Birthdays and weddings

This week has been an auspicious week of quiet celebration as it contained both my birthday and our wedding anniversary. Spent the morning with my Knitterati friends down at Mangere Arts Centre looking at an exhibition of  "objects"  using different materials to what we have been tradionallly used to with scarcely a precious stone to be seen  and not even normal art materials but plastic, bottle tops, even soft toys in the person of Basil Brush, dressed in Louis Vuitton cloth. 
In the afternooon good friends Frances and Pamela joined the 3 of us here at home for Kaffee and Kuchen, the Kuchen being a hazelnut cake as usual.  Eli made cupcakes too which went down well .
We followed all that with a glass of wine, dip and chips over a celebratory game of scrabble before repairing to the foodhall for a meal.

Hobbled through the park  (like "the cat from Norway" I had got stuck in the doorway - of the bus that morning and was feeling a bit sore) and Pam and I struck up a conversation with a little girl who was skillfully walking along along some narrow concrete edging which Pamela immediately recognized as a Montessori skill.  The little girl was indeed a Montessori child, very self-assured and we heard her comment to her father afterwards that she had been talking to "some nice old ladies" which really put the icing on the proverbial birthday cake for sure.

Today the 28th of October is our 34th wedding anniversary and we celebrated that quietly a deux .  Went to a lovely beachfront cafe on Takapuna Beach and enjoyed a delicious lunch of egg benedict with crispy bacon in my case and copious slices of salmon in Dieter's.

Outside St Patrick's Cathedral 25 October 1978.



My 8th birthday party.  I am second from left.



My Parents' wedding day 6 November 1942.

German Reunification Day

Today was the annual lunch at Sorrento to celebrate the reunification 22 years ago. Having just got back from spending time in both former East and West Germany I feel that apart from fewer people there is now very little difference between the various former east and west states, other than that which you would normally expect.

It was good to see old friends from as far back as the 1960s. First there was the welcome by the president of the German Club, then an interesting speech by one of the members on Weimar, a city famous for its cultural heritage and a great centre of classicism. She read a poem by Schiller and one by Goethe, two great men of Weimar though there are other important people who flourished in Weimar like Liszt and Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus. We were in Dessau last month where we saw Bauhaus buildings too and in Weimar many years ago in the 1990s. Then she touched on the more recent history of the Weimar Republic and later still the infamous concentration camp of Buchenwald. Our speaker finished her speech on a happier note speaking about the annual Onion Market which goes back to 1653 and which takes place every October.

There followed a toast to Germany , then a musical interlude during which German music was played and sung , then the delicious buffet lunch was served.

Meissen

Visiting the porcelain factory and museum  and the little town of Meissen was one of the highlights of the trip for me. When I first went to Germany I acquired 3 beautiful blue and white dinner plates which I still have.  They were from the 1920s or 30s I found out when we were at the factory this time.  I had a picture of them on my iPad  and  someone dated them from the backstamp. 

First we saw how the beautiful figurines are made - each piece is made separately then carefully attached painstakingly , painted  then finished off.  We saw 4 or 5 of the steps  involved in the making of an item.   No wonder they are so expensive they are so labour-intensive.

They had a shop which made it very hard to resist and in the end I succumbed and bought a small dish which I don't regret. It was not cheap needless to say.  However I like it and will use it and divest myself of some other china or porcelain I don't care for anymore. 

There was a pocelain museum with hundreds of items made over the centuries for the various European

and world markets with the subjects designed to appeal to the people of these countries.  Tastes vary.

After that thrilling experience we went on a walking tour of the town walking down from the high point down cobbled streets to the market square below.