2023 年 1 月 27 日
As I write this post, January is drawing to a close, and my writing is catching up with the current date: January 27th, 2023. Cold, dark days when I find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. The European winter. Good company, sunlight, music and warm food are essential.
Scroll back to New Year's Eve and I am with friends Nik and Anna in Göttingen. Photos don't always have to be sharp....😁.......写真がぼやけていてもいいですね ！
Music was provided by Stefan Kordes, who gave an organ recital in the huge St. Jacobi church in town. As the organ had been recently renovated, he turned on all the lights inside, which made an impressive spectacle........ゲッティンゲンのオルガンコンサート...
We sat down and let the music of J.S. Bach, Max Reger *, Marcel Dupré, George Thalben-Ball, Oscar Lindberg and Louis Vierne wash over us.....
* (not my favourite composer - help! I shall be shot down for that comment by some organists)
Back on home ground I grab some willing hikers and we drive down to Klingenberg, south of Frankfurt......on the river Main....This is actually the very first hike of 2023. 2023 年の最初のハイキング。Unfortunately we found the famous ravine (Schlucht ) たにま 谷間 closed off. But we did manage a little tour of 7km all the same...Here's a view of the town from the vineyards, looking over the river......must come back here in summer! 夏にここに戻っていかなくていけません！
At least (very occasionally) the sun comes out. Then I get out for a little stroll around Langen....a simple reflection in a stream....単純な反射
.....and nature does its best to put on a show, flooding the meadows....浸水した畑
....producing odd winter blooms.....奇妙な花
and fungus in the woods....森の菌
I saw this rather quaint old bird table in the woods the other day....古い鳥のテーブル..."Sponsored by the Community for the protection of the German Woods/ Langen-Egelsbach" If anyone can offer a more elegant translation, the comment box is open.....😄
Time for an evening out in the city. It gets dark so early.....however the trains still run..(mostly)....I love these pillars at Langen station. They are so 19th century.....😉! 街への小さな夜の旅行....
Warm food. In this climate the Italians have the answer.....Pizza and Pasta! With my daughter in Frankfurt......We found a wonderful Italian on the Hanauer Landstrasse. A street I usually associate with huge gleaming car showrooms and old industrial buildings favoured by recording studios. 娘と一緒にイタリアンレストランで食事....
More music. もっと音楽。I drove down to Karlsruhe on Wednesday for a recital given Prof. Müller-Brachmann's singing class. The great thing about these student recitals is that you get a bit of everything - The programme leaped from Heinrich Schütz to Richard Wagner in the space of 11/2 hours. By way of Scarlatti, J.S.B, Pergolesi, Mozart, Schubert, Donizetti, Kódaly, R.Strauss, Amy Beach, Poulenc and Verdi.......
And as for the singers, well, everything from raw first year students to practically fully- fledged operatic sopranos and basses.........
You needed the programme just to keep up......And as for the last scene from Das Rheingold, I don't know how the pianist did it.....ピアニスト 🎹：よくできました (Das Rheingold!)
The moment I stepped into that recital room in Schloss Gottesaue I thought. Yes. This feels good..... a nice ambiente.......素敵なアンビエント....
And so I survive January....１月を乗り切りました.......with the help of my English book group reading for this month.....
An imaginative, well written novel... 想像力豊かでよく書かれた小説..Adam Haslett creates a fictional middle-class American/British family struggling to deal with a vein of depressive illness. The story runs via the perspective of each family member, and is full of humour and sad reality. A very perceptive and humane writer. We talked for hours about it, ordering too many espressos in the process and booking the table for the next session.
Why does this guy look so sad? after all, the sun comes out sometimes.....(outside Langen library) どうしてこの人は悲しそうな顔をしているの？
Last weekend I organized another hike, and told my fellow hikers to ignore the weather forecast 😉.... So here we are at the Felsenmeer (lit. The sea of rocks) in the Odenwald.
The snow was just right - light and powdery. Each step through the forest brought a satisfying "crunch" under your boot.....雪はちょうどよかった - 軽くて粉っぽい. Huy and myself stride out.....
I saw shapes in trees.......
.......and Wenyi tried out an icicle...aaarh!!!😛 つららを舐める!
It was quiet on the trail - brooding rock monsters appearing at every corner.......眠っているモンスター.......
I am actually quite old-fashioned when it comes to maps. So although I was following the path on my phone, I did had an old-fashioned paper map in my rucksack.......
I am not quite sure what Phe was pointing out at this moment, but it was definitely something funny.....何？
All of a sudden we stepped out of the trees into this Dutch painting - オランダの絵画のようです.......a Breughel ?
Every young family to the south of Darmstadt seemed to know that this meadow - the Kuralpe - was where you go sledging.....🛷.....however, nobody had told us to bring a sledge ! So we dived into the snow and built a snowman instead.....not bad eh? 😊 (I made the "hat"by the way..👏...) あなたの雪だるまは好きですか？
So January has not all been gloom and doom. Blue skies have been seen.....Here at my favourite Langen walnut tree....好きなクルミの木
And I will continue writing this blog The View from the Towers. タワーからの眺め. Indeed, here is one such View.............📷....from my attic window......
Thank you for reading this 🙏.
Feel free to share it with friends if you like. よろしければ、リンクを友達と共有してください😊
I send out the blog pretty randomly to whoever I think might be interested. Either by email, LINE or WHATSAPP. If you don't want to be sent this blog, don't hesitate to tell me and I shall take you off the list. No problem.
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終わり
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