Each winter, I suffer from a cold or two, and just occasionally this results in me losing my voice for a week or so. It’s that time again, and here I am struck mute. I am still able to, but really should not, whisper, so I limit my verbal communication to a minimum. And even…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-gLRp5bSpwThe best news about Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie, is: It’s good. Really good. While I liked Daniel Craig as James Bond from the start, I was not overly impressed by either Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ0L7O_khbsI have very mixed feelings about Suzanne Vega. When I was at university, for six months I lived next door to this very nice girl named JoAnn, who loved listening to music. Really loved it. Did I mention the walls were thin? Her favorite albums were Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing and Tracy Chapman’s Tracy Chapman….
This year, for the first time ever I have made plum jam according to my mother’s recipe. It worked out beautifully, I now don’t understand why I never made it before, and it’s so easy! Here’s how you make it: The main ingredient is 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of common plums (prunus domestica domestica) or…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGinwDu0L8This song is what I call an insidious earworm: It sticks to the back of your mind even after you’ve just heard the first few notes, and doesn’t leave you for days. I don’t even particularly like this song. I understand it’s emotionally charged with memories of 09/11 for many, and for that reason I…
No report of visiting Bavaria is complete without mentioning the food. It’s just that delicious! When I speak of Bavarian food, what I really mean is Southern German and Austrian food, because reciped have been traded in these regions for centuries, local cuisines have enriched each other and the result is a variety of cooking…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoWcgP7SUD4For me, Marianne Faithfull is a true “mood” musician. Sometimes, I don’t listen to her for months, next I take an album of hers and listen to it non-stop.
The best part of my recent trip was a visit to Rose Island or Roseninsel, as it’s called in German, in the Starnberger See. There is only the one small islet in the whole of the rather big lake, and it’s a truly magical place. The first people settled there in the Stone Age, and…
My husband and I spent this year’s summer vacation in the south of Bavaria, on the shores of the Starnberger See. It came as a bit of a surprise, as we had other holiday plans at first, but wasn’t it a marvellous place! I fell in love with the area immediately, and am now plotting…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7Vu7cqB20Although I only watched the competitions now and then, I enjoyed the Olympic Games in London hugely. By all accounts, they were especially happy and friendly, and I think you could sense that even from the TV screens.
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