



Linked to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: smiles.


Linked to One Word Sunday: Simplicity.

Some 50+ years ago this was often what we ate on a Saturday: potato soup and yeast dumplings or sometimes yeast dumplings and wine sauce. It was either and not all together as it is offered here on the window of this pastry shop in Ladenburg, near Mannheim. I had never seen this combination – Dampfnudel und Kartoffelsuppe – in a restaurant before. It was a real blast from the past, evocative of Saturday mornings which were spent in school, coming home to mum’s home cooking. A time when Saturday afternoons were meant for working in the house and the garden, shops closed at 1 or 2pm, and the busy day slowly eased into the weekend. Food on Saturdays was simple and traditional, usually eaten in the kitchen, unlike more formal Sunday fare.
This is linked to A Photo a Week Challenge: nostalgia.

Cee writes on her block: For a great monochrome photo “look for contrast or highly textured subjects to photograph”. — Half-timbered houses then for me!



Linked to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: any kind of house.


“I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.”
Groucho Marx
And so we turned our backs on Britain when we visited. The weather was just too gorgeous.
Linked to Travel with Intent: quotations.

A field, ploughed and bone dry, in the Odenwald, in Germany.
For more almond coloured photos, click here.

Some people write their favourite poison on their legs (kale?! seriously!?):
Others prefer to write their state of mind:
Or state what they are:

Just simply a:

Linked to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: legs and feet.



I was in Koblenz yesterday and in the cable car up to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress. In the cabin one has a commanding view of the Deutsches Eck, the German corner, where the river Moselle joins the Rhine. The corner tip was called Deutsches Eck for a long time but was enlarged and a monumental statue of Emperor Wilhelm I on horseback was erected. The statue was destroyed during World War II and until German reunification only the plinth remained – meant to be a reminder of the German separation. A replica of the monument was erected amidst much public discussion in the 1990s.
Public discussion was again fierce when the cable car from the banks of the Rhine up to the fortress was built in 2011. The area where the Moselle flows into the Rhine is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and people were worried that the view was going to be spoilt but personally I think it does not distract from the beauty of the area.
This is linked to One Word Sunday: Aerial.


The title is the beginning of the poem “Phases” by Hermann Hesse (Stufen), one of the best known and most quoted poems in German. It goes on to extol the virtues of endings and their inherent new beginnings and ends with “Courage my heart, take leave and fare thee well.”
This is linked to A Photo a Week Challenge: Endings.