Surprise trip with my harp

This week my husband has his autumn holiday. Usually he plans plenty of chores to do - but today he wanted to take my harp and me to the forest. My choice was a park on a nearby hill which also has a charming forest beside it.

Inside the forest someone has build a circle out of branches I visit every time I walk in the park. Today I played my harp inside the circle. It was magic. Very few people passed by. Most of the time the birds joined the melodies and squirrels loved the sound as well. I could have stayed much longer, but there are no toilets in the forest and there are too few invisible places. 

Of course I took my camera and my husband used it well.

This is one of my favorite songs

A Sunday full of autumn joys

While my boss is enjoying his holiday, I have to work more hours and therefore have less time for blogging. Especially as this time of the year brings extra chores, like harvesting....

As I had the help of my husband today, we took care of one bucket full of plums and one full of our pears. We now have 20 jars full of delicious jam more - I did cook some strawberry and summer fruit jam early this summer. 

As a treat we visited an autumn festival in the afternoon. There was some interesting pagan folk and South Amercian harp music beside plenty of stalls with crafts and decorations. There were delicious cakes for sale - but our daughter had made a plum cake for us at home. The weather was perfect with sunshine from a clear blue sky, cooled by a wind to remind us that summer is over. As long as fall has many days like today, I'm going to love it!

Travelling time used sensibly

This summer I spent quite a few weekends traveling by train, usually 3 or more hours in one direction. I love watching the scenerie and let my thoughts wander, but to use the time sensibly I started knitting socks. At home I hardly take the time for knitting therefore socks are a clever choice - it's easy to remember where to go on. My husband and I still have several pairs of hand-knitted socks made by my mother- in-law. Our daughters were sceptical at first, but now apreciate them as well. So far, most of my socks went to friends - hopefully they wear them with gratitude. Sometimes I even see my socks at their feet. :)

Middle Earth - a visit to Tolkien's world

Many people have read the books and/or seen the films of "Lord of the Rings" or "The Hobbit". There are some who know the stories so well they could take a part in the films and know every word they have to say. For all these people there are many events to meet.

One of them took place in Austria on the Castle Piberstein at the beginning of September. There were courses about crafts one would need in middle earth, like archery, collecting herbs, speaking the language of the elves, to forge ornaments etc. People slept in a medieval camp or on the floor in the castle and there was a camp kitchen, where the collected herbs and beeries where cooked.

Unfortunately just at that weekend there were so many events attracting the same people, that only a few came to this magical place. I was there for just one day, once again with my friends of Dunkelschoen. It was an honour for us to take place and we had tried to dress accordingly. As I'm not very tall I had decided to dress as Hobbit woman: long skirt with an apron, blouse and bonnet - things I usually wear at medieval festivals except for the apron. Although the bonnet covers my ears, the elves in the castle insited on fixing my ears, so I really felt like being in the Shire. The head of the band had even grown hair on his feet and "smoked" a pipe, like the hobbits in the films.

 There was a TV crew of a private broadcast station - you find the link to there broadcast in my blog "a weekend full of adventures". I had brought two cameras, one for photos & videos and the video cam of my husband which I gave a friend to fill with memories. This friend also looked after my stall of goodies for some time during the concert, so I could go up front to the stage, where the audience was having a ball. There was no big crowd, but those who had come, loved the music, clapped hands and danced as if they had taken some magic potion. They loved the themes of the films the band had added to their songs and sang along. After several encores two large men put the hobbit on their shoulder and carried him away. Luckily not to Isengard, but to the medieval camp to spoil the band with drinks. At the end the strongest even helped to carry the 1001 pieces of equipment to the car. It was the best party of the year!

My photos of middle earth

Behind the scenes of Middle Earth

Video of new song

Medieval "City-Wall-Festival"

Medieval Festivals are becoming more and more popular these days. Some towns already have historic celebrations for many, many years. Two years ago I was invited to Bretten, a town I had never heard of before. It was amazing, how they turned the complete historic city center into a medieval town with most of the residents dressed into typical clothes of the year 1504.

At the beginning of September I joined a similar event in a Bavarian town. There the historic celebrations are much younger, and therefore it's not as big, yet. Still, some residents really took care to dress suitable for the event.  

The reason for my visit were my friends of the band "Dunkelschoen", who gave a night concert on the huge stage on the market place. It was my job to sell their CDs, T-shirts, Button etc. As I had to take care of my little stall, I didn't see much of the town and all the wonderful events taking place. Fortunately I had a perfect place to watch the opening of the Festival and could see and hear the concert of my friends.

During the concert the place in front of the stage was packed with people - a fact I didn't really take in account, when I went onto the stage to take a photo of the band with the audience in the background. They all cheered and the photo looks nice. It was only at home, looking at the pics, I realized that thousends of people have watched me there on stage. Well, I suppose they forgot me by now, but will hopefully remember the band and come again to their concerts.

Video of Dunkelschoen on stage

More photos of the festival

Soccer Sunday

When I got to know my husband, he was still playing soccer himself for a few years. Then his bones protested....and he only watched soccer on TV. By now it's almost every day - so I stopped watching TV almost completely.

About 6 years ago our youngest daughter started playing soccer to my husband's delight! He tries to watch most of her games. I went once to watch, but the bad language of the parents watching and knowing everything better - beside my ignorance of the game itself - put me off. 

Today my husband asked me to come along, as our daughter now plays in the woman's league. No more know-it-all better parents any longer. Our daughter's team won 9:0! But soccer still isn't my game.... At least we now have some up to date photos of our daughter. ;)

First Performance with my Harp

My boss has invited our customers to taste the "new wine" tomorrow at he Mall where he has his shop. That's grape juice with yeast, tasting still a bit sweet and bubbly. The yeast eats the sugar and poos the alcohol. It has many names all over Germany. We call it "Federweißer" and "Suser".

The most favorite food to go with it is either onion cake or "Flammkuchen", which is like a very thin Pizza traditionally with sour cream, ham and onions. (Or whatever you decide to put on it).

To make the Mall more homely, a band will play during the afternoon. On Monday my boss hat the - slightly crazy - idea, that I could play a few melodies on my harp during the morning hours, so the silence wouln't be so loud. Well - this means, that we're going to have our first live performance tomorrow.

Luckily we only have to make comfortable noise - I don't expect people to stare and listen closely. For me it's a great oportunity to get used to distracting noises around me while playing. That's very important if I  will ever play in front of people.

So I'm off to practise now before a busy day at work - and won't be here tomorrow.

If you care to listen: 

 Practising at the Mall

Almost forgotten....

With all my travelling last weekend I had completely forgotten that my favorite Irish Folk Band from Berlin was coming to our neighbour town this week! Luckily my friend asked me on Monday if I would join her today. Of course I wanted to as it was the last chance for this year!!!

The neighbour town is only 20 km away - but our daughter needed our car to go to her Ballett training. Luckily there's a train running from town to town. Our daughter took me to the station and my friend - living further away - collected me in the next town.

Unfortunately we couldn't stay until the end of the concert as I wanted to get the train before midnight - thinking of my poor child staying awake to collect me. Two years ago it was me staying up late to collect her. 

Still - it was a fantastic evening with plenty of happy music and now sore hands from clapping and sore feet from dancing.

Cobblestones

A weekend full of adventures

The past weekend was full to the brim with adventure, friends, people, traveling, music, joy, laughter, feelings and gratitude. 

On Friday I traveled to Bavaria to meet friends and their band at a medieval town festival. They put so much love in creating a medieval town - far too much to see it all on one day! I would have loved to stay the weekend, but the next morning we all together travelled on to Austria. 

A castle had been turned into a place out of Tolkien's fantasy stories, luckily into one of the peaceful scenes. There were many workshops, like how to pronounce the language of the Elves, collecting herbs etc. All participants had been asked to dress like the characters in the films of Lord of the Ring or The Hobbit. And the magic worked  - even my ears changed their shape.

Unfortunately there were far too many events and festivals that weekend, so the population of Middle Earth was scarce. To make up for it everybody was in a fantastic mood and the concert at night turned into an unforgetable party.

I still have to sort through all my photos, videos and memories which might take a little while as reality has already taken over and there's so much to do during the few hours I'm at home.

TV report about Middle Earth 

Middle Earth Festival Austria

Photos from the Medieval Town Festival 

Too heavy to bear

When we moved into our house almost 20 years ago, we had a huge pear-tree beside it. It was higher than our house and the only pears that grew whereat the very top. After the first harvest my father in law helped to cut it down bit by bit.

During the next spring we planted a new pear tree with my favorite pears "Conference". During the first few years we only had 2 or 3 hand fulls of fruit, but then we had more and more. Two years ago they finally were too many to eat, so I started to make jam before they got bad - and that it just delicious.

This year there were more pears than ever before and for one of the branches it was too much to carry, although we had tried to hold it up with a pole. Last week the wind was already like the first auntumn storms - and it broke the branch off. So sad, but the pears are already tasty - as the wasps prove by eating them at the tree. Last year we had to pick them to save them from the insects.....we might have to do it again this year, although they keep longer on the tree, usually.

Wedding anniversay

Today I'm too busy to blog - it's our 20th wedding anniversary and after work we'll go out for dinner - so I better hurry with my chores now!

At the same time it's our 19th wedding anniversary, as we only went to the registry office first and had the Church wedding a year later - on the same date.

Since it's on the number plate of our car, my husband hasn't forgotten the date once!

Back again

A few weeks ago our PC decided that it needed a break - without a warning it stopped working. I was shocked and needed a few days until I could decide, what to do. There's some sensitive data I don't like to show strangers - although I wasn't sure the data was still there.

In the mean time we used our very old XP computer. I'm full of gratitude that it helped me in those weeks, but it also showed me why I had bought another one. The XP is very slow and it needed plenty of updates first, as it hadn't been connected to the internet for 2,5 years. It was ok for basics, but no fun to blog, as I had no photos to use.

Finally a good friend offered help and together we managed to find out that the grafic card wasn't working properly. The storage disc needed a format C - but it's not as bad as it sounds, as I had all my data secured on an extra storage disc. This doesn't include the programms which I'm now installing back the way I need them. It's amazing how many programms we need for ordinary tasks at the computer.

Now things are almost back to normal and I can sleep peacefully again.

When did you do your last back-up? I do it every week, so I'm lucky now. :)

Mind you - windows had a hard job last night, doing all the "lost" updates again.