Oxford, Paris, and other things

 How dare do I say 'my'?! hm? Oh well.  I will not speak however of friends as they do not like to have their picture taken.  One of my favourite Hamburg bit was 'the beach'... can you say it's a beach if it's near a river? I'd say yes, after all there are many beaches near the river Loire in Nivernais where my French family comes from. You have sand, you have people lying down on the beach, you have swimmers... well not so... it'd be a bit dangerous unless you really know the place... its shallow and then very deep as boats come and go there, and cargos as well. Opposite you have the port of Hamburg, looking a bit like the machines in War of the World. I absolutely loved it, especially after walking under the sun and visiting around, what great pleasure it was to ask for bubbly water and a bit of wurst and kartoffelsalat (sausage and potato salad), and then watch people go by or read my book.    My second favourite place was an art gallery in the most p...

 Yes, why? Why this interest in this country? I realise that, apart from my two home countries, this is the country I have most visited... why? Why did I go to big and small places such as: Schweinfurt, Bonn, Berlin, Lübeck, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Rheine, Hamburg, Köln (Cologne), Tübingen,  Sierksdorf, Nuremberg, Waldenbuch and many others!  Well, there was the question of education in France... if you were studying German as first language in highschool, you were going to a class with a higher level compared with English as first language. But then why not Spanish or Italian? Well it seems a lot of work was done to reconciliate France with Germany starting in the 1950s. Who would have thought that after years, centuries! of wars between the two countries, they would become close allies and even partners in Europe.                                        ...

 As I'm still trying to remember and make progress in German, I'm watching a lot of ARTE programmes . (I just searched for ARTE in my ROKU device and it appeared! It's not however the live television programme that you get in France or Germany) and I watched the documentary "Stockholm 1975 terror at the embassy" about an assault made by the  RAF (Red Army Faction) on the West German embassy . They took embassy staff hostage and asked for the liberation of all RAF members. I was 6 years old then but I do remember my mum speaking about 'la bande à Baader'. Terrible events, terrible violence. Two embassy staff murdered and two terrorists blown by their own explosives. One remained alive, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, served his time I suppose, and is now in charge of an art gallery in Hamburg. How strange.   But Karl-Heinz Dellwo puts the blame on having been raised in a nazi environment, that West Germany, after the war, did not do enough to purge itself from its nazi ...

 This is my second part of my (brief) reflection on Germany after my travel there (Rheine and Hamburg). It's called 'de l'Allemagne' after Madame de Staël's book. I have always wondered about the difference between a state and its limits and the official language of that state, during conversations made with complete strangers in trains or other places, I've discovered there are Swedish speaking communities in Norway and Finland - not to mention the USA, Hungarian speaking communities in Slovakia and Serbia, Russian speakers in Ukraine and Belarus (and of course Paris!), and so many others. But the one European speaking community that I have found a bit everywhere is... the German speaking one. They are, or they were, everywhere: Belgium, France, Russia, Ukraine, most other countries in East Europe. Some were invited by countries, some invited themselves. This is well explained in MacGregor's Germany: memory of a nation (chapter 3: lost capitals) Walking in ...

 No no don't worry I'm not going to redo a madame de Staël, a noble (well as far as I know) lady from France who wrote books at the beginning of the 19th century and is remembered mostly for her book de l'Allemagne.                                                               Bismark monument, Hamburg   (with panels explaning its history and controversy) I vaguely remember her from my highschool as she was included in the Lagarde et Michard , the annual textbook for French literature and culture. Each year was a new century and we started with medieval time when we were in first year so I believe XIX century arrived when I was a teenager. I vaguely remember, from the year before, the walking into nature of monsieur Rousseau, the spleen from the North (England? Scotland?) and the Sturm und Drang...

 For those of you who don't know, I've just registered as a student at Surrey University. It is based in Guildford which means it's not on the other side of the planet from Wantage! You just need to take the Oxford Bus Company X35 or X36 and go into Beauty (ie the countryside surrounding where I live) then arrive in Didcot. Take a train to Reading and change there. So yes really, not far! I plan to go there about once per month. It was only my second day of studies yesterday but I was given the chance to read some of my poems, so I said yes of course! I also heard the other students' work which was great. During the day, there was the Surrey New Writers Festival on campus and my mind (and bank account...) got blown away! I do admit that apart from Amy Key I didn't know anyone. Wow... came back home, around midnight, my bag full of books and I'm now trying to process all the fantastic comments I heard yesterday. It was the best literary festival I went to becau...

  Quand tu débarque à Oxford et la première personne que tu prends en photo est une travailliste au travail #AnnelieseDodds   La classe!