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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...
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Recent entries with comments
- Indications of Autumn - (1)
- Temple roofs - (2)
- My first experiences cycling in Paris - (2)
- A shrine on Limpsfield Road - (4)
- Zebra Crossing Part Two - (1)
- Courchevel - (2)
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- Old school rice packaging - (1)
- Were you one of these car drivers in Oxted who nearly killed me yesterday? - (4)
- This Charming Man - (2)
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France
This is the picture of the garden outside my room in chez Wolff. The garden is very peaceful and in the summer we sometimes eat outside under the tree in the evening. The grass is a bit dry after the long hot summer.
At the moment it is 2 C outside, and it should drop to below zero overnight. Finally summer is over. Yesterday and today we had showers of rain.
Last night I backed up all my webpages and then upgraded my blog software. It was a bit more time-consuming than I thought it would be, and it’s just as well I made the backup because in my tiredness I made a mistake and the simplest way to fix it was to restore. You shouldn’t notice any differences after the backup, but it will allow me to introduce more things in the future.
According to lil blue meanie:
bluemeanie is sick today. done
german homework. my day was good.
i want to go to japan.
In fact she has been nagging me about going to Japan since our trip to Cape Town in August. Last year I nagged them about going to Japan (but they weren’t keen and we ended up in Cuba instead). I am pleased that she wants to go now, as I have been wanting to go to Japan for about the last 21 years.
gogo has also been in touch, and said on Sunday night:
I have been reading all your news and looking at the photo’s - such joy to me! I particularly enjoyed your comments about last weekend in Oxted and the photo of MasterPark. holly certainly makes her views known and I agree that she needs to be able to join in conversations!
I won’t lose much sleep worrying about that.
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This is a picture of my colleagues peter and sophie taken at le clou restaurant in Strasbourg earlier this year.
Today I have been thinking about peter quite a bit. He is now actually an ex-colleague, since he gave up the world of consulting at the end of last month, having decided to do something useful with his life. First step: join a culte.
I learned lots of interesting things from peter during our 27-month working relationship, including Erich Fromme, the film Götterdammerung, fuel/motor alternatives such as Biodiesel and Elsbett. We discussed why and how Father Christmas got his red robes in 1931. peter was the one who reassured me that the magnetic poles were going to flip over, not earth itself, which was naturally quite a relief. He “introduced” me to his famous compatriot Daniela. peter told us all who paid for the first Gulf War. He introduced me to the delights of swimming in lakes in this region, to some local organic food shops and markets and to Slovio (the 2nd or 3rd most widely understood language in the world!). His partner eva introduced me to eurithmy and showed me how to write with my left and right feet! I miss our many discussions on all the above, and more: peter and eva are now studying together at Dornuch in Switzerland, about 2 hours drive away from here (Haguenau).
Talking about cults, here’s a picture peter sent me some time ago of his friends celebrating St Jean’s fire back home (in Slovakia).
Au revoir!
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Bon anniversaire! This week my house-mate anna-sofia celebrated her 22nd birthday. Here she is (white cap) with her friend erieka, also from Sweden, crossing the Rhine into Germany [taken in July 2003].
Last night I travelled back from France to the UK. Therefore I spent most of the evening just across the border, at Baden-Baden airport, waiting for the other passengers (and airplane) to arrive, and listening to announcements like
Will all passengers for flight FR 9775 make
their way through passport control.
The airport is so small it would be a disaster if everyone left it to the last minute. There doesn�t seem to be much chance of that though � the enthusiasm and punctuality of the German passengers seems to match the anality of the announcers. The other aspect of airports is of course listening to the conversations of your fellow travellers. stuart brought along his laptop to play pinball and solitaire. In between we laugh and talk a bit. The guy on the right says loudly into his phone:
I am actually at a place called Baden-Baden.
stuart laughs and looks at me. His response:
It is a bit like that. The other person says �Where�s that?� or you have to say �Nah, it�s not sarf ovva river�.
As stuart gave me a lift to Oxted from Stanstead Airport (1 hour drive), and he was travelling light (hand luggage only) I didn�t bring a suitcase. This saved us half an hour getting through Stanstead. So I packed some dirty laundry into a small over-shoulder suitcase with my laptop. Apparently the limit for hand luggage is 7 kgs. Mine weighed 10,5 kgs but they let me through. It can be a problem with these cheap (20 Euro) flights � they get pretty sticky with the rules and regulations. Coming back they may not be so lenient, because they are pretty �jobsworth� in Stanstead.
So today is the start of the RWC. Can�t say that I�m particularly excited though. petite maman is of course, and she sent me a link to a TV schedule giving times and channels for a number of countries.
I was at her house-warming last weekend and must have said something because I had seen a print-out of the schedule on her TV. In the office today ashley, who is from Melbourne, was surprised when I mentioned the RWC. He didn�t know it was on, and isn�t interested in rugby at all. Apparently they aren�t very big on the game down there. I laugh Australia wins. His disinterest in this won�t go down very well in our international (though largely French) office.
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So, where am I now? Above is a picture I took at (nearby) Chateau Fleckenstein.
I am posting from Haguenau, which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described as:
“.... A quiet, quaint and ancient town
Among the green Alsatian hills,
A place of valleys, streams and mills,
Where Barbarossa’s castle, brown
With rust of centuries still looks down
On the broad, drowsy land below .... “
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