have you ever thought about the peculiarities of an engagement as a long-distance truck driver? considering the unfavourable boundary conditions i have great respect for this profession. it's not just that the family men are mostly not at home to wake the children in the morning or to put the kids to bed in the evening (like pilots, mariners, soldiers and probably a good many other professionals, too), in return they bring in only very little money. due to the schengen agreement the average wages for truck drivers still decrease since the east european drivers do the same job with less grumble for less money.
sel
cuteness overload
as long as the weather will stay that grey and misty, our sweet kitty nila won't leave the flat very often. as a consequence we have to look after and play with her more often than usual. even so we are easily able to tap into her cuteness.
snow curves for circles
really don't know what the farmer has done here. whatever, the shapes make for a good subject. btw: you'll find a few new photographs in the glimpse galleries.
madsen's sideshow bassist
rockers don't always have to look like these old school rockers.
while the madsen brothers that constitute three quarter of the whole, german indie-rock band madsen, wear their hair pretty short and neat there is this one exception in the composition of the band: niko maurer, the bassist, reminds me of a funny mix of sideshow bob and john travolta.
any way, the show they provided today night, was outstanding and left a big part of the audience - including me - in a jumble of speechlessness and pure joy.
under observation
germany is still under observation, mostly by itself. its charged younger history, especially with the atrocities of ww2, constitutes an incubus that is still present in the public opinion.
in yesterday evening's tv chat show 'hard but fair' which is broadcasted on germany's first channel the subject for discussion was the current bestseller book 'he's back again' that is on first place of the bestseller list in germany since already ten weeks now. hitler sells very well. the author tells a satirical story about hitler who wakes up again in last year's berlin: so the führer has to understand all the things that have changed since his dead in 1945 with its own sense. added to this almost every person in the story is laughing at him. the central question of yesterday's tv show was if germany is ready to laughing at hitler, too? especially in consideration of the millions of dead people of ww2...
i for one can only say that i'm able to bring all the told things and jokes into line with the real history. although i'm no contemporary witness i'll never forget this hideous period of our history. despite that i've already listened to three quarters of the audio book: it's really clever and smart.
music recess
when i'm back home after a several days lasting absence we usually carry on as normal. why not starting the evening with a couple of friends (and beers) and a great dinner again before setting out for disco? the bar / restaurant essis in ravensburg is something distinctive - while being opened almost 24 hours (it's closed only from 0300am to 0930am) you can enjoy breakfast, what we haven't tried yet, or later in the day tremendous, authentic persian food, which is cooked by the chef and owner essi himself. besides music which is also personally deejayed by essi, the owner seems to like art: the facilities of essis host varying exhibitions of different art, including photography. perhaps i'm going to mail essi at some point.
illuminated space
some things here in france don't make sense to my way of thinking. illegal rubbish dumps, decay and in the most general sense the ravages of time have left their marks on more or less every town here in the countryside. so why, this being the case, should a municipality ever invest in such a wonderfully illuminated, every evening completely unoccupied car park?
round-about orange-blue
whereas i'm currently busy all the day long, i only have the possibility to capture the beautiful environment of southern france in the early morning or late in the evening. since i actually prefer to sleep as long as possible in the morning (as everybody of you does probably), only the evenings are left in the basket. doesn't matter, as long as the light and the colours stay that fantastic i'll proceed with portraying the french landscape at dusk.
living in clover
days are long this week. today we were cordially invited to a workmate's place. he, his wife and the two dogs cared lovingly for us. an appetiser, two courses of fish and dessert were served. i've to admit that to a certain extent they really live in clover here, or like people would say in germany: living like god in france.
french countryside din(n)er
france. blue hour, somewhere in the countryside. in search of a venue for dinner we ended up at a arguably typical burger stand what was a completely new area for me: i'd really not expected to find a wheeled fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where moreover for whatever reason a lot of the ordinary restaurants had closed. no idea how they manage to attract ample customers here to keep theirselves above water. all i can say is that the cheeseburgers they sell are delicious. if this is already enough to successfully operate a business i should think about changing the branch.