mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Bakery)
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.

Ducklings!

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 11:34 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
Let's have some ducklings!

Let me preface this by saying: Don't feed ducks bread. It's unhealthy for them as well as the lake (if you are hell-bent on feeding them, and ducks looking as cute as they do and these birds being tame, anyway I can understand that, either use feeding pellets, or stuff like grapes or peas). The ducks on the Maschsee in Hannover are being fed by the students from the school across the street as well as the scores of visitors to the lake that come every day and they're so used to humans they're practically tame, more so than any other inner city birds I've ever seen. They'll even take food directly from people's hands.

And now on to the mallards and their offspring.



Many many ducks and ducklings... )
mothwing: (Woman)
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.

More icicles!

Saturday, January 16th, 2010 09:11 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
Sadly, everything outside is thawing by now.

We had about a foot of snow, and the icicles were up to three feet!!

I think I am far too exited about these things, especially the ones outside our window.



+ 10 )
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
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... )

Snow

Thursday, December 31st, 2009 09:30 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
It's still snowing. It started yesterday evening, and even though the heating's been on all through the night in the living room, the snow on our skylight is several centimeters thick. It doesn't look as though it's going to stop anytime soon, either. I don't really feel like going to look at the fireworks, I must say.

It's been snowing for hours this morning and I had to traipse through the blizzard to fetch some groceries. Optimistically, I went without a hat, only to wish I had miniature windscreen wipers on my glasses, blegh. I nearly ran into two people on my way to the shops because I couldn't see anything but my feet because snow kept getting behind my glasses. In the end, I got myself a hat and looked like a bullfinch (rather than a bulldyke, snerk) in my red coat, black hat, and greying scarf.



Snow in the inner city (16) )

Conti-Werk

Sunday, October 18th, 2009 11:33 am
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Adventure)


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

Rainbows

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 11:13 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
One of the benefits of our flat is the view - we get to see the most amazing rainbows up here.



+4 )

Lots of fishes

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 12:07 am
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
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) )

Schützenfest

Sunday, July 12th, 2009 05:36 am
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
Crocky and I took a break from studying and writing yesterday evening and we had a really lovely time at the Schützenfest (they even have a wiki page, go figure). That's a funfair much like the Dom in Hamburg with various merry-go-rounds and merry-be-tossed-arounds for those with stomachs of steel or no fear of heights, although in contrast to the fairly generic Dom this is a festival geared towards marksmen - or used to be, at any rate, and there were still an astonishing amount of marksmen there.

We arrived at half past nine, which means that the families with small children had all gone home, the roaming bands of drunks had not hit the fair yet and the Schützen were still there in their traditional attire (this being green clothes with green loden overcoats and green felt hats with bushes of boar bristles). As were a mindboggling amount of same-sex couples. I spotted the "Gaypeople"-tent among the various stands selling food, but I doubt that that could have been the single attraction drawing them. It was really cool being among so many couples similar to ours for one, I had expected quite a different crowd, this being a Schützenfest at least by name.

I'm still pretty immersed in my work, which means I wasn't able to catch up with entries and comments and won't be for some time, but I will once this is over.



Various funfair rides (22) )

Time for some coffee.

The nice kind of bug

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 02:36 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Default)
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.
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
Very picture heavy post of the picture Crocky and I took on our Sunday walk last week.

It appears that the freight yard has never been used, as there are no tracks anywhere. Half of the front of the building is used a s a post office these days, but the entire back is completely out of use. It seems that a squatter is sleeping in the pink tower below, but probably not always.





27 )

To be continued...

Ok, back to work and considering whether or not I ought to go to contact the medical emergency hotline to find a doctor who works over Easter. Something seems inflamed in my tummy, it doesn't hurt all the time, but when I press, and my head is woozy, although that might be the sleep deprivation.
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
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 [livejournal.com profile] 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 )

Tolkien seminar

Monday, January 26th, 2009 06:09 pm
mothwing: A wanderer standing on a cliff, looking over a distant city (Book)
The University of Hannover is hosting the German Tolkien society's annual seminar this year. It's free, it's this April and it'll be on conflict, violence and war in Tolkin's works. The organiser is the Professor whose seminar on "literary masculinities" I was allowed to attend for kicks at Hannover university in spite of not being enrolled there (he is an awesome teacher and has worked on Tolkien, too).

I am tempted - and I'm especially looking forward to "Tolkien as war poet", "violence and song" and the talks on the "just wars". My knowledge of Tolkien's works may not be sound enough to fully appreciate everything, but I'll try.

In case any of the more Tolkieny-inclined among you are interested:

Konflikt, Gewalt und Krieg bei Tolkien/ Conflict, Violence and War in Tolkien
24.-26. April 2009
Alle Vorträge/ All Lectures:
Hörsaal 1503.003, Erdgeschoss Conti-Gebäude, Königsworter Platz 1 (lecture theatre 1503.003, Ground Floor of Conti Building)
Friday 15:00-19:00
Saturday 9:00-19:00
Sunday 9:00-13:00.
Registration is not required.
 

Conti Werk recon

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 11:01 am
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Adventure)

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, [info]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.
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Adventure)
I realised I may need a man in my life. Preferably someone tall and impressive who lives in Hannover and has a lot of time.

This realisation came when it dawned on me there is no way I can risk traipsing around in the abandoned Conti AG Werk across town in the middle of an eerie abandoned industrial area all by myself, not even with 110 on the speed dial button.

This sucks.

As things are I'll have to wait until my little brother has time to come to Hannover. He fits the bill, he is tall and male. Not necessarily much use when fighting off evil muggers, but if he brings his tripod we'll at least have something to shake at them while I dial 110.

Map of the area

I really want to go there, though. Ever since I joined [livejournal.com profile] abandonedplaces, [livejournal.com profile] urban_decay, and [livejournal.com profile] rural_ruin I've become increasingly jealous of the pretty pictures the members post and I want to play urban explorer and have a look at abandoned places myself.

Directions )
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Photo)
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.
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Default)
Blurry because we were not allowed to use flash: the orchestra, and Crocky's choir in the background. I think one of the blurry blobs behind what appears to be a six-stringed forefather of the double bass may be Crocky.



I love my girlfriend's choir. Her singing teacher, who is also a member, asked her to join, and as most of the members are either professional singers or singing students at Crocky's university, all members are all really good singers, and together they are a spectacular choir. I heard them last week when they were performing during service, so I should have anticipated how good they are.

Yesterday, Crocky's sister and I saw their concert "Magnificent Music", and even though I knew they were good, they completely blew me away. They did Bach's cantata "Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn" and the Magnificat in E flat major, in case anyone is interested (I didn't know either of the pieces). To my delight, they even had period instruments (a positive organ! natural trumpets! Baroque oboes! The mysterious six-stringed double bass-ancestor, probably). I loved the Magnificat, the Fecit potentiam and the Sicut locutus est, especially. I wish I could go into more detail here and do these great pieces and the performance credit, but I lack both the knowledge and the vocabulary to do so in English or German,  I should have taken more music lessons when I was still at school. So, I can't really say more than that the pieces were beautiful, and the choir did great.

The location they chose for this concert made our evening, too - a hall in the beautifully overdone Galeriegebäude. We had spectacular seats in the second row thanks to reduced prices for students. It was a perfect evening.
 


mothwing: Gif of wolf running towards the right in front of large moon (Wolf)
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.
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Default)
The inevitable was put off by my inability to get to the internet, but now, here there are some pictures of Hannover. I know that I usually concentrate on how ugly it is, but this time I went to the inner city, especially the banker's district, and I've also looked at some of the beautiful churches.



The view (2) )

The Nikolai cemetery, founded in the nineteenth century, partially destroyed in the second world war and today continuously destroyed after that because some horrible people thought that a great big freaking roundabout might be a good thing to have in the middle of a beautiful historic cemetery. What's happening to it makes me really angry, as does the fate of the beautiful little chapel from the thirteenth century which is now situated in a nice spot squeezed in between a ShinShin eatery and a junction. You have to walk dangerously close to the traffic to catch a glimpse of the inside, and there cemetery is torn in two by the junction and several housing blocks.



Cemetery (5) )

Banking district with loads of money temples from different periods. I stuck to the prettier ones and left out the glass monsters.



Banks and surrounding area (10) )

An art gallery, or rather a house of arts. For some reason someone must have thought that a great big chandelier in the street would look good.



Art gallery (3) )
The opera. Someone felt the need to add a big red flag that says "Opera!" for the confused.

Opera (3) )

The Michaelis church - it's around the corner from our place and beautiful. I can't wait to see it from the inside, there was a storytelling event going on in there when we were in the area.



Michaelis church (8) )

Inneres Aegidientor. It used to be a gate to the town in the fourteenth century but was rebuilt later, obviously.

Inneres Aegidientor (2) )

Aegidienkirche, which is probably me favourite church in Hannover, even though it's a war memorial now. I love that there is no roof and the building simply opens up into the sky, I'd love to attend a service in that church.



Aegidienkirche (17) )

And some pictures from the inner city that don't really fit into any category.

General inner city (10) )

Sorry about the length and the amount of pictures, this is probably more TMI than anything else.

Moving

Friday, September 19th, 2008 06:58 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Default)
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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.

Hässlichkeiten

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 12:35 pm
mothwing: Image of a death head hawk moth (Moth)
Thanks for the congratulations on getting the flat, everyone!

A literal translation of the word "Hässlichkeit" (IPA: ˈhɛslɪçɪçkaɪ̯t would be "ugliness". I've never heard it anyone use a lot, but my mother keeps using the word to describe things in Hannover, as in, "Das Ihme Zentrum ist von ausgesuchter Hässlichkeit." ( "The Ihme Zentrum is of supreme ugliness").

When I went to the viewing of our new flat the areas I walked through reminded me of why I usually dislike Hanover and why I think the city is really, really ugly. It was raining, everything was grey and cold and sad, with one of those headache inducing white skies. The part of the city I walked through on my way to the flat are not exactly in the tourist area, either. In fact, it's part of the city's "redlight district", which in this case boils down to a handful of dodgy hotels offering exotic massages behind the main station.

Since I've already posted a few pretty pictures of Hanover, I felt like posting (more representative) ugly ones, too.



More Hanover (15) )

What we need to do now is find a weekend to move, which is much more difficult than it sounds, what with all the music stuff that Crocky's got on the weekends.

Hanover

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 10:27 pm
mothwing: A wanderer standing on a cliff, looking over a distant city (Book)
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:

Pladder...

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 09:09 pm
mothwing: Image of Great A'Tuin from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (A'Tuin)
Remember the word?

Here are pictures from the day in question.



Rainy Linden (13) )

Pladder…

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 10:30 am
mothwing: (Woman)
“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.

Pentecost

Friday, May 25th, 2007 12:37 am
mothwing: (Woman)
Which equals a week offline, at Crocky's.

Sadly, "holidays" is definitely not the appropriate term here, there's too much stuff I have to do. Including a solo group work, as it seems, as my group miraculously disappeared and didn't get in touch with me, either. I love that kind of shite. Ah, well. At least I'm not here.

I hope that by the time I'm back my treat to myself, Love That Dog will have arrived, too. I am really looking forward to that!

See youse in a week.

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