Category: Uncategorized

I haven’t posted much in the last month what with being busy at work, the World Cup occupying much of my time and the warm summer weather not being favourable for sitting at a computer screen. So blogging has taken a bit of a back-seat, but I have been reading quite a bit. One of the books I read recently was Frederick Brown’s book on the belle epoque era in French history, For the Soul of France, which has the subtitle Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus. That book covers significant events such as the rise and fall of General Boulanger, the crash of the Union Générale, the Panama Scandal and of course the Dreyfus Affair as well as others. The Dreyfus Affair becomes more fascinating the more I read of it and Brown’s book was especially useful as it helped put the events into context. I…

Zwölf Uhr mittags

Amtsrat Igler kommt nach Haus,
So wie er’s immer tut:
Mit unbändiger Wut,
Sein Chef, man sollt ihm eine langen,
Ist wieder vor 12 Uhr gegangen!
Sein dicker Kopf, der ist ganz rot,
Die kleinen Augen voller Schrot
Und Frau und Kinder, Katz und Maus,
Die baden nun den Ärger aus,
Er kann kaum reden, kann kaum schnaufen,
Das Wochenende ist gelaufen.

Jeden Freitag ist das so,
Kein Chef mehr im Büro,
Er fühlt sich ausgenutzt –
Ein Glück, dass abends Western kommen,
Im Sessel hat er Platz genommen,
Denn wie James Stewart und John Wayne
Für Sauberkeit und Ordnung stehn,
Gehört der Schlendrian gestutzt,
Dafür er auch die Brille putzt,
Ihn darf, wenn’s losgeht, niemand stören,
Er will die Helden sehen, hören.

Cowboystiefel hat er schon,
Jetzt fehlt nur noch der Hut,
Ein Sheriffstern wär gut,
Dann könnt er die Banditen stellen
In bleigeschwängerten Duellen!
Im…

Looking out of my bedroom window at the Bryn Tyrch hotel I had a good view of Moel Siabob, the highest peak in the Moelwynion mountain range. It’s a shapely mountain that stands on it’s own, 2860 feet high, to the south of the A5. It was my destination on the second day of my break in Snowdonia.

I set out from the hotel with a packed lunch in my rucsack fairly early as I wanted to be back in good time to get ready to eat and then watch England play Croatia in the World Cup Semi Final that evening. After a walk down a short stretch of the A5 I crossed the road near the Moel Siabod café and followed the path along the river through the forest.

At Pont Cyfyng I joined a very steep tarmacked road signposted for Moel Siabob. It was hard work for a…

Marktplatz mit Rathaus und Wohltäterbrunnen in Wernigerode, Foto:©Constanze

♥~ Auf Herzwegen ~♥

So gern bin ich mit dir in alten Städten,
durch stille Gassen, auf verwunschnen Wegen
gehn wir und gehen wie durch Ewigkeit
und atmen leis verlassne Orte,
du reichst mir deine Hand mit Zärtlichkeit –
Erinnerungen ohne Worte…

Dann möcht ich sacht mein Herz an deines legen,
als ob wir beide nur noch eines hätten,
das weit sich öffnet und uns innig schlägt
und einem Brunnen gleicht am Markt, der trägt
das Wellenspiel mit Liedern an das Leben –
in Liebe allem Schönen hingegeben…

©Constanze

The Radetzky March is listed in 1001 Books so I pounced when I saw it at the library!

This is why the editors included it:

The Radetzky March ranks as one of the finest European historical novels of the twentieth century and is the outstanding literary work produced by the prolific journalist and novelist Joseph Roth.

Through three generations of the Trotta family, the story traces the decline of the Hapsburg Empire in its dying days, but this is not a family saga.  From the hero of the battle of Solferino who saves the Emperor Franz Joseph’s life and is subsequently ennobled from plain Lieutenant Trotta to Baron von Trotta and Sipolje; to his son Herr Van Trotta who becomes the District Commissioner; to his grandson Carl-Joseph who has an indifferent peacetime career in the army, the book focusses just on these three men who are all, effectively, bachelors, and how they…

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Last weekend we were stayed with our friends Steve and Anne who live in Waverton near Chester. We were expected in the evening so decided to have an afternoon in Port Sunlight on the Wirral, a “model” village built during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries to house workers at the Lever Brothers soap factory. The Lady Lever art gallery, opened in 1922, built as a memorial to Elizabeth, the wife of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of the Lever Brothers Empire, is in the middle of the village and we decided to go and have a look inside.

The gallery was originally built around Lord Lever’s collection of mainly British Victorian art, but also including examples of Chinese art, Roman sculpture and Greek vases. Today it’s part of Liverpool Museums group but Lever’s collection still forms the core of the collection. Consequently, the exhibits are dominated by…