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.