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?) 

There's always Something...

Dear You, 
Fire on the roof of the Europa Center in Berlin yesterday - thank God nobody of the 1500 people who work there was hurt. 
The building is 103 meters high and was built between 1963 - 1965. As a pupil visiting Berlin with my classmates we all thought it the highest fashionable store we'd ever seen.  
Yesterday I came from the Museum für Fotografie, where they show an excellent exhibition by Bernard Larsson: "Leaving is Entering" - with photos from 1961 - 1968. Then I saw the smoke and grabbed my smartphone (NO, not the Galaxy Note 7 :-) and took some pictures. 

What people bemoan most: the huge Mercedes-Star on the "Icon of City West" doesn't turn around anymore (if you try hard you might see it middle-left) - it is ten meter high and turns around 1,9 times in a minute, never stopped since 1965, when the Center was built. 

PS: But today all is fine: it turns again.  

Grateful

L' été c'est fini ... 

... and I feel thankful for such a lovely, lovely solitary summer! 

Here a part from George Herbert's poem 'The Flower' 

...And now in age I bud again, 

After so many deaths I live and write; 

I once more smell the dew and rain, 

And relish versing: O my only light, 

It cannot be 

That I am he 

On whom thy tempests fell all right. 

Boring for England?

No, I don't want to bore you. 

So these photos will be the last ones from my visit to London I'll show you, promised.   

They are more traditional, because Rachel complained that the others "could be everywhere"- 

These ones NOT: 

Ha, you might think: now I've got you! These could be from Paris! 

Maybe they could - but they are from Battersea Park. 

Glorious! 

And can you believe that the father of my friend Trish accompanied Mr.Churchill to the Wannsee-Konferenz? 

And that I saw a letter to her father, written by him: 

PS: "And what do you think of Britta's Dream Aga, Sweetie?" 

                                                  

"Absolutely Fabulous!"

... and VERY British 

And this I found - I swear - in London -  Street Art you could find anywhere? 

:

Anyway: I will return. Again. And again. 

(Promise to myself)

A quick run on Monday through London (Part II)

I visited museums for old and modern Art 

e.g. Tate Britain 

and Tate Modern

revelled in Street Art 

and felt refreshed by Nature 

saw Things battling hard to survive 

or having lost the fight against time already

 dreaming seclusively of times bygone

while others, overhauled,  look somehow like fakes: 

As it is Monday evening (but I promised to write, so discipline wins) I was a bit in a hurry, sorry - in a few days I will show you the last (condensed) part of my impressions of lovely London.

London - at last (and at length...)

Dear You, 
while I want to tell you about my stay in London, I feel like her, above - trying to play this:

yes: all those titles in the shop "The Duke of Uke" are adapted for ukulele - I ask you: can you imagine AC/DC on ukulele??? 

My friends could, evidently...

(While they plunked they still had enough power to withhold me from entering the pub of the legendary Kray-Twins in East End - on the other side of the Duke - from where they schemed their criminal activities in London - the twins, I mean). 

They didn't know that I have a special guardian angel - you can find him in Tate Britain (where my journey started, after meeting my wonderful friend Trish. 

My angel and I - in close embrace we reach our ideal body weight, BMI alright, I feel sooo protected!
When I had enough from ukulele chirping, I went to get some real music: the Saatchi Gallery exhibited the Rolling Stones (and kindly gave me a special solo (!!) concert of Mick - wearing the offered 3-D-specs - gosh! was I happy that nobody else saw me with them - only Mick - looking quite wintery but vivid, and very tiny ("Hi, Mick - love your latest! - but I also love my High Heels!)

You say that my impressions of  "London - Part I"  seem a bit hazy?

That has nothing to do with the huge Craft Beer Festival in The Oval (Space) (which was a bit difficult to find - because there is another "Oval" near Vauxhall station - but I just followed those guys whose body-type seemed to indicate that they do love beer - real ale..).

Now, sweety, I'll give you a short rest.

After the weekend we'll meet again in wonderful, wonderful London. "Nice to meet you, hope you guess my name... uh, uh..." 

In case you should have forgotten - due to my long absence from blog-land - it's:

Britta xxx

We Are Beer

"Not commenting makes me feel guilt-stricken and nervy. I am prone to that." - this I found on Mise's blog. 
Yes! Yes! Yes! - or: Same! Same! Same! (Dropped the "H" nonchalantly after meeting some real Londoners). 
Because my guilty secret is: 
I am back from LONDON - and VIENNA - and have neither written nor read posts for almost 2 weeks after coming home. 

Though actually I had such a sensational heading:  "SUNBURN in LONDON!" (And never in my life I had a sunburn before - but at the Craft Beer Festival in The Oval Space it (almost) happened). 
Outside of course - above you see the inside - at the beginning - later you couldn't put a foot into it -- too many people, too much beer on the floor. But: fun. 
I will tell you of my adventures soon. 

But before that I have to negotiate a contract with London's tourist advertisement: 
at last (thanks, Google, tracing every step of mine!) they noticed that every time I come to England - 
                                the weather is exceptionally HOT. 
They want to book me now. 

Will I EVER Reach My Destiny?

Will I EVER reach my destiny? (Of course I know that I should speak of destination... :-)
These days you hear strange tones from my bow window room: I'm practising the pronunciation of some places. I knew about Leicester, Clapham and Greenwich - and a few more - but am still astonished how I ever I made it to "Ho-bun", "Tott-num" and "Marly-bone".



But then: my pronunciation is always a risky one ... n'est-ce pas, Tom? - on the other hand: it peps up my conversation, so mysterious...





 

A Madonnina for me

Dear You,
last Sunday I went to a little flea market in Berlin - and was vexed to see that I was late and them all packing up*. It was half past three - and at 4 pm they have to be off.
So I just did a hurried round - and then, at the very last stall, I found this little Italian madonna.
As I "collect" shop window mannequins with my camera, I saw that it resembles puppets that were made in the Forties or even earlier. She is tiny: about 25 cm height, 15 cm width - and has two impressed signatures, but I have to wait till my Italian friend Gloria, "la mia insegnante", comes back from her holidays in Italy to read what it is. I think there were lots of them in Italy at their time, and it will be nothing special. (I bought it for very little money - one advantage of coming late).
But I instantly fell in love: I love her aura - the expression of the faces is fine - and she exudes serenity.
I found a wonderful place for her on the wall of the bowfront of our flat.
And if someone thinks it a bit "kitschig" - I don't care!

 -

* PS: When I look at this sentence - the grammar - am I right to believe I should stop seeing "Ashes to Ashes" for a while, because glorious Mr. Gene Hunt's dialect dazzles my (broken) English?