Vice versa

Today: everything done in another way. Breaking the routine. Strong coffee first thing in the morning instead of tea, rolls instead of porridge, no grapefruit and the egg can wait. Still in my nightie, and yes: it is later than usual, because yesterday evening I cooked dinner for friends. We sat long on the balcony, so sweet and warm the air, and raised the first Pimm's No. 1 of this summer to the stars above. 

Too many Churches...

It might be the churches.
Too many of them - in a town that is allowed to call itself city, because they counted (very generously) more than 100 000 inhabitants.
Hildesheim is a Catholic diaspora. In Mainz, where I studied, I became aquainted with Catholicism in the form of "laissez faire" (we call it: To let five be an even number) - Hans' aunt Maria, for example, surprised me by saying laughingly: "Who often goes on a pilgrimage will seldom become sacred" (that in the matchless dialect of Mainz). And I, coming from the Evangelic Church of Bremen, indulged in the sheer sensuality of Catholicism in Bavaria: gold and jewels in abundance, Saints for every wish and woe, relics and baroque splendour and frankincense.
Hildesheim has a strange form of Catholicism, Puritan almost - stern, rigorous, austere.
But the churches are beautiful.
Take St. Godehard - the Basilica, which belongs to the biggest buildings in the Romanesque style of Northern Germany, stands on a little hill near the island where our house is.  

Godehard was Bishop of Hildesheim from 1022 to 1038 - an art-lover, church-builder and adherent of the reform of Cluny. On June 16, 1133 A.D., Bishop Bernhard laid the foundation-stone of the St.Godehard Church.
I will spare you the many 'Strokes of Fate' - and prefer showing you some pictures of this really beautiful church: the lucidity of its architecture, the structural abundance of the column capitals and the cube and scaly friezes.

The more than life-sized figure of St. Godehard is from 1450. The huge wheel chandelier over the altar was a present of Mary, the last Queen of Hanover, 1864. 

By the way: the Basilica is more idyllic than you might have thought from the first glance above: 

And the vicarage always reminds me of Jane Austen: 

As you know, I take wisdom and solace from where I can find it - so maybe the lighting of a candle and for sure all the good wishes and prayers from friends have helped:

we are very grateful that Hans, being an athletical man, recovers so well that maybe he might leave the Rehab center on coming Friday - and be finally in our flat in Berlin. 

"Our house...in the middle of our street..."

These weeks I had time to live in our house again.

Here we have lived as a tiny family: father, mother son - for 19 years. Longest time of my life in one place.

Our house was built in 1902. It lies in one of the best residential areas in Hildesheim: a little (half-) island, surrounded on one side by the river 'Innerste' and the 'Kalenberger Graben' on the other side. We have streets that are called "Great Venice" and 'Little Venice' - which says all.

The whole street was the result of an architectural contest - and shows some of the very few buildings that survived the war. 

Six years after we had bought it, the complete street was put under "protection of historical buildings and monuments" - which was not always a joy for us, because I had a lot of 'interesting discussions' with the curator of monuments - an out-and-outer for others (in his house of the 17th century he pulled inside down every wall - but at this point, dear reader, Husband would roll his eyes and say: "Have you to keep on and on?" Eh - YES ).
On the photo below the left one is our house: around the windows in the shade you might guess the yellow sandstone I was not allowed either to let paint or sandblast(!). Three floors, every room about 4m high, stucco and beautiful carved doors:  one big flat on knee-high ground-floor (175 qm where we lived, now let), 4 little flats (Hans' library-and working-flat is on the first floor, 3 others are let). The four streets of rows of houses form a square full of gardens. 

These are houses around us (to be honest: I'm not a big fan of wooden framework) :

On the other side lives the Lord Mayor of Hildesheim:

We left Hildesheim almost 8 years ago, and now I asked myself: "Why did we leave?"  
Son went to study Law at the University in Freiburg. Hans and I went first to Hamburg, then moved to Berlin - he always working at the University of Hildesheim, commuting, me working in Hamburg, and now trying to skive off to free-lancing translation and writing in Berlin. 
I think I found an answer to: Why did we leave? 
(to be continued :-)

"Do as the Sundial - count only the happy hours"

This quote was written ump-teen times into friendship books in scrawly pupil's writing.

Husband is recovering, in tiny steps, and we are thankful.

I have not much access to the Internet at the moment, so I could not read the post which 'Pondside' mentioned (I might have got it all wrong) - but it seems that 'Friko' remarked about bloggers who always write about their happy life instead of showing 'life as it is'. 

First: look at the 'Idiot Gardener' - he uses the hyperbole, exaggerating misfortune and crudeness to make you laugh. 

Second: as I posted about our misfortune to inform you why I can't comment on your blogs I hope I was not wallowing in self-pity. 

Because I am convinced that seeing the world negative (in their eyes = Realism - being positive they call "seeing life through rose-tinted glasses", meaning daftness) is not an expression of 'thinking' and 'being realistic'. In (modern) literature awful unhappiness even seems to be a synonym for being ART. (I am partaking in a Literary circle in Berlin - and every book we read is more depressing than the one before). 

I like to be entertained and amused, superficial as this might seems to the gloomy people without the trace of a smile on their faces - life is so hard! I can't grasp it: they have friends, shelter, nourishment and so on - but nineteen out of twenty look discontent and disgusted.  

I found out that even in the eye of the cyclone I am able to notice a bit of beauty: the shrill chasing of the swallows, the soft smell of the sweet peas, the sun on my skin. Though I feel pain or grief I still have a part of the Tao or God in my soul which thankfully notices that Life as a whole is a miracle and beautiful. 

To notice this, I think, is a sort of discipline that one can learn. 

Lamenting, moaning, complaining - in short: the full monty - can be an unhealthy addiction (the body produces adrenalin in doing so - you give yourself a kick to which you really can get addicted). 

I don't speak of denying pain or sorrow. They exist, and one has every right to be unhappy and full of anxiety. But there are people - who are not even afflicted - who wallow in 'Think what might have happened!' (on the first day after Husband's accident one woman told me -well-meaning, of course - that I might claim a wheelchair for Husband! She also knew that all the hard-working doctors were fools, doing everything wrong, the nurses were lazy, the social system is going down the trubes, and that other people had experienced REAL misfortune (which she depicted in a litany of heard-of gruesome pictures). 

After that I almost needed a hospital bed too :-) 

Such negative people are often also very rude in other situations - they "call a spade a spade" - well, well, well... 

Now give me my rose-tinted sun-glasses again!  

Here and now I want to thank our lot of lovely, helpful, wonderful friends and acquaintances, want to thank you for your support: we are very, very grateful for that! 

"If You Want to Make God Laugh, ...

... Tell Him Your Plans."
Now: I don't think this quote is a very witty one - it seems to insinuate that a cruel God is sabotaging deliberately your plans, and that is not what I believe.
Why I choose the quote nevertheless?
I wrote in my last post about the 'Dolce far niente' that I wanted to enjoy.
I did - exactly till half past four on Wednesday afternoon.
Then my mobile rung and a woman asked: "Are you Mrs. Hügel?"
"Yes", I answered, "and who are you?"
It was the doctor from a hospital in Hildesheim, who informed me in a very kind and sensible way, that - vital functions all ok - my husband had a severe bicycle accident in Hildesheim, where he works at the university.
I sat in the train as quick as I could (very quick!) and rushed in two hours there.
We have been quite lucky under the circumstances - if one can call many broken bones luck.
Yesterday we could celebrate Husband's birthday - he still being in intensive care unit - and we are both thankful that he can think, speak, see, hear, spine and all joints are ok.
Now I will spend a lot of time in Hildesheim (without Internet in the house, but I will find a way - but don't be cross that I cannot comment your posts as quick as I want to) - hopping to Berlin now and then, till he is healthy again to come to Berlin.
It will take time.

Have a seat!

Isn't it nice that you don't have to be a V.I.P. but only a normal, though very tired guest of the Café Tambosi in Munich to be offered these comfortable seats?
I will sit down a bit, the Hofgarten at the back of the Cafè, (of course I will write about it on gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com)

with a view on the Feldherrenhalle and the Theatinerkirche:

You can see some more photos of Munich at burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com (like a good cappuccino always covered with a poem) - but here, I fear, you have to wait a while. It is so comfortable! 
And I have to think a bit about blogging on three blogs, and its effects on 'real work'.
The only thing I will do the next days is stirring my coffee (yes, some more sugar, please!),
and enjoy (already back in Berlin) the
                                                  Dolce far niente. 

Just beautiful!

"Ah .. umm ... so-so" - one glance out of the window and you know it is -
WHAT? The first day of SUMMER?? June?? You bet!
13°C in the morning, but the radio cheers us with the promise that it will get up to 15°.
Mmmh.
Might be a golden opportunity to show you the two books I found in London, and make a cuppa and thumb through a bit.
At Foyles, of course, I found them. (As with migrating birds the way to that bookshop is engraved into my brain's navigation system. Kind of magnetism. I went there oh so often - and you are welcome to talk of e-books and clouds and whatsoever: I love to see books presented on shelves, love them humming at me - love to feel them, their sort of paper, their heaviness).
And this year there were two books I always came back to:
"London, You're Beautiful. An Artists Year" by David Gentleman is really - beautiful!

Drawings and sketches as I like them - month by month, and interesting little texts.

I draw myself a bit, because I think a sketch sometimes gets more to the gist then a photo (yes, in my next life I will re-appear as a Geisha: I can do all these Arts a little bit in a good amateurish way: draw, write, sing and so on, whatever is required in that profession - come to think of it I might be a typical "Höhere Tochter", a German term for young Ladies from the Upper Class in the last(!) century). 

So the second book I bought that had caught my eye by it's design AND its content is on a subject that always fascinates me: "The Perfectly Imperfect Home" by Deborah Needleman. 

 Decoration - with the promise of "The perfectly Imperfect" - my motto - and again light sketches the way I love:

Not "Art" - just "witty and pretty".
"Any house or room remembered with pleasure has the look of being loved by those who live in it",
said Billy Baldwin.
And he is right. Today, I think, I'll spend quite a lot of time in our home.
Ah, and don't forget: switch the light on - that makes even a dark 1. June look bright :-)