Egyptian Goddess in Germany

What happened in Japan on 11th March 2011 was a tremendous tragedy, the reverberations of which are not over yet. With all the countless human tragedies it brought, there was maybe one single positive effect: The world realized that nuclear power IS potentially very dangerous und uncontrollable. People are again thinking about and are increasingly against nuclear power. So far, so good.

Every other weekend we now read and hear about hundred thousands of people gathering in German cities to protest against nuclear power. The message is clear: Switch them all off and do it right now.

Very good, I agree. What I still wonder, though, is: How many of those protesters boil their tea water and dry their hair with nuclear power every morning? Looking at the number of people who buy their electricity from renewable energy providers, the number of those people must be quite high.

My dear fellow citizens, in very few areas of our daily life it is so easy to directly influence politics: Just switch to a renewable energy provider today. If everyone who is suddenly against nuclear power acts like this, our nuclear power plants are soon history. It costs not more than 10 mins to fill in the form and few additional Euros every month. That’s all.

I can’t help the feeling, though, that shockingly many people are either too tight-fisted or to lazy to act according to their own statements…

Christmas time is the time of baking and cookies. -A good time for publishing my grandma’s receipe for “Katzenpfoten” (literally “cats’ paws”). I don’t know where the receipe originates from, but some long web research for the receipe has not resulted in any useful results. So I believe the receipe will be new for most of you! You need

375 g almonds or hazelnuts (I prefer hazelnuts)

325 g sugar

4 eggs

1 tea spoon ground cloves

1/2 tea spoon ground cinnamon

1 pinch of ammonium carbonate (”Hirschhornsalz” in German)

enough flour to make a dough which you can form into a roll.

Mix everything and make a thick dough. Make a roll out of it and cut it into 2 cm thick slices. The bake on a baking tray with baking paper.

Be warned: The Katzenpfoten are extremely crunchy and not suitable for bad teeth!

The result should look somewhat like this:

How much would you have to pay for a tomato ketchup sachet in a fast food outlet and an how much for a nice ice cream in an ice cream parlour? Well, I guess in most countries of the world, the ketchup would come for free. In the US you even get about 8 sachets in your bag by default, regardless of what you order. And and ice cream would cost somewhere around EUR 1.-, at least in Germany.
Not so in Denmark. At least in ‘Sunset Blvd.’ - apparently the Danish McDonalds - you have to pay an additional 1.5 DKK (corresponding to about EUR 0.20) for a small sachet of 15 ml Heinz ketchup. For a second flavour in your ice cone, however, you have to pay only 2 DKK (about EUR 0.25) on top of your DKK 18 (EUR 2.50) for the first flavour.

So next time you are in Denmark, rather have your french fries with ice cream, that’s much better value for money! But you should make sure that you do not pay with your credit card. Otherwise you will be charged 3% on top! Another Danish speciality…

Our first ‘lesson’ today was ‘Progressive Muscle Relaxation’. Would you have any idea what to expect from ‘PMR’? I had only faint prejudices, but they were all confirmed:

We started with throwing little cloth bags to each other while calling the catcher’s name. Then the ‘real’ program began: “Now we close our eyes and breathe in… Strain your neck muscles now… keep it strained… Now relax it again while breathing out… What do you feel? Concentrate on your inner self… Does your neck feel different now?” And so on and so forth. The whole thing was also accompanied by some relaxing music in the background.

As you might have guessed, I did not fell ANY different after straining and then relaxing and concentrating on any of my muscles. -Maybe I am too dumb for this kind of exercise…?

Second lesson today: Theory about our spine, what it looks like and what you should avoind if you want to keep it healthy taught by a funny Italian physiotherapist.

What I learnt: ‘Don’t rush, do everything piano, piano.’, lying is better than standing which is better than sitting, sleeping in the embryo position is bad for you, so I should rather quickly change my way of sleeping.

Tomorrow: Spine gymnastics at 7.15 in the morning. -So much for ‘let’s do some relaxing wellness holiday…’

Person question of the day: Why do huge and fat people who choose the module ‘nutrition/eating’ and nevertheless eat 6 sausages for dinner pay the same contribution to their health insurance as I do?

Yesterday, we used our new car to explore still unknown corners of our surroundings. The short trip took us to a ‘Bergtierpark’ (a small zoo with animals living in different mountain areas of the world) some 40 km away from Mannheim. Perhaps one of the strangest inhabitants there was this ‘zonkey’ (in German: ‘Zebresel’), a crossbreed between a zebra and a donkey.

For those who can’t believe it: Just google ‘zonkey’ (or zebrass, zebronkey, zeedonk, zedonk, zebadonk, zenkey, zebrinny, or deebra).

But there were also conventional animals, such as a baby donkey and some kangaroos.

As you can imagine, we had a lot of fun. Although (or because?) it seemed we were the only couple without kids. ‘No, DON’T eat this! It’s animal food, not kid’s food.’ - ‘Benjamin, don’t push the goat, please!’…

Looking for an interesting linguistics book on English-Hindi code-switching? Here’s a new book by a new and aspiring author…

Yesterday morning when we woke up and pulled up the shutters, I saw two big fire engines in front of our house. ‘Cool, seems as if something exciting is going on in our neighbourhood!’

Then I spotted a group of spectators who were all looking up and pointing to OUR roof.

At second glance I then discovered what had happened: Apparently, the storm last night had loosened a tile on the roof which had then crashed down on the sidewalk, fragmenting into a thousand pieces (and luckily enough not killing anyone). Now the fire men were busy trying to safely get down two more tiles which were lying at the edge of the roof, about to fall down as well. Quite funny to watch such a large scale operation involving eight firemen just bringing down two tiles. Gives you the impression that you are living in a very safe country.

In 2008, the initiative ‘Deutschland, Land der Ideen’ (’Germany, Land of Ideas’), promoted by the German President and sponsored by the Deutsche Bank, awards 365+1 companies, institutes and organizations as a “Special Venue in the Land of Ideas”. With its Venture Support concept, Sitewards became one of the “Special Venues” in the Land of Ideas 2008.

-Congratulations!

Yesterday morning I was walking to work when a police woman, standing next to her parked car and a parking meter, addressed me:

‘Excuse me, could you maybe break a ten Euro note? A five Euro note and a few coins would be great.’

I dug up my purse from my hand bag and handed her a five Euro note as well as five Euros in coins.

‘Oh, thank you so much, that’s lovely… I just don’t want to get a ticket again!’

:-)

The latest study commissioned by our minister Horst Seehofer confirmed what we all have known for ages: The Germans are fat and becoming fatter and fatter. Half of the female and two-thirds of the male population are overweight. Germans are fatter than any other Europeans. Not surprising either: Less educated people with lower incomes tend to be much more often overweight than highly educated people with higher incomes. Medical expenses for diseases and medical conditions caused by malnutrition amount to 70 billion Euros!

One often heard explanation, especially by radio station callers: Less educated people are not able to afford healthy food. - THIS IS COMPLETE NONSENSE! The truth: For not more than EUR 70.- per person per month you can easily live on a healthy diet. And registering your kid at the local sports club is much cheaper than buying the DVDs and computer games which make them sit in front of the TV/computer all day and finally make them grow fat. ‘The inconvenient truth’ so to say is simply that people are too lazy live a healthy lifestyle.

Fat people directly cost our health care system more than EUR 70 billion per year! And why do I have to subsidize other people’s self-inflicted obesity with all associated medical problems? Why isn’t there any risk loading scheme for obese people? Why shouldn’t someone who drinks, smokes or lives on a very unhealthy diet pay himself for the consequences? Well, the answer is that our society - or at least the majority of it, including many of our politicians - think this wold be against our principle of solidarity or simply ‘unfair’.

You don’t understand why it should be unfair if you don’t want to pay for your neighbour’s excesses? Welcome to the club! You seem to belong to the few people with some common sense in this country…