Royal Christmas / Königliche Weihnachten

Dear You, 
this was the view from our hotel room at the Hopfensee (Allgäu), where we spent Christmas. A very new experience for me, not to celebrate at home - but you drive 8 hours and a half by train - we didn't want to ask that from our 'children', who live in Kempten now, and have to work on Monday again.
It was utterly beautiful - sun as in May.
On the trip to the Hopfensee I thought for a moment that I was in the wrong film: a red little train passed us, coming from Füssen - and it was filled up to the last place with dark-haired young Asians. Japanese mostly, but also Chinese.
I wondered. Then, of course, the penny dropped.
Allgäu - Füssen - der Kini - König Ludwig II. - and: Schloß Neuschwanstein.

Which we saw for the very first time. To understand its bizzare architecture one look at the face of Ludwig might help:

Pfiat di! 
Britta  xxx

Today is my birthday

Another one!
The little pendant I found a year ago - it is made of enamel, and is even older than I :-)
Of course I don't wear it - I'm not into astronomy astrology (proof: I knew only very few birthsigns of friend - and when I know them I often am not sure what they mean. Strange was only for a long period of my life the clustering of Virgos).
You might remember my last birthday post, where I told you of that friend of mine who pays lots of money for learning astrology, in Suisse - and still is adamant about me being a Gemini.
Which I am not, but if it makes her happy...
Being a Capricorn - that much I learned - means
a) you better not tell
b) you are ambitious, and climb up to the summit
c) you are stubborn
d) and very resilient
e) and more. (Should take a course in Suisse).
Best:
They say a Capricorn grows younger while ageing. Young they are very eager to do the right things, thinking brain is everything - growing older they relax and start to enjoy life with all senses. . .
As I do.

I thank you all for following, and wish you a Happy New Year!
Britta xxx

PS: Please allowe me one birthday wish: of course Rachel was right when she asked 'Why not integrate "Rise and Shine!" into this blog?" (Answer: c)
Now I will. It's not that I don't have nough topics to write about - I have - but I found out that I mumbled all the time - happily only in my head -- in plain (though admittedly: broken) English!
I talked all the time to you! 
Stop! I also have a real life! And work to do!
So : easier for you to have this one blog (with from now on a few shorter posts, and some long ones), and easier for me. Thank you!

I like this one better!

         The whole family: my father and I, my mother and my sister. The way it always was.

Merry Christmas!

I wish all of  Dear You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Thank you for your wonderful blogs and so many letters comments. 

These two photos I took at my last visit to Hamburg:
- at the central station (above) and at the Levante Haus (isn't that beautiful?)

 During the Christmas Holidays I might not blog - and then again: I might.

                          In keeping with Lord Peter Death Bradon Wimsey's heraldic motto:

                                                   "As my whimsy takes me."

Commenting Comments

Dear You, 

Comments are bit like letters, and I've chosen "Dear You" with the hope to get 'letters' back. 

Often we talk more freely about ourselves in a blog than in real life (I sometimes forget completely that "all the world" might read it - though luckily the world has other things to care about).  I even start to worry, if a blogger who normally comments eagerly, remains silent - have I said something stupid? or is he ill? 

Till now I was lucky not to have a troll, an evil commenter on my blog, as Rachel has. 

A rough classification of commenters is:  

- bloggers who don't allow comments. 

- bloggers who promise to answer all comments - and then don't. In that case I wait for a while - (e.g. John, whose blog I really like - and then I withdraw. Not sulkingly, but with time management in mind: I have to invest so much time to a comment - not only because I write in a foreign language, but also because I look up ideas, quotes etc. and reread and polish - so often a tiny weeny comment takes me a quarter of an hour. Or more). And there are so many blogs I want to comment on! 

- bloggers who allow comments, but don't answer. That is utterly understandable as in Pondside's case (she often gets more than 60 comments on one post - that would be a fulltime job to answer them all). Maybe the famous Hattats gave up their blog because the wonderful way they answered each of their zillions of commenters profoundly was too strenuous - I suspect that even they have only 24 hours a day? Often bloggers with many comments don't answer, but comment on my blog - a very fair exchange. 

Some bloggers give short comments, other long ones. 

I'm often a bit wordy. And Tom was right, when I complained in a comment - in a general way - that some posts are just too long (because one wants to read so many) to answer: Yours are often not short either. So true! (Look at this one!) 

Some bloggers blog every day. That is exciting - but often I cannot comment every day, though I read them - which makes me feel that I might appear as a bit fickle, though I am not. 

On Facebook I have the strange phenomenon that a bright young author whom I know in person complains that one often does not comment on his posts - but he never comments himself on anything we write, even to click "Like" seems to be too much. Well - I might think: He just doesn't like it! - but no: recently he told me that he reads every bit and everything I post. Strange. Worse: if a person answers on a comment in the printed version "above your comment", and on the one "under your comment" - but not on your own comment - that I take personal :-) 

I too love to write each day. 

Thus I invented a new blog - "Rise and Shine!" (a quote from "Vera", when she enters police headquarters in Newcastle). If you go to that blog you do it at your own risk - I warned you! no photos, just morsels from everyday life, mine of course :-) . You find that blog on my blogroll at the right - or under the blog-address http://mandelrosen.blogspot.de/ . Of course comments are very welcome - but I don't expect any. 

Ah - and to humour. I love the English authors for their wit and irony. And when I use some (irony), I often put one of these daft emoticons behind it - otherwise there is a fat chance you might think I meant it the way one could read it also. 

Conclusion: Comments are fantastic. They brighten up our day. 

Or as Eeyore put it: 

“I might have known,” said Eeyore. “After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother!’. The Social Round. Always something going on.” A.A.Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh  

 

:-) , :-) . :-) ! 

Toodle- pip!    

    

  

Please, Mr. Postman!

Dear You, 
Actually I wanted to write a post about "comments".
Now I'm sitting here, caught in a luxurious prison - our flat - and wait for the postman. Will he ever come?
"With the post you never know", said "my" postman wistfully. Strange to hear it out of the mouth of some official - it is true that we had oh so many thefts from parcels and small packages the last years (at least three items I sent were stolen till finally, finally I followed son's advice to ALWAYS send a package (costly) insured).
Our postman is utterly reliable - he is a wonderful young Turk who really loves his job, (and even greets me from his yellow van - by name! - when he sees me in another street in Berlin). They have given him a new route now, sometimes here, sometimes there, sometimes not -  and thus made his job less secure and his smile a bit more worried. I wonder what the Post is thinking of!
Why am I waiting? New job from nine-to-five? Nay - Amzon informed me that my iRobot will arrive today - and that is heavy, I suspect, and if I am not at home and have to go to the post-office to get it, I won't have to go to the gymn today.
Yes, you read right: I ordered a robot to vacuum dear home. I am very curious if that will work (and you know my infatuation with technical gimmicks) - I see me Sitting On My Sofa, feets up, laptop on my knees - hammering a post on "comments" into the keys, while "IT" purrs and currs all around.

PS: Maybe in four hours I will change the song to: "Set Me Free" (I love the Kinks!)

Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go...

Dear You, 
I don't know what I expected when the day after the English Christmas Fair I was on my way to the "Japanese Christmas Fair". Maybe little Geishas folding complicated Origamis? I should have used my brain - I mean: Japan and Chrstmas?? and: oh, Revaler Straße in Friedrichshain - even better known to the police than rough Alexanderplatz...
Fights, stabbing, drugs - "down these mean streets a man must go", to quote Raymond Chandler - well, and in these days: a woman too - IF she wants to find that Fair.

From the underground station Warschauer Straße I Took a walk on the wild side - the promised number 99 wasn't to be found, and as I walked on, the area became more and more dreary and sinister,

And the Africans, very well fed and very secretive, started to offer me "Tea, coffee or me?"
I wisely refrained from witty answers or taking a few cute snapshots of them, and after more than one kilometer walk along a single (!) wall - beautifully sprayed with graffiti - I muttered unladylike under my breath "Damn, damn, damn - I'll go back."
As the wise Taoists say: the moment I "was letting go", all things fell into place - and I between picturesque ruins and beside a beautiful swimming bath "Der Haubentaucher" (great crested grebe):

and a flea-market:

Vainly I asked a girl wearing not much more than a Purple Haze if she knew where ??? - but all she could do was to offer me her joint. Felt like the middle-aged woman in "The Knack", when Rita Tushingham rings at a door and cries: "Rape! Rape!" and the lady says kindly: "Thank you, love - not today."
Then, at the very beginning of the Revaler Straße, at my starting point - yes, Buddhism is right: life is a circle, not a line - was the Urban Spree, where the Japanese Christmas Fair was taking place.

Mangas, mangas, mangas - nothing else - and they didn't seem especially convincing to me, but then: I am no expert. But nothing "hummed" at me.
So I did that myself, melodiously humming: "These boots are made for walking!" 
And that's just what they did...

In my sturdy Timberlands and without getas I was leaving a very lively and interesting part of Berlin.