Landed in Langen ランゲンに着陸

2023 年 3 月 24 日

I was writing about griffins in my post last week. Today I found one. But it was long since dead. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin) It must have lost its way and landed in Langen...........ランゲンにちゃくりく....

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I've fitted the pegs, the soundpost, gathered some strings and am now cutting the bridge. It's a `cello チェロ for a child, which doesn't mean I put any less effort into the work. But where is my little plane? I hate it when I can't find a tool 🛠 - it disrupts the work flow. And we violinmakers have so many little specific tools for specific jobs! So is my plane hiding somewhere here?......私のかんな (鉋) はどこ？

....or here?...ここ?..(who put that light bulb there?)...誰があの電球をそこに置いたの? 🤣

.....or here?......ここ?

In cases such as these I take a sip of coffee, stop and think.....and there it is, right next to my espresso...そして、私のエスプレッソのすぐ隣に....such cheek....なまいき...

Oh, but what is this?.....there is a chip of wood in the cup. What a start to the week. こんな感じで一週間が始まりました 🤔....

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I've discovered a new Japanese restaurant in Frankfurt. フランクフルトで新しい日本食レストランを発見しました。It's called B-Gourmet, and is right in the West End in the Kettenhofweg.

So when my English student passed her first German exam (that doesn't sound logical, but it's true) we thought we'd celebrate. So there I was, sitting with my Kirin ippai (my glass of beer) at the appointed time. I waited, and waited.....Eventually I texted."I am sitting in B-Gourmet....are you coming?...." Answer: "I am also sitting in B-Gourmet, but the menu looks a bit strange....".......Something wrong here, I thought. Next came a phone call from the third party in our group......"......ah....am....It seems we are in a Chinese restaurant.....hang on.....".......

Now this flags up a danger in the Kettenhofweg. There is indeed a Sichuan Chinese restaurant at Nr. 61...but two doors down at Nr. 59 there is a Japanese one, B-Gourmet....careful! B-Gourmet does delicious Donburi dishes どんぶり丼. This is a bowl of rice covered with almost anything you want - Sashimi, crispy chicken, seafood, beef....the list seems endless. Here's the link to the restaurant.....Oishi desu!! おいしいです. It's a very down-to-earth place with reasonable prices....... even though I look a bit sceptical here....🤨

https://b-gourmet.de/about-us/

I was eating Spicy Karaage Don - fried chicken steeped in ginger/soja sauce........mmmmmmm 😋

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What do two research scientists, an investment bank IT pro and a violin-maker do when they find themselves in a one-horse town on a Sunday in the middle of a rainstorm? 2 人の研究科学者、投資銀行の IT プロとバイオリン製作者が、暴風雨の真っ只中の日曜日に 1 頭の馬の町にいることに気付いたとき、何をしますか? (I'm a bit dubious about that translation, especially the one-horse town bit 🤨).....They discuss a plan of action under the nearest available garage roof. Decision made: find a restaurant and dry out. Thus was the scene on our hike at the weekend. It had been a quick-decision hike....one car, four people. That was it. We had walked about 7km over the hills above the Nahe valley......reaching the rather forlorn settlement of Niederhausen.....

...on the way we had walked over an (active) railway.....the tunnel reminding me of Charles Dickens' ghost story, the Signalman).........😱

..through vineyards, fields and even past a deer farm.....

............(!)............his tongue was surprisingly soft on the palm of my hand.....

Video: Wenyi

But nothing in the weather forecast had suggested bad weather. 天気予報は雨について言及していませんでした. Our marine biologist had just returned from Northern Ireland the day before, so we decided to give her the blame for bringing the weather with her. That wasn't nice of us was it? 😂.

Now anyone who has been in a German village on a Sunday will know that they are not exactly buzzing with activity. 😴💤💤💤.日曜日のドイツの村はとても静かです😴. Back down the valley was the town of Bad Münster am Stein, our starting point. But the railway station in the village of Niederhausen (not Niedernhausern) was shut. And had been for the last 30 years by the look of it. The first restaurant we tried was full of locals tucking into Schweineschnitzel and chips (they looked at us with curiosity when we entered - aliens from another planet 🛸 ). No table available. This only left a rather dubious-looking pizzeria down by the river. No trouble getting a table here....through the gloom we could make out a few forlorn customers. The rain continued unabated outside, rapping onto a restaurant terrace that would undoubtably have been good in summer.....(!).

The pizza was actually ok. And then we came to pay the bill. No cards, sorry. Cash only. カードはありません、ごめんなさい。 現金のみ。Haha! between the four of us we managed to scrape some Bargeld (cash) together, only to discover the prices in the menu, were...er...out of date 🙄.

We survived. 乗り切りました! The rain eased off and we continued our hike across the weir (the Stauwehr せき 堰 ) over the river Nahe, following a slightly shorter route back to the town. Here is a view of the river at that point....

A bit gloomy eh? En route we noticed this on the edge of the path....これは何ですか...

Of course! This had been a railway...🛤...and it had been converted into a cycle path. ここは鉄道だった……自転車道に転用されていた。 I tried to change the points, but it didn't budge (hardly surprising!). Soon we were approaching the town of Bad Münster am Stein, which google describes in glowing terms..........

"........Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg is a charming resort town of small hotels and vacation rentals. It’s known for the Kurpark spa gardens, home to the art nouveau Kurmittelhaus, a mineral pool, and the Gradierwerk, a wall of trickling salt water that produces a therapeutic saline mist. The Rotenfels rock formation, with views of the Nahe River valley, and the centuries-old Rheingrafenstein castle ruins are nearby......."

But first we made an Abstecher - a detour. 迂回路. The top of the fields were dotted with strange sculptures....we had unwittingly stumbled across the Steinskulpturmuseum und Park. And what's more - the rain had stopped! Hurray......! Here are some stones, some with humans sitting on them or in them.....

Photo: Phe

Our merry band pose with some books....

Amazing......stripey marble....

So the day was saved. And on the way back we inspected one of those medieval-looking mineral water systems. Here's a photo I took back in 2021......

See the benches? You sit there and inhale the "sea" air.......🏖......It works. I've done it!

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Roald Dahl - an exceptional author 著者.......Quentin Blake - an exceptional illustrator イラストレーター.

Without wading into the current controversy over the recents edits to these books, I would just like to show you the first couple of pages of "The Twits", which our family read, with great amusement, a few years back...(Impossible to translate the title into Japanese..so try this .....https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=%E3%81%84%E3%81%98+%E3%82%8F%E3%82%8B%E5%A4%AB%E5%A9%A6%E3%81%8C%E6%B6%88%E3%81%88%E3%81%A1%E3%82%83%E3%81%A3%E3%81%9F&ref=nav_bb_sb..). For us, Dahl became a firm favourite, alongside Michael Morpurgo and (later) J.K.Rowling. He and his illustrator left many of the other sentimental "safe" childrens' books way behind......And I don't recommend reading them on trains or buses. People may start looking at you......🤣

Chapter 1: Hairy Faces

Mrs Twit.......

".......If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face...." How true.

So there we are. That's all for this week 😉.

Except for this: Sometimes English journalists working in Germany find odd things. How about this........now although I occasionally get sausage-like smells from my neighbour's balcony, it has never gone this far......

"Grill Wars: German man sued for having too many barbecues"

A 75-year-old man from the town of Bad Tölz in Bavaria has successfully sued his neighbour for causing a bit of a stink by lighting his barbecue with unusual irregularity. As RTL reports, the two men live in the same apartment building in the small town, and the one in the upstairs flat began to get frustrated with his neighbour, who apparently took to grilling food on an electric barbecue on his terrace almost every single day.

The smoke and rising smell became “unbearable” for the upstairs pensioner, who was named by RTL as Heinz J. Together with his wife, he reported his neighbour to the local authorities, and the case ended up in court.

Man is now only allowed to have a BBQ 4 days a month.

While the first court threw out the complaint, the plaintiffs appealed and a second district court in Munich - after hearing testimony from around a dozen witnesses about the smell and smoke caused by the grill - eventually sided with the couple.

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Thank you for reading !

Feel free to share this 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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