Tag Archives: Germany
The View From Quarantine
For ten days I missed my daily walk through the Black Forest and the vineyards. Taking COVID-19 quarantine seriously, I stayed inside for the required time. My wife wanted fresh air, so she would walk in the apartment building yard as long as there was no-one around. That didn’t appeal to me – 18 steps […]
Love and Devotion
Do cemeteries fascinate you as much as they do me? I enjoy walking through graveyards, reading the tombstones and wondering about the stories of the people buried there. There can be a lot of social history packed into simple inscriptions. You can see family relationships, names being passed along for generations. Reading between the lines […]
2020 In Review – A Bowl of Cherries
This was the most popular of my 2020 offerings, the third most-viewed post of the year. It surprises me how some posts maintain their popularity from year to year. An I wouldn’t have expected this one to top the 2020 offerings. Fruit is always popular I guess. No, seriously, I have no idea why people […]
On The Side Street
It feels weird to have a Christmas season where people aren’t traveling. Welcome to 2020. Pretty much nothing about this year has been normal. I saw this sculpture in Heidelberg’s old town. A friend was leading us through back streets to avoid the crowds, which explains why I had never seen it before. The sculpture […]
Welcome To Winter
It is official. Winter starts today, just as this post is being published. I timed it that way. The forecast high of two doesn’t seem overly wintery. However, there is snow on the way, perhaps ten centimetres on Christmas Eve. That does seem like Winter. Not that the Winter Solstice means much in terms of […]
Missing The Market
Europe’s Christmas markets aren’t happening in 2020. Too many crowds for safety during the pandemic. So I thought today we would revisit the Christmas market in my wife’s ancestral hometown of Lippstadt, Germany. These pictures and comments are from 2017. I have visited Lippstadt before, but always in the warmer weather. I didn’t know what […]
Shutting People Down
I understand politicians are feeling a little overwhelmed right now. They’re human after all, and it has been a touch year to be in leadership. So I generally cut them a little slack when it comes to questioning the wisdom of some of their pandemic-related decisions. I figure they mean well, even if their actions […]
Christmas Decorations
I hadn’t realized how much I missed being in Sulzburg last December until I saw the Christmas decorations going up in the market square. Sulzburg is beautiful at Christmas. European towns make Christmas a big deal. There may not be much faith left on the continent, but the traditions remain. Even in 2020, when so […]
Security Issues
“It’s about my rock, isn’t it?” I asked. The security officer laughed. I knew it was the rock because it wasn’t the first flight of the day. Or the first time I had been asked to open my carry-on. In Frankfurt were was a small cluster of people gathered around the screen looking at the […]
What Customer Service?
It seemed like such a simple thing. How could it have gone so wrong? And why isn’t the system better? We needed to make changes to our bank account, which necessitated a trip the the branch around the corner. I normally do my banking online. The teller asked for our ATM cards. They do that […]
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