Tag Archives: Germany
Weinberg In Flammen 2020
It might have been the end of an era, so we went to Britzingen’s annual Weinberg in Flammen (Wine Hill in Flames) a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure the festival will be held next year, it is too much fun to cancel, but new regulations concerning fireworks mean that this may have been […]
A Storm By Different Names
I thought naming storms was limited to hurricanes and typhoons. Which means that Sabine has taken me by surprise. Not the storm itself – people in my area of Germany have been talking about it for days. On Saturday events scheduled for this evening were being cancelled. On a bright sunny day that surprised me. […]
Still A Hole
It is still there. I had wondered about that. We were gone for five months after all, I thought maybe there had been some movement. The hole at the edge of Sulzburg was supposed to be the basement of a new apartment building that would provide housing for 20 Syrian refugees who have been living […]
German Fashion
I’m still cleaning up my phone and finding posts I never got around to sharing with you. This one is, I think, a couple of years old. People wear their pride on their chests. But why in Germany is that pride always in English? I hadn’t processed this before, but my brain had somehow absorbed […]
In The Courtyard
The Alsatian town of Kaysersberg was given the title “City of the Empire” in 1293, according to a mural I discovered when checking out a courtyard off one of the main streets. There I found this mural commissioned to mark the 700th anniversary of the event. The title was given by Adolf, who was King […]
Man’s Inhumanity
The first question I thought when visiting the Dachau concentration camp was: “How could they not have known?” Of course, many Germans did know of the concentration camps and bought the lies about what was happening there. It was easier to pretend than to confront the reality. After all, as it said on the gates, […]
Christmas Passed
There were things I missed by being in Canada last month, especially the Christmas tree in Sulzburg’s town square. For me it is a highlight of the season. The tree is still there, but the lights have been removed. Soon it will be taken down and most of the branches stripped from it, Then it […]
The Wheat Fields
Over the Christmas break I spent some time cleaning out my digital closet so to speak. I dumped a couple of hundred emails, read and filed some others and did some cleanup on my phone. That’s where I found this un-posted piece from 2017, written shortly after moving to Germany. After two months here […]
Don’t Throw Them
Stuck in meetings Tuesday and not able to finish today’s planned post. Given the season, I thought it reasonable to re-post this piece from 2016. I never sampled these round pastries that the Germans call snowballs. I’m not much into sweet stuff, and I had never heard of these things before. It seems though that […]
The Christmas Market
For the first time ever, Ottawa has an outdoor Christmas market, modeled after the ones in Europe, which are a huge tourist attraction. I was excited when the market was announced. Then I realized that this is a modest first year for the market. There are only about 20 vendors. I guess that makes sense […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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