Move To Bremen?

Because if I wanna have Blooood-Sausage today, I´d buy it from this pal, if I lived there!



Pic from the Shopblogger, think it´s just advertising for him, so he won´t kill me, huh?

As you can see here at the Shopblogger (German).

From 8:30 to 9 tonight this 24/6-Shop will close to decorate Halloween-Like. For those 30 minutes they serve potential shoppers with hot mulled wine.

After that entrance is for persons 16 plus only, as you can see here.

Oh, my, so sad he isn´t here in Braunschweig!!!

Happy Halloween!

Addendum: Here are videos of that night.

Who Is Thomas?!

... The Wedding II

For those who know my Bro this will be no surprise: "I´ll be there at 1 to 1:30." Half an hour later it´s 2:00 and he was there a bit after 3... in Jeans and Sweater! We decorated the church in the very last minutes and had to improvise, too.
No surprise, actually!



Beautiful, no?



I dunno what happened, but shortly before the ceremony started I heard my dear Bro telling the Pastor that, yes, he has a second name.
Because...

My first boyfriend´s name was Thomas. We liked to play a lot, but at 6 I always had to go home. So, I thought, when my Bro was born, we simply name him Thomas also and he sure will be as fun to be around with.
It must´ve been a very deep wish of mine - his second name is Thomas, and, sorry to all the Thomases in the world... but it´s more a collective term than a name (I have two in my team, btw, both guys are fun, too :-)!)
My Bro doesn´t like the name much.

The Pastor did a great job! Free speech mostly, he said their story sure was an adventure (it was!)... and when he came to the serious part...

You guess it!!! Bu-hahaha!!!

The Bride´s father very loud and astonished interrupted, "who is Thomas?!!!"

Oh, dear Bro, I´m sorry (kinda)! :-)))

My Mom´s Brothers and Sisters haven´t changed in the last 7 years, one of them, though, I haven´t seen in over 25 years... looks like my Brother! Weird! The name-sign my Bro took to the Airport wasn´t needed!

We had the yummiest food!

Ingo did the greatest job "selling" my prices, really, he surprised me a lot!!!

We had the job to get the pressies and left-over food the next day (or, let´s say in the morning) - was heaps!
Back in Braunschweig we "found" the Wedding-Soup still in Ingo´s car - 5 yummy liters!



And so much more my SIL packed:




Including the cake!!!
Though we both don´t like sweets, we certainly didn´t want to bring them bad luck and ate it!



Uhhh, so sweet....

Haha, whilst we were packing the food, SIL asked, "you want cutlery?" (Besteck)
Me.. ????

Not Besteck, she spoke of Gesteck, the bouquet!




It was a great day and night and those two looked so,so happy and beautiful!!! :-)

Life is goooooood!

The Wedding I

My Bro is a gymnast, hence they made him do a backflip :-)



And here they go, not on a bed of Roses but also on "soft soil" :-)

Lady Marmelade

Well, not that Lady Marmelade, I am one of another kind ;-)

For the coming Wedding I wanted to reprise the idea from my friend´s Wedding in August, to let the guests wrap up small servings of jam with a paper on which they leave a note for the Newlyweds before.

One of my colleagues has a card that enables him to buy at wholesale. He checked it out and said, there are 40 portions per package.
I said, ok, then bring me two packages, please, there´ll be 60 guests.
Which he did. Just.... not 40, but 100 per package!

See, here I sit with 200 small portions of marmelade - that is some kind of traffic jam, huh?
Anyone in for a sweet snack?



But, I guess I´m all set now. The money-shirts are a bit more colorful this time (naturally),



(hmmm, do I miss the good ole "Deutsche Mark" anymore? This is not as colorful, but does it, too!

Ingo made another "laundry rack" (we now slowly run out of chopsticks!):



(The "anchor" you see is a corn of rice with their names and the date of their marriage on it, put in a heart with red fluid)

Yes, also this one is wrapped up "childproof", cause people really do take it and shake it!



I have 12 cards for the 12 "winners" who will hopefully delight the Newlyweds the coming 12 months with divers functions each, now I only have to manage to find the right people for that!
Not much use if our Aunt from Switzerland would be a winner, or the Uncle from Mallorca...




The best comes here:
Ingo has something very special, too.

This is the invitation we got:



The word "Love" in many, many languages.

Here, right on top, you find the Wedding-Song Ingo mixed.
It is about Love, in many languages:
High (or standard) German, that´s what we speak.
Then German from the Middle Ages (well, those guys dress as Musketeer and Sutler when being with the Sehusa Musketiere (German).
Then Cologne Accent, that´s where my Bro studied.
Berlin-Accent, just kinda "cool", Swiss-German is part of it, too - I love it :-)

Please cross your fingers it´s not too cold.
I have the same dress I had in August!!!

Today I´m off work, I am to decorate the church with flowers. And I don´t wanna be stressed.

At 4 in the afternoon the serious part begins!

Oh, my. I haven´t seen my Mom´s Brothers and Sisters since my Dads funeral. That´s over 7 years now - will they have changed a lot? Hope they´re still fun to be around with!

Yes, around 7am... I have so much to do!
(Ingo made Pickled eggs for the team, now I have to get them safely there, too! And all the other stuff! Lucky me, the car isn´t parked too far away).

Oh, boy. My little Brother is a married Man!!!

Happy Feet

This is what my Mom presented me/us with:



Since we´re not married the backside says:



"Dear companion", but, hey, the hearts in front say it all, no?

Hearts, btw... my keybord at work will hopefully look like this, soon:



I hope it works out fine... was just 1 €!

It´s Free!

And not (yet) destroyed! Public binoculars:



Direction where? This tower.



It´s art, I suppose! Just don´t be jumpy, this guy is very near then!





And last, not least...



Art... for free. Don´t bring the kids.
;-)

It´s cold, too cold for October! I have to scratch the ice from the car in the mornings.
Need to get the winter-tyres on soon!

My Stripey Tiger Duck

Maybe you know Janosch, he is one of the best-known German children's book authors and he helped the Stripey Tiger Duck come alive, as you can see here (German, but fun).

Boy. Must be over 13 years ago now, we were with friends in... tadaaaa, Braunschweig (seems I got glued to this place pretty early) when Ingo suddenly was gone!

Then he was back.

With the little one you see in front, as a chain :-)



When I was in hospital yet again some time later, Ingo brought the bigger one to me.

And now I stubmled over this Brekkie/Lunch-Box!:



Don´t say I´m too old - I love it! And I know that Panama smells like Bananas all over (the books are available in English, too, btw)

Here is another "mature" person in love with the Duck.

And in Kassel once a year the Stripey Tiger Duck-Race (German) is on on river Fulda. You can adopt a Stripey Tiger Duck - the money goes to charity.

Oh, hang on!!! Right here at my PC is my silver-Stripey Tiger Duck my Mom gave me! A pin, with my name engraved! :-)

You have one, too?

I Am...

...what I am.

I´m a SIL!!! Since yesterday!

Best - only - pic I got (heck I didn´t want to go on their nerves... though... I would´ve had the right to? I´ll get proper pics soon, my cam isn´t good for indoors anyways, as you can see!):



I didn´t "cry", just signed, cause I was... (I wasn´t a "groomsman", wasn´t a "best man"... do you guys have a word for that?!) ... witness to a marriage... Yups, I was there :-)

And guess what!

I had all the fun newly Weds have... without marrying myself!
Ingo and me simply joined the couple (on their "order"):



Sounded like horses!

Was rainy, oh, my! The registrar, a cool lady, who didn´t mind to offer us really classy glasses for the sparkling wine - with the town´s emblem (Seesen, that - certainly has the Brunswick Lion in it´s depiction) - she said, "hey, a rainy day!!! That means heaps of kiddos!"

Lucky me, Ingo knows how to handle Babies :-)

Aw....

So many people I knew, I know better now (in Germany you have that nasty thing - like in France, Spain... "Sie" and "du", I say "du" to some nice guys now).

Oh, my, maybe this doesn´t make too much sense for people not from Germany (or my family), but I am oh-so-happy for my little Bro!

Wedding in Church is to come in two weeks time!

I´M Sooo.... Part II

Now I know I must´ve been 17 on my first adventure in true naivity, because on this one I was 18.

I know that because my then-boyfriend had lost his driving license (yes, what you think) and so I had to drive all the way to Calais in France.

Plan was: leave the car in Calais, take the push-bikes, set over to Dover (ha, that sounds nice, no, set over to Dover...), go to London by the bikes and head back to Dover via train.

Hm. Leave the car in Calais.
No. That would cost some money!

Him, working in the factory, me just finished school --> no money.

On second thought I wanted to leave it inlands at a farmer´s place, hence. It was my car, an old Holden Diesel.

So, without a streetmap (haha, can you imagine to travel without car-navigation these days???) I just drove around to find a farmer.



I found one. 4 generations under one roof!

The "main" farmer understood and said, ok. But I need the keys, too, for in case the car is in the way.

You guess it. I left my car with the keys with no contract or whatsoever at people I just didn´t know.

I did that.

Oh, they were friendly! They even invited us for supper!
Supper in a farmer´s kitchen with four generations, it was awesome, I tell ya!
We had peas, mashed potatoes (I left out the meat) and typical english beer.

You know english beer? Take a beer, fill it in a glass and wait 30 minutes. No froth.

Well. That was some meal.

The great-grandfather joined, and I thought, oh my, bet he just hates Germans! (WW II)

He didn´t! Not at all, on the contrary, he was really interested in what we´re up to. Problem was.. he spoke some slang I just didn´t get (then-boyfriend spoke no French at all - just like this one, btw, and I more or less lost it, too by now!).

So, in the huge kitchen, with several dogs and many people, great-grandfather asked me question after question. One of the younger ones "translated" it to school-French and I yelled my answers back to the near-deaf old man.

Boy, that was exhausting!!!!

From today´s point of view it was funny, I suppose! :-)

Those guys go to bed early, so they said when we left, the key will hang here, the door is always open.

When we came back two weeks later around 10 in the evening they were all sound asleep, the door was open, I found my key, left some thank-you-pressies, found my car not in the same spot as left, with one kilometer more and headed back to good ole Germany.

Hmmm. I think it´s good to be naive, sometimes.
Or maybe my gut-feelings serve me well.

Did you give strangers something to keep for ya (or something like that) full of doubt just to find everything worked out fine, too?

Happy News

Another milestone mastered:

Ingo has a job, yay!!!!

A 7-3-job, now that fit´s to mine!
It´s not in town either, other direction than mine, but it´s a job!

I´M Sooo.... Part I

There was a report on Pharao Ramses on TV. Which made me painfully remember when - I was young!! 17 or 18 - I was in Cairo. At the Pyramides. You know how the people there are, they don´t let you go unless you bought something from them. I gave my last money I had with me for the day away. For... a camel ride - cause my then boyfriend "begged" for that. My last money. I would´ve been one of the last people allowed to go inside the Pyramides. Did I mention I was young? Maybe naive, too. From Cairo we wanted to go to Alexandria, by train. We had to leave the hotel early, I called a taxi and when we arrived, the taxi-driver took my case and helped find the right train - which left Cairo at 7 in the evening. Oh, my! The driver suggested the following: 

We leave the luggage in his taxi, he drives us to the military museum and pics us up at 4 when his working day is done. I said, ok. I let him leave with all our stuff!!! At the beginning of our holidays! 4:00 - no taxi driver. 4:10, no taxi driver. 4:15, there he is! Now from 4 to 7 is still some time, no? So, first he took us to the markets and helped us to a typical local snack. He then showed us some of the more hidden, beautiful corners of Cairo. Then he took us to his home!!! His Mom had made dinner for all of us. We sat on the floor and were served the food on old newspapers. Later he brought us to the train station and refused a tip. Naive and lucky, I´d say, huh?