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The Frankfurt garden gnome

I was invited to break the fast with a Syrian friend. In Frankfurt I realize what radius is possible when you’re stuck here at the end of the world. Frankfurt and Cologne are easily doable for friendships, everything that is further away must be old friendships where the frequency no longer plays a role. We haven’t seen each other since the pandemic, but her life is going well, she now works in a big German bank now.

I used the morning to visit all the shops that aren’t in Trier. I bought a bag, t-shirts, swiss chocolate, massage oil and a jacket. A little off I bought my first garden gnome, now I’m really German.

Easter Sunday I walked a longer distance along the Main. In the city I got a city tour and learned about Maria Sibylla Merian who was a 17th century naturalist and scientific illustrator. Unusually for that time, she traveled to Suriname with her daughter to draw plants there.

We passed a place called Nice. The Nice owes its name to its mild microclimate, which is due to its southern exposure, sheltered from the wind, the favorable sunshine and the heat storage of the river. As a result, numerous plants of the Mediterranean flora thrive here, palms for example.

I also spent some time learning Italian and reading on the internet.. Catatonique shared a lovely text about getting older. It struck me when someone said he wouldn’t look for any platform other than Twitter anymore, that I’m less interested in beginnings, especially not all the time. It used to be different. I used to be basically made up of beginnings.

At home on the balcony there are now blackbirds and pigeons, recently also a crow, which still shyly turns away when I sit on it. I’m curious if it will get used to me. Avoiding eye contact seems important to me, for now. The birds usually come in the morning, just after sunrise. The wild bees have accepted the insect hotel well.

The dates of the 2nd Corona winter / January

December

1. January 2021

  • For the fourth day in a row, France reports more than 200,000 new corona infections

2. January 2022

  • Israel formally approves 4th dose of COVID-19 vaccine for people over 60 and medical staff

6. January 2022

  • The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported a record number of weekly coronavirus infections worldwide. The number rose in the past week by 71 percent to just under 9.5 million
  • More books sold in pandemic year 2021. With an increase in sales of 3.2 percent, the book market closed the second pandemic year.

7. January 2022

  • 98,000 children in Peru have become half-orphans or orphans as a result of Covid-19
  • In Italy, the corona incidence more than doubled within a week. As of Thursday, the health authorities recorded an average of 1,669 corona cases per 100,000 inhabitants nationwide over the past seven days,
  • New rules in Germany: restaurants only for 2 times vaccinated and recovered + test or completely boosted / quarantine reduced to 10 days, boosted people not quarantined at all.

11. January 2022

  • The World Health Organization (WHO), citing an extrapolation, warns that in two months more than half of the people in Europe could be infected with Omikron.
  • Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has encouraged his European partners to debate the question of treating Covid-19 no longer as a pandemic but as an endemic disease and establishing a model for monitoring virus evolution, similar to that used for the flu

12. January 2022

  • For the first time more than 80,000 new infections in Germany (80.430)
  • If the corona virus leads to a shortage of staff in the police force, right-wing extremists are planning an overthrow, according to the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

17. January 2022

  • The number of new corona infections in Hamburg is increasing . For the first time, the seven-day incidence reported by the health authority is above the 1000 mark

19. January 2022

  • Germany has over 100,000 cases for the first time. France reported 465,000 cases yesterday.
  • The curves of new corona infections and those of new admissions to intensive care units diverge more and more. A good sign.

24, January 2022

  • In view of the increasing number of corona infections due to the Omicron variant, compulsory attendance at Berlin schools has been temporarily suspended.
  • Given the scarcity of PCR tests, prioritization should be made while increasing capacity.

27. January 2022

  • The EU medicines agency EMA has given the green light for the approval of the drug Paxlovid against Covid-19
  • The Novavax corona vaccine will be available from the end of February. In Rhineland-Palatinate, registration for a vaccination with the new vaccine has been possible since Monday as the first federal state

The dates of the 2nd Corona winter / December

November January

01. December 2021

  • Austria uses triage in hospitals
  • Several European countries have offered to take over Covid19 patients from Germany. Appropriate aid pledges were received from Italy, France, Portugal and Sweden.

02. December 2021

  • Meetings in public and private spaces, in which non-vaccinated and unconcealed people take part, should be limited to one’s own household and a maximum of two people from another household
  • They will initiate a facility-related vaccination requirement for employees, for example in hospitals and geriatric care facilities
  • The Bundestag will decide on a general vaccination requirement as soon as possible.
  • In shops, as well as at cultural and leisure events, access will only be given to people vaccinated against the coronavirus or those who have recovered from an infection.
  • Clubs and discos should be closed if the number of corona infections is high (350 incidence) due to the risk of infection.
  • In schools, a mask requirement should generally apply to all grade levels
  • In order to accelerate the vaccination campaign, dentists, pharmacists and nurses should also be allowed to vaccinate against the virus in the future
  • The number of participants for supraregional sports, cultural and comparable major events will be significantly reduced.
  • The sale of firecrackers and fireworks on New Year’s Eve is again banned this year.

05. December 2021

  • Rose Monday procession in Trier and Cologne canceled
  • The workers union fears increasing violence and attacks on journalists during anti-corona protests.
  • Opponents of the corona policy pulled in front of the house of Saxony’s Health Minister Köpping yesterday with torches
  • Because of the Omikron variant, the Brazilian metropolis of Rio de Janeiro has canceled the traditional New Year’s Eve party on Copacabana Beach.
  • Because of the current partial lockdown and the announced mandatory vaccination, more than 40,000 people demonstrated in the Austrian capital Vienna yesterday

06. December 2021

  • Karl Lauterbach becomes the new Minister of Health.
  • At the moment 2800 people a week pass away of COVID in Germany.

07. December 2021

  • The Berlin Humboldt University has lodged a complaint with the press council against „Bild“. The newspaper had made scientists responsible for corona measures
  • Some AfD members of the Bundestag lodged a constitutional complaint against the current 2G regulation for Berlin hotels – and thus failed.

08. December 2021

  • Deutsche Bahn tightens 3G controls in local transport
  • According to several studies, the vaccine from BioNTech / Pfizer apparently only offers partial protection against the coronavirus variant Omikron.
  • Berlin: Homeless people without 3G proof are no longer allowed to seek refuge from the cold on platforms. This sucks.

10. December 2021

  • Corona vaccination will mandatory for certain professions in the future. MPs voted like this: 571 yes, 80 no, 38 abstained.
  • Do everything to keep schools and universities open in presence: That is the motto of the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs

13. December 2021

  • According to the Saxon Medical Association, the rejection of a corona vaccination by a doctor can be considered a gross treatment error and have consequences under liability law.
  • At a demonstration in front of the Federal Ministry of Health in Berlin, the globalization-critical organization Attac called for the patents on corona vaccines to be released.
  • Brandenburg’s state parliament has declared an epidemic emergency.
  • Instead of five months, citizens in North Rhine-Westphalia only have to wait four weeks to be vaccinated again

14. December 2021

  • Deaths in November nationwide 20 percent above average
  • Politicians, the media and institutions have received threatening letters announcing „bloody resistance“ to the planned vaccination requirement.

15. Dezember 2021

  • Opponents of the vaccination are said to have planned the murder of Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer in the Telegram messenger service. The authorities have now reacted with a raid in Dresden – a special task force is also involved.
  • After an inventory, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced that Germany will lack corona vaccine for the first quarter of 2022.
  • In Berlin, the State Police Department of the State Criminal Police Office is investigating after politicians in the capital have received threatening letters against the planned vaccination requirement.

18. Dezember 2021

  • Netherlands impose lockdown. Restaurants, cinemas and hairdressers will close until January 14th
  • London is again declaring a disaster
  • Numerous demos against corona measures
  • Because of the rapid spread of the Omikron variant in Great Britain, doctors are warning of massive staff absences

19. December 2021

  • The government’s panel of experts sees potential threats to the critical infrastructure. This includes hospitals, the police, fire brigades, rescue services, telecommunications, electricity and water supply and the corresponding logistics.
  • In New Zealand, a 26-year-old man apparently died of complications from myocarditis after an initial vaccination with the active ingredient from BioNTech / Pfizer.

21. December 2021

  • The Standing Vaccination Commission approves Booster vaccinations after just 3 months
  • The Robert Koch Institute prefer contact restrictions before Christmas. The government is pissed off because the health minister has promised no restrictions before Christmas.
  • Government decided:
  • The vaccination campaign should also run over the christmas holidays
  • Compulsory vaccination: The federal states ask the Bundestag and the federal government to speed up the preparations for the introduction of a general compulsory vaccination „and to present a schedule at short notice“
  • Critical infrastructures: should review their pandemic plans and ensure that they can also be operated in the short term
  • Because of the Omikron variant, a maximum of ten people are allowed to meet privately from December 28th
  • Meetings with the unvaccinated: Once an unvaccinated person attends, stricter contact restrictions apply. Then, as before, meetings are limited to your own household and a maximum of two other people from another household.
  • Dance events are banned from the 28th.
  • Major national events: No more spectators are allowed from December 28th at the latest.

25. Decemner 2021

  • France has over 100,000 new infections a day

28. Dezember 2021

  • With a decision published today, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court decided that the legislature violated Article 3 (3) sentence 2 of the Basic Law because it failed to take precautions to ensure that no one with disabilities is disadvantaged in the allocation of intensive care treatment resources. The goivernment must define triage rules.

29. December 2021

  • France has over 200,000 new infections a day

30. December 2021

  • For four weeks they should live and work shielded from the outside world: An energy company in Austria isolates around 50 employees. In this way, the supply should also be secured in the Omikron wave.

31. December 2021

  • Italy reports 144,000 new infections

The dates of the 2nd Corona winter / November

Im Garten des Todes, Hugo Simberg (1906)

December

9. November 2021

  • The Berlin Charite cancels all plannable operations.
  • In the Elbe-Elster district, the incidence among 5- to 14-year-olds rises to 2,600.
  • I have my first warning „increased risk (red)“ in the Corona app => PCR test

10. November 2021

  • Bavaria declares a disaster situation

11. November 2021 – Helau!

  • 50.196 new infections

12. November 2021

  • Rapid tests should be free again from next week

13. November 2021

  • 12,000 Bundeswehr soldiers are to be mobilized to help in the 4th wave

15. November 2021

  • Today 16 districts in Bavaria and Saxony over 900. The new front runner is Saxon Switzerland with more than 1,300 …

18. November 2021

  • 52,826 new infections
  • The vaccination centers in Rhineland-Palatinate and otheer federal states will open again next week
  • There are no longer any PCR capacities in some laboratories
  • Hospitals in Bavaria (Rottal-Inn) are starting with mass transfers

19. November 2021

  • Austria will go into lockdown from Monday and will have a mandatory vaccination from February
  • In Bavaria, locations with an incidence of 1000 or more go into lockdown
  • Saxony is temporarily lifting the working time restrictions: Doctors and nurses are allowed to work longer, the crematoria on Sunday
  • The air force is being prepared to transport the sick

22. November 2021

  • The health department in Trier (and in many other places) can no longer record the new infections, employees from other parts of the administration are turned off, so the citizens‘ office can only be reached to a limited extent
  • Saxony defines specific rules for triage

23. November 2021

  • The USA issued a travel warning for Germany
  • The Netherlands are moving patients to Germany. Germany moves patients to Italy.
  • 400 officials infected, 600 more in quarantine: The Saxon police union warns of a possible end of many controle areas in the State

24. November 2021

  • 66,888 new infections. All people who go into quarantine and are absent from production.
  • „Kleeblatt Süd- und Ost“ has been activated. It is a concept to be able to relocate hospital patients nationwide.
  • From today on there is a 3G rule on workplaces (geimpft, genesen, getested / vaccinated, recovered or tested)
  • In the army there is an obligation to vaccinate
  • The new government introduces itself. There is to be a premium for nurses, a compulsory vaccination in nursing professions and a crisis staff set up in the chancellery
  • Due to Corona cases, the Trier garbage disposal may be delayed and canceled.

25. November 2021

  • 75.961 new infections
  • The Czech Republic declares a national emergency
  • According to scientists, a new variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in South Africa. The variant with the scientific name B.1.1.529 „has a very high number of mutations“
  • In Dresden, a mobile vaccination team is attacked with fireworks.

26. November 2021

  • 76.414 new infections
  • The Cologne health department approved a soccer game with 50,000 spectators
  • Belgium registers the first case of B.1.1.529
  • The name of the new variant is Omikron.
  • The Netherlands will go into an evening lockdown (5pm) from Sunday on

28.November 2021

  • The Bavarian state government and university clinics are now calling on medical students to volunteer in the clinics in the fight against Corona.

30. November 2021

  • Constitutional complaints regarding exit and contact restrictions in the fourth law for the protection of the population in an epidemic situation of national scope („Federal Emergency Brake“) unsuccessful
  • As of today, foreigners are no longer allowed to enter Japan.

New cookies

The first cookies baked this year. The first in the morning with walnuts and white coverture, the others in the evening with blueberries and lemons. Here are the recipes.

Otherwise slept in the sun in a park, every second of the sun is now taken away.

Blueberry-lemon cookies

½ organic lemon
125 g soft butter
150 grams of sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
salt
1 egg (M)
200 g flour
1 teaspoon Baking powder

Rub the zest from the lemon. Mix all ingredients, form biscuits and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes.

Walnut cookies

100 g white couverture
40 g walnut kernels
100 g soft butter
100 g of sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg (M)
1 teaspoon baking powder
200 grams of flour

Chop the walnuts and coverture and mix with the remaining ingredients. Shape biscuits and place them on the baking sheet at intervals. Bake for 8 minutes at 200 degrees.

Maps and index cards

The train stopped in Koblenz for half an hour and in Hamburg I am thrown from the subway because a madman is threatening the citizens and the police with a knife.

Before family obligations stoped me, I visited the Museum am Rothenbaum. There is an exhibition on cartography and color. After months of staring at the chronoscope, the real maps overwhelmed me.

The five Chinese phases, wuxing, have been incorporated into a Korean map. Red is the south, the west is white, black is the north, green is the east and yellow is the center.

I spend a long time in front of a pictorial map of Wutaishan, a Buddhist pilgrimage site about 350 km from Beijing. The pictorial maps are my favorite anyway, I could look at them for hours.

I learned that iron gall ink was made of iron and oak galls that are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasps.

In an adjoining room there is an exhibition about the women who worked in the museum at the beginning of the 20th century and who inventoried and drawn the museum pieces. Little biographical information and personal testimonies have been received from the women, but many have attended the arts and crafts school in Hamburg.

Henriette „Henny“ Wagener

Initially, from 1905, a male research assistant was entrusted with the inventory of the objects, but was replaced by female technical assistants from 1907. They earned 100 marks a month, which was half the pay of a male research assistant. The Hamburg Museum was the first in Germany to employ women as assistants. A draftswoman created index cards for 1,500 objects on average each year.

Autumn is coming / Gloomy sunday

I had raclette for dinner. I’m wearing a warm sweater and I’m starting to write letters and watch films on Netflix again. Autumn is coming. As if winter had long fingers and their tips were already brushing you here and there, you can’t really tell yet whether it was a touch or just imagination. Much too early and we all waited so longingly for this summer, the summer after the lockdown, which wasn’t a real summer at all. I’m not really through this lockdown sleepiness, at the same time I’m so hungry for life it hurts. Who wiill wake me up?

I create activities for myself in order not to remain in melancholy: drawing, learning Arabic song lyrics. But the activities seem to me to be vain and self-referential, since they arise only from my own curiosity and have no external goal. Like it’s a crime to have intellectual needs.

Right now I have trouble imagining the beauty of autumn, the storms outside, the warmth inside, with books and tea and cookies and peace. Maybe I had too much of all of this last year and that’s why I no longer look for it. And I also push away a lot. Push away what this pandemic means in the long term and that it will no longer be the same as it was before. Sometimes I still dream of long journeys on which I discover many things, but in reality I don’t feel comfortable while traveling at all even inside Germany. And I will miss people. I’ve never had problems being alone, but the long period of self-isolation has created some kind of break, it suddenly has a hardship for me that it didn’t have before. And the isolation phase will soon begin again. Even if there will no longer be an official lockdown, it is better to be careful if you are not completely stupid.

Pictures & Short stories 1

I started a little game with the Fabulous Android last week: Every day a picture an a short story with 280 Twitter letters. Here a hers:

Story 1 Story 2Story 3Story 4Story 5Story 6Story 7

And now mine….

In the evening we sat at the table and again you talked about leaving. And I held your hand and so passed an evening, a night and another day, and again you talked about leaving. Many evenings. And I changed the tablecloth and I changed expectations and we’re still sitting there.

I actually wanted a decent job. Merchant, baker, tailor. At sea I especially loved the smell of salt and that the eye could see far. Paris ruined everything. 1856. Our brothers were the Wassergeusen and the old Francis Drake. We had beards. We had a black flag. We had deep waters

Turn off the love songs. Take off your clothes. The sand at the bottom is fine, your toes feel leaves. Sure there are fish. The cold water. No people. You can hear the street if you are very attentive. Is there room for two people? There is room for your rest.

Let him go! Put the knife down … put it down! Harry? Selma? No! …he .. for God’s sake! Move to the side ..to the side. Selma call the police! The Police! .. ok .. you can do that .. put it down .. take it easy my friend .. take it easy. What ??? Selma! NO !!

So this is what parting feels like. This time it was different. The rejection was different. In spring she was alone for 25 years & she knew that she would not try again. That was it. And even at the end of summer she hadn’t got used to it.

Neighbours:Ms. E. & Ms. T., are at war with each other. Yesterday Ms. T. put drawing pins in front of Ms. E.’s cellar door & destroyed her bicycle tires.Whenever I meet either of them, they try to include me in their war. I wonder if I’ll be this lonely one day.

But he has really big feet, so big feet. There would be problems if I didn’t finish by tomorrow. He’s been hanging around my shop all week. What does he want? I only used the finest leather so that there would be no problems. See you tomorrow morning. Alright

Behind the fog lives a little woman who has 300 pairs of shoes, disheveled hair, old envelopes, has ugly thoughts, has a best friend, has red lips, has chicken soup, has a bedside lamp, over there behind the fog.

Puff pastries with goat cheese, rosemary and honey.

Puff pastries with goat cheese, rosemary and honey.

You can also add walnuts, but I forgot to buy them. Ingredients:

Puff pastry
Goat cheese
Creme fraiche
Fresh rosemary
Honey
Pepper

Cut the puff pastry into rectangles. Fill with cheese, rosemary, creme fraiche and pour some honey over it. Season with pepper and shape into pockets. Bake in the oven at 220 degrees for 15 minutes.