May 23 2020

Working on language retention with using some pictographs and sound alike words in English or German etc. to fix a word in memory. We are having a couple of rainy days here for a change which for the farmers and forests are well needed. Insect counts are low and certain animals are in the danger zone.  We have had two students in local schools testing positive for the Corona virus. At this writing schools are slowly opening with classes meeting at intervals during the week. There will be an opening of an outdoor drive-in theater on the parking lot of the town‘s local festival hall.  The local paper had an article about using wild plants as thistles and pigweed to add to the table. Wash well! Two students in the Hofer schools have come down with Covid 19 and one of the schools will remain closed until the 2 week in June. Father’s Day comes on Ascension Day in Germany and many men go out with little carts filled with bottled beer in groups but this year was very orderly with only one police citation for not keeping social distancing.  Perhaps many men stayed home with their families for a change. 

 Today is Monday the 6th of June and like many days in Germany it is a holiday. I am enjoying two weeks of vacation from teaching as the students are off till the 17th of June for what is called „Pfingstferien“ Pfingsten being the German word for Pentecost or Whitsunday. It is one of the holidays in Germany which has two days like Easter and Christmas. So today it was up at 7:30 to take the dog out and jog. Meggy the dog had a stroke last August and is per Vet‘s advice not to go with me on my morning run. Recently she has decided to wake me up starting as early as 5:30 AM by barking and howling a phenomenon that is new for her. When she was younger (now 14) I never heard her bark and luckily she is a dog that stays at home when no one is there without making a fuss. I was getting up with her at first thinking she had to go out but reading a bit online and observing her actions, I realized she wanted me to simply get up. The advice is to let her carry on and not give in. I hope the neighbors will be ok as her barking is quite loud. The little dog in the one of the upstairs apartment barks ( not powerfully) the whole day long till her mistress comes back from work. I end this report with a picture of my „Pfingstrose“ from my garden a type of peony which blooms at this time around Pentecost giving its name. 

Blog May 17, 2020

The weather has been unusually cold for this time of the year and it would have been nice if the landlord had not turned the furnace off.  The advantage will be the fuel costs at the end of the year. Most of the stores are open including the larger ones and everyone is entering wearing masks. The supermarkets are mostly requiring that customers also use the shopping carts which facilitates keeping distances between the shoppers while pushing the carts. There has been demonstrations in the larger cities in Germany against the lockdowns and sheltering at home but since one can go out for a walk, increasingly go to restaurants sitting outside, small groups meeting, shopping, visiting a friends home, etc. my feeling is not one of isolation. I have started teaching at the music schools where I have students as well as continuing lessons online of those that want to stay at home. The music schools have „Spukwände“ ( spit shields) for singers and instrumentalists, plastic sheets mounted on wooden stands and plenty of hand sanitizers in teaching rooms.  Luckily in one school,  I have two pianos so that I can demonstrate without getting near the student at the piano. What I have missed this year since I only started back to teaching last week is driving in the countryside looking at the light pastels of emerging leaves on the side of the road and hills as they are turning to full greens. I was at my garden yesterday and picked a good handful of sorrel to add to a salad along with parsley which comes up every year (sorrel too) in my greenhouse.  We usually make sorrel soup here in Germany but I googled some recipes for salads and will give it a try.  

Blog May 10

From what I have been reading about the arctic weather hitting the northeast, a look at the weather prognosis for northern Bavaria, Franconia is cold nights for the next 4 days of freezing temperatures. Sometimes there is a mirror weather effect here paralleling the northeast of the States. Today at the bakery for fresh buns and croissants, I had to wait in line with distancing in order to enter the bakery. The only problem with paying for something using the smart phone is my facial recognition IPhone doesn’t work with a mask on and so I have to tip the password in sometimes not getting it right with people as well as sales person waiting for me to get it right. I sometimes wear rubber gloves which makes it even more difficult but hey, that is so unimportant these days, why bother complaining. They are starting to relax some of the controls here and this week I will start to teach at the music schools in the two cities where I have students. I have sent all the parents and students the rules for lessons and several have asked to continue online lessons for the time being.  This month I will miss my intensive Czech lessons in Prague for the first time in many years. Every quarter we meet with our teacher in Prague at  a language school near the Prague Castle trying to get back our foggy memories of the language having been busy with many other things during the off months. One of our fellow students works near the Czech border in Linz, Austria and actually has to use the language in business. She can converse much better than I.  I do practice daily and slowly attempt to gain a foothold in Russian as my garden partner comes from Moscow. 

May 4 2020 making semolina breakfasts

Since I have been here in Germany there is a type of wheat flour named Grieß and from this flour one makes Grießbrei or as I recently discovered in English semolina porridge. Many things and words are not translated everyday and one accepts the word without bothering to translate in my case into English. Since my Wednesday routine is Grießbrei for breakfast after many years I wondered if we had this type of flour in English and lo and behold there it was. I have never used semolina flour in the U,S. although being acquainted with the word. Semolina is used to make pasta and desserts. The closest I came to it is wheat being used as a breakfast cereal is in Wheatena but that is not the same thing. Semolina is thicker than normal flour and has more taste.  This brings me to Stellcut  oats. I have often bought steel-cut  oats in the PX where I shop at the military base at. Grafenwoehr and it is not cheap but makes a great breakfast. I don’t go often to the base as it is an hour or so drive and most of what I need can be bought on the economy here where I live. I discovered about a a year or so ago that steel-cut oats (with steel blades) are hulled oats (outer inedible shell) cut into tiny pieces. Hulled oats are also known as groats and the taste is like steel cut oats only more chewy. They should be soaked a long time and then cooked but like with steel cut oats can be made the night before. I put a cup of groats into a sauce pan and 3 cups of water and a bit of salt. I turn the stove burner on to about medium and set my time for 45 minutes. I then cover the pan and leave it over night. I start the my breakfast with doling out two portions which leaves 2 portions in the pan. I add milk, fruit, homemade jelly and into the microwave for 2 minutes and voila breakfast is ready.  Groat porridge is chewy, tasty with a consistency not unlike tapioca. The advantage is with the leftover porridge is to put it in the refrigerator to use a few days later.  The leftover porridge as is good as it was several days ago and doesn’t become mushy like oatmeal.  The cost of a package of 1000 grams is less than 3 euros while steel-cut oats can cost upwards to 8 or 9 dollars. 

May 2, 3 2020

A sort of rainy clear sometimes day here in Germany. Went to the bakery with my mask on and got 2 loaves of „Bauern Brot“ or „Farmers bread“ in German. This particular bakery is one of the few businesses that only accepts „Bar Geld“ or cash.  Many stores not only accept bank cards and or credit cards, the readers also have blue tooth receivers so I can use my smart phone to pay. The Scandinavian countries almost exclusively use card payments and cash very seldom used to pay for something. I am still developing my internet teaching skills with music instruction. It is difficult to correct a piano students mistake without showing the keyboard and simultaneously playing. Luckily most students have a bit of musical talent and are able to grasp what should and should not be played. The news is full of reports on how people are coping at home and work. The 12th graders are carefully going back to classes in smaller groups to prepare for final exams similar to American Highschools senior exams, They get a passing grade for an Abitur which is like a diploma.
    Sunday May 3. Walk to bakery for Brötchen (rolls) and croissants. Everyone going into bakery puts on their masks. I paid using my IPhone Apple wallet. The only problem is the phone doesn’t recognize my face and I have to use digital access. Today if the weather holds (windy and cold) I will go to my garden to make some repairs on greenhouse and gate.  Yesterday I made a quiche with vegetables ( using a frozen bag of mixed vegetables). I finally have to succumbed to buying frozen food from a distributor who comes once a month. The main advantage is I get the frozen vegetables that I want especially frozen corn which is difficult to come by here in Germany. We can buy canned corn now which wasn’t a possibility in the past as many other American type foods were not when I first arrived in 1991.  This has all changed for the better as chicken in all ways is now available. At the time the only use for chicken was soup chicken and rotisserie chicken. Gradually chicken breast chicken thighs, and whole chickens became available.  This observation is only where I was shopping as I am sure that in Berlin and in big cities there may have been more selection. I mentioned my garden which is about a quarter of an acre sporting a small garden house and two greenhouses. The metal greenhouse I bought and put together and the other is self made with wood and plastics sheets.

 Germans love their gardens and one can rent a plot and then add structures.  The yearly rent is quite cheap and one can rent the garden for as long as one wants. 

29 April 2020

29 April 2020

It has been a long time since I have used my blog to publish anything but since I do a daily personal blog for my self, I think it would be useful to get back to my letter from Germany. We are like everybody else in lockdown with Germany doing a good job keeping safe distances and lower death tolls than many other countries.  I have been teaching music on line with my keyboard and singing students and although not perfect it is working. The parents are happy that the children have something other than schoolwork to do. I am cooking more than.ever learning new ways and techniques finally ordering frozen food from a distributor something I never thought I would do. The frozen vegetables are excellent and because I do a lot of baking vegetables in the oven rather than steaming or boiling them makes them taste better. We’ve started putting on masks for entering stores, offices etc. and everyone seems to be complying. We are having a problem especially here in Bavaria with the of the driest Aprils in record which causes problems for farmers and our forests. It was warm and wet during the winter but snow is a cover and supplier of water for the subsequent seasons. I am trying to read more although being more at home doesn’t mean I have had less to do and I still am wasting too much time reading reports and news from the States. I read our local paper here daily and catch the evening news at 8:00 PM as well as reading several books in English and German. Getting older means that retaining things such as words and names is a part of life. Memorizing has never been a forte for me but I have always been able to research quickly to bring back things and the internet has supplied so much information that was not available in the past. I have a good library of reference works especially for language and music.  

October in Germany

October  13 blog 2013

Fall came rather early here in this part of Germany with a cold, rainy September which on the end drifted into "Indian Summer" better known here as "Alt Weiber Sommer" among other names.   Because it comes at during September is the reason that "Oktoberfest' in Munich takes place in September to take advantage of the warm sunny weather. The last week or so has been around 40 to 50 degrees during the day going down to the 30's at night. I have been in each of the 2 gardens that I have here picking a bumper crop of plums, tomatoes, peaches, grapes and that most interesting berry actually a nut called Sea Buckthorn. The yellow orange berries are packed into clusters on the thorny branches making picking them arduous and sometimes painful, the long thin thorns being hard to see pricking the unwary gardner's fingers.  The yield is made into many different things from jelly to health products, Schnapps, and so on.  I make jelly, the sour juice making a tangy jell with vitamin benefits. The last of the grape juice is in the fridge waiting to be converted into a ruby red jelly which interestingly has a Fox Grape taste.  Yes I checked the label still clinging to the vine planted over 4 years ago and aside from the German wording states that the grapes have a "Fox" taste.  I remember picking wild fox grapes with my father some 20 years ago in Roseland, NJ before the developers bulldozed what was left of what used to be forest to build "McMansions. " On Friday I attended a meeting of the Niederländters, a society that mostly active in Bavaria and is a men only club that gathers once a month to recite poetry, essays, sing, drink, eat, and mostly have fun with words as only the Germans can with this very rich language.  This website is in German but can be quickly translated with such browsers as Google Translate. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_der_Geheimbünde

There is even several groups in the USA.  

My contribution to the group is to accompany the singing on the piano which makes up for my language abilities as the wordplay can be quite linguistically advanced for this person. 

Today the sun is shining for a change and I will harvest the last of the tomatoes ending the afternoon with good long run accompanied by my pooch.  

29 December 2012

Today the weather was clear and about 40 degrees. While in the City to do some shopping,  I noticed many other people shopping for sales like me. A neighbor said the local supermarket parking was full and difficult to park. This is Germany the weekend before New Years Eve which is a holiday and the stores close early during day on the 24th.  Christmas lasted 2 days which meant Sunday the 23 all stores were closed and most businesses closed at Noon on the 24th what with Tuesday and Wednesday, the 25th and 26th being holidays it was essential to get all shopping done by the 22nd.  What is great here is the peaceful two days of Christmas without stores being open and most people staying at home in contrast to the States where everyday is go to the Mall!  I got some long walks in with the dog both of us enjoying the exercise and Thursday evening the 27th was a visit to the new Freiheitshalle an all purpose exhibition hall to see the Glinka Ballet company from Russia.