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Katrin How on earth did they do it?
27. März 2024
Ah, that's good to know! I might have a look around just out of curiosity. I've since learned that w...
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...though not entirely easy. I've been able to get my hands on a few strands over the years for Geor...
Katrin Hieroglyphs.
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Yes, that would sort of fit that aspect - but you can also go from bits of woods to sticks if you ar...
Bruce Hieroglyphs.
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I think the closest English equivalent would be 'Down the rabbit hole'. It has one entrance (No, not...
Harma Spring is Coming.
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I'm definitely jealous! Mine disapeared except for one pathetic little flower. But the first daffodi...

What I did when on Holidays.

I came back from a wonderful and much needed time outside to an inbox full of a gazillionade of emails (of course) and a stack of things to d0 (also of course)... but one of the pleasant things on that list is that I get to tell you about my holidays, which were spent canoe tripping.

Because I'm one of those people who like their adventures, um, semi-adventurous, and the relation between travel time and actual vacation time as good as possible, we only went a little bit from home and paddled down the Saale river. It was actually adventurous enough, because our map material turned out to be rather outdated, so quite a lot of the camping spots and other logistically helpful points were missing. Thank goodness the canoe and other boating clubs were still there, and many of them offered a bit of spce to put up a tent and stay the night.

It was wonderful, by the way. Very, very hot, and we had been expecting quite a bit of other paddlers and motorised boats on the river, so we were rather surprised when we found ourselves alone most of the time. Seems that some people found it too hot, and others found the water too shallow (which was true - the Saale and Elbe, where we ended our tour, had extremely low water). A while into our trip, we learned that not only was the Saale at low levels, there was also one lock currently being repaired, so there was no way for larger boats to come up the river past Alsleben.

That explains the few motor boats, we thought. It will change after Alsleben.

It didn't, though; the reason for this being that the Elbe was running so low that most boats did not dare to venture out. Which meant we were the only people on the water for long stretches of time, and there was nobody to be seen on the banks of the river. With the long-lasting drought in the east of Germany, it felt like paddling through a savannah, or through a post-apocalyptic scenario: hot, sparsely populated though with a bit of civilisation noise here and there, whole stretches of land brownish-yellow from the heat and dryness, and some deteriorating fabrication buildings or currently out-of-use trans-shipment places here and there.

The river itself and the landscape were lovely, and we had a wonderful time paddling it, though it needed taking very, very careful aim on the livelier bits to find water deep enough so the canoe would not run on ground, and lots of paddling in about all the places, with the low water levels making the current slower or sometimes nearly non-existant.

We spent most of the days paddling, and while we were not getting up extra-early (with one exception or two) and not aiming to go as far as possible, we both had no inclination to do a lot of sight-seeing and were content to just paddle, paddle, paddle, so we did end up going all the way to Magdeburg from our start at Jena-Paradies. We arrived there on aFriday and did actually go for a bit of culture on Saturday, going into town to visit the Cathedral, a pottery market on the cathedral square and the Hundertwasser building. There was cake and ice cream and writing of the last few postcards, and on Sunday we travelled home by train, lugging the folded-up canoe along. It was all, all delightful, with the only drawback being the dearth of good ice cream parlours in the East (but to make up for that, we had lots of other yummy regional foods. The East can do poppy seed cakes really well, for instance. Also: Knusperflocken. Currywurst. Ochsenaugen.)

It was also delightful to not sit at the computer for a while, and not be connected to everyone and everything, checking emails several times a day. I got to do some reading, and some knitting, and it was all in all totally wonderful - and now I need to get ready quick for the next event, for I'm going to the Tuchmarkt at the Freilichtmuseum Hessenpark on the weekend...

 
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Wax Cloth in the Kitchen
Summertime...
 

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Donnerstag, 28. März 2024

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