While my beloved one was in Toulouse, I hung up three baskets with bulbs and hibernated plants on our roof terrace. Our neighbours across the courtyard were out in the sun as well, hooray, the open air season will start soon.

Roses, clematis, wine, the Chinese lantern and the dipladenia are outside already as well, the bulbs that started to grow in autumn turned out to be irises and are already blooming quite beautifully. If I were able to photograph I would add an image as well. Soon Karsten will finish the gas heater on the terrace and the the only thing blocking the first hours on the roof is the ruin of a table, as we did not manage to get a new one.

By the way, here is a good tip against the greenfly: let 5 bags of peppermint tea brew in a pint of water and then sprinkle the roses with it… my greenflies fled immediately. I hope they stay where they are now, if not the procedure will be repeated in 3 days. This was a recommendation from the flower shop. And, oh yes, one now may start to apply fertiliser to the roses.

I do not even know when I got the old record player, as I only got stuff not wanted by my sisters any longer. With the player I got two records… Emmerich Kalman’s “The gypsy princess/Countess Maritza and Mozart’ “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”. I still know the lyrics and melodies of both operettas and I accompanied the kleine Nachtmusik on the recorder. Both did not go well with my friends who were reading teenager magazines and put up huge star posters into their rooms. Somehow the record thing then suddenly stopped, either the player was broken or the radio or both, not repairable at least taken the abilities of my father. And then I only had music equipment again when I married in 1970… Maybe that is where my phobia towards music equipment and technical devices comes from. What little Hanna did not learn…

There are lots of discussions about campaigns supporting national identities. The two spots following will interest Hanna: this and another little video. Well, it is just PR for a Canadian beer, indirectly only for the country.
via Lanu

Since the opening of the new central station in Berlin I go there on most Monday mornings from Ostkreuz during rush hour to catch the ICE to Hamburg. Normally the trains are frequented well. What I notice however, at the station Friedrichstrasse, the former border crossing between East and West Berlin, the train is emptied significantly.

Ok., is this only because this station is a crossing and passengers just change?  But then a lot of people should also enter the train. Or is it just a sign for East Berliners not visiting the West? Or that they do not have jobs in the West? I cannot judge how it is with the West-East-Berlin time of the day. Is there any body to contribute similar or opposite experiences?

When I was about sixteen years old, there was the high time of what was called “beat music” at the time. As money was a scarce resource in our family, my sister owned a record player and I a tape recorder (a real one with a reel),accordingly I did not own any records. On Sundays the tape recorder was started to record the local charts, and of course they were carefully written down.

This was the time when members of the other gender were really interesting,but contacts had to be planned carefully, at a boy’s school you did not get into contact with girls that easily. Very popular therefore were parties with girls from a neighbouring girl’s school. Some of my classmates already went to the more and more evolving discotheques, but those were too wicked for my parents, they would never had allowed my going there.

There was an alternative. Parishes organised discos for adolescents, you were under control and parents thought that there happened no drug stories or similar. Therefore I prepared myself one Saturday, first under the drying hood with hair rolled onto cotton wool, then the shirt in a colour of poisonous green with a lilac-coloured tie (shortly after that I would not have touched a tie with pincers, a jackett with slanting pockets and red terry cloth socks, and off I went.

This turned out to be a very special evening. I met my first girl friend for a long time and during the evening lottery I won the main price, the LP shown above by Wilson Pickett. After the dance I accompanied B. home during the early evening (these dances mostly were happenning on late afternoons). The LP I carried under one arm, the other hand I joined with B’s quite shyly and in a chaste manner. I delivered her home safe and sound.

I even dared to make a date for a cinama visit with her, with a film I cannot remember in any way, the dark cinema was a wonderful occasion for petting. Welol, until the end of school I was together with B., but then I lost contact.

To hear this record I always had to bewitch my sister and to seize her record player. Even if I still have the record, it has beendigitised in iTunes for long, all vinyl records are gathering dust on the attic with two record players.

Today I had a one and a half hours session with the person which is feared by a lot of people, the dentist. As it was a treatment where he had to remove a nerve he had to had to apply the syringe twice before the troublemaker went calm. After these anaesthesias I am always afraid to drink as I fear the juice running out of my mouth because of the inevitable dumbness.

But modern technology still is a miracle somehow. Where there were extractions only in previous times, today there is a root treatment and then they produce a provisional tooth onto a stump. The final solution then may be planned later. And my dentist is someone having fun with difficult solutions, especially problematic ones. I really cannot understand someone liking this job

It is only really annoying that a tooth, which was not even touched, is hurting so much after the treatment that I get tears in my eyes. But it is my fault, I neglected things for a long time.

Next week is the next treatment, but do not worry: this was the first and last dental report. All future ones just have be listened to by Hanna who is not available currently.

50 minutes delay are quite heavy on a 90 minutes ride. The train stayed on the track for a long time, supposedly because children were sighted playing on the track.

Well, certainly I do not want remaining exemplaries of the dying species “children” on the red list of endangered species to be rolled over by an ICE, especially if they are that intelligent and adventuresome to play on a much used track and then resist being removed for such a long time.

But I still cannot help to suspect that they were special “signal children”. The train stopped at the same spot that it also was delayed during the Fridays before. But then they told us it was a signal failure. But then the delay was not that severe.

In the meantime I got access to the net in Hamburg as well (thanks to a neighbour opening his WLAN for me). Therefore I am able to experiment a bit and included a plugin for foto galleries (myGallery and Lightbox).

To start with I created a Gallery with further images from England (captions in German). Check the right side of the image with your mouse to choose the next image.

Meanwhile I am conditioned to watch the net in such a way that, when I saw this shop in Sheringham, I thought, oh well here Firefox, Opera, Camino, Safari, yes, even Internet Explorer are invited to enter the shop.

I am certainly influenced by the net!

When we left Sheringham, on the other side of the road you could see the train engine Thomas, which left the station in  the opposite direction with a lot of steam.  Those not knowing Thomas should watch the children’s series produced by the BBC.

To watch then also was the motto of the boys as arriving in London (this time at Liverpool Street King’s Cross (Note. Axel). We went to see the architecture of St. Pancra’s Station. Even if Michael said he was not really interested in railways I found a lot of books at his place covering this topic.

On Monday we managed to get through Oxford Street in spite of a lot of rain and wind, but the offers in the shops did not suit my taste and even less so my purse. We then spent the evening with a sandwich and Visconti’s Il Gattopardo.

Even more than on the day before I realised that Berlin is not more than a village. I roamed in the areas of Liverpool Street at lunchtime an found out that people do not walk but run and to safely cross the street a group formed at every corner. A wonder in these crowds are small, but well-kept miniature parks as Finsbury Circle, where you find wonderful, fully blossowing camelias in many colours. Their flowers are much larger than thos of hibiscus or clematis, they really are admirable exotic beauties.

Plants are further than in Berlin not changed by the snow during the week before, England’s climate facilitates an earlier spring. Tomorrow I will try to go to the Museum of London or towards St. Paul’s. And in the evening I will get back to my beloved small BERLIN, MEANING GOING HOME.