> … the Turkish butcher. Can’t find a darn thing about the history of the Neubrunnen Bad in the – yes – Neubrunnenstrasse. It was probably one of the institutions…
> The horizontal decorative bands on the Frankfurter Hof in the Altstadt never fail to remind me of the Duomo di Siena. Thinks: Not plagiarism, by any chance..?
The Gaustrasse’s gradually becoming a cluster of Good Places – interesting galleries, good restaurants and still a few hardcore Mainz bars. If you keep your eyes peeled, you pick up…
> “It was GREAT” I said to Ms jb. “You would have hated it, though…” Just got back from the 10th annual International Hako Races in Dexheim. A HaKo is…
> ..when sunflowers turn up on the market. Trivia Alert: The Italian name is Girasole from their habit of rubbernecking to follow the sun. (“girare” – to turn + “sole”…
> Perfectly good pair of shoes hanging off a sign at the back of the Frankfurter Hof the other. Wouldn’t have minded then, actually. Shame I’m such a short-arse….. “Wag…
> “Senfkorn” – Mustard Seed – in the Gaustrasse is a non-alcoholic pub. Correction: “WAS” a non-alcoholic pub. For 20-odd years it’s been a meeting point for folks with alcohol…
> Sunset in the container port
> Not the sort of thing you want to see if you’re a farmer. Sudden storm, microbursts galore and whole swathes of your cereal crops are flattened. Rarely the entire…
> The delightfully leafy suburb of Gonsenheim at stupid o’clock in the morning. (If I’d tried this stunt yesterday, Helen would have had to jump into the fray as your…
> I’d like to say that there’s a church next door, but there isn’t. You can see one – the Christuskirche – just down the road, though. “Cleanliness is about…
> …cucumber Seen at the market in Mainz
> …don’t you understand? POST NO BILLS Offenders will be prosecuted The Owner Black on white Can’t get much clearer than that, eh? Seen in the Gaustrasse
> Er, no. It’s not Hollywood. Sunset at the container port on the Rhine in Mainz. Mainz, Container Port, Rhine, Zollhafen, Rhein
> Yet another antique car rally in Mainz yesterday. On occasions like this, I truly do have problems with that “Thou shalt not covet” commandment, especially when there are MkII…
> The Proviantmagazin (Commissary) is a classic White Elephant story.It was originally planned in 1860 as a grain storage facility and wartime bakery for the troops stationed in Mainz.In those…
> A blackberry at the instant of conception….
> …you’ll find them everywhere. This used to be Schorch Lautner’s legendary gallery in the Augustinerstrasse. Long gone, both of them.
> I had a bit of time to kill one morning last week before my physiotherapy session. If it had been Tuesday, Friday or Saturday I would have been round…
> A slightly PSed “Maison de France”, the home of the Institut Francais on the Schillerplatz in Mayence. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants The rest of the…
Remember Igor Mamonov, the absentee ballet dancer? There’s a sequel. Ms jb, feeling that her friend Ingrid (Frank the Potter‘s missus) had been hard done by in missing Act 2,…
>If there’s a patch of open space in Mainz, they’ll either have covered in in cobblestones or the busy chappies from the city’s gardening department will have bagsed it and…
>So you think you’re all modern and 21st Century with your underfloor or ducted heating… Yeah right. The Romans beat you to it by about 2 millennia, mate. This is…
>I know a couple of professors. One of them is fairly new at the job, so he hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that you have to constantly wail and…
>Rosa canina or dog rose. There are various theories on the origin of the name. One goes that it was a disparaging cachet (in the context of “worthless”) compared with…
>This Euro 2008 business is getting out of hand. The local boys have barely reached the semi-finals and there are flags everywhere and excessive public enjoyment and whathaveyou. They’re also…
>They didn’t have to go to all that trouble, you know. Big festival, hundreds of thousands of people, bands, fireworks last night. Just because it’s my patronal saint’s day. What?…
>One of the 3 or 4 hairdressers in the village. (I’d hope that this is the “before” image….) “Struwwelpeter” – Shock-headed Peter or Scruffy Peter (Mark Twain’s translation) – is…
>People get carried away by this Euro 2008 business. (Some are blissfully unaware of its existence, but that’s another story…) Overnight, park benches (these are at the Vertical Village) appear…
>Holger Bergmann is my physiotherapist. He’s bloody good. He used to work in a big physiotherapy practice in Mainz-Mombach and kept my degenerating hip joint (sort of) pain-free for a…
>This is Marek, a cool young guy from the end of the road. I was pottering about in the garden the other evening and he was there in a flash,…
Mainz Daily Photo 