Read in 2015 - 20: A Woman's Journey Round the World

Reading this book was a premiere for me - not only because it was my first encounter with the author and her life, but also because of the language. Let me explain. Whenever possible, I read books in their original language, which is no problem when the book is in either German or English. I don't trust my abilities to read French enough for an entire book, and my last read in Italian is many years ago.

Every now and then, someone gives or lends me the German translation of an English book. I can't help but notice the quality of a translation; some are very, very good, others are acceptable (meaning the translation does not take away the pleasure of a good story), while others still are so full of mistakes (or at least unlucky choices) that I really regret not having read the original.

Ida Pfeiffer's book was originally written in German, but the free copy I found at Amazon's kindle shop was translated to English - the first time ever for me to read something translated "the other way round".

When little Ida was born in 1797 in Vienna, she was the only girl in the family. Her father took the education of his children very seriously and, up until a certain age, made no difference in the way Ida was brought up from that of her five brothers. She liked the rough and tough games with the boys, the comfortable trousers and the orderly, almost military, emphasis on discipline and (physical) strength, things that would serve her well later in life.

Upon entering puberty, she was - with some difficulties - persuaded to live like a girl: wear dresses, behave demurely and properly, learn sewing and cooking, etc.

She married and had children, but was far from well provided for by her husband. On the contrary, she had to work very hard to even just care for the most basic needs of her family.

After she became a widow, received an inheritance from her mother's side and her children were old enough to look after themselves, she finally made her life's dream come true: To travel and see the world. From early childhood, learning things, seeing places, meeting people and see how others live had been her yearning. She still wasn't well off financially, but she scraped together just about enough to set off on her first long voyage.

Ida wrote down what she saw, heard and felt during the trip, and was encouraged to sell her travelogue. Of the proceedings, she saved as much as she could; also, she spoke to interested audiences about her travels, which not only added a little to her meagre income, but also made it easier for her to find sponsors willing to help finance her next trip.

In "A Woman's Journey round the World" (first published in 1850), she describes her first trip around the world, a 2-year-long voyage that lead her across "The Brazils" to Chile and Tahiti, then to China, India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Turkey, Russia and Greece before returning to Vienna.

Ida did not only show great courage and readiness to deal with all sorts of hardships (imagine being on a tiny sailing ship with no mod cons for weeks on end, without fresh food, clean clothes or even a bit of privacy, plus totally subject to the weather and the captain's mood). She was also a keen observer and noted down in much detail what she saw, heard and learned. Whatever crossed her path and piqued her interest, she collected: plants, insects, minerals, and so on. Everything was carefully documented and upon her return sold to museums in Vienna and Berlin.

Back then, political correctness had not yet been invented, and Mrs. Pfeiffer's comments about natives and fellow travellers range from the humorously frank to the outright appalling. She has no trouble in calling nearly every people of a skintone darker than her own "ugly", and it is rare to find favourable comments about the looks of natives. She grew up with such racist views and, like most people back then, never questioned them. She was, however, not totally blind to the merits and wrongdoings of others. For instance, she highly praises the kindness and hospitality shown her by those "pagan" and "savage" people she encounters along the way, while she does not hesitate to condemn the hypocrisy of her fellow Europeans who call themselves Christians but behave badly towards the natives in whatever country they come to, and sometimes towards herself. 

A few times, she encounters real danger, but most of the time, being obviously a relatively poor, elderly woman serves as her protection, and she is largely left to travel in peace, seen as a curiosity worth looking at, but not worth capturing, robbing or killing for her few possessions.

What I found very interesting was to compare the places Ida visits with what they are like now. For instance, she often mentions the number of inhabitants of towns and cities. Some of those we know today as megacities were little more than small towns back then. Many of the monuments and sights she describes are still there, while others have long gone. The political landscape has, of course, changed significantly since Ida's days, but the cultural make-up of some societies has not advanced all that much, I'm afraid.

The book made for very interesting reading and, once more, made me glad to be alive today and in this part of the world.

How To Spend a Very Hot Weekend

Not a hot weekend as in "hot" (i.e. escaping somewhere with a lover), but as in high temperature hot. The first weekend of July broke some temperature records in Germany. My Mum reported 41 Celsius on her balcony on Sunday afternoon - in the shade!

What to do to keep cool, especially if you live in a very average German house, which means there is no AC? To be honest, I don't want to keep cool in summer - summer should be sunny and warm, sometimes hot, and it is perfectly normal to sweat a little on a hot day. Just wear something suitable, make sure you drink enough water and don't eat too much or over-exert yourself, and you should be fine.

But that weekend, along with three of my friends, I travelled all the length of Germany from the south to the north to visit one of the ladies of our original group of friends. She moved there six years or so ago, but we have managed to remain close and see each other about once, sometimes even twice, a year.

She lives somewhere between Hamburg and Lüneburg, in a small town (Mölln) in an area known as Lauenburgische Seenplatte, a kind of "lake district" really. Her town alone is built around three lakes, and her house is right next to one. As there is no heavy industry nearby, and the whole region is very well cared for and clean, people who live around the lake usually go for a swim whenever they can. Our friend is no exception - she swims in the lake every morning, temperature permitting.

We were all very much looking forward to seeing our friend and the beautiful place where she lives; so far, we'd all seen it only once, in February 2010, when the lake was frozen over and there were snow and ice everywhere.

After a rather tiring trip, involving four different trains and a total delay of a bit more than an hour (which has, sadly, become normal for train trips in Germany), we finally reached our destination.

The sight that greeted us on/from our friend's balcony was this:

See the red arrow pointing to a house somewhere to the left of the church?  That is the hotel where one of my friends and I were staying; the other two opted to stay at our friend's place.

We brought along a basket full of typical Swabian food and drink, as a culinary reminder of our friend's old home:

After enjoying a refreshing glass or two of prosecco, we went for a walk around the lake, our friend playing guide. It felt so good to finally move about on our own feet instead of depending on the whims of trains! 

I took plenty of pictures, but I'll show you only a few now and the rest in a seperate post.
 

I have not yet found out what the connection between the town of Mölln and George Bernard Shaw is, but this plaque on a wall near the church made me want to do some research on the subject:

Sunset over the lake:

Time for bed! It had been a good and long day, and tomorrow was going to be even better.
The hotel was alright; the landlady could have been a little friendlier, but the room was clean and the beds comfortable enough.
 

Walking Again

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you already know that my parents have an allotment and that my Mum and I love going there on foot (at least for part of the way). We usually take the train from our home town, get off about half way there, and walk the rest. That walk takes around 1 1/2 hours, depending on how many short breaks and photo stops there are in between.

Two Sundays ago, we did just that. Here are the pictures I took along the way; if you like, have a look at how things have changed since the end of April, when we last did this walk.

The first one shows the river Neckar with the picturesque town of Marbach, as seen from the train approaching Marbach.

This one is the view from the bench in the shade of a tree, where we took a little rest after having climbed the first hill of our walk. 

Fields and orchards already gave the impression of it being several weeks later in the year than it actually was.

Crossing the Murr in Steinheim:

By the time we arrived at the allotment, my Dad had already made coffee and laid the table (including flowers from the garden) on the patio for the three of us. My Mum had made raspberry muffins (the berries were, of course, from the garden as well).

After a while, I went for another walk, this time on my own. You know I had to check on my favourite place, the grassy path between fields and the woods where I've never come across anyone else.

Today was the same - I had the path all to myself. I took a different route back to the allotment, through the woods, where I saw some beautiful flowers in the sunny patches:

I arrived back at the allotment about an hour or so later. It had been a perfect Sunday for me.

Places of Interest

For me, any empty house, neglected, overgrown garden, ruined barn or otherwise forgotten, abandoned place is a Place of Interest. Why I have this penchant for such places I can't tell; all I know is that I have been feeling that way for as long as I can remember. 

One particular situation when I realized that abandoned places hold special attraction for me was when I spent an unforgettable holiday on the Danish island of Bornholm in the early 1990s. One of my aunts has been living there for decades; we spent summer holidays there as a family when my sister and I were in our early teens, and I remember that time well.

When I returned more than a decade later, now a married woman, I rediscovered the area and enjoyed every minute of it. My aunt and uncle used to live on a former farm; the old stable was converted into a guest house, where my husband and I were staying. The nearest neighbour was more than a mile away (which is why in the meantime, my aunt and uncle have moved into town, where they are closer to all the conveniences they need, now that they are in their 70s and 80s).

The summer I was there for the second (and so far last) time, the working farm next to my aunt's had been abandoned the previous year. Not because the farmer's family didn't feel like farming anymore, but because the land was acquired by the local government and to be used for re-forestation, something very important for the ecological balance of the relatively small island.

So, there it was - an old and recently abandoned farm house with several outbuildings, an overgrown orchard and a garden. Paradise!

Nearly every day between returning from the beach and getting dinner started (and sometimes again after dinner), I spent some time alone in the grounds. There was nobody about except for the odd pheasant, many other birds, a few lizards and lots of butterflies. It was very quiet, and there were still plenty of flowers in the garden, giving off their scent in the warm afternoon sun. I have never tasted strawberries more aromatic and sweeter than those I picked in the abandoned orchard. It was magic, and I wanted to stay there forever.

Anyone who looks at the place now will not suspect that there ever was a farm there. The buildings were pulled down a year or so later, and the efforts to re-forest have been successful.

Since that summer about 20 years ago, I have come across many more Places of Interest. Sometimes, a fellow blogger writes about such places. I will, in all likelihood, never visit there personally, but the excellent pictures and very good descriptions nearly make up for that and have almost the same effect on me.

Over the past two or three months, I have taken pictures of several abandoned houses, dotted around the greater Stuttgart area (none of these buildings is in Ludwigsburg). Although I would have loved to, I didn't venture inside any of them. The main reason for not going inside is of course that they are either locked up, unsafe or both - and it would certainly be illegal to enter what is still, after all, someone else's property. But there is also another reason: I'm afraid I'd be severely disappointed if I really managed to get in.

Probably all I'd find inside would be heaps of rubbish, dead rats (or worse) and none of the morbidly romantic settings I see in my mind when I look at them from the outside.

 

Very overgrown path leading to...

...this house. You wouldn't guess it from the picture, but it actually is in the middle of a bustling little town, with one of the main roads leading past it.

So, to spare me this disappointment - not to mention a possible lawsuit -, I'll stick to admiring my Places of Interest from the outside.

More Woods!

These days, I am a bit behind with posts. I've been rather busy with many other things and did not want to scribble a hurried post only so that there would be something, anything, to read on my blog. Today, I have a bit more time, and so I start catching up by showing you yet another walk in the woods we took on Sunday three weeks ago.

As you can see, it was another beautiful day; sunny and warm, so that a walk in woodland was a very good idea.
 

 
We took a late lunch break between vineyards and woods, eating our sandwiches and fresh strawberries. 

View towards Stuttgart Fernsehturm ("Television Tower", built in 1954 and a famous landmark around here; 217 m tall)

Then we walked further on and soon arrived at a path leading to an old quarry. It was never used as a source for building material. Instead, it shows thin, multi-coloured layers of marl and sandstone which the owners and workers of the vineyards used to fertilize the ground between the vines with. You can see the strips of marl near the top of the quarry.
The vineyards are still there, but marl is not used as a fertilizer any longer. Nowadays, the quarry is a designated nature monument; it can be seen from the steep path and steps, but it is not allowed to go in there. 
Legend has it that the place is haunted: When it was still in use, it belonged to the neighbouring communities (it was never owned by just one person or family). The mayors of those communities were not always law-abiding and sometimes took money out of their community's treasury for their personal profit. It is said that the ghosts of those dishonest mayors sometimes roam the quarry at night.
Well, it was full daylight when we were there, and all we saw was a little brown mouse busily running across the groundcovering plants.

Our walk was much longer than the few pictures I am showing you here make it appear, and we enjoyed very much being out there for some hours to get the best of both worlds - sunshine as well as the relative coolness of the trees.