Roads to Safe Places

Toc toc toc toc toc pause. Toc toc toc pause. Toc pause pause pause. Toctoctoctoc pause. Toc longer pause. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. No wait not finished yet Brbrbrrrrr. Toc toc toc pause. Toc pause. Toc? Toc pause. BrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr yeah I mean business now and I'm not going to stop anytime soon BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Yes, our  downstairs neighbour chose this weekend to do some refurbishing.

It's 33°C inside and 40°C outside our flat. Though I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't actually colder outside, can't possilby be even hotter.



3pm update: 37°C outside, 34°C inside. Huh. I should be outside.

I'll get back into the discussion on home schooling later (thanks for the input!), but right now I have to moan about Hannover's GL(b) pride event. Granted, it's a GL event by tradition, bisexuals sneaked in only later, and trans folks' movements seem to be pretty disassociated from the LGB stuff that is going on in Germany. Still.

See, this year, there's fifty events, many of them sports events organised by our LGB sports club. However, out of these fifty events,  most of which are aimed at everybody, twelve events are for gay men only, and only six events are aimed at women in general. Why is that?

And some of the titles are unintentionally hilarious:

Stadtrundgang „Frauen an der Leine“ (the Leine being a river, though the name has a double meaning, making that either "Walking tour: Women on the Leine" - or "Walking tour: Women on a leash").

Offene Werkstatt! Für Frauen, Lesben und Mädchen. ("Open workshop! For women, lesbians and girls" - cool, lesbians aren't women now. Awesome).

But there are also some interesting events, and I'm thinking about going to some of the events on offer, especially the meeting with the people who do educational events at schools.

They're still there!! This probably should not excite me as much as it does, but I still stop to point them out to Crocky whenever I spot some that look particularly impressive.

And they are very pretty, although we keep thinking whether it might not be a good idea scrape them off, lest they half-melt, fall, and hurt someone five storeys below.



( More icicles... )

Other pictures of our visit to the Conti-Werk can be found here. 

This is a backdated entry. I meant to post it at the time, but never got round to.

Yesterday, Crocky and I went to SeaWorld, and it's a beautiful place. The lighting is amazing, the tanks seem, by an large, to be of a fairly reasonable size, the fish were all bred in captivity and there is a member of staff in each room who explains interesting things about the fish and makes sure that no one stresses the fishes with flashlights or hitting the glass.





( Caution, picture heavy (33) )

Something nice for a change: I usually only whine about this city, but finally, I found something that I love about this city: it has may bugs!!
Yay, may bugs!


I saw the first ones today on my way to my appointment with my GP and rescued two from the street and put them back between some shrubs in the park. I hope they don't get stepped on.

I love, love, love these beetles, and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I don't live in a time in which they are so numerous that they they threaten our harvests or sad that they are so rare that when I saw one of them today I stopped and watched it until it has waggled out of sight, trying to remember when I've last seen one - which was back in the late nineties, and even back then my mother called me to show it to me because it was such a rare sight.

Also, I found 'Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr'  on YouTube - ah, childhood memories - and pest control wank in the comments. Seriously, Reinhard Mey fans, I would have thought you were above that. o_O.

I don't know for how long this has been abandoned, as I couldn't find any information on it. I've seen this building whenever I go down Hannover, as it is directly next to the main station, and I've always wondered what it looks like from the inside. Another thing I plan to have a look at with niaseath when he's here.

When I was there today, the place was not as deserted as I had hoped. One lone guy was golfing along the remains of the tracks, and two people were wandering around, apparently going for a walk. Or maybe they were dealing drugs, who knows, they gave everybody an incredibly wide berth. I know that the yard is the home of illegal rave parties, and judging from the used condoms which are littered all over the place it's also the less romantic version of "lover's lane" (and apparently, more fitting terms even exist. No wonder there was a rush to rename the streets in question in the eighteenth and nineteenth century).



( +6, freight yard and blooming willow )

Yesterday morning I went to have a look at the big, scary industrial area that I did not dare to go to alone and found that I really should not have worried so much. It's in the middle of Limmer, a part of Hannover, and I'll have to be quick with going there because it is supposed to be torn down.

Also, niaseath, if we want to go there, we'll have to go on a Sunday, because there are still people who work in the main building and I am pretty worried about whether what we are doing is... well, entirely legal. There are no fences and no signs saying that it's not allowed to wander around in the abandoned buildings, but to my mind it sort of goes by common sense agreement that it's probably not - at least I wouldn't wander about on the premises of a factory which is not abandoned - so we'll have to be careful. We'll not the only ones who are going there, I ran into two people with camera bags and tripods on my way there, so it may even be allowed or at least tolerated by the authorities.



Instead of walking through that factory I was a good girl and went back to the canal nearby, which was frozen. It seems to be far colder than any winter in the last five years - at least I see far more bodies of water frozen which wouldn't usually be. To anyone who lives in an area in which it actually gets cold and in which they get a real winter, this kind of weather is probably pretty ridiculous in comparison, but to me, used to mellow maritime climate and a big, central-heated city, it's pretty exiting, although slippering along the half-melted-and-then-frozen-again pavement plainly sucks.

( Ice, ice baby (13) )

( Conti Werk and tramlines (3) )

I'm thinking about starting a separate blog or journal to spam pictures to save your friendslists, as I am pretty picture-happy at the moment. Somehow, Bugbitten never really worked for me, as it kept freezing and/or eating my pictures when I still used it (although that might have been the Uni computers hating the site's guts), and with Flickr I don't really like the album style that much. I'll look around for a site.

This entry is backdated as it's more to my information than of general interest. I am too photo-post happy of late.

It's funny, because when Crocky is here and all exited about going for a walk and exploring the neighbourhood, I hardly ever feel like it. When I come along, I have to drag myself everywhere and am usually glad when we're back home. Whenever Crocky is not around, I have curiously itchy feet and go on long, extended walks.

At 8am this morning, I decided I wanted to go for a walk and have another go at the light frost I failed to be able to take pictures of in the dark at Christmas. Fortunately, the same people who thought it was bright to build a huge intersection and a shopping district right on the middle of a cemetery which is a few centuries old also thought it would be nice to have a great big forest and so we are lucky enough to have the Eilenriede, which is one of the biggest forests within city limits in Germany. It's lovely there, but strangely busy around the time I got there with people walking their dogs or jogging or just slowly shivering along like me.

It was a bit of a surprise for me how different the Eilenriede looks in winter. I had only ever been there in July and August, and once in October, the lack of colours really came as something of a shock - everything was coated in frost or behind a slight haze.



( Cold things (13) )

Yeah. Back to work.

What I had taken for rain yesterday turned out to be snow, after all. So, here are some obligatory snow pictures from the neighbourhood I took on my way to the library.



( Last night (7) )



( Today (15) )

Ok, back to work.

We're moving house tomorrow. Right now I am sitting on our futon mattress, on the floor, and my laptop is sitting on our coffee table. We've already taken the bed and every piece of furniture we could take apart apart and piled everything up in the room next door.

There are few things that I hate even more than moving house, although it is really great for weeding out your old uni notes, because few heavy things remain as interesting and worthy of being kept as you thought they were if you're facing having to carry that stuff all the way to the fifth floor apartment we rented in a fit of shortsighted stupidity.

Thanks to my father, we'll have plenty of help - he hired three men and a small truck, and I could not possibly be happier about that, especially seeing as one of them is supposedly able to carry our washing machine to the fifth floor all by himself. I'm glad he's there only so I can watch one man carry around the washing machine that I can barely lift, let alone carry it more than a meter. My father and my brother niaseath  are also going to help us, and seeing the pile of boxes next door I can't help but be reduced to a puddle of gratefulness.

Then, I'll probably be lost to the world of the internet until I return to Hamburg next week and until we've got internet at our flat in Hanover.

We'll hand in the keys to the flat in Uelzen on Monday. I can't believe that we moved  in here over a year ago, and I am really glad we're moving out, especially seeing as the nights are already getting significantly chillier and our walls have started getting more mouldy again. The crazy design of the flat and redecorating it the week after moving in was fun, but there were a lot more disadvantages than there were advantages to this place, on the whole. Hannover will be much better, I suppose, even though commuting down to Hamburg for the few lessons I am taking (preparation for my writing thesis is more important) will suck epicly.

And to spam your Friend's page even more, a few pictures of Hanover I've been meaning to upload for ages.



That's pretty much what I always disliked about Hanover. But Hanover can be pretty:

“Pladdern” is a German word for “to rain”. (It’s pronounced ['pladɐ], like *pludder would be pronounced in English).

There are lovely words in German to describe rain, most of them forcefully onomatopoetic. “Pladdern” is one, “gießen” (['gisn]) another for rain that “prasselt” (['pʁaslt]). “Piseln” (['pi:zln]) and “nieseln” (['ni:zln]) are for light rain that “sprüht” ([ʃpʁyt]) and “tropft” ([tʁɔpft]).

“Es pladdert” means it’s raining cats and dogs. Pladdern is what it did yesterday, most of the afternoon.
I was out on a walk taking pictures of plants when rain suddenly pladderte onto them in huge drops. Rain pladderte onto my head with such force I felt individual rain drops hitting my scalp. Rain pladderte onto my glasses, making my vision blurry, rain soaked my shoes. Rain pladderte onto my lens and made me fear my camera would be broken by the time I reached dry land. Rain pladderte onto the path and created instant puddles that grew faster than any I had ever seen. Rain pladderte onto the stones of the pavement I reached in a run.
Rain pladderte onto the roofs of the cars that were parking rather than driving on the street, as it pladderte so hard that it was impossible to see anything, even though the were screaming with effort and moving so fast they were a blur.
Rain pladderte onto my shoulders, completely soaking my shirt, rain that seemed to come from below soaked my trouser legs and rain pladderte onto my bag, threatening to soak all my books. Rain pladderte onto the blue umbrella of a little boy who grinned wildly at me as he passed me by in a run.
Rain pladderte onto the tree I reached and under which I tried to wait for the rain to end. It turned out that it was no good at all because rain also pladderte onto the grass below, so I had to leave again, and rain pladderte onto my wet, bedraggled shape as I ran for the house. Crocky doesn’t even live far from the park I had been in, but those were the wettest three minutes of my entire life.
Rain pladderte onto my hands as I fished for the key in my bag, rain pladderte onto my cold shoulders, onto my legs.
Rain also pladderte onto my head as I realised there had been an umbrella in my bag all along. 

Yesterday was fun.

Apart from feeling genuinely stupid for forgetting not the umbrella but about my umbrella I read Feet of Clay, chapters in various books on teaching poetry, and wrote a story for Crocky I am rather pleased with. It consists only of receipts and shopping lists.

I also realised how much I would like to live alone for a month at least before moving in with Crocky. I love her, but I feel that I do need a space where I am alone for a month to ... acclimatise and to celebrate the lack of other people at least for a while before moving in with her again. I want to live with her far too much to live on my own for long, but that one month… that one month I may need.

I don't really have any grand news to share, apart from this item of vocabulary in German, and who knows what that could be useful for.

Life is good.