Close call - #991

"Bloody hell" I thought. "BARRY MANILOW polluting the ethers in Mainz? I thought he was dead"

Certainly deserves to be and reason enough to get the next train out of town.

Risk a peek around the back of the advertising column and..... relief!

It's Milow, a Belgian singer-songwriter.

So that's OK, then....

Ghost town - #990

The Markthäuser complex on the Domplatz/Cathedral Square appears to have a big, smelly albatross hanging around its neck.

Not only were they comprehensively bowled a couple of times, but the city-owned (and utterly inept - as in "Oh dear, we've got debts of €300m" utterly inept) housing provider, Wohnbau, was involved in the selection of an architect with the strangest name and questionable skills, its construction and subsequent marketing.

They're still trying to let the apartments on the top floors (a snip at a mere €2300 a month for 2 rooms...), they're in court on Tuesday with the operator of a cafe (Wohnbau supposedly guaranteed him seating for 200 customers on the market square, the city approved 100, he's unilaterally reduced the rent because he can't turn a profit on those numbers) and the shops on the lower ground floor are empty.

All of them.

After 20 months.

Possibly because it's eerie and not nice down there.

Could have something to do with the atrium being monopolised by the massive supports for the rest of the place, too....

Thanks for all the fish - #989

But who stole the loaves of bread?

Nordsee, a national chain of fishmongers/fish restaurant/pescine fast food outfit, hovering above St Quintins.

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Your logo...#988

 

Your product.

Your message.

This oversized Whatever was waddling through Mainz the other day, not making a lot of progress, but attracting quite a few inquisitive onlookers.

A kid asked me if I thought that there was someone inside.

I reckoned that the best way to find out would be to push it over.

If it swears, there's someone inside.

"Shall we?" he asked "I'll take the left side..."

There's hope yet....

(Reminded me of a Dalek, actually)

And 14ºC - #987

And this is Spring?

Bloody weather....

Schillerstrasse

And talking about drinking....#986

There are few more pleasant ways of spending an afternoon than drinking wine and snacking* at the Wagner-Stempel vineyard in Siefersheim.

OK, so it's not free, but his Riesling is top-notch and you can't beat the ambiente as they say in France Italy somewhere foreign.

Frau Dr. Professor appears to have had a similar idea...

*Asparagus spears in a strawberry-balsamico vinaigrette, cheese with a passionfruit-lemon jam, Parma ham, olive ciabatta, cheese and pesto pannini.

Twentyten - #985

"So what do you think of the Pfeddersheimer*?" asked Martin Luther a bunch of friends in Wittenburg in 1540.


*In this context "So what do you think of this wine from Pfeddersheim?"

Pfeddersheim is a village close to Worms (hence the Luther reference) that enjoyed the status of "Free Imperial City" off and on for centuries before being  Pacmanised, digested and hyphenated by Worms in 1969.

The Riesling grape was first documented in the village in 1511 and it still plays a major role for the local vintners.

Not only Riesling, though.


Heinrichs in Mainz had a cracking 2009 Sauvignon Blanc from Max Pfannebecker in Pfeddersheim and a bit of research turned up the presentation of the 2009 vintage over the weekend.

Just the nicest people, great wines and a good day out in the country

Free, too.....

What's in a name? - #984

That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

The Whitsun rose aka the Benedictine rose aka Paeonia officinalis.

(There's also the tree peony, but that's another story.)

Whitsun rose (Pfingstrose), because it blossoms on or around Whitsun. i.e. now if we hadn't had such a crappy Spring.

Benedictine rose because Benedictine monks supposedly transported it across the Alps to northern Europe from southern Europe which is where it ended up all the way from China. (Although these days, it would end up directly in a Walmart near you...)

They're selling them on the market and in places like Kölle for €2 EACH...

We have them in the garden.

I just worked out that were to sell them all on the market, I'd have enough for a condo on Central Park with enough small change left over for a Learjet....

Don't Feet The Horse - #983

 

Moi?

Mistreat a horse with my Size 11s?

Never.

I mean, who would do something like that?

That's what the sign said, anyway.

This chappy looked so unhappy, I gave him an apple...

Speak softly.....#982

...and carry a big stick push a Zimmer frame.

On the market.

This'll be me in a couple of years....

Alles Bio oder was....? #981

I reckon that the chances of garlic from China (and they really do sell the stuff here) being organic are about the same as my getting more than 4 readers a day.

But this stuff's local - sold by an outfit in Wiesbaden called Kölle - and it's so healthily organic that it'll cure you of what ails you just by LOOKING at it.

Organic potting mix, organic fertilizer, organic PVC wrapping.......

If you actually DEVOUR it, you'll have eternal life, I'm sure.

Ancient and Modern - #980

The extension/conversion to/of the Lampenfabrik shows just how well modern and industrial architecture can coexist.

The 2 cone-heads in the foreground appear to agree.

They stayed put for days on end.....

"Now that you're a barista, John....#979

...you'll need a decent coffee grinder..."

As Patrick would say.

(What he actually said was "Now that you're a farmer, John, you'll need a tractor" which is why I've got a 1957 Ferguson FE35 sitting on 3 hectares in New Zealand..)

But I definitely need a decent coffee grinder, which is one of the things that Martin Meyer who owns and runs the Molino Cafe in Wiesbaden told me on Sunday night when he showed 10 of us the basics of barista-ing.

Excellent, informative evening.

I didn't know, for example, that increasing the proportion of Robusta beans in the blend gives you a better crema. (Gives it a more sophisticated taste IMHO too, in case you're asking.)

And that Nestle pads its Wellness product with unroasted coffee beans (Marketing blurb: bursting at the seams with antioxidants etc), , so you charge more (because it's so GOOD for you) and lower your costs (because unroasted beans are untaxed)

But I also learned how to texture milk properly (after wasting the best part of Daisy's daily output trying..).

And that you need exactly 7 grams of coffee for a single shot and that it needs to take around 25 seconds to pour through the filter group.

Which is why I need a decent coffee grinder, because the pre-ground stuff flies through in about half that time and tastes vaguely naff.

Mind you, I've had LOADS of time to research, given that it's now Wednesday and I haven't slept a wink since Sunday.

That's what happens when you sample everything that's placed in front of you.

I lost count at 24 singles.....

Yummy - #978

Banana, walnut and blackberry loaf.

Just to get things straight before the sexist comments turn up ... I was responsible for

• Borrowing the eggs
• Letting the bananas go mushy
• Stealing Harvesting the blackberries

Thank you

Markt der schönen Dinge - #977

Translates as " The Market of Utterly Superfluous Tat Beautiful Things" and it runs for the 4 days from Ascension Day in the atrium and adjacent roads of the Lampenfabrik.

Some vaguely useful kit there - a blacksmith and a chappy who cuts shapes of of steel plate, but there's a lot of stuff that a) I don't understand, such as shapeless garments made of felt (top) b) expensive clothes which break the already broken budget (2nd from bottom) and other stuff where I don't really want to ask vis a vis their true purpose.

At least Karin Schweikhardt got a decent suck of the straw....

Lettuce spray.... - #976

...could be an appropriate post title for a Sunday, but we'll have none of that around here, thank you very much.

Only organics allowed.

Lactuca sativa avanacluia, grown from a 15c plug bought at Stein's herb nursery and planted in a mixture of 2/3 home-grown compost and 1/3 potting mix, with some additional cow manure pellets mixed infor good measure.

Water liberally and jump back to avoid injury when they take off.

We've got 8 lettuces of various shapes and colours on a rotational system and they keep us in salads from May until late September.

Just pluck off a few outer leaves from each plant and away you go.

When one lot starts getting a bit raggedy, invest another 60c for 4 new plugs.

Easy as....

The Postman knocks.... - #975

..once.

3pm during the week and 10:30am on Saturdays.

Surprised that it hasn't been

a) ripped out of its mountings and sold for scrap iron

b) painted standard Post Office Yellow

c)  disappeared along with most other mailboxes and postal agencies

Hands up - #974

Sculpture by Beate Thiesmeyer

Serious stuff - #973

OK, REALLY serious stuff is when you grow your plants from seed, but this is pretty close.

Cabbage plants, lettuces, celery as far as the eye can see.

Mum and the Littles - #972

Is it a "bustle" of bikes?

Could be.

3 out of 7 - #971

3 of Christoph and Uschi Niklas's 7 grandkids - Magdalena, Kalle und Lucie - at Freya's christening the other week.

Aaaaa, springtime!......#970

Grape hyacinths in a Frank the Potter pot

Fuzz - #969

Alles in Ordnung on the market in Mainz.

Someone else appears to be responsible for enforcing litter laws, though...

How much wood would a woodruff ruff....#968

Or something like that, anyway.

Woodruff. Galium odoratum.

Around here: Waldmeister or "Master of the woods"

Use it VERY sparingly (moderately toxic to the liver and kidneys... hallo?) to flavour Maibowle, a seasonal punch.

Or add a synthetic syrup that tastes much the same (forbidden by law to use plant extracts, see above...) to beer to create a Berliner Weisse, based on a (and I quote..) " cloudy, sour, wheat beer of around 3%."

I have no idea what came into Kennedy's head when he said he wanted to be one.

(The leaves look reminiscently attractive, though....)

Über den Dächern von Mayence - #967

Hitchcock's 1955 classic "To catch a thief" ran under the title "Über den Dächern von Nizza" ("Above the roofs of Nice") and it sprang immediately to mind when I ventured up to the 5th floor of the Brand shopping complex to have a chat with the anaesthetist the other day in preparation to losing bits of my meniscus.

(Which I duly lost with a minimum of discomfort)

Not often that you're eye-to-eye with St Stephan (11 o'clock), but I could definitely have done without a full-frontal of that bloody gasometer perched on top of the Theatre

Magn.......-#966

...ificently magnoliac.

Edible petals, Leif.

Honest.....

The Apple Store - #965

Doesn't quite match the glamour of New York's Apple Store - no glass stair case here - but it's pretty good all the same.

ProStore, just across from the Theatre underground car park, has a strong gravitational field and I get magically tugged in there on a fairly regular basis.

Stuff to play with, clued up (if a touch intense and edgy) staff, resident labrador

I keep well to the left.

If you venture too far to the right, you could veer into the Dark Side, with PCs and Microsoft stuff.

I always carry a clove of garlic.

Never can be too careful, y'know....

I spy with my little eye... - #964

.... something beginning with "R"

Rucola
Rocket
Rauke

(Aragula, too, but that's only in flasher restaurants and then it costs twice as much. Same thing, though).

The producers are holding their collective breaths that the same thing doesn't happen THIS year that happened LAST year.

Namely that in a SINGLE BUNCH of rocket,  someone found some Senecio jacobaea.

Ragwort or groundsel.

The sort of stuff our guinea-pigs used to devour in quantity.

You would have thought that SARS, swine flu and the Black Plague had hit at the same time.

"Just LOOKING at the stuff will turn you blind and give you IMMEDIATE liver failure" they cried.

Especially if you eat more than 20% of your bodyweight of the stuff, which is well below the LD50 for horses.

Supermarkets pulled it from their shelves, hectares of the stuff were ploughed under, some growers went to the wall.

As I said, everyone's a bit nervous at the moment

Wall of fame - #963

At some stage, the littlies at the St Stephan Catholic kindergarten in Gonso were provided with buckets of paint and brushes and instructed to a) not make a mess and b) immortalise themselves on a technicolour picket fence outside the kindy.

How cool is that....

Well, isn't that dandy...#962

....lion

Comes from the French "Dent-de-Lyon" - Lions' Tooth - and if you look at the serrated leaf, you can see why.

Around here, it's called "Löwenzahn"

Which is the same thing, but in German, as one would expect.

The French also call it "Pis-en-lit", referring to the leaves' diuretic properties.

I'm sure someone's going to give us a translation.....

Monthly Theme Day - Statues - #961

This was just TOO tempting.

I couldn't resist.

It'll doubtless get me blacklisted.


An Italian's studying the plans of his new house with the interior designer.

"I wanna a statue in THIS room" he says "and a statue over HERE and another one over THERE and then two over here."

Interior designer's a tad puzzled, but he figures that if that's what the client wants....

House is finished, owner comes to inspect and EXPLODES.

"Whaddyou put all a these dead people all a through my house?" he screams "This Venus de Milo, this Davido, I no wanna these things"

Interior designer stutters " But you SAID you wanted all of these statues"

"No, you no unnerstand" says the client "I want when my friend call me, I pick uppa da receiver and say:"'S dat you?"

"These Sdatyous I want...."

I'll get my coat....

The serious people are over here

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(Good thing we haven't had a "Favourite Vegetable" Theme Day  I'd REALLY be in trouble...)