"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  

Toodle-pip! (For a while I have to leave you...)

When I move... house...
... When I switch to a totally new parfume (from 'Balenciaga' to 'Shalimar' now) ...
... When I buy a new hat -
all these are indicators that 'something is going on'. All three things together have happened now.
My friends wouldn't be astonished to hear that I moved again - one said to me in Hamburg, where we moved three times in six years, (and then to Berlin): 'My next present for you will be a subscription for a movers company'. 
No - I only moved inside our big flat. Surprised Husband when he came back from university in Hildesheim: I had hired two men who secretly helped me with the big things like wardrobes, writing desks etc (though it still was a lot of work for me, how many tableware and glasses does a woman need?) - and now I am writing in the room with the three big bay windows, and Husband writes in the room opening to the balcony, (though I can still see our balcony from the chair where I sit reading).

As a teenager I was always fascinated by a line in a Thomas Mann short story, 'Tonio Kröger', where Tonio, a romantic youth with black curls and a mother who played the violin was deeply (and hopelessly) in love with the blond Hans, the model of a Northern German, said:

'But we are not gypsies in a green caravan, but respectable people, consul Kröger, the family of Krögers ... Quite often he also thought: But why am I so odd, being at variance with the teachers and alien among the other boys? Look at them, the bright pupils and those of solid mediocrity. (...) How orderly and approving with all and everyone they must feel! That must be good... But what about me, and how will all this go off?" (rough translation by me)

Well - how will all this go off? I mean: in my life. Oh no - don't fear - absolutely nothing dramatic has happened - it is more the feeling that I am entering another passage in my life soon. And not only because I have my birthday on December 29.
I need some time - Me-time - to sort all this out. Am a bit tired. Aimless. Not my true self.
So I will leave you for a while - but return, promised.
Next year :-)
(Ha - if you won't miss me you might even put me on your blog-lists - where I am very often not, a lot of you forgot to change that when I abandoned 'You are witty and pretty'. Don't miss my comeback!).
I will still translate a few poems on 'Britta's Happiness of the Day'.
And of course read your blogs.

So: I wish you all a Merry Christmas! And a Happy New Year! 

Lost in ... Movies

Dear You, 
when I look out of my window I see big lumpy snowflakes dancing over the the whole street, and a very strong gale urges them to move quicker. Yes, Berlin has got its share of the hurricane 'Xaver' - though luckily not with those masses and masses of water Hamburg has to cope with. 
Winter has arrived - outside you see only those who have business to do - meaning: dogs and their owners. Some cars. 
I had a wonderful week with my friend, who visited me - meaning: we sport dark under-eye-circles, because we chatted far, far into each night. Meaning: wonderful new little restaurants were explored. Meaning: exhibitions, walks trough different Kieze (residential quarters) of Berlin, and beautiful shops. And cinema: we saw a hilarious new film - 'Fack ju, Göthe' - (yes, I think you will understand that - it is the German onomatapoetic way how a person who comes from what they nowadays call the 'educational alienated class' would write the four-letter-word and the name of our prince of poets) - in the newly reopened cinema at the Zoo, the famous Zoo Palast. 
When we moved to Berlin three years ago, the Zoo Palast was hidden behind wooden panels - you see a section of it on the picture above that I took then (on tiptoes). It took 3 years to rebuild this jewel of the Fifties - which is soaked with film-history. Built in 1956 - though before it had started in 1915 - showing e.g. 1927 the first release of 'Metropolis'. Destroyed by bombs in 1943, then rebuilt and extended. From 1957 till 1999 it was the official contest cinema of the Berlinale - and has seen many famous film actors on its red carpet (e.g. Romy Schneider, Errol Flynn, Gina Lollobrigida, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sophia Loren, Jodie Foster, Tom Hanks, James Stewart). 
About 4,4 millions Euro were invested into the completion of the new interior and building - the owner says: "Going to the movies shall become a celebration again. The Zoo Palace got back its soul by us." 
7 cinema halls with (only) 1700 seats, meaning: enough room for long legs - you can almost lie on the comfy leather chairs! - and more than 100 employees, from the liveried (!) porters to the cloakroom attendants - everything in style and elegance. (Sorry that I didn't take pictures of the new glory that evening). 
Ah - and hurray, hurray: the cinema is in a very, very nice walking distance to our flat! 
So: if I am late with a new letter, dear, bear with me: I might be sitting in the palace, a princess lost in a new (or old) movie. 

Yours 
Britta 

They Pinched my Purse - But Not my Spirit

Dear You, 
I was happy this morning when I read Susan's comment:

"Oh dear Britta... Watch for your little green notebook of thoughts to become a best seller. A quote or two within will touch the heart of the hardened thief and bring him to write and right! Well... Maybe! I am so sorry for your trouble and aggravation. I hope all is sorted out. Warm thoughts to you...Susan" 

Which was a consolation, and reminded me that I wanted to write letters to you, instead 'Waffle on Raffle'. (Proudly slap my back for that one, haha). 
So I'll start anew. 
When I stared into my handbag yesterday and could not find my purse, I knew that very moment it had been nicked. I can't say why, but I knew. Not a nice feeling - (though interesting that the first and only time it happened before, long ago, there I had felt a cold grip at my heart - this time I was shocked, but not horrified. Rod Stewart might be right - "The First Cut is the Deepest") 
Shocked I was yesterday - not only because I had quite a lot of money in my purse, not only because I thought of the legwork I will have to do, but because someone had entered my privacy - (and sorry to say: in the spectrum of characteristics I am in many items far on the alpha male side - though not my legs, thank you very much :-) - so maybe the Tao wants to teach me a Lesson to work on: getting mellow while ripening...  
So: shock first, anger later. (Mellow, girl, mellow!) 
Anger at myself - normally I am quite careful (not cautious or anxious): and I took my handbag with me when I went to order the coffee in the Coffee Shop. But then the room was so crowded, and the armchairs so small (now we have our winter coats and caps and scarves and gloves to put somewhere - and no cloakroom, of course. We all sit with our mugs in all that clutter and try not to dribble the cappuccino on it... 
Till then the day had been so nice, though hectic: I had not only managed to wrap 24 little packages for Son and daughter-in-love (thank you again, Susan, for this wonderful word I learned from you!). You know: each year something deeply mysterious happens when I try to discuss abolishing Advent calenders : my children have fallen into the Fountain of Youth - are twelve years old again and thus need it - so I collect the items over the year (and love it)... Yesterday I had also baked my 'Ultimate Brownies' - I do that only once a year (Lesson: make something rare, and people long for it...)  
But I disgress: 
after the post office, I lunched with a friend in a little Italian restaurant, then in the Coffee Shop we chatted, forgetting the rest of the world.  
But into that cold world I was brought back with a bump - nothing is perfect (for long).  
Being one who tries to see the silver lining, I think now: Good that I took the more expensive dinner - and Had-I-But-Known I would have ordered champagne. 
Drawing a more general lesson from that: shouldn't we always? Order champagne? But you and I know: then there would be no money left for Advent calenders, postage stamps, or brooms - which reminds me, my dear, that I will now tidy and clean our flat - I want to restore order where I have control... (Stop that smart-alecky sniggering, dust bunnies!) 
And you, Dear You: have a beautiful day - and clutch your hand bag, as Moomin Mama always does! 

Yours 
Britta

A.J.Raffles, Arsène Lupin and the Whole Caboodle...

Dear You,

well: I'm glad they left me the key to our flat (Hans is in Hildesheim, teaching at university) - and also, quite astonishingly: my expensive smartphone (must have got to the ground of my handbag).
So I could use the phone to ring the bank to ban two cheque cards of mine. I could use the phone to ban the season ticket of the underground. I could use my phone to speak to the local administration to get an appointment for December 4th, to make an application for a new ID card AND a new driver's licence - and hurray: in about six weeks after that maybe I'll get a new ID card/ driver license.
To stress the silver lining: by now I am an expert in popular music - dideldidum, dideldidum - which I was forced to listen to while waiting to get my calls through (and to add insult to injury: they take money for those minutes and minutes you wait! "Sorry, all our employees are busy at the moment" - I bet: the one poor guy who is the whole staff needs the soothing tones while looking in horror at sixty-two telephones ringing at once...)
Can you imagine that under the emergency number of the bank they first play a few advertisements??
Maybe we should suggest that to the police too: "Oh, they threaten your life? May we offer you a course in self-defense for the next time (if there is a next time, hahaha - if not: do you want the number of a flourishing undertaker?" Dideldidum, dideldidum - or even better: "Plum, plum trallala" as Jean-Paul Belmondo so stubbornly sang when put under water in "Breathless" by Jean-Luc Godard) If you only rapport petty theft, the living person at the end of the phone - yes, there was one - suggests the Internet to you.
You see: I'm angry. Of course a bit at myself: I was sitting in a coffee shop in Berlin, which was quite crowded, and talked with a friend. Saw, that two men (oh, in Germany we have to be so overly political correct - Where Angels Fear to Tread - who didn't look quite like the typical blond-curled Bavarian German) sat first there - without coffee - than there - without coffee - and I know that I thought: "Strange - maybe they are just looking for a better place?"
They found it - one of them, the other stood in the middle of the room - just beside Silly Me. When in the fitness center, which is only three houses further up the road, a little bit later I wanted to present my member card, it wasn't there. Nor my purse.
It took a few seconds to sink in. I went back. Nobody had noticed anything - how could they, when even I hadn't noticed anything? (Though it is absolutely clear what and when it happened and by whom - no mistake in that. Had the purse to buy the coffe, and only one other person than my friend came near me). There are a lot of errands I have to do now (wish they had kept the money, Merry Christmas, but returned the cards).
What interests me: what will the thieves do with my little notebook, clad in lime-green silk, which they nicked too? Learn the elaborate quotes by heart, and the lines I've written in it??
Or maybe write their first "Gentleman Thief novel"?
I always preferred detective novels. Always.
Give me one Inspector Morse for three Raffles.

Yours 
Britta (starring in 'Purseless in Berlin')

 

Video about Worth Admiring Russian Inventiveness (and I mean it)

Dear You, 
yes: winter stretches out his icy hands, touches my flowers on the balcony, and they shiver - so I will have to put them on the balcony floor, put little wool caps and balaclava helmets (I always wanted to use this word, balaclava, at least once in my life) on their green coiffures and put them at rest.
Wish the same for my heart - must be in some sort of crisis, all circumstantial evidence seem to indicate that. (As a story teller I will keep the arc of suspense till my next post)
But it is Monday (a day of the week I'm utterly in love with - I know, I know, most people aren't and they write hateful songs about it - but not me: I love vigorous starts, even if only imagined, love the freshness and the possibilities of the first of seven days lying promisingly and glittering ahead of me).
And I love to laugh: in a not-mocking, yes I can say: here in an admiring way. I love the following video (you need a bit of patience, as for most good things). Those Russians know how to help themselves - in a sort of crisis they don't sit around and moan: they have bright ideas and the will to act - that is the right spirit!

http://www.snowaddiction.org/2013/11/you-will-not-believe-how-these-russians-get-this-car-out-of-a-frozen-lake.html 

In this sense I wish you a beautiful, sparkling week!

Yours 
Britta 

A letter, written in the morning (in case you have any doubts...)

Dear Darlin',

yes - trust your eyes: I remembered!
Remembered - (in the back of my head I hear a song "Try to remember the kind of September/ when life was slow and oh, so mellow. ... and if you remember then follow, follow, follow me..." - - who sang that? Ah, yes - Barry McGuire - honestly, till this moment I didn't think of this chap for decades!) - I mean, suddenly (suddenly?? It took me a whole year!) I remembered why I had changed my flourishing blog "You are Witty and Pretty" to pining away "Berlin Letters".
I wanted a change a focus!
I wanted a bracket, a brace or a staple to give my random, rambling posts a sort of unity. But, much more important: I wanted my blog to be more personal. I mean: I have the feeling to know some of you better than just acquaintances, mere ghosts in the www - I have quite a distinct image of you, by your writing, through your comments, or even by meeting you in person - and I really miss you when you go on a holiday, especially such a long one as Pondside (who acts the part of "The Silent Traveler" in China)!
So in that year dot I made up my mind to write letters to you, Darlin'.
Tentatively I started out with "Dear" - as you'll still find in my comments to your adorable posts - but that sounded so very old-fashioned to me. I KNOW that 'Darling' might be even more old-fashioned, and if for a second I would believe that you associate it with "Dear Darling", that song by Olly Murs, I would be ashamed to use it - I mean: that song has a way to worm its way into your brain - and the only way to delete it that I know is to watch the silly video on Youtube: Olly is a pretender, my dear girl: I think it right to warn the young ones among you, though I know this sort of warning is utterly in vain - never has the warning of a well-meaning experienced (much nicer than 'older') friend (the futility is expressed in the word 'well-meaning' - we all know that it means: completely without effect) - kept a hot-blooded girl from running into - now this might surprise you: JOY (you expected: unhappiness, didn't you?). I found out, till this very day, that it is a good thing to follow your impulses/intuition. (Well, a bit of thinking in advance doesn't hurt). In the Threepenny Opera our poet Bertold Brecht wrote the beautiful Barbara's Song (part here roughly translated by me): 

And if he has money, and if he is nice, and his collar is clean even on workdays,
and if he knows how to behave with a lady, then I say to him: “No.”
Then one keeps one's head up, and stays in the most general sense.
Sure, the moon shines the whole night,
sure, the boat is tied up at the bank,
but nothing more will happen.
Well, you know, one can't just lie down, one has to be cold and heartless.
Yes, so much might happen, but alas, there is only a: No!  

NO! But that other chap - no clean shirt, even on Sundays...
Well, I seem to digress (a speciality of mine).
What I mean is: how come that I forgot about writing you letters? 
In real life I write a lot of them - some even on paper, though most of them as emails now - and I love to receive them. Think with glee of the postman in Hamburg, who once rang at my door and delivered a very special postcard personally, saying: "I had to see the woman who gets such postcards!" (it happened four years ago - he must have read it - or at least looked at the front side - postmen are not the same any more in Germany since they lost their status as civil servants...).
And so I dare to be as daring as him, and write egocentric (yes, I know myself by now) rambling letters to you again, Darlin', and I hope that you like it and join in with Barry McGuire,
"and follow, follow, follow me..."

Yours
Britta

Really, Really Vexed with 'Vogue' editor Alexandra Shulman who finds older women hideous

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(picture by 

Dr. Erika-Fuchs-Stiftung

Today I want to share an article from The Guardian with you - because I really got furious when I read it (and it is absolutely irrelevant whether you are 48 or 60: the Vogue speaks of women over 30!). I'm not a subscriber of 'Vogue' - which I regret, because otherwise I could unsubscribe now.

"...it appears that Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, feels that elderly women trying to be fashionable are "slightly ridiculous and absolutely hideous" (When fashion ends at 30, G2, 5 November). !

from this I quote: "Shulman, who says: "I don't think people do really want to look at older women as … exemplars of fashion and beauty." Why? Because they would look not only "slightly ridiculous" but "absolutely hideous". Vogue may talk about older women, but it doesn't show them. Older for Vogue means over 30."

I cannot imagine that any woman, being a few days over thirty, will support that magazine.
This was the link that made me find the insult:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/08/older-women-hideous

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).