Indian Summer in Mainz
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, you’ll be aware that the trickle of refugees from Syria/Eritrea/Libya/Balkans has grown from a trickle to a…
Invitation popped up in the mail the other week to the 10 year celebration of a cluster of ceramic artists’ studios in Höhr-Grenzhausen, a hop, skip and jump down the…
…but heaps of other good stuff… Natural History Museum
Oh. They’re clouds……
Here in Mainz, we’ve progressed from sun clocks to egg timers. I’m sure we’ll see wind-up chronometers within the next millennium….. (This is the world’s biggest and most accurate, gifted…
Don’t recall reading that 8 degrees C were on special offer, but it was rather parky
You know that something’s wrong when buses start thrashing up and down the Gaustrasse, shuttling passengers along the route normally served by trams. Probably “leaves on the track”. No, wait,…
Just don’t ask me how this tree opposite Mitternacht 18 squeezed into this pullover. Or swedderrr, as the colonials call them
This was an option for Thursday. I stumbled over an article by Michael Bermeitinger of the Allgemeine Zeitung dating back a year or so about a humungous chunk of concrete…
My young friend Lena is studying law (but I’ve almost forgiven her for that) She’s spent the last 3 months as a foreign comparative law clerk in a judge’s chambers…
I do love Paul Bonna’s kaffeekommune, but it’s definitely solaristically challenged. Solution: Grab a chair, move to the sunny side of the street. Tony’ll take his life in his hands…
…would have you believe that these are chemtrails, used by the Gummint to geo-engineer [sic] the weather and drug us into submission. All I can tell you is that this…
Halftime score: 0:0 Niko Bungert has a market value of €2.5m. He marked Robert Lewandowski (who scored 5 goals in 9 minutes against Wolfsburg last week) Market value? €50m He…
The Coface Arena in Mainz holds 34,000 spectators. It’s normally pretty full, but when Bayern Munich turns up, you’re like sardines in a tin. I figured that trying to score…
Thekla, the little sweetie from next door, was christened at the Protestant church in the village last Sunday. Heaps of folks in addition to what appears to be a sizable…
Mainz has a coloured history – Romans, Franks, Vandals, Swedes, Austrians, French all turned up at some stage and stayed for various periods of time – but it’s the bleu-blanc-rouge…
Andrew van Leeuwen and I go back a long way. Although it seems longer than just 3 years….. We hit it off straight away and I was mightily narked when…
Yesterday was Officially Autumn, but I’d promised Simone Bott a slott [sic] on MDP so here we are – a day late and a dollar short. Did you know that…
Simone Bott co-runs the eponymous family tiling business in Weisenau. It’s the go-to place if you want quality and expert advice. In the process of renovating one of the bathrooms…
Riding through the fields in Hechtsheim can be quite traumatic….
Being forced to sit in the Porter House, an Irish pub in Mainz, drinking Guinness and watching the Rugby World Cup game NZL vs ARG on a big flat screen…
An event in front of the Staatstheater on Friday, highlighting the work of and need for womens’ refuges in a most powerful way. Lines and lines of womens’ and kiddy’s…
Werner Scholles‘s egg stand at the Mainz market just wasn’t the same without his tame rooster strolling around the table top. Moritz departed for the big hen house in the…
..er…crane my neck to see the top of the boom. Heavy-lifting in Klaawinnerum
“Waste not, want not” is what my granddad used to say. Sloppy stuff seen during the Grumbeerernte*. Local dialect for “potato harvest” What was that? You thought they’re called Kartoffeln…
Look at the amount of energy required to build, install, decommission and dispose of a single turbine and you’ll find it’s significantly more than the energy generated over a unit’s…
…just good days for different things. When it’s blowing a gale and pouring with rain, that’s a good day to sit in a café with mates, not a day to…
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,…
If you’re partial to a decent sized piece of Fleischwurst, a roll and some mustard, the go-to place in Mainz is the Harth family’s mobile butcher on the market. Tuesday,…
Up at the Kaffeekommune the other week when 2 ladies walked up, wavering a bit as whether to go in. “Best coffee in Mainz” I said. “If not the world…”…
