Wednesday 27 November 2013
sternschnuppen
I'm a little bit embarrassed by my little string of coloured lights laid along the window sill that I don't think are even visible from the outside, whereas I can see little twinkling displays across the street. My apartment building, however, is completely blacked-out—to the last flat and I think I'd be insensitive to do otherwise. I had the chance to visit the “Shooting Star” market of the city in the early afternoon. It had a nice atmosphere, but I found I was missing the crowd and bustle and not knowing what ornaments and crafts that one is missing before being compelled to move along—plus the illumination, which was meek under the overcast skies. I was having fun but decided to visit another Schaufenster, show-window, in the city museum's new exhibition, Germany for Anfänger—Deutschland for Beginners. A few galleries illustrated German identities and cultures, I sort of a tongue-in-cheek, self-critical manner, in twenty-six letters, no umlauts.
It addressed stereotypes and what's true about German mannerisms, D for Dialects—which are a source of pride through also of ridicule, or B for Brauchtum—customs, which can be tacky, tawdry traditions as well, and so on with a lot of deference to the Grundgesetz (the Basic, Constitutional Law) interspersed. Importantly, there was also Y (Upsilon) for Yabancı işçi (guest-workers in English and Ausländische Arbeitskräfte auf Deutsch) for integration, change and the Multikulti. Significantly, the etiquette for each letter was rendered in German, English and Turkish. My favourite display was O für Ordnung—order, with a collection of officious-looking stamps and traffic-signs and a lengthy narrative about rules for patches of gardens, children at play to include taxation of the rain-water that runs off ones roof, met both with disdain and comfort.
catagories: 🇩🇪, 🇹🇷, holidays and observances, language
Tuesday 26 November 2013
auslese
Der Spiegel's international desk has a interesting feature on attempts in the Rheingau and surrounding regions to preserve traditional viniculture with robotic aid. Engineers at the University of Geisenheim have developed a rover-prototype that can scale the steep hills at times approaching a right-angle.
catagories: 🇩🇪, 💡, 🥂, environment
Monday 25 November 2013
paying peter to rob paul
Just scant weeks after the European Union floated the proposal to set negative interest rates for its institutions, there are reports that some American banks threatening to impose the same for depositor accounts should the US Federal Reserve step back on its programme of buying assets—that massive lienholder effort on the part of the US government that has been keeping up appearances for months.
Sunday 24 November 2013
tv tray
I really do enjoy cooking and trying new things—as well as tried-and-true recipes that require more effort than the old stand-bys of frozen pizza, boil-in-bag Indian dinners and fry-ups (though all carefully selected), despite that sometimes my offers to help are deferred to setting the table. I insist that it's not laziness that overcomes continuing overtures to prepare something more elaborate than processed foods and ready meals but I question what's in season and has a shelf-life—since I always am a bit put-off by the idea of tidying up afterwards and making such a fuss just for myself.
catagories: ⚕️, food and drink, lifestyle