Bums on seats - #689

In a past life, I used to be in the business of helping airlines get bums on seats, as it's so delicately described in the business.

(Check-in agents are "bagsnatchers", cabin crew are "sandwich mechanics" and the travelling public is "SLF - Self Loading Freight").

So here are some seats - where are the bums..?

And I'm meant to to get to work....#688

....how?

Invasion of the Littlies from up the road

The bridge to nowhere II - # 687

There are, in fact, 5 bridges connecting Mainz with (boo, hiss) Hessen.

Which is what happens when you're on one side of the river and they're on the other.

There's the Theodor Heuss bridge, the other railway bridge, the Weisenau bridge and the Schierstein bridge.

And this railway bridge, over which one can ride on a bicycle.

(Wouldn't know why, but anyway...)

As the better photoblogs say " Last week, I showed you a picture of Bridge A. Here's a picture of Bridge B"

2 down, 3 to go.....

Just to bridge the gap as it were until I get some more decent photographs.

And taking about Bridges

Could do with a touch-up - #686

It must be about time - 200 years or so since they last gave it a splash of Dulux...

The Augustiner Church in - you've guessed it - the Augustinerstrasse in the Altstadt

If I were a fish...- #685

..this is how I would see things.

With my fish I.

"That buttress...- #684

...looks bloody unsafe to me"

"And it's perched right above my head"

Thus spoke a very nervous looking gargoyle on the facade of the new Markthäuser

Grapping the bull....- #683

by the horns.

Or the chin.

Maybe they're billygoats after all.

In which case this is all a lot of bull....

Another in the series of carvings on the not so moveable type in front of the Gutenberg museum

Got milk? - #682

Kiddyo here's got the right idea.

Fronts up at the TSOW of a Saturday and gets served a glass of frothed milk, while the rest of us dig in to the grown-up stuff.

For the rest of you: "Got milk" was a supremely effective (then again - if I have to explain it, it probably wasn't "supremely effective"....) print campaign for the American dairy industry a while back, featuring actors and other luminaries with a milk moustache.

As in:

Our little flossie on the market knocks Beyonce for six, though....

Winter detritus - #681

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

Anne Bradstreet, 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' 1655

True, that.

As Omar Little would say....

Flying the flag - #680

This flag is either that of the

• Füsiliergarde
• Garde der Prinzessin Mainz
• Prinzengarde
• Kleppergarde
• Ranzengarde
• Husarengarde
  

or one of a myriad other  outfits.

As you can deduce, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to this Karneval business. 

As in a lot of other things too.....

The empty throne - #679

Local politics around here are real hoot.

This is the pedestal on which Famous Son Johnannes (not me - Gutenberg) normally resides.

JG's off for some well-deserved R&R and a new coat of paint, so the throne's currently vacant.

Karneval's slowly building up (only another month and a bit to go until it's all over..) and the curious ritualistic parades are 2 a penny at the moment.

One of the clubs has Johannes Gerster, a Napoleonic little prick failed local politician as its head honcho and - in a fit of egomania -  he took it upon hisself to clamber up onto Gutenberg's reserved seat and review the parade as it shambled past.

"Desecration" was one of the mildest terms of abuse vented in the "Letters to the Editor" column.

Don't think he'll try that again in a hurry.

On the other hand, his Walter Mitty-like delusions will probably cause him to complain when JG usurps his throne assumes his rightful place.....

Get your vitamins here - #678

Tricky, this photography lark.

Had to stand on my head to take this snap....

Don't fence me in - #677

Actually - DO fence me in.

Please.

Otherwise I'll get nicked, just like jb's bike.

From right next to his front door.

Security cable and all....

fəˈnɛtɪks - #676

For a (supposedly) humourless bunch, the Germans come up with some choice plays on words.

The billboard idea from SWR1, a local radio station, is a cool one just by itself - phonetically translating Anglosaxon pop acts' names.

(And don't laugh - some old guy once told me all about his "Gwen Elspeth" - Queen Elisabeth - rose being mildew resistant.)

It's the "Ausgeprochen gut" that gets me.

Choose between "Decidedly good" or "Articulated/pronounced well"

And "gehört" means either "deserves" or "heard"

As in "(SWR) One deserves to be heard"

And - at Mrs jb's insistence) we've got tickets for Tienah Törnah in February.

Think I'll give Bonn Dschowie swerve, though

Sneaking Sally - #675

...through the alley.

(Robert Palmer with half Feat plus a Meter or 2. Listen here)

Very starkly designed townhouses in Gonso.

B&W matched the mood today.

Never thought I'd be heard to say that I prefer -16ºC to +1ºC, but if it's a choice of blue skies or leaden grey, then I'll wear thermals....

History's scrap pile - #674

Mrs jb rescued this book.

Johann Töws, an ethnic German, emigrated to Germany from Russia in 1978.

Over a period of 10 years, he documented his recollections from childhood in a series of loosely related essays.

"This is not a heroic epic" he wrote. "It tells the tale of its time and answers questions that might arise"

Self-published, no ISBN number, 667 pages, I have no idea how many copies.

When he died last year, his family cleared his apartment in Mrs jb's Vertical Village and dumped his stuff into the skip.

Including this book in great quantities.

Quite tragic.

Cheating! - #673

Hitching your kids up behind the van and towing them through the countryside is the moral equivalent of taking your dog for a walk by letting it run alongside of the car.

Out of towners.

Obviously

Crystal clear - #672

As if we didn't have enough snow already, the darn stuff's growing and multiplying.

Crystals.

Just like you grew at school.

Quite cool.

If not to say freezing.

As in "anything below 32ºF...."

The not very straight and narrow (and *%$£@ cold) -#671

Quite a brisk 267º out in the fields today.

Kelvin, that is.

-6º Celcius. 22º Fahrenheit.

And the tracks in the snow got me thinking (which doesn't happen very often, actually)

Maybe Farmer Brown wasn't responsible for the squiggles.

Maybe it was Saint Nick on his way to Hechtsheim after having imbibed copiously of the sherry that folk leave for him next to the chimney. There were a lot of deer out today, 2 or 3 leashes in fact (go on, look it up, it's right...) and they just might have been reindeer.

On second thoughts:

Saint Nick turns up in early December over here, appears to be a bit of a wowser and reindeerless to boot.

Go back to what you were doing...

Christmas reloaded - # 670

What goes for the Champs Elysee around here (the Augustinerstrasse, actually) all flash and festive.

All together now:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

If I lived in Darmstadt...#669

... I could tell you about the Mathildenhöhe, an artists' colony built in a park above the city at the turn of the last century at the height of the Art Deco movement.

I could also tell you about the excellent exhibition titled "Russia 1900" that's currently running, blending the cultures and politics of the period between the turn of century and the sudden demise of the Russian royal family in 1918.

I could also tell you that Czar Nicolaus II had the Russian chapel built on IMPORTED RUSSIAN SOIL on the Mathildenhöhe so that he could go to church when visiting the wife's (she was Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt before she metamorphed to Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna) folks.

And that Phil the Greek's parents (who were related to the Hesse-Darmstadt crew and half of the royal houses of Europe) were married there.

Shame that I can't tell you all that.

What I will tell you, though, is that the hot chocolate in the cafe is ABSOUTELY NAFF.

Small cups, too.

Which is quite a blessing, actually...

The not very straight and narrow - #668

Ploughing's a piece of cake these days.

So says Mrs jb's nephew Chris, who does that sort of stuff for a living and appears to be more than proficient in his field.

"You just set the GPS, crank up the revs and put it on autopilot. Then just sit back in the (airconditioned) cab and listen to the (Dolby 5.1) mp3 player. And at the end of the furrow, you just turn round and do the same again."

Don't know what happened with this guy, though

He's either got the DTs or there were frequent earthquakes that he neglected to compensate for.

At least 6 on the Richter scale, I'd say....

Hard times -#667

It's a sad state of affairs when you walk across the market in Mainz and find a gap where Caffea Moguntia's TSOW should be.

I mean, I don't begrudge them their vacation in Capetown, undoubtedly deserved after slaving all year over a hot expresso machine.

But THREE WEEKS?

Have they given no thought to their customers?

What's a bloke meant to do for THREE WEEKS?

Having dragged myself out of the deep pit of caffeine withdrawal induced depression, I've found a solution:

Hot chocolate from "Extrablatt", a cafe on the Schillerplatz.

Their coffee's REALLY naff - the push-a-button-machine-made stuff - but their hot chocolate's quite divine.

AND you get whipped cream on top.

Even if it is out of an aerosol.....

The Mark of the Beast - #666

Don't - whatever you do - go to markbeast.com.

It'll scare the living daylights out of you.

But given that this is Post #666, I figured I couldn't let the occasion slip by without acknowledging its numerical significance.

And - while we're on topic - does anyone have a remedy for these strange tattoo-like markings that have mysteriously appeared on my forehead and wrists...?

(The fork-tongued chappy is a carving on a more permanent version of Helen's not so moveable type)

"My New Year's Resolution for 2009" he said.....#665

..."is to give up smoking."

[Stage whisper: "Just as soon as I've finished these 3 cartons..."]

And - for some serious resolutionisms  - check out young Helen's Resolution Round-Up over at Heliospheric.


Found this carcinogenic collection in one of the vineyard shelters. 
Looks pretty much like how we'd leave Maurice Dagger's Dad's garage after a party. 

Quantum res abeo quantum subsisto idem eadem idem

"Despondency......#664

....is futile"

Thus spake Beate Thiesmayer, artiste extraordinaire.

For free - reloaded - #663

Almost, anyway.

Chris Paulson's a German-based American folk-singer.

Pretty good, too.

Good enough to garner regular invites back to the Unterhaus, the local subterranean alternative cultural Mecca, anyway

He set himself up in front of the Staatstheater back in November for the Burgundy market graciously providing entertainment for those of us lurking on the other side of the road, sampling the local goodies.

Which were so good that I didn't - to my everlasting shame - recognise "Girl from the North Country".

Them local goodies must have been stronger than I thunk.....

All the things you can't do..#662

Scuba-diving, going to the dunny and climbing ladders (only if you're a suitcase, though) are all things on the "No No" list at Mainz 05's football ground.

How about "Losing at home"?

(How about "Losing at all"....?)

Ice age - #661

Recipe:
Freezing temperatures for a couple of days
Light Rain
Freeze some more

Result:
General moaning
Geriatric reminiscences "But this is NOTHING compared to 1847...."

Cancelled dinner parties

(Actually Mr and Mrs Helen braved the elements and a good time was had by all. I think)

January Theme Day: Best photo of 2008 - #660

As good as any, I'd say.

Here's the original

(Although a learned and quite genteel reader pointed out that it's "artsy-fartsy", not "arty-farty". Whatever..)

The other 150 are over here:

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants