A Bavarian Farmhouse

Snowed recently. Just before we had to fly over to Scotland, it snowed for about three days and this is the result of just one day. While we were concerned about this delaying our flights it was only a few hours before the airports were operating as normal. When we did leave it was raining so there were no snow related transport difficulties despite the fact that we are in the middle of a council workers strike in Ulm. We landed in Edinburgh, where it was characteristically bone-chilingly cold and soul-destroying. However it was lovely and warm in my daughter's appartment. On Sunday my daughter seemed be doing a great deal of phoning (she's a travel agent and they work on a Sunday in Scotland). "It's snowing," she told me and I was just about to say "call that snow?" when I saw someone go past the window on skis. A fairly normal site in the South German winter, but rather unusual, to say the least for Scotland. I transpired that for the first time in ab

Ulm Is disappearing under a mountain of trash. I don't quite remember how long our version of the 1979 Winter of Discontent has been going on, but if it continues much longer, the roads authority will have to designate some of the mountains of garbage bags as roundabouts. Although I am happy to attribute the current situation to the regular leaderless nature of German national and local politics, I suspect the looming local authority elections have something to do with it as well. Once the electionis over. I often wonder if the left here has any grasp of economics, and I might remind you that I am coming from the left in Scotland ( which is considerably more left than anything described as left here!), who know that no strike has ever been of benefit to those who struck. Most strikes end with the strikers in a considerable personal and financial crisis. During the Miners strike 1984/85 I was the Stirling Labour Party constituency secretary and had first hand experience of how much

The German Platter Toilet Bowl. It is not unusual for people to dismiss the platter toilet as an invention which allows the Germans to indulge in their allegedly stereotypical habit of examing their own stool. I use to think this but I no longer believe it is the case, as it is my (second-hand!) observation that they never do this and in fact are so keen on hygiene and cleaning and healthy, wholesome activities that I doubt the thought of looking at their stool ever enters their head. I am convinced that this is another fine example of sophisticated German Engineering. Firstly the platter provides a much lower velocity of impact for the stool and this has the advantage of reducing smear and sticking. Secondly the wide platter allows the water to flow over the total surface area of the pan. Thirdly because the water wells up behind any substantial deposit, it floats it free and clean of the platter. Fourthly the platter makes a smaller cistern of water move faster and shift more mat

I just went out for a bag of chips and when I came back three years later… Get us a portion of chips pleas Joanne. The Bistro 2006 Well, it was as if I hadn’t left. The only the thing that had change were the regulars. The old regulars were still there and the new regulars were the sorts of punters I would never have let in the door. Amongst the staff were the people who had never left, Sue is still in the kitchen, Janet is still the manager and Ronnie, although I missed him, is still behind the bar. Kirsty is back behind the bar, wee David is a new addition to the bar staff, Joanne is in the kitchen and Pat has been promoted to Kitchen Toto. The downstairs now has the added attraction of a pool table and a football machine, which Joanne a) suggested I would never have agreed to (correct) and b) it didn’t have any effect on the numbers of regulars who remained regulars. Still crazy after all these years All of the characteristic pictures have been taken down and Janet told me