The Day I got Lost (slightly revised)

A few months ago, during the height of Covid-19-time, I bought a wonderful edition of the fairy-tales of Die Gebrüder Grimm. Might have been the same longing that brought many people to start examining their family history - fairy tales are a bit the family lore of a nation. 

The Gebrüder Grimm started to collect those tales from 1819 on - writing down what till then was only told verbatim - and thus endangered to get lost. They didn't add anything, and we are so thankful for their great work. 

Fairy tales are for children, one often thinks - especially when you know only the sweet Disney movies. But a long long time ago, when mankind told these stories around open hearths or at the spinning wheel on long winter evenings, they were cultural transmission. 

Some fairy tales are outright cruel. Some are not easy to understand. As a child I only loved those with a happy end, those which made me laugh. But now I see that a lot more of the wisdom of the not so nice  tales is stored inside me too. 

What I esteem: the fairytales taught children - different from nowadays overprotective helicopter parents (no chance to become that with triplets!) - that the world is a colourful but not always a peaceful place, that not all people are interested in that proud parents' Unique Sweet Child, as lovely and pure as it might be, and that the world sometimes is not fair, although fairy tales also often tell you that virtue is rewarded. 

One of my favourite fairy tales are "The Bremer Stadtmusikanten" (The Town Musicians of Bremen, where I come from) - its mantra for living-on is : 

"Something better than Death you will always be able to find."  

I'll drink to that - and cling to the antiquated syntax! 

Now to my adventure of getting lost: 

"In the Olden Days when wishing still has helped..." (fairy tales often start like that) - so, in my modern language: the day before yesterday, I went to the next town by train to buy some bread, and, as the weather  was hot and beautiful, decided to walk back to the little village where I (part-time) live now. 

That would make about 3 km, and I thought I knew the way. 

So Our Heroine started - with lovely fresh bread and no stones in her knapsack. 

Two times she asked Friendly Strangers if she was still walking into the right direction - and got somehow muddled advice about being quicker on another route. She walked on confident.  

When suddenly the road went uphill, she started to wonder. (Having a good sense of locality, why did she go further up, knowing that the little village nestled into a valley?) 

After a while she saw an ugly Old Woman, accompanied by three barking dogs, coming out of the woods, and she asked her: "Is this the way to Arcadevillage?" 

"Yes, my dear! Just go through that wood and you will be right there!" 

Our Heroine overlooked the strange glint in those eyes, didn't notice the cackling and was afraid of those Cerberous dogs.  

WELL...   This was what followed: 

 

After about seven miles through the wood and then many more miles through oven-hot dry fields she finally reached home. 

"And if she hasn't died she is still alive".  (Oh yes, she is!) 

After a few deep breaths she looked up the name of that wood and that little river (and I swear it is the truth and nothing but the truth). It is: 

                                                               Devil's Ditch.   

                       Phew! 

Morning Fog and Name-dropping

 

Another very hot day will unfold - the last two days we had temperatures of 34° C, which make you feel as being clad into hot blankets. 

In the early morning mist rises from the meadows on the low ground near the little river. It is always a stunning sight.                                                   

So: No walk with the triplets' electro mobile - but I brought two watering cans, thus we spent a very vivid and wet afternoon in the garden - little hands slided into the cans, discovered how to splash fountains - and the sun dried the clothes at once. 

I wonder how I shall name the triplets here - to respect their privacy. They have very beautiful names (and each of them has three - fortunately we only use one, otherwise they would be up and away while we stand around and call them :-) 

Elizabeth von Arnim called hers fictional "April, May and June". Might bring confusion to the readers, especially in months with the same name? 

Maybe I call them by the name of the Three Graces: Euphrosyne, Thalia and Aglaia - but Euphrosyne is a bit long - and my son detests abbreviations...  

So: I will call the unidentical triplet "Igel", which she choose very early to name herself, meaning hedgehog - in the beginning her abundant hair stood away from the head in little spikes; so she heard it very often. Now the spikes changed into a sort of long curls.The uniovular call her "Igel" too. 

The first uniovular triplet calls herself "Ada" (which I adore!). 

The second uniovular, who is very determined and fearless, has the name of a strong Nordic goddess - the name is short so she can pronounce it almost correct. She is the third of the Three Graces, Aglaia- so I will call her Glaia.  

Igel, Ada and Glaia -time will show if that fits. 

Nature's Mysteries

 

Now that I have Internet in Bavaria, I can come into contact with the world again. 

I am here since almost three weeks - the Flying Dutchman left a few days ago, and I try to arrange the last (the last?? Hahaha) equipments for my second, very rural domicile. 

With the triplets we do very long walks - WE walk (most often my Daughter in Love and I), the triplets are riding in a fashionable electro mobile, motor necessary because here are steep hills, sometimes with a gradient over 9%. 

When I say long walks I am speaking of 10 - 13 km, and those very often in the sun - because around 14 o'clock the triplets shall sleep, which they do in that mobile. 

And I enjoy the beautiful nature here. See so many plants I know - but now I came upon something (with no time to make good photos - first time on May 30) that made me fall back for a second: WHAT IS THAT? on a lake? 

Second time we went by I also had no time (the electro mobile runs fast) - but I managed a snapshot, the flowers no longer in abundance - and which my Apps did not recognise - I use PlantNet, Andy Green and Flora Incognita. 

Do you know what that is? Thank you for your help! 

PS:  I've found it! (I think...): 

        It might be ALISMA - maybe lanceolatum, or Alisma gramineum.

A Sign of Life

 

Dear You,

just a sign of life: this is the view from my new domicile in Bavaria - isn't it ravishing? 

At the moment I am back in Berlin: I got the offer for my first Biontec shot two days ago, and thought that so important that I entered the ICE and will stay here for a few day. Hustle and bustle - but also 

                                                            Joie de vivre!

(Britta)'s On The Road Again

  

Dear You, 

I haven't use the photo above (which I took years ago at V&A) for a long time, and you know why. 

But now, despite the lockdown-lethargy, I am in the middle of an adventure. 

At the beginning of 2021 I decided that I do not like to feel remote-controlled. 

So, after having not seen the triplets since February 2020 (!) I acted: I had luck to rent an apartment in the village where Son, my Daughter-in-love and the triplets live. To be precise: it was my DiL who told me that the apartment was there to be rented, one street away from their house. 

I thought: "OK - at least it is far enough away that one has to put on a jacket to visit each other".  I don't want to intrude into a family - though welcomed and hopefully able to really help with three vivid little girls, no longer the babies I saw last year but little children who run around, start to speak - and love to lie on the ground and "read" a book. 

I rented without having seen the apartment except on photos - (though Son went and looked at it once). 

I keep my huge apartment in Berlin - by now I know myself: I am a city-girl. 

I could buy the whole kitchen including all machines; and a good-looking big wardrobe in the bedroom. Yet the van the caretaker and his son filled today with the sofa, the bicycle, ten moving boxes and a lot of other things is full - tomorrow I will manage to climb inside, and then we three drive to Bavaria. 

Hurray! 

The janitor and his son are part-time knights - living in medieval tents, being able to fight with real swords, and hunt with real bow and arrow, so I see it as a sort of crusade: 

Time to fight the dragon Corona, time to move again. 

Wish me luck - and forgive me if you do not get comments at the moment: for some time I will have no Internet, though after five days quarantine I will try to get a connection to you in the house of Son&DiL. 

On my smartphone I can see your comments (and will find out, how I can read your blogs too). 

So: Toodle pip! 

DELIGHT Two: SHOPPING in small towns and villages

 

photo by Britta Hügel 

No travels to little towns and villages at the (long) moment, AND the shops are closed everywhere in Germany. 

The only living person a lot of people nowadays see at all is the Amazon delivery man. Or the postman - which makes me think of the time when little shops in villages were also the post office... 

But I agree with Mr. J.B.Priestly: shopping in small towns and villages is fun and a delight. 

"We begin (to shop) as small children clutching our pennies and staring over the counter in a sweet agony of indecision." 

Oh yes: I remember Mr. Meissner, the chemist's, just over the street - you could go there with 1 Pfennig (!) in your little hand and he would take down an enormous tin can, open it (ahh - that heavenly smell!) - and took out one heaped teaspoon of black sharp salty rhombic salmis - mmmmhhhh! 

"We who begin to buy only when we are at the mercy of our instinctive drives do not want a whole floor of neckties or saucepans, with lifts to take us to cushions or tobacco. It is when shaving brushes and cheese, toffee and potato peelers, liver pills and socks, are heaped together that we go berserk, shopping like mad." 

Every time I see the scene in the village shop when watching "Saving Grace" with Brenda Blethyn, where the two elderly ladies, having drunk a very special tea, hide behind the counter, pop up with big goggle eyes that pop out of the spectacles from the joke items - I have to laugh out loud, every time! (Well, you could put me beside an old-fashioned laughing bag and I would roll around with laughter 😂) 

What do you think about shopping in little villages - or do those kinds of old-fashioned shops still exist in your area?

PS: As Tasker and Joanne asked ... here I will try to explain what "Salmis" are. One picture says more than hundred words - though in this case I doubt it. 

See why: 

"Ah, liquorice!" you might say. 

Yes and no. They add something that sounds horrible: sal ammoniac - which gives a sharp tang and taste (liquorice is more sweet, salmis are WHOW! Salty-sharp). 

People in northern countries love them and have many varieties: the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden - and the region where I come from, Bremen in Northern Germany - countries that are more cold. 

It drives up your blood pressure - maybe this is why we Northerners love it (though I searched for it in Edinburgh in vain.) 

I cannot say more to it - you have to taste it. For a lot of people ONCE is enough forever - the others I would call dangerously addicted  :-)    (you can buy it in every chemist's shop...) 

DELIGHT One: Fountains

 

The last days I was a bit "under the weather", although the sun came out and I got some (personal) very good news. (I will tell you another time). 

So I did what I always do when I feel sort of blue: I looked into my bookcases and took out "Delight" by J.B.Priestly. It was first published in 1949. 

" FOUNTAINS. I doubt if I ever saw one, even the smallest, without some tingling of delight. (...) The richest memory I have of the Bradford Exhibition of my boyhood, (...) is of the Fairy Fountain, which changed colour to the waltzes of the Blue Hungarian Band, and was straight out of the Arabian Night." 

Priestly complains that there are only few fountains in Great Britain: 

"We hunger for them and are not fed." He asks for letters to The Times and even for demonstrations to get them. 

"Their cost is trifling compared to so many idiotic things we are given and do not want. Our towns are crammed with all manner of rubbish that no people in their senses ever asked for, yet where are the fountains?" 

The fountain on the photograph I took at the Victoria Luise Platz, a few steps from my home. The man who designed in 1902 the whole quarter, Mr. Haberland, insisted on many "Schmuckplätze" - Ornamental Places? - where you will find every time a fountain - in always diverging design. 

When they start to sparkle after winter, you know: now it is really spring.   

Query: What do you think about the delight of fountains? Are there fountains where you live, or nearby - and/or do you remember a very special one?