The Erbacher Hof in the Grebenstrasse just behind the cathedral is a classic example of the traditional Mainz winebar.Chronologically gifted customer base (we tend to drop the median age by a couple of years and that doesn't happen very often these days), limited menu with the standard stuff (Fleischwurst, Handkäs mit Musik, Spundekäs), local and Rheingau wines, beer in bottles, long scrubbed wooden tables.
The place clears in stages during the evening with a phased exodus as curfew approaches for the various old folks' homes. ( I kid you not)
And you'll rarely have a table to yourself. You either join someone at theirs or they'll join you and start chatting.
"Ei, wo kimmst denn her" ("So where do you live, then?")
Except for the folks from across the river.
If someone pops their head around the door, doesn't see an empty table and leaves, the oldies nod knowingly to each other.
"Wissbadener", they say.
A bit stuck up. They wouldn't join you at your table.
Not like the Meenzer.
Tempted to crop this more and run a competition.
It's the patterned brickwork under the shore-side arch of the Theodore-Heuss bridge linking Mainz and Wiesbaden
"Ah, I'm so glad that you are promoting women's businesses and interests", wrote Kate a while back when I blogged Gloria et Odile.She'll be well pleased with this one, then,This is Doris Urban, who is/was a teacher in real life and has a tiny flower shop behind a gate to an alleyway off the main road in Gonsenheim, one of the notier (as in $/€/£ notier) suburbs of Mainz.She only opens a couple of days a week and does fine flower bunches (that don't droop after a few hours), has larger plants, such as hydrangeas for the terrace and a good range of terracotta pots from Impruneta in Tuscany.
And she's pretty cool, too.
I'm not sure what people think when they design information panels.Do they think that everyone's 6'4" (like me)
At least they could provide a ladder.
On second thoughts, that's probably not a good idea....
This was easier than I thought.And it's good discipline, too.Thanks to Meg and Ben for posting for me while I've been out of range.
And thanks for everyone for dropping by.
Now I think I'll I'll head down the the Spiegel wine bar in the Augustinerstrasse (where this was taken) for a celebratory drop of Riesling..
Magnify this 20 times and you've got an idea of how many blossoms our white clematis has.
It must like it here.
It just gets the water that the heavens bring and lives in well-draining clay soil.
Undemanding, as they say.
My kind of plant.
During the gravitational incident a few weeks back, my field of view on the trip to the clinic was straight up through the glass vent in the roof of the ambulance.And when I saw this, I said"And now we go left and left again and left again at the lights and then right into the clinic'And the paramedic said "Huh?" and increased the flow of oxygen.How can people not notice stuff like this?
They must be blind.
Cistus or Rock RoseWikipedia says "They have showy 5-petaled flowers ranging from white to purple and dark pink, in a few species with a conspicuous dark red spot at the base of each petal"That'd be ours, thenIt's a beauty. The petals remind me of crushed silk.And I learned a new word today
Thermophilous.
Requiring open, sunny places.
That's my sort of word.
.. falling off a log.The Lerchenberg Woods
Mainz cathedral and the epitome of evil.
So you'd think if you heard the discussion about the proposed new runway at Frankfurt airport.
There's going to be a TENFOLD increase in traffic
We'll all go deaf.
Despite the fact that the airport was there when we moved here (5 years ago), WE HAD NO IDEA.
Yeah right.
Declaration of financial interest:
When I was still working for the IT subsidiary in the Lufthansa Group, we'd watch the aircraft passing overhead and - if it was one of our customers - we'd go "Ka-ching" and work out how much we'd earned in passenger processing fees for the flight.
And I have shares.
In 1978, our section had a brand-new house and about an inch of topsoil on it.Northing else.
No plants. No birds. Nothing.So we started planting.
One of them was this one
Not being too clued up on gardening back then, we bought fairly indiscriminately.
Mum and Dad were over a couple of years later in very early spring - not a sign of flowers yet - and Dad - from a long lineage of plantsmen - said "I've always liked the idea of a white garden"
White?
"Well, how about this one?"
"That'll be white", he said.
Was too.
This is a Wasserhäusche. The diminutive form of "Water House", "water" being the euphemism for alcoholic beveragesOr a Trinkhalle. "Drinking hall"Even the euphemistic nomenclature sounds a bit dire.
You can buy bus tickets, newspapers, lottery tickets, cigarettes. And booze.
From early in the morning until late at night.
Like really early in the morning.
The really sad folk turn up at 7 and they're lurching by 9.
But it does provide a community need, I guess.
Not necessarily for me, though..
Looking at the Second Division.
Bugger.
Here's Lloyd Harwood's quite wonderful "The Magi wives go shopping"Bought it last December at Red Gallery in Nelson, the only place in the world that sells Meg's scarves.
Never did get to meet Lloyd, although he was at the vernissage.Which had excellent drinks and nibbles.
I think they might have distracted me.....
Or Heilige Drei Könige, as it's known over here.
There's quite a cool tradition associated with this.
The "Sternsinger" - Star Singers, after the star that the Magi followed - are kids from the local parish who go from house to house by invitation and sing, recite a poem or say a prayer and then mark the lintel or the door with C+M+B and the year with consecrated chalk.
Which stands for both Christus mansionem benedicat - Christ, bless this house - and Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, the Magi .Cool, eh? Oder Cool, nicht wahr?Ou Cool, n'est pas?
Disclaimer: I know it's out of season, but I didn't want to wait another 7 months...
If it wasn't so pretty, it'd be a weed around our place...
This sounds like an escapee from over there.It supposedly tells you all you need to know about the exact location of gas/water/power lines in the immediate vicinity.
Something like - "3 steps to the right, one forward, dig veeeeery carefully.."
But don't ask me...
Before I forget - Meg and Ben in Nelson are running this place for a few days. Many thanks.
But I'm a bit worried about what's going to happen over at YMBFA
If Meg has her way, it's going to turn into a cesspit of Andy Williams, Mitch Miller and Barry Manilow .
I'd rather Ben was in control over there, I think...
A pretty typical sight on the Rhine.
You've got space on the quarterdeck - take the car along, just in case you need it...
B
ought one of these GPS navigation thingies the other dayPrimarily in the interests of marital harmony...Words have been exchanged in the past.Road maps have exited the car in an expeditious manner via the window.This one is good, though.Good mapping software, easy to use.Reminds you when you're over the speed limitJust wish it didn't have a female voice, though.I know what's going to happen if I get ticketed after she's warned me."I told you to drive slower. See what happens when you don't listen to me" Repeat ad nauseum.A bloke would just shrug.Maybe I can get a software update...
..we're just a couple of altar stones dedicated to Mithras, the invincible sun god.Secundinius Amantius, logistics officer of the XXII Legion, dedicated us in around the second century AD.And we'll still be here when your chains rusted and your saddle's rotted.
Not long now....
Not happy days around here.Mainz 05 has to win their last two games (which might actually include the requirement to score goals, something for they haven't shown much aptitude in recent weeks) and everyone else lurking at the bottom of the table has to lose.Otherwise they'll be relegated to the 2nd Division.
Miracles do happen.
But it doesn't look too good...
Gloria Hasse (left) runs an excellent ceramics gallery from her home near Darmstadt, which is waaay out of my authorised reporting zone, so I shouldn't really even be mentioning it.But her friend, Odile Landragin, (right) has a wonderful herb and aromatics garden right in the middle of Mainz-Gonsenheim and once a year, they get together and present
Keramikum im Grünen - a play on the word "Grünen" which can mean "in the country" as well as "green".Walk along the road and you'll just see a standard town-centre Gonsenheim house - 2 storied, 2 or 3 windows wide and a narrow driveway separating it from the neighbouring 2 storied, 2 or 3 windows wide, narrow driveway house.But open the gate and walk through a courtyard that's lined with herbs and you'll find a 2000 m2 garden that wends its way past trees and hedges and is packed with almost every herbs and aromatic you can imagine.
The works from Gloria's artists are spread around the garden and in one of the greenhouses among the plants and it's a really good day out.
Not the sort of thing that you'll find at PlantWorld or Target or whatever the Big Boxes are called in your neck of the woods...
This says
"You can do handstands for all I care - no card, no ciggies"
I gave up smoking 30-odd years ago, so I'm not really up to speed on what they cost or how one buys them these days.What I do know, however, is that cigarette vending machines used to be coin-operated (back in my active days, they'd take a 5p coin from the UK - worth about 20 Pfennig - for a 1 Deutschmark coin....) and they're not anymore.In a clever move to try and prevent kids smoking (try and prevent kids smoking - yeah, right), they can only be operated with a debit/cash card issued by a bank.Which means that the person operating the machine has to be at least 16.
Now, I'm sure they won't try to circumvent the procedure by passing on the goods to kiddies.
Of COURSE, they won't.
Bit (crikey - if THAT's not an understatement...) of controversy over here regarding the Bush administration's plans for a missile defence system with tracking radar and interceptors based in Eastern Europe.
The left-leaning SPD junior coalition partner sees no need, the centre-right senior coalition partner is going "Weeeell, but it has to be a NATO decision" and the general perception being that the friends across the pond are trying to drive a wedge through the EU by courting Poland and the Czech Republic.
Someone in Mainz has a better idea.
Balloons.
On strings.
Sounds OK to me...
They call it the innovative stylish car from Daimler-Chrysler.It's pretty much the Edsel of the 90s and cost the CEO (along with a couple of other disasters) his job.But it's a cool concept. 2 seater, agile, park anywhere, cheap (ish)Shame they've only sold a handful.Reminds me of a story that my uncle (used to do consultancy for Boeing Vertol and Lycoming after he retired from the RAF as Group Captain) told me.The marketing people at Fokker, a Dutch aircraft manufacturer, did some analysis and said "Look, there's a gap in the market for a 65-passenger twin jet. Let's build one"And build one they did. And 2. And 3.And then it slowly dawned on them why there was a market gap for 65-passenger twin jets.No-one wanted a 65-passenger twin jet.In 20 years, they sold around 200.Boeing launched the 737 at about the same time and sold 6000. And counting
Germany's a pretty organised place. More rules and regulations than you can shake a stick at. (At which you can shake a stick...? Kate?)And many of which you can ignore with minimal risk of getting on the wrong side of the law.But the car registration process is pretty cool.To register your car, you need your ID card (which has your address) and confirmation from a car insurer that you've got coverage.(For us foreigners, it's passport PLUS a certificate from the city council that you've been behaving)Then they take your road tax for a year and give you your license plates with stickers showing that it's registered (the bottom one) and the month that the tech inspection is due (August 2007 for me)And if you don't pay your road tax later on, they'll come round and scrape off your tax disc.And if you cancel your insurance, they'll ask you for proof of a new insurance or they'll - yep, come round and scrape off your tax disc.
Because they know where you live.
The first 1, 2 or 3 digits show where your car's registered - MZ is Mainz, F is Frankfurt, WI is Wiesbaden ans so on.As from there, it's a random combination of 1 or 2 alpha and 1 to 4 numerics.Unless you want vanity plates, which are sort-of available.Car dealers will do the registration for you and they just love getting their mates at the registration office to arrange meaningful combinations.Like MZ-JB-1948Or MZ-JB-0748.Which I think is sooo naff and you have to instruct them not to.And they look all disappointed.Mrs B's niece is mega-naff in this respect, thoughShe wanted IG-0277.Her Mum filled out the documents and wrote the "I" so that it looked like a "J" (the way school kids learned in the 1950s)And that's what she got - JG-0277.I did suggest a name change via deed poll, but got black looks.It was worth it, though. (Heh, heh!)
offe
We have 3 tree peonies in the garden - a double purple, this single yellow and one of unknown form and colour.Someone pruned it back a few years ago (RTFM - no, it wasn't me for a change) at which it appears to have taken offense.
Not flowering, for example.
But this chappy more than makes up for it.
Depending on where you're from, it'sGreen herb sauce
Sauce verte
Salsa verde
Around here, its dialectic pronunciation is Grie Soß. Claimed by those folks over in Frankfurt, actually, but we'll ignore that.
We usually make our own, but it's early days and we were a bit short on a couple of ingredients.
Which are
Parsley
Chives
Sorrel
Cress
Borage
Pimpinelle
Chervil
And you can also add or substitute
Estragon
Lemon balm
Dill
We were only missing cress and borage, actually, but we bought a pack from Michael and Petra Stein, our local market gardeners and loaded it up with stuff from the garden.
Then you pop it in a blender with some sour cream, creme fraiche and buttermilk, let it rip for a bit and dollop it over some new potatoes and boiled eggs.
Or a piece of panfried scrod.
Or a chicken breast, wrapped in sage and pancetta and then barbecued.
Or asparagus
Nice glass of Saumur always goes down a treat, though...
Welcome to Anywhereville.
With 2 exceptions, these pictures are within a 5 minute walk of each other.
And 4 are right next to each other.
I kid you not
.
There's a fairly heated debate running at the moment about the pervasiveness of Denglisch (Deutsch- English) in German life.
It's not so much the hipness that rankles a lot of people (The 40+ crowd, as it turns out to no-one's real surprise) - it's the inane use of the language.
Some clued-up language students did a survey and documented that many people - if they had a clue what was going on - totally misinterpreted the text.
"Come in and find out", for example.
The now-defunct advertising slogan for a cosmetics retail chain that had a lot of people thinking they should go in and leave again. Immediately.
They wore out about 500 revolving doors before they figured it out.
And in corporate life, you can play Bullshit Bingo at most any meeting. Even if it's being conducted German.
Gebenchmarked. Gebrainstormt.
Prefix any Anglo-Saxon buzzword with a "ge", tag a "t" or an "ed as a suffix and you're away.
And a warm welcome to all you other City Exchangers today, too.
Monte Carlo, Monaco - Rome, Italy - Singapore, Singapore - Tenerife, Spain - Rotterdam, Netherlands - London, UK - Montréal (QC), Canada - Melbourne, Australia - Naples (FL), USA - Bastia, France - Hong Kong, China - Mazatlan, Mexico - Buenos Aeres, Argentina - Manila, Philippines - Arradon, France - Madison (WI), USA - Evry, France - Seoul, Korea - Shanghai, China - Bucaramanga (Santander), Colombia - Sequim (WA), USA - Singapore, Singapore - Budapest, Hungary - Baziège, France - Hamburg, Germany - Toruń, Poland - Nelson, New Zealand - Madison (WI), USA - Vantaa, Finland - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Mainz, Germany - Dubai, UAE - Saint Paul (MN), USA - Cork, Ireland - Stockholm, Sweden - Menton, France - Tel Aviv, Israel - Albuquerque (NM), USA - Kitakami, Japan - Stayton (OR), USA - Szentes, Hungary - Stavanger, Norway - Grenoble, France - Villigen, Switzerland - Paris, France - Hyde, UK - Moscow, Russia - Joplin (MO), USA - Jakarta, Indonesia - Greenville (SC), USA - Cape Town, South Africa - Asheville (NC), USA - Seattle (WA), USA - Kyoto, Japan - Tokyo, Japan - Madrid, Spain - Auckland, New Zealand - Oulu, Finland - Lubbock (TX), USA - Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Baton Rouge (LA), USA - Sydney, Australia - Maple Ridge (BC), Canada - Vancouver, Canada - Seattle (WA), USA - Selma (AL), USA - Chandler (AZ), USA - Sharon (CT), USA - Manila, Philippines - Lyon, France - New York City (NY), USA - Los Angeles (CA), USA - Brookville (OH), USA - Hayle, UK - Wailea (HI), USA - Saarbrücken, Germany - San Diego (CA), USA
The Erbacher Hof in the Grebenstrasse just behind the cathedral is a classic example of the traditional Mainz winebar.
