babys make me smile

well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? – babys make you smile a whole lot, they totally make you happy and tinkly all over and afterwards you feel as if the world is a better place – that is the way it is supposed to be – and i am so glad i get to met yet another little one tomorrow – i just know it’ll make my day and make me forget whatever might be troubling me – it’s not that i want one of my own just yet, but i am always so pleased to see other people’s babys and be able to cuddle and hold them and spoil them and play with them and hear them giggle and squeal and make other funny noises

a long time ago

i have just re-dicovered a long forgotten part of my childhood – musical fun times with moosmutzel und waldwuffel – many, many happy days were spent with these musical stories, imported from the former eastern germany by a boyfriend of my aunt’s – it seems like yesterday, that i was listening to the songs and i can still sing along – awesome!

here’s some of my favourites

remember astor inn?

remember top withens?

sunday saunterings

sundays are best for day trips to amazing places near your home – last week i finally made it to the wartbug – world famous and pretty amazing – it is situated upon a hill, which you reach after a twenty-minute hike through the autumn forrest – perfect for a sunny sunday afternoon, when the leaves are falling and life is beautiful

this sunday was a journey back to childhood – to the wild animal park sababurg – i used to be there all the time, when i was a child and it was pretty damn great to be back and to remember happy days from long ago

blame it on chopin and canada

i am wide awake and waiting for the canada-usa hockey game to start in about three hours time – i should probably get some sleep, but i am rather excited, so i while away the hours, drinking tea, staring out of the window in the star-crested night, writing long lonesome letters to far-away friends and listening to chopin – and, suddenly overcome by a deep lust for reading, i have also fetched my rilke letters and feel like perfecting the art of my letter writing by studying with a master

why is canada so far away and why are so many people i care so much about so far away and mostly in canada as well? – questions life will not be able to answer and listening to chopin most certainly will not help but rather put me in an even worse contemplative mood – the thing is, i don’t really care – just weeks ago, a night like this would have brought on a massive attack of depression, but right now i revel in melancholy – it will only be moments before i bring out my old diaries and highschool yearbooks and get myself lost in times long gone by – loves lost and mourned for, friendships held dear over the years, adventures taken and adventures forsaken – i think to enjoy life in the present and life for the moment, you have to dive into the past occasionally and remember the good and bad times you had

fernando

why oh why is soccer boy not all that anymore? – and why did i not think of this last year? – anyways, a hymn to all fernando fans, any fernando, no matter when and where, who and how – if you can’t get enough get yourselves over to youtube and find the spanish version – that’s totally something

oh, this is just the start – ABBA is back in my books – they never really left, but i can just about predict a very ABBA-strong phase ahead – nothing’s ever as good as a classic

twenty years ago

twenty years of unified germany, so this movie is just about in time to celebrate – and it sounds wonderful

by the way – bananas are good!

ten childhood memories

not that i watched overly much tv as a child – i spent more time outside – probably running away with the neighbour’s boys – climbing up the steep slope behind our house, using thick tree roots and vines – scrambling through a water tunnel – throwing disgusting algae balls at the other kids, while standing ankle-deep in the village brook – running wild at the next-door farm, feeding sheep, chasing cats, watching calving or buying milk – life was charmed – a little ronja, a little bullerbü, a little madita – i can rightfully say, i had a delightful childhood

but these  intros still give me the shivers, from the few times, i did watch tv

i really don’t remember what tao tao was all about, just that i watched it and loved it

20 years – musings on the fall of the berlin wall

twenty years – what could happen in so many years? – a little girl can grow into a little miss – wars can be fought – people can attempt to change the world – cell phones can diminish to a midget of their original size  – and two countries can chant “wir sind das volk” and become one

angela merkel was just getting out of a sauna, when she heard – i was seven and for the first time in my life i watched the news with ardour – the people attempting to leave their country and crowd into the prague embassy, that was more exciting than any cartoon or silly movie could ever be – history was being written and i was right there

why o why did i leave berlin behind this past weekend to experience turmoil and despair, instead of staying for today and celebrating?

fall of the berlin wall – that is something so incredible, so huge, so historic and, for once, i am rather proud to be german and to have my own memories of “damals” – we even have a real piece of the wall at home – i know, i know, anyone can buy one in berlin, but let’s face it, who knows where those pieces come from – ours is real, someone was actually there and brought it back from the actual night of the fall and took it themselves

and how does the world celebrate? – everyone to their own fashion – l.a. demolishes a giant cardboard wall according to scrip – london builds a melting ice-wall – and a chocolatier in paris re-built part of the wall in chocolate – great!

there is many songs that describe this day – the scorpion’s wind of change of beethoven’s ode to joy, but this somehow is the hymn of the day

short magister story

i stumbled across my magister thesis the other day and was thrilled by the sheer size of it – i started reading and was amazed that i had managed to write something as interesting and good as that – i don’t want to be gushing myself with praise, i am not that great, but i am pretty damn proud of having accomplished someting like that – and here’s the very, very shortest version of my thesis – enjoy!

ps: my thesis is on the dynamics of mexican-american self-perception in prison in california – tough choice, but very rewarding in a strange way

happy birthday

not only one, but two quite important birthdays today – in my world at least

1. the internet is forty today – without the internet, no wordpress, without wordpress, no teacaro-blog, without teacaro-blog the world would be a sadder place – definitely for me
2. asterix is fifty today – without asterix, many a lonely teenage hour would have been disastrously boring and sad – according to three different quizzes in three different communities, i would either be miraculix, asterix or idefix – i’ll agree to the last

Du bist klein, süß und meistens auch sehr lustig. Aber wenn du jemanden siehst den du nicht magst, wirst du zum Berserker oder einer Wilden Kampfmaschine.

so, here’s to asterix and the internet – a very happy birthday and many more fantastic years

SoBe knows

SoBe is a brand of drinks i know from my stays in sweet california – i’ve gotten to love them not only for their great taste, but also for their caps, in which you find little bits of odd wisdom – i aspired to collect as many as possible and make it a daily happening to open my bottle and find my personal message from the lizards – an all time favourite being “i deserve this!” or “ever danced with a lizard in the pale moonlight” – it’s simply a state of mind you need for understanding the meaning of that – and if you drink your daily SoBe, you know and you never want to stop

here’s some cap examples i found on the internet:

chestnuts

why does nobody collect chestnuts anymore? – when i was little, it was my favourite sign that autumn was here, dig into the fallen leaves and rummage around for lovely, smooth, silky chestnuts – the things you could do with them – stick animals or just feel them laying smoothly in your hands – or feed them to the wild boars in the city reserve – so many possibilities and just the thrill of collecting and possibly climbing up in trees and shaking them so more would fall of – but today i saw bunches of chestnuts just lining the streets, forgotten and never picked up by a happy child – a sad sight, somehow making childhood, mine and nowadays, something unforgivingly melancholic and despreate, as if it isn’t really there at all

world wide web of wonder

the internet is a wondrous thing – while working all afternoon yesterday, i found some photographs of a lovely valley in austria – that happened to be the exact same valley, where my grand-parents liked to vacation once upon a time – thus i found myself compelled to look it up on the internet and after some random clicking and flicking, i found an article on a rock located above the wangalm, which is full of memorial plates for people who died upon the mountains – one of them is for my grandfather – it gave me the shivers that this very same plate was quoted, it’s “all ways lead to god, one leads over the mountains” being a sort of leitmotif for the whole article

this group of random travelers happened to record their feelings on the internet, but it is a very nice thought that many come upon that rock every year and all of them read of my grandfather and thus remember him, just as we do – we all leave or trails on this earth and sometimes they make wondrous things happen – my grandfather died many years ago and it still hurts, but it also makes me happy to realize he might have died that day on that mountain, but will never be forgotton as long as this plate is there – and even more wonderous – we chose the quote because that was what he had photographed years before on an other mountain on an other plate – life is so inspiring and even in death we refuse to give up and keep on being there and pointing the way for generations to follow – a truly comforting thought

chopin was my first love

sadly, i never looked this cool, when playing the piano – but i miss it – why does a piano have to be so great and big and my place be so small?

ah, the fun of random memories

i found this video on my computer and was remindedof a party i held in california one day long ago – i prepared a lot of food and drinks and invited all my friends over to our wonderful apartment – i think that was the day i invented the famous carola orange punch (alcohol not detectable at first sight, you see – with campus police and such busting parties and my beloved roomate then being underage…) – anyways, the party took a funny turn, when we ran out of glasses and used jars instead – or when someone decided it was time to demonstrate his view on american truckers and what they look like – in the end, my roomate and friend neha, the crazy girl from india, a pre-med, who’d do her spare time painting in her scrubs – jon, the funniest british guy, i have met in all my live, who’s never learned that the brilliant california sun poses a great threat for his delicate white british skin and who emerged from a long day at the beach and a cold shower afterwards looking like a lobster time and again – and myself were cleaning up and decided to commemorate this memorable moment by taking a photo of ourselves – unfortunately, jon hit the recording button on my camera and the perfect shot was lost – but we got this short clip – and i can truly say, here it is not true that a picture says more than thousand words – this speaks truly for itself and the crazyness of a california exchange year – giggle, giggle, damn, damn, weird, random, funny, oh my god, hilarious

julia and elmo

my next birthday-wish is somewhat unrealistic – i want to be five years old again – be able to fit into all the cute children’s clothes in the stores – laugh my head off over silly sesame street clips – have no worries beyond tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s play-dates – don’t be embarrassed by the amount of teddy bears and such in my bed – be happy and carefree and candidly starry-eyed about the world around me

maidenhood memories

i feel melancholic and in the mood for girlie childhood memories and crying at cheesy movies from the past – here are some of my favourites – oh, i feel the tears welling up in my eyes – get the kleenex ready and join me on a crying blast from the past

immenhof – horrible quality, but ohhh, i loved it – and i didn’t even like horses all that much

nesthäkchen – the music alone makes me melancholic and longing to be little again and having no worries, but the loss of marbles and how my gerda-doll would be dressed tomorrow

sissi – how i wanted to be a princess – oh, i still do

anne of green gables – for ever and ever and ever my favourite book in the whole wide world – and i love the movie as well – where, please, is my gilbert?

 

aula am wilhelmsplatz

the chairs are more comfortable, but everything else is unchanged – the same mighty kings look down upon the audience and the same formidable ceiling attracts attention – oh, the people have changed – i was there during my first week of university and look how i have changed during those seven years…

today was the formal graduation ceremony of all graduates of 2008 of my faculty – social sciences – at the georg-august-university of göttingen – it was impressing and it felt great to have so many people acknowledge one’s achievement – german politician rita süssmuth held a speech – parents, grandparents and proud friends took millions of photographs and my diploma was given to me with a handshake and a smile, not just via mail or handed out randomly at the registrar’s office

even though it’s been ages since i actually finished my magister studies, it now feels completely real and i am ready to start something new full time – my p.hd. plans are ripening and i am looking forward to be getting back to the libraries and study halls and – most of all – the books of lore and learning