Category: Experiences

The Floriade 2022

The “Floriade”, the world horticultural exhibition, will take place in Almere in the Dutch province of Flevoland This year. The Netherlands organises the Floriade every 10 years and there are bad reviews each time thanks to massive budget overruns. How high the loss will be this year can probably only be said when the exhibition closes its doors in October. But it already looks like a record. The true numbers of visitors is much lower than those estimated – whereby Corona certainly also plays a role. Several heads have rolled among those politically responsible.

Continue reading “Growing Green Cities”

Of foreboding in nature

This is not about your unease as a mighty thunderstorm front approaches, although this spectacle of nature could also be worth an article in Harlequin, especially if there is a theatre of clouds in the sky (look up and discover, as I did, your grandmother as a cloudy silhouette). And it’s not about mosquitoes either, which are, after all, known as awe-ful bloodsuckers of mammals and thus also transmit diseases. Nor is it about ticks, which, once they have bitten into a mammal, grow larger and larger and only occur at altitudes of up to 1,200 metres.

Today it’s really about crime stories, S&M practices, pretense and deceit. And all this in nature. And it’s about small and tiny creatures trying to hold their own in a world of eating and being eaten with artifice, guile and trickery.

Continue reading “Crime Scene Front Garden (Part 1)”

Subtitling versus dubbing

On German television it has been standard for donkey’s years to show foreign films dubbed in German (with the exception of “Dinner for one” on New Year’s Eve, of course). DVDs and streaming services offer the choice of “original with subtitles” – but with films and series on TV international actors and actresses are still “dished up” with German voices.

Continue reading “Read-along Films?”

I’m visiting friends in Hamburg, who live on the 5th floor of a modern house with a small garden. And early in the morning at 4:30 a.m. I am woken by the piercing chirping of my favourite bird, Troglodytes troglodytes. This animal alarm clock is the loudest loudmouth (between 40 and 90 decibels!) in relation to its body size (about 10 cm) in the diverse ornithological kingdom: my favourite bird, the wren. With its tail always up when it sings, it acts with great self-confidence. The male belts out “with warbles and trills and ends abruptly. It (the song) is composed of about 130 different sounds.” (Wikipedia)

According to a very old fable, it also reputed to be a trickster who likes to fool other animals.  In order to escape the revenge of the aggrieved, he is said to lurk mostly in hedges and bushes. Trickster or not, I like the little fella, even at 4:30 in the morning, when he is the first to open the dawn chorus.

Somehow I’ve been anti-cyclical more often lately. While everyone was sitting in the office, I was in the home office. Now it’s the other way round and I miss the freedom to organise my working hours now and then. Working from home, I sometimes work in the evening, but I have lunchtime free: for example, to stroll to my favourite cosy café and let it all hang out there, relaxed, with cake and coffee. And yes, that works fine in the morning at 9:00 too.

… is Robert Adams, an internationally renowned and environmentally-aware landscape photographer. Together with other American photographers, he shaped a new direction in landscape photography in the 1970s: “New Topographics”. I studied his writings and illustrated books carefully and found in them the foundation on which I built my own photographic work and from which I developed my own visual language. Through him I learned that a successful photograph combines three aspects: geographical, metaphorical and autobiographical.

Ti Amo (I love …) Ai Suma, a wine from Piedmont. Not as popular as Tignanello and Sassica from Tuscany, just not a super Tuscan. Nevertheless, a very special wine from the Barbera grape. In principle, it is harvested like a German Spätlese (late-harvested wine), although this quality classification does not actually exist in Italy.  Only Giacomo Bologna had the courage in the last century to harvest his Piedmont Barbera much later and produce a truly great wine. On a visit to the estate in the 90s, his daughter Raffaella Bologna warmly welcomed us to an extensive wine tasting, even though she had already sold all the wines by subscription beforehand. We were able to taste all the wines – but not buy a single bottle from her.

As a stereotypical Gemini it is hard to single out any one thing as a favourite. However, one piece of music has stayed with me since I first heard it as a student and never ceases to move me: the Adagietto, 4^th Movement of Mahler’s 5^th Symphony. The music has, thanks to its use at Kennedy’s funeral and the movie “Death in Venice”, often been associated with mourning. In actual fact it was a love song to Mahler’s future wife. It leaves me breathless at the way Mahler gently weaves through an abstract melody tune with just strings and a harp gliding from minor to major, resolving lines of a melody only after stretching the anticipatory note, instructing the orchestra to switch gently from soft to sonorous, melancholic to passionate. A wonderful expression of Romantic longing.

Because it’s quick and delicious. And it’s easy too.

Lemon spaghetti (serves 3-4)
1 onion
1 lemon (untreated)
Lemon thyme (if available)
Lemon balm (if available)
2 cups crême fraiche
500g spaghetti
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Put the water for the spaghetti on to boil and salt it, of course, and as soon as it boils, cook the spaghetti until al dente. At the same time, chop the onions and grate the zest of the lemon. Chop the herbs if you have them. Fry everything together in a pan with olive oil until the onions are glazed. Add the crême fraiche and stir. Squeeze half of the lemon and add the juice to the pan. Season with salt and pepper. Keep warm until the spaghetti is ready and serve together.

Dear friends of the Harlequin!

The Harlequin team is now taking leave for the summer holidays. While we are away, all the Harlequins will be sharing their personal favourites with you. Today we start literarily- minded, but depending on your interests, “Harlequin’s favourite” can also be culinary, ornithological (alcoholic? philosophical? … ). Let us surprise you!

We wish you and ourselves a wonderful holiday!

Sunny, summery greetings

Your Harlequin Team

My favourite novel character…

… is Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. I devoured the Miss Marple detective novels as a teenager and was thrilled by the English atmosphere. Everything was “so very British”! From Miss Marple I learned that most things in life are not what they seem at first sight. A very useful lesson that will accompany me all my life!