Learning German is something that a lot of non-native German speakers will have a lot to tell you about (probably including a heap of curses). It's not the easiest of languages to learn, especially not if you are living in an area where there is still a local dialect being spoken. And that dialect can change even between neighboring villages, never to speak of the changes between regions.

I grew up in the very north-east of Franconia (which was then called Nord-Ost-Oberfranken and is now called Hochfranken) and though I haven't moved far away from there, just about one hundred kilometres as the crow flies, the dialect in Erlangen is a lot different than the one from home. So I had an utter "home! home!" feeling when the Most Patient Man got to this website yesterday and clicked his way through the sound samples from Schönwald. It's a talking language atlas with samples of words from different spots in Bavaria (and thus Franconia), and it's amazing how differently things can be named. If you are interested in the many different ways people living just in Bavaria call things and pronounce words, this Sprachatlas is definitely worth a visit!

I have long ago come to the conclusion that whether good or bad, things have a  tendency to come in bunches. Take the weather here, for example: The first half of June has been rather cool and wet, and people were complaining about the temperature and the amount of rain. Now it has been so sunny and dry for several days in a row that I actually had to take out the watering can and save a few of the plants from dying of thirst. (Now people probably complain about the heat.)
The garden, by the way, is coming along slowly. There are still plenty of empty spots in the beds, but there are also a good number of plants that are resilient and perennial or at least very efficient when it comes to producing seeds. We got a present of some Amsterdam tulips last winter from a dear friend, and those have now finished their vegetation period and producing new bulbs for the next year. There are even a few raspberry canes left scattered over a part of the garden, and I hope to re-plant these somewhere better suited in the autumn or next spring. The few plants that we bought and set into the garden - three different species of mint, lavender, sage, and Sideritis (mountain tea) - also seem to do mostly well, and I hope for a good crop of mint next year.

Work-related, it seems that I'll be able to wrap things up nicely today and tomorrow (unless a heap of new things comes in today). Then it's time to relax, and wow, I'm so looking forward to taking a breather!

Somehow, as I try to tie up all the odds and ends left to tie up before our holidays, my brain has gone pretty empty in regards to blog inspiration.

So I do just as any other blogger lacking inspiration does: I post a video.



Have some medieval helpdesk!

I had a collossal lot of fun during the last two days - so much fun that I enjoyed a sleep-in this morning, because laughing a lot in between work means very, very exhausting days. And all that because - can you believe it? - I am going to be on TV.

On Monday morning, four people came: The reporter, the camerawoman, the sound-and-light technician and the assistant. They came and brought a mini-bus full of equipment and a general plan on what to shoot and how to proceed; these were mostly things the reporter and I had talked about and pre-planned on the phone during the weeks before.

I think about everybody knows that shooting for a film production will always take much, much longer than the finished film as it runs on the screen. And everybody who has ever tried to do something like a mini film or documentary will have an even better insight into this. But the amateur video and a full-fledged TV report are two very different creatures.
It starts with having the eye for selecting, carefully, a spot as background for the bit to be filmed. We've been living here for a few months, but I would not have thought of choosing the spots that the film team chose - and chose very, very well!  Then everything needs to be arranged and adjusted: the camera on its tripod, the lighting, the chair is placed just so. Then the fine-tuning begins, where all the lights are adjusted again and again to tweak lighting and colour - until everybody is satisfied. And then the little bit for the film is shot, and depending on how it went, shot again (and maybe again, until it went well enough). And then selecting and arranging and fine-tuning for the next bit begins.

I had the feeling that it all went quite smoothly and very well altogether, and it took us one and a half days to film a good hour and a half's worth of material. The finished bit in the film will be about ten minutes, if everything goes as planned. One and a half days of work for ten minutes of film... I find that quite impressive. Gives you another insight into why a film is so expensive, too - after all, you need four people just for a little documentary shoot.

I was happy that the things I had to do were not far out of the usual demonstrations and explanations I do at any medieval event or at a conference. I got to explain the spinning experiment, which meant a lot to me; show some textile work and talk about the Textile Forum, and all those topics I have already shown and done so often that it felt almost just like telling another colleague or showing another visitor.
And loading the car with equipment for a market to show that side aspect of the job? It was so easy for me to fall into "packing mode", carrying all the things and meanwhile planning about what to get next and where to stow it in the car that it was possible to really mostly ignore the camera. So between joking with the team and doing things that I have done so often in public, I soon felt quite at ease.


But the best part of the experience for me was working together with the crew. The team was very, very nice and seemed to be as fond of weird jokes and bad puns as I am, so we laughed a lot, and I was quite sad to see them pack up and go once we had finished. And I did enjoy a lot to see the team at work, since obviously they did like each other, love their job, were happy to get the pictures right and best they could be, and they worked very well together with lots of friendly banter - I'd call it craftspersonship at its best.*
And this is always wonderful to see, and even better if you can feel like a part of such a team for a short while, which was my pleasure and privilege during the last two days.



* I know that strictly and technically speaking, neither artists nor camerafolk are craftspersons - but for me, craftspersonship is closely collected to a special kind of joy and pride in your own work, and joy and pride in doing it well. And to me personally, this attitude is more important for the definition of craftsperson than whether the finished piece is a very good show, a bit of film or an actual tangible object.

During the weekend, we had one really strong gust of wind that lifted a few of the tents on the place slightly off the ground. Now an A-frame tent is not so very light, so it does take a strong wind to set it flying, and usually  our tents are securely anchored to the ground in addition to their structural weight. However, in Hanau, the tents we had were not fastened to the ground properly.

Why? Because the little town square where we had set up is paved with cobblestones - but the spaces between the stones are sealed with concrete. And that means most of our normal tent constructions, relying on pegs to keep the structure up, will not stand or stand badly there. Just like we had done last year, we wondered again why anybody would want to seal cobblestone paving like that, and like last year there was a lot of adjustment and make-it-work-somehow and shifting the places to set up tents because things would not work out as planned, and accordingly lots of swearwords. But this year, a nice lady that was born in Hanau told me why exactly we had all those problems: because of fashion.

In the 1950s and 60s, modern shoes for ladies featured stiletto heels. And on that cobblestone pavement of the town square, necessarily also crossed by fashionable ladies, that led to broken-off heels galore - because the heels, not fatter than the tent pegs or thick nails that we would have loved to use, would fit into the gaps between the stones. And if you wedge a stiletto heel into pavement well and tight, it will most probably break off.

The solution? Seal the gaps with concrete. Problem solved. Fashion influences even city architecture.

It finally feels as if summer has well and truly come to stay - we are having hot days, warm nights and a good measure of thunderstorms. And we still enjoy the surprises our garden supplies...

There are different amounts of all kinds of plants in the different beds, and most of them have just finished blooming or are about to start. There's some sort of reed-like or grass-like plant that blooms with a slightly purplish blue - but the blossoms open only when it rains or when a lot of dew is still around. There's a foxglove in white, a rose that is still preparing for its heyday, and a few other plants that are about to flower soon. We have an elderberry bush, and the strawberry plants also seem to do nicely and are hard at work making strawberries. In addition to these "proper" plants, we also have a lot of stuff in the garden beds that would usually be classified as "weeds" - but since they are nice, small, flowering plants that cover the ground and look okay, they stay in until something else will take their place. And there are some really, really tough and sturdy plants - the chives that grow no matter what, the dwarf thyme in the lawn that is determined to take over the rest of the lawn too and enters into battle against the trefoil and the daisies, and last but not least some lemon balm that was left in a crack between two stones and is now readjusting to a more normal place to grow.

Sturdy plants and the "it's not a weed if we like its look" approach make for very relaxed gardening, by the way...

I find it amazing again and again - the things that can happen if you hop around on the internet.

Yesterday night, we laughed about a pun involving the Krebs Cycle (citric acid cycle). Then - by looking that one up in Wikipedia - we stumbled over a page that lists biochemistry songs. Folks! Biochemistry songs! With lyrics detailing how the Krebs cycle goes, or the respiratory cycle, or whatever! Can it get geekier than that? I wrote a few filks in my life, but I never thought of doing a science-y songtext.

Needless to say, we went to bed far later than intended. Go waste your time too: Here's the site we found yesterday, and here's a link page to lots of other science songs.
And while I'm at it, if you are planning to write a murder mystery book, here's a hint from author Parnell Hall, also wrapped in a song. With gruesome pics.