Samstag, September 30, 2006

A Beautiful Town or Phoenix out of Ashes

September 30 /06 4:30 p.m.

..That is Dresden, city full of childhood memories. My favoured aunt and more aunts and uncles from my mother's side lived there. Us kids used to visit during school holidays, and we always looked forward to staying with my aunt, she had no kids of her own, and she spoiled us rotten. Well, times long gone, and there are not even graves left. Since I grew up later on in the western part of the divided Germany, there had been no more chance to go and visit with my relatives in Dresden. However our aunt was allowed to come and see us "Westerners", once she had reached the age of beeing a retiree. Those people the communist system was not afraid to loose. -Even as a child, I had been fascinated by that beautiful Frauenkirche, which had been totally destroyed in that awful bomb raid of February 1945. But now it has been reconstructed as beautiful as ever, and...hold on to your seats, folks, we will be there for a concert coming Saturday! Great? You bet! -
We will take a flight very early Saturday morning and we will be coming back on Tuesday, which will give us time to look around. Unfortunately there were no more tickets to be had for the "Grüne Gewölbe", which must be a marvellous sight in the new, old setting in the castle. We had seen the exhibition in the interim settings in 1994,the first time we had been together in Dresden after the war.

So, my new camera will be in action again, hopefully to produce great pics!

Montag, September 25, 2006

Welcome and have a nice visit

Welcome and have a nice visit

Not only ham at Vianden, culture too!
Click the welcome..its a link!

A tip:
go to other Sites (in the upper line) then
to Tourist Info - on the right side it says:

Vianden
The Medieval City
see a trailer

....then you can watch a very nice trailer about the city and the castle!-

Sonntag, September 24, 2006

Here are the Cows!


P.S.

Now, would not deprive you of the cows! - Nor the ham-shop!!

Hunt the Ham


September 24/06 3:33 p.m.

Yes, you have been looking right, we have been ham-hunting. Longer story, but worth reading.
When we had been in Luxembourg at the same time last year to celebrate our friends double anniversary, they invited the whole party into a restaurant in a little village,right at some riverbanks, for a lunch of simply smoked and cooked ham, pickles and fresh bread, great! And in the same building there had been a butchers shop, selling all those food-goodies.- So, this year, we decided to drive there and buy that ham to take home. Smart Landfrau looked at the map and decided, the name of the village must have been Esch-sur-Sure, there is a river and a castle. Only an about 18 kms drive from our hotel,if you do not run into deviations, which we did, in such a way, that after about an hour a roadcrossing looked kind of familiar, and bingo, it turned out to be the one leading to our hotel in a few houndred meters. No sweat, being on vacation, we made a new start and with the help of a couple of construction workers ,who told us, which deviations had deviations, we finally made it to Esch-sur-Sure. Took us about 2 hours, by that time we could have hit Meerbusch. Only the place looked kind of unfamiliar and the restaurant must have gone broke, including the butcherie, so we phoned our friends, who told us that we should have gone to Vianden, a place with a river and a castle (found out, that this must be a trademark in Lux.) only Vianden was about the same distance from our hotel, only opposite direction. -
Well, like I said, beeing on vacation, we decided to continue this nice sightseeing tour,took us uphill and downhill,winding roads and high plateaus, thru little places with no people but an abundance of cows. And we found Vianden! and we got our ham!which by now is really dwindelling away and we keep accusing each other of greediness.
So,that's the ham story. Aside from that we had a good time beeing spoiled in every way, foodwise and health treatment wise. Landfrau felt 10 years jounger (a twen??) but lost 5 years yesterday again slaving away.
The copied menu should make your mouth water, and for the ones not beeing able to cope with the french language,they are just lucky, they wont get envious.

Coming home, we found our two goldfish, Max and Moritz, still alive,they probably enjoy having the pond all by themselves, bastards! and the old gelding horse has decided he is a stallion now and is busy,trying to make his harem,the two mares, happy, loosing lots of weight in the effort. Anyway, there are worse ways to slim down,am I right?

Samstag, September 23, 2006

Promises...





September 23/06 9:22 p.m.

......should never be made! Here I am, with 97 pictures to
choose from, well enjoy those 4 ,folks, and a report about
the trip is to follow, too beat today, hard garden work and cleaning the car,Landfrau deserves a medal!

In case you forgot, this is all about Luxembourg.

Freitag, September 22, 2006

BARFLY




September 15/06 8:30 p.m.

See that bar-supply? I drank all that! - Kleiner Scherz - and tomorrow more about Luxembourg, the trip has been worth it!

Freitag, September 15, 2006

Oh, no! POPE!

September 15/06

Now I am really fuming, the Pope should stick to patting little kids on their heads and keep his fingers out of politics, the world is mixed up enough, without that old man butting in!

Muslims assail pope over Islam comments
By Ian Fisher The New York Times
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

ROME As Pope Benedict XVI arrived back home from Germany, Muslim leaders Thursday strongly criticized a speech he gave using unflattering language about Islam and violence.Some of the strongest words came from Turkey, possibly putting in jeopardy Benedict's plan to visit there in November."I do not think any good will come from the visit to the Muslim world of a person who has such ideas about Islam's prophet," Ali Bardakoglu, a cleric who is head of the Turkish government's directorate of religious affairs, said in a television interview. "He should first of all replace the grudge in his heart with moral values and respect for the other."Muslim leaders in Pakistan, Morocco and Kuwait, and in Germany and France, also criticized the pope's remarks, with many demanding an apology or clarification.The extent of anger about the speech may become more clear Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, in which grievances are often aired publicly.As the criticisms gathered force, the Vatican moved quickly to snuff out a potentially damaging confrontation with Muslims. It issued a statement saying that the church seeks to "cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward other religions and cultures and obviously also toward Islam."The statement, from the pope's chief spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, said: "It should be said that what is important to the pope is a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation of violence."The pope mentioned jihad in his speech and Lombardi said Thursday: "It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to do an in-depth study of jihad and Muslim thinking in this field and still less so to hurt the feelings of Muslim believers."On Tuesday, Benedict delivered what some church experts said was a defining speech of his pontificate, saying that the West, and specifically Europe, had become so beholden to reason that it had closed God out of public life, science and academia.He began his speech at Regensburg University with what he conceded were "brusque" words about Islam: He quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as having said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."The pope then used the word jihad, or holy war, saying that violence was contrary to God's nature and to reason.But at the end of a speech that did not otherwise mention Islam, he also said that reason could be the basis for "that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today."Lombardi said the pope did not intend to insult Islam. But many experts on Islam warned that Benedict ran the risk of offense in using such strong language, especially with tensions between religions so high.And criticism began flowing Thursday toward the 79-year-old Benedict, who has taken a more skeptical, hard- nosed approach to Islam than did his predecessor, John Paul II, who died in April 2005."I don't think the church should point a finger at extremist activities in other religions," Aiman Mazyek, president of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, pointedly recalling the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Vatican's relations with Nazi Germany.The French Council for the Muslim Religion demanded that Benedict "clarify" his remarks. Dalil Boubakeur, president of the council and head of the Paris Mosque, told Agence France- Press: "We hope that the church will very quickly give us its opinion and clarify its position so that it does not confuse Islam, which is a revealed religion, with Islamism, which is not a religion but a political ideology."In Kuwait, the leader of the Islamic Nation Party, Haken al-Mutairi, demanded an apology for what he called "unaccustomed and unprecedented" remarks."I call on all Arab and Islamic states to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican and expel those from the Vatican until the pope says he is sorry for the wrong done to the prophet and to Islam, which preaches peace, tolerance, justice and equality," Mutairi told Agence France-Presse.In Pakistan, Muslim leaders and scholars said that Benedict's words widened the gap between Islam and Christianity, risking what one official called greater "disharmony.""The pope's statement is highly irresponsible," said Javed Ahmed Ghamdi, an Islamic scholar in Pakistan. "The concept of jihad is not to spread Islam with sword."The criticism from Bardakoglu, the Islamic leader in Turkey, was especially strong, and carried with it particular embarrassment if Benedict were forced to cancel or delay his visit to Turkey.Many Turks are already critical of Benedict, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opposed Turkey's entry to the European Union in 2004.Bardakoglu, the head of the directorate of religious affairs, demanded an apology, saying that the remarks "reflect the hatred in his heart. It is a statement full of enmity and grudge."In Morocco, the newspaper Aujourd'hui questioned the good faith of Benedict's call for dialogue between religions."Pope Benedict XVI has a strange approach to the dialogue between religions," the paper said in an editorial. "He is being provocative."The paper also drew a comparison between the pope's remarks and the outcry in the Muslim world over unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last year."The global outcry over the calamitous cartoons has only just died down and now the pontiff, in all his holiness, is launching an attack against Islam," the newspaper said.Theologian voices concernsThe dissident theologian Hans Küng faulted Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday for not reaching out more to Protestants during his visit to his native Germany, The Associated Press reported from Munich.He praised the pope, however, for his defense of religion's role in public life.Küng, a professor emeritus of theology at the University of Tübingen, said he was gratified to hear that Benedict had told President Horst Köhler, a Protestant, that he would work for reconciliation.


Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/

Mittwoch, September 13, 2006

Whispering....

September 13/06 7:07 p.m.
Yeah, and very softly,that the type, jynxing our latest travel plans does not listen in. We are making another try, to Luxembourg, this time to the very nice Hotel Leweck . We have been there last year exactly at the same time,before our river cruise in France. -

Problem is, what clothes to take, rigt now we still have that terrific late summer, but I bet, that the weather will chance around latest at the weekend, when we want to leave. Then we might have green winter again. Of course Herr Hund will come along too, logo.
We will be seeing our friends, who live in Luxembourg -town,looking forward to them,especially to K.,whom I have been rolling around on the street with the last time.Well, nothing beats a strong Landfrau to hold onto, n'est-ce pas?

And some pics are promised herewith(cross my heart), have to put my new camera into action, finally!

Montag, September 11, 2006

9/11

September 11/06 3:10 p.m.

That date, 5 years ago, changed the world and it turned a proud, self- confident, open nation into an overanxious, mistrusty and unsecure country. -
Heard a tape played this morning on the radio about the desperate cry for help from a woman, locked into one of the towers. Made my hair rise and I keep thinking about that call all the time. It's those individual stories, which make you realize the horror of the desaster, not statistics and numbers.
I sincerely hope, that justice is done to the survivers,helpers and relatives of the deceased by the US Government, things do not seem to go exactly right for those poor people, just as for the victims of Katharina.

Freitag, September 08, 2006

I Am NOT Nice Today!

September 08/06 3:43 p.m.

Friend sent me a list of NEW DRUGS FOR WOMEN today (thanks, Chris!), so I took

DAMNITOL
Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 full hours

FLIPITOR
Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling road rage and its urge to flip off other drivers

and must have been fed DUMBEROL
by someone - drug can cause dangerously low IQ, resulting in enjoyment of country music and pickup trucks(and cowboys) !

but then, as a revenge, I put NAGAMENT into man of my life's drink -
when administered,provides the same irritation level as nagging him.

So, and now : STAY AWAY FROM ME!!!

Donnerstag, September 07, 2006

September Song

September 07/06 4:02 p.m.

No, I'm not talking about that great song by Sammy Davis, Jr., from whom I still hold a most cherished 45 single, dating back 1956, but about my own ,personal September song about Birthday party, Pflaumenkuchen ( the translation prune cake of this deleecious pastry just won't do justice) sitting in the last warm rays of sun in my parents' garden and of wasps, enjoying "Pflaumenkuchen" alongside with us. And, of course the cake had to be topped with whipped cream,nice,yummy, fattening! - Also used to be a day of family gathering, the kids still small and romping around in the garden. My father had set up a swing and the sandbox for the small fry. - Nice memories! - My mother, having been a very stern mother for us three kids, ( I had been into the subject) turned into a marvellous adoring grandmother, probably the lack of resposibility did the trick. -
The weather always had been great, we had such a day yesterday, and have been promised more for the weekend by the weatherman. Had been a long day for me yesterday, a patientpick- up at 8:00 a.m. at the clinic in beloved Krefeld, and had to walk the dog before. Woke up very early and decided to get up instead of dozing off again, would have never made it then in time. I think it's keen, kicking out patients at such an early hour. Took the opportunity to visit a nice at the maternity ward, who has to wait out her time for the arrival of her baby-son , he wanted to show up too early into this world, now the little mom is stuck and claiming, that she is outliving her own "groundhog" day -time. So, all of you, keep your fingers crossed for her!

And we are planning on a small trip (hopefully), in two weeks time. I believe it, when I'm there, more about it some other time!

Montag, September 04, 2006

Monday,monday....

September 04/06 8:43 a.m.

...mean, fat monday! So. for all monday haters, here is something to "Cher?" - cheer you up! And Landfrau has to get going, bye for now.