Random Saturday - "Litfaßsäulen"

What are "Litfaßsäulen", I feel you think.
You may know them as advertising columns (or pillars), but maybe you don't have them in your area anymore or just haven't given them much thought.
In fact I have been walking by one every time on the way home from the bus, but I'm so used to it, I hadn't even been aware of it.
What brought the columns back to my mind actively was this tin. It used to hold gingerbread, a co-worker gave it to me for Christmas years ago. I put it with my Steiff animals because of the Steiff "poster". The mix of "advertisements" is a bit strange, but it's a pretty tin.
The picture in the center on the right is one of the Litfaßsäulen that still exist in town.

I have no idea what the highest number of Litfaßsäulen in town was, but not all of them still exist.
This is a bad picture (a cutout of an old postcard from around 1940) of one that isn't there anymore. Actually, the houses behind it aren't, either. You can just about see that the column has a pretty domed roof and some kind of pattern underneath.
The few I still know of in town today are very simple with flat concrete roofs and none of those in my area have any posters up at the moment.

Most advertisements are on billboards, old-fashioned ones, but of course also more and more digital ones. While the old column has become rare compared to old times, it's not gone completely, though.

Where did "Litfaßsäulen" come from and why the strange name?
They were invented in 1854 by a Berlin printer, Ernst Litfaß. His suggestion was to use them for advertising to avoid people putting advertisements and pamphlets just anywhere from walls to trees (and of course he wanted to make money with them). The city of Berlin granted Litfaß a monopoly until 1865 under the condition that news were also posted on the new columns (for free), and the first ones were put up in 1855.

Lithography by F. G. Nordmann, ca. 1855
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons 

The columns became so popular that the idea spread to other cities in Germany and also other countries, with designs such as the "colonne Morris" in France.
Some of them were not only used for advertising, but could/can also house public toilets, phone boxes, ticket machines, and even flower shops!

A little selection of "Litfaßsäulen"  (via Wikimedia Commons)
1. Flower shop in the street "Lange Reihe" in Hamburg (1975)
Picture by Norbirt, CC BY-SA 3.0 
2. Colonne Morris in Paris 1910. Picture by Eugène Atget, public domain
3. Concrete "Litfaßsäule" in Trostberg. Picture by LepoRello, CC BY-SA 3.0
4. "Litfaßsäule" in Vienna with a poster recognizing the cultural importance
over 170 years. Picture by Blausonorisch, CC BY-SA 4.0

In 2019, people in Berlin were shocked to hear that a big part of the existing 2,548 columns were about to be dismantled. One of the reasons given was the age and condition and concerns about possible asbestos in the concrete.
As I said above, you are so used to them that you don't really pay any attention, but to many the idea of them being gone felt like taking down history. There were protests and art installations. After determining the historical value, however, only 24 of them were chosen to be protected as historical monuments.
Maybe there wouldn't have been such an outcry if the new standardized columns didn't look so boring? I doubt they have the charm of this Art Nouveau example from 1901 in Karlsruhe.

No machine-readable author provided.
Ikar.us? (based on copyright claims),
CC BY 2.0 DE via Wikimedia Commons

Let's come to a famous column now, though. If you are a fan of classic movies, you may know this one, but do you also know that it wasn't real?
Of course I mean the column in "The Third Man". For those who don't know the movie - the American writer Holly Martins comes to post-WW II Vienna to meet his friend Harry Lime who has promised him a job. He learns that Harry has been killed in an accident, but one night he spots him in the street and follows him to a square - but Harry is gone.

The column is an entrance to Vienna's sewer system where the last chase after Harry takes place at the end.
Vienna still has four such columns, but the one in the movie never existed. The scene was filmed at the square Am Hof, but the only column you'll find there is a 17th century Marian column.

Picture by Gugerell, CC0
via Wikimedia Commons

I said to Martins: "Did you look inside the newspaper kiosk or was it locked?"
"Oh, it wasn't exactly a newspaper kiosk," he said. "It was one of those solid iron kiosks you see everywhere plastered with posters."
...
We stopped at the kiosk. "You see he passed behind here and simply vanished - into the ground."
"That was exactly where he did vanish to," I said.
"How do you mean?"
An ordinary passer-by would never have noticed that the kiosk had a door, and of course it had been dark when the man disappeared.
...
"It's one of the entrances to the main sewer."
(from the novel "The Third Man" by Graham Greene)

In the shot, the Marian column was hidden and the kiosk was just a prop.
I'm aware that this might be a bit of an anticlimax to the end of the post, I'm sorry. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse in the history of the "Litfaßsäule".


Sources and further reading:

1. Andrea Westhoff: Vor 165 Jahren - Die Geburtsstunde der Litfaßsäulen. On: Deutschlandfunk, December 5, 2019 (in German)
2. Andreas Becker: Streit um Litfaßsäulen-Austausch in Berlin: Säulenheilige verschwinden. On: Deutschlandfunk, July 25, 2019 (in German)
3. Kate Connolly: Last stand for Berlin's ageing concrete advertising pillars. On: The Guardian, March 31, 2019
4. "Litfaßsäule" on German Wikipedia

Random Saturday - Postcards

Do you remember this post about a postcard which came back to the house where it came from? After almost 50 years?

Now you may think that is just another example of nostalgia, and part of it probably is, but to me it actually means learning more about our hometown and its history. Sometimes it takes a while to find info online, sometimes there's nothing to find.
And the backs of the cards - as in the above mentioned case - can be really interesting as well, but that may be a story for another time.

The other day, it came to me that I knew absolutely nothing about the history of the postcard itself. Another rabbit hole? Actually more of a whole burrow. There are so many pages out there, and while they agree on some things, they don't on others - doesn't that sound familiar ... Who was the first one to invent the "real" postcard? Which country was the first? What even is a "real" postcard? There are postcards and picture postcards. To be honest, my brain was overwhelmed trying to make sense of it all and especially to put it in a post shorter than a thesis and I failed miserably.
So let's just say that it really seems to have started in the 19th century (staying on the safe side here) and that most sources seem to agree on these Austrian "correspondence cards" to be the first "real" postcards even though there had been cards before.
Here's the history on the "World Postcard Day" page.

Correspondence card from 1869
Public domain via Wikipedia

When Heinrich von Stephan who reorganized the German postal service suggested something similar in 1865, the "open post sheet" which was meant to avoid an envelope by having pre-printed postage if you just wanted to send a short message, the idea wasn't well received.
What if servants read their employers' mail, for example? What about preserving public morals? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Sorry, that's a quote from "Ghostbusters".
Anyhow, after the Austrian card was such a huge success, postcards caught on in other countries as well, even in Germany. I couldn't find any information on the servant-employer crisis related to that 😉
Towards the end of the century, there were more and more picture postcards. Pictures could be lithographies, sometimes colorized, or photos. They showed individual buildings, streets, parks, but also persons.
For example, monarchy used postcards for propaganda, showing off their families as role models for their subjects and to shape a positive image of themselves - which may have worked for some people, but not others. Examples that come to mind are the Romanovs, Queen Victoria, Emperor Wilhelm II.

Early cards still looked different. Unlike the cards you probably know, one side was meant only for the address and the message was written above, below or around the picture, like in this panorama of Göppingen from 1903 made up of three postcards.
If it was just one card, the sender didn't manage to put much text on it.

Maybe that's why postcards changed later. The images took up one side completely and the back was divided in a space for the address and one for the message.
The address on this card from 1919 simply says "Umbrella shop" and the town.
Isn't the penmanship beautiful? As much as I like to look at writings in Sütterlin, it's not always easy for us today to decipher it, though.

I'm often surprised at what the senders have shared on postcards. Sometimes it's just a greeting from a short trip, a visit, a longer vacation, on occasion of a holiday, a thank you, but we have seen more than one that has been sent from a hospital and the news haven't always been very good.

Greetings for New Year's Eve. You might think the word and flowers are
drawn by hand, but they are printed on, probably after a hand drawn design.

I'm not very interested in cars in general, but look at these beauties!
I just love an nice old VW Bug. That restaurant is outside town, near an artificial lake. You just don't see VW Bugs there anymore now.
The other card shows our renaissance castle. If you look closely, you don't just see the old cars, but also - unfortunately blurry - a horse carriage in the background.

The following pictures are not postcards, but file copies which served as masters. They are actually just half the size of a card.
They were taken by a local photographer. Many of my cards were manufactured by local photographers, bookstores or stationery shops.

This is the square in front of the old train station with the post office on the right.

More old cars, but to me it was interesting to learn about the so-called "Kraftpost" (literally power post). These successors of stagecoaches were postbuses used in Germany (other countries had them as well) both for mail delivery and passenger transport. You can see a sign on the post office building. It's illegible here, but I also know a picture with a later sign that could be read easily.

Let's stop here or I might never stop again.
I hope I didn't bore you too much, but maybe you could get a idea of how postcards have illustrated history over years, no matter if you are just interested in that of your town or area or global history.
When was the last time you sent a card?

Random Saturday - The small world

This time I'm not talking about finding out that your new friend is also a friend of your first cousin once removed whom you only learned about yesterday or something like that.
I'm talking about the world of miniatures.

As a child, I wanted a doll house so badly, but it was a matter of space and probably money, too. I was lucky, though, my friend had one. You know what's really weird? We didn't even play that much with it. We put the doll parents in bed to get them out of the way (some dolls have a hard time sitting up nicely, but you can never go wrong with making them have a nice nap) and the three children went off on adventure - which sounds much like the Famous Five or the Lockett children and all the others now that I'm thinking about it ...
My friend had a lot of space and we sent those kids out to the Wild West, on mountains and into caves and whatnot. What I loved most about the house (very 70s), by the way, was the white baby grand piano and the Christmas tree.

Then there were the antique miniature shops and the doll house at the "Storchen", our local museum. They are behind glass of course. Even now the toys are my favorites at the museum.

I got a doll house as a grown up, but it was neglected rather quickly as it had to be moved out of reach because of the cats. It was bad enough I had to pick up Steiffs off the floor ever so often, I didn't feel like having to search for tiny items. Eventually I gave the furniture away and only kept very few things, like the cat on the pillow (no surprise there).
That doesn't mean I don't love miniatures anymore, though. Not at all in fact! So when a family member told me she had been gifted some, I absolutely wanted to see them - and take pictures.

My favorite is the good old phone book, in this case
"Das Örtliche" for local businesses,
and by the way, the red book is handmade!

I love the tiny building bricks, but I love the thread spools even more!

1. Percolator and pot (maybe for breakfast eggs?)
2. The plates, napkin holder, tray, flower pot, and candle holders
are handmade very prettily
3. Various kitchen utensils
4. Two different kinds of flatware, so cute!

The scales work, but the weights are glued in (good idea!).
I love that fish pot, can you tell from the close-up?

Americans use Mason jars, Germans use jars made by Weck. 
That has even influenced one of the words we use for preserving
food - "einwecken". Weck jars are wide-mouthed and they have
heavy glass lids sitting on top of the jars. They are held in place by clips.
 The red rings are rubber gaskets used for extra sealing.
I also love the old-fashioned butter churn (which really works, I mean it
moves, I haven't tried to make butter with it) and the vintage style meat
grinder which we call a "Fleischwolf" = "meat wolf" here.

Christmas!! I absolutely love the shiny Christmas baubles.
They do hold a little secret. They have a hole at the bottom
which tells me that they are made from bead chains like they were
and are made in Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou), for example.
Beads could/can be cut off individually or in groups and then wired
together for elaborate ornaments like the ones you can find here.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip into the miniature world.
In case you are interested in the psychology behind loving tiny things, I picked two of the many articles available on the topic - here and here.

Random Saturday - Purple and green

If you expect something about color coordination in art or fashion, you're wrong, sorry. This is just another post about memories which is inspired by a post written by Nicole from Huisvlijt, "Kringloop Tristesse".
I don't speak Dutch, but from the Firefox translation I get it's about a water can that a school class gave to a teacher and it ended up in a thrift shop still with that tag on.
No idea how it is in other countries, but in my time gifts for teachers were not a big thing, at least not in my school. So I asked a teacher I know how it is today, and he too said that it happens, but not often.

We had one teacher, however, who got several gifts from part of the class, and that was a running joke.
One of my classmates loved the color purple and wore it a lot and said teacher didn't like purple. I don't know what the exact reason was, but he once told my classmate jokingly that purple wasn't a color, but a punishment.
So of course our whole row decided to give him something purple. My friend was a former baker's daughter and good at baking herself - how I loved her Christmas cookies! - and suggested a marble cake, but with purple and pink food dye. It was a big hit (I have no idea if our teacher ate any of it, though).
Anyhow, from then on, he always got something purple at the end of the school year. Nothing big of course, just to keep the joke alive, and we always tried to make it something useful or consumable, so it wouldn't take up unnecessary space.

One year, another teacher said jokingly how much we "spoiled" him (they had become a couple although we didn't know it yet at the time) and another friend of mine told her to pick a color. She said green. That friend did macrame and knitted socks like crazy - it was the 80s and a lot of pupils knitted in class - so she made a beautiful pair of green socks as a Christmas gift, much to our teacher's surprise but also delight.
So from then on we had to get something purple and something green.

Picture by Konevi via pxhere

I even kept the tradition running for several years after leaving school. A lot of my school friends left town to work elsewhere or study, but I lived at home during training as a librarian and my teachers didn't live far from me.
One time, my teacher handed me a little parcel saying "ok, so sometimes purple can be beautiful if it's on the right thing".
It was a framed picture of a purple Porsche (he had a vintage one himself, not purple but red). I don't know if I still have that picture somewhere, but I remember it really made me laugh back then.

Picture by Alex Ifti via Unsplash

So yeah, that's my little story of an "apple for the teacher".
Is it common for children to give their teachers a gift where you are?

Random Saturday - How could you?

We spent almost 34 years together.
I thought you were the one constant in my life.
You would always be there for me.
I counted on you day and night.
True, you weren't bright enough for everyone, but you were for me.
Then you left me, though, without a warning.
You were just gone and left me behind, in the dark.
I guess I should have been prepared that this would happen eventually, but I felt preparing would have looked as if I didn't trust you.
And then I just couldn't turn you on anymore one day.

We had a good run together, though, didn't we?
Farewell, little fluorescent tube. I'll miss you.

Random Saturday - To brick or not to brick

Lego was the topic of another random Saturday seven years ago, but back then I only spoke about and showed my London bus.

You've also seen a picture of my Lego Snowglobe as part of my hallway Christmas decoration.

There's more. Not much. Lego is and always has been very much a matter of money and space both of which I prefer to spend on other things, no matter how tempting some of the projects may look like (I'm just saying cat).
There are stories, however. Of course there are, after all this is random Saturday. Old ones, new ones.

I couldn't tell you the exact age at which I got my first Legos. Back then, all of us siblings got one basic set which consisted of one baseplate - still the thicker ones then - and a bunch of bricks. We threw everything together in order to have more options for bigger projects. Basic set also meant basic bricks which we named after the number of bumps on each one (no idea if that was some official naming, but we added the Swabian diminutive -le to the numbers, so maybe not).
What I remember best was building tiny house models with limited wall height and no roof, tiny because the baseplates were small and because we didn't have that many bricks. Also no roof meant we could play in them by using the smallest bricks for the people living in the house.

Years later, my little brother had five boxes (four of them had been a lottery prize, size A to D) of Märklin's (the company is known among model train collectors and is located in my town) own brick version - the so-called Minex bricks (Märklin used the name Minex for several products, also metal construction sets or trains). You could do a lot with five boxes and the bricks were much easier to take apart which could be both an advantage and a disadvantage, but I remember having a lot of fun with those.

Afterwards, bricking (as I've heard it being called in Germany) wasn't really a topic for me anymore for many years - until one year my pal gave me the Yellow Submarine from the Beatles movie to cheer me up in a weltschmerz phase.
We spent a few evenings both working on our projects, having something to eat and drink, laughing a lot, always under the strict supervision of Ponder.
It was a lot of fun although it's amazing how many mistakes you can make on a piece that doesn't even look that difficult on the outside.

For my next birthday, he gave me the London Bus.
That really brought back memories of my first London visit (unfortunately there were only two) together with a friend and her five year old daughter. On the first day, we did bus hopping, randomly changing buses seeing where they would take us.

Again we started to work on our projects together, but then life happened and we finished them on our own. That's when I found that I wasn't made to be a lonely bricker. I gave up eventually and had to motivate myself hard to finally pick it up again. That's why it took me five months to get it finished! It's so cool.

Two more projects we did together again was the living room from The Big Bang Theory and the Santa Snowglobe (the weirdest snowglobe ever) which had been an extra gift with an order.

There's one more piece that has been waiting for me to work on it. It has been around for several years and I think it's really time to get started on it - the Lego Art set "The Beatles". With the box content you can make one of the four portraits and my first problem was to decide which one to make because, let's get this clear, if I make one I'm not going to rip it out again to make a different one.
To be honest, I wish the portraits were old black and white ones, but that can't be helped, can it?

Once I decide, I might turn this project into small WIP posts to motivate myself, so I won't give it up.
Which portrait would you choose IF you like The Beatles at all?

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

Random Saturday - Diaries

A while ago, I saw an Instagram post with a few pictures in which several people had shared bits of their teenage diaries. It made me cringe, not because of what they wrote, but because I had come across my own diaries the other day when I looked for something else.

I got my first diary when I was 12. During vacation, I spent a few days with my closest school friend and we were out and about a lot. One day we walked to the next little town to visit another school friend and on the way we discovered the window of a little shop.
I wonder if those kind of shops still exist in some villages and small towns. It's practically one room where you can get about anything, from pencils to magazines, glasses to figurines, lottery tickets to diaries.
Yes, there were diaries in the window and we spontaneously decided to give each other one because that's what best friends did instead of buying their own.

Do they look familiar to you? They were from Shanghai und I was surprised how many people seem to be looking for them.
There were two sizes, this is the "Shanghai diary 112" (the other one was 110), they came in all kinds of colors and different motifs. They also had notebooks and even recipe books like that (it said on the spine what it was).
They had lines, the left pages had an orange edge with a sun and flowers, the right ones had trees and mountains in pink. At least, that was the case for all of mine, maybe there were some with other pictures.

From the age of 12 to 24 I had three of those diaries and filled about two and a half of them. I wasn't a very regular writer and there were huge gaps at times.
It was so surprising to find them because in my memory I had disposed of them a long time ago. That was not the only time my memory had failed, it seemed.

I started with the one I had abandoned because it was the shortest one. It was from the time when I was training as a librarian and then began working which was also how I met my ex. So yes, it was all very much pink glasses and love songs in the air back then 😉, but there were no surprising memories, so the shredder did its work.

Then I turned to the first one because I figured there would be a few things in there I didn't remember and I was right about that.
Early teenagehood was a relatively carefree time. I wrote mostly about friends, what we did, what we ate, what we bought, where we went. The rest was filled up with talking about school and that once again I hadn't practiced enough for my violin lesson.

The second diary, however, is full swing puberty and it was downright embarrassing to read about my being awkward (that's a euphemism) and pining for one or the other boy (or young man as I grew older). Reading it made me cringe so badly 😂
Some of those memories had been shoved into a small cabinet in a cobwebbed little corner of my mind and that's where I decided to put them back into.
Just imagine I'll get famous after all - stop laughing - and someone pulls out that diary after my death, I would roll over in my grave! Okay, I wouldn't want anyone to read it, famous or not.
So yeah, into the shredder it went.

There were some redeeming features, though. I stood up against racism (for a friend), I was not self-centered (or infatuated) enough to not contemplate the state of the world (and of course worry about it), and I was there for friends. 
It was a relief to read I wasn't a complete idiot, just a teenager.

After abandoning my diary at 24, I never picked one up again. I have always been terrible with even keeping up notebooks and calendars, so it's more of a surprise I even wrote that much.
The only thing I regret in that regard is never trying to write a dream journal. My dreams are wild, but hardly ever embarrassing, I think they would have been a much more fun read - most of them, anyway. I'm not going to start that now, though.

Do you (still) have a diary or your diaries from your past?

Random Saturday - Words

This post was inspired by the September 10 on the 10th post on Marsha in the Middle about words ending in -ber.
I didn't participate in that one because I couldn't find it in me to look for ten words for my English and my German blog each because they obviously couldn't be the same except for the four last months of the year.
I only realized that, however, when I had already started looking for -ber words and got a list of both English and German ones some of which were completely new to me.

Picture from pxhere

"Reihenschieber" = "row slider"
A hand cipher system developed in 1957 and used by the German Bundeswehr until the early 60s to encrypt high-grade messages.

"Schlammfieber" = "mud fever"
A different German name for leptospirosis, a disease caused by bacteria often spread by rodents which explains one of the English names - "rat fever".

"Hellschreiber", also called "Typenbildfeldfernschreiber" (you have to love German words)
A facsimile-based teleprinter developed patented by a German named Hell in 1929.

Hellschreiber in
Bletchley Park,
public domain via
Wikimedia Commons

I doubt anyone would have believed me if I said these were among my top ten favorites of -ber words.

I also learned a few fun names of villages in Scotland and Wales (and will forget them again right away, I'm sure) - Ballintubber, Knockentiber, and my favorite Penrhiwceiber. Guess which one is in Wales.

Have you ever had "bonnyclabber"? The Free Dictionary tells me it can simply mean curdled milk, but also "thick, soured milk eaten with cream and sugar, honey, or molasses". My mother used to like "Dickmilch". I haven't had it in ages, but I think I need to get myself some just so I can say I had "bonnyclabber" which sounds so much more fun than just "thick milk".

Picture from pxhere

If you wonder what this post is even about except being proof for my "jumping spider mind", it's about words and language.
Aren't words fascinating? How they roll off your tongue, how they twist your tongue, how one single word can evoke memories, emotions, scents, images? Where they come from?
Or how about writing down a short, really familar word and looking it for a while? Have you ever had the feeling that it suddenly looked very strange and made you wonder how anyone came up with it?
Or have you said a word out loud before and wondered if that is even right because it suddenly sounds weird (which is something my sister happened to do in a call just when I was at this point of the post)?

That's probably one of the reasons why I like to read to the cats and prefer to do it in English than the familiar German, to savor new words or sometimes learn to pronounce words I already know because I never thought about it before when just reading them.

The other day I discovered by accident that the English ebooks I read on Overdrive (other apps probably have the same) have the feature of looking up definitions by marking a word which is for example interesting for slang words.
I can also get lost in etymological explanations in dictionaries. Oh, those rabbit holes everywhere!

I want to apologize in advance as I'm afraid this is going to start a new category on my blog and I'll be back with new words every, now and then. German or English.
(Maybe you should blame Marsha for giving me the idea in the first place 🤪)

Random Saturday - Water

"Can you please just try our mineral water for once?" "Why can't I just get tap water?" "We don't really do that in restaurants here. They usually make their money with the beverages and that means they are not prepared for people asking for free tap water. I'll be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed about asking. They have still mineral water. Couldn't you try that?" "I would rather have tap water."
It was a regular discussion with my friend from the USA when she came here to Germany for the first time many years ago. Why wouldn't she try something new?
We got strange looks, but not always tap water.

Picture from pxhere

The way I was surprised when I first visited the USA in the early 90s for being offered iced water with every meal, my friend just couldn't grasp that tap water in restaurants wasn't something we had - and still don't really have.
In fact, not many people here drank tap water at all back then. We had seen American fridges with water and ice dispensers, but for us that was something very exotic, you couldn't get those easily here at the time. The first time I stayed in my US friend's house, I played with that water dispenser like a little child.

Esme and I loved ice cubes (I still do), she from outside of
the glass, me from inside the glass

That's what I meant by "outside of the glass",
 she liked licking off the condensation 

 
Germans have always loved their water, but that meant mineral water. We have a lot of mineral waters, German and imported ones, most of them in plastic bottles, but also still some in glass bottles (which I prefer), carbonated - medium is the most popular one before the "classic" - or still which comes in third place in Germany (unlike other countries).

No machine-readable author provided.
Rainer Zenz assumed
 (based on copyright claims),
 CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This is the "bead bottle", by the way, designed by Günter Kupetz and produced since 1969 - 5 billion times! This is just a nickname, the official name is really very German, "Normbrunnenflasche" or "Brunneneinheitsflasche" (which could both be translated as "standard fountain bottle").
As a beader, I can't help but love the nickname which is inspired by the 230 glass "beads" which not only mimic the bubbles in the water, but also helps with a safer grip in combination with the narrower part in the center. It works. I like my water cold and I hate smooth bottles with aquaplaning thanks to condensation.
The bottle has won design awards and is so popular that it has even been reproduced in plastic as well.

Actually, my own town has several free filling stations for our local so-called "sour water" which has been a big part of our history, and until a few years ago you could buy it bottled as carbonated water before the plant shut down.
Two of those are next to our local pool and for us kids it was completely normal to go out there when we were at the pool and have a quick drink because we couldn't afford to buy anything. Over the years, some of those stations were closed down temporarily and opened up again, I admit I have no idea what the current situation is.
One of those is the "Brunnenhäusle" (literally "small fountain house") in my neighborhood. It has faucets on each corner and the house itself is a little kiosk where you can get ice cream and beverages, and it's really nice to sit out there.

Many families saved money by filling up their bottles at those stations. Of course the sour water wasn't de-ironed which meant the bottles which kept being reused started looking brownish inside after some time, no matter how much you tried to keep them clean, and it wasn't carbonated which meant if it wasn't cold, it tasted quite flat. Back then, still waters were not popular.
The first documented mention of the bathhouse is from 1404. In the mid-16th century, Christoph, Duke of Württemberg, often visited here because of the water. Other important people followed, but after The Thirty Years' War, interest decreased. In 1839, two physicians bought the bathhouse and surrounding area and opened a hospital there which still exists today.

I have to admit, however, that the carbonated version of our own mineral water was a tad too salty for my taste.
Taste in water is really important for us. We Germans can't just drink any water and like it - unless we are very thirsty and even then chances are we are going to complain.
Water can taste different depending on the minerals, calcium, sodium, sulfate, magnesium, etc.
Water can also change taste. It is possible you have been used to a mineral water and suddenly you don't like it anymore.
It happened to me with my last one (on top of that, they also changed from the "bead bottle" to a smooth bottle!), and since I can't get the one I like delivered, I switched to tap water. That wasn't an easy decision for me. The tap water in my region is rather hard and I had to get used to it first. Some people use filters, I also did that for a while, but then found it didn't make a difference for me, but was a hassle and money I didn't need to spend.
A lot of people here drink tap water now. Not only is it often said that it's our best controlled product, it's also cheaper than bottled water and it's readily available without having to go to the store. For those who can't stand still water - once upon a time I was one of those as well - there are "water bubblers" you can use to make your own sparkling water, as bubbly as you like it.
My town and others have projects to promote tap water, for example by opening filling stations in the city or getting shops on board to offer free fillings.

So yeah, that means you can get tap water in German restaurants now, right?
Yes and no.
According to the EU Drinking Water Directive, it's recommended to improve access by "actions aimed at promoting the use of tap water, for example by encouraging the free provision of water intended for human consumption in public administrations and public buildings or, for free or for a low service fee, for customers in restaurant, canteens and catering services".
That means you can ask, but it's possible you won't get any at all or it may cost you - and the owner decides how much.
According to a survey in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Germans still don't like to ask for tap water in restaurants.
I guess the reasons are that people want to treat themselves when going out, they think prices are too high for tap water - we all heard one or the other story - or they are simply not used to even think of asking.

By the way, water in restaurants ... did you know there are water sommeliers, about 500 in the world? They often work in the hotel and catering industry and recommend the right water with certain food or offer water tastings.
There are few schools where you can study to be one.

Tired of water yet? 🙃 No worries, I'll let you go now. Thank you if you made it to here!


Sources:

1. Sabine Riker: Das Wasser, das Göppingen berühmt machte. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung, August 15, 2019 (in German)
2. Olivia Logan: How many people dare to order tap water in Germany? On: I Am Expat, June 13, 2025
3. David Hahn: Darf Leitungswasser etwas kosten? On: Südwest Presse, December 6, 2024 (in German)
4. Directive (EU) 2020/2184 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2020 on the quality of water intended for human consumption

Random Saturday - Travelling books

In my post about "Little Nicholas" a few days ago, I said that my personal copies of the books had a story of their own.
Here it is.

The year is 1994 and it's two days before my birthday.
We three sisters happen to take the same train home after work and my oldest sister has my birthday gift in a bag which she just picked up from the book store on the way to the train station.
The commute from Bad Cannstatt is about 30 minutes. We talk, we laugh, we get off the train ... that's when my sister notices she has left the book bag on the train!
It's too late to hop back on, so there are only two things to do now, 1. go to the service center and try to have them contact someone, 2. hope that no passenger grabs the bag and decides these are nice books to have.

Losing or forgetting something on a train is a game of chance. Some people will give it to the conductor, so it ends up at the railway company's lost and found (and in an auction if no one claims it), but some go the "finders keepers" route or at least contemplate it (I've seen it myself), and some just ignore it.
The service clerk told my sister they would contact someone at the end of the line and have the train conductor check the train in case they hadn't already found the bag by themselves.
If the bag were there, they would then take it back on the next possible train and drop it off at the service center where my sister would be able to pick it up the next day.

Luck was on our side and my sister picked the bag up the next day.
To celebrate it, she drew a little picture in each book to tell the story.

From left to right - my sister A., yours truly, and my sister B.
There's a lot of detail, from A.'s braid to my long hair worn open
and B.'s bob, but also A.'s typical backpack, my shopper and
B.'s purse, and of course the book bag saying "Stehn", a book
store that doesn't exist anymore today.

What I love most about this picture are two things.
There is the company Hengstenberg which will be 150 years old
next year and produces vinegar, pickles, mustard, etc.
Nowadays there are only offices in that building, but it's still part
of the region's history.
Also, this is still one of the old trains. It's actually possible that we
did ride on one of them because the new double-decker trains
were only just introduced around that time.
Can you see us in the last window?

 

Oh no! We got off the train at home, but the bag is still on there!
Our shocked faces never fail to make me smile 🙃

Tell me without words how the books went back from Geislingen to
Göppingen. Did you notice the speed lines?

The service center of the Deutsche Bahn (which also doesn't exist
anymore because they lost the contract for this line some years ago
and because they expect everyone to be their own service people,
anyway) on the day before my birthday. You can tell from the
clock A. and I took our usual train at the time and oh what
a miracle, it was on time, too!

I think the drawings really make these books extra special. Do you think someone in the future will be holding them in their hands eventually, wondering what all of that was about ...

Random Saturday - The new flatmate

Warning: Spider pictures and more!

Years ago, we visited relatives of the ex. His young cousin (actually we were young as well then) had all kinds of animals - it used to be a farm in a village - mostly fowl, such as ducks in a pond, chicken, pheasants, but also rabbits. When we went looking at them, he suddenly put a white mouse on my shoulder. Of course, he had hoped for me to freak out and scream, but even if had felt the urge which wasn't the case, I wouldn't have done him the favor.
Instead I petted the mouse and told it how cute it was. It was, you know. I think I gained his respect that day, not that that had been what I was after.

I'll be honest, though, I'm not as cool around all animals, at least at first sight. If a spider jumps at me, I will probably jump as well, not because it's a spider, but because I'm startled. I daresay it would happen with any other animal (der Dekan has one or four stories to tell about that).

If I just have a visitor looking at me, however, I can react accordingly. Sometimes, a single stink bug makes its way in through the open window and it will get evicted gently but firmly.
Spiders are allowed to live with me, not having a phobia I do not see any need to burn the house down with them in it.

I think she was
really pretty.

Flying specimen are guided outside as gently as possible although things can get hectic if they are of the stinging kind and a not so little cat is getting excited about them.
Clothes moths and carpet bugs are an exception. Seeing them, I don't even think about my karma and let go of all mercy (although moths have become hard to catch without a trap).

If I don't let the shade down on the window behind my bed all the way - so that I can look at the moon for example - I sometimes get late night visitors, moths and grasshoppers. Ponder was utterly fascinated with them and would keep touching the glass very softly. It was a good thing that there was glass because Ponder may have seemed very friendly, but I've seen him squash and eat more than one spider.

Those stripey bumps - der Dekan.

Der Dekan, too, is interested, but he's more the kind to lurk for a long time and then pounce with feet going in all directions. I have seen him trap visitors in here, but he usually lets them go again, looking after them with eyes as big as those of a child in front of a Christmas tree. He could at least knock them out gently to give me the chance to put them outside, but to put it less nicely, he's absolutely useless in these matters.

Yesterday, however, we had a visitor that surprised me because I had never seen one around here before.
Let me start with this page from one of my favorite books, "Daddy Long Legs" by Jean Webster.
Judy, the protagonist, is in college and writes to her mentor.

That describes it pretty well except this isn't a college.
I was woken up by somecat demanding breakfast at 5 a.m. I had only slept about four hours at that point and wasn't quite my alert and energetic self yet - stop laughing! -, but I noticed something big and black hanging on the ceiling which very clearly wasn't a spider. At closer look, it was a centipede which baffled me, about 2 inch long and way out of my reach.
I would say he had fewer legs than in the drawing, but was fatter.
The next moment, however ... plump! I honestly was amazed how loud that sound was when the centipede fell down right next to me. No cups, no tea table, no hair brush (although there is one on my nightstand). Instead I ran back to my bed for my tissue box for lack of a bowl in my bedroom (note: always keep a bowl and a flat piece of cardboard in your bedroom), but too late, he was already gone. I think he went under the wardrobe and I probed around a bit with a broom, to no avail.
What really bugs me is that I was sure he was just trying to hide from me interviewing him about what he could bring to the household and how he expected to pay his rent. I swear if he throws his shoes all over the place, I'm going to get mad.

While writing this, I'm still completely clueless where he is. He could be anywhere, so I guess we will have to live with him for now. Der Dekan hadn't even noticed him, but if he's to stay, there may be an encounter of the many-legged kind. Oh dear, I hope he's not a tap dancer!

I'm not overly concerned about him, but I don't like the idea of stepping of him, in the middle of the night, for example. I also don't like the idea of the brat trying to chase/kill/eat him and I'm not keen on finding him in my bed (that would be the jump thing all over again).
Is it weird that I wish I had been able to take a picture of him?