New Love

Happy

44th! :-)







We were up late due to my company meeting, so the "celebrations" had to take place in the night :-)
Was better for the candles and sparklers anyways!

Did you know? We don´t call them ordinary sparklers. To us they have magic, we call them Wonder-Candles (German). Some call them Star-Sparkler, too. Well, it´s magic :-)

Wild-Wild West

...yeah.

We went - haha, surprise! - on another bike-tour today. 25C!!! Yay!

This time we went into Braunschweig´s West. The Western Area has a bad reputation in general, though many say it has some charme.

Ingo found the old railway-route now is a bike route and sure we followed that.
First impression...



"At least" it´s English, not Russian, Turkish or..., har-har.

Next one was better, quite cute actually:



We then came to the South-Lake again, with Ingo´s help I HDRed it "myself":



On we went. I know it´s booooring, but I have to say again: This bike is GREAT! It´s So. Much. Fun!
You should never look behind and say, aww, if only..., right? So, I look ahead! :-)



All the way we had the river Oker and lakes nearby:



Beautiful scenery , no?

A bridge, quite arty, I thought - and took a pic, despite all the traffic, so many people took the chance of the great weather!



Back home we took a shower and got quickly ready to go to town - it was Hansa-day.

It´s always a mixture of everything, old and new. Here you see how a sales stall might´ve looked in the Middle Ages or such:



"Krauts" as we are, we fed on this:



3,30 € - each!!! Wasn´t worth it, sadly!

But, locals we are, too, hence:



Yummy Mumme-beer (German).

My. Was packed, this weekend! I could need a time off, I tell ya ;-)

Cute Or Rather Sad?

At Cute Overload I stumbeled over this article, featuring among all this pic:



My... on one hand that little rat... "brave" (no, actually just young), the leopard, ... oh it all seems so cute. And sad on the same time.

What thoughts do you have on zoos?

We need them, I know. And I love to watch animals. But that a leopard lets a rat get away with stealing it´s food, that it´s "puzzled"...

Anyhows, since I can´t change the world, I thought it´s rather cute, no one was hurt and I just share a "cute" pic.

Old Ladies Summer

Another great Old Ladies Summer-day, over 20C!

(Why we gave Indian Summer that name? From the strand or silk the spider Linyphiidae leaves when "sailing" around. It reminded the people of weaving strings, weaving is weben or back then weiben and an old woman was called Weib. Alt-Weiber-Sommer. Too long, huh?)

Anyhows, we hopped ob the bikes again after I was better.

Yuck, I went to the butcher to get something for Brekkie, but all I could get was potatoe-salad. First bites were fine. Then my tastebuds said no, but I didn´t listen. Promised, next time I will!

Well, I even was in the water today!!! Ok, just up to the knees, but, well, was rather c-c-c-cold!



Hopefully the weather will be as good tomorrow! 30 years the wrong bike - I have a lot of good cycling to catch up to!
And we have Hansa-day, maybe I´m in this time for some good food!

My Fav Places In One

It was a beautifully sunny, warm day.
I took off at 12, we ran errands before everybody else did, then hopped on the bikes for another nice tour.

The first part - the errands - was by car naturally and luckily I (nearly) always have my cam nearby. At the traffic light I took pics of our waiting "neighbour":



A truck with our Lion and our placename sign, how cool is that?
Sure it features our local little brewery, Wolters (German), as you can see:



Later, on the bike-tour, we suddenly saw this building:



Immediately I had to think of the public showers in Perth, that we really used a lot in 1999 (you can click to enlarge to see similar bull's-eyes and round forms):



Well, showers are in here:




Great memories.

Heck and really it was a weird day! The calendar says it´s officially autumn now.

And there are heaps of people who live according to the calendar rather than to reality!

Some lay in the grass, reading a book, wearing nothing but shorts.

Other ran around with sweaters - and jackets even!!!

Some looked at me as if I was crazy, wearing skirt, T-Shirt and Thongs - it was over 20C still!

What a day... for a daydream

My All-Round Man

Guess I have to face it... autumn will be here soon. Bye-bye skirts and dresses.

Since my trousers are victims to the bike I needed new ones and certainly they´re a tad too long.

Lucky me, the shortening didn´t cost a cent.

I have a friend nearby who has an old sewing-machine she doesn´t need atm.

And a man who can work with it! :-)

A Wall In The Head

... or just typical German?
This is kinda weird. School "kids", aged around 16-18 here in my town started a project they call "cultural memorization".

On November the 10th 20 years ago the wall fell, between 130 to 206 people from the East died by trying to get into the West, many lead an unhappy life being seperated from their loved ones, being "caged" in a state... I don´t even dare to speak it out loud.

Those kids weren´t even born yet when the tragedy finally found an end.
They wanna find out what people their age know about it all.

No surprise, they mix it all up - and maybe that´s even a good thing.

My parent´s generation as well as mine live with the "war guilt" - yes, mine still, even! Though my parents were just kids themselves in WW II!!!

This "new" generation has a new guilt. They mix events and people up but they have a clear feeling of guilt.

The guilt of having (a generation before them) lived in a system of injustice. Which makes them feeling labeled "injustice". Pupils from the East, the "Ossis" have the feeling they have to justify themselves. For their Stasi-, or secret police- background.
Pupils from "the West" decline to go to Jena or Leipzig for a school trip, the article (German) goes on.

Maybe I try and see if I can go and witness the results of this project on October 1st. Maybe even not. Because...



Point is: I wonder... is it typical German behaviour to feel guilty about something that happened before one self could even interact?

Feel guilty to a point that it concerns daily decisions?
My generation as well as the one before still has the war-guilt (does anyone ask about the realtionship or guilt considering Jewish and Palestinian people?) and hence we build mosques and police and doctors learn how to better deal with the people who migrated here. Just that they don´t migrate, they live their traditions out here.
(That´s not for all, but many)

Not sure if it´s a good idea to hit the "publish"-button at all.

Because I feel kinda guilty of my thoughts.

To second-guess this system is rather not the job of an ordinary German person - how dare I?!


Will this ever change?

How about you? Is it a tradition to keep your mouth shut because of something a former generation "did"?

In Eighty Days Around The World

The brave and lonesome Frog finally made it to Brauscnhweig, yay, thank you Flea!!!

Due to differences in how addresses are put together the poor fella made his way from Perth to Braunschweig, where he didn´t find me, hence back to Perth and to Braunschweig now for good -

I say that qualifies enough for his job as a key chain, huh? :-)



He looks a bit stressed still, but hey after such a long trip, who would look fresh?

The Maggifest

Guess you all know Maggi, it´s really a yummy helper, from time to time also to us, glad it made it´s way from Switzerland all over the world:





Some people obviously think Braunschweig people really get nuts over the stuff.

It was a funny picture, really, when my soon-to-be-SIL asked Ingo if we come to the Sehusa-Fest (German), the historical festival in Northern Germany, in our old hometown.

When you grow up there, you really don´t want to any more, but more important on every first weekend in September is also our Magnifest (German), a fun event with heaps of music and good food. Got it´s name from our Magniviertel (German) an old quarter of town.

My soon-to-be-SIL isn´t so much into this town, I think, because her eyes went wide like plates when Ingo said, "no, sorry we won´t come, we have our Magnifest then".

She stared at Ingo, waited and then went, unbelievingly, "Maggifest ?!".

Ok, we call it Maggifest from now on :-)

Too bad I had migraine, so food was outta question.


But this guy was really great, I think:



I never liked Reinhard Mey. But cause this guy was so simpatico, I liked to listen and have to admit... it´s great lyrics actually, this song is called "Over The Clouds":



Over the clouds, freedom must be boundless
all fear, all sorrows, you say, are concealed within
and things that are huge and important to us
turn into something small and peddling

Here´s the complete song (German)

On the way back I captured this scene, isn´t it too cute? The Dog sure ain´t famous Nipper, but this reminded me of him, how he sits still being photographed by his owner:





Was a rather rainy day (we were lucky with no raindrops), nature makes it a beautiful thing after all, I think:

My New Love

You can guess it.. the moment Ingo said, oh, look, a green Netbook, I was in.
Yes, I actually don´t need a netbook. My PC stands right near my old tube, so actually I could surf and watch, or watch online on one PC-monitor and surf on the other, but hey...

Ingo put Windows on it (yips!) and I have to say... my, I never thought how comphy it is to sit in the swing and surf and especially write on it!

Friends of my soon-to-be SIL make a wedding-journal and ask me for funny stories bout my little Bro, so there was a lot of writing to do, like when he bit his tongue so hard it was nearly completedly through (playing soccer and another kid missed the ball and found his chin whilst he was yelling something, tongue sticking out... longer story, but funny indeed) or when he proofed, yes, you can do a somersault through an open window and such.

So. Much. More. Comphy. than sitting on a chair!

Have to learn the touchpad, but, well I can see, my PC will sleep a lot in the future! :-) Doesn´t qualify me as Geek yet, but, oh, it´s a great new toy!