Unexpected presents

Daniel visited on Friday evening for help with English. After settling down he pulled two things out of his rucksack. The first was a present from Moldova. It was a traditional wooden mug.

I stared as he explained that nearly every family there had one somewhere in the house. He said you could drink anything out of it. I queried "anything?" He smiled and said not only water or beer, but fruit juice, and even vodka and whiskey! Here you can see him trying it out! He also gave me some McV biscuits. He saw them in a promotion at a local supermarket. Thanks Daniel.

He sometimes amazes me how he switches languages without any problem. He has to give a presentation in German about the first partition of Poland. He looked into my books about Polish history, then into Wiki to get a shorter version in Russian, Moldavian and then Romanian before flipping  back into English and German.

Thursday evening found me at a public meeting hosted by the SPD in a church hall. The topic was the danger to the local borough from the rise of the right-wing parties. Outside the NPD = Nazi Party and its supporters were demonstrating against our meeting, and against all non-Germans in general. The police cordoned them off and so our meeting took place as planned. Interesting discussion and the hall was full.

Pleased to report that my health is getting better and I am now sleeping much longer. I am still taking a range of medicine and have another doc appointment on Wednesday morning. I expect to get more medicine. I hope nothing else!

January Health

This month has not been a good one for me. I started the month with what later turned out to be acute bronchitis. I am still taking tablets for this. The last six are at the bottom of the photo. They are against 'bacterial infection'. Last week, I finished my tablets which attacked slime in the lungs. Yuk!

Last week I noticed some veins on my right leg calf were swelling and painful. I also noticed a 'fungal infection' between toes 3 and 4 on my right foot. They became really painful on Monday so I went to my Docs on Tuesday.

He was not happy! I got a box of syringes full of medicine for my vein problem. I have to inject one into my stomach each midday. In addition, I got a tube of creme to attack the 'fungus' growing on my right foot/toes. I have to smear it on twice a day. Yuk, again!

If you remember, I was in hospital for a week in January 2015 with heart/vein problems. I wondered if I would have to go to hospital again but Herr Dok said,"Later, if this treatment does not work!" Don't ask me where I got the fungus attack from. I'm still trying to work that out. Wishing you all a healthy end to January :-)

More snow and hair

In a recent post I told my Silsdeners that winter had arrived in Berlin and showed a photo of the garden covered in snow. Since then we have had temperatures below freezing most days and even more snow. You can see this clearly from the photo of my picnic/grilling area. Seems difficult to image it in the sun!

I also recently posted a story about beards and included the only digital image I have of me with a beard. Remember that? I now have two. A certain nephew by the name of J2 sent an E-mail with a number of images. He admitted he got them some time ago from some Silsdeners. I had completely forgotten about them.


Here is one of me with a full beard! Crikey! I can't believe I had such a face full of hair. I stared in disbelief when I opened it. It was clearly taken in Cambridge sometime in the first half of the 1980s. I worked this out from my appearance and that either I had just returned from a visit to India, or was about to leave for Delhi. Not sure which. Any of you UKers have a clearer idea?

This week I taught my Oldies again, took pills and wondering why my bronchitis was taking so long to disappear. I have a Drs appointment early tomorrow to give blood to be sent to a laboratory. I should be wiser about what is in it, apart from red wine from Spain, by the middle of next week.

I went to my Oldie Camera Club yesterday afternoon and tried again to understand their non-Berlin dialects as they quickly argued about the content of their winter shots. On Tuesday afternoon I relaxed with my SPD Oldies for afternoon tea/coffee and cakes. Tomorrow I am going to my Photoshop Gang and then I have a lazy weekend. Nothing to do but keep warm and read more books. Talk to you again next week.

Mug Ganging

I met my Muggelsee Gang yesterday evening. We should have met in a restaurant in Spandau, but part of our Gang who live there were on hols over Christmas so could not organise it. I was asked to step in and that I did.

I booked a table at a popular German restaurant on the main road not far from where I live. It proved to be popular and all were happy with my choice :-)
We had lots to catch up on and we did that over a few glasses as we waited for the food to be cooked.

We talked about the important things that had happened in 2015. One couple had become grandparents for the first time and I shared my adventures at two weddings. My blog readers will know which ones I am talking about!  I showed them some photos and that started more talk about memorable weddings they had been to.

We ended by talking about our next meeting. This will be on 1 May for a bicycle tour and that will be somewhere around Bernau to the north-west of Berlin. Looking forward to that!

Lost Days

Since Monday life has been a blur of tablets, pills, inhalers and more pills while not sleeping and not sure what time of day it was. I went to my Docs on Monday. He diagnosed a not very nice strain of bronchitis.
Where did that come from? I had my usual ant-flu jab at the start of November.

We wondered if it had anything to do with the time of year for it is exactly now when my allergies start. He decided to send my blood sample for testing and this grand event will take place on Friday next week. The delay is for my body to get rid of the bronchitis cells and all the medicine I am taking.

Then started my life of 'blur'. My regular sleep pattern stopped last Friday, so by Monday I was used to sitting in the kitchen sipping endless cups of green tea when I should have been in the land of nod. Last Monday and Tuesday nights I only managed to sleep one hour.

I then noticed a change in eating. I lost my appetite and something worse happened. It happened when I tried to eat a pizza with a glass of red wine. I gave up after two mouthfuls of the pizza and one 'schluck' of red wine. I threw both away! Unheard of since I went to Uni and discovered the red liquid with the help of ladies T and S :-))

I managed to sleep last night so think I am slowly 'on the mend'. I hope to be fit for Saturday night when I meet my Mugglesee Gang in a local restaurant for a New Year meal, and catching up on news and events.

I leave you with a photo I recently received. It made me wonder what there is about the 'Brit' mentality that makes them design and built such beach huts. Does this come under the heading 'This is what makes us British'?  I wonder if you will find them anywhere else on the planet?

Jüterbog

I went to Jüterbog on Thursday, as planned, and caught a cold. One was nice and the other is not! Last November I got an anti-flu injection from my Dr. I've had such an injection for a number of years and gone through winters without a cough or sniffle.

Not now. I wonder what went wrong. The day before, I began to 'sniffle' (interesting word) but didn't think it was the onset of a winter cold. As I settled into my seat en-route to Jüterbog I noted lots more 'sniffling' (must find the origin of this word - it sounds Germanic). As the day progressed came heavy coughing and nose blowing.

That did not put me off enjoying seeing friends in Jüterbog, catching up on news and enjoying their superb food. They have a large garden and like producing as much as possible to put on the table. Home grown vegetables, potatoes and fruit taste much better than anything you can buy in a shop, but then I think you must know that. 

We didn't meet in 2015, in spite of me talking about coming over. On the other hand, a couple of meetings were cancelled as one of them had to go to hospital for checks. That is the price of being 70+. We agreed to meet in summer as I set off on the return journey.

I got to Jüterbog station with ten minutes to spare and decided to take a couple of shots for my Kamera-Klub. Our current topic is Winter Scenes. I already have four, but decided a shot of the platform in winter would be a welcome addition. As contrast to winter I have decided to share a totally different shot with you.

It is a postcard from Max. He went on a winter holiday there with his lady-friend. I was very pleased to get this card showing different views of a place I have not been to, although I think one of my Silsdeners has. Correct Barbara? I like the contrast to my dark winter platform shot.

Tomorrow I have been invited to a SPD Brunch for members of my local party. The host is called Andreas and he owns a restaurant/bar opposite the S-B Station. He is a member and always throws such a party to welcome SPD members to another year of party activity.

Later I am meeting Johanna, Jutta and others for another Bach concert in the local church. Also looking forward to that. I hope I don't have to 'sniffle' and cough through both events! Where are my tissues, cough, cough?

Incarnation of ambiguity

I'm fine and keeping warm. It's only -8°C outside and still snowing. You can see this in the photos of my garden and building site. That's about all I have to say about me and life in Berlin.

I could close now, but I want to share something with you. What do the words in the title, above, mean to you? The story begins last Sunday at noon.  Here is text copied from the BBC Radio 3 'blurb'.

"For New Year New Music, Michael Berkeley's guest is the Irish composer Gerald Barry

His latest opera transforms The Importance of Being Earnest - with Lady Bracknell sung by a bass in a business suit, and Gwendolyn and Cecily throwing dinner plates at each other

At the age of 14, he won a medal for composition - by taking a Mozart piano sonata and cutting it up, sticking it together again in random order. Barry went on to study with Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel. He struggled to make a living as a church organist in Cologne: he was fired, first for being Catholic, then for being late for 7.30am Mass.

Gerald Barry's marvellously idiosyncratic choices include Mozart, Alfred Deller, Clara Butt, William Byrd, a hymn setting by Stainer, and Oscar Wilde's letter from Reading Gaol, De Profundis, set by the contemporary composer Rzewski. He ends with a hilarious recording of the Red Army Choir singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary'."

When commenting about De Profundis set by Rzewski, Barry said it was like "the incarnation of ambiguity'. On hearing that I shouted at my radio, 'WHAT?' Oh dear, the drivel that passes these days for the English language :-((( And not only the incorrect overuse of 'like' and ' absolutely'. 

Let us take a minute to look at the problem. Check your dictionary and you will find the following.

Incarnation: A person who stands for some abstract idea/a person who embodies a God or diety in the flesh. Ambiguity: A word or sentence that is not clear about the intention or meaning. 

Now try to put them together. As Germans would say.'Viel Spaß dabei'. I'm off to Jüterbog tomorrow to enjoy a few hours in a small town south west of Berlin. More about that later. Perhaps I can incarnate myself and save some money on the train fare!!

Winter has arrived

I think Winter has finally arrived here. It has been  -10°C in my garden all day. Some even say it will get colder and there will be snow. Pity Berlin doesn't have any snow slopes, for then I would be cheering the arrival of snow, and getting my ski clothes out of the cellar.

I've even had to wipe the bottom of my windows three times (Thrice in old English and in India!).  For those familiar with cold winters it means it is so cold outside that the moisture in the air in the room(s) turns into water and collects at the bottom of the cold window(s). Quick, put the heating on!

Silsden and the north of England seem to be drying out after the latest rain and floods. I wonder if the Brits will start to ask why they have been under water so often in the north and north-west. Perhaps some will connect it to global warming and why that is. Apparently it all begins with changes in the Pacific. What causes those changes?

My Ozzers don't have the problem of mopping up the condensation from the windows. Just look at this photo. It was taken in a bay in Sydney, which as you know is in the south-east of Australia. This is on Christmas Day. Not bad.

I can't work out what kind of bird is 'hogging' the front of the photo. It's not a goose or duck. It has a big chin and long spindly legs. Is it a Pelican? When I look at it I wonder what it could be saying. Perhaps, 'Eya mate, gotta fish fu' mi?   For the non-Ozzers, keep warm and dry.

January 2016 Things

Yes, I had a very pleasant afternoon/evening with my guests yesterday. The lady with the little dog didn't arrive. She called to say that 'Woofie' was ill. She thought he had eaten too much Christmas food. Na ja, who gave Woofie the food?

Anyway, after my guests left I washed up then settled into bed with my book as the first of the early fireworks went off. In sleep I moved from 2015 to 2016 and even woke up late this morning. I've been lazy again by dozing on the sofa between reading another book.

Next week looks to be a quiet one, but the week after shows a return to routine appointments, including teaching my nice Oldies again. Looking forward to seeing them and hearing about what they did during the holidays. I'm already planning trips and travel for 2016 but more of that later.

I shall end this entry into a new year with a glance back to the last one via a photograph. Here it is. This is my PHOTO OF THE YEAR 2015. Isn't it great. I know there have been many nice and interesting photos on my blog but this has to take top place :-))

Who has a birthday in January 2016? 

 Dr. Peter L. in Canterbury hits 56 on the 5th. Hannelore will celebrate her 73rd with Peter in Claviers near Nice on the 13th. I've been invited to have a holiday with them there in summer. Nice in Nice! Harald P. celebrates his 52nd with family in Berlin on the 21st and in Potsdam on the 24th, Prof.Dr. Graf Peter von Longlegs will celebrate his 32nd. I think he is the youngest of Jan's Abi Gang. To end this month of birthdays we move to New Zealand for Paul  will celebrate his 31st with wife and two little sons on the 27th. 

Happy Birthday to all and each no matter how old or where you are :-))