My summer fun this year. Dedicated to Dana X.

The following was a copy of a letter sent to a few people the last of whom was Dana X.  It is self explanatory.  Please enjoy. 

Dear Dana , 

Thank your for your nice words after my sending the  Goitse video to you.  I have noted your kinds words and the observation re. my  writing a book.   Well thank you, but no thank you.  The reasons:

1) I have trouble keeping up blog postings of a few words per month. The discipline of writing a book... O.M.G. !

2) There are some unhappy times in my life I don´t want to ´go back to´.

NOT awful, but growing up/finding one´s way stuff. That was hard and really what is there to share on that?  Most everyone have ´been there, done that´ in some uncomfortable-to-awful way or other.  Nothing new to talk of there, even if I wanted to!

3) The truth.  I would have to tell the truth. HOW AWFUL IS THAT!  I have absolutely no desire to share my  whole life with the world.  

So instead, I will just sent you a newsy e-mail. 

After our adventure driving to Spain in June, all has been quite for us on Lake Konstanz.   Not too wild, but very pleasant, there were parties and friends, and family visits.  All wonderful, below is a taste of the more unusual.  

 As you know I work in a school, so I had most of the summer off.   It was lovely here when the sun was shining.  Which it did most of the time.    - Well apart from about three weeks bad weather the end of July/beginning of August.   There were a lot of cycle trips, walking about and of course swimming and not doing much at all.  The latter of which I am quite good at!  

A family friend came for a week of cycling and leisure on the Bodensee.  A good story there: Yasmin X is coming to retirement age.  Like many in her demographic the world over, she has worked hard all her life, and now at 60 plus is aware she is not sure what she wants to do with the gift of time afforded to her in the near future D.V.  So, she is experimenting.   In this spirit, she contacted me to see if I could accompany her on a cycle trip on Lake Konstanz, she wants to see if she would like to take up cycling.  While not exactly a breeze for her, cycling was fun enough for her to consider ´more of the same´.  A nice addendum there:  Her daughter and her daughter´s friend thought so much of this adventure, that they joined us for a few days. Some photos en route.

Another fun thing we did was visit a farm museum, to see how farming was carried out in the 1700 and 1800´s.  – It was a hard life here too in those times!  

https://freilichtmuseum-neuhausen.de/

A highlight was a visit and going out for a walk - with the pigs.  See photo below with us, other visitors, a pig herder and lots of very self-confident pigs.  Which I understand pigs are.  It was indeed fun. 

A note on the pig herder, the red haired women with the bucket; he started as a housekeeper in the museum over 25 years ago.  They noted that she had a great talent with pigs!    Since then, she has been managing the herd of about 12 young pigs that arrive every spring.   I´ve always said it Dana when people see how competent one keeps a house, it can lead to all sorts of options, this is particularly true in the U.S. - One of the many wonderful things about that country. None the less from housekeeper to pig herder is a first for me!

Yesterday I had another adventure of a different sort.  I visited a monastery here that honours an Irish man, St. Fintán.  – Seems there are several Irish saints in the old church called Fintán.    See link below.  The church was even more ornate than Birnau, where Herbert and I married.  And even more out in the boondocks.  A lovely walk in the wilds which I enjoyed with a woman here who is well up on ´holy places´ and such things.   Alas it was too wet to take good pictures, so you check it out yourself.  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fintan_von_Rheinau

You might enjoy my little Birds custard trifle story.   A German woman  here, a friend and an anglophile,  was horrified that I had never made this dessert, for my German husband.  

Well I made one for Romeo H. during the summer, and the proof of the pudding in this instance, is in the picture. 

 But it was a good trifle too it was if I say so myself.

And finally, a picture of me at Oktober Fest in Konstanz. 

 It is only going in Konstanz for about five years now, from about Sept. 15^th to Oct. 3^rd.     I am the only person in my world here who likes Oktober Fest.    So one of the week days after work, I headed straight in on the train and enjoyed a few hours of ´oomph pa pa´music.  It was fun.  – The Maß of beer was just for show, I hasten to add!

Well now Dana, is this not a newsy up date or what!   I enjoyed writing it and thinking back on all the fun things I have enjoyed and more to come. D.V.   Much to be grateful for. And I am.

So Dana, this is not a book, but it is some updates on life and times here.  In fact, I will make a blog posting out of it, in your honour! 

Regards,

Hausfrau Róisín.  

P.S. in Sept. 2009, on the night before our church wedding here in Allensbach, when  coming back from and evening meal in Allensbach on Sept. 18th, we saw ´something´ in the sky, which we filmed.  We later found out it was the NASA  world viewer.  

See link to same not from 18th 2009 however!. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxRUpzM6JTg

The Landscape in Northern Spain.

Before travelling to Spain, I asked a friend who knows the country well, what could I visit and see in the area of Spain south of the French border?
 
She said: ´´Nothing except the landscape.   But that is enough because it is beautiful.´´

She was right.  Miles and miles of hills, rocky land, occasional cornfields on the plains; here and there a single tree.   Moving further to the center of Spain towards the Madrid region, the land became more rocky.  

See below sad attempts to do this wonderful landscape justice.  - Even if one had not dropped and  broken one´s camera , I don´t think one could do justice to this landscape.

Note a symbol for Jacob´s Way above on the water trough.  There are a lovely feature to be seen all over Europe. 

We were amazed to see occasionally bright colourful little plants who managed to hold their own in the blazing heat. 

On a spontaneous whim, Romeo H. decided we should go ´off track´and climb up....

And up. And up..

In the photo you see below, there was an eagle´s nest in the trees.  We saw the parent birds flying over, and they taking note of our presence.  When we climbed higher, when the birds flew we could hear the movement of the wind under their wings.

We climbed up until we could go no further without climbing equipment.

Look closely above, there is a cow down there!  And see how well she maneuvers the undergrowth.

On another day´s walking we saw these craggy rocks high up in the middle distance..

Somewhere we took a wrong turn on the path, and ending up IN these craggy rocks high up in the middle distance!

The nesting eagles seemed unperturbed by us, but were perhaps not used to company.  Especially on a Monday morning when everyone else was at work.

The picture above is looking down the valley.

And this picture to the left is down in the same valley looking up.









Driving deeper into the region of  the of Castile and León, there were little villages every few miles.   Sadly not well populated these days, as most young people have moved to the bigger cities or left Spain to find work elsewhere.  One village we passed with about 20 houses, had only one person living there full time.  Many of the villages reminded me of pueblos you see on American cowboy films.  BUT then I remembered, it was the reverse:  The villages on the American cowboy movies, were a copy of these villages in Spain!































































This is Semmi standing proudly outside his family wine cellar.

Semmi is now retired, he used the time to build an apartment in the cellar -  complete with kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms... COLD - even in summer!  See below.

(More photos of  Semmi´s home in the following blog posting.) 

One corner - three houses!



























All over the world in small villages every where there are these wonderful little shops that sell everything; so you have under ware beside the glue beside the soft drinks, behind the children´s toys.... great stuff.   Indeed I have seen such ´small village shops´ in New York too.  And I love them all.

In this little shop in a small village some miles south of Valladolid in Castile and León they were not only friendly, but were very enthusiastic to get their photos taken.

The Village of Fompedraza, Castile and León
Without a doubt, my favorite village of all those we visited was Fompedraza where we stayed for a few nights.   It was otherworldly...



The village was on a little hill, surrounded by depressions in the land of grey white soil; in some areas where there was enough flat land, corn or fruit trees were cultivated.

It really was a trip back in time too.... see below a garden across the street from where we stayed.  And above the door to the garden if you look closely.........

 


.... you see a cock that crew every morning.  And for much of the rest of the day too!

And in the 1920s the village had washing pools built...

We actually met an older woman who had washed clothes in this wash area; she said it was used actively until the 1940´s or so when electricity was installed and people could have washing machines at home. 

The picture above was taken from the verandah of the house we stayed in; an elderly man brought the horse and donkey down to graze on the plot of land every afternoon.  As the animals grazed, he would cut some corn, seen in the right of the picture. This with a scythe.   As the sun got too hot, the man would go and lie in the shade for a few hours, and then continue with his task in the cool of the evening.

The Church of St. Bartholomew, which was built in the 1100´s, dominated the village.  It was a well loved and well kept church, of which the locals were justifiably proud.

And back to the other worldly business again....

On our last night in Fompedraza we visited the local bar-cum-community centre, which is open only a few nights a week.  The locals were gracious enough to chat away with us.  At about 11.30 p.m. I took off to take this photo of the moon below, which I could see to my right....

... Standing at the same spot and turning to my left...

The sun was setting .... most beautifully.






Ten minutes later, the sun had completely disappeared, and the moon shown down alone.

Magic!