Circus Roncalli

Saturday we were at the circus. 
I am not a big fan of circus - neither of tigers that an animal tamer whips through the manège nor of clowns (though I don't suffer from "coulrophobia" - fear of clowns). 
But when I heard that it was the Circus Roncalli, I came gladly. It is a bit more poetic. 

Though in my mind they even here use too much technique - or do you see here a difference to a rock-festival?

There was only one act with animals, though. 

A lot of acrobatic work: 

... and these was really breathtaking: Artists from the Ukraine. 

You have to trust each other completely, to do something breakneck like that! 


I wish you beautiful days till Christmas! 

Lateral Thinking sounds so much better than Muddy Thinking ...

Surprise, surprise: I really didn’t think straight. As everybody else I am trapped in my own little world – and though I sometimes dream in English (don’t ask the Grammar Godddess!) and read very much in that beautiful language and (if Husband would come with me, which he doesn’t) would pack my things to live in London, Hythe or Edinburgh (see: I’m versatile), I told you that you have to wait for the beautiful cookbook I translated, because the German publisher DuMont puts it in April 2012 on the market.

What I hadn’t thought of is THAT MOST OF YOU read my articles in ENGLISH!

So you will not need a translation. And so you don’t have to wait. The book is in your bookstore since autumn. 

Claire Ptak and Henry Dimbleby: Leon. Baking and Puddings. 

www.octopsbooks.co.uk 

Fairy-tale!

As every year the KaDeWe, Berlins luxury store, that seductively is only six minutes away from our flat, decorated its shop windows lavishly for Christmas.

This time the motto is ‚Grimm’s Fairy Tales‘ – though very liberally interpreted. 

I am especially fascinated by „The Princess and the Pea“. 

I own a genuine ‘Hügel‘ with this theme, priceless because from a very early period of his work. 

A Portrait of the Artist as a very Young Man – and if you think that ‚portrait of‘ has been used here in the wrong way: not at all. You only should ask: portrait of whom? 

Here is a game that can give much insight into the character of another human being: ask him/her, which fairy tale s/he loves best. Very often you will be surprised – even more so if you ask for the reasons of the choice.

It can happen that the gusto for a fairy tale changes in life. After being fascinated by The Fisherman and his Wife for many years, (the woman would make a career at all costs and was never content) I believed that Mother Hulda rewards the hard worker and punishes the lazy buggers (hehe – they are not called fairy tales for nothing!). Now I like The Town Musicians of Bremen with their winning motto “You will always find something better than death“ so much that I have a little silver sculpture standing on my desk. 

Doubly appropriate as I come from Bremen.

One fairy tale in the KaDeWe was difficult. Who do you believe is this? 

Sweets for my Sweet, Sugar for my Honey...

It’s funny: as a child I envied Karin, a classmate with whom I often walked back from school home, because she always had money to buy sweets at the kiosk. Karin’s parents had a drugstore, but no time.

Karin bought soda-sweets, and little eatable sponge rubber dolls that held hand endlessly like those garlands you cut out from tissue paper; she bought Salinos; Ahoy!-effervescent powder-sachets with a blue sailor on the waxen paper, that grew so strangely limp when you licked the last few small crumbs out of the edge with your tongue. Pipes from liquorice with a pink or lime green foamy filling on top, that stuck in form of a cone in the pipe bowl and had to be unhinged in one piece by a skilfully bite of the molars; rolled-up liquorice- ribbons that you held with your teeth and reeled off to your waist, and then gobbled up with lightning speed. And sticky toffees, which sometimes pulled out a filling from the tooth (Karin had a lot of fillings, it was a time when the dentist gave you sweets as a recompense for the suffered torture).

My parents disapproved of Karin, who was the first in our class to wear nylon stockings, and they disapproved of sweets before dinner – as a quite well-behaved child I abided them, mostly.

In the drugstore Meissner stood huge cans, filled to their neck with salmine pastilles (tiny rhombes of very salty liquorice) – a cockaigne, into which Mr. Meissner dipped a tea spoon and laddled the boot into a pointed little paper bag – Mr. Meissner was a friend of children and sold a teaspoon of salmine pastilles for two pennys. You sticked them in form of a star with saliva onto the back of your hand, and licked them off till they became wafer-thin. Then there were sweets that one could never suck to their end: nibble-thaler had to be bitten through till the cracknel splintered among the teeth; gobstoppers hid under their hard vanilla or powder pink shell a tiny sugar kernel and must be bitten through, and cristal raspberry sweets did not only colour your tongue excitingly red but also cut your mouth with glassy needles. Round went the horrible rumour that genuine liquorice sticks were made out of real ox blood. Highly interesting were the very personal mixtures that one created oneself: „chocolate&salmine pastilles& tiniest sugarywhite peppermint pastilles“: aaah! Even better: “chocolate, sour raspberry sweets and salmine pastilles“ – that was heaven!

Today I have the money to buy all these treasures – I could put rows of huge glasses filled with sweets onto the shelves in my rooms. Nobody would admonish me, I could downright bathe in them!

And do I do it?? No!

But yesterday I did a breach of my own rules. Did, what I never would do with the men in my life, because I want to keep them treasured in my memory as I have them in my memory – will say I never am tempted to look after 10 years what has become of an Old Love –  because: am I being stupid?

With sweets evidently I am: there they stood saucy tantalizing in look-through sachets on the counter of ‘Manufactum’: “Sweets of Yore”.

In my nostalgic brown paper bag with the slogan “They still exist, the good old things!” piled up cannon balls (devilishly salty!), golden nuts, crunchy thalers, rhubarb-vanilla clumps, raspberry sweets and sorbet pillows.

The result was predictable. In a German film of the Sixties, “Zur Sache, Schätzchen”, (“Let’s dispense with the preliminaries, cutie!”) depicting the slack life of students in Schwabing, a young Werner Enke always nagged his running gag: “The old spunk has gone!” (He was about twenty).

Let it be understood: the sweets have lost it.

I: not by a long chalk!

Detectives in Fiction and on TV

"@Britta: You like George Gently?" asked Tony Van Helsing in a comment on a comment (see: we read them). 
Do I? Do I like George Gently? About the person I'm not quite sure. I like the TV-series very much, discovered it just recently. I see and read a lot of detective fiction, above you see a little choice fom the DVDs I have. 
We endowed 6000 German (written by Germans, no translations) detective novels to the Schiller Literaturarchiv in Marbach. Normally they only harbour "High Literature". But our books were very old German detective novels (the first written before Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story), and they are double valuable because nobody ever collected them - the fate of "Low Literature", though produced in masses, is to be thrown away. Lots of them date very easily,

some become classics.

Though even a classic can be modernized: 

At the moment I delve into "A Touch of Frost", interspersed with the umptien times  meeting with "Inspector Morse". 

Had you asked me: "You like Inspector Morse?" my answer would have been a clear: "Yes! I love him!" 

PS: 

If anybody of you will recommend a detective TV-series I might not know, PLEASE do it! The winter evenings will be long... 

PPS: Thank you for your P.D.James tip, dear Anonymous: of course I should have mentioned Commander Adam Dalgliesh (and a few others :-) 

How to Stay Slim

Husband knows the signs: when I buy Brewer’s Yeast, wheat germs and blackstrap molasses it is Gayelord Hauser–Time again.

I do love this man. His most important book was “Live long – look younger.” Written in 1950, it says  almost everything that modern nutrition and health gurus preach nowadays. He stresses the blessing of good nutrition. Vitamins from real food, (especially the vitamin B family), lots of protein and lesser carbohydrates are important. He tells you to eat yoghurt with wheat germs and black molasses, eat yellow and green vegetables and avoid sugar. 

I have always been slim, but I see women with beautiful rounder figures and like that too, and I see too haggard women. This famous model I think is looking sick and poor:

And I am very concerned that male models now start to become anorexic as well. 

I do not want to sound smug. In other times women wore three ample skirts one over the other to appear thicker - which was the fashion then. As long as one feels well in ones body it is unimportant whether one has the 'ideal weight' - that differs from generation to generation. 

My aim is to remain strong, flexible and agile. And for that aim I do something, or even: quite a lot. 2 – 3 times a week I go to Kieser – a no-nonsense fitness-studio where you lift weights (that supports the back, is good against flabby arms and wobbly legs and gives you a taille). I do Tai-Chi with my dear friend Stephen Russell’s method (he is the Barefootdoctor) - that means: quicker and more energetic than the normally very slow movements. And I walk whenever I can - which is often the case.

I try to eat healthy. Gaylord is very rigid when it comes to explanations why people don’t get thinner. Of course sick people are exempted – but he believes that very seldom the glands are the culprit, but eating too much and moving too little.

I often look aghast at the monstrous portions a lot of people devour. And I seldom see that the gobbling person seems to be happy: in the tube a young lady ate a whole chocolate bar – and looked as if she was punishing herself. Why not relish that treat? A packet of crisps is automatically finished off: grip, grip, grip, cram, cram, cram – while looking at something else. At the cinema they sell those elephant-leg-sized popcorn buckets! And call their restaurants “All you can eat”!

If I eat ice cream, I take one scoop – not four. And I do not eat it every day - a treat should remain a treat. Often heavy people eat very hastily – they give their stomach no chance to say: enough. In Japan there is a saying that you should fill your stomach only to three quarters – that makes sense to me. They use smaller plates – good! Much, much better than the weird example of Mrs. Osborne who had an operation where they put a steel band around her stomach. Now, I read, her daughter will follow her example.

Health Government is very strict upon smokers. That is OK – but IF you think you have to tell your citizens what to do: why not be strict on sugar too? Fat? Additives in convenient food? In Germany we all have to pay for the back problems, overburdened joints, diabetes of sick thick people. You don’t have to jump onto the scales every day or week – just feel if your favourite pair of trousers still fits. If not: do some walking, cut back on a drink or Crème double or whatever (I do not believe in diets) or eat less for a while. I did just that when half a year after the birth of my son I didn't like the size of the T-shirt they offered me in a shop.   

I think it is the question of self-motivation and discipline. Having a sweet tooth I like a lot of sugar in my coffee – but I can resist and take only one teaspoon. When I see a large cream cake I can image what it will become in time. That does not mean that I don’t eat cake – I do, and with cream – but: I only eat a little bit. 

I don’t buy sweets for my home (except Easter or Christmas) or for my office – I know that at four o’clock in the afternoon I would become weak. But if nothing is there – I cannot eat it. And it is highly unlikely that I will go to my colleagues and beg for sweets. In front of the TV I put a plate with carrots, apple slices etc on the table: you will munch it away if some series is really suspenseful. 

From your 30th birthday on you should eat 10 calories less a day each year - when you are sixty, you should eat 300 calories a day less. I do not count calories - it should only persuade you to eat less - and then: high quality. I prefer almonds to marshmallows. (Most of the time - I am not strict). 

I often think that there must be another motive behind eating too much: boredom, not really loving oneself (Victoria Moran wrote an interesting book "Love Yourself Thin"). 

From birth on we got a body that has a special form -  round or slim, both can be beautiful. I don't like the extremes on both sides (Dear Gayelord also wrote a chapter: "Don't get too skinny" and gives you tips for changing that). 

I believe in good nutrition – that even includes 2 tablespoons of oil a day – lots of protein and vegetables and fruit. I love to cook – and my guests and I love to eat my food.  

And when I bake: I share it. So we all have fun - and stay healthy.  

That Obscure Object of Desire

"Who of you", Son asked  in a wondering voice, "reads 'Men's Health'?"
Coming back from their Honeymoon in the USA he had found a forgotten magazine in their flat in Munich.
"Me", I confessed.
A few days before Husband had associated me to the minority of 8% women who do just that: read the magazine with a male target-group.
And now I added That Touch of Pink to a crowd of males - a dark mass of fascinated men, staring with glittering eyes and only one hot desire in their - um, well, their eyes were glued to the
                                       Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport L'Or Blanc.

I admit: I do love cars!
And this Bugatti is a dream car: uniquely high performance of 1,200 hp, a maximum torque of 1,500 Nm and a world-record top speed of 431,072 km/h.
If you still marvel whether you should use your "good" porcelain every day, innovative minds have already gone one step further: Die Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin has designed "the quickest porcelain of the world" and put 12 elements into this Beauty (e.g. the centre console and the petrol cap).

"Bugatti: Art & Perfection" is an exhibition in the Automobil Forum Unter den Linden.
Bugatti was founded 1909 in Molsheim, France, by Italian-borne Ettore Bugatti. (His father Carlo was an architect, silverware designer and furniture maker; his brother Rembrandt a sculptor; his son Jean an automotive designer).
"Bugatt is an ultra-luxury high performance automobile brand" -
The Brescia Type 13 was the first serious race victory for Bugatti at Le Mans in 1920 (it pioneered the 'powered-to-weight ratio'; the legendary Type 35 was the most successful racing car ever created, winning over 2,000 races -'the only automobile of its age that could be driven both on the road and on the racetrack'; the Type 41 Royale "The best luxury car in the world, a car for kings and royalty'

Sadly only three of them were ever sold.
Oh, Ladies - I see you stiffle a yawn - your eyes glaze over...
Maybe this will wake you up:
If you win the lottery you might buy a Type 57 SC Atlantic - "the most valuable automobile in the world. An Atlantic sold in 2010 for more than 30 million dollars."

Let's speed up! 

That Touch of Mink

In one of her last posts The Hostess of the Humble Bungalow discussed whether one should use a luxury good everyday or not.
It is such a difficult decision.
To use your finest porcelain each and every day - means: you have to wash it by hand. The other option: putting it on display in a cabinet, as my late parents did, allows to give the full number of cups and saucers to your children - but you very seldom felt the pleasure of finest thinnest porcelain on your lips.
(By the way: am I the only one who thinks that coffee tastes better in beautiful cups?)
Does one get weary if one uses something special every day?
I fear that might be so. The eye gets lazy, the mind gets lazy, even the heart might get lazy...
In the 19th century the servants living at the Rhine went to Court and won their lawsuit: the sentence confirmed that no master or employer was allowed to let them serve salmon more than twice a week.
Think of that!
If something is rare, people hunt for it. If something is there in abundance, people often say derisively: "Oh, that old thing!" or "Weed!" (I think of the utterly beautiful dandelion).
On the photograph above you see This Woman with "That Touch of Mink." Good value for very little money. The previous owner (wearing it in the Fifties? The Seventies?) must have used it very, very rarely - it is utterly well-kept, made by a fine furrier (Gerson International) - and has such a wonderful warmth that goes deep down into your joints.
Of course you can wear it only at very special occasions.
Not with jeans.
Come to think of it:
Why not? 

German Women Don't Get Fat

... and are always chic! 

Well? WELL??? 

I bet that you thought: now dear Britta went totally gaga. German women? Chic?? 

May I try to look into your head when you hear the word "German"? Do I see Gretel with Zöpfen, Dirndl, munching Sauerkraut and Strudel??!? ("Sauerkraut", says husband and grins when I tell him of this post, "Sauerkraut makes slim!" True. Strudel not - but that's imported from Austria.)  

Then why, I ask - WHY? - are a lot of women, millions of women, buying a book with the title "French Women don't get fat"? 

I am often in France, have an ex-brother-in-law there - and let me tell you: the average French woman is short, practically dressed, and often a bit - stout. As she is in Italy. Or in England. Or Germany. 

Of course I see in Paris exceptional beautiful women, very elegant and very chic. But I see them in New York, in in London,  in Florence and in Munich too, and though I never have been to Brisbane I expect to find there also chic women. 

The French have been very clever in building up an image. A cliché. 

The same is true for the image of lovers - head up, Englishmen, no need to hide your light under a bushel! - err- purely (!) scientifically spoken, of course. 

Clichés are nice, they give you a sort of orientation, but beware: you should not believe every fairy tale that dear old grandma is telling you. 

Now I go to eat my Pretzel. With Kraut. Slims like mad - as does my daily dance of Schuhplattler. Hahaha. 

Karl Foerster's Garden in Potsdam-Bornim

Today we visited in Potsdam-Bornim the garden of the Great Master, Karl August Foerster (1874 – 1970). I use the words “Great Master” without irony: he was an exceptionally gifted perennial cultivator and garden-book author.  Powerfully eloquent. Visionary. A sorcerer. 

Born in 1874, (his father was Professor Wilhelm Foerster, an astronomer from Silesia, Director of the Berlin Observatory, his mother Ina Paschen). After his A-levels he was apprentice in Schwerin Castle Nursery, then developed his first own nursery in Berlin-Westend 1903 – 1907. 1906 first publications  in the press „Pan und Psyche“, 1911his  first book, „Hardy Flowering Perennials and Shrubs from the Modern Era”.  He writes for journals and gives talks on radio, founds the garden design department in Bornim with Hermann Mattern, creates a public garden on the „Friendship Island“ in Potsdam. Among his friends is the pianist Wilhelm Kempf.  1927 he marries the singer Eva Hildebrandt from Stettin.

Foerster became Germany’s most famous cultivator of perennials:  1920 First cultivation of Delphinium elatum (1939 Member of the English Delphinium Society), 1932 first of many Phlox paniculata cultivations,  and Heliopsis and 1940 Helenium.  

The book I love best is „Garden as a Magic Key“ (Rowohlt 1934). It is much more than a garden book – a book with a philosophy of living and an ode to beauty: 

„Beauty opens up and evens out roads between the visible and invisible world", he writes, and: "Where  there is too little beauty, there is quarrel!"  

Here an example of his gift  to fabulate:  

„Man can become like a half-god to us, music gets one with the breath of the world’s history, a moving animal can become almost fleeting by ravishing beauty,  a blossom a light jewel, age can become the morning of the earth and winter’s scantiness the treasury of a million-voiced music.“ 

1940 publishing of „Blue Treasure of the Gardens“ (from which I quote in my post „Blue Gardens“ on Gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com). 

The Soviet military administration 1945 takes over protection of the nursery for ‚cultivation and research into herbacious perennials‘. 1950 Honorary doctorate awarded by Humboldt University in  Berlin, 1959 freedom of the city of Potsdam, 1964 nominated as professor on the occasion of his 90^th birthday, 1966 First honorary member of the ISU, 1969 Certificate for Outstanding Achievement awarded by Latvian Horticultural Society.

1968 publishing of his book “Es wird durchgeblüht!” („It must be flowered  through!“)   

I can imagine that Gertrude Jekyll (born 1843 in London) and Foerster would have understood each other beautifully. “If something is worth to be done, it is worth to be done well” was Getrude’s philosophy, and she was it who put gardening back into the rank of Fine Arts.  

Foerster’s garden in Bornim is separated into different sections after the English role model: spring path, natural garden, autumn borders, rock garden of seven (!) seasons etc. The heart of the garden is a “sunken garden” with a waterbasin planted with water lilies. 

All overall spilling abundance of plants and stern geometry, architectonical and natural principles of design are completing each other. The different levels allow to look very attentively at the plants and to look from above on to the sea of flowers of perennials, shrubs and grasses. 

Visitors are welcomed. The garden and the house are under protection of a country’s historical heritage since 1982, and  since 1998 a vast reconstruction of the sunken garden, the spring path, the rock garden and the autumn path was done.

If you come to Potsdam and love gardens, I recommend you to take the short drive to Bornim!

And you mightl agree with me that Karl Foerster remarked so rightly: 

“Search – and you will find (together with that; my words) something quite different !”      

I'm Grateful for Role Models!

(Joanna Lumley)

I found a wonderful blog: "Advanced Style"  http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/  which I want to share with you.
I see on many blogs that women of a certain age have problems with their concept of self when they get older.
Of course nobody is utterly thrilled when looking into the mirror in that awful sunlight in March, only to find that the neck is suddenly covered with tiny little wrinkles -
(By the way: here I can offer you three solutions:
1. I always carry a very little creme pot with me and put on a tiny dot every four hours - that's as long as the 'pump up' effect works
2. I sometimes wear a beautiful scarf (something I hated before, because it makes me nervous, even if Hermés or Bulgari is written on it)
3. I read Nora Ephrim's hilarious book "I feel bad about my neck", laugh and don't mind so much)
Not for me the "I-promise-you-the-fountain-of-youth"-creme for 600 Euro - I use Nivea, keep fit, brush my skin, eat not too big portions - and do all the things recommended in the wonderful book: "Look Younger - Live Longer" by Gayelord Hauser - and believe me: there is nothing new under the sun: he wrote it in 1950!
20 - 30% of the way you get older is predetermined by your genes. Of course it is a huge privilege when you had not to do too much physically hard work, have a good health (and care for it) and serenity, have never been made redundant, have a harmonious partnership and be grateful for all that.
Beside these aforementioned important things there are other secrets for staying young, (because I know a lot of women in the same social conditions who don't):
- Be curious about Life (Think: "He who lives for himself alone lives for the meanest mortal known")
- Be interesting
- Laugh (and cry)
- Be sexy (I mean the feeling - not the outward appearance - and believe me: one can tell the difference!)
- Wear colours (Yes! You can! Don't let Bobbi Brown tell you you should wear beige, brown and pastel)
- Don't stay too much in a rut or on the safe side - be bold and daring, you are as important as anybody else
- Love young people, love old people, love life - and tell people about it!
- Be grateful and forgiving
- Love!
And don't fix on your wrinkles or your age on the passport - I compare it to being 16: you thought the whole world would look at a pimple (though people had other things to care for - preferably themselves) -and  now we seem to change that fixation for the belief that everybody notices our wrinkles or muffin top...
My photographs on facebook.com/britta.huegel (except one) are not older than a year.

                                                             

No Botox, no surgery, turning silver slowly and loving it - though good illumination definitely is welcome :-)
Role models I had even when I was very young: Colette, Elisabeth Flickenschildt, Ninon de Lenclos, to name a few.
So I am utterly happy to discover that there are many, many more around:
just cast a glance at http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/ !!

The Quickest Facelift Is A Smile

You might know my opinion about facelifts and Botox: I'm against it. Fullstop. 

But that is not the theme I want to write about today - I just thought that the headline "Haughty Faces" might not be that attractive :-) 

The older I grow the less tolerant I get to endure haughty faces. It's bad when you meet them in the street. Very often they belong to very young women, who, dressed to the nines, are unsure and fight back any possible advances that they actually want so much. 

Then there are "famous" people. Here I show you one of Germany's most famous hairdressers. 

                   

He is doing the hair of Chancellor Angela Merkel - if that is a recommendation. He has been on TV recently - but I don't know why he is looking at us like this. 

I mean: he is a hairdresser - and not the Queen of Sheba? 

And here you see the poster I see when walking past the Russian ticket office. 

This is a conductor - whom I don't know, but he might be quite famous. 

Be it as it may - if he looks at me like that I would prefer not to make his aquaintance. 

There is an American psychologist, Dr. Wayne Dyer, who suggests that, if you see such a face at the breakfast table, over the long run you will become clinically depressed. I would. 

And now let me show you the worst case: shop window dummies.    

     

What were they thinking of when they created these??? 

Do they think that I will buy anything these - well: DUMMIES - are wearing? ? 

You bet - I don't!                                         

Comments - Vanishing into Blogger's blue, blue Sky?

Jinksy said...

Blogger has just lost my comment! I shall resort to an email!!!

Oh dear, oh dear - how often in the last weeks have  I myself written that (IF there was an email-adress), or have given up after writing an (hopefully) emphatic comment - witty and pretty :-) - only to see it vanish in the haze, and that damned (sorry) sign comming up: Ooops - something happened (or words like that, I was too furious to remember them...) It started when Blogspot made new gadgets and I could not enter at all - for days - everytime they asked me for the password to my Google account - and, though knowing I was absolutely correct (having it written down) - I thought: Well, then I will change it.
A lot of correspondence went to and fro - like correspondence with -mmmh, who is the maddest madman of all times being? 
"Utterly absurd" is the nicest word I can find for it - because the damned (sorry) answering machine of course couldn't even understand the problem!
A student in Germany helped me - I changed from Chrome to Firefox - then it worked most of the time, but not always - especially risky are comments to The Hostess of the Humble Bungalow, The Idiot Gardener and Annie. If I think of it I get cunny: copy my w&p-comment and laugh triumphantly when Google starts to heave its "Ooops!" - because I can try it again, on Chrome maybe, or Firefox - whatsoever.
And now I have to read that some of you have the problem to enter comments on my blog - see dear Penny's comment above.  
I say!  
We are not amused!
Do any of you ingenious bloggers can offer an advice? What is happening? Do you have the same problem too? What shall - and can -  I do??