I think I posted about the German thing with potato salad before at some point, but I recently stumbled across a potato salad discussion on reddit and, well, it sums the thing up very nicely as there being one thing all Germans can agree on: 

There should be potatoes in a potato salad. 

All the rest? Depends. There's the dressing with mayo fraction, the dressing with oil and vinegar fraction, there's some that put in yoghurt. There's onions or not, radishes or not, cucumbers or not (and those pickled or not). Eggs. Bacon. Peas. Most people have a favourite version, often the one their gran or mom made (though if you ask me, the best one ever was the one my gran made. Even if others come close). 

So if you ever wondered what a real German potato salad looks like, the answer is probably: Use potatoes, and whatever else you enjoy.

(My gran's version went like this: Marinade an onion, diced, in the pickle liquid of pickled cucumbers, the German style one pickled in vinegar and a bit of sugar. Add cubed pickled onions. Boil potatoes, peel, cut into slices, add to mixture. Add in hot broth and let cool until only warm, then add a little bit of mayonnaise, salt, maybe pepper. Once it's fairly cool, add a sliced, hard-boiled egg per person. Let cool off completely and serve.)

I spent a lovely hour this afternoon preparing a joint presentation with a French colleague - about a garment find she had studied, and presented at the NESAT in Warsaw. Our plans include making a reconstruction of the thing, which is... a medieval underpant fragment. It's very exciting, and I am all looking forward to it, and today I saw close-up images of the seams and stitches and now I have itching fingers. It will have to wait until I have all the data, and a plan, though, so... deep breaths, and patience.

Braies, or breeches, or underpants, or however you want to call them are one of the bits that we know about, but by far not enough. There's mostly pictorial evidence, and a bit of written stuff that is not always really clear, and next to no surviving pieces at all, so anything that makes it to today in a recognisable way is like a double win in the lottery. Imagine my excitement when I first saw images of the piece! It's of course not complete, but there's plenty of it left to have a really good idea of the original looks.

There's some other balls up in the air - still trying to do some re-organising here, still working on the big thesis translation project (a little each day, in the hopes it will add up quicker than math says it will), some shop stuff planning for things, and research/reconstruction requests that need a little attention now and then, but are still in the evaluation and pre-planning phase, so nothing is firm and decided yet. It's a kind of limbo that is always exciting, but I have learned to not get too excited too early.

The calendar is also slowly starting to fill up with things; here, too, some are still in the early stage, but I am hopeful they will come through and I'll be out and about to some really wonderful events in 2026.

Sometimes you run across the saying "publish or perish" in regards to academic settings. I have my issues with that phrase, but I am always delighted when colleagues publish their work - because then it's out there, and accessible, and that is a very, very good thing.

So, putting my money where my mouth is, or rather trying to live up to my own ideals, I do try to publish my stuff as well. It's not always worked out, and sometimes it turns out a little different than expected, but one of the important bits is that it's there somewhere and people can look for it and read it and then, most important thing in my opinion, they can get into contact and start a discourse if they so like.

All this is mainly the preamble to let you know that I've published an article together with my dyer colleague Micky Schoelzke, and it's out now in an anthology published by Springer, and they even sent me fancy pictures and instructions on how to promote it. I will, in fact, use one of them here: 

Of course, I will also give you the link to the book page that they provided me with. I would have preferred, actually, to provide you with a kind of affiliate link that would earn me 30% provision of the book price in case you'd buy that book via the link provided, but alas, the marketing company they are working with has decided that my website is irrelevant to the advertising needs of Springer, and so I cannot get a link, and cannot get money from it.

This is, in one perspective, not a big deal, as chances that people would go off and buy that book en masse are, well, slim, so I'm not having the feeling that I will be missing out on a lot of money here. I'm a little miffed still. (Mostly, probably, because I got dismissed as irrelevant.) Springer (just like Brill, and DeGruyter, and so many other notable academic publishers) is not best known for their cheap books, whether print or ebook. I'm all for books that are fairly priced, which is rarely really cheap, as there's a lot of people and a lot of work involved in making and selling a book. However, Springer does not pay any of their academic authors (at least not to my knowledge) and also not their editors. Basically, writing and editing for them is done for free, for the pleasure of having a book published. There may or may not be payment to the publishing house involved in some cases; I know that I have heard about at least one of the bigger German publishing house names taking quite a sum for publishing a PhD thesis about a decade ago, so I might be outdated, and things may be different there and now.

But the thing that remains is: These houses depend on the writers handing their work in for free, on peer reviewers working for free, on editors working for free. Then they do sell the books at a price that's not, well, very low, and while they do offer that 30% provision (that's not more than a bookshop would get as their cut, by the way) it is, as I have found out, not so easy to access it.

The whole system depends on people either being paid for their writing, editing, proofreading, and reviewing work by their academic employer, so a university or other place of work; or they depend on these people doing the stuff on their own time, unpaid. In both cases, I think it's not entirely fair (but especially not in the second one). 

Books are not a get-rich-scheme anyways, and no author that I know (who has done authoring work and is not just dreaming of becoming the next Rowling, income-by-books-wise) is expecting to get lots of money from their work per book. It would be nice, though, to get at least a little, not just because money is nice and, well, rather useful if you want to keep on living, but also to have more of a feeling of being paid and appreciated, and not just... useful. Even if you're irrelevant (to the publishing house, like me). 

Rant over. If you get your hands on the book, any which way, I hope you'll enjoy it!

So... ordering and sorting stuff here is still progressing. My appointment was no issue either; it took me a little longer to walk (carefully, because of slippery streets) from the station to where I needed to be, and the same on the way back, but it was no big deal.

By late afternoon, everything had thawed much more, so the errands were also no problem. Now, however, I am looking forward to the weekend - after the last few bits that I have to do today will be dealt with. And hopefully on Monday I'll get somewhat further with the book sorting... do you know that effect when you'd need to add one single book at a specific place in the shelf, but there's no more room for it, so you need to move one of the books from there to another shelf, and it's the same thing there, and all of a sudden you realise that the one book will cause a cascade through all your bookish belongings, or at least almost all?

Yes. This. This is exactly what is happening here, so some of the non-book stuff will have to move somewhere else, or find new homes at some other place. The little cat also reminds me that I wanted to clear some more space again on my desk, because it's getting cramped here and she wishes to stretch out more.

You see... things have been clearly laid out, and I know what I have to do on Monday!

It is, for a change, quite cold around here. The last several winters, we had a little bit of snow now and then, and maybe a few days of below zero, but this year, there's actually frost and cold and snow for more than just three days in a row.

Somehow, it feels like I'm not used to that at all anymore. Fortunately I have warm things to wear when going outside, and there's several different options still working to get me from where I am to where I need to be (and that even though I was too lazy to put the winter tyres onto my bike, as it was never necessary in the last years, and now I question that decision). However, it seems like I'm not the only one who has gotten out of the habit on how to live in a winter. There was lots of snow coming down one night, with the result of buses stopping service for a few hours - greeted, obviously, by a lot of clamouring about how this is totally out of the question and inacceptable.

Eh. We were taking a walk on that evening and there were plenty of cars taking little slides on the street. Yes, I can get that not getting your transport is shitty, but I can still understand the decision taken to stop bus service during these snowfalls. (I am fully aware that it's much easier to be understanding here if you were not one of the people caught out and with no possibility to get from A to B as planned.)

However, and more generally speaking: There is no guarantee that mobility will be possible at any time and without restrictions. Things can always happen, and if the weather gets more extreme, we will all have to learn how to figure that in, much more than most people are currently used to. There's always been delayed flights due to snow and ice. (Well, for that relatively short time in our history when there were commercial flights.) There's always been issues with icy, slippery roads in the winter time, and car crashes due to this. (Again, in the slightly longer, but still overall very short time... you know.) There's also always been issues with ships sailing in wintertime, or more generally in seasons with difficult weather in the corresponding area.

Back in the Middle Ages, there were times when some places were not accessible during some times of the year. Heck, still in the 19th century that was the case for some mountain valleys. But this seems not to fit in with the modern concept and self-image of being able to do anything, anywhere, and at any time.

Our modern comforts are not a matter of course. Some of them, I'd argue, are a true luxury - such as strawberries in winter, or flights cheaper than trains - and they are not without price. We can get the impression that with modern machines, modern medicine, modern science, modern computers, everything is possible. It is not, and there's many, many people each day that get to experience this in their own life every single day.

For tonight, there's a weather warning for large parts of Germany, with prediction of snow and/or rain, so it might be quite uncomfortable tomorrow. I have an appointment to get to in the morning, so I hope it won't be too bad around here, and I won't have too much trouble to get there. (No, it can't be postponed.) Then we'll probably just stay home and won't budge for the rest of the day - we did postpone visiting a friend, because of the weather warnings.

Here I am, back from the winter break. There's a bit of chaos around me, as, of course, the "going through stuff to tidy things up" was not finished within the break... and I still have a hard time throwing stuff away. Ah well. One thing to work on during the new year!

While I was on break, there was a little interview happening for an ORF radio show (and podcast): In "Betrifft: Geschichte", school children were asked to send in their question about things in history. I happened one day to get asked if I'd be willing to answer one about protection from weather and sun.

The little piece has been aired already, and the short version is available here for a few more days. The slightly longer podcast version will be online for six months, and you can find it here. Both are, I should mention, in German! 

It's time for the winter break - I wish you all happy holidays with some time to spare to do the things you enjoy, and a good start into a happy, healthy year 2026.  May you find some peace and quiet, too, as needed! (The little cat certainly has this part down pat.)

I will be off the shop and blog until January 7. Thank you for reading here - and see you again next year!