The 25th of May - a Thursday - was a holiday here in Germany. The weather was fine; sunny without being too hot, and so my sister and I decided to go for a nice long walk.
We took the train to a small town called Winterbach, about 30 km East of us. Before starting on our actual walk, we had a quick look around the beautiful old church. It would have been nice to see it inside, too, but as is so often the case, it was locked.
There has probably been a church in this exact spot long before the current building was dedicated in the year 1309. Of course, the church has undergone renovations and alterations over the centuries that have passed since then (for instance, lightning hit the bell tower and burnt it down in 1644, and in the 1750s, the good people of Winterbach became modestly wealthy and spent some of their money on extensive renovations), but it is still very obviously very old.
Some typical buildings for this part of Germany, and a maypole:
We left Winterbach (literally "winter beck") and started our walk in earnest.
About an hour later, we arrived at the other end of the woods among more meadows and orchards:
Time for a break - a picnic on the grass, before walking on towards the next village.
This is not the first time I am mentioning pub quizzes on my blog - you can easily find my older posts by putting "Pub Quiz" in the search bar on the top left corner.
I can not remember exactly when I started going to the quiz at "my" pub (Ludwigsburg's Irish Pub, Towers). It must have been 2008 or 2009, and although our team has changed a little over the years through circumstances - one member moving back for good to the US, while a new member joined us for the first time earlier this year - we are still pretty much The Corner Shop.
We nearly always end up among the first three and have come out 1st a few times. All of us would like to play more often, but it is difficult to find dates when everyone can make it. The quiz is held every Tuesday night, with a long break over the summer and a shorter one around Christmas. We manage to play maybe two or three times during one season.
This season ended last night - and we ended it on a high!
Only three of us managed to make just one point less than the winning team!
(We still did not come out 2nd, but 3rd, since there were two teams
competing for 1st. And I will now forever remember how many letters
there are in the Hawaiian alphabet!)
So, VERY well done us!!!
At first, I was rather put off - although I had booked well in advance, our usual corner table (hence our team name) had been given to someone else; two of our team could not make it, and there was no ginger beer for me, only ginger ale.
But once the questions started and we realised we were not doing so bad, my mood lifted, and walking home with yet another bottle of champagne was a very good end to the evening (and the season).
We'll be back for more in September :-)
Do you want to have a go at those questions I can remember?
1. How many letters are in the Hawaiian alphabet? (That was our draw question.)
2. Where on the human body would you find a hallux?
3. Which is the biggest lake in Africa?
4. What is the name of the most famous beach near Sydney, Australia?
5. In which state of the USA do you find the town of Stuttgart?
6. Which river crosses the equator twice?
7. What body part is affected by the disease hepatitis?
8. In which movie would you hear the phrase "Chewie, we're home!"?
9. What two nations share the island of Hispanola?
10. Which sport returned to the Olympic Games in 2016 for the first time since 1904?
11. In which European country do you find the resort town of Sopot?
It's been years (5 1/2, to be precise) since I last wrote about the topic of self-perception and how it differs from what others see when they look at us. If you are interested in my 2011 post about the topic, click here.
Maybe this post from two years ago is also interesting in context.
A few weeks ago, I had an appointment at a photo studio where all sorts of professional photos are taken. People go there when they need pictures to apply for a job, for a new passport, or simply for fun; they can have their pictures taken either as a family, couple, group of friends or on their own.
Last Christmas, my parents gave me a voucher for a photo session at that studio. I was unsure what to do with it, as I do not currently need pictures for any particular reason. So I simply went there to see what was going to happen.
The very young lady who was "my" photographer took about 15-20 minutes to apply make-up. We had agreed on a simple day-make-up, nothing too over the top, no smoky eyes or any particularly fashionable stuff. She chose lipstick and eye shadow for me, and soon we were in the room with the lamps and different wall backgrounds.
I gave her free range, since I had no particular wishes. She was quite happy to let me try various postures in different lights and in front of several backgrounds.
About a fun half an hour later, our session was over. She let me choose my favourite pictures out of the 60 or so she had taken, and showed me which one was her personal favourite of the set.
I am not unhappy with the results, but I agree with my sister, O.K., RJ and others who have seen the photos and said I look older in them than usual; the general agreement seems to be that I look my age.
Well, I have wrinkles - perfectly normal at 49 -, and I agree that I do not look like this normally; for one thing, the only cosmetics I own and (occasionally) wear are lipstic, mascara and eye-shadow. No make-up or "foundation", as it is often called.
Now I wonder what you think. Also, have a guess at which was the photographer's favourite, which one my Mum chose to have framed, and which is the one I personally like best. And no - this post is not really about vanity. It is out of a genuine interest in the topic of self-perception v. how others perceive us.
Who is not fascinated by the beauty of a rainbow appearing in the sky? They are relatively hard to photograph, I find, being better visible to the eye than to the camera. Also, sometimes they appear and disappear rather quickly, so it has to be just the right moment.
A few weeks ago (on May 18), I saw just the shimmer of a rainbow above one of the roofs I see from my kitchen window. Zoomed in, it became more visible, but it remained a stub, so to speak.
But the day before yesterday, Tuesday evening after work, I saw this beautiful rainbow while talking to O.K. on the phone:
I took many pictures and hope I have chosen the best two for you here.
By the way, I am not sure how well you can see it in the pictures, but the cherries have grown considerably and gained colour in the time between the first and second rainbows - they are almost ripe now, and it is only the first week of June!
Saturday, the 13th of May was our last full day in Cannobio; we were to leave the next morning.
We woke up to fine weather, as the above view form our hotel room shows, and decided on another tour from O.K.'s guide book. This one was to lead us to the peak called Cima del Morissolo (cima simply means mountain top, peak or summit in Italian). According to the book, this is the only place from where you can view the entire length of Lago Maggiore; 60 km in total. At 1,311 m, Morissolo was going to be only slightly higher than Monte Giove, where we had been on Tuesday.
After a hearty breakfast, we changed into our hiking clothes and boots, and drove to where the tour was supposed to start. We had both been a little apprehensive about driving there - we knew it was not going to be a long drive from Cannobio (less than half an hour, I think), but we did not want to repeat my experience with the narrow curvy mountain roads only two days earlier. So the deal was, if I feel bad again, we turn round at the first possibility, and do something else with no driving involved.
But guess what, I felt fine throughout, and when we did stop about halfway to the starting point, it was simply because the view was fantastic and we wanted to take pictures.
We followed the designated path, and while we did not have to master as much difference in height as on Tuesday's hike (880 m), the path was rough, rocky and unclear in parts. There were bits where I used not only my feet, but also my hands (just to be on the safe side), and I would not have wanted to hike there without proper boots.
But then, the view from the top! It was breathtakingly beautiful, spectacular - the photos can only give you a poor impression of what we really saw, and how it felt up there. Quiet, distant, clear. Nobody there but us.
Down there is Cannero, and round the bend, you can just about see Cannobio:
We did meet one or two people on the way to the top, and when we came back down, there were two young women on mountain bikes.
After exploring the tunnels and caves hewn into the mountain itself (sorry - no pictures; it was too dark and wet down there to pull out the camera), we continued our tour, now on an old military road. The road as well as the tunnels and caves were constructed in 1916, at the time of WWI. The idea was to create the infrastructure necessary for defense in case of an attack from Switzerland, Germany or Austria. According to one of the information signs put up near the entrance to one of the tunnels (where artillery was kept), up to 20,000 men were working at the construction at one time.
What I found interesting was that the works offered women a paid job for the first time in their lives - employed to transport provisions for the men and building materials by mule from the bottom of the mountains to the top. Up until then, women in that region and that time did not work for money, but struggled along with their families to live off what little they managed to yield from the land. It must have been a big change for the region, but was of course short-lived; once the work (and the war) ended, they had to think of other means to make a living, or return to the old ways.
The military road was very comfortable to walk on, and kept to the same height nearly all the time:
All in all, it was more a walk than a hike, with the exception of the rougher bits up to the Cima. But with the fantastic views, it was the perfect ending to our holiday.
We drove home the next day (through several thunderstorms with some really heavy rain fall) in around 5 1/2 hours. Leaving was not made easier by the clear blue sky we saw from our patio that morning:
A Brilliant Plan
Alex Ames
After the not quite so entertaining play I read last (see previous post), I was really lucky with my next read: "A Brilliant Plan" kept me interested and entertained throughout, and had more than one surprise in store.
I'd not heard of Alex Ames before, but he is one to come back to. With Calendar Moonstone he has created a character I (mostly) like - apart from her "hobby" of being a cat burglar, specialized on the theft of rare and expensive jewels. She is no modern Robin Hood, but avoids stealing from people who would truly suffer the loss of whatever piece she is after. In her day job, she runs a small jewellery shop, creating and selling her own pieces.
One night during what she thought of as a straightforward job she comes across the dead body of a watchman. That completely changes things for her, and she leaves the scene without having accomplished her original goal.
The next day, she finds herself on top of the list of suspects, but manages to convince the police of her innocence - and becomes most useful to them with her expert knowledge of rare and precious jewellery as well as the markets, offical and shady ones, for such items.
During the course of the investigation alongside the police detective (whom Calendar finds very attractive), she is confronted by her ex-fiancé, has to handle her best friend's love for her without losing his friendship and support, travels to Mexico and back, meets up with her parents (former hippies who have turned into wealthy pillars of their community), comes across another murder victim and is almost killed herself.
In the end, she unravels the mystery, keeping information to herself (and from the reader) until the last chapter. The solution does not disappoint, and although not ending on a cliffhanger, the story is clearly the start of a series.
I found it as a free ebook on Amazon's kindle shop, but unlike so many free ebooks, this one was well written and edited.
Alex Ames has written several books the sound of which I like. You can find out more about the author and his books here.
Zur schönen Aussicht
Ödön von Horvath
For a change, I read something in German. Most of what I read in my native language are work-related documents and of course my weekly paper (for which I usually have a back log of about three issues).
This free ebook is a play. I don't know about you, but normally, I do not enjoy reading theatre plays, but prefer the flow of a story in its narrative shape. After the first two or three pages of "Zur schönen Aussicht", I was about to give up, but then decided to stick to it.
The play is about a group of people at a run-down hotel. There are the manager and his staff, one staying guest and a few visitors.
In the opening scene, the tone is set for the entire play: Conversation is a mix between witty and vulgar, with little love lost between the characters. Sometimes the innuendo is a little mysterious; to fully understand each remark, one needs to know the time and context in which the play was written. Language and its use of certain terms changes, and the 91 years that have passed since its first publication in 1926 show.
The hotel manager and the (only) paying guest, a rich lady slightly past her prime, are having an affair without any attempt at hiding it. This changes when a former lover of the manager appears for a surprise visit, claiming their brief relationship resulted in a child. The manager believes it is the young woman's strategy to marry him, whom she believes to be wealthy. He, his staff, the rich lady and her brother (who has also arrived on a surprise visit) confer about the best way to get rid of the young woman.
They do not intend to kill her, just to scare her away and forego all claims on the manager, and develop a ruse.
Things do not go as planned, however, and the play ends with a surprise for the partners in crime.
What can I say? It is not a play to be "enjoyed". People behave and talk nastily, but they are not meant to be admired for it. Instead, the characters (apparently based on people the author knew in real life) are exposed as parts of a society hardened and bittered by a war (WWI was less than 10 years ago) and economic difficulties. Everyone has dark spots in their past, everyone has a more or less hidden agenda, and everyone is interested only in their own advantage, willing to sacrifice what little friendship or affection may exist between them.
It left me sad, and I felt sorry for those nasty, frustrated people who were so clearly looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Time to read something a bit more entertaining!
The author was of Austro-Hungarian origin. Born in 1901, he started writing while still a student, and during his short life produced an impressive list of plays, novels and other prose. He died in 1938 when, while walking in Paris during a thunderstorm, he was hit by a falling branch from a tree. Only a few months earlier, he had arrived in Paris as an immigrant, leaving Austria after it had become part of the German Nazi Reich.
Politics and history, and especially the dangers of fascism, often feature in his works.
You can read a little more about him here.
