Hmmm

Hmmm.... This blog seem to be turning into a food blog...
That is not the purpose. And I am sure it will get better when it gets warmer and one starts to go out more. But then again, food IS important and fun. At least good food. I am not much for junkfood. 
(And yes, I AM going to post some more pics, it is just the matter of downloading the pics from the camera as well)

Paris and glamour

Next time I go to Paris I think it is time for some more glamour, high heals, nice dresses, fancy dinners - but it HAS to be a bit warmer then... Paris is always great, was great this weekend too. And there are plenty of chances for good food, also the more basic food is great, but next time I think it is time to splash out. Or perhaps I should save that for my New York trip? When I go there it will for sure be warm, anything else would surprise me greatly. In Paris it was still pretty chilly, even though I managed to miss the showers, when the rain came down it so happened that I was inside. What a great coincidence. :-) But you can't really be glamorous when you are shivering with cold, can you?

Oh, by the way, talking about food, and basic food. When you have a basic salad with foie gras, you know you are in Paris... (Yes, yes, I know, one should not eat foie gras, as they don't treat the birds well, but I am a bad bad person, I could not resist. I always have problems resisting good food.)

Paris Paris Paris

Wonderful city but I wouldn't mind it if it was just a tad warmer next time I am there...

Updated with a picture of the blue sky and the Japanese cherry tree. Flowering cherry trees are truly wonderful, as are chestnut trees. A long long time ago, when I lived in Göteborg, we had the Japanese cherry trees as well as chestnuts in the courtyard. But they didn't reach up to the kitchen window, instead I could have my morning tea watching the trees from above. Still one of the most beautiful sights I can imagine!

Proud owner of a new bike

The spring really cough hold of me this weekend. I went out and did some shopping, and I am now the proud owner of a bike of the brand "Diamant" (Diamond). It is a real "old lady" bike, with foot break, parcel carrier (think that is the word? I never really discussed bicycles in English - heck, I barely know what the words are in Swedish...), and I can sit on it, properly, instead of leaning the way you do on a mountain bike. Good! I want my bike to be primarily a means of transport and something I can carry things on. Picnic baskets, for example...

I have been without a bike since I moved to Germany, but to be honest the last bike was not used very much, due to how we were living, instead one had to take the car everywhere. This new bike is the first new bike I have ever bought. My old bike I bought from my father for what equals 2.5 EUR. A symbolic sum for a bike that no one wanted to steal. It was orange (orange metallic to be picky), an SCO, which is a Danish brand. No gears, and quite frankly, the breaks were about to give up too. Poor thing, it was after all over 30 years old and not very well handled since I took it over. Prior to that I had another bike that I didn't take care of at all, it was silver when I wanted a red one, I was about 10, perhaps 11 when we bought it - I know because we bought it before we move to where I lived as a teenager. I hated that bike. I really wanted the red one but everybody said it was to big for me. 27", and the silvery one was 26". So I had to settle for the silver one. And I never took care of it. It was standing outside regardless of the weather, I didn't want to service it, I barely even went on the bike after I got it. No idea what happened with it in the end, but I know I got to use mums bike when I had to get to the train and didn't have time to walk.
I admit, I understand why I couldn't get the red bike, it would be a safety hazard not reaching down properly, and not being able to break. But I was growing so quickly, and had I been able to make my red Crescent last just a liiiiittle longer I would have been big enough for the red one. Now it doesn't matter anymore what colour a bike has, but then, as a girl in my preteens, of course it did.

No more worries, though, now I have my brand new bicycle, and it is practical and comfortable. But I will be using my helmet, the traffic in Düsseldorf is horrendous, especially in some areas. Many bikes are on the sidewalks, something that is illegal in Sweden but here it doesn't seem to matter - or it is just a matter of avoiding getting killed... Only got one head and I need to be careful with it. It is kind of difficult to repair, or can be. Hands, arms, legs I am not so worried about, but my head...

And no, I will not take my bike to some exercises area and bike around for exercise. Exercise is a nice bonus but if I am going to make an effort I am going to make an effort with other things. Bike is transport and fun and a possibility for the city to get smaller. Next time the sun decides to come out and we have a nice warm spring day I know who is going to go up to the Japanese park and watch the cherry trees bloom. Who knows, I may even bring a picnic!

Anyone wants to join? Let me know...

Smell

Why is it that after a real cold, the first thing that I am able to smell is the horrible smell of cigarette smoke? For days that has been more or less the only smell I have been able to recognize. If I can't smell anything nice I'd rather not feel that either. The second smell I could recognize was far more pleasant, though. Oranges. Today I can smell the oranges! Yesterday I got a hint of oranges but today it is quite clear. And I could smell something else during lunch, food cooking possibly (although I wasn't yet able to determine if it really was, nor what it was) - it means it is going in the right direction! Hurray!!! Spring is coming, I need all my senses!

A new solution - think outside the box

There is a new solution to trains not being on time, remove the time tables from the station. And - wow - no more delays. Or at least no one will know there is one...
Thankfully they are only trying that on my station so far, because even if it's not a part of their original strategy, but more a coincident, it is slightly frustrating even if I know my trains by
heart now...

See there, there is always something positive

Have been ill for a few days, coughing, sore throat, you know, all that boring stuff that comes with a cold, and is very common this time of year.

However there is always something positive - I can really feel how my muscles have been working, my stomach is in great shape from all the coughing :-) So I can survive that I have missed going to the gym, at least there are some muscles that are in shape now!

A simple test

Just curious to see if I can post using email... If you can read this
on my blog, I could...

Wallpapers

Most German homes seem to have the same rather boring white wallpapers with some sort of pattern in them - "strukturtapet" as I would say in Swedish. I guess the reason is that most Germans rent, it is not that popular to buy here - it is very costly (among other things it is the buyer that pays the real-estate agent, not the seller, and there is a speculation tax. If you sell within seven or eight years or so, you pay a special tax, they don't want people to speculate in the housing market...). And while in the rest of the world you expect some "wear and tear" and it is up to the landlord to renovate on a regular basis, even if it may be quite a lot of time in between, here that doesn't exists.. No wear and tear, every little hole, every little spot you pay for. A general rule is that you renovate before you move out... The contracts often also specifies how often you should paint the windows, and so forth... 

And this in a place where you normally don't even get a kitchen built in when you rent... Of COURSE there will be holes in the walls, who can put up kitchen cabinets without drilling holes????

And due to the need to renovate and put the flat back to the state it was in when you moved in, the white wallpapers - cheap - are very common... Who would dare spending money on fancy wallpapers that you then have to take down when you move out, or you lose your deposit...

Frida - I like her

Frida, I like her. Not that sophisticated, but charming, with surprises. And easy accessible...

It's not quite what it sounds like, though, Frida is a nice tapas bar more or less around the corner from here. They have nice tapas, great red wine - and in the mornings they have the best breakfasts! What is also great is that parts of the menu keeps changing, and the things that doesn't change on paper change slightly anyhow, they are presented differently, there are additions, more of one fruit, less of something else, the ham is somewhat different and so on. We were there today again, a team of eights, and I can't underline enough how nice it was - and not just because of the company...

The lime/honey yogurt with fruit and nuts, brilliant... :-)

She is absolutely worth checking out. She may not look much from the outside, but it is anyhow the inside that counts!

(And another good thing: Non smoking... Rare in this city despite of the official smoke ban...)

The tapas they serve in the evening are pretty good too!

No ice cream...

I am wondering why I can't find any Soy based ice cream here in Germany. I haven't had ice cream since last summer - I am lactose intolerant and the normal ice cream makes me ill. I can hardly even find sorbet actually...

Surely it can't be that there aren't any lactose intolerant people in Germany, can it?

Perhaps a silly "purity" law, just like they have a law that very strictly describes what you can have in beers, when making beer. One of the reasons why it is so difficult to find Belgian beer in Germany by the way - it's a good thing I am close to the border and can go over the Netherlands now and then, there they don't have problems with Belgian beer. (And yes, the German beer is good. But sometimes I want a change - and you can't compare Belgian and German beer, it is like comparing a starter and a dessert - they are both good but very very different.)

One thing I know for sure and that is that the lack of ice cream has got nothing to do with the Germans being extra healthy and not wanting people to eat too much because there are many many kinds of ice cream made from cream and milk, and besides it is not like the average German doesn't eat a lot anyhow...

Guess I will have to get my hands on some ice cream when I visit Sweden a weekend in April...

Feels like spring

Feels like spring is possibly here after all. A colleague told me what his mother used to say: "The cold has to rain down". Well, it has, it certainly has, for days it has been doing nothing but rain. Today we have a beautiful day though, and 10 degrees or more. At least it is nice in Düsseldorf - I am working from home today, and sitting in the kitchen with the warm sun on my back is lovely. I even contemplated getting out to sit on the balcony earlier but that would be overdoing it. 

Keep your fingers crossed that the rest of the weekend continues like this! If so, I know who will be out for looong walks, cold or no cold...!

Scandinavian evening - an update

Scandinavian evening, an update...

One of the former breweries, now "only" a restaurant/pub/bar (which mixes their own herb snaps, but that is about it as far as I understand, at least on the "brew a drink" side) had decided to have a Scandinavian tonight. Actually it has been on for a few weeks, and this weekend (or next???) is the grand finale. A group of us were there tonight. It was indeed an interesting experience...

The yellow pea soup that is in a way a signature dish for Sweden (Thursdays - pea soup and then pancakes afterwards) was quite nice, although not completely authentic. But never the less good. But when I ordered cinnamon buns - "Kanelbullar" in Swedish, and got pancakes with sugar and cinnamon, pancakes which had been cut into smaller pieces and presented in a nice way, I could not help but wonder. I passed the plate around because if it is something that I can't eat it stuff filled with lactose - and for pancakes you use milk... It was popular with the rest of the group though! But it was not cinnamon buns...

I also read what "prinsesstårta" was, and what they had in the description for that cake had nothing to do with what a "prinsesstårta" is. Prinsesstårta is a cake - in Sweden that is - which is covered with green marzipan, and inside you have sponge cake, LOADS of cream, a layer of jam, a layer of vanilla cream. Possibly something more, I haven't been able to have "Prinsesstårta" since I was a little girl. But never the less, nothing that was on the description fitted into what I just described. Unfortunately no one ordered it so that I could see what it really was...

One person ordered Glögg - Swedish Glühwein, hot, sweet wine with spices like cinnamon etc - and what they got was not Glögg but some German style Glühwein, far from sweet enough. And made of white wine rather than red, which is the most common variant in Sweden.

The "Elksnaps" I could not complain about though, because that I ordered just because I was curious. This was not a translation going bad, this was - and I knew that from the beginning - a German invention, but the waitress could not tell me what was in it so I ordered it just to satisfy my curiosity. It turned out to be some sort of mix between the Düsseldorf herb schnapps "Killepitsch" and the more common "Jägermeister". Served cold, and if you drank it slowly OK, but not exciting.

No one tried the Swedish meatballs that were presented as "Swedish national dish". That's more than I knew but OK... Actually most had eaten before coming to the place (not knowing what to expect) and besides the soup was quite filling...

All in all; A good evening, and I learned a bit more about Germans and how they view Sweden. It is obviously so that putting "Sweden" on a label sells here... And then if you throw in an elk to, the success is clear!

Scandinavian evening

Tonight; Scandinavian evening at one of the pubs/bars in Düsseldorf. Will be interesting to see what Scandinavian means. Smörrebröd. Peasoup. Salmon. And meatballs is what I am guessing...

But we shall see.

Tillfälligt avbrott

Tillfälligt avbrott...

Hysteriskt mycket att göra just nu.

Återkommer.

Out of service at the moment.

Will be back... To much to do right now...

An escape to somewhere

Towards the end of the week I feel I want to do something else, so I contact a friend who lives in the middle of nowhere, without a car, and with no expats around her. She is from Australia, where she was also more or less in the middle of nowhere growing up, but still, this is another country, and rainy and cold.

I met this woman in Düsseldorf, when she was coming for a visit. She has my mail address and contacted me and asked if I wanted to have lunch. And since I am always up for an adventure I off course accepted the challenge. It was enjoyable, and now I suggest that we meet again. She tells me which the biggest cities are, the once she can get to without a car, and we decide on Osnabrück. I take the train in the morning. Osnabrück is a direct train away but it takes two hours. No problem, I love taking the train.

We meet up in the city, and we go for a long walk, stop and look at fancy furniture, and then we go to the Felix Neuhauss museum. Very interesting place, by the way. The guard who follows us through several rooms puzzles me, though. I manage to scare him off by a smile and direct eye contact. Poor guy, he thought he was discrete and that we didn't notice the way he sneaks around and pretends to look at something else when we are turning in his direction. I wonder what was so interesting about us? That we were foreigners? Or is it the plastic bag that I am carrying? We are forced to leave the bags, including my tiny handbag in the wardrobe when coming in to the museum, but when I complain that it will be tricky since I have to have my wallet, iPhone, my tissues, my lip gloss (dry lips), my other phone etc with me, I get a separate small plastic back to carry everything in instead. I don't quite get the point, as the plastic bag, even if small, is actually bigger than my handbag, but OK then. Anyhow I suspect it's the bag that catches the interest of the guard, and rather than asking so that I can answer "I got if from your colleagues" he follows us....

After the museum we end up walking a bit more, and then we end up at a very nice tapas place with pretty authentic Spanish tapas. Mmm :-) The fact that my friend misses her last bus from the main station because the time table was so odd is another thing. It does dampen the spirit a little but really only a little. And not because she missed it but because her village is so small that the last bus leaves at 19:15 on a Saturday. When we get to the station at 20 there is no more bus, at least not from there. The next one goes from another stop 2 hours later, when I will already be home... Good thing that her boyfriend can come and pick her up!

Inte säga fula ord...

Jag var alltid en ansvarskännande och förståndig storasyster som gjorde allt för mina småsyskon. I alla fall var det min tanke. Extra speciellt var det förståss med min äldsta lillebror, framför allt för att vi var så nära men också för att vi rätt så ofta var iväg på olika ställen utan att mamma var med i närheten. Vi kunde slåss så hårtussar rök men när det verkligen gällde så höll vi alltid ihop. Och jag lärde honom mycket, åtminstone försökte jag. Ibland försökte jag kanske lite för mycket. Vid ett tillfälle när jag stod och fixade på mitt rum - det är för övrigt en annan historia, jag och sandpappret. Jag ska berätta den också en gång men inte idag. Hur som helst, jag höll på inne på mitt rum, och lillebror kom väl in för att kolla vad jag pysslade med och om något kul var på gång. Jag kan väl ha varit en sju, kanske åtta år så där, och lillebror hade inte börjat skolan ännu. Vi kom att prata, som vi ofta gjorde, och jag kom av någon outgrundlig anledning in på saker som man inte fick säga. Jag minns inte alls varför, som sagt, men däremot minns jag stora delar av konversationen trots att det var så många år sedan. Jag vet hur jag stirrade stint på lillebror och noggrant inpräntade i honom att "Röv, det säger man absolut inte, kom ihåg det. Röv är ett jättefult ord och det får man inte säga!"

Inte sjutton förstod jag vad mamma var så arg för senare på kvällen, när hon gav mig en ordentlig avhyvling. Jag frågade vad hon menade och varför hon var så arg, för jag kunde inte förstå det, och ganska snabbt kom det fram:

"Du får inte lära lillebror fula ord, du får VERKLIGEN INTE lära lillebror fula ord".

Jag minns tydligt hur jag stirrade på henne och sa att nej, det har jag verkligen inte gjort heller.

Varvid mamma kontrade med att det hade jag visst, för hon hade hört mig - och hon kunde till och med peka ut situationen, att det var när lillebror var inne på mitt rum och hon kunde till och med ge mig klockslaget, på ett ungefär.

Jag tänke och tänkte och tänkte (och fattade ingenting) men så VIPS kom jag på det. "Men mamma, jag sa bara till honom vad man INTE får säga!"

Hmmmm.... Det var då jag fick min första lektion i att "små barn gör inte som man säger utan som man gör". Lillebrors vokabukär hade tills dess inte innehållit det hemska fula ordet Röv, och nu, tack vara mig, så fanns det en risk att han faktiskt skulle komma att använda det. Oh hemska tanke!!! DET var ju inte alls min mening... Å andra sidan ska det sägas att lillebror var en väldigt bra lillebror så han utnyttjade inte sitt nya kunnande, åtminstone inte bland folk, på det hela taget var min lillebror en mycket bra lillebror, och hade storasyster sagt att man inte skulle göra på ett visst sätt så gjorde man inte heller det - i alla fall inte som liten knatte...

Men i alla fall!