Roads to Safe Places

Two more glorious weeks of Easter holidays lie ahead and I'm surfacing from work once more. I haven't touched the pile of student papers yet at all.

I haven't even glanced their way.

Crocky and I have taken a short trip across Germany and I've knitted a lot while watching The Walking Dead, but that's about it. I've backdated seveal posts about the trip with photos and notes with memories.

( Short thoughts on TWD )

I'm going back to doing drop stitches on my Gyre cardigan now. 

Dear flist,

I hope you all have a happy, snow-free and relaxing Easter if you are celebrating or similar spring-related holidays!

It's a blessing to have you in my life. ♥

Bremen is snowy at the moment, the annual Christmas market is in full swing, and our house is becoming more Christmassy, too - all the other windows are blinking or light up at night.

To join in, I put up some decoration as well, though compared to the lavish display of our neighbours mine is half-hearted at best, but then, I never really know what to do in terms of window decorations. I don't really like things that blink or light up, and thus I went for red sisal stars. And there's our tree and wreath, too. 



( Close-ups of decorations. )

I've been to Esbjerg before with angie_21_237 and her family when I was a teenager, and the most vivid memory I have of the place is eating my first hot dog, pretty buildings, after, if memory serves, a visit to the Artillery Museum in Varde (which these days is advertised as "a great day for father and son", so I suppose I don't have to feel bad about giving it a miss, being neither). In short, I don't really remember the city. Crocky really wanted to go, though, because she's liked the city for a long time. 

So along we went. I'm glad we did, too, the weather was lovely, we had a picnick in the park, and we found the most flattering bathing suit that I have ever owned. Since I am self-conscious about my size there isn't a lot of swimwear that will make me get excited to get in the water, but I feel rather good about my newest aquisition of a swimming-dressy-kind of garment. 



( Ringkøbing and pictures from the road - with extra cygnets! )

The Ribe Viking centre go look at that page!) is a living history centre which uses volunteers from Denmark to play Vikings and introduce visitors to their various crafts. To boost their numbers they also take volunteers without any special skills (who then get to camp close to the centre for free in exchange for being a Viking for a few weeks), and Crocky and I were seriously tempted. They get lot f German visitors, after all, and need to translate for them, too. 

It has three different sites, a marketplace from around 710, a town from around 825, and a manor farm with a long house from 980. The buildings are all reconstructions from buildings archeologists found on the site, and they're fascinating to walk through. 


Inside the longhouse on the manor farm. 

( Read more... )

As of tomorrow, Crocky and I will be away on vacation in Denmark on an impromptu Viking-sight-themed-camping-tour. 

See you all in a week!

Just finished packing for my trip to Hanover today to see Crocky and spend Christmas Eve with her, head to Hamburg on Christmas Day to see my family, then maybe to Hesse to see the in-laws on Boxing Day.

I hope all of you have great holidays and a lovely Christmas!



(Yesterday's lunar eclipse)

One of the downsides of studying at home is that I get far too distracted. While reading my texts for my didactics exam I caught myself doodling lesson plans, tried to come up with exercises for Friday (something I scheduled for Friday morning), tried to make up games for my students, tried to think of think of fun writing exercises I can use to get the other students to write, of songs I can use for the listening comprehension crew. I watched a blue tit, planned a story.

But I suppose productivity is a good thing.



( Blue tit (3) )

Also, the moon is particularly beautiful today:


( It's made of cheese (3) )

I hope everyone had a good first Advent Sunday. Do you do anything to celebrate it? Crocky and I lit the first candle of our wreath (a tradition which was supposedly invented by the theologian who founded the school where I did my second internship, Johann Hinrich Wichern) and read together in the evening. I would have liked to sing with her, too, but she was busy on Sunday, so we're doing that tonight. I love singing with her.

Happy New Year, everyone!!

Have a great night and a great year 2009!

There are already good news for the new years, too: Terry Pratchett is now Sir Terry.

Why I'm on LJ half an hour before midnight? Crocky's caught a cold and is fast asleep. I think I'll just wake her briefly at midnight and then let her sleep again and watch the fireworks in the city centre from our window.

Edit: We did watch the fireworks from our window. Our neighbourhood is thankfully full of very rocket-happy people who all live in apartment building, so more fireworks come per square meter of street than in my part of Hamburg, resulting in a multicoloured sky for hours.



( Open the window... )

.

Goodness, it's already December.

If you'd like a Christmas card from Crocky and me, please comment with your address or e-mail us at mothwing at web dot de.

We'll put them in the mail next week so that they'll arrive on time and won't get lost in the annual Christmas postcard avalanche like they did last time. I hope the post won't mess them up the way they did this time  - for some reason, two thirds were returned or never arrived back then.

Comments should be screened.

I hope all of you have great holidays and a lovely time!

I am so glad that I have my own internet at home, seriously. These internet cafés are just soo expensive! Well, maybe that's because it's easter and everything's closed. 

Spent a very lovely weekend with Crocky so far. I don't know why, but whenever I get here, I am always in the mood for going places and visiting all the tourist attractions or going for a walk on the banks of the river, holding hands - but as soon as we reach her flat, I am no longer in the mood to do anything except for curling up on the sofa with a cup of tea and we never, ever really do go out. 
This weekend was the same. After the prerequisite chocolate bunny hunt I sent Crocky on we've been watching movies (The Perfume, PotC II) and cuddling. Which is the best way to spend a weekend, really.

The bonfire on Saturday was nice, although it was smaller than I had hoped and there were more people than I had hoped, too. It was nice, though. 

I really don't want to go back on Tuesday. I have to go to an interview for a prospective internship this summer. I am really not looking forward to either the internship or the interview, but I have to do it for my course of studies. If I don't manage doing one this semester it may be that I get in trouble with my final exam later on, because I need it for signing up for the finals. I also need to do a Latin course in the holidays, but the final exam for that is not in the middle of next semester, the course related to the stupid internship is. I really, really hope this will work out. 

It's in a day-care centre around the corner that also offers supervised homework. They've got children from the age of 3 to 14, the latter only after school. I really, really hope they take me. I am also pretty miffed that I wasn't really able to look for a place a LOT earlier. 
If I hadn't been able to change courses, I wouldn't have needed to do that kind of internship, and if they hadn't taken so long I might have looked for the place earlier. The deadline for submitting the paper stating the address and the date of your internship is *drumroll*  next Friday. 
I could swear it used to be in May, but no, April it is. That really did not leave me a lot of time between being accepted for this course of studies and the deadline to search. Because I thought it was in May I did start later than I could have, and got a lot of friendly e-mails thanking me for my interest but sadly, they really didn't take any internees at all. 

This is pretty much a last resort kind of internship, and I am really not looking forward to it. I would have loved finding something that's actually useful and interesting for me, like working in a support centre for teenagers or even at an international day-care centre, or a language school, but no, day-care centre it is. 

Well. 

No, it couldn't have really been worse. I am really, really NOT good at dealing with that age group. 
Out of curiosity I have done an internship at a kindergarten before, and that ended in mutual incomprehension. I liked the children, they were really nice and clever and sweet, but I am just not very good at pre-schoolers. Poor kids. 

Rejoice with me! Now our Christmas festivities will no longer feel as though there was something missing. My family and I have been looking for him quite a while now, and finally, this year, there will be no strange substitutes any more! He was in a basket on the upstairs corridor all along, buried among old wrapping paper that had piled up in it for a reason.

Don't worry, I am talking about the wooden figurine from our nativity set. I know these things are dangerously kitschy, but they are part of my Christmasses like the tree, like the annual fights, like wobbling cassettes with carols because none of us can sing, like the smell of pine and the fight about who is going to try and untangle the fairy lights this year, who tangled them last year, whose fault everything is, etc.

Edit: Take that, you Christians with your leaflets on campus who assume that everybody around you must be a heathen fiend.
Now, when they go, "Have you found Jesus?" I can always go, "Oh, yeah, he was in the basket in the corridor all along, but thanks for asking!"

The little wooden baby Jesus belongs to my grandmother and has been part of Christmas for longer than I can remember. It was a magical and special treat to be allowed to help her setting it up, and especially to place the holy family in the stable - although I have to admit that I was much more preoccupied with the donkey and the oxen as a child than with, say, Joseph.

After me and my mother had moved to another house with my father (who had been living in Hannover prior to that for job reasons), my mother and I made our own, with ceramic, self-painted figurines. Oh, I can remember painting those sheep! They are easy, and easy enough for a six- or seven-years-old. Our five shepherds had a flock of five apologetic, forlorn sheep in the beginning, but by and by, the flock grew to a couple of dozen. The same happened to the multitude of the heavenly host, which was, at first, actually only one host, and because we did not have anything for him to stand on, he had to stand on the roof of the stable. He's got lots of company, now. I loved painting the angels. Due to my expert taste in colours, most of them do not only have silver wings, but also are wearing bright, pink or green garments.
The one my grandmother has is not colourful, it's made from wood, and my grandfather built the little stable himself. My grandmother always has the three magi advancing a little every day, and only has them reach the manger on Epiphany. I remember checking in on them every day, to see how they were getting on, how far they still had to go until they would reach the stable.

Sometimes I think that the Christmasses at my grandparent's were the only times, with the possible exception of last year, when Christmas actually felt right, and not just like one, big awful family gathering that everyone wants to be over as soon as possible.
In Crocky's fairy-tale family, the house is full of people who love each other so much it actually becomes visible in their eyes, especially at Christmas, people are actually happy it's Christmas, happy to see each other, not faintly worried, and there is always, always music - half-played piano tunes, or carols, violins from rooms upstairs, brass instruments...
In my family, there are always fights at Christmas, fights and wounds and tempers and tantrums and tears, and I am always glad when Christmas is finally, finally over. The atmosphere is always tense and uncomfortable, and everyone draws back a little more into their shell, ready for the attacks the others might want to levy on them, because emotions are running high.

The holy family in their stable is actually quite lucky, I faintly remember thinking once, because the stable does not have any doors, and there are lots of people looking in on them, and people always behave better when there are strangers around.

Happy Halloween to all who are celebrating it and a happy Reformation Day to the rest!

Typical of the German government to change its status from a public holiday back to a regular working day, I could strangle them. Grrrr. Although there seem to be a few states who still list it as a public holiday, so maybe it's just Hamburg. If that's the case, even more grrrrrr. 

Here's a picture that does not really fit any of the aforementioned occasions - or both, if you are thus inclined: 

(click to see the big picture - although some of the leaves aren't what they were before I uploaded it)

So, nearly time to head off to the Minnesang-seminar. 
I don't want to go out there, it's all so cold and grey! I'm inside at the moment and already the cold and damp air is creeping into my joints... And the Bachelor/Master students are always so... keen. Can get on your nerves sometimes. And after that seminar I'll be squashed for a while, in Prof. Berg's seminar, which is a complete nightmare for the fire regulations (should we have any) and thus a typical German seminar. We're around 70 people in a room designed for maybe 20. 
The thought of squeezing myself into that room alone gives me the creeps, and it always seems to go on forever and ever...

Ah, well. Off now.

Christmas is drawing nearer and nearer..

Hm, this is the first Christmas I don't spend with my family.
I wonder what they think about that - they don't actually seem to care. Well, my brother already told me he was going to miss me, but my parents and grandma don't actually seem to mind or care - they didn't react at all. I am not sure about whether that is good or bad.

Both, I guess. Ah, well. I'll better go packing again.

*sigh* I hate public holidays. And they especially suck if I have more to do than during the week due to extra "Oh, right, there is a public holiday coming up, how about some extra work?"-homework.

Yesterday, I have been to what felt like a twenty-first century version of Dante's Inferno - but really was the local mall crowded with the lost souls who had to buy last-minute presents or chocolates for easter - guarded by a squadron of sulphuric-yellow fiends who had dressed up as park attendants and caused the staining of many bright souls that day due to our favourite deadly sin, wrath. After I had bought the six yellow tulips I had come for (thanks, grandma...!), I needed around twenty minutes to leave the parking lot. TWENTY!

And right now, I am sitting at home, alone. Lonely, even. I had waited for my usual spring "I will always be a single"-panic phase for a few weeks already, but somehow I had not imagined it'd hit this year. Well, I have been wrong. Spring sucks. Every park or green spot in the entire city is infested with couples. They seem to sprout from the green lawns faster than mushrooms from a dead tree.

And Hamburg has so many parks. More than a million people live in this city. 1.6 million, to be precise. Regarding the increasing number of singles, it is statistically improbable not to find someone some day. But then, I am a statistical impossibility already regarding the story of my birth.

Thinking about it sucks even more, because it feels so... childish. It is something I kept doing when I was a teenager. But perhaps I still am a teenager. *scowl* I LOATHE spring.

Anyway - HAPPY EASTER everyone!