. According to wikipedia, he was not only an Oxford scholar, historian and Christian theologian. In his 20s, he played cricket for the university and appeared in 5 matches considered first class.

He was married; wikipedia does not mention any children.

PS: I have just looked him up on the German version of wikipedia. While, as I said, the English one does not mention any children, the German one says he had NINE children - five daughters and four sons - with his wife Louisa.

Dîner en blanc

Have you heard of "White Dinners", or "Dîner en blanc"? 

The idea comes originally from Paris. Wikipedia calls it an "early instance" of a "smart mob", saying that "the Dîner en blanc phenomenon [...] has taken place annually in Paris, France, since 1988, for one night around the end of June. The invited guests wear only white clothes and gather at a chosen spot, knowledge of which they have only a short time beforehand. They bring along food, drink, chairs and a table and the whole group then gathers to have a meal, after which they disperse. [...] It is not a normal cultural event because it is not advertised and only those who have received an invite attend - information on the chosen location is transferred by text message or more recently Twitter. The number of people attending has grown, in 2011, to over 10,000. Dîner en blanc would be considered a smart mob rather than a flash mob, because the event lasts for several hours."

For the third time this year, my home town Ludwigsburg has held its own version of a Dîner en blanc. It can't be considered a smart mob, because the event was advertised beforehand, and anyone could attend, with or without invitiation. The key elements were there, though: People came (largely) dressed in white, and while tables (decked in white and with beautiful white flowers in white vases) and chairs were set up along the street by the organizers, guests were welcome to bring their own food and drink. For those who didn't bring anything, there was of course a wide range of food and drink on offer. Everything from paella to oysters could be had, and all sorts of (preferably white) wines, champagne, prosecco and cocktails were available. Even beer, although it wasn't really the beery type of occasion.

My Mum and I decided to go, and spent a very nice evening there. Admittedly, I wasn't dressed entirely in white. I do not own a white dress or skirt, and the only white shorts I have are not really suitable for a night out on the town. 

We enjoyed the very relaxed, easy-going atmosphere and strolled up and down the street a few times, briefly chatting to people we know (and some we didn't).

The drink we are having here is called Belsazar. It contains Vermouth, cherry tonic and fresh mint, and we found it very refreshing with a bitter-sweet taste.

Later, we had a look at what was going on on the adjacent market square. I noticed that the two clocks on the church are not in sync. Somehow, though, I didn't mind; I just briefly wondered which of the clocks would give the bells the command to ring the hours.

Dusk fell, and we walked home at a very leisurely pace. At around 9:30 pm, I was back home. We definitely want to go again next year - maybe I'll find a nice white dress or skirt or pair of trousers until then.

1st of August

For some, the 1st of August is Yorkshire Day (have a look at Neil's blog for more information). So far, somehow I have never managed to be in Yorkshire for the day, even though I have been going there regularly every year since I first met my husband (a Yorkshire lad) in the year 2000. If you are new to my blog, you'll find plenty of pictures and descriptions from my days and weeks there by simply typing "Yorkshire" in the search box at the top left corner of this blog.

Of course, around the world, every day in the calendar has a different meaning in different places, although there are some that are globally recognized, such as Christmas (but even that can differ for the disciples of various churches) and New Year (again: Chinese New Year is months later than the 1st of January, generally observed in Western countries).

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the 1st of August is also National Girlfriends Day.
Did you know this? I only learned about it recently, when I heard about a campaign from Oscar Health Insurance Company.  I think that this post of mine matches the idea of National Girlfriends Day perfectly, so I wanted to write a bit about the day because it is important among friends (and strangers, too) to support each other, even in small ways.

My thoughts on this? OK, here goes:
For example, one of my friends and I regularly go to the gym together. We usually meet on Mondays and Fridays, as these incidentally are the days when both of us are the most flexible for when we can leave work; I often work from home then and can pretty much come and go as I please (a huge luxury, I know!).
With another friend, I go running once a week. We both enjoy those runs just as much for the catching up with each other chat-wise as for the exercise and good feeling it gives us after a long day spent at a desk.

Have I ever actively encouraged a (girl)friend to see her doctor for a checkup? Yes, definitely. And I try to be regular with the usual stuff myself (although not always successful), especially since I've had a few false alerts over the past 10 years or so, and in 2010 needed minor surgery when it was not a false alert.
Everything is fine now with me, healthwise, and I hope it to stay that way for many years to come. I never tire of stressing how important it is that we do our part to keep healthy; I am not a fitness fanatic, and I love my food (especially the "unhealthy" stuff such as bread and cheese, and chocolate), but I contribute to my own well-being in small, inexpensive ways. As a reward, now that I am 47, I am fitter and in better shape than when I was 27.