Once More...

...I was back in Ulm, staying at the same hotel where I've been in 2014 during my course at the Academy for Data Protection and IT Security. 

This time, though, it was only a brief stint: I arrived Sunday afternoon and left Monday evening. Still, my short visit felt very nostalgic, especially when I on the Sunday I walked the paths that had become so familiar to me.

If you have already been reading my blog in 2014, maybe you remember this post about the walk with the view of Ulm Minster - the very same church I saw from a very different perspective the Sunday before last. 
Back in 2014, on my Goodbye-Walk, I thought I'd never see this place again. But now I had good reason to return, because the EU parliament has issued a new set of data protection regulations which I need to know inside out. I enrolled for a one-day seminar about the new law, and that's why I was back.

Here are the pictures I took on Sunday:

The hotel. Not exactly luxurious, but clean and simple, which is all I need for such a short stay (plus just across the road from the seminar rooms). This time, my room was facing the front; you can see my window: It is the bottom one in the first row of windows from the left. Inside, it looked like this:

Outside, I found little has changed here in the past two years - at least outwardly.
 

  
The view of the minster is, of course, zoomed in, but it was visible very well. It was a walk I enjoyed a lot, even though it wasn't very long and the scenery is certainly not the most spectacular I've ever seen. But it was like time-travelling to a period in my life which was both very intense and very happy - not that I am unhappy now (quite the contrary!), or do not find my life intense enough. It was just special, and it was nice to literally walk down memory lane. 

Read in 2016 - 9: Dust

At first I didn't quite know what to make of this (relatively short) novel. Is "Dust" by Arthur Slade a horror story? A mystery? A coming-of-age tale? Maybe all of it, and there is certainly no need to sort each and every book into a category.

Rural Saskatchewan in the late 1920s or early '30s, anyway, some years after the "Great Crash": Robert's seven-year old brother decides to walk into town instead of riding on the cart with his parents, who follow the same road shortly afterwards, only to discover that their little boy has never arrived in town.

Robert, 11 years old and different from the rest of the family in that he loves books and treasures his privacy, has stayed behind. While everyone is away, some strange things occur which could all be coincidences and have natural causes, but make for an uneasy, ominous atmosphere on the small, dusty farm.

Michael's disappearance coincides with the arrival of a stranger in town - a stranger who promises to change the life of the small, relatively poor community for ever.

Soon, everyone seems to be under the stranger's spell, with the exception of Robert, his uncle and one of the Mounties who have been involved in the investigation of Michael's disappearing.

More children vanish, seemingly without a trace, and their families and friends soon lose interest in finding them - it is almost as if they had never existed.

For a while, life in the small dusty town indeed seems to improve greatly, thanks to the stranger's plans. But of course not all is what it seems, and Robert, now 12 years old and on the border between child and young man, needs all the courage he can muster to get to the bottom of the mysterious events.

I really enjoyed this free ebook; the story was gripping and I wanted to know what happened to the characters and how Robert was going to solve the mystery. Even the scary bits are described not overly gory (I don't like all the gory detail some authors and their readers seem to be so fond of); had this book been available in my childhood, I would have been able to read it without having nightmares (I think).

The author, Arthur Slade, is less than a year older than I. He has written 18 novels, some of which form series ("Dust" isn't one of them), and some comic books. On his website the headline reads "Worlds of Wonder and Imagination" - and this story certainly set my imagination going!

Closer Than Ever...

...I was to some of the snow-covered mountain tops of the Alps at the border between the south of Germany and Austria.
Skip two posts back to see the first part of my Sunday flight(s); this is the promised second part.

After the delicious plum cake and coffee we had in Kempten, my pilot friend steered our small plane across the region called Allgäu, towards the mountains. We flew right above the place where I spent New Year's Eve and went for a nice long walk on New Year's Day - I could clearly see the house where my sister and I had been staying, and the lake where we went walking.

The mountain in the picture below is called Grünten. According to wikipedia, it is 1.783 m above sea level and about 600 m higher than the region at its foot.

A long time ago, when I was still a little Librarian, I spent a memorable summer holiday in the area with my family. It was planned that we climb the Grünten one day. But the day before, I ran bare-footed across a meadow of clover and grass to get to the lake for a swim, and stepped into a bee that was innocently sitting on a white clover blossom. My big toe (and the rest of me) did not agree with the bee sting, and I was ill for the rest of the holiday. My Mum stayed at the house with me, while my Dad and sister climbed the Grünten alone.
And here I was, nearly 4 decades later, and saw the same mountain in a way I could not have guessed back then!

Next, we flew a little to the East, entering a valley called Tannheimer Tal. (That's Austria already.) The closer we were to the mountains, the stronger the winds became, and as we climbed higher, it also became a little cooler. We even saw a lake below that was still frozen over! (The lake is called Haldensee, just in case any of you want to check on google maps where we were.)

I took many pictures, many more than I am going to show you here, but it was difficult - not only because of light conditions and reflections from the window pane, but also because we were being buffeted about by the wind quite a lot.

Still, I hope this small selection of pictures will give you an idea of how majestic and impressive this part of the world is, especially seen like this:

The strange thing was, even though the motor's noise was constantly very much there (I would have been worried if not!), I felt the silence out there. Not an eerie silence, just... silence, complete, quiet silence, maybe briefly broken by the cry of a large bird of prey I once saw flying past (no chance to capture it on camera), and of course by our little plane.

Rote Flüh. This - the clearest of all my mountain pictures - was taken by the pilot.

Kanisfluh

The "fences" have been placed there by helicopter. They are supposed to protect the valley below from avalanches.

Klimmspitze, Lechtal; 2.464 m above sea level

As I said, it was very windy up here, with turbulences shaking us about quite a lot. It wasn't scary; I knew I could trust my pilot friend 100 %, and he did not run any unnecessary risk. It was just not very comfortable on the narrow, relatively hard seat, and while I didn't feel exactly sick, I had to focus on myself and for a while neither spoke nor took pictures.

We followed the Lechtal (Lech being a river) for a while (to a place called Warth) and then took a right turn, following the valley of the "Bregenzer Ach", eventually leaving the high Alps behind us near Bregenz. Lake Constance was well visible, but I was not in the right position for pictures - and I still didn't feel like clicking away again.

Landing in Leutkirch, we took the welcome chance to stretch our legs and take some refreshments. It was really sunny and warm there! 

Shortly afterwards, the last part of our trip saw us heading north again. We crossed Stuttgart airport (like last year) and were already in sight of Pattonville's landing strip, when all the having been bumped about caught up with me - can you believe I needed my bag (brought along for just that purpose) literally on the last few hundred metres of our flight?! I felt somewhat embarrassed, but immediately much better, and glad I had not eaten since that piece of cake at around 11:00 am!
My friend told me not to worry and explained that it happens every now and then even to seasoned pilots, especially to glider pilots on their first flight after the winter.

It had been an eventful and most impressive flight experience altogether. As a treat just as much for the pilot as for myself, we had dinner at the Indian restaurant near where I live.
I wonder if it will take another year now before we'll be flying together again!

Read in 2016 - 8: A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies

Are you familiar with the "Dummies" books? I knew they exist, but until now had not read anything in the series.

Interestingly, I must have been thinking of them when I posted my recipes under the headlines "Spätze for Dummies", "Pizza for Dummies" and "Tiramisu for Dummies" some years ago here on my blog.

This book, "A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies", was (what else!) free on Amazon's kindle shop.

It contains 20 chapters with excerpts from 20 titles out of the "Dummies"-series, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this highly useful series of books - a great idea!

Spanning subjects from "Windows 7 for Dummies" to "Sex for Dummies", as diverse from each other as Knitting is from Canadian history, I found this to be a most interesting and entertaining choice. Apart from a few pages about Rugby World Cups, guitar playing and (non-digital) photography, I read almost every page of every chapter. Some subjects were of course more interesting to me than others, but I found all of it presented in a very clear and easy-to-read manner without lacking important detail.

If I should ever want to look further (further than, say, reading about it on wikipedia) into any of the hundreds of areas covered by the "Dummies"-series, they will be my first choice.

The collection of 20 chapters give a very good impression not only of the wide variety of subjects available, but also of their style. An excellent level of language without being too high-brow, as good as no errors (editing or otherwise), some humour where it is appropriate, clearly structured contents - in short: I highly recommend the series.

PS: Next up will be the second half of my Sunday flights.

A Change of Perspective

...is exactly what I was given on Sunday - literally!

Maybe you remember this post about my day up in the air with a friend of mine who flies small aircraft as a hobby. Back then, we really meant for me to fly with him again much sooner, but it turned out to take more than a year before it did happen. Life does have a way sometimes to cross our best intentions, doesn't it.

Maybe you also remember this post about the tallest church spire in the world. Now combine the two posts, and you can get an idea of where this is heading :-)

On Sunday morning, I was picked up early-ish for a ride to Pattonville. The plan was to spend good part of the day in the air, and that's exactly what we did.
We happened to have use of the same ultralight plane of last year, and we also began our round trip with the same short hop to Heubach for refuelling.

As you can see, the weather was still a bit dubious when we set off, but became better and better:

We were approaching Ulm, the city with the tallest church spire in the world, where in 2014 I spent several weeks. My friend did an extra turn around the minster especially for me, so that I could take pictures from all sides! This was brilliant, and I was very grateful - I would have never thought of suggesting it myself.

While in 2014 I took pictures from the church spire, this time I was taking pictures of it :-)
The river is the Danube, by the way.

Right after that, we could see the snow-covered Alps on the horizon much clearer than before. The first picture below is the view I had when looking out on my (the right) side of the plane; the second one is the view through the front window. Normally, you don't even see the rotor blade; it moves so quickly. But the camera still captures it.

We stopped for coffee and cake (pieces of home-made plum cake, twice the size of what you get when you order cake in a café here in town!) in Kempten. The colourful plane next to ours on the grass was from France. We briefly spoke to the pilot and his girlfriend who were sitting at the table next to ours.

After half an hour or so of enjoying the sun, we got on our little plane again and took off the green field amidst daisies and dandelions. The Alps were our next goal - and that will be the subject of my next post.

Here's To Spring!

A grey and rather dull-looking Saturday morning turned into a beautiful sunny spring afternoon. My Mum, my sister and I decided to check on the progress of spring in the palace grounds and spent a most pleasant few hours together.

Enjoying pumpkin secco - tastes like apricot lemonade and has about the same effect. Here's to spring!

Forget-me-nots are my favourite small flowers. They look very pretty together with the pale yellow hyacinth, don't they!

This is a plant all three of us are sure to have never come across before. Its scent is sweet but delicate, not overwhelming, and reminds me a bit of honey, milk and beeswax.

Herons love this spot!

We were happy to see so many flowers and soak up the sun after a week at work. Many people had the same idea, but the park is big enough to accomodate them all.

Next up will be pictures of my flight on Sunday.

Office To Opera...

...and back!

Do you like the opera? Generally, I do like going to the theatre, opera, ballet, and concerts of classical (and modern) music - but I do not automatically like all and every opera, ballet, theatre and so on.
Often, I simply don't "get" modern productions, but I don't always like the classics, either. What I do like, however, are operas by Giuseppe Verdi. I've not seen all that many, but the ones I have seen were so full of drama and GREAT music that they simply took my breath away.

On Wednesday night, I saw my first Puccini opera - another Italian composer, born 45 years after Verdi and different in style but just as dramatic. The opera was "Tosca", and the tickets (2nd row at the wonderful Opera house of Stuttgart, which is well worth a visit for the building alone) were very generously given to me and my sister. 
My Mum and a friend of hers have a subscription for a certain number of performances every season. This time, the friend was away over Easter, and my Mum had already seen "Tosca", and so my sister and I were given the tickets. What a great gift for the two of us!

Tosca killing Scarpia

We both worked during the day and went to the opera straight from the office, so my choice of outfit had to be both business-like and good enough for the relatively posh atmosphere at the opera.
I am not one to go to the opera jeans-clad; to me, seeing a performance (opera, theatre, ballett or concert) is something out of the ordinary, a special event sparkling in the course of everyday life, and I want to express that in my outfit. I know the people on stage can not see me, not even in the 2nd row, but in my mind, dressing properly is also a sign of respect for them and their great talent and effort going into the performance.

"Our" Tosca saw a great cast of singers and actors on stage. The photo above is taken from Stuttgart Opera's home page. "Tosca" was sung by the amazing Adina Aaron; you can read about this particular production here.
What touched me most of all was when Tosca's lover, Mario, knows he has only one hour to live before the firing squad will kill him. In prison, he sings about how he has never loved life more than at that moment, and after the aria, he breaks down, sobbing. It was that sobbing that really got to me.

Back to safer, more shallow ground! This is what I was wearing:

A teal silk shirt (Christmas gift from my parents) with a classic black skirt I often wear to the office, pearls around my neck and on my ears, black tights and shoes with a bit of a heel.

On Friday, I worked at RJ's home office. Whenever I work there, I dress more or less as if I was working from home; still properly dressed (definitely NOT in my PJs when I work from home!) but not quite as business-like as when I go to the office where I meet "The Customer" (which, in my case, consists of hundreds of people working in the same building, eating at the same canteen).

The outfit I wore on Friday was a combination of old and new. I've had this pair of trousers for many years, and the lovely spring weather we'd had the day before made me look for something pastel. The top was in the birthday parcel my mother-in-law sent me from England, among many other things, as well as the bracelet, which consists of hearts - something I would not have bought for myself, but now that I have it, will wear occasionally.

Flying tomorrow with the same pilot friend who took me along a year ago - fingers crossed the weather will hold!