Knut and Ute are farmers living in Germany’s Zittau Mountains, a gentle, Catskill-like range that stretches across the ‘Three Corner’ region…
Tag: Germany
Wish Fulfillment
Have you ever wished for something for as long as you can remember? Not with an intense, burning desire, but more with a relaxed, unconscious, and unexpectant vigilance…
Stolpersteine
I thought everyone knew about them but apparently not! Stolpersteine (literally ‘stumbling blocks’, singular Stolperstein) commemorate individuals (mostly, but not exclusively, Jews) who perished in the Holocaust…
German Expats
German Expats, particularly those hailing from Dresden, played decisive and undervalued roles in the development of Neoclassicism in the eighteenth century…
Gardening
I am happily surprised by the joy I derive from gardening. My father would have observed dryly, ‘I told you so’…
Dresden
I’ve been coming to Dresden regularly (at least every other year) since the mid-1990s and it’s been fascinating to observe the city’s transformation following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989….
Walking to Spitzkunnersdorf
Inexplicably reluctant to break my writing procrastination streak, instead of writing my Monday blogpost, a ritual I enjoy, I decided to spend the cool, sunny morning taking a short hike….
Caspar David Friedrich
I currently find myself residing at a house in a rural German village tucked into the corner where Germany meets the Czech Republic and Poland. It’s a region where one of my first art historical loves, Caspar David Friedrich, often wandered. He captured the rolling hills, distinguished by pale nuances even at sunset, in many of his paintings, although Cross in the Mountains (painted in 1808 and now in Dresden) depicts the nearby, pointier, red sandstone peaks a few kilometers southeast….
Hope & Happiness
I thought about my sudden change of humor and how someone else’s success transformed my somber mood of detached concentration into a vibration of joy that lingered as a gentle quivering undercurrent…
Mustard Seed
I keep this photo on my laptop desktop. It captures a banal moment in my peripatetic life. Taken on the S-Bahn (commuter train) between Berlin and Potsdam, I love it because of the way its significance has metamorphosed over time….