Sunrise

There is a very peculiar habit in my life: once a year I get up very early to see the sun rise on the highest mountain of the Rhön: the Wasserkuppe!

Oh well, I am not crazy, for I meet up with 4 friends, so I am not the only one. This meeing is already a well loved tradition, we met for the 6th time this year. But this year was the first year that actually didn't get to see the sun - FOG as thick as cotton! But the sun was rising exactly at 6.14 am or so the newspaper said.


There were only four of us this year (Vanessa, Hildegard, Tobias and Me), for as some of you know, Christian is in Mexiko at the moment (we are already waiting for your dinner invitation - hihi!). We cannot really remember why we do this, the only thing we know is, that Tobias lost a bet and therefore had to bring us to the Wasserkuppe for the sunrise after our prom 5 years ago.We live all over Germany/Europe now and this is sometimes the only occasion we are managing to be at the same time at the same place. We knew that it would be like this and Christian is a vivid example that it still does not always work out the way we planned it. Instead we had a special guest: Luzia, a friend of Vanessa. We also made it a habit to have breakfast afterwards at my place.


We spent the whole day together. Last year we went canoeing and this year we decided to go hiking. It even got sunny later on and it was a great day out. The picknick was perfect - okay, don't mention that I forgot half of the stuff in the fridge, but hey, it was quite early!

But it is good to have friends like them - thank you!

Weather

It is August and it is supposed to be the hotest month of the year but somehow this year is a bit different. Let me explain what I mean by that:

Spring is my favourite season and I had some lovely days in France at the end of April. It was warm and sunny and everything started to bloom. I had to spent the first weekend of May, which is a bank holiday in Germany, at my parents - housesitting! Well, it was bloody cold and it even started to SNOW!

Summer was also a bit late, for the cold stayed till mid of June, it was not snowing anymore, but the thermometer never even got close to 20°C.And it was raining most of the time, so everybody was depressed and longing for a bit of sunschine.


For those who do not speak German: It is summer - The rain is getting warmer!


As I already mentioned in one of the previous posts, I had to study for one of my final exams till the 9th of August. So perfectly timed, the hotest weeks of the year started mid of June and lasted till the beginning of August. With temperatures close to 40°C and no rain at all - which is quite unusual for Germany, especially if the heat lasts longer than one day - these weeks of studying where quite frustrating. As it was too hot to study at daytime, I settled on studying from 8pm to 2am in the garden. A friend of mine preferred studying from 5am to 10am!

Okay, exam over - heatwave over as well! Now that I have time to go to the nice lakes near Bamberg or to the swimming pool, it is too cold even to go outside without a jacket. Poor me! And it has been like this for three weeks now and it does not look like it is going to change soon. Probably it will change at the beginning of September, when I have to work again or we will step right into autumn.

The only thing I can look forward to is our planned holiday starting on the 19th of September - Corfu/Greece! Maybe I will get some sunshine there, for I am still as white as a sheet and that close to the end of summer! I envy all of those at the other site of the world where summer is close and spring even closer!

Paradise Lost

Right, I might also say something about the quote above:
As some of you know, I am still lingering at university - well, my degree takes 5 years anyway, but if I had not travelled the world all the time, I might have finished earlier - and at the moment I am writing on my final thesis, which is kind of connected to Paradise Lost.



I am working on a teaching degree for Secondary Schools (English/History) and on a degree which is comparable to a Master in English Literature, English Linguistics and Early Modern/Modern History. So I have to write my final thesis in my major - English Literature. I took me some time to find something to write about, but I finally made it and even my professor was kind of excited. And here it is:

The narrative creation of fantasy worlds in the novels of J.K. Rowling, P. Pullman and C.S. Lewis

Fancy, isn't it? Well, I guess I never grow up and I just LOVE children's books and I especially love Harry Potter or at beter, I love the books. I am not very fond of the films, though. There is still quite a lot of work to do, but I do not have to hand in the thesis till the beginning of March. I will write about the concept of Secondary Worlds (this term goes back to Tolkien's "On Fairy Tales" and I have already proved that in Harry Potter there is only ONE secondary world with two parallel societies - Muggle/Wizard World - not two independent worlds! If anyone is interested, I can send you the first part of the thesis (The Secondary Worlds of the Harry Potter Series). But I have oral exams coming up at the end of October (pedagogics/psychology) and I guess I won't be able to do anything for my thesis till then.

But back to Paradise Lost: Did any of you read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman? Fantastic books, aren't they? Well, the quote above is part of the introduction to Northern Lights and I really like it, even though I was never able to convince myself to read Paradise Lost. I have to admit, that I have not finished the Chronicles of Narnia yet, but I managed 5 out of 7, which is not too bad so far!

Did any of you study Psychology? I had my final exams (for the teaching degree) only three weeks ago in this stupid subject. Okay, it is not really stupid, but it is definitely not my favourite. There are a lot of things that are very interesting and helpful for a teacher, but I am not good at learning things off by heart and I don't know why I had to learn all these stupid results of various scientific studies... I survived, but I have never in my life studied so hard for one single exam - I started in April!!!!

Why am I addicted to snails?

Okay, I should explain to some of you why I have chosen this blog title. Well, I guess some already know why;-)
I cannot really explain when it all started, but I guess years and years ago...

Everyone collects something - stamps, postcards, coins, turtles, things no one needs, bric-a-brac, shoes, handbags,... - so maybe I just wanted something else, something very hard to get and therefore I decided to collect SNAILS.
No, not these slimy red or brown ones without houses - cute cuddly snails like the ones on the pictures. Hi hi, they keep on growing, don't they? Oh my good, I seem to collect them like other women collect shoes!


You won't believe me when I tell you that it is very hard to find snails. When you go to a market, you will find all kinds of animals like owls, turtles, hedgehogs and mice and even spiders, but no snails! But there is one company in Germany which sells these cute softtoys!

They come in various sizes with dots or stripes, uni or muliticoloured and I just love them.


There are also special editions like this X-Mas Snail:


But I also collect snails made out of other materials like wood, glas, ceramics and so forth. So if you are ever looking for a present for me, just remember this post!


I have to admitt that I also tasted some in France and well, they are not as bad as their reputation! On the other hand, I find them way too cute to eat them.

As I am travelling a lot and as I am out and about every so often, I decided that "Snail on the Road" is quite appropriate.

I'm still alive

Well, I am quite proud of me, I finally managed to create my own little blog. I even remembered some of the things I learnt about HTML-writing at university - amazing! As Dana said, every single second a new blog is created and this seems to be my "second of glory"!

People keep telling me that they have not heard from me for ages and that they do not even know in which country I am living at the moment. Right, I am a bit lazy and often forget to answer e-mails (sorry everyone), but I do not do it on purpose, I promise ;-) At least I managed to send some mails during my stay in Ireland, didn't I?
But I thought this might be a good way of keeping in touch with all of you. So hello world - here I am!

I decided to write in English, as some of my friends abroad might find it a bit difficult to look up every single word in their German-English dictionary, if they have one! As I study English literature and linguistics and most of my friends here in Bamberg do so as well, I am very confident that they will manage to understand the posts. And all the others had at least 9 years of English at school, so they should manage as well! Every now and then I will include some "mistakes" for you to find, just to check if you read the posts! Of course you can write your comments in whatever language you like, but please use one of the two I understand properly: English or German!

Don't hesitate to leave some comments, so I can have a laugh as well!

Yours
Nadja