After The Rain

After the rain there is always the sun, isn´t it?

My Dad loved sunflowers.
Mum had his coffin covered in them.

Life is such a strange thing at times.
It took them so long to bloom this year, my poppies are still far from it.

Dad is gone 17 years now.
T is Ingo´s age and his Mum just passed away.
Sometimes I feel a tad "betrayed" that I lost both my parents so relatively early.

Wee. Actually this was supposed to be a happy post!
I love. love. love rain after all!

Especially summer rain!

Lion of the day:

This post has no point, obviously.
I´m just a tad shocked.
Last week I learned she suffers of Alzheimer´s and now she´s gone.
I "know" this cruel desease, my Grandma had to endure it, too. It´s no life, so...

Into The Abbey

Once a year we have a ... well, we´re German, right, so ... we have a beer-festival.
My goodness, wasn´t easy stopping Ingo once we left the house!

OK, this was a joke, certainly!
But yes, here you get money for recycling those bottles, some are just too drunk to even finish them...

"Rats", huh?

Cute pic, but we didn´t go for this.

We went for the Belgian, the Leffe.
The bartender sure gave us an astonished look when we told him we go to the Belgian in Perth :-)

What the lille abbey is for?
It is there not only for "good looking", like parsley is, no, it makes sense!

It keeps the beer cool.
And, yes, it´s still real summer here, yay!

To keep it that way we sure...

The event took place on "Platz der Deutschen Einheit", a dedication to German Unity - can you even believe there were two Germanys not that long ago?

Well, I won´t really say...

We took some home even!

Lion of the day:

It´s Burning

Mural again taken in Leederville, this time in Oxford Street.
It´s not a new one, I remember I took this pic also a couple of years ago, yet it´s so beautiful I had to take another shot.

I think Sarah McCloskey did a great job to brighten up any day, don´t you think?

The love to detail...

And I think I get the messages, too...

I´m a tad sad the time of the day was wrong, light-wise, but, alas... I hope you enjoy it none the less - or maybe say, oh, no, not THAT mural again...

But then... can you ever get enough of beautiful murals?

Taking part again in Sami´s COLOURFULWORLD Monday Murals.

All Night Long

Some of you might´ve seen pics of Till Eulenspiegel here before in the post Not A Tale.

But today I want to tell you the tale to this "memorial".
Till, maybe born near Braunschweig around 1300, is said to have visited Braunschweig often, that he was a funny guy.

Right where this fountain is to be found there was a bakery.
Till needed money, the baker hired him and told him to bake all night long.

"What am I suppsed to bake, then?", Till asked.
The baker, a man of no patience angrily snapped, "you ask what you´re supposed to bake?! What do you usually bake?! Owls or apes?!"

(Guenon is an ape with a long tail)

Well, guess.
This is what Till did, certainly.

The next morning the baker got very angry not having any bread and wanted money for all the ingredients.
Till payed him, got his owls and apes and sold them with huge success to the Braunschweig people and made more money than what he payed the baker.

In some local shops you can still buy those "cakes".

Yepp, be careful and think twice before joking to a Braunschweig person! ;-)

Lion of the day:

Do we have another Till here?!

Is It All About Luck?

After I left the tax office the other day I spontaneously payed my health insurance company a visit.
Not "my" lady but a young man, I thought, oh, no.

Oh, yes! "My" lady, turned out, is not as competent as I thought!
I get a good amount of money back, he filled out a form - and could only cause by luck I had the info from the tax-office with me!

Another example: my therapist suggested St John's wort in large doses for my (reputed) depression.
You need a prescription from a doctor and she "knew" a new neurologist, but needed to contact the patient to ask for the name.
Luckily that person is on holiday, so I went to our family doc.
Luck again! She knows I´m allergic to the sun and St John's wort has sun sensitivity as side effect! She suggested valerian when I need it, aka punctual, say, when I have a job interview.

I needed something from the pharmacy and by... luck :-) ... the pharmacist who is really competent took my order.
So I asked for valerian, what he thinks of this, that I can´t tolerate chemicals - he immediately said, "like citalopram? Has a very long phase to get it out of the body, too!" He just shook his head when I told him that doc told me I can let go of it just like that and doing so I thought I´ll die. (So much for she had never ever had a patient like me before!).
He came up with two other non-chemical options and I sure will take one come winter - I always feel bad in the dark half of the year (I will tell my therapist and doctor of these meds, too).

(Last two pics: A butterfly again and again tried to land on Miss Mango - my windows are THAT clean, just saying! :-)... the other green leaves are 3 meters away, it really tried to land on my lille avocado-tree!)

I really wonder, how come there are, say five people doing the very same job and the outcome can be bad or great, is it just about luck these days?

Here, have a look:

All three of those drivers have the same driver's license. For driving a car.
To the left the Smart-driver parked right by the beginning of the house. This is dumb as you have to expect the next dumb person parking right behind that car, so when the Smart drives away only a Smart can park there.
And exactly that happened :-(

A huge space behind the car parking in the middle.
(Too many) people do not think these days anymore...

Can you relate, does it happen to you, too, sometimes?

I really need to find out the pharmacist´s name, I think usually he has a name-tag, not this time.
If you know a trick how to remember names, please let me know, I´m very bad with this...

(BTW, to get myself on the horsewagon again: Reminder.. 390%, 32 824 steps, 21.3 km, 2749 calories burned - in this heat, too. Just cause Ingo felt sick (all good now) and I had to run to the doc in over 35C as Fridays they close early)...

Addendum...

Parking space is a problem here. I once was looking for one 45 minutes and then found one that left me with a ten-minutes walk home. "Hellbenders" or simply dumb people here?


Lion of the day:

At the cathedral.

From One Heat To Another

37C tops yesterday. Here, in Braunschweig, isn´t that wonderful?
It wasn´t as hot on March 1st in Perth and even if, it´s a different heat, more pleasant, due to the ocean.
Here it´s more sweltering, but I love it anyways :-)

Pic above is when you stand at Elizabeth Quay Bridge and watch Transperth ferries go to South Perth.
A concept totally not known here, all public transports under one flag plus usable with a card!
"Advanced" Germany... we use paper.

On the bridge you find this sign:

Cyclists here are often very rude, sadly, rude and stupid, wearing no helmet, often in darkness no lights on and dark clothes coming along at high speed.
As car driver you sometimes have a hard time. Even if they drive in the wrong direction on top of this, if you hit them (or rather they you) it is your fault - I speak of experience :-(

The arty part:

The view:

And the towers, Bell Tower is just a tiny green thingy now...

Writing this on a hot, sunny day makes saying slowly good bye less painful, hopefully the rest of July and August´ll give their best!

Meow

I had to go to the tax office, having a question.
And luckily ended up at that friendly, helpful guy again. When you leave such an offive smiling it´s going to be a good day!
They open 08:00-12:00, so 08:02 I was there.
And out by 08:15, so I caught the cats in Kattreppeln in early sunshine :-)

Hmm... Kattreppeln, where does that street-name come from?
The artist, Siegfried Neuenhausen, thought it might come from the name Katze and assumed that, when this area was a quiet side-road, cats lazed here or had fun, undisturbed.

Kattreppeln, or Katzenbalgen, means hence cats "balgten", they tussled here:

A bit of tussling we had here on Tuesday.
Bro got lost near Braunschweig, called to see if I´m home and 15 minutes later got a parking space right in front of our house!
I tell you, one day I die of heart attack!
The bell rang, I opened the door and Wee one practically stood on my toes!
Someone was moving in, hence the main door was open!

We combined buying ice-cream with regular shopping (at our darn REWE) and, wee...
It sure is an adventure to go grocery shopping with two kids!
At least Wee one cling on me at the cash-out instead of being gone all the time...

When they left Big Niece would´t let go of my hand (they came in the old convertible), thanked me for the ice-cream and kept calling "I love you, I love you", waving, as they drove up the street.
And I stood there, calling it back!! Like in a movie, just... this was a real moment.

What happened to that shy girl, where has she gone??? :-)
What she´d like for her birthday, I asked before.
"My pink lamp is broken, I´d like to have a new one...". Yeah. A 10-Euro lamp from IKEA! Guess I´ll have to add something on my own!
Ideas are welcome, she´s turning nine (time flies!)..

Also funny/strange was... she asked why I have two big screens. When I said "One for TV, one to surf", she asked back "to surf?!". She didn´t know what that means.

Is she reliving my childhood, roaming free on her bicyle instead of being glued to smartphones/computers?
I was truly impressed!

Lion of the day:

Lions are also only big cats, right?

Bet You Have One, Too

Bet deep inside of us we all have one.
A...

Right? Well, not THAT gold, but a good heart - we help others, are friendly and even if once and again we have a bad day... all in all a "heart of gold" - right?

Yes, this is again from March 1st, on Elizabeth Quay.
But, you see.
My Dad was, my Brother is a goldsmith, amongst other, so... I just had to take these pics, right?

Well, the "creature" is...

And not only that, no, it´s also...

Hmmm... Coolgardie, sweet memories.
Can you believe it, a gold nugget weighing 35.3 kg?!!!!!
I couldn´t even pick it up (or could I? ;-)...).

Have I ever mentioned I miss Perth?