She Can´t Talk

My Perth-bag finally has had it. I´ll try ro repair it, but I needed something working right now.
I don´t wanna loose my purse, right.
Plus...

Looks cool and has nearly the same functions as the old one.
But what is that red thing?
Looks like an envelope, no?

It is!!

My bag can´t talk, but it... she, her name is Robin, wrote me a letter!

How cute is that!
Now you know who likely will be with me on every photo I "make", just like she wishes :-)

She promises quality (forever yours), so I hope I can trust Robin Ruth.

Maybe I live under a rock, but this is the first bag that wrote me a letter, how about you?
(My coat came with a name - that was just the beginning, right?)

Braunschweig´s Jeanne d’Arc

I got another interesting story for you (I think):
In the east-side of the cathedral you find a cannonball and a date from 1615.
At the time Braunschweig wanted imperial immediacy and sent the duke to Wolfenbüttel - the city where also Jägermeister comes from, btw.
The duke wanted to get back to Braunschweig but the people didn´t want him and hence the city lie unter a siege for three months and this cannonball hit.

Well, rather there was another way of it´s getting there as back then the weapons weren´t "strong" enough for this.

More likely the ball was found and put up there as a memorial - sadly it wasn´t a strong enough sign after all...

The title?
The situation became very hopeless for the Braunschweig people. Back then 34 year old Gesche Meiburg went and collected other women and together they helped the men keep the city. It´s said she worked with a sword, a war hammer and a musket and surprisingly survived unwounded, too.
Flyers about the "Braunschweig hero-virgin" were printed to spread the area and hence the cannonball is also a commemoration for her and her fellow female fighters.
These days she´s also called Braunschweig´s Jeanne d’Arc.

Source again the book Braunschweiger Geheimnisse (Braunschweig´s secrets).

Why not take a seat by this courageous, roaring lion(s)...

... and think of all the women who were brave and clever like that when it was still strictly a man´s world? :-)

Henry´s Faithful Friend

When Henry the Lion left for his pilgrimage he told his wife Matilda that, in case he does not make it back, she may marry again after seven years.

He split his ring in half and gave her one so she knows for sure that it´s him.
All this happened for real, the following might eventually be a myth only...

In the Mediterranean Sea they lost the ship.
The vassal sew Henry the Duke into the skin of an ox and a giantic griffin took the assumed yummy bite, but Henry could get free.
He found a wild lion fighting a dragon and helped the lion - who, in turn, was so thankful he never left his helper´s side.
But Henry wanted to go home asap as the seven years were nearly over and with the lion it would take too long.
At night he secretly escaped but the lion cried so hard Henry came back and took the lion, whom he named Henry as well.. with him.

The devil played a sad part, too (sad as in he lost) and Henry was home in time.
When Henry died in 1195 the lion wanted to enter the cathedral to be with his friend but was not allowed to.

Broken-hearted and desperate he stood on his hind legs and kept digging his claws into the stone until he was so exhausted he fell and died. You can see how his claws worked the stone in pic above.

It certainly also could be that many visitors who came out of church in the dark lighted a fire using the sandstone right by the door.
Or that people took the fine dust for their sick people as the cathedral was sanctified to healer Saint Blaise.

Whatever works for you :-)
Maybe just take a seat on one of the benches around the cathedral and listen to your heart.

I think I can clearly see a lion there.
And no, he wasn´t a wimp, he was a faithful friend, I think...
Source again the book Braunschweiger Geheimnisse (Braunschweig´s secrets).

Faith, btw!
Why can´t some people have faith that now is just right?
The summer is only 15 days old and I already saw the word "autumn" yesterday as deco.
OK... you know something? When winter is 14 days old I´ll happily give up that sort of faith and put up my "spring"-sign - if I remember then! ;-)

Three-Dimensional Genius

Did you know that we have a special Picasso in town?
The Gewandhaus was badly destroyed in WW II and bad weather helped to get rif of the gable for good.

An architekt together with a sculptor worked on reconstruction and the latter sneaked in the little three-dimensional Picasso:

In this building you also find the oldest gastronomy cellar of Lower Saxony.
From 1329 on it had a wine cellar and 20 years later they were allowed to serve alcohol, amongst other Brunswick Mum and they say in the article it´s a "delicious thought" the sculptor was inspired by the Mum :-)

I leave you with another Lion:

Do We Know Each Other?

Funny how sometimes you meet a stranger and it feels as if you know each other - and it works in both directions, kinda, too.

The doc is available on the phone from 09-09:30 on Thursdays.
I called 09:05 and caught her by surprise - first day after a holiday!, she laughed.

Yesterday I went.
We sat down and she asked me if we know each other, I look so familiar.
I don´t think we´ve met before, but I liked her straight away, actually already from that first call.
Her right ear, like mine, has several earrings, plain ones, too.
Unlike the first doc she had comphy chairs and when she asked when I got my termination and I said October 26th, she blurted out, and on my birthday, too! to which I replied, and my Brother´s.
Funny, no?

What I do for sports.
I said, well, there is this guy, actually I didn´t like him, Detlef Soost... and she interrupted straight away she just saw him on TV, he was quite arrogant but what he said made sense - LOL.

We went along real well. She said it´s always best to check out more than one psychotherapist - well she is my second one and why look further when it seems to fit just very fine, right?

So. I have a new doc :-)

Pic above is a Greek restaurant. I took that pic cause it looks so cozy - just comphy, like I felt in her office.
Funny enough the owner or some staff just went in and offered to be in the picture.
Well, in the aftermath it would´ve "destroyed" the meaning, but I bet you´d smile about all the toilet paper he was carrying!
Shitty times ahead, LOL.

Lion "of the day":

Other... still cold and tired, eating is no fun, either, but I stick to it.

A-Fri-Ca Part II

Certainly, ENTE had to bring lions to The City of Henry The Lion, right?

He´s quite an honest artist, don´t you think?

Yep, that´s part of wildlife also:

One more set of African vehicle halls is to come.

Taking part again in Sami´s COLOURFULWORLD Monday Murals :-)

It´s A Very Small World

Yesterday it was time again to pay a visit to Bierfest, the beer festival.

As you can see Ingo wore a certain t-shirt (mine said Braunschweig, funnily, by chance):

The fella next to Ingo said, ponting to the t-shirt, "Australia, huh" ... and ... guess.
Yep.
His Auntie lives in... Perth.
I think it was nearly two hours we chatted about WA and sure he really knew, too, what he was talking about :-)

Guess again.
His wife does not speak English, yet he found her talking to strangers.
In WA.
They were from... Gifhorn (a couple of km from here) and Braunschweig.
I don´t even think he made it up!

Just right after we switched from D-Mark to Euro in 2002 he went to Swan Valley cause he was told a Braunschweig restaurant had opened there and yep, still there, the Duckstein Brewery!
All the staff back then had been to Braunschweig before opening, too!

It´s really plain crazy, no?
On our way to Grill´d in Murray Street last time we passed by Tiger Lils and a young staff-woman asked if we wanna come in. We chatted a bit and she´d been to Europe, Germany, too, Braunschweig - I am not kidding.

For dinner we went to Schadt´s as it´s safe for Ingo to eat there.
An elderly couple asked if they may join us and wheeewwwww, their whole family followed, too and here I present you another Braunschweig-Lion hence:

Yeah, we had some fun again, isn´t that a very cool tattoo :-)

Beaming, someone invent it for real and we can switch between Braunschweig and Perth, right? THAT would be fun!