You See What You Expect - But Sometimes Glorious Life Adorns It.

At the moment I'm writing an essay about the garden of Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin.
I read a lot about this theme complex (even, for the first time in my life, an 'historical novel' about Sophie Charlotte (1668 - 1705), who begged for this garden - quite amusing to see that King Friedrich I.  ('Sloping Fred') always sent her a mounted messenger with a red velvet cushion when he wanted to visit her in a special mission.
But I digress. What I will write about is my discovery that sometimes you only see something when someone else has mentioned it. At least I. How many times I have been in that park, looking attentively, always joyous because its very special width has a betwitching impact on the light; the beautiful canvas of the sky often gives his performance as Italian light blue charmer.
But never had I discovered the bust of Queen Luise (not even, I am ashamed to confess, the little Luisen-island, which 1799 was ordered by King Friedrich Wilhelm III - and when I finally found it, it took my three visits till I discovered the bronze bust - very well hidden behind a sitting place with benches and bushes). This confession will make the ardent worshippers of Queen Luise hoot with derisive laughter. Oh yes, she still has a wide group of devotees (one is an aquaintance of ours, living in Hannover, whose house is brimming over with very precious antique devotional objects - a bit surprising to me, but very charming).
But back into the park: I learned that sometimes one has to know what to look for - only then you will follow your quest and not despair till you find it, knowing in your heart: it must be there!
As it was. Added by a big surprise: somebody had adorned it!
That devotion - so simple, but so gorgeous! -  brought a smile to the somewhat sad features of the queen.
And it was done with style, simplicity and a keen sense of beauty.
Look:

For Tetchan: 'Molly', the Steam Railway in Heiligendamm

When I read Sapphire's lovely post about 'Cosmos flowers and the Kururi Line', I promised in my comment to show a few photographs of 'Molly', which I took in Heiligendamm.
Tetchan, I learned from Sapphire, are Japanese rail fans.
In 1886 Friedrich Franz III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, granted a concession to build a narrow-gauged rail, which run from Bad Doberan to Heiligendamm, first only in summer. Later they enlarged the route and even added freight traffic to Rostock, which was not a success because of its narrowness, so they gave that up in 1969. 13 trains a day were driving.
Today it is still used, in high season at hourly intervals, otherwise every two hours, driving between Bad Doberan via Baltic Spa Heiligendamm (where it became famous at the G8 summit, being the only medium of transport for the journalists) to the Baltic Spa Kühlungsborn.
It is called 'Molli' now (but the gender is male, it is surprisingly 'der Molli', a HIM).

How to Prolong Pleasure

Not what you (might) think (though: why not? As my statistic shows, I have the 'one-and-only-pleasure seekers' in great numbers on my blog, not as followers but in an explicit audience-address at stats, can't get rid of it) 
No, I'm speaking of how to make the most out of something. Out of Everything. 
Example: my balcony. 
A friend of mine sent me an email last week - she was busy to winterise her balcony. With blankets and foil - the whole program. 
"But my roses are still blooming", I said. "And my other flowers too. So why should I?" 
To cut a pleasure "to be prepared" is in my eyes such a waste! 
Of course, if I still were a gardener, I would start by now in the very last edge, but I have only a big balcony now, I have the weather forecast, and I have strong arms to rush out when frost is sneaking up at the walls of our house. "Don't be such wimps!" I'll shout at my roses, "in real life instead of such a sheltered home as here you will be able to endure those little frosty tweaks!" I might even read to them the chapter out of Saint-Exupéries 'The Little Prince', (no, not the worn thin 'heart thing') to show them that I see through their ridiculous prim affected behaviour... 
Pleasure - my big theme at the moment. 
We are so short of really enjoying pleasure, I think. 
I have a DVD with a beautiful film of Emir Kusturica - Black Cat, White Cat - skip the advertisement and please, please have a look at it, it is such a wonderful film! (Here they put English subtitles underneath, but I think there exists a synchronised English version)

As I wrote to a young German friend about his film 'Danube Sounds' yesterday: 

"... I love their equanimity and their zest for life, the modesty and the pride about the own accomplishments. It doesn't matter whether the trousers leg has a rip: those people live! (...)  They do something with their own hands - this seems to be important to me: if you have to produce something for your own life, it makes you vivid, and proud - here at home they often buy one meagreness after the other, but that doesn't fill their souls, bores them soon, and has to be replaced quickly." 

No - you don't see me running for the 'simple' or 'better' life, I am not one in social romanticism - but I try to bring pleasure into my life by doing and enjoying things. 
Can you imagine: in a survey of a big German health insurance people complained about stress, stress, stress - that might be so, though I bet the generation of my parents had a lot more stress - but when you scrutinised the answers: they counted cooking as stress! Gardening, cleaning the house, looking after their children: stress! 
I think we need a lot of rethinking here. 
This morning, when I woke up, I felt the wonderful warmth of my eiderdown, listened to the drops of rain that clonked on the metal windowsill, lolled and thought: 
"What a wonderful world. Thank you!" 

PS: Of course now all the sourpussies of the world will tell me that it is not the norm to have an eiderdown, or even to have a roof over my head - I know that, thank you very much, but hey: this is my life - the only one I got - and I am thankful for that! At least I appreciate it - and I think that is quite a lot. 

PPS: If you wonder about the photograph: it is so weird: I took away a sedum which stood in a darker corner beside that draggon - and one stalk tore off - and when I looked at it, three months later: it was still as fresh as a daisy! It is making the most of it, I bet. 

Very Discrete Presentation of Some Narrowboat-Musicians

Now I want to introduce to you some musicians who were with me on that narrowboat.
Above: Look at the drummer Raphael Kaletta of 'Cats and Breakkies': he was our youngest crew member.
And if I were more technically versed, I could give you a glimpse of a big project he is involved in, but I can't, so please look this up:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/danube-sounds 

This is so fantastic - here you also see 'our' drummer in a road movie record on a beautiful DVD - they play music with many different bands all along the Danube river.

He also plays in a Jazz-Trio Ponciana 

Another musician is  Chris Alastair, here a song from one of his DVDs, 'Putty in your hands':

http://www.lastfm.de/music/Chris+Alastair/Sah+Sex+Pleek/putty+in+your+hands

And our captain, Matti Mueller, who "is" three bands:
"Trouble at the Mill",  "The Milltones" and "The Madrigal Minstrel Four"
Here is his homepage:

http://www.muellermusik.de/index_main.htm

first click on the band you want to hear, than: music.

All these musicians are doing their own thing - on the boat it was just a friendly meeting, with three other musicians (a French saxophone player; a singer, and an English guitar player - but I could not find their DVDs).

So much fun to have them on that boat!

Get the Creeps! (And May I help You...?)

The last day of October - might I send you a postcard to Halloween?
"Isn't it weird?", asked husband - who is a connoisseur of many things, but not of nature's wild life, "that today I still saw a swallow in the backyard?"
Weird indeed - because it was a sweet little bat - fluttering in her inimitable soft-hectic loudless way through the twilight.
Are you in the mood already? Or are you like the youngest son in Grimm's fairy tale: "Von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen", "The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear"?

A father had two sons. The oldest one was clever and intelligent, and knew how to manage everything, but the youngest one was stupid and could neither understand nor learn anything. When people saw him, they said, "He will be a burden on his father!"
Now when something had to be done, it was always the oldest son who had to do it. However, if the father asked him fetch anything when it was late, or even worse, at night, and if the way led through the churchyard or some other spooky place, he would always answer, "Oh, no, father, I won't go there. It makes me shudder!" For he was afraid.
In the evening by the fire when stories were told that made one's flesh creep, the listeners sometimes said, "Oh, that makes me shudder!" The youngest son would sit in a corner and listen with the others, but he could not imagine what they meant.
"They are always saying, 'It makes me shudder! It makes me shudder!' It does not make me shudder. That too must be a skill that I do not understand."

May I help you? Learning that skill?
As I love the poems of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797 - 1848), and couldn't find a translation, I did (roughly - come on, we have Halloween - and I have to get that damned bat out of my hair!) one for you:

Der Knabe im Moor                                           The Lad in the Moor

O schaurig ist's übers Moor zu gehn,                                      Oh it is scary to walk through the moor, 
Wenn es wimmelt vom Heiderauche,                                       When it seethes with heather smoke, 
Sich wie Phantome die Dünste drehn                                       When phantom-like the vapours twirl 
Und die Ranke häkelt am Strauche,                                          And the bine crochets at the shrub, 
Unter jedem Tritt ein Quellchen springt,                                   Under each step a tiny fountain wells up, 
Wenn aus der Spalte es zischt und singt,                                  When from the crack it hisses and sings, 
O schaurig ist's übers Moor zu gehn,                                       Oh scary it is to walk through the moor, 
Wenn das Röhricht knistert im Hauche!                                    When the reeds rustle in the breeze! 

Fest hält die Fibel das zitternde Kind                                        Firmly the shuddering child clutches his primer, 
Und rennt, als ob man es jage;                                                And runs as if it he is hunted; 
Hohl über die Fläche sauset der Wind -                                    Hollowly the wind swishes over the land - 
Was raschelt da drüben am Hage?                                           What fissles over there at the grove? 
Das ist der gespenstische Gräberknecht,                                  That is the spooky grave-servant, 
Der dem Meister die besten Torfe verzecht;                              Who boozes away the Master's best peat; 
Hu, hu, es bricht wie ein irres Rind!                                         Whew, whew, something breaks forth like a freakish ox! 
Hinducket das Knäblein zage.                                                   Despairingly the little lad ducks down. 
(...)                                                                                      (...) 

Well? Well????

Grand Hotel Heiligendamm: We had Putin's Suite (I think)

"Being determines consciousness" says the popular version of a quote by Karl Marx (the original is: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness"). 

Well, who am I to question that - but humbly I annotate an observation of mine, where the opposite seemed to have happen - vice versa, so to speak: 

Husband worked so long and intensely on his paper about LUXURY (of all people: him -- he is the most modest man I know...) that the topic might have crept in unnoticed. 

Whatsoever: as compensation for my lovely narrow boat trip that I did on my own, he booked a 4 day-trip to the Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm. Five stars. 

Yes - THE one. Where in 2007 the 33rd G8-summit took place - with Angela Merkel, Sarkozy, Putin, Prodi, Blair and so on.  

As the stuff is absolutely discreet, I could only allure a hint of a nod when asking if we had Mr. Putin's suite - and maybe I even imagined the nod :-) 

It was absolutely gorgeous. Luxury at its best - even the weather! 

Heavenly breakfast in heaven (the same room for dinner). 

A terrace, and a vast lawn with silvery teak tables with starched linnen and heavy silver tableware that made me think of a picture in the old film version of Galsworthy's 'Forsyte Saga", and we could look from at the turquoise Baltic Sea. 

On the right a huge foundling with an inscription - 

it was Duke Friedrich Franz I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin who bathed in the sea at "Heiligen Damm" for the first time in the year 1793 (his physician, Prof. Dr. Samuel Gottlieb Vogel recommended that). So the first German seaside resort was founded. 

"Between 1793 - 1870, the master builders Johann Christoph Heinrich von Seydewitz, Carl Theodor Severin and Gustv Adolph Demmler created a unique classical complete work of art out of bathing and guesthouses. In 1823, the first racing track on the European continent was officially opened bewtween Heiligendamm and Doberan and with it came the foundation of German horse racing. (...) 

Since its foundation, Heiligendamm has been the most elegant seaside health resort in Germany. The highest ranks of the European nobility, including the Tsar's family, spent their summer holidays here.  (...). In society of that time it was a must to have been there at least once in one's life." (Hotel brochure) 

Beautiful, beautiful - and now we have been there :-) 

But I have to confess: though I really, really enjoyed being pampered: this is not the way I would want to live forever. After a very short time I would feel -- immobilized - aimless - childlike. And that's definitely not the way I want to live. 

With 17 I won a Highschool poetry contest with my recitation of Charles Baudelaire's poem 'L'Invitation au Voyage' - and the refrain was: 

"Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté 

 Luxe, calme et volupté." 

(There all is order and beauty/ Luxury, silence and voluptuousness). Well, except the last point that would get on my nerves after a while, I think. 

To quote my friend Stephen (Russel): "... it is the mess of it that makes it glorious - and so are you: glorious." 

Nothing to add. 

 

Tics (not a very serious post...)

"Would you have married me if I had looked like this?" asked my father, and distorted his face to a horrible sight. 
"No", my mother cooly answered. 
Well - I remembered this incident ("No real love!" my father said and grinned), while sitting in the train from Berlin to Bremen via Hamburg. To Hamburg it takes two hours. 
The train was too late (as often), but I found a good seat and started to write. 
"RRRR - mmh - rrrgrrr - mm", it started two rows behind me. 
Not a dog - a man. Harrumphing. And it didn't stop. 
For two minutes: silence, then it started again: 
"RRR - mmmmmm - rrrrgchck." 
A man with a vocal tic in his chest. Horrible. 
I took my I-pod. It blarred "LUCILLE!" into my ears, or "Highway to Hell" - but "Rrrrr - mmk - mmk - rrrrgk" - clear and loud. (My ears started to hurt, and I didn't know whether it was the music or the tic). 
I tried it with ear plugs - 
"mmm rrrgk mmchmm rurg..." 
It wasn't a cough, and it wasn't temporarily. It was a habit, a tic. 
So I put my pen down. Took my jacket. Went into another coach. Found a good seat. Placed my jacket - went back, fetched my suitcase and LEFT. Sometimes you have to. 
Now I sit here and all is fine. 
(The woman three seats behind me only rasps every 20 minutes - that is OK! )