A Blog a Year!

It seems to be again the time of the year to start blogging! What is it about Spring/Summer that gets me to my laptop to type a few words. It feels a bit counter-intuitive to sure, the longer winters should be one the get me blogging and writing as a way to beat the depressions. The only reason I can think of is the big break that I get at this time. The Queen's day, May Day and Liberation day celebrations certainly put me in a holiday mood and that gets me wanting to share my lovely mini-vacation with all and sundry ... actually just me :)

This year I spent this time of the year in Alsace. A perfect place for good food and good wine. We mainly followed the wine-route, but had some important deviations. First we stopped at the Maginot Line Memorial. Certainly a world war relic worth the five minutes we spent there. It brought up the issues of what the mysterious Limozins were doing there.


Our next stop - Restaurant "Trout" in Illhausern. A mouth watering cuisine (we tried the asparagus and the trout), a charming view of the "L'ill" stream and warm sunshine added to the charm of the place. After a short stop at a few more places, we finally reached the "wine-route".


A few things stand out from the quite packed two days- other than the food and wine. The first being the timber houses - quite like the "fachwerk" houses in Germany. But most of them were multi-coloured and had quite some intricate sculptures on the wood adding to the beauty of the villages. The next were the storks - the symbol of Alsace. We crossed a natural park abounding in Storks. They flew over our car in their quest for materials for their nests. The sight of storks building nests on top of public towers/gates or houses seems quite common in this area. The real storks were definitely a million times more interesting than the soft-toy storks that every shop in every village seemed to stock. The third thing that I found quite unique was the bakery selling "pain ancienne" (sorry for my french). They had (usual) different bread varities - olive, nuts, whole- grain etc. The unique thing about the bread was that they were about 2 m long - yes you read me right - 2m! Atleast thats how long they were at the end of the day - I wonder if they started the day being longer. The breadth was probably marginally bigger than usual and they cut the bread side ways and not lengthwise. The bread was really good as well - a nice fuse of german and french bread that I am familiar with. A personal first was seeing a "stage coach". Another nice feature was that every one we met were extremely friendly. They had no problems communicating with us in our broken french or german or sometimes even english!! We did miss out on the beautiful lakes but the plenty of streams made up for it. And the food and wine - but thats for another post. Hopefully a year wont go by :)

Cesky Kumlov

cesky kumlov: a small unesco hertige town near the border to austria. a town which taught me how a good tap and a good bartender can turn a good beer into the best beer i have ever tasted ! i would highly recommend a walk down to the small pension with the red board and pig skin just to taste the beer. the view of the 'painted' castle and covered bridge is definitely an added addvantage. for those who wish to escape the crowds - here as well as prague, a bike into the natural park and ruins of devci kamin is a must!

Gay Pride.

I better post a picture before its already the next gay pride.
Beautiful weather, perfect bodies, lots of beer, music, boats on the canal ...
What more could you want?

fields of tulips...

Definately not natural, but less manicured...



Took these pictures for my grand children before it all goes under water ...

keukenhof

some pics ... from the 'most beautiful spring' garden of the world ... are there any summer or winter gardens any more beautiful .... i wonder!!!!


The view near the main entrance. The first glimpse is always beautiful, but after a few minutes of tulips, they do get a bit boring. I had a few questions for the head maali, why are contrast colours more the fashion (read blue, yellow, red) and are checker board tulips more enticing than seas of colour?




And how did you get the frilly edges??

Phew! Its a long time since I went blogging. Guess the grey and rain and sleet in Holland wasnt really inspriing. But Spring's sprung everyone (and me) into action...
This weekend was spent in Keuenhof ... some super touristy pics from there - actually I cant post them due to an 'internal error'. Will try again later ...
On keuenhof itself - It nice! but not worth all the hype and the money! seriously! you are better of in the fields...
Take a bike and a sunny day in holland (not too many of those) and bike around the canals and tulip fields and the country side dotted with windmills and seagulls - its a lot more refreshing than walking through manicured paths with teeming other tourists. Ofcourse if you can ignore the people, which any normal desi can, it might be worth it ... so go ahead, trudge all the way to keuenhof, and then do take the bike trip!
till the next pic ....

Biggles!!!!!!!!!!

The biggle association's stall in the Deventer book fair.

The adventures of Biggles bring on fond memories - of adventure, of aviation, or adversity, of admiration, of many other childhood charms. The stories cronical the adventures of James Bigglesworth, his flying companion Algy (the Hon. Algernon Lacey) starting out in the 'white fokker' from the Gobi to Antartica and even India. My favourite character in the series is Ginger (Hebblethwaite) who charmed me from his first appearance in Biggles and the Black Peril. In all about 100 stories were written by Capt. W.E Johns and they continue to fascinate people (like the members of the international biggles association) even today.

a story of flamingoes

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Phoenicopteriformes
Family: PhoeniPhoenicopterus
Genus: Phoenicopterus
Species: Roseus



Greater Flamingos in the Cabo-de-gata - Nijar natural park in the Almeria, Spain. of . By August the whole place if full of flamingos migrating from northern Europe to Africa.
The Salinas, the Mediterranean and the desert combine to form a unique landscape.

Dresden Shepherdess

Any one familiar with Georgette Heyer or for that matter Jane Austen would have come across the Dresden Shepherdess often. The small porcelein figurines decorated dinning tables and shelves and were much admired in the regency period. The Dresden figures were one of the first forms in which European porcelain had appeared. They were first made in the small town of Meissen, near Dresden. Meissen and later Sèvres were the most important porcelein factories in Europe. Interestingly, Auguste Rodin was employed at Sèvres for a short time butapparently did not leave any enduring marks of his presence. The dresden figures still adorn some living rooms.