World Cup Fever

• "Deutschland bebt - und das völlig zu Recht!" / Germany is writhing, and utterly rightly so." Thomas Müller

I have to confess that I am not that into football (soccer). Which is an understatement. 

Husband, and son and daughter-in-love are football-fans. 
(Thus they are astonished that I knew a prominent player of Werder Bremen - the Hansestadt Bremen is my hometown - when I was young. He could not light my fire for football.) 
Non-football-lovers often do not know how great are the sacrifices fans make for them.  
There is that old chestnut of a - sad to admit: true - story which is often retold to show the amount of love my husband (though at that time he wasn't) has for me. He had bought tickets for an important Football Cup Match in Frankfurt. 
When we arrived at the Frankfurter Waldstadion, this woman started to moan: "Look at all those people in front of us on the sand path - they all carry buckets with beer - I don't like being in such a mass of drunken people - oh, and now we stand here on top place of the stadion and I see nothing, only the backs of them - I can't see anything!" ending with: "I would prefer a stroll in the woods." 
Which we did, unbelievable as it sounds nowadays. 
Getting older I learned to behave better - isn't that encouraging?: when husband in Berlin invited me to the quarter final of the German Open of Snooker to the Tempodrom, I looked down from our seats high above, saw someone who was called Ronny O'Sullivan, saw three green tables and beautiful coloured lacquered balls - but not knowing the rules it was soon a bit - boring. BUT age has softened me (haha) - why spoil another person's joy? In the break I said to husband: "I'll drive home with the underground, you stay here and look and enjoy." That was a good solution - even better is the one now: husband goes with Matti, a friend who can value the game.  
So: I don't look football on TV or otherwise. 
But noone can overlook the very funny strange effects that World Cup-fandom produces here in Germany. 
At the KaDeWe a salesgirl keyed in the prices into the till - with nails painted in Black-Red-Gold. At that temple of elegance and luxury! 
Downstairs someone pushed in a pram - and the baby inside - I couldn't believe - sucked at a baby's dummy, which was in the colours of Black-Red-Gold. Then I saw a dog - wearing a T-shirt - guess the colours?? 
And later a man, fortyish, on a bike, who had a shaved head, sporting just a flat Mohican haircut on top, dyed in??? Yes, of course: Black-Red-Gold. 
And I had no camera with me! 
In the quarter with the many Christmas decorations they spill our flag everywhere - a little bar outside: has black seats, red blankets, and golden cushions. 
But the picture above of a very kitschig frontgarden topped it all! .  

Wolf Whistles

Dear You,
how do you feel about wolf whistles?
I ask  because I found this funny passage in the hilarious book of India Knight, 'Mutton. Age before Beauty. Maybe.' The book's heroine, aged 46, walks by a scaffolding with builders - and nothing happens. Not one odd catcall comes. She muses:

"Oh, I know. I spent many decades of my life objecting vigorously to objectification. I could bore for England about the theory. Ew, everyday sexism: the horror. Obviously men shouldn't shout things out at women in the street. It's not nice. But I'll tell you what else I don't find nice either, to be absolutely honest with you: this weird silence. What is wrong with these freaks?" 

I have nothing against wolf whistles. Never had. Take them as a compliment. When I walk past a building site, and they whistle, the pack sits in a pit, or on a high scaffolding. To me it is only a rough way of flirting.
I once told you: I am a flirt and will stay so till I'm a hundred (or more?). I flirt with men, children, cats and even flowers (yes, you can - try it!) It is a very pleasant game, for both sides.
But some women find it upsetting.
For men these times are difficult. In the last decades they get what psychology calls "double-bind messages". Or, reversing my beloved quote from Shirley Conran - "A mother's place is in the wrong" - to "A man's place is in the wrong." Don't misunderstand me, please: I'm speaking of wolf whistles. Bravado. Flirts. Not pawing or violence.
I enjoy it when a man holds a door open for me - I do not cry angrily 'I can do that on my own!' (as I have often seen). I like knights in shining armour. Politeness. (In other parts of life too). Though one can go too far: Today I read that the BBC makes Britain discuss whether one should ask a woman before kissing her. Uh, what??? I think that goes without saying - let alone asking. You feel it. (I hope). What said my driving instructor about entering a dubious turn in the road in high speed? "When in doubt - don't." 
In the blog world there are wolf whistles too. Don't think I put comment moderation up against those. 

No - I have a very persistent "Anonymous", who always sends advertising comments disguised as comments on the post "Arsène Lupin, Raffles and..." 

Now I ask you: Who in his right mind can believe that this will lure me on his website? Anonymous might also easily believe that Little Girls, wearing a Red Riding Hood, will take a woolf for a grandma. (Tom, here might be the appropriate place for a Grandma-axe-pun). 

No, I keep it with James Thurber, who recast the story, ending: 

When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be. 

A German Hausfrau Unter den Linden

Dear You,
these days, when I leave our house I'm instantly wrapped in the sweetest honey-est scent of flowering limetrees. Berlin has thousands upon thousands of them, it is the greenest city of Germany. So the air is filled with a very special and seductive delectation.
You  -  just - melt - away. Dizzy. Almost drunk. 
(Some poor bumblebees even die - they lie on the pavement, having looked too deep into the Mass full of nectar - plastered first, then on the Stairway to Heaven. Too late to become a teetotaller!)
Two years ago I published a poem on my blog "Britta's Happiness of the Day", written by Walther von der Vogelweide, our poet from the High Middle Ages (that most Germans would not understand anymore). "Under der linden" is so beautiful, and maybe I will do a translation of my own in the next days, because I am not utterly happy with the one I quote there.
You might know Berlin's famous boulevard "Unter den Linden" - though at the moment you would see more construction areas than limes (they build the new underground 55 - a silly project, only 1,8km long. I don't believe that chancellor Merkel or any MP will use that underground from Hauptbahnhof to the Brandenburger Tor -- and no back-bencher will do that either: they all are chauffeured around in their huge limousines while preaching ecology of environment to us, their beloved voters. It is not social envy that makes me angry - as you all know I love beautiful and racy cars - it is the hypocrisy to speak of ecology and then sit in an official car as that of our mayor's, a 435 PS strong gasoline-engined car, which needs 9,2 liter on 100 kilometers on average - with 216 gram Co2-emission per kilometer.
For the U55 they chopped a lot of old limetrees, which will be replaced in time. They promised. So we can feel reassured.
Yesterday I had to do a lot of car-cleaning: Knut, my little red Fiat 500, had been parked for 2 weeks under a lime tree - first the weather was too hot to use a car, then I was in Munich. And now: horror!
You see: the leaves of the limetrees look like being lacquered, and when you walk under them, you think: What? Is it raining in a fine spray?
It isn't. There are zillions of aphids... sprinkling everything underneath with a sugary sticky film - I couldn't look Knut into his eyes! So I put on my Marigolds and took a bottle of Windolene and freed the sight, his and mine.
I have a dashy photo where I stand on a high ladder - in Marigolds, with an apron and a feather duster (oh, I almost forgot the little black dress, smiley, smiley!) - the incarnation of what men think a Hausfrau should look like. It was actually made for (the German issue of) Men's Health, for which I sometimes answer household questions.
Thought I show you the beautiful limetree photo instead.

Beauty in the Air: the Balcony

Dear You, 
Our balcony is very beautiful at the moment. The roses are in full bloom, pansies are still fine, and one can even find a few clematis blossoms (I wasn't as lucky as last year, when I had over 20 flowers on one of the two clematis). The wine makes me a bit anxious - fewer leaves than usual, and no flowering for grapes to see. Husband is anxious too: he almost can't find a place for his cup of coffee.

The voice of an acquaitance became agitated, when she told me about a friend of her: "Can you imagine? She has 40 pots on her balcony - forty!" . 
I went home and counted mine: 60. Oh. Yet the best is still to come: the buds of the lilies are almost bursting. (The first photo is the only one from last year's balcony - the New Dawn rose now creeps over the railing of the balcony and looks down on the street - a helicopter plant). ).

I'm especially proud of this pelargonium - I got it from the Royal Court gardener of Schloss Charlottenburg. (Of course that's not his title - but the Schloss is still a castle).

I love to potter and putter around. First thing in the morning is a step on my balcony:

Good Morning, Berlin! 

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 ...