What Day Is It?

 

I´m joining "Wednesday's Words on a Friday" on a Saturday (hups!) with the words "water, gather, flood, memory, linger, solace, enigmatic, neighbour, cold, destruction".

Again, a true story and I have to say, a good one, even if you don´t think so in the first place....

And we are lucky, no flooding this time here!

I sure feel for the people who suffer this in NRW. More than 130 people lost their lives.

Crazy these words were chosen before reality hit!

 

The water was predicted to come. It was 2007, September.
Ingo put everything up, like PC, TV, all electricity disconnected.
Then he left his home, Rhüden, and came to Braunschweig.

 

 

The water gathered itself in front of the main door ... and went through, passed Ingo´s door, as we learned the next morning, when my dear lille Bro called and said we should maybe come and see what happened.

Ingo´d said "if the flood hits again I leave this and we find a place together in Braunschweig".
13 darn years of weekend-relationship, I secretly crossed my fingers and hoped the water will do this job!
It even went into the bathtub.

 
The memory won´t leave my nose.

You know how flood-water STINKS?!

Ingo moved in  with me - tiny one-room-apartment, but what the heck, we lived for 6 months in 1995 and then 7 months in 1999 in a car in Australia, so not a worry.

 

But we had to clean that place in Rhüden.

Every day Ingo drove from Braunschweig to Rhüden, some 60km one way to work and then afterwards cleaned up the place, returned to me -  on weekends we drove there and I helped. 

The icky stuff lingered for us.

 

The big, BIG solace sure was: living together, finally!

It was a tad enigmatic ... or not... how huge furniture was all over the place in Ingo´s apartment in Rhüden - water has power, glad we were in Braunschweig that night! Such a destruction...

 

Now we live with weird  neighbours in a way too cold German summer.

Again.

But at least together.

Henry 🦁

He welcomed Ingo for good at least! 🧡

Big boy that (choose yourself whom you see as that!)

Let´s Relax

Found these signs whilst waiting for a free trolley to go grocery-shopping.
I sure wanted to be free and fly away like a butterfly!

And on the way to the bakery I found this man on Campus at TU:

He made the best of the darn situation.

Henry, on the upper left in sign below has to tell just once again...

This is for "Tom´s "Signs 2".

Let´s stay sane. And healthy. and friendly.

We´ll have to live with Corinna.
With the flu.
We still pay money as in taxes to build up East Germany!
Some come and stay forever, right...

Socks Of Love - I am Not Polite

When Ingo and I got together he lived with his Granma.

Picture it: You come in.
A mini-hall, behind: the only bathroom with a shower.
Door to the left.

Left again, Granma´s living room, door always open, straight ahead the kitchen, door always open.

Right: Stairs.
No door.... we had not much privacy up there - a bathroom, though, too.

We got along well, though! With time.

She wanted to welcome me finally with a pair of socks, but owwww!!!!! Not enough wool! Shops closed, it´s Christmas!
Heel and toes she made from another sample. I loved it.

"You´re just being polite!"

And then everybody wanted socks from leftovers.

One day I found her on the floor.

Oh nooo!!!!!

Oh yessss! Sorting leftover wool, she was :-)

Reckon she really had a job again! And she loved it.

I am honest, not polite. And that was proof, again :-)

Well. I am polite, too, but I never lie.
I helped her wash and hang the socks and she told me the most ... amazing and also frightening stories from her youth and life.

Oh, did Granma hate it when we took off on the Moped!!!
Nah. Guess, she was a tad proud, too. That was some moped!!!

A real Harley Davidson from the 70´s Ingo got shipped from the US and put her together himself.

Granma came to hospital Braunschweig with an eye-infection.
I´d moved there due to my job and I certainly visited her.
Forgot my purse. She must´ve felt it and made the hospital staff call out for me at once!

She sadly had to leave us 2008.
The socks are a treasure and now season is over.

Ask Ingo about a pumpkin, if you like, that´s another "funny" story....

No Lion, this was Rhüden, Granma´s place...

A Final (Good) Decision - Hey, Dads

We´ve traveleld Australia twice, once for six, once for only seven months (ohhh, there was so much money left! Frugal us! Living in the car(s) always) and after I didn´t make enough points due to no work experience (advanced secondary education plus being 7 years younger than Ingo) we put the "we move to Straya"-thing to the future.

It was sad. IELTS-tests came out fine, as did our age and than this...

I found work here. Moved to Braunschweig, Ingo stayed in Rhüden, weekend-relationship.

Yes, four bikes, two there, two here:

We beat the nasty neighbour in my place, kinda:

(OMG we still have those chairs in daily use! Frugal!)
After the second flood in Rhüden...

We moved together in Braunschweig in 2007, finally.

We fought.
More or less right after I moved to Braunschweig in 2002.
Ingo wanted kids.
I didn´t (weekend relationship!!!!).

Now, 2007+ I was in my 30´s, we finally lived together.
Kids? PLURAL, if so! If so I wanted at least two!
Oh, my heart and mind were spinning and honest friends helped me along.

No.

We traveled A.LOT. instead.

Father´s Day is just a day off to us hence and Ingo by now says it was the right decision.

Too late to re-think anyways, right.

To all who took a different route:
In Germany it´s Father´s Day:
Have fun, Dads! Get celebrated by your kids :-)

The Good And Bad

...sometimes are so close to each other.
The good: With summer finally arriving you have sights like these, the joy of living near university, sexy students!

On river Oker. Which went down to normal.

The bad: Whilst we enjoy the sun, in east-Germany the embankments so many people helped building up... they give in one after another. Towns are flooded, thousands of people being evacuated, it´s awful.
In Bavaria, where the flooding is nearly over and people digging their ways through stinking mud... more rain is expected.
It makes one sad.
Now police is needed to get rid of all those people watching.
Yeah that happended to us back then, too. They don´t help, they look on!

The water that flooded Ingo´s apartment... it went so high it got into the bathtub.
The smell was awful, weekends and weekends we tried to get rid of that mud (Ingo had moved in with me).

The people now could only laugh bitterly about this. 8m and more, many lost all their belongings.

But even when you feel for others, your life goes on, and even happily.
Ingo finally used the Kärcher I bought a few weeks ago:

Wow, who ever thought the wood is that light??? Guess the pre-owners never ever cleaned it properly!
(Instead the woman cleaned basin and toilet that "well", we need it all new. The material is porose, it smells bad real quick.)

With the balcony being super-clean again, we had a BBQ:

Pleased note the plates. Cute, no???

And, well. I don´t like soccer at all. But thanks to the soccer-team making it into first league, we got this sauce:

I tell you... i could drink that sauce, it´s fabulous! So.Dang.Yummy!!!

Is also what Ingo thinks, one happy man:

Oh, let´s hope we get a good summer!

Sox-Season Opened

Or... Watch out!

Just not the Red but the Colored one ;-)
Brrr, it´s cold.
So, on the weekend Ingo opened up the season.

Apologies he took so "boring" ones! Mine are the "real" ones. An hommage to his late Grandma again.
I still picture her... on the floor with all the different small balls of wool, arranging same amounts for a pair - at the age of over 84!
Afte she finally (!) believed me those patchwork-socks are the coolest ever. They were an "arrangement" in the first place. She wanted to "welcome" me to the family, "accept" me with a personal hand-made pair of socks. And.. dang! Not enough wool! So heel and toes got a different one. Her first patchwork-socks she was kinda ashamed of. And I loved them. And she thought I´m just being polite....

She got more and more creative over the years and more and more family-members told her they love them. A new hobby that gave her a new job.

Yeah, socks. You can blog about those!
And her "My children" is back in my ears when we came to visit. Her warm smile. She really loved to have us over. After we had to move out, but that´s another story.

Grandma R... she lives through her socks.

Christmas deco is all over the town. One good thing about the darn cold season. On Wed the Christmas Markets will open.
And my friend P told me it´s not a good idea to take little Niece. All she´ll see is legs, legs and legs. Wait two more years and she´ll have fun.

Funny car we saw in the Christmas-Markets.build-up-chaos:

No idea where that comes from? Ingo still has some Cohibas from... 1985, I guess. Aww. Cuba. A nice place. Miss it.
Happy Monday!

Oh, btw. I bought Season 3 of Eureka to listen to it in the original - the German voices are pretty close.
And a documentary of the Klitschko-brothers - can´t wait for that (haha. I even have a book about em. Ingo is not interested, though). Aren´t they "cute"? It comes in German and Russian. After one of my "East-German" colleagues sang the alphabet in Russian to me (don´t ask, we are cool like that), I can hear "real Russians" as well.

I have winter-tyres on since a week, today I got Ingo´s tyres up as well.
They say it´s the dryest November since ten years. Not good for the environment. But good for drivers.

Addendum: Here is a Trailer. In English. Hm. Guess we´re a wee bit (!) like them, Bro and me, age -gap for sure, the same. We fight (and get angry at each other). But. We´re a team. Not as sexy, though.
Just saw it was released on Friday. No wonder the price is that high. Aw, well. And no. I never saw a "game" but I think it´s cute one of them called his Mum after winning and opened the call with "the other guy is ok" :-) Hehe. Cute, as I said. Ingo´s parents love to watch btw. Maybe I join in now? (nah...)

We´ve Got Plus

It was such a sunny day yesterday, and so mild! Would you ever say 5C plus is warm? It was!!! No wind, just great!

So, after running errands and taking a pic (only) of our local product beside a liquor from Africa that really was covered with "fur"...

and filling my car with two of the Three Tenors, two bottle crates that we got in Northern Germany at the coast, accidentially took it to Rhüden, where Ingo lived, in order to bring in back in the next holiday - the stores here don´t accept that stuff - ... forgot about them, took them to my first apartment when Ingo´s apartment flooded, then to our second apartment, now into this... and my Bro´s friend finally can take them, so I bring them to his place when I go there on Monday.

Well, after all that we went for a walk in the park.

We found this:

Braunschweig belongs to those cities that allow public BBQ - with the people bringing their own grills, that is.
And this is where you can leave your hot coal!
Gotta send them a thank-you note for this service!

We even found an abandoned Christmas-Tree on an arm of River Oker:

Hope you call that an "arm" - the river splits up and the two new rivers are called arms of river.

Anyhows.
Wanna see how boring and sad Playgrounds in Germany look like?
Here we go:

Anyhows it was such a beautiful day! Everybody was out soaking in the sun and "warm weather"! Food for the soul!

When we went back home, we found the pile of free give-aways hasn´t shrunk but grown!

Too lazy to care about eBay?
I can understand that. I bring stuff to my Bro. He can sell it via eBay and keep the money. With a Baby in the house, he can need it, too :-)

Happy Sunday everyone!

What Is This

This was October 2005.
A Sunday, in Rhüden.
A happy day with a sad view on the next day where I drove to work and then didn´t see Ingo til the coming Friday.
I feel exhausted like back then and I dunno why.

I was off work since 22nd! 12 days, and I feel exhausted, and sad. I miss Ingo! How stupid is that?! He´ll be here in about two hours!

Yesterday I got up with him at 04:50. I cleaned bath and kitchen, did laundry and stored many stuff away. And after the work was done it was still early in the day and I started to get this bad feeling.
As every post-weekend-relationship-Monday we went into the city, and I felt better.

The night was horrible, my nose was runny, let little air through, so I started snoring and woke Ingo who in turn woke me so I stop. Happened severel times - I took wick vaporub to free the darn nose, but oviously didn´t work.
Wanted to sleep in a bit, set alarm to 6:30 and felt so tired and bad, didn´t get up before 9:30!!!

I got nothing done and feel "depressed".

Start working tomorrow and am afraid of driving.
It´s rather warm now so the ice starts slowly melting away. They expect -12C in the night and in the news they warn it will get very slippery tomorrow morning.

I love my job and like most my colleagues - so what is wrong with me???

Feels like it would´ve been better I worked through like Ingo?
I should feel refreshed, no?
Is it the fear of driving?

I should stop whining, really, I know.
I just wonder what´s wrong with me these days.

Live To Ride - So Fashionable

Ride To Live!



So, today we decided to go to our old place and take a ride on the Moped - the only one, I suppose, season is over now, I guess.

Some impressions, turn on the sound:







Other... my dear Bro is so fashionable, what do you think?
(Clicking to enlarge is really worth it!)



Nah, he collects all glasses from the 70´s and 80´s and sends them to some artist who actually even pays for them:



This is how the guy really looks like :-)



Addendum: My Bro is an Optometrist and those glasses are old ones that have not been sold. Spectacle frames they are, really.
Old glasses with spectacle-lenses that are given back to him always go to Africa where someone (looks like he made a time-warp-jump from the old times and looks a bit weird) and can at least see a bit better...

And you can probably guess it. I came home with another 10 without ham!!! 4 days in a row, yum!

With a little help....

of your friends... isn´t there a song like that?
I finally got to meet my brother´s girlfiend. I only wish I´d met her other than down on her knees cleaning up Ingo´s apartment.

Yesterday Ingo went all the way home to put all his stuff to safety - so he thought. It has been raining for a whole day.
This morning we went there and my brother and his girlfriend waited already. We said our first hellos and went to the door - and could hardly open it.

It was chaos and everything was coated with mud. Over 50 cm the water has been in. Even the wardrobe had been moved from the waters´ force. It even went into the bathtub!! The bed also is through for good. Ingo now lives here.

Thanks to my bro and his girlfriend we´re back here already. I feel bad, sad, angry, exhausted.

Now we need to find an apartment quickly. Sure, we lived in smaller places before, like in a Holden Commodore or a Nissan Patrol. But then ... that was on holiday - now we have a working life, stress and all that.

Darn it. I should be hungry or something. I´m not. I´m unsettled, uneasy. Cold.

:-) Alex (the girlfriend) found two toilet brushs, still originally packed - one in the kitchen, the other in the bedroom, they floated into different directions. Ingo said, hey, they were for just one Euro... from IKEA.
This is how she sees Ingo now - a person who collects toilet brushs ;-)

The last apartment we had a look at was miserable, no option. Tomorrow I call three others - keep your fingers crossed....

Meanwhile we think of a way to say thank you to our helpers. She is a nice girl, I´m happy for my brother!

Real men

(Pics are from the official site) It was a revenge with a lot of emotion (german).
The Braunschweig Lions played "against" the Kiel Baltic Hurricanes on Saturday.

Kiel Baltic Hurricanes? You could have guessed it´s the Braunschweig Lions just in green-white instead of red-white!
Their Quarterback, Adrian Rainbow, wears the number 3 - just like he did all the years he was "our" Quarterback. Four of "our" best player went to Kiel.

The Lions always walk hand in hand to the coin-toss, which looks really "sweet". Then there was shaking hands with Kiel and then a lot of hugging - real men can show what they feel :-)

One of the old Lions was Estrus Crayton.
Boy, I remember one game where he still played for the Lions. They had a bad start - right on the 20 yards line. He was Wide Receiver and magically bypassed the Defense. And then he ran and ran and ran - out of the field at the one yard line.

The stadium went absolutely quiet! What had happened?!
One other player had his 99th or 100th game and never had done a touchdown. Hence Estrus Crayton gave it to him, how cute is that?!



We couldn´t stay ´till the end. We were both sick. I could hardly eat and Ingo just felt bad, too.
We don´t know why, though. We were together, at a great football game. We have decided to move together, which means we finally get a step forward - we should have been fine!
Ok, his apartment smells real bad. We have to sit on folding chairs since the sofa is ruined. We ate on the street since it smells real bad in the kitchen. As if someone peed in the fridge, yuck!
But that doesn´t explain why we felt so sick...

Why did we stay there anyhow and even came back after the football-game? We had a compressor that gathers the water. You have to empty it regularly. Maybe the constant noise of that thing made us sick, too...



Or it was all just too much.
Ingo called me on Wednesday at around 12. Most of the water was out of his apartment and he needed my help to clean up. Or rather to have someone to lean on.
So I left work, went to my apartment to get clothes suiting the situation. Drove to Rhueden, bought rubbish bags and stuff. Tried to get through to Ingo but the routes I went were closed off. Finally I left my car and went on foot. Ingo came to help me, we had to wade through dirty water - in sandals, since we don´t own gumboots.
We tried to tidy up - but only half-hearted. Ingo is very serious to move to Brunswick!

This evening Ingo comes to my place again :-)! Seem like he´s already trying to get used to a 120 km drive on working days...