Are we there yet?

We're still there

2008-07-12T19:56:00.001+02:00

today in berlin

2008-01-06T20:00:00.000+01:00

when we walked out of the place where we had lunch

Nope, it's NOT A DOG!

i killed my ixus :-((((((((((

2007-10-31T16:06:00.000+01:00

by emptying half a bottle of water in my schoolbag :-(((((((((((((

It went with me literally everywhere for more than 2.5 years, and now I feel naked without it. And everywhere I go, I see loads of pics to take, and I need it for at least half of all the homework I have to do, and it's bad enough that I'll have to borrow one of those ugly, heavy, unhandy Olympus that we have in school for our term project because I don't have a digital SLR. Now I don't even have my Ixus anymore. And I smashed my beloved laptop in January and managed to pour a whole biiiiiiiig cup of tea over my keyboard 4 weeks ago. It's not exactly been a good tech year, and if I go on like this, I won't have many of my Taiwan things left very soon :-S

I downloaded a 9-page repair guide from the internet, and H actually sat down and started taking it apart (how sweet of him!). Until he got to the point where he didn't understand it anymore, and apart from that, he isn't sure he'll get it all put together again. But I don't think it would work, anyway.

I've been eyeing buying an Ixus 70, the stylish black one. I'd need some real translation jobs first or rather it would be nice to finally get all the money different agencies owe me :-S

R.I.P. beloved Ixus....

back to school

2007-10-25T22:57:00.000+02:00

Looks like almost everybody in the family is going to uni now: Noemi in Canada, my sister finally got accepted to study medicine in Munich, H's niece is doing economics in Frankfurt, and H's nephew just started studying civil engineering.

And I'm off to Merseburg every morning to study technical documentation and technical knowledge communication. The downside is the 1.5 hour trip one way (even though it's only 20km) including having to get up at 6am and coming home around 6pm :-S The upside is the fact that we're ---- three students who have a whole bunch of professors to ourselves. Feels almost like being back in Germersheim :-)

Tuesday is a bit pissed off with getting up that early as well. And even more so with me not being around all day anymore. But it's only two years including internship and master thesis. And supposedly, the workload gets a little less after the first term. At the moment, life more or less exclusively consists of uni, homework, feeding Tuesday and bed. Which means there isn't much to blog about and even less time to do so...

no comment

2007-06-16T09:36:00.000+02:00

chinese weekend

2007-06-07T10:24:00.000+02:00

Managed to catch the "Humanism in China" exhibition that I missed when it was in Stuttgart and Munich and had lost track of. I almost screamed when I saw the billboard on the subway in Berlin on my way to a document translation workshop (to get more secure in translating Chinese birth certificates :-S).

It's a terrific exhibition on every-day life in China, 590 pics taken by 250 different Chinese photographers during the last 50 years. It was first set up and shown in China, the set up shown in Berlin supposedly is the original set up from the Guangdong Museum of Art. H went with me and liked it just as much.

And I bought two Chinese pots in a store right next to the building where I had the workshop :-))))) H and our friends had lots of fun imagining me changing trains on the subway while dragging along two 7kg pots ;-)

north korea

2007-04-04T12:03:00.000+02:00

Looks like I'm not the only German who used to be close friends with Nth Koreans: North Korean husband of German woman is alive

I suppose she can be lucky that they didn't take her kids, too. Like they're trying to do with children of Nth Korean diplomats right now: N Korea envoys 'keeping children'

jacky was in Singapore

2007-04-03T16:00:00.000+02:00

promoting his new album. just a couple of weeks early :-(

and I spent 4 years in Asia waiting for an opportunity to see him on stage, and he'll tour China AND Taiwan AND Singapore this summer.

Life's fucking unfair :-(

germany's cutest polar bear

2007-03-23T15:39:00.000+01:00

Knut even made it onto the BBC News Front Page

yuck

2007-03-22T15:09:00.000+01:00

woke up this morning to this:

One more reason to count the days: we're off to Singapore on 22 April. 31 more days... and I've already checked out the inflight entertainment :-)

tuesday at work

2007-03-09T13:13:00.000+01:00

got tixxxxxxxxxxx!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-03-01T15:56:00.000+01:00

For Tori Amos in Berlin:

and Ezio here in Halle!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had a fit this morning when I read it in the newspaper, and H`s dry comment was: "you´re really sick", especially after I had told him that he´ll have to come with me because I already got Arne to join me for the Tori concert....

My first two live acts since the last Tori concert in 2003 :-))))))))))

embarrassment ;-)

2007-02-04T12:32:00.000+01:00

Grenada has promised an inquiry after Taiwan's national anthem was played instead of China's at a ceremony in the Grenadian capital, St George's.

That´s even more hilarous than the article in our daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about China´s influence on African states, illustrated by a pic with the characters 台灣商城 Taiwan Magasin :-)

greatest website ever (sort of)

2007-01-26T13:46:00.000+01:00

thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks, little brother :-)))))))))))

info and 12 more pages on movies featuring the most beautiful car in the world here
:-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

i fucking hate nye

2006-12-31T23:58:00.000+01:00

The whole concept of another year having passed is bad enough. But what's worse is that fact that the whole fucking neighbourhood started doing their firecrackers before 8pm tonight, and have been going strong for the past 4 hours. I HATE fireworks, I HATE firecrackers. Why the fuck can't people donate money to Unicef and the like instead of wasting it for stinky, ear-splitting, littering firecrackers??????????? And watching Brazil hasn't exactly eased my being edgy and feeling sick and being rude to H :-S He's taken a bottle of champagne and gone off to watch the bloody fireworks from the rooftop. Poor H, I've messed up yet another moment he probably feels I should spend with him. I'm sorry!!!!!!!! But I couldn't have any champagne anyway, I feel waaaay too edgy and literally sick. And I've never felt that a new year was something to celebrate anyway :-S Tuesday isn't too pleased with the whole noise, either. Last year wasn't half as bad, but I won't take this next year, I'll have to find some hole faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from any firecrackers and fireworks :-S

christmas

2006-12-28T18:06:00.000+01:00

Spot the cat...

Merry Christmas to every one!

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusy

2006-12-08T09:17:00.000+01:00

translating a (very Chinese) guide on what to keep in mind during business negotiations with Chinese. And I'm awfully sloooooooooooooooooow :-(

But I just got my daily Asian Studies Abstract Newsletter, and it sent me a link to a site with such magnificent China pictures, I just had to share.

taiwan film festival in berlin

2006-10-31T18:34:00.000+01:00

Looks quite interesting, might be a reason to spend the weekend in Berlin, especially as Monika will be there for the show of the Tigerwomen. Program and info here (German only)

ds

2006-10-20T15:32:00.000+02:00

Ordered and got this today:

:-))))))))))))

mimi

2006-10-13T09:30:00.000+02:00

The most beautiful and special cat in Singapore was killed by some speeding idiot on wednesday :-((((((((((((((((((((((((

halle wildlife

2006-09-25T14:21:00.000+02:00

moon cakes

2006-09-22T19:43:00.000+02:00

personal delivery straight from Singapore :-)))))))))))))

There's a second box here - hint,hint! Oh, and when you come to pick it up, would you mind passing by Winterburg to put the Datura that somehow everybody seems to think I'm dying to have into the Kangoo so Dorothea won't have to bother with overwintering it? Thanks!

new recruit joins terracotta army

2006-09-19T16:37:00.000+02:00

BBC news text here

august pics of the month

2006-09-04T12:50:00.000+02:00

state garden fair

2006-09-01T14:30:00.000+02:00

movie marathon

2006-08-13T00:09:00.000+02:00

H was on a business trip from Thursday to Saturday, so I ransacked the best video rental place in town (that happens to be owned by a guy I know from the movie theater and to be located just around the corner), locked the door and turned on the DVD player. And watched:

Edward Scissorhands (have I mentioned that I love Tim Burton?)

North Country (a little too much courtroom but great women)

The Forest for the Trees (how can anyone be so stupid?)

Ronia, the Robber's Daughter (all-time childhood favorite)

Love me if you dare (meant to watch it when it was on in Taipei and missed out. Amelie meets Ma vie en rose meets Serendipity meets the meanest and most selfish characters you've liked in a movie - great!!!!)

A Love Song for Bobby Long (reminded me of two of my (many) favs: Where the Heart is and Garden State and have I mentioned that I love John Travolta's acting?)

Mystic River (left a bitter taste)

Männerpension (great German comedy)

Nick of time (well-done real-time thriller)

Punch drunk love (weird and cute)

Citizen X (starring Stephen 'I only know one single facial expression' Rea)

and, last but not least, since all my Region 3 Feel Good favs don't run on H's DVD player, a lighthearted relaxing comedy a friend sent me before he left Taiwan:

State and Main :-)

and managed to finish the socks for both Annika and her sister:

(so much for the stupid knitting housewife)

ultimatum

2006-08-10T12:07:00.000+02:00

H has set me an ultimatum for moving out. 31 December, so he can enjoy New Year's Eve in peace. After all that's been going on in the past year since I came here, with me being depressed all the time due to the everlasting cold in Germany, feeling worthless after giving up my job and becoming a stupid knitting and baking and cleaning and washing housewife volunteering at a run-down movie theater with no perspective, desperately trying to find translation jobs (and feeling pretty stupid babysitting instead) and suddenly having no money anymore after 4 years of having more money than I could spend, feeling so fucking alien in Germany, missing about everything about Taipei, not succeeding in setting up social life and most of all not being able to give him the closeness he obviously expects and instead giving it to Tuesday, it's his perfect right to do this.

The thing is, I don't know where to go. Apart from the loss of face here in Germany for both of us, there's no place that I feel I'd want to live here. Of course, Taipei would seem like the place to go. But - I've got no job, no qualifications and no money (and I hate begging him for money, that he doesn't have either, anyway), I gave up my job, my apartment and my furniture and the rest of my life a year ago, I've badly neglected all my friends, the ones in Taipei as well as the few ones I used to have in Germany. And the thought of packing and organizing a move again (and having to deposit all my plants with my mum again), with all my stuff (that I haven't really unpacked completely yet because the back wing isn't finished but that I would have to unpack and repack to sort it through) and Tuesday and everything, makes me feel sick in every sense.

I've tried to look for a therapist. But the few ones I've found here that take patients (not that there isn't a therapist's practise on every corner here) have waiting lists of a year for regular appointments. I managed to get two introductory 20 minute-appointments in September. And obviously, H doesn't really want to wait to see whether a therapy would help though he made me promise to see a therapist (and I sort of tend to think that if I really managed to move back to Taipei, I wouldn't need therapy).

When I was in Taipei last november (where I actually decided to leave H and move back and even got a job opportunity on my last day there and spent ten days with Alex in Shanghai making it all seem soooooooo easy. And then came back here and told him, and he wouldn't let me go), a friend who sort of was in a similar position put his head on the counter of the pub we were in and went: "If only I could hibernate here and wake up when my life has resolved itself." And I was like: "I know exactly what you mean."

"Behind my impassive face, my soul curled up into a ball, waiting until the unpleasantness was over" (from: Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex)

modern times

2006-07-16T10:10:00.000+02:00

The movie theater I'm involved in was asked by the Stadtmuseum to show an open-air movie for the Sachsen-Anhalt Tag. We chose to show Modern Times by and with Charlie Chaplin

and had a great laugh watching the whole movie by ourselves because nobody else showed up :-S

family pics

2006-07-12T11:38:00.000+02:00

I completely forgot to post pics of my brother Arne's wedding end of May. A wedding that was notable for its being very different and very beautiful, for the joy my (real) dad's mother, father and sister felt in being invited to this wedding and in seeing my mum's family again for the first time in 20-30 years. And for the fact that my mum and my (real) dad hurt my brother terribly by not showing up due to petty egoistic motives.

and another pic of the four of us, taken in January at my mum's boyfriend's 60th birthday:

which happened to be the first pic of the four of us since my sister's high school graduation in summer 2002:

football II

2006-07-09T23:45:00.000+02:00

Meant to go and watch Transamerica as OV while H would be busy watching the final. And then I was so tired because I hadn't slept more than 9 hours over the weekend, and H's delicious lamb dish wasn't ready by the time I would have had to leave, and the movie will still be running wednesday when H is in Holland, and the tv was on anyway

I watched the game 8-S

football

2006-07-05T08:19:00.000+02:00

Thank goodness Germany lost the semi-final. I don't know what would have happened if they'd reached the final let alone won the world cup. It was all crazy enough all ready.
I happened to be in Munich during the semi-final game, and while I absolutely refused to WATCH the game (no, I'm not one of those who beforehand claimed that she'd have nothing to do with the world cup and then still watched every game. I haven't seen a single game, and when the quarter-final was on,
I didn't even know it was Germany playing), we sort of couldn't escape the whole game on audio commentary when we finally managed to find a place that had NOT put the tv on the pavement
(Tapas, btw, YUMMIE!, almost as good as in Gomera). So we heard the whole game through the window and with about a minute shift from the window across the road (where some guy climbed and yelled out of the window every time Germany scored a goal).
And of course stayed until the end of the penalty shootout and then walked over to Leopoldstrasse, the main meeting point for fans. The first half hour there was ok, taking pics of all those crazy Germans wearing the German colours in any way possible. Then it got too crowded and the crowd too drunk,
and while I have no problems in Asian crowds (which due to the fact that people there usually aren't drunk in crowds tend not to be aggressive let alone throw empty bottles and pick a fight with everybody who happens to run into them), I started panicking and had to leave. We hardly made it to the subway and were some of the last ones to make it DOWN the stairs before the supervisory staff had to call the police
because they were unable to clear the stairs themselves with all those people trying to get in and out.

Two more days, and hopefully after that, Germany can concentrate on something else again, and it will be possible again to open up a newspaper without the world cup on each and every page and
stroll through town without references to the world cup in every shop window and turn on the tv without some non-vip discussing the world cup on every channel and go to a pub without tvs everywhere blaring the lastest football results and have something else to talk about. It sort of feels weird that it needs a football world cup of all things for newspapers to exult on how Germans can finally identify with their flag again without needing to feel that it is wrong to feel German :-S Ask any foreigner: Germans are Germans and will never be able to hide it as much as they'd like to deny it. I'm certainly no exception :-S

Ms Annika

2006-06-29T18:34:00.000+02:00

The reason why I had no time for posting lately: Ms. Annika Reichenbach

She's H's boss's daughter, and her mum had a freelance job layouting a book on design for a couple of weeks, so she asked me to take care of 10month-old Annika, and once in a while her 4yo sister Paula, too. The project is over now, and I'm basically back to my old life of spending my days with my laptop waiting for my friends to come online and taking quick glances at Forumosa. But her mum has come to enjoy her time off so much, she's asked me to keep on taking care of Annika one day a week. If I'm lucky that's enough to keep my "pushing a pram all day" tan :-S

strawberries

2006-06-26T17:19:00.000+02:00

It's strawberry time, and I picked my first own strawberries in years (from the plants I had back at uni and that my mum gave back to me last year):
H brought about 3 kg of jam strawberries 10 days ago, so I spent the weekend making strawberry jam, strawberry icecream, strawberry milkshake and a strawberry cheese cake (that I had to throw away because there was nobody here to eat it :-S)

Even though H checked the other day that I hadn't turned on the heating again, it's almost warm now (after 1 June was the coldest 1 June in the history of Germany's recording maximum day temperatures), and we spend a lot of time outside. I'm still trying to get a grip on the garden. Not that it would be obvious :-S

cell phone update

2006-06-21T18:47:00.000+02:00

Went to get a new SIM card and was available as always by noon. The only drawbacks are the fact that every time my new old phone gets a text message, I keep thinking it's from one of those friends I used to have message marathons with in Taipei :-S And, of course, the 75 Euros the thief or whoever he sold my phone to used up to chat with friends in Africa before I managed to get the number blocked :-S

cell phone

2006-06-21T05:10:00.000+02:00

Had one of my lifelines cut last night: my cell phone was stolen :-(((((((((

Weird story, too: Another guy and I were doing the weekly shift at the movie theater where I'm volunteering (as is everybody else there). We sold the tickets, started the movie and then went outside to water the hops we planted a while ago. Came back in, everything alright. A third one of the volunteers showed up and sat down outside to read. Until we heard him arguing with somebody and then calling out for us: He had caught a junkie none of us had seen or heard come in walking out the door with the cashbox, raced after him and retrieved the cashbox when the guy dropped it (wasn't really worth it anyway, most of the money in the cashbox was stolen 2 days ago :-S who knows, might have been the same guy). Anyway, we took the cashbox with us, I went back to the list I was making. And an hour later realized that my cell phone had been next to the cashbox when the guy took it. And it was - gone :-((((((( Called H and told him and then raced home to have the sim card blocked (after H had sent message after message telling the guy what an asshole he is).

It's not so much the cell phone itself or the lost numbers that has kept me up all night. I still have my old phone, the white one with the cat thingie and most of the numbers. But it's the few special messages I had saved. And the dangly thingies, my Jimmy thingie Tarra gave me and the cloisonne butterfly Arne and Nicole brought me from Beijing :-(((( And of course the possibility that whoever took it might have called half the world or a couple of porn lines before I had the sim card blocked :-S

spot the...

2006-05-16T23:40:00.000+02:00

... reason why I took this pic:

2006-05-10T23:21:00.000+02:00

hamburg

2006-05-09T23:55:00.000+02:00

H had some appointments in Hamburg, so we went a couple of days early and spent the weekend with Monika and Manfred, eating lots of fish and seafood, going on a bike tour and cruising around the port on different ferries, with terrific views of the big container port and the Queen Mary 2.
I of course went crazy when we stumbled upon two goddesses :-)))

And then there was that moment when we were sitting in a small roadside cafe underneath apple trees just out of Hamburg and were eating red fruit jelly with vanilla sauce, and there was that plane above us, and H looked up and said: "I think it's the new airbus A380." And all of us went: "No way!" And he looked up and said: "It is!" Mind you, it was the port anniversary, big thing with loads of people everywhere, and the site where the new airbus parts are being assembled is close by, and when we went up the dike to take a look, we could get a full view of the area and the first A380 with its Singapore Airline tail. And the big cargo plane they use to transport the airbus parts just behind. I bet my Singapore-based plane-spotter cousin Jonathan would have loved the sight.

recent tuesday pics

2006-05-08T23:54:00.000+02:00

sari's place

2006-05-07T23:14:00.000+02:00

in sepia

sister days

2006-05-06T12:49:00.000+02:00

Spent a couple of days at Sari's 24sqm place in Munich and had a lot of fun doing sister stuff: swapping clothes and shoes :-), going cocktail-bar hopping and dancing, strolling through the center of Munich and having lunch in hip places, ordering pizza while watching silly videos, catching up on original version movies (Ice Age 2 :-), and poor Sarah had to sit with me through the Chinese version of Wuji - weakest Chen Kaige ever (the computer graphics were hilarious) but Chinese enough to make me feel at home), chatting about boys and family, trying out the Mongolian BBQ place she found (pretty much like in Taipei!!! They even had loads of doufu, algae and Chinese mushrooms), taking pics of each other, writing postcards to Reiner (sorry, not posted yet), and admiring Super Twin Nanny's English twins

munich

2006-05-06T11:40:00.000+02:00

spring pics

2006-04-30T23:36:00.000+02:00

movies

2006-04-16T18:32:00.000+02:00

I finally updated my movie list. Mainly with the 100 movies I brought back from Shanghai last July. And the stuff I've bought here since then (about 30 :-S). Got somewhat more than 850 now, with about 1/3 Asian movies, and quite a few rarities among them. If only I'd manage to watch them more often :-S

easter

2006-04-16T18:07:00.000+02:00

My godchild's mum who passed away more than two years ago painted this easter egg for me:

H all of a sudden decided to go see a friend. So Tuesday and I have the place all to ourselves. And it feels almost like being back in Taipei, totally relaxed, with moon cakes, red bean balls, 八寶茶, 張學友 in the cd player, updating my movie list, chatting with a German guy in Egypt who used to live in Taiwan and looking forward to a couple of videos as soon as I've cleaned up my "nobody's here to bother" mess (my aunt and grandparents will drop by tomorrow) and heated up the frozen pizza. If I'd known that he'd leave I'd have made sure to have tomorrow to myself, too.

district court

2006-04-07T18:19:00.000+02:00

I was sworn in by the vice president of the Halle district court today. I'm a publicly appointed and sworn translator for English, French and Chinese now. Not that this fact would actually create jobs :-S

blogging family

2006-04-03T10:03:00.000+02:00

My Singapore-based Swiss cousin Tamar was first and up to now has been the funniest and most diligent blogger in the family (she's the one from whom I got the Blogthings links and who sent me this as a belated April fools day joke). Her sister Noemi was next. But she's so busy getting straight A's, she doesn't have too much time to post ;-)
Then it was me. A little funnier and exciting back when I started while still in Taipei. In December, Noemi's and Tamar's brother Jonathan set up his blog, linking to a forum full of airplane pics - the perfect combination of his two most favorite things in the world (afaik), taking pics and looking at airplanes ;-)) and blogging some of what he does while studying in Montreal. And yesterday, my brother caved in and set up his blog. Wonder who'll be next... It's about time Sarah set up hers. Life in Munich should be interesting enough ;-) even if she spends her time babysitting twins and driving around in her 2CV ;-)

EDIT: and there it is: Sari's blog

mosanick

2006-03-14T11:37:00.000+01:00

H brought me a foto magazine with an article on some mosaic freeware (downloadable here)

The demo didn't work for me. But I downloaded the exe and have already been playing around a little with my own pics:

gym

2006-03-13T17:28:00.000+01:00

found this in my locker when I got to the gym :-)))

more snow

2006-03-13T10:54:00.000+01:00

At the Stadtgottesacker, a unique Italian-style cemetary, set up in Halle in the 16th century:

still winter

2006-03-07T10:44:00.000+01:00

It's early march and it's still winter :-(((( Everybody around here is just soooooo sick of the snow, the cold, the sludge...
view from the window this morning:

puzzled Tuesday:

Of course it's not quite as bad as in Munich where Sarah had to clear her beloved 2CV's roof to make sure it wouldn't collapse:

tokyo godfathers

2006-01-26T17:16:00.000+01:00

I dragged H to watch Tokyo Godfathers (as subtitled original version!!!!!!!! - though it still feels strange to read German subtitles, I keep waiting for Chinese characters :-S)

It was his first anime movie, and he was so impressed with the detailed drawings, he immediately told an old friend to go and watch it if it's playing in her town.

icy

2006-01-22T16:56:00.000+01:00

Germany is suffering under a cold spell coming over from Russia. While we're lucky enough here to have to put up with just 10 degrees minus (unlike the 30 to 40 they had in Russia), that's still cold enough to freeze over the lakes in the area (many of which are former open pits that are flooded to restore the natural ground water level). Creating odd sights like in this former allotment area.

Frosted window on the staircase:

Tuesday of course spends all day on or under the radiator:

full moon

2006-01-15T16:10:00.000+01:00

snow

2006-01-02T15:45:00.000+01:00

We actually had some snow in Halle recently, and I took a friend's five-year old sleighing down the church hill.
The city had blocked the roads around it to for cars, so the kids would't have to worry about crashing into cars.
And they didn't.

Made a trip to countryside and the mountains, too.

new year's eve

2006-01-02T10:27:00.000+01:00

A perfectly nice and quiet New Year's Eve: For the evening, H claimed a voucher I had given him ages ago and made me read him Pablo Neruda's Ode to the Cat :

The animals were imperfect,
long of tail,
sorrowful of head.
Little by little they got adjusted,
made landscape,
acquired spots, graces, flight.
The cat only,
the cat appeared complete
and proud:
born fully finished
he walked by himself and knew what he wanted.

Man wants to be fish and bird,
the serpent had wanted wings,
the dog is a displaced lion,
the engineer wants to be a poet,
the fly studies how to be a swallow,
the poet tries to imitate flies,
but the cat
wants only to be a cat
and every cat is cat
from whiskers to tail,
from presentiment to living rat,
from the night right up to his golden eyes.
Nothing has
his unity,
nothing lunar or floral
has such a texture:
he is one whole
like the sun or the topaz,
and the springing curve of his controur
firm and subtle as
the line of a ship's prow.
His yellow eyes
leave a single slot
through which the coins of night drop.

Oh little
emperor without a realm,
conquistador without a country,
smallest tiger in the salon,
and nuptial sultan of the heaven
of erotic housetops.
Love's wind you claim
in the wild weather
when you pass
and place
four feet, delicate,
on the ground,
sniffing,
distrusting the whole universe
as if it all were too dirty
for a cat's immaculate foot.
Oh proud Independent of the house,
haughty remnant of night
lazy, athletic
and alien,
profoundest cat,
secret police
of the dwellings
flag
of a vanished velvet,
surely there is no enigma
in your manner,
perhaps no mystery,
the whole world knows you and you belong
to the least mysterious of householders
perhaps all feel that, all who feel themselves owners,
masters, uncles
of cats, companions, colleagues,
students or friends
of the cat.

I don't--
I don't buy that,
I don't understand cats.
All these I know: life and its archipelago,
the sea and the unmeasurable city,
botany--
the pistil and its deviations,
the for and the minus of mathematics,
the world's volcanic funnels,
the crocodile's unreal rind,
the fireman's unknowable goodness,
yet I cannot decipher a cat.
My understanding slips on his indifference,
his eyes hold golden numbers.
Pablo Neruda
Version by John Hollander

2005-12-30T17:18:00.000+01:00

Your Brain's Pattern

Your mind is a firestorm - full of intensity and drama.
Your thoughts may seem scattered to you most of the time...
But they often seem strong and passionate to those around you.
You are a natural influencer. The thoughts you share are very powerful and persuading.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

2005-12-30T17:03:00.000+01:00

You Are 40% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird...
But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

christmas

2005-12-25T10:17:00.000+01:00

Christmas cat:
our very first Christmas tree:
she wasn't really that excited :-S

dresden

2005-12-05T14:49:00.000+01:00

My grandma was from Dresden, and Dresden is sort of important in my mum's family history. It's not far from Halle, about 1.5h drive, and I hadn't been there since some family thing in 1996. So we went yesterday. Thank goodness the raining that sort of spoiled my Semperoper and Zwinger pics stopped soon after and I managed to get some really nice photos of the recently rebuilt Frauenkirche. The last time I went there (not that I'd remember much) it must have been a pile of rubble, left behind after the bombing of Dresden in 1945. The rebuilding (completely financed by donations) of this church famous for its self-supported cuppola was only finished a couple of weeks ago. As the queues for going inside were too long, we skipped that and visited an exhibition of Dresden pictures just around the corner. Which made me remember my grandma's oilpainting of Dresden that used to hang in the living room. Though as a child, the name "Dresden" didn't mean much to me. And I can't remember having seen the painting in a loooong time. I sort of hoped that I'd recognize it if the original was in the exhibition. Didn't :-S
Of course, the center of Dresden is still a big construction site and there are many more buildings that need to be restored or made over in some way or other. But still, there's so much to see, it sort of reminded me of Paris with its grand buildings. Or some corners of Berlin. Too big, pompous and tourist-frequented for wanting to live there, of course.

volkswagen

2005-12-03T20:42:00.000+01:00

As seen in Halle, on saturday night. I didn't notice, H did. And we followed the guy until he stopped and I could take a pic. He looked a bit puzzled. I was, too. Too puzzled to ask why he is driving around Germany with a Mainland China car designation :-S

star shanghai

2005-11-28T16:12:00.000+01:00

The best way to spend time with Alex is to go to the office with her. Begged for some work even. And the view from the new big office is cool!

a night out on the bund

2005-11-27T14:32:00.000+01:00

Wiring for the trolley buses on Fuzhou Road:

Little Hong Kong:

The Bund:

Pudong:

qibao

2005-11-21T19:40:00.000+01:00

Close to Vanke, they're tearing down the old houses (like everywhere else in Shanghai nowadays) and setting up a tourist attraction: Qibao Old Town - pseudo historic houses with lots of shops and restaurants mainly catering to Chinese tourists. It was packed on a normal monday :-S

farewell

2005-11-17T19:25:00.000+01:00

My last day in Taipei :-( celebrated with the traditional farewell dinner at the Vietnamese place in Kungkuan. With the usual suspects: Hans and Ya-Ching and Reiner. And Michele. And she brought Fei-Fei, my oldest friend in Taipei and ex-colleague at STAR :-)

modigliani

2005-11-15T19:06:00.000+01:00

After a friend saved me from a day of channel-hopping by asking if I'd have a quick mid-morning coffee with him at Taipei Main Station, I went on to my favorite temple in Taipei, the Confucius Temple, and then walked over to the much busier Bao'an Temple right next to it. From there, it wasn't far to the Fine Arts Museum, so I took a quick detour via the Taipei Story House (the current exhibition was a tad boring, though - just a couple of jars with Chinese medicine remedies to smell) and then paid the entry fee for the "Pieces from the Modern Arts Museum of the City of Paris" exhibition. And walked in and stood in front of my first real Modigliani ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The girl with blue eyes - BEAUTIFUL!!!

botanical garden

2005-11-14T18:56:00.000+01:00

Every time I go there, it's a little bigger and nicer :-))

translation

2005-11-11T18:34:00.000+01:00

I went to Kungkuan to present myself at Pristine, a translation agency that might be in need of freelance translators. I walked in there, and the manager said: "I've seen you around." - Mh, yes, I used to live in this area. We had a nice chat, I promised to email them my resume, and then she asked if I had presented myself at the Chinese translation agency a couple of floors below. So I walked in there, straight into a Chinese-language cross fire: "What are your experiences? What is your background? Who did you work for before? Where are they located? What are your fields of expert?..." Felt a bit weird to stumble into this kind of crossfire after having been a manager of a translation agency myself :-S But I guess if they believed just anyone walking in there claiming to be a former manager of a translation agency and now being an expert freelance translator...

work out

2005-11-10T23:37:00.000+01:00

I did a 3-hour up-and-down hike on Yangmingshan. First I raced up the stairs to Qixing park that my mum, Sarah and I had to hike down in the dark last year in summer when we sort of picked up that Dutch guy on the way up and he turned out to be so slow, it was starting to get dark when we reached Mount Qixing, with 1120m the highest peak within the vicinity of Taipei. As my mum and that guy have really bad nightvision and the stairs were of course unlit, Sarah and I each had to lead one of the two. So we went down going "step, step, step, no step, no step, step, step, step". Needless to say, it took us ages and we were utterly exhausted by the time we reached the street. And it was so late that we had to walk for at least half an hour before we found a taxi. The next day, I got terribly sick from the exhaustion.
It was much nicer doing the stairs during the day. And there was almost nobody around which is probably why I managed to get so close to those beautiful big blue birds who kept leading the way for a while. I think they were Forumosan Blue Magpies. There was no point in going up to the park and taking pictures of the view since there was zero visibility, so I turned towards Lengshuikeng. By the time I got there, it was really foggy, and I have absolutely no idea what the area looks like. From the description, it looks like it might be worth it going up there another time when the weather is better. I just went on towards the Juansi waterfalls and found in them one of the nicest spots I've been to that close to Taipei downtown. As always when doing a hike in or around Taipei, I kept thinking that I should have done that much more often during my time here. But every time I thought that, the next weekend would come, and there would be so much every-day stuff to deal with. Or the feeling of just wanting to hang around at home would be so strong that it would usually take months before I'do the next hike and find some other absolutely great spot fairly easy to reach.

alleycat's
Reiner was working late and then called about dinner, so I suggested my beloved Alleycat's. I didn't expect to run into either Jenny or Alan, so seeing Jenny there was a niiice surprise. Hopefully, I'll manage to run into Alan on Saturday, when Roelof is having his birthday party at the Neihu Alleycat's.

page one

2005-11-08T23:46:00.000+01:00

Had lunch with Michele, just like I used to do most days after I stopped working. We walked into the bagel place next to the office, and the girl behind the counter smiled at us and remembered our usual order :-)) Had a looong lunch with lots of women's talk, and then I went towards Page One to look for the books on my shopping list, the new Mao biography by Jung Chang and the new Harry Potter. Didn't buy the books, though, because of course RichardM was right, they're not out in paperback yet, and the Mao biography was about 1200nt. I guess I'll have to try through Amazon then if I want them in English. Bought some other stuff but nothing fancy, just to have something to read while I'm here (I brought so much stuff for Reiner et al. that I hardly packed anything for myself). I did the Warner Village (nothing really interesting on)/ Mitsukoshi (how can they make profit from having 4 giant department stores one behind the other???) detour back to the MRT and went home to get ready for

the forumosa happy hour

:)))))) Of course, I had sort of timed my stay here so that I could go. And it was just as always, as if I hadn't been away :) A couple of new faces were there and some of the usual suspects, like Bri, one of the first GC members 3 years ago and who I went to Taiwanese class with. When was that again? Or Tarra who I knew even before I moved here. And Maoman brought the t-shirts :) my name is on the back, too ;-) even though I haven't really been posting much lately :) Reiner's name is, of course, much further up, he's number 6 or so. As always, Reiner kept counting my drinks and whenever I asked if I could have another one, nodded and ordered. Paid with a minor hangover the next morning :-S

kungkuan

2005-11-07T23:32:00.000+01:00

Walked into Hans' office this morning just like I used to do every morning before work. And what we talked about wasn't that different from back then ;-) except for the part about my reverse culture shock in Germany, like how uncomfortable I feel in German crowds whereas I can handle crowds here in Taiwan well enough. And, of course, the part about anybody in sight feeling qualified to comment on our family planning ("why haven't you stopped taking the pill yet?"), even people I've never met before. I know that it's about the same here - as soon as one is involved with a Taiwanese family. Never was for me, though, nobody ever bothered me with that while I was still here.
Got myself a phone card, too, Monika's prepaid card that she keeps using whenever she's here and that she left with a friend who works in the pseudo Goethe Institute, just around the corner from Reiner's place. And immediately started messaging. Being able to get answers was quite nice for a change :-) Afterwards, I roamed my old neighbourhood and did the whole Kungkuan tour that I did so often on the weekends: down all of Tingzhou from my place towards Keelong Road and back on Roosevelt, with a quick dash over to Hsinsheng, to check out the cd stores and Eslite. Wasn't in much of a shopping mood, though, even less than usual, I guess partly because I still have so much stuff in boxes in Germany that needs to be unpacked before I can focus on buying lots of new things. I've got to go back before I leave, though. I promised Tuesday to bring her some of her favorite cat food from our old pet shop and didn't feel like buying it today.
We, Reiner, Michele and I, concluded the day with diner in Carnegie's: Fish and Chips with the most delicate mushy peas ever and two large Hoegaardens ;-)))))

bitan

2005-11-06T20:10:00.000+01:00

Did something today I've been meaning to do for years: Hiking up the trail in Bitan. Poor Reiner ;-) We set out for Bitan after "breakfast" (around 2.30), crossed the bridge and basically kept on walking. And suddenly found ourselves in one of the weirdest places ever. Must have been some sort of amusement park or something. All that was left were some overgrown plastic cars, a concrete platform in the middle of nowhere, broken marble stairs and lots of rubble. Got to make a post on Forumosa, somebody there surely knows what this used to be, maybe Sandman?
Amazingly enough, it was Reiner's suggestion to keep on walking ;-) We did and had the chance to enjoy some of the Taipei wildlife: suddenly 5 or 6 squirrels were chasing each other and throwing nuts at us. We watched them for a while and then went on to the "Scenic flat-top" from where we had a nice view all over Hsintien and the south-east of Taipei including barely visible 101. As we were already on the top, we took the chance to go on even though the mention of a bus station evoked memories of that hike I did with Michele in summer and where we ended up walking for ages in the scorching sun until a nice elder Taiwanese couple took pity on us and brought us to the next bus stop. And were back at the Bitan bridge much faster than we'd expected. Tried to take some pictures of all my favorite food-stall food (fish balls, deep-fried vegetables, quail eggs) before it got too dark and then managed to cross out the next thing on my shopping list: I bought 6 bags of dried fish/shrimps/squid for Tuesday and myself to snack on at the "Local Taiwanese produce" exhibition in front of Hsintien MRT :))) (first thing I crossed out on my shopping list were the dangly cell phone thingies on the Jade Market yesterday).
On the way home, we bumped into a German guy I know, and he went: “Are you STILL here or again?”:-)))

h o m e

2005-11-05T19:38:00.000+01:00

Helle, sorry, maybe you don't want to read this :-S
I'm home! After the worst and longest bout of homesickness I've ever been through, after 3 months and 11 days, after the longest time I've ever been away from Taipei in the 4 years since I first came here in November 2001. I got all excited being among so many Taiwanese during check-in. I didn't sleep for a second on the plane (and instead caught up on movies I'd missed like The Island or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and checked out all the Chinese cds on demand). And I cried when the first peaks of Taiwan came up through the clouds and on the bus all down Zhongshan North Road.
I just had a perfectly plain normal Saturday with Reiner, with a sandwich breakfast, the usual Flower and Jade Market trip including checking-out the give-away pets (a tiny, still blue-eyed Tuesday and some beautiful Tugou puppies), a stop-over at Bade Road and Guanghua Market for roaming all the DVD stores (only bought like 12 – I’d have expected more new stuff after 3 months), a big bowl of beef noodles with some tofu + hundred-year eggs, a quick afternoon nap, an evening stroll around Shida including hijacking Reiner’s cell phone for textmessaging (and having him tell me that I'm not supposed to walk while text-messaging ;-)), peaks into shoe shops, an onion-egg pancake and my first pearl-milk tea in 3 months :) :). And two videos before going to bed.
And it’s nicely warm and humid, and I can still speak Chinese, and I feel completely at home and less than half as weird and out of place as I do in Germany.

weird :-s

2005-11-05T07:30:00.000+01:00

When I got to Germany in July, there was this poster at my transfer gate in Frankfurt:

When I arrived in Taipei this morning, China Air played a video during the landing. The first picture was this:

the market place of Halle (it was a feature on Haendel who was born in Halle).

wedding anniversary

2005-11-02T19:25:00.000+01:00

It's our second anniversary tomorrow, and since I'll spend the whole evening on the train, we opened the bottle of champagne tonight.
Happened to be "Germersheimer Zungenloeser", the champagne my Chinese professor had produced by some of his winegrower friends after he became dean of the FASK. The bottle has been waiting for the perfect occasion for two years :-)

4 more days

2005-11-01T13:47:00.000+01:00

:-)))))))

golden october

2005-10-25T19:08:00.000+02:00

As rainy and cold as it seemed to turn once in a while, we've actually had a real nice "Golden October" with lots of colorful leaves, nice trips every weekend, more onion tart and wine and turning on the heating only occasionally in the evenings.

taipei and shanghai

2005-10-21T16:26:00.000+02:00

I've just reserved my flight. I'm going to Taipei for a visit :-)) and to Shanghai :-)) I'll be gone for almost four weeks (quote H: "Of course you don't have to ask me how long you can stay."). I'll be staying with Reiner in Taipei and with Alex in Shanghai. I already have a shopping list for all those things I can't get here (Tuesday's favorite cat food, cds and movies, English books, cheap and beautiful christmas cards, Jimmy books, dried fish to snack on and share with Tuesday, maybe some Kimchi, dangly thingies from the jade market, Chinese dictionaries from Mainland...). And a To-Do list for a couple of things I wanted to do before I left and didn't manage in my leaving lethargy (visit Hans in his office opposite of Reiner's place, drag Reiner to as many movies as possible - all original versions :-)))))))))))), get a decent chop done for H and myself, meet the others for lunch or dinner or whatever - maybe I could get them to organize a ktv session???????...). And a list of restaurants I want to go to (Alleycat's, my favorite Vietnamese place in Kungkuan, Thai, Korean, the nightmarkets, maybe JB's...). And that's just Taipei, and there'll be more people to see, more favorite food to eat, more things to buy and more stuff to do in Shanghai :-))))))))))))))

I'm so excited, I woke up at 5 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep

the most beautiful car

2005-10-16T16:00:00.000+02:00

Saturday afternoon, H grabbed a couple of scissors, disappeared into the bedroom and shooed me away whenever I tried to ask what he was doing there. Half an hour later, he sent me to the loo, and when I came back, I found this on the table:

It's the goddess's birthday :-)) so our daily paper had a special feature. And H's work is almost as beautiful as the 40 die-cast models of her I have waiting to be picked up at my dad's place :-))))

addendum

2005-10-15T15:49:00.000+02:00

the perfect companion to Federweisser: Lamb's lettuce and Zwiebelkuchen (onion tart) - made by myself :-))

The Federweisser is all gone by now :-((

federweisser

2005-10-09T19:44:00.000+02:00

One thing I definitely missed about being in Asia is Federweisser, grape juice that has just started fermenting, a sweet, tangy delicacy that's only available at this time of year and is traditionally savoured together with onion tart. Living close to Saale-Unstrut, the northernmost winegrowing area of Germany, Federweisser isn't that hard to get here. So we combined a sunday trip around the Saale valley with a detour to a wine grower H knows and bought a couple of bottles after some tasting on the spot. (H: "Are 3 bottles enough?" I: "Let's make that 5"). The girl didn't understand us when we asked for "Neuen Wein", new wine, the expression used down south where we come from. And it took us a second to realize our mistake. But the wine was goooood :-)

autumn

2005-10-08T16:39:00.000+02:00

We're lucky. Except for some fog in the mornings, we're experiencing a beautiful "Golden October". It isn't too cold yet, too (thank goodness), and we've only had to heat up the old tiled oven a couple of times last week. The weather is great and Tuesday can't decide which sunny spot to prefer for her many naps. And I'm taking pics :-))), out of the windows at home:

of my autumn decoration:

one of these chestnuts is the one Sarah sent by mail from Munich - and paid a fortune for mailing it:

During a walk among the grapes on the weekend:

and a couple of weeks ago on a walk along the Saale:

auguste rodin

2005-10-02T16:39:00.000+02:00

I dragged H to the Rodin exhibition in Jena. He asked: "So, what did he paint?" and then took a look at the bronze statues and said he'd prefer big canvases with some paint on them. Of course, there are loads of big canvases with paint on them that I like. But I love Rodin's female bronzes. I had to keep my hands behind my back to stop myself from touching them. Iris, Messenger of God was just one of them. I liked his drawings of women's bodies, too. Can't post a sample here, though, some of them were outright pornographic.

skype

2005-10-01T10:56:00.000+02:00

My aunt called from Singapore. Through Skype. I had installed it in April after loads of people kept bugging me to download it. But so far, the only way I'd used it was for the STAR Greater China group chat (jeez, we should have started that years ago. It made things much easier to be able to ask a question to all Germans at STAR Beijing and STAR Shanghai at once and then get answers from different sides instead of having to bother Alex on the phone. And it would be great to use that between the European and overseas offices, too. Or with the software support).

Chatting was ok, basically the same as using MSN. But every time anyone suggested to use Skype for internet phone, I'd start panicking and find ways why it didn't seem to make sense to me: "the phone bill is paid by the company anyway."; "I have no microphone."; "I have no headset"... Today, my aunt asked if I had Skype while we were chatting on MSN and then immediately called me. I refused her first. But she called again. And I picked up, and it worked :-)))) Sound quality was even better than with phone calls once in a while. And it felt nice to be able to talk to her without having to worry about the phone bill (have I mentioned that I LOVE my DSL flatrate? ;-)).

10 minutes later, the phone rang again. My cousin from Singapore ;-) my aunt had told her about our successful talk and she wanted to try it out, too :-). Now I should get Reiner to install it (he had actually been the first one to tell me about it some time last year but lost interest when he didn't know anyone who used it).

made in taiwan

2005-09-30T10:01:00.000+02:00

Early this week, H's nephew called. He'd been on the website of my director friend Monika Treut who he had met at my place when H brought him to Taipei in April this year. And realized that her latest project Made in Taiwan, a documentary about a 17-year old girl, part of a German tv documentary series about teenage girls all over the world, was showing this week (thursday to be exact, with a rerun at 2pm on friday). I called my brothers and sister, H called his mum and our neighbours to make them watch it. And we watched it, too, of course :-)

It was fun, not only to see the girl and her parents whom I had met briefly at Monika's farewell party or to recognize street corners in Taipei. But also to watch a scene and remember Monika coming home in April and saying: "Today, we filmed a family discussion." Or to see that after H had told her about a giant picture of Taiwan that you could walk on in front of CKS memorial, she'd taken the girl to do just that. Or to remember her amused report of going on a schooltrip with the kids. Or to recognize the video tape the dad was watching ;-)

I think all in all, it gave quite a good introduction of main features of life in Taiwan, like the Mainland Chinese military threat, the strict school days of a 17-year old (including maths buxiban), normal family life, the girl going out with her friends, not to mention the pearl milk tea :-(((( or the karaoke session on the bus ;-) Mind you, Yi-Chun and her family are pretty extraodinary because even though they're just a normal family, neither of them had any problems living with a camera following them around for two weeks.

shipping

2005-09-27T10:08:00.000+02:00

"Tuesday, Tuesday, look, our stuff is here!!!" :-))))

(this isn't all of it, of course)

Can't unpack, though, the two construction site rooms aren't done yet. So I just openened every box, grabbed my cds, my favorite books and a couple of winter sweaters and put the rest up in the attic for when we have more space and furniture.

la gomera

2005-09-26T21:33:00.000+02:00

us
Puzzled question of our favorite Ghanaean waitress Kalay (who grew up in Hamburg, speaks accent-free German and recognized H and me from our Gomera trip two years ago): "What kind of group are you guys????" My answer: "Well, the 3 guys graduated from school together, and this one is my dad and this one here happens to be my husband." I tend to forget that we're a weird family because next thing, she assumed that my (step-) dad's gf was my mum. Which sort of annoyed my dad's gf because she's not quite old enough to be the mother of a 30yo. But it's true, the 2 Peters and H have been friends for more than 30 years. I got to know them when one of them became my stepdad when I was 4. And married one of them 2 years ago. The 3rd one and his wife were our witnesses. It was the 1st trip of the 6 of us together.

Of course, all 6 of us have our special traits and characters. My dad Peter was the busybody who fixed everything within reach, couldn't spend more than 1 day in a row just reading and relaxing, always raced ahead and carried around his big bagpack (I wouldn't be suprised to find a toolbox somewhere in there), was somewhat suspicious of food he doesn't know (mussels? octopus? eek!) and who woulnd't mind alternating between pizza and spaghetti bolognese fo dinner regardless of the fact that these are Italian favorites. His gf Andrea, the newest addition to the whole group, seems to be the same kind of busybody, climbing around the hills to collect all cactus figs and passion fruit within reach, racing Peter up and down the mountains in search of the most interesting trail, clearing the rubble off the stairs and, unlike my dad, being very open towards everything there was to see, experience and try.

The 2nd Peter served as our interpreter as he was the only one of us who really speaks Spanish (I sort of understand a lot but kept involuntarily answering in Chinese and realized once more that I prefer to spend my holidays in places where I speak the language. Like France or China.). As usual, he exulted self-confidence for two and always knew where to go, what to do and what to think. His wife Doris was the thoughtful soul of the group, keeping everything in order, making sure everybody had enough to eat and brushed their teeth, begged Peter to play with her and was as always fun to be with but always careful not to hurt anyone. The two of them are one of the most harmonious couples I've met.

And then, there was H and myself. H kept cracking his usual bad jokes that everybody is sooo used to and as always spent a lot of time taking a nap and missing his daily newspaper and home. And I, being the baby in the group, usually went to bed first, didn't say much, talked to every flower and every cat I came across, missed Tuesday, took literally 100s of pics, wrote about 20 postcards and managed for the first time in my life to get a real tan without going through the lobster stage first.

the house
The house belongs to H's boss and is situated in the valley of Hermigua, the greenest valley in the north of La Gomera. It's an old local house (renovated and with all necessary amenities like hot water, washing machine, oven and fridge, of course). We had loads of space with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two big living rooms, a giant garden and two sea-view terraces for reading, breakfast, ocasional dinner and long evenings with lots of beer and wine.

la gomera
With 376 square km, La Gomera is the 2nd smallest island among the Canary Islands in the Atlantic off the African coast.
Unlike for example neighbouring Tenerife, La Gomera isn't a classical beach island as there aren't many beaches, these are usually unattractively black and/or covered in pebbles, and the currents are too strong for real swimming. Hiking is a much more interesting option because of the many different landscapes like canyons where nothing grows but agaves, date palms and cactusses; green valleys like Hermigua with terraces covered in banana plants (long an important source of income for La Gomera) and other fruit crops: grape, chestnuts, papayas, figs, peaches...; romantic fishing villages, tiny mountain villages in the middle of nowhere; steep barren coastlines and the laurisilva forest, a World Heritage site covering the whole center of the island.
La Gomera has long been a favorite with German dropouts, so there is a well-established (and pretty weird) German community with vegetarian health-food shops and meditation centers (we didn't exactly look for those).

national park
The central peaks of the island are covered in laurisilva, a unique ecological system dating back to the tertiary era. The 4000 ha of laurisilva on la Gomera are one of the largest still existing specks of their kind and were declared as World Heritage site by the UNESCO in 1981. The main water source for the often endemic plants are less the scarce brooks but rather the humidity taken from clouds that are driven up the mountains by the trade winds and get cought in the peaks (the highest of which is the Alto de Garajonay with close to 1500m). Thus, clouds tend to hang low above the peaks (while the sun is scorching in the valleys). The laurisilva is also called "foggy forest", and the trees and landscapes are coverd in moss and lichen. Great for taking pics :-)

hiking
We did two major hikes and one somewhat failed one (the description in the guide didn't match the real layout of the village) on the last day.
The first one went from the peak of Contadero (1350m) straight down into "our" valley of Hermigua, through laurisilva, macchia, deserted mountain villages, a steep descent along a waterfall and through banana fields before reaching the town where we called my dad (who as always had been running ahead with his gf while we took our time enjoying the landscape, talking to cats, goats and donkeys and (it's me, after all) keeping everybody waiting by taking 100s of pics) to pick us up and save us the last 40 minute descent down to our house (he couldn't spare us the 57 steps up the stairs from the road to our house, though).

The second one was shorter and went up from a former volcanic crater (you wouldn't guess) on 1260m to the highest peak of La Gomera, the Alto de Garajonay (1486m) from where we had a 360 degree view over the island and would have been able to see all the other Canarian islands - if visibility had allowed to see more than the somewhat ubiquitous Tenerife. The climb was a bit boring, along a dusty road for forest maintenance. But we varied the descent and came through laurisilva, alternating with spacious chestnut forests and sweet-smelling macchia before ending up in the restaurant at the crater for a couple of beers and an afternoon snack.

food
I could live there for the food alone (and the sun and the heat and the flowers...). Each meal was a feast of fruit, different cheeses (mainly produced from goat's milk), loads of fresh fish and seafood, goat or rabbit meat, the typical Spanish tapas (little snacks like tuna salad, meat balls, marinated cold sardines...), always accompanied by fresh white bread, cooked potatoes with salt crust and red or green mojo, little pots of sauce made from herbs, chili and olive oil. And for dessert a pudding made from milk with palm honey or local fruit.
YUMMIE!!!!
The best food we had were the tapas at a bar called "Cuba libre" on the central plaza of San Sebastian, the African-influenced dishes in El Piloto (pumpkin with cashews and peanut butter, vegetables with ginger and coconut, shrimps with red peppers boiling in olive oil, mussels with tomatoes) where we had dinner a LOT and, surprisingly, the really tasty meat and snacks we tried on the camp site in El Cedro during our day hike.

the sea
Beach-wise, we were lucky in Hermigua, with an immaculate beach just down the road and a natural pool as well as a sea-water pool around the corner at the former banana port. And La Caleta, supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches of La Gomera just over the hill. Not to mention that they had a snack bar with terrific almogrote, cold beer and fresh fish and the most charming beach snack bar cat ever. It's actually possible to walk there. But I passed the 40 minute steep climb and descent in plain sun. All other beaches we came across weren't half as nice. But I took some great pictures in San Sebastian.

animals
Apart from the birds which I can't really tell apart - unless it's those menacing big things that loudly crying almost attacked us one night, reminding us of Hitchcock, the most prominent animals on the island are ugly little dogs, goats literally IN the rocks, the ubiquitous cats that often enough were surprisingly friendly, bats at night, geckos in the houses (two years ago, H had never had that before and insisted that we locked the bathroom gecko out at night by closing the bathroom door). And thousands of lizards hustling between the leaves, taking a sunbath on our terrace and fighting for breakfast crumbs.

elections
Main topic during our stay and with all other Germans we came across (or rather the minority among them that we felt like talking to): the early parliament elections in Germany. All of us had duly voted before leaving for La Gomera. Though, to be honest, I think these elections are just a joke because there won't be any positive change in Germany, no matter what kind of government we'll get. But anyway. Like 3 years ago, during the last parliament election sunday that H and my dad spent in Taipei, surfing the internet all night to catch the latest polls and emptying a bottle of liquor they had originally brought for ME from Germany, H got all nervous in the early afternoon. Andrea went to a German apartment owner in Hermigua and asked if there was any chance of watching German tv somewhere close. I was looking forward to sending them all off and enjoying some quiet time with myself and my laptop because imho, there isn't anything more boring than watching the polls for hours and hours. I'd be content to learn the final result and the outcome when they've decided what to do with their meagre percentage numbers that force them to form a coalition (traffic light - red, yellow, green? or Jamaica - black, yellow, green?).
Alas - no luck. No pub with German election news anywhere close. So H spent an hour tuning the old radio to find Deutsche Welle, and they all gathered around the crackling radio, got all excited about minimal percentage differences and laughed about stupid politician quotes. While I retired to our bedroom with a thick book, was in a foul mood during dinner (what a stupid waste of time) and went to bed early.
The whole thing was the trigger for H's "I miss my daily newspaper" mode, so after proudly telling all Germans in reach what the results were, each couple had to go to San Sebastian on consecutive days to buy a German newspaper. Until we finally got the one with the detailed election results. He even put up with the somewhat reactionary FAZ for that. But he managed to score with the others when he told them his mum's quote: "If the greens go together with the blacks, it's the last time I've voted for them." What??? How did you manage to make your mum vote green?

packing

2005-09-09T18:58:00.000+02:00

We're driving to Berlin tonight to take a plane to Teneriffa tomorrow morning at five and then the ferry to La Gomera. 2 weeks, 6 people (H and I, my stepdad + gf, another old friend of H + wife), we have a house to ourselves (belongs to H's boss). I was fighting with myself whether or not to take the laptop (me without laptop? 2 weeks????), but then H was like, "oh, I could use it to do my tax declaration" (he always seems to be doing some tax declaration). And I got another translation job today that I have to deliver next week. No internet will be hard enough (but afaik even Gomera has internet cafes). So the laptop will come.
I'm almost packed :-) (H isn't, and he hates packing):

tuesday

2005-09-09T17:49:00.000+02:00

sorry, more Tuesday pics (even more on Flickr)

2005-09-09T17:47:00.000+02:00

killed by my little tiger

2005-09-09T17:46:00.002+02:00

shadowplay I

2005-09-09T17:46:00.001+02:00

shadowplay II

2005-09-09T17:46:00.000+02:00

fast asleep

2005-09-09T17:45:00.001+02:00

looking out the window

2005-09-09T17:45:00.000+02:00

we didn't put her there, she came by herself to be in the family picture

2005-09-09T17:44:00.001+02:00

careful

2005-09-09T17:44:00.000+02:00

what is that?

2005-09-09T17:43:00.000+02:00

got you

grandparents

2005-09-08T16:46:00.000+02:00

Monday night, the phone rang, and I had an over-excited aunt telling me that she'd only just talked to my brother and that my grandparents were at her place, and if they could come see us Thursday, the day before we're going on vacation. Of course, they could :-)))
So they turned up: Birgit, my (real) dad's sister who lives in Berlin, about 1.5 hours from Halle, and my grandparents, my (real) dad's parents who live in an area of Germany that I almost never get to. I hadn't seen either in two years, and they'd never met H before. We took a looooong walk to the Saale, had some cake at home (the same I baked for H's sister weeks ago), played with Tuesday (she was soooo funny, and they loved her :-))) and then had dinner at my favorite Czech place. It was soooo great to see them. And of course, now with my being closer to Berlin, it might get much easier to see them more often because Oma and Opa spend a lot of time in Berlin :-) And Birgit doesn't mind the drive, so they can even see Tuesday again.

bank account

2005-09-07T16:38:00.000+02:00

I tried to open a simple bank account today. Wasn't that easy :-S
In the first bank I walked into, they went: "Do you have an appointment? All consultants are busy right now, you need an appointment. How about friday morning?" - no, thanks, I'll try a different bank.

Walked into the second bank, and the girl behind the counter paled when I mentioned opening a bank account. "Sorry, I'll have to ask somebody. I'm only a trainee". She came back with a phone number: "Sorry, all our consultants are busy right now. Please call this number and make an appointment." Thanks, I didn't want to open an account at your bank, anyway.

The third bank was the main office of the first one. "Please sit down for a couple of minutes, and we'll call your name." I had only just opened my magazine when a woman walked up to me and said: "Sorry, how do you actually pronounce your name? I was afraid of pronouncing it wrong." She was great. I had my account in no time, and in the end, she asked: "You said freelance? What kind of freelance work do you do? Are you an artist?" cool, never had anyone think that of me before :-)))))))))))))