Sunny day in Cannstatt

Sunday was such a wonderful, sunny day, I had to walk around enjoying the sun and Stuttgart. I chose to go to Cannstatt, across river Neckar, an old town from roman times. In all the years I have been living in Stuttgart, I hardly ever went to Cannstatt. What a shame, it's such a beautiful little oldtown!
I discovered the oldest house in all of Stuttgart, from 1463 - it was love at first sight! The house of the Beguines is so beautiful, and rebuilt wonderfully. Strolling around the old town and discovering all those buildings and squares was fun, indeed.
And of course, I met old friends again!
I decided to walk back to Stuttgart center through the park, past the famous festival at Wasen, the zoo, Schloss Rosenstein, beer garden, Planetarium, an african party, and drove back home to Vaihingen from main station, after a long visit in the station bookstore (run by another friend). It was a perfect autumn sunday!

Old friends

Back in Stuttgart on Friday evening, I went to the exhibition Tina had invited me to. Her pictures had changed quite a bit, showing some pieces I had only seen in her husband Ernho's works before. Strange.
It was a good and successful vernissage at Mieterverein, she sold a few pictures. And I met so many old friends, incredible! You can't help it in a town like Stuttgart - totally unlike huge Berlin.
Saturday, Anna and I went to the fleamarket at Vaihingen university, and were back home just in time for my sister Ulrike and her husband Thomy, who had a short break at our place on their way from Allgäu back home to Düsseldorf.
In the afternoon, I met Tina again, and we strolled around the fleamarket once more. Beautiful weather, but not as beautiful nicknack to buy. She got a jacket, though. At least something!

Two birthdays and a funeral

September 25th is a great day to be born. It's Alex's birthday (born 1980), and our former neighbour's son as well, yesterday. Welcome to the world, Janne Leonhard!
Have a glimpse onto the picture we took of Alex on his birthday in 2006. Does he look two years older - and wiser?
We had to get up very early, at 5 am, to sing a birthday song and eat the delicious chocolate and cherry cake Anna and Volker had made. Then Alex took Anna to the airport: she had to go to court in Leipzig, as representative of the state of Baden-Württemberg. She won the case (of course).
In the evening, Annelie came with lots of presents and some beautiful autumn flowers, and we had some pumpkin stew together Alex and Annelie cooked for us, with a glass of champagne on Alex, his birthday, his exam, and the new job at Stuttgart university, doing research on longtime archiving (sic!).
Friday was not as pleasant. A collegue and boss of mine, from more than twenty years ago at IG Druck und Papier, Sepp Rasper, had died, and I joined my friends and collegues from ver.di to go to the funeral in Neu-Ulm. So many collegues came from all over Germany, to say a last goodbye. What a sad reason to meet those old friends again.
I was glad I was in Stuttgart, though, so I had a chance to join the funeral. Before leaving Ulm, I had a glass of Goldochsenbräu on Sepp, the beer he loved most. Cheers, Sepp, and thank you for everything!

Dancing around the world

Whilst I'm stuck in Stuttgart for these holidays, Matt quit his job to travel and dance around the world. Wonderful idea, and marvellous videos. More on his website and here.

You scored as Cultural Creative

On couchsurfing forum "50+ Travellers", we started checking a quiz on worldviews.
Most of us (almost all of us) scored as "cultural creative", meaning:
"Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational."
My score was a bit weird, since I scored
Cultural Creative 100%, Postmodernist 100%, Idealist 100%,
Existentialist 75%,
Modernist 50%, Materialist 50%, Romanticist 50%,
Fundamentalist 25%.
"Postmodernist: Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis."
"Idealist: Idealism centers around the belief that we are moving towards something greater. An odd mix of evolutionist and spiritualist, you see the divine within ourselves, waiting to emerge over time. Many religious traditions express how the divine spirit lost its identity, thus creating our world of turmoil, but in time it will find itself and all things will again become one."
Yup, that's me.
What is your worldview?
P.S. The pic shows the park surrounding Stuttgart University in the center, where I studied and worked 30 years ago.

Furniture on a bargain

Autumn is here, and with it the annual autumn fleamarket in Stuttgart center. Anna and I managed to convince Volker to come with us downtown to have a stroll and a look and maybe find something nice and cheap.
We did! It was Volker we got something!
A wonderful old and remarkably well kept arm chair, just like the one he had wanted to buy since many weeks. For almost nothing - only 25 Euro! The first piece of furniture for the library he means to have as soon as they find a house/flat with a garden. And a fireplace.
Yes, Anna and Volker are looking for a place to stay with their three cats and most likely dogs as well. Our old little house is getting small for all of us.

Travellers

Anna and Volker came back last night from a great vacation in Denmark (the country of Europe's happiest people according to sicientific research and common sense), and a few hours later (which Anna spent sleeping on her couch, accompanied by her sweet cat Felix who had missed her so much), my sister Ulrike and her husband Thomy arrived from Düsseldorf, stopping for a night and some talks with us.
We sat in the kitchen for hours, sharing the latest family news. Helen and Felix are happy with their new jobs after having finished school this year, so is Cathy, working at the Karstadt bookshop, and - biggest surprise: her son Marius is allowed to go to a boarding school in Mönchen-Gladbach, with specially trained teachers and psychologists, to help overcome the problems some children have with public schools. Marius suffers from attention deficit disorder (ADD) since many years, and he's super intelligent, but the average school is not able to cope with his desease and the problems it causes.
As yet, there's no room for him to stay the week. It takes him an hour to get to the new school from their home in Lierenfeld, and back as well, but he loves it already. He even started taking riding lessons. Go figure!

Lazy days

Cold outside, this is autumn for sure. So I'm staying inside my cozy home, four cats around me, with some new books (Leena Lehtolainen 8th with finnish police inspector Maria Kallio), and a glass of red wine (Barcelino form Lidl - bad shop, but good wine on a bargain). Some food shopping and cooking in between, and from time to time logging into the web to check for friends and places to visit during the next few weeks of vacation.
But now I've been lazy enough, and will go downtown to meet Tina who's checking into spanish lessons at VHS, and do some sightseeing in general. Places tend to change when you're away.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn...

...good and ill together. Shakespeare, of course.
This quote was the result of a quiz I took today. More?
"You are very wise, and take the bad with the good. This shows you are optimistic, and understand the way of the world. Great things may come your way!"
I hope they will! :)

Stuttgart on a Sunday in September

I left Berlin finding there are lots of events and parties this month I'm gonna miss: a house (or rather yard and garden) party in Crellestraße, Jana's "25 years of living in Berlin" party, the usual October 3rd open air festival (well, I hardly ever went, anyway), CS meeting in Schöneberg, "Berlin Winter Camp" meeting work group, to name just a few.
But then again, Stuttgart will be filled with events, too. Theatre, opera, jazz season started this weekend, European heritage day in Germany saw opened archaeological sites in Stuttgart, too, and this years's official german opening was celebrated in Esslingen.
Small cities like Stuttgart have lots of advantages, I noticed: small center, everything is in walking distance, the surrounding towns are just 30 minutes by public transport, if that, and you meet lots of people you know all the time.
I went downtown around noon, and was back by 8 pm. What a lovely time I had in between!
Some guided tours at open monuments (the old castle, main church Stiftskirche, frame work house at Webergasse), exhibitions at "Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen" (about changing cities: Riga, Vilnius, Skopje...) and Galerie Königsblau (Renata Tumarova), espresso at "Cafe Künstlerbund", and meeting two friends, by chance: Tina (close to one of her favourite galleries, no wonder), and Hermann Abmayr - a collegue I run into every second year since almost thirty years now. And we always enjoy the timne we spend together, talking about our projects, and about our lifes since the last meeting.
Actually, this time we met twice: once in "Landesmuseum" and once waiting for "La graine et le mulet" to start. Original version, of course. Wonderful movie! I was happy I finally made it!

Too tired

Saturday, I woke up early, and after some turkish moccas was ready to get the last tasks done before leaving by train to Stuttgart main station. Emil and I arrived at our second (or first?) home around 4 pm. - time enough to do some food shopping in the afternoon and go to "Art Alarm" gallery opening in the evening. Steffen Osvath and Tina were waiting for phone calls to meet somewhere in the crowd.
I was too tired, though, and decided to stay at home, rest a bit, and watch "The last night of the proms" around midnight. No chance - I fell fast asleep before it started.
Sigh.
Maybe today, I'll do better. Lots of events waiting for me downtown.

First day of my vacation - first day of autumn

These last days have been tough with lots of work and exercises and getting the flat ready for autumn. Just in time, since temperatures dropped a lot tonight, and it's cold outside.
Emil and I will be going to even colder and rainy Stuttgart tomorrow morning to catsit whilst Anna and Volker are enjoying the northsea coast in Denmark, with long walks in the sun and relaxing at the fireplace or in the sauna, and Alex will be working in Silicon Valley.
Lots of events waiting for me there, and lots of events and meetings with interesting people and newly found friends I should have written about. Hopefully later...

Happy Ramadan!

This morning, when waiting for the bus, I found this announcement in the turkish shop at the busstop. So it's ramadan again! Love and peace to you all!
These last days, I couldn't do much but try to get well soon. As always in autumn, a cold took over. No peace demonstrations on September 1st, no movie "La graine et le mulet", no work. Instead, I stayed at home, sipping tea, trying to get well soon.
Emil loved it! ;)

Decent work - decent life!

All over the world, workers and their families suffer, because working conditions are poor, inhuman, and indecent. Employers often care about their money, but hardly abour their workers, and their working conditions, wages, and rights.
As part of the "Decent Work - Decent Life" campaign, the Call to Action for Decent Work was launched at the ILO forum on a fair globalisation in October 2007, in Lisbon: an internationl petition which urges governments to ratify and implement the ILO’s standards and to put decent work at the heart of their policy-making.
In the following months signatures have been collected on paper and online - the aim is to reach the biggest number of signatures possible. I signed, too!
On the World Day for Decent Work (7 October 2008) the Call to Action will be presented to the highest EU political representatives in Brussels. At the end of the year the Call to Action will be presented to development aid donors attending the International Conference on Financing for Development in Doha (29 November- 2 December 2008).
You want to support our goal? See here how you can help!