Happy New Year Everybody!

Well, December was apparently the coldest in the UK since the Met Office started monitoring the weather a long time ago. But we went to Sweden to spend time with relatives and friends, and the coldest temperature the car thermometer registered was –22 degrees.

The whole country was covered in masses of snow. You needed your long-johns and thermals, that’s for sure, and woolly hats and gloves …. but it created some beautiful scenes for free…

…and some funny ones as well.

In Stockholm my grandchildren could not go on the swing …

… although some kids played outside in Malmö …

… my two little darlings had to play indoors most of the time…

 

While the snow caused some people problems …

 

… others took the opportunity …

 

… but most of all, it was beautiful!

 

 

 

 

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

 

Happy Holidays, Everybody!

See you next year

Don’t You Just Love That Hat?

My mother is still going, not strong perhaps, but she is going. Yesterday she turned 88. Sadly I could not be there, but I will see her in two weeks’ time.

I was in fact frantically scanning old photo albums so I can return them when we go for Christmas. That’s when I came across this wonderful almost 69-year-old picture of her and her best friend at teacher training college. She was still 19 years old that summer when she graduated. I believe this photo is from early spring 1942. So elegant, a real class act! (She is the one on the left by the way.) The hat might be dated, although beautiful, but the rest of her outfit would have done a modern business woman proud. What a good dresser she was!

Winter Came Early

All of a sudden we had the first snow, on the last day of November, and then much more today.

Since it got cold I have noticed the birds having a greater appetite. Add snow to that and they start getting more aggressive, in particular the Greenfinches.

The Great Tit had to wait for its turn. But this Blue Tit was luckier, the female Spotted Woodpecker had her own food supply. Is that the same Great Tit waiting up there?

Some flowers had not even had time to fall off the shrubs before the snow settled.

Foggy Photos

The fog has us in its grip. Airports have closed. Motorways are slow. No proper daylight all day, only cold, thick fog.

So I thought this morning, what an opportunity to practise some black and white photography (and some colour)! Said and done, winter jacket and gloves on.

I just wandered around in the woods, the fields and also paid a visit to our military cemetery (Rheindahlen). I think the thick fog gives these pictures another dimension, the grave stones look positively ghostly.

(Please click on them to get a better view.)

 

 

Three Stolpersteine

Almost two years ago I blogged about Stolpersteine (please click and read). Some time ago I came across three more. They are next to each other for obvious reasons.

I tried to avoid writing about them, but then these three people just would not leave my mind. For a long time I have had this picture as a thumbnail on my screen reminding me, prompting me to look into this issue again.

If you read my earlier post you will see that it is a German artist who has devoted himself to this cause.

From the information on these Stolpersteine, metal cobbles, and some internet research (just google “Chelmno” and you will see) I have come to the following conclusion:

Fanny Levison was born Leubsdorf in 1878. At the age of 28 in 1906 she gave birth to Reinhold (my educated guess). In 1941, when she was 63 years old and Reinhold was 35, they were picked up by the Nazis from where they lived in Düsseldorf and deported to the growing ghetto in Lodz, Poland. The Nazis had established this ghetto from which they systematically transported people to the nearby extermination camp in Chelmno.

Using three specially adapted Renault vans the Nazis murdered, gassed, 150,000 to 300,000 Jews, gypsies and others before they tried to get rid of all incriminating evidence of their evil activities.

11,700 Jews were deported from Lodz to Chelmno between 4 and 15 May 1942, among them Fanny Levison. But before her gruesome death in one of those gas vans, she will have experienced having a granddaughter, Chana, for roughly two months.

The little baby succumbed to starvation or some decease (another assumption) about one month after her grandmother had been murdered. Reinhold, the father, lasted another two months and a week in the horrible conditions in Lodz.

What happened to granddad? Who was the mother? What happened to her? These three sad cobblestones cannot tell us, but you do not need much imagination to understand what terrible tragedy they are evidence of.

When will mankind ever learn?

Our Rural French Haven

I am still here, yes, but I have not had much time for the blogosphere lately. I will not bore you with what I have been up to in great detail, so I have assembled a few photos from a week in Normandy where I recharged my batteries. I will soon get my blog mojo working again, but for now I leave you to a few minutes of contemplation. Just click and relax!

A picture slideshow by Smilebox

Went for a Walk Yesterday

It was a beautiful autumn day with wonderful sunshine without a cloud in the sky. The little roads and paths were brimming with life; people of all ages took advantage of the opportunity to walk or cycle. You met people in the remotest corner of the forest and we all said our polite “Guten Tag” to each other, making it even more enjoyable. How very civilised!

My camera accompanied us and I snapped a few here and there, trying to catch some interesting light. After two hours’ walking this was my best attempt.

Girls Girls Girls!

I have posted many photographs here but not any Pic of the Week for a long time. But here is one I could not resist putting up. It is not one of outstanding beauty, but a funny one.

I am still in Brussels, La Grande Place, the main square where people gather and lots happen. There is music and giant puppets walking about, people having a relaxing drink and then all the tourists taking pictures of all those fascinating buildings I mentioned in a previous post.

On this car-free Sunday the square was very crowded and some girls in their early teens put big smiles on many faces with their antics. What they did? They moved like a lightning-quick snake positioning itself behind people snapping the imposing buildings with their backs to the centre of the square. The girls also walked behind people copying their every movement, like some delayed ripple effect. Extremely funny.

I have never seen so many (at least ten of them) in such a well-choreographed action. It only took them a few seconds to get in line behind this man, the only one actually with a camera in his hands. Good, clean fun!

How Likely Is That?

When we were in Brussels a couple of weekends ago we stayed in a B&B where one other guest was a young Russian, who was there for some conference, and then there were two Belgian women.

At breakfast on Saturday we chatted like one does, and the topic of the state of the Belgian motorways was introduced (by me). I explained with my standard joke “How do you know you are travelling through Belgium? It goes bumpety bumpety bumpety.”

One of the ladies said to the other “You have to tell your boss that!” It turned out that one of them worked for the Minister of Transport. Ooops!

Another unlikely meeting took place in one of Brussels’ many excellent restaurants. Since Brussels is a city of two official languages, French and Flemish (Dutch), you are not quite sure how to start a conversation. Mrs S spoke French, since neither of us speak Flemish, and the waitress replied in fluent French, of course. But it turned out that she actually was French.

Mrs S continued to tell the waitress that we had a holiday home in Normandy, and she wondered where. Before Mrs S had finished her geographic explanation the young French waitress said with a broad smile that she came from a town not far away from there, and that as a young girl she had often been with her mother to the swimming pool in our nearest little town, the very same pool Mrs S regularly frequents on our holidays. How about that for a coincidence?