The Agony of Choice, Mr. Karl Lagerfeld

Yesterday I saw this "KARLBOX" presented in the KaDeWe in Berlin. Hundreds of beautiful colour pencils, crayons and pencils. For the astronomically modest price of 2.500 Euro. 
Ridiculous. 
Every real artist - Rachel, Tom and Cro know that of course - needs good 'tools', and they have their price, but even a layman as I know that you mix most of your colour hues yourself - with a lot less pencils than those 72 in my Faber Castell Artists' Watercolour Pencils box. 

When I stand in a drugstore in front of a shelf of 100 cream jars all promising everything under the sun - and we all know that in the end it all comes down to oil & water! - it happens that I walk out of the drugstore without buying anything. 

An overload of choice, scientists found out, stands in no correlation to happiness - it produces - and do I really need a scientist to tell me this? - STRESS. 

So: it is nice to have choice. But not too much. 

Because the most important 'things' you can't buy anyway: creativity and discipline and talent and inclination to work really hard for success. (And a little pinch of luck). 

The funniest thing, Mr. Lagerfeld, is, that YOU prefer BLACK. 

Which reminds me of a passage in a German children's book, König Mauzenberger: eagerly the King (Cat) mixed all the beautiful colours he had in his new paintbox. The result: 

Karl's Black. Single-coloured, monochrome, plaincoloured BROWN. 

Highway to Hell - Bavarian Style

Dear You, 
it's Monday - and Halloween - so here's a little uplift -from Bavaria :-) 

Berlin in Five Minutes - SWEET!

Dear You, 
You came over by aeroplane to Berlin. You are in a hurry, maybe you have to attend a conference - so there is not much time for sight-seeing?
Here is my sweet solution!
In 1918 the family "Wilhelm Rausch jun." started to produce chocolate for their "Private-Confiserie". .  Just follow your nose - the scent of chocolate - and lots of people - hurry to the Gendarmen-Markt in Berlin Mitte. Open the door to the biggest chocolate shop paradise of the world.
And here you can see (almost) all important buildings in five minutes -  created in chocolate!

The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche:  

The Reichstag:  

 The Berlin TV Tower: 

The Brandenburger Tor:  

But be careful and don't overeat, 

though you might be tempted (this is only a little snippet of the truffle section): 

The results of too much indulgence you see here - the Berliner Bär could not resist! 

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain..."  

Patience... Solitaire...Banana Solitaire...

I'm not blessed with it. PATIENCE , I mean. 
At the moment I take "Patience" - that's how we call your "Solitaire" - literally, and try to learn the game.  
For a long, long time I regarded it as an utter waste of time - the voices of my late parents urged me to do "something meaningful" instead.(I still have difficulties to watch TV in the afternoon!). 
But better late than never I try to free myself.  
I take small steps, patiently. On my own.  
Though Bananagrams, which, after Amelia Bullmore (wonderful DCI Gill Murray in Scott&Bailey) mentioned it in an interview, I ordered impatiently (the English version of course - and please don't laugh at my humble attempts) is even more to my gusto: 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves" as our poet Rainer Maria Rilke said in "Letters to a Young Poet". 

I'll try. Have BUNCHes of them. Questions BANANAS!!! 

144 files for a Bananagram Solitaire. 

PATIENCE!! (Otherwise you go bananas)

I believe In Kissing

When I was in Vienna in August, I lost my pink Pashmina - in a tram, (well... after visiting a Heurigen(Wine)-Lokal, with son and daughter-in-love). And as hard as I tried: I didn't get it back. 
So sad, because I loved it very much, it had the perfect Pink. 

"I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles." Audrey Hepburn 

Me too!

Ambiguity of Entertainment

Well -- I am not insensitive to deafening silence... :-) 
AND I see myself more being cheerful than nagging about Nobel Prizes in Literature.
So when I came back from the Museum für Fotografie - this time I had seen photos by Helmut Newton - such beautiful women he photographed! - I hummed a little meaningful tune, it went like this:  

"Don't follow leaders, 

    watch the parkin' meters.  

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, 

Rum-tum-tiddle-um-tum."

Knut, my little red Fiat 500, stood outside on the street - sulking, because he is very, very rarely moved. The son of our caretaker grinned broadly when he saw me: "You'll move it?!?" he chuckled. 

"No", I said. 

"Why?" he asked. 

"Because I have found such a perfect parking place". 

Now he ponders if I meant it. "The Ambiguity of Entertainment", that's it.   

Yes: There's always Something...naked...

In Germany we say: "With a tear in the buttonhole". You say "With a tear in the eye" - ours might come from the parsimony of 1 tear in the buttonhole of a suit - a more manly version of showing feelings :-) 
This morning a Berlin radio moderator announced the winner of a competition - prize: a voyage to Cuba with the whole team - task: the chef has to come to work stark naked. (No place for a buttonhole or a tear). Winner: a doctor who will come nude to the surgery - and work that way - all day long. 
That doctor volunteered - argument: "As a dermatologist my patients have to undress in front of me too - so it's only fair." 
Aha. 
I hope that the few doctors I have will be able to pay their travels with the money they earn from us private patients (One handshake: 150 Euros, in combination with a smile: 250 Euros). 
Why the tear in my buttonhole (or on the Gaura on my balcony - took a photgraph yesterday - it is still raining - but isn't it lovely?) 
Well - at the moment I have lots of work to do. That's why I'll change the style of my posts - at least for a while - to shorter impressions. 
As the sign on German phone boxes in the Sixties urged: 
"Make it brief!" (Haha - I :-) - anybody knocking at the glass door?)