A hotel has just opened on the German island of Rügen having equipment according to my taste: Instead of installing a TV set, an expensive telephone, a radio and CD-Player and of course a DVD-player in each room, they did something else. All hotel rooms are equipped with an iMac having TV and radio functions and, naturally serving as CD- and DVD-Player. Of course combined with WLAN, the telephone is based on VoIP and additionally they equipped every room with an iPod docking station.

The Nymphe Strandhotel seems to be the right thing for a confessing Apple follower.

This is from a German blog and I translate it into (British English) to make sense. Into which direction is the bus going, which you see above, to the left or to the right? Look carefully and think!

90% of nursery school children asked gave the following answer: of course it is going to the right! Why? Well, if it were going to the left you would see the doors of the bus!

via: StoiBär

Calf’s Liver Berlin Style with Mashed Potatoes

For the mashed potatoes use floury-cooking potatoes and boil them in salted water with two peeled cloves of garlic, mash them with some butter and milk, flavour with Crème Fraîche, some sour creme, mustard and nutmeg if you like until the texture is to your liking.

In parallel remove the pits from 2 apples (Belle de Boskoop or similar) and slice them, additionally cut two medium sized onions into slices (rings). Cook them in a pan until the onions get soft (without browning). Keep warm.

Fry the liver on both sides in a mixture of oil and butter until still soft but cooked. Pepper it and if need is use some salt.

Serve!

Since Friday evening, Buddy has been added to our household, a mixture between a Persian and a Chartreux. We “ordered” him, when Linus still had disappeared, and therefore we now have 3 tomcats.

Hanna thinks that Buddy is ugly, but it is true that he has got more of a Persian cat, a type of animal we never wanted to have. But he seems quite bright and very adventurous. While Linus and Smokie had hidden themselves for days, he at once started to explore the flat.

By the way, Linus is trying to bully him while Smokie does not know what to think of him.

After six weeks of absence we had given up on him, yes, that was the case. On Sunday evening we got a call just before midnight, we were in bed already. Someone told us that they had found our tomcat. Hastily we put on some clothes, fetched the cats’ basket and rang the bell about 500m and two streets away.

Of course we had our doubts, there were calls before when Hann and/or I went out, but it never was Linus. But this time it was true, we had found Linus. A nice young man had picked him up in front of our house about a week before because he cried miserably. Where he spent the five weeks before that, we will probably never know. Maybe he spent some time elsewhere, maybe he went on his hosts nerve as he really is able to cry quite enervingly.

Now we just need to find our lost oleander and our family would be complete again!

Just recently our tomcat Linus was gone, now it is the turn of our flora. This weekend our oleander disappeared from its hibernating spot on the landing.

But of course stealing is out of the question. Probably a neighbour took the plant as he thought that it was put there to be disposed of, thereby misunderstanding the situation.

Just watch the image carefully. What do you see? Is she turning right or left? Clockwise or the other direction?

Seeing her turning clockwise would point to a dominating right half of the brain, mainly responsible for creativity, feelings and intuition. Turning the other direction accordingly would mean the left half, rather responsible for logic and rationality.

Believe it, I have seen her turning in both directions!

via:Basic Thinking, Source (?): the Australian Daily Telegraph.

How to interpret all the signs when

• Hanna has the climate killer brought out from the attic?
• In exchange the oleander, the fuchsiae and other plants are moved to the long forgotten storage spots in the staircase?
• Other plants are put into frost-resistant pots?

• You see drivers on an early Monday morning removing ice from their windscreens?
• The first people even keep their gloves on in the underground?
• The people standing in front of Berlin Central Stations show white mist in front of their mouths and this does not necessarily mean that they have a last smoke before the train ride?
• The sun lets the frost glissen on the meadows of Mark Brandenburg?
• The German Railways known to not talk about the weather has a fifty-percent delay since a long time due to signal failure and you are not sure in the train driver is on strike again?
• You do not know if to cry or to laugh seeing the sun and feeling the cold?
• The colleague is worried if the hedgehog in the garden is able to bear the cold without hibernating yet?
• The number of women you see wearing long boots is rising significantly?
• The choice of Christmas cookies surprisingly is growing rapidly in supermarkets?
• It is dark outside when you wake up and getting dark when you come home from work?
• You look forward to the weekend on Mondays?
• Your mood is getting worse and worse and you do not know why?
• And starlings increasingly gather on the house antenna?

I am sure you have guessed already: summer is definitely gone and autumn is here.

Just decided to skip the backlog of translations from our German blog and to have a fresh start with this English version. So watch out for new articles!

Some time ago the German magazine SPON carried a story which I only can recommend to anybody, a kind of love declaration for German bread. A paragraph especially fully meets my opinion:

But much nicer than devouring something edible while watching TV it would be to revive a typical German tradition: “Abendbrot”. Most European countries are having a “warm” dinner, in Germany in the past we had an archaic kind of meeting at the kitchen table. So why not: just buy a couple of local specialities and ask friends to the table, maybe the light cold supper may be the hype of the next season?

No, you do not need to feed yourself in front of TV. Bute Hanna really does not realise that during the week, when I go for a warm luch with colleagues, I like cold cuts on bread in the evening and not a warm meal. And of course on Friday as well when I return from the working week in Hamburg to Grypphiusstraße at home.