A Call from the Muddler's Button Collection

Dear You,
what you see in the photo above is just one third of the things (here the books I took to Berlin) I had to move...
I suspect that the many sleep-disturbed nights (I told you some time ago that I made a big mistake when I exchanged two rooms, having overlooked - or underestimated - the 'elf' with the gruesome smoker's hack and her night-thumping husband above our heads) have made me edgy and losing perspective - so I blew up some more or less petty little incidents into major issues and moaned (publicly - Fie! Fie!) - but I was really sleep-deprived. (Husband is better off: his hearing gets a bit weaker - mine is still that of a bat).
But finally I sat down and thought really hard about it.
And reminded myself  of Hill's Law No.7: When you have made a mistake (which I had by exchanging the rooms), there is no need to stubbornly hang on to it. (It's just my foolish pride..). Yes, Bob Dylan sang especially for me:
Well, the moral of the story,
The moral of this song,
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong.
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin',
Help him with his load,
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road.
Wrong! I grumbled (still over-tired). I need someone to carry my load! 
So I bit the bullet, and phoned the removal men. In Berlin they are known for their humour.
"Oh, we do know exactly where to put the furniture", they sniggered, "you can go and drink an espresso, my dear." 
Well - I stayed. Had to do a lot before (see above), and after. It is a mystery how much is hiding in seemingly fragile-looking slim cupboards. And on bookshelves. (Once again I found out that I seem to fear a total shortage of paper: I tend to hoard empty notebooks, empty diaries and a lot of watercolours, pens, inks in different colours, and pastels. Lots and lots. The drawers look like the Button Collection the Muddler lost some time ago...)
"We'll be pleased", my removal men said, "when you call us again. In a month or two?? We are athletically trained. Hahaha."  
Now everything looks nice. The balcony is again in front of my writing-table. Good!
And I feel home again - and can sleep (they only thump once or twice every night over my head - I can live with that).
And feel better already.

Life is beautiful!

Happy again! 

She dat typa girl dat'll turn you into stone...

Dear You,

you might have noticed that I started a new blog, "Berlin zum Dritten". 
The title is from Robert Gernhardt's poem 'Berlin thirdly', which starts: 

 "One never steps twice into the same city. You just aren't the same one as you have been. Once you were young, at that time the city was already old. Now you are older, and the city becomes younger."  (rough translation by me). 

I write the blog in German, because I thought that I need a "stage" for my mothertongue too. The subjects which I choose from what I notice in Berlin might be too specially Berlin-centered. And if you are curious: I'll enable Google-translation.

Klick. CLICK! 
. 
I looked - and "turned to stone" -- ---second time this week   ----- 
that's why you see the beautiful marble statue that Gianlorenzo Bernini created about 1635 of Medusa in the picture above. (And of course it is a link to my recent German blog). 
Google's translation into English (sort of...) is simply gruesome. 
Being of a kind nature (and vain), I really pondered about the question whether I should translate the German posts into English. But that's a lot of work - and the sun is shining so nicely outside, the birds are singing --- I will think a while, then we'll see. 

“I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. (...). After all, tomorrow is another day” 

as Scarlett O'Hara said in 'Gone with the Wind'. 
Maybe Im a bit shell-shocked   tired too. But you know: I'm a tough roly poly. 

World Baking Day: Now

Dear Sir Paul, 

on  http://magicalchristmaswreaths.blogspot.de/ you told me that today is "World Baking Day", and I promised to join in (proudly telling you that I translated "LEON. Baking&Puddings" by Claire Ptak & Henry Dimbleby for Germany's most famous publisher DuMont last year)
We had guests today, so I served the cake as a dessert. They all enjoyed it (me too, because it is easy and fool-proof to make). May I add that I took very dark chocolate, 75% - because one has to counteract the sugar.
Here it is:

Flourless Chocolate torte with macerated strawberries 

{Woolworths/Masterchef}

Recipe type: Dessert, cake, tea, baking, baked goods

Prep time:  20 mins

Cook time:  25 mins

Total time:  45 mins

Serves: 8-10

Ingredients

·         6 eggs

·         100g white sugar

·         100g brown sugar

·         300g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

·         2 T instant espresso powder

for the macerated strawberries

·         200g strawberries, sliced

·         3 T icing sugar, sifted

to serve

·         250ml cream, whipped

·         icing sugar, for dusting

Instructions

1.     Pre-heat the oven to 180°c and grease and line a 27cm round cake tin.

2.     In the bowl of a freestanding mixer, whisk the eggs and sugars until light and creamy. This can take up to 5 minutes.

3.     Melt the chocolate over a double boiler and when the eggs are light and voluminous, slowly pour in the melted chocolate, whisking continuously.

4.     Add the espresso powder and fold in.

5.     Transfer the batter to the prepared tin and place in the oven.

6.     Bake for 25 minutes until the cake has risen and feels slightly firm.

7.     Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tin. It will sink in the middle.

8.     Combine the strawberries and icing sugar in a bowl and allow to stand for up to 30 minutes.

9.     To serve, slice the chocolate torte then serve with a dollop of whipped cream, a spoonful of the macerated strawberries dusted with icing sugar.

'Love after Love' by Derek Walcott

Dear You, 
today I send you a beautiful poem by Derek Walcott. Normally I would put it on "Britta's Happiness of the Day" (www.burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com), where I usually combine a photo with a poem (or rarely a quote) and then put in my two cents.
But you, Dear You, seldom find the time to look up that page - though it might bring more insights then my "little dabs here", as Miss Mapp would 'humbly' say.
This poem means much to me:

Love after Love 

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other's welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

Derek Walcott 

Because I love this poem, I comment here in a much longer form than on 'Happiness of the Day". 
(There are many ways this poem is interpretated - sometimes as religious, sometimes as trying to reconcile the black and white parts in Walcott himself after the colonial era, sometimes as 'Find loving yourself after an unhappy relationship." . 
I will not speak about these possible interpretations, nor about the formal construction of the four stanzas, the enjambement which links the stanzas to each other or the lines of varying length.)  

Here I want to show you what I see in it. 
For me it is a beautiful description of what might happen when you get older. 
When we were little children, we accepted (or mirrored) our self in a direct and unadularated way. We were one with ourself. Then we were educated, learned how to please others, and with puberty we tried oh so hard to love "the prince" or "princess" - looking for the ideal person, the saviour. 
When deeply in love we (often) ignored our self - till we became strangers to ourselves. We became thin. 
"Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart" - Derek writes. 
When we get older, we (hopefully) find ourselves as worthy as others. We don't need another person to explain our life, shelter us. That does not mean that Love isn't a wonderful thing - it is! - but you will no longer love at the price of the loss of self. 
At first you might be unhappy to get older - maybe losing the "romantic love",missing it with its drama and ups-and-downs. That way of growing-up doesn't seem that enticing - but: "The time will come/ when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving." 
And you might even get more. When I read the line: "peel your own image from the mirror", I instantly think of the book "The Empty Mirror" by Janwillem van de Wetering - he lived for a while in a Japanese Zen cloister.  The motto of his book is:

"The empty mirror", he said. 
"If you could really understand that, 
then you'd have no business here!" 

To me, this means: total wisdom - the letting go of the Ego. 
But till we are that wise, let's follow Derek Walcott's beautiful advice: 

"Sit. Feast on your life."    
.

Today is World's Day of Laughter

I laugh very much - and it doesn't need a huge reason. If a person starts to laugh, it can happen that I hoot with laughter till the tears wash away my Amy-Winehouse-eyeliner. The following videos were quoted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung (with a lot of analyzing text) for the World's Day of Laughter, which is celebrated today. I hope you laugh with me. 

Other languages can be funny:

...and administration- regulations: the Swiss Federal Councillor Hans-Rudolph Merz, who has to answer Parliament a question concerning meat-import:

'Operation Bumblebee'

When I read the last post of Tom Stephenson about bumblebees, I remembered the story about the theft of a complete garden in England.
A man was moving within Bristol, and when later his wife drove to their old home, the 300 square meter garden was gone.
"Shrubs, trees, fieldstone terrace, flowers, borders, the pseudo-antique sun dial, benches, garden table (together with chairs), (...) wishing well, Italian platters, (...) garden fence, (...) all of it gone." As well as trees as tall as a man and two fishponds (with 17 kois).
In England "Garden-crimes" are no longer rare. One million gardens get plundered per planting-season, and the damage runs up to 105 million Pounds Sterling, say the insurance companies. Per year!
The police started the "Operation Bumblebee" - though the fast-seller was the bumlebee-coloured brochure, the thefts go on.
The more I read, the more alarmed I got. (Smiley, smiley!!) Could that happen to us too?
Mostly I would miss Vita Sackville's beautiful bench, the expensive basalt paving stones on which it stands, though the shimmering quartz square stones weren't cheap either. And the plants? Well - the rhododendrons are quite big, the virburnum, the Alpine azalea, the many, many box hedges, the roses, the rose arches and the rose obelisk, and the great perennials...  Gulp - that will amount to quite a sum. How lucky that no insurance agent is near - at the moment I might make an easy victim :-). Garden-household insurance. Everything insured except the the mouseprint - which of course would exclude everything, except the ground elder, the hazel bushes and the elder - and those not even thieves would want to steal.
I remember my neighbour from Kalenberger Moat. Two years ago she stood aghast in her front garden. She had planted twelve expensive precious roses, all along the house. And suddenly, one morning, they had vanished. Thieves had come under the screen of night, had digged out all the roses, put them on a hanger and disappeared , never to be seen again.
The chef of "Gardening Which?" let conceptualise an exemplary burglar-proof garden, "Safe Heaven" (or was it haven?). With hidden infrared-transmitters, bevelled pickets, and blackthorn, holly and berberies - all very defensive.
I ponder over my garden: seen under this aspect Vita's wild rose hedge is at least a success. To surmount the devil sheet might be difficult. Spiky roses all side long to the neighbour at the right. At left spiky common juniper - and how good that I never got a grip on the blackberries behind!
And the old wrought iron fence in the frontgarden has dangerous spikes. Now I understand why there are these ugly shards of glass on the corner wall - maybe in 1902 there was another person afraid for his hostas and his distinguished lilacs?
White gravel I have spread bewteen the box hedges (though there is always a little less for scrunching after each weeding). The only weak point is the garden entrance behind the house. But even at this entrance Husband and Son always complain about the deep-hanging roses on the rose arch. Now I have a new argument: it is part of my "Operation Bumblebee". The bumblebees and the bees have already understood that and mutter and buzz tantalizingly in the blossoms. And the blackbirds wear little caps and feel like Deputy Sheriffs.
"Colin Warburton, Bristol's John Lackland, has only a scornful snorting for these 'plant protection products'." "It's no use as long as nobody intervenes", he says. His neighbours had watched the repotting action as cool as a cucumber - assuming that it was part of the move." (Zeit-Magazin)
In my garden they wouldn't even be able to see anything, the neighbours...

There it is in black and white

Seems I get a bit springtime lethargy, or having so many things to do that unnerve me, like getting the spring-summer wardrobe out of their boxes and put the winter wardrobe into boxes - and decide what is really needless or unbecoming and thus has to go. (I have too many clothes and too many shoes - but they all keep so well, are often really nice and timeless) - but being a woman I sometimes want diversification!
But at least I learned from last year's fault: then I bought a lovely white jacket (in springtime I suddenly develop a crush on White), and when I opened the boxes I found three more lovely white jackets - surprise, surprise...
I just read Elaine's post on Bramble Rambles - she finding a box full of old letters - and suddenly I remembered a very funny accidental meeting with a - let's call him 'a good friend' - a flame from my schooltime, he being a student then.
He became a quite famous TV show moderator (come to think of it: most of my flames became quite famous), and I met him by accident in another town at least a decade later, I having my then five-year old son with me.
The OF (Old Flame) and I recognized each other instantly (on my side not so remarkable, as I could see him over the years on the telly, being glad that Life had parted our ways), and we chatted for a while. Then son joined into the conversation.
"I know who you are", he said to OF.
The famous moderator smiled flattered and cajoled.
"You know me through television?" he asked.
"No. I know you from Mom's diaries", was the answer.
I seldom saw the expression "He got white like a sheet" so exquisitely put into close-up picture...

PS: Of course I only randomly told son that I knew the Famous-One - but it makes me think hard about what to do with my about 158 diaries I have in many boxes ...

My beautiful red Fiat 500

Dear You, 
I have to tell you about my new car (well: I should write 'new', because it is used; never in my life I bought a new car - and I have bought a lot).
You might remember my jeremiad about the perfect old black Jaguar Daimler Double Six - with cream white leather seats, a lot of blinking chrome, a perfect condition, and a perfectly sensible price - being my dream car for oh so long - and then the desaster when I looked into the rear-vision mirror and saw - nothing, behind the window a void - though I felt there was quite a lot there...
Son encouraged me by sending links for MiniCoopers (which I drove by BMW's car-sharing here in Berlin), and then Son wrote: Why not a Fiat 500? 
He sent me a link - and the car was perfect! The owner: an absolutely neat holder of a neat car - and the car being equipped with the special interior-version: not, as most have, grey interior - no, no: red and white, even the seats: red seat, (which are comfortable, even for Husband, who is 1.98m tall), and white round headrests. (I'm not that curious to find out whether the eight airbags are matching).
The number plate (which one keeps in Berlin after buying a used car) is a bit special: "B - TT 6606".
"I would change that", said an acquaintance.
I won't. Why should I?
The old version of this car, the Fiat Nuovo, built in 1957, was tenderly called "Topolino - little mouse" by the Italians. The Germans called them "Knutschkugel - canoodle-ball". Being used to names, this car, the Fiat 500 is the very first of about 12 very different cars I owned, that cried for a name.
I call him "Knut". Like: knuddelig, meaning cuddly.
(He first insisted to be called 'Cnut' - him being a bit on the eccentric side concerning appearances - to put it mildly). Our quarter is very much sought after by gay people - and Knut feels evidently drawn to them, and vice versa, but, as I have many friends among them, Knut accepts me too.
Yesterday you could see me with a car - beautiful, beautiful Ferrari red - filled up with palm tree, flowers and an aspidistra.
And that's our motto of the day:
"Knut - Keep the aspidistra flying!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"  (I told you...)

I promised you...

...to show you how the alteration of my hat (the pink one with pink fur) worked out.
Now that I read that Susan of "Southern Fascinations" still has tornadoes, and see on the header of Joanne's 'Cup on the Bus' that icicles still hang in Canada, I take my last chance to present it (though my friend Anne took me very much from the front - the fine pink cloche is not to be seen, only a small brim).
You might remember that I thought the old version was "Too much pink". Following my own subtle fine logics, after the alteration I bought a pink coat to counter the silver-grey, hahaha.
             It is my stratagem to counteract the doom-prognosis : "From a certain age on you are invisible." I am not. At least my coat is definitely not.
What looks here a bit like winter-fat is the result of a silver feather down-jacket under the coat over a dashy grey felt-jacket over a pullover - you get the message: it was a very, very Siberian-cold day in Berlin.
I could hardly move - and if I had been the sprayer of that cozy entrance of a house in Kreuzberg, I would hardly have been able to do a runner. Life is so interesting between all fronts: the wild Kreuzberg inhabitants might take me for a Member of The Gentrification Gang. The Anti-Fur-Fighters might use their little cans to spray on me - pink again :-)

Let's talk about the weather instead, to be on the safe side: Now we have had some beautiful spring days, warm, though today suddenly we had it cold again.

PS: (I think they call this phenomenon April)

Sweet Violets and Perfume

Dear You,
you know that I love perfumes.
But I had to abandon 'Balenciaga Paris' for a while, because my nose became 'blind' to the fragrance. After being wrapped up some time in 'Shalimar', I could change back - the old wisdom that a little distance to something you love often works wonders was valid here too. (Don't let go - just loosen your grip! Don't try too hard - be patient, be self-sufficient - or, more my style: love yourself, then you will be able to love others for what they are, not out of need. End of Britta's Readers Digest).
           Somewhere I read: "Balenciaga Paris wears like a minimalist's veil". It smells of violets (without being sweet, romantic or old-fashioned - Charlotte Gainsbourgh fronted it, and she stands for urban). It is the perfume where I got the most feedback and praise from men: "What is it? You smell so good!" 
I love violets. So I tried to find the pure version, just as a room perfume. (Looking for a reason to speak of 'my boudoir').
At the stall of the perfumer Jo Malone, the saleswoman said: "I don't have violets. May I offer you bluebells?" I stared at her. We talked. And so I found out that this very young woman never ever in her whole life had smelled the fragrance of a living sweet violet. (It made me think of those poor children who believe that milk comes in beverage cartons from lilac Milka cows).
There are not many perfumes with violets on the market. They offered 'Violets de Toulouse' on the Internet. But I didn't want a mixture, so I contacted my lovely old-fashioned Zieten-apothecary (here I always feel I'm stepping back into another century - old wooden shelves and cabinets and brown glass-bottles that cry 'Drink me! Drink me!" - they sell Chinese medicine and homeopathic drugs too, you get the picture). Yes - they would order violet fragrance for me. The pharmacist read: "Petals of violets". I asked: "Excuse me - are you sure these are the petals of the blossom?" "Yes". 
OK. Next day I went there by underground, happy. I was less so when I opened the little bottle at home. It smelled like - hay. It was the juice from the green leaves. "Oh, I'm sorry", chirped the pharmacist, "bring it back. I will order something else - a violet oil."
Underground again. Disappointment at home - which I almost had expected, because it was too cheap to be the real thing. (I didn't telephone - I just throw it away - it smelled like candy floss).
The next day I passed a very nice little perfume-and-soap-shop. Went in. Talked with the young man about the impossibility to get violet-perfume these days. "Wow", he said, "you are ahead of fashion". (Modest as a violet I thought: I know - often I comb shops for clothes that will come three years later). "They created 'Viola' in 2013', and next year", he said, "sweet violets will be the craze." "Ah", I said, "but I want them now." 
(I'm not always a pure Taoist).
He thought for a long while, and than he made a telephone call to an Italian perfumer, L'Erbolario.
So, with a bit of luck, I might have found it. I will know it next week.

PS: If you want to read more about the sweet violet (and less about me :-), look at gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com soon.

Pride Comes Before a Fall

Dear You, 
"A beautiful leg can't be disfigured by anything", said my posh orthopaedist, as he almost tenderly put a black mobile leg brace around my left ankle.
I am very thankful to him: he gave me an instant appointment, managed to get an appointment at the MRT-center the same day - and supported not only my ankle but also my moral.
"If you are lucky, only the front ligament is slightly torn. If not, you need surgery."
"I feel that it is only slightly torn," I chirped - not my usual pitch, but I was in pain.
And I was right - Lucky Me!
What had happened? Well - it wasn't "pride", it was haughty impatience. It was the first time that I went jogging+walking in my new Nike shoes. Pink. Sold to me in the new Nike shop that has opened on the Tauentzien-Kudamm in Berlin. I told the guy what I wanted them for. They were not cheap. I was no beginner at jogging. But he convinced me of the merits of the 'new technology', when I asked whether they weren't a bit "soft".
So out I went - with my new Nike+Fuel-Band on my wrist (I'll tell you about that in another post). I just reached the first corner of our street, waited because a cyclist neared from the left. He was a bit slow - so I gave him a (nice) little Royal wave of the hand, meaning: "Hurry up, slug." Then I tripped - over the extremely high kerb (I know that one - but I was distracted, and the new shoes gave no support).
Landed on all fours. (Six, to be precise: my knees got their bump too). Being trained, I fell quite well, and my gloves protected my hands.
But I have to say: I never had that feeling before: I was literally swept off my feet - at the angle of 90 degrees, or so it felt. Swoosh!!! 
The cyclist stopped, came back. "Everything OK?" It wasn't - but I would not tell Him (IF I finally managed to ever get up). "Everything OK?" he repeated doubtfully, when I said 'yes', but needed some time to get up. Then I walked - hahaha: euphemism, I hobbled back to our house. Felt like being 14 again (partly at least) - the burning on my knee was a well known though long forgotten pain: I have grown up very quickly, and being long and slim I often hit the ground then. I hit it so often that till today I have an inclusion of a itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny little piece of cinder from the Messegelände in Bremen (fair grounds) under one knee.
Back to 2014: in front of our house I stopped. Stood. Thought. Thought of two friends who had accidents with their ankles a few years ago. And still labour at them.
I listened into my body. In my head wailed Tom Petty: "No, I won't back down." And so I moved on. The first two streets were - well - painful, but I had the feeling that something began to assort itself. Well - I'm tough. I did my tour. A bit slow, of course, and a bit pale maybe, and freezing more than the temperature would indicate. Shock.
At home I wiped away the (not so much) blood on my knee. Kept moving, alternating with putting the leg up. In the morning: a very fat cute foot. And a visit to my cute orthopaedist...
What I thought really funny - and I told him, ("As long as you can laugh", he said) - was, that at the moment after the MRT-diagnosis - front ligament only slightly torn - keep your leg restful - cool it - get lymph drainage - use Mobilate gel and the leg brace - my fuel-band started to blink:
"Go, Britta, Go!" it glared.
I did - and it gets better every day.

PS: And I am oh so glad that we visited Son and Daughter-in-Love in Munich before my accident. We are so happy: both have had got their doctorate in Law - and to celebrate that occasion I could still wear High Heels. Bliss!

PPS: Nike will kindly take the shoes back tomorrow and select other ones for me.

"Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!" Macbeth

                                                                    'The Princess and the Pea'  by son, aged 5 

Dear You, 
I consider buying one of the new Sleep-Tracking Apps - you know I'm easily fascinated by new technical gimmicks. I tend to "Jawbones" by Nike, which is also a fitness tracker band.
What held me back was:
a) my vanity aesthetic sense - they hadn't the turquois band I want, only drab ol' gray ones.
b) my various experiences of not being that talented in programming high-tech computer devices (though I can still charm a young salesperson to do that for me - the only difficulty is (look at point a): I won't tell my age :-)
c) and: the experts are not very convinced that they work. If you impersonate a 'William Styron' and just lie still and stare into the starry, starry night, the app thinks you sleep, because you don't move.
Do I need a 'Jawbone'?
A few years ago this question would have been met with polite disinterest. I went to bed and slept like a baby. Come to think of it: like a stone - I remember that a new born baby wakes up every four hours.
Nowadays I still have the very fine hearing of a fostress - in Germany we have the expression 'Ammenschlaf', sleep of the fostress, meaning: you wake up to every light disquieting sound. That is a good thing when you have to look after a baby or little child - but it is absolutely unnecessary in a person whose child has just reached the ripe age of 30 and lives in Munich.
I am overhypersensitive (look at the picture above), but I am clever (Yin and Yang...):
- when at 4 o'clock in the morning the central heating rushes into being, I successfully mesmerized myself to change it into 'white noise' - thus I learned to ignore it (after I listened to a real 'White Noise'-CD on Amazon - I knew that that sound would keep me wide awake because it sounds like our central heating...)
- I eat the recommended banana in the evening (and run an extra mile in the morning)
- I drink a mug of hot milk with honey
- I tried lavender oil, but I can't stand the smell
- being old-fashioned I never in my life used medication, (though Evelyn Waugh's mixture of "bromide and crème de menthe" sounds interesting) and will not start now; I believe that the body will fetch up in sleep some day (even if in form of a nap).
AND: why should I doze myself off when the reason is definitely extrinsic, not intrinsic?
Our old neighbour living above our heads has a bad hip now and thus leans on a thumpy stick and his orthopaedic shoe sounds on the wooden floors like a horseshoe - and he has to go to the loo at least three times during the night, and then his not-elf-like wife gets up to rush to the far away kitchen with a fit of the most evil smoker's cough I ever heard? And one of them snores - oh yes, you can hear that... But these are all things you reasonably can't complain about. Our huge flats are constructed in a way that you can run around in circles - and they do: in none of all the rooms on the 180 square metres is a corner which they don't stomp through at night.
None. But I would feel silly to ask them to use a special trail at night...
Husband sleeps sound and well. His hearing isn't quite as good as it was. (Yin and Yang again :-)

I believe Russell Sanna, the executive director of the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine who says: "The reality of sleep is often at variance with the perception of sleep", meaning, one overestimates the time you lie wide awake at night. 

But please don't tell me that in the morning! 

I can prove my sleepless time by the pages I read of the very -- soporific tome of household-wisdom, "Home Comforts" by Cheryl Mendelson. It has 884 pages in very small print, and very detailed descriptions about Ironing Temperatures, Spills and Stains, Fabrics That Work and other delightful profound topics - I admit to feel a bit drowsy now when I write them down...
I try to work hard to change the stomping into 'white noise', and suppress my urge to rush and administer first aid help for a suffocating smoker... but till I reached that stage, I'll read on. Oh, interesting: the chapter on "Poisons, Hazardous Substances and Proper Disposal of Hazardous Household Wastes"...

"Supergeil" - from my "Diary of a Best Ager"

Diary of a Best Ager (‘consumer older than 40’ www.dict.cc)

Today I found something enjoyable in the newspaper (very rare today, I have to say – astonishingly I find more and more articles where the journalists use terms like “grandma” when they speak of a completely unknown lady, who – as the added photo shows, is as fit as a fiddle and looks like ‘the new thirty’. (Almost).

But today they write about Friedrich Liechtenstein (a pseudonym – his real name is Hans-Holger Friedrich). He is stunning: he acts in an advertisement for Edeka (a German supermarket chain) – and he uses only a few words: “supergeil” – meaning: “super hot” yeah – you got it: very attractive, very sexy – ‘freakin’ awesome’.

Almost 3 million people clicked on this spot on youtube – and I think I know why: it is funny, it is sexy – imagine: old and sexy! – it is, in one word: “Supergeil!” 

'The House In Good Taste'

Dear You, 
On Sunday husband and I talked about 'home' as (one) expression of ourselves.
People are always quite astonished at how we live.
Their fantasy paints pictures that might stem from husband's profession - "a university professor" at least in the German mind has a special image, and we often brim over with mirth when we remember a quote that son brought home in the days he still went to grammar school:
"I see you and your parents", one learned teacher told him, "in the evening - all three of you making Hausmusik in front of your fireplace." 
(If any student of Hans reads this, he/she will roll on the ground screaming with laughter too).
The second 'label' was quite correct: books, books, books (and some more books). Most of them in the three-room-study in our house in Hildesheim (above our big flat where we, the family, lived - and also many books in that too). Most of them are still in Hildesheim, (although 6000 went as an endowment to the Literary Archive in Marbach - though that didn't help much to create more space: miraculously the shelves filled up with lightning speed). "They are my tools", Hans says apologetically, and he is right - now they wait for him three or four days of the week in Hildesheim, because in Hamburg, then in Berlin, I wanted less of these dusty friends (there are still enough!).
A friend, an architect, said after his first visit to us: "I am so happy! I really feared what might have been your interior design - but I think it is absolutely you!"
You bet! A very mixed style, not many antiques (as a lot of people seem to expect), nor stylish modern "design". (I put it in brackets, because everything is design).
And my kitchen - which I like! - is a shock for all these dream-kitchen people, who look at the advertisements (where - in a ridiculously spacious kitchen - huge - grey - with a bar and lacquered shining fronts -  you might find after look hard enough somewhere in the vast wilderness a chic little couple, lacquered as their empty kitchen - maybe they discuss whether they will order something from the Chinese take-away, because that sort of kitchen isn't made for cooking). Or those baths: when I see the altars - oh, sorry, got the wrong impression: it is the bath tub, not an altar - also in a room as big as a football field -- I wonder... though I admit that I would like our bathroom in Berlin to be a bit bigger - (as it was in Hamburg) - our bath now in the 180 square meter flat has somewhat Spartan features - but then: we can live with that.
What we love and want most is space and light.
Except twice we always had Art Deco flats in the many cities we lived in - high ceilings, high windows, pitch pine or beautiful parquet, folding doors, stucco. In every flat each of us had a study - a room of one's own.
Our guests have to sleep on a comfortable daybed for two (I tested it) - if you need two seperate beds we have to think hard and please tell us before your visit.  
PS: The title of this blog is from Elsie de Wolfe's lovely book "The House In Good Taste", first published in 1913, written by 'The First Lady of Interior Decoration'.
I hope very much that you find that the Quiche and the lamb's lettuce and the home made mousse au chocolat will provide the good taste when you just drop in...

A Valentine for A.A. Milne - who reads from Winnie-the-Pooh

Dear You, 

I found the reading by the author himself on http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/02/13/a-a-milne-reads-winie-the-pooh-1929/ - a very inspiring blog with oh so many interesting subjects.
And as I love Winnie-The-Pooh so much, I wanted to share it - enjoy (the story starts after a few seconds).

So have a lovely Valentine! My next blog will follow soon, but now
I have to leave - I have something to do - I suppose I really ought to do it now. (...) It isn't the sort of thing you can do in the afternoon, (...), it's a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in the morning, and, if possible, between the hours of - What would you say the time was?" "About twelve," said Winnie-the-Poo (...). 
"Between, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve-five. So, really, dear old Pooh, if you'll excuse me - 

Yours
Britta

Berlinale 2014

Tilda Swinton was here at the Berlinale  - the film "Grand Hotel Budapest" was shown 7 minutes away from our flat at the Zoo Palast - and I missed her! 
I already missed her in Edingburgh , where I was at the Film Festval in 2010 by a hair's breadths:

Well, in Bremen we have a saying: "Three is the inhabitant of Bremen's right" - so hopefully next time.
And  I will see "The Grand Budapest Hotel" - quite certain.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

Today I got a letter from a class-mate I haven't seen for - um, well... let's say: for a very, very  long time. To be accurate (haha): since our A levels.
She sent me this photograph - guess who of the four beauties I am in this Oscar-winning play?
Oh - you only guessed because I was tall even then - here stooping because I was insulted by that old bickering witch  decent housewife with the unbecoming headscarf - and you'll never guess what I was accused of...  
I played a lot in amateur theatre - and I liked it so immensely that I wanted to become an actress.
I may have told you before that the theatre of Wilhelmshaven (I lived in Bremen) offered me to play there - I repeat it, because I'm still a little bit cross at my parents, who received the letter with the the offer and didn't show it to me, of course as always meaning well for me - they suggested I should study something sensible.
Well, nowadays I see that maybe they were right (though I would have preferred to decide myself). Thinking of most of the other parts I played, they always showed a lot of leg, I was often wearing chic hats, and had to look vain (evidently the 'stage directors' didn't recognize my inner beauty). With that haircut - I thought - I could have run through Paris, "Out of Breath" together with Jean Paul Belmondo! (I  often tended more to Modesty Blaise than modesty. Glad to have outgrown that).
Later my employer, the Federal Employment Agency in Nürnberg, discovered my hidden talents and I acted in two films ("Counselling in Groups" and "Data Protection" - not very glamourous, I fear - though even then I tried my very best).
We have some actors among our friends, and I see that their life isn't always easy. But - and that is oh so important (to me, at least): it is very exciting, always. (You won't chorus my parents' song now, don't you - I know it - by heart).
Growing wiser (my best running gag, I know) I see the global play:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143 
 

Lady-in-Waiting

Dear You, 
oh I have to post the email I got today! As you hopefully have noticed, I gave you the address where you can order the wonderful CD "Wild Goosechase Expedition" of Scottiswoode & His Enemies from which I nicked the video "Beautiful Monday" in the last but one post. If you have forgotten were you put it: you can find the CD here:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/spott7

♫ Wild Goosechase Expedition - Spottiswoode & His Enemies. Listen @cdbaby

www.cdbaby.com

I ordered some - they are lovely presents !!! - at cdbaby and got the most adorable email from a company ever. But read for yourself:

Brigitta-

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

(...)

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing. Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, January 16, 2014.
We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
--
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.

http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

Now that's what I call service - "The customer is king" here. Or Queen, in my case. Will put my Royal Doulton on the table. Might invite Hyacinthe Bucket Bouquet, even she must be content with such a service.

New Year's Resolutions - Yes... You Can!

Can you imagine?
It took me five years - FIVE YEARS! - in which every year I wrote down the good resolution (among others): "Learn to prepare a Bavarian cream". 
Well - though I love to cook and bake, and prepare an excellent Mousse au chocolat, I was too anxious to make this crème bavaroise. Pretended to have too much to do, though actually I feared words like "beat the egg-cream diligently in the bain-marie to a 'rose' - you recognize that rose-state when you blow softly over the wooden spoon and there forms itself a rose" - aha! I also have high respect for 'gelatine' - in Germany you only get it in form of stiff leaves, which you have to water, then press the water out, then slide them one by one - softly, softly - into the hopefully stiff beaten egg cream.
So every year I used my stays in Munich to go to the gourmet food - temple Dallmayr near the Marienplatz (http://www.dallmayr.de/delikatessenhaus/) and bought it there, highly content with what I got - and even more intimidated (Pearl of Wisdom: if you compare yourself, don't do it to the professional's ideal).
But this year I said to husband: "I will do it - now! Don't want to face another New Year's Eve with this unfinished business!" 
Of course I said this on the morning of Christmas Eve - still having to do the elaborate and not utterly uncomplicated Christmas Dinner for next day, of which the Bavarian cream should be the dessert (I was at least clever enough to arrange a meal in a beautiful French restaurant for the second day). So you saw this woman swirrling through the kitchen (YES - one has to prepare a raspberry puree too - haha: also with gelantine..)
Well: it worked out lovely.

You see that on my happy face:

So I am really proud of having done it. Finally. And I see - again - that many 'fears' are unfounded - but that I can only find out by doing it. 
So - after this deep insight - you might ask: what comes next? And you might hear me call:

                               WHERE IS MY HARLEY-DAVIDSON? !? Pronto! 

Beautiful Monday

You can order the CD "Wild Goosechase Expedition" by Spottiswoode & His Enemies here: (17 titles, very different and worth each of them!)
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/spott7 or https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/wild-goosechase-expedition/id421044813
Dear You,
can you imagine that I DO LOVE MONDAYS?
People stare at me and wonder - but for me, Monday is like a clean sheet, a promise, a little new start every week. Of course I love the big start - New Year's Day - as well. Love Filofaxes to be filled with projects and plans, new lists, crisp new address books - in short: I love 'new' beginnings (but am faithful to old ones, too).
                 And I do love surprises: we had so many even in December and January:
- First on my birthday two days before New Year, when around noon the bell of our flat was ringing. Imagine:  for a tiny second I thought: Who is this beautiful tall young man standing in front of me? It was our son! He had come all the way from Munich to see me - and our lovely daughter-in-love came too (she had been one day in Hildesheim to see her parents), and so I got the biggest birthday surprise + present of my life!
- Second on New Year's Eve: we greeted it in Berlin from a roof-terrace in Prenzlauer Berg - the Fernsehturm was surrounded and illuminated by a gorgeous firework, and we were among a lot of friends of many nationalities, singing and celebrating and eating a dinner that a famous American Macrobiotic cook had prepared with other friends - utterly delicious.
- And then, two days ago, I met Jonathan Spottiswoode again, whom I first had come to know on the evening in London before we entered the narrow-boat - together with Matti (the friend and musician I showed you some posts before) and Angie Stricker (a beautiful singer) he sang in "Gelegenheiten", a little bar in Berlin, housed in a former butcher's shop.
Jonathan has a passionate, wild & tender husky great voice, very sexy, and the lyrics of his songs are stunning, giving us insights by putting something we all might have experienced too into a new perspective, focussing it, and you think "Yes, exactly". Beautiful lines about love of the seemingly ordinary, passion, acceptance, courage, willpower - strong and stirring.
Back to the bar 'Gelegenheiten' in Neukölln (Berlin): come to think of it this is the third remodelled butcher's shop I saw in a row: they opened a little café in one b.s in our street, we ate a gourmand French dinner in another b.s. in Prenzlauer Berg - and now this bar - it seems to be highest fashion to remodell and integrate the old painted tiles and stucco into a new destination - all dating from the beginning of 1900.
               So: What a great start with so lovely music and people this year! 
And today - Monday! - we celebrate our Wedding Anniversary!
After that I'm looking forward to a bit more routine and everyday life. But - although most of us have made resolutions for the umpteenths time - you know me a bit by now: presumably that time of 'routine' will not last very long...

My best wishes to you! And remember:
"Take another look at me: We all are beautiful! And we're all gonna make a difference. Beautiful Monday!" 

Britta