What a beautiful weekend - Leipzig Book Fair and fair weather on Sunday

Waiting for Godot on my West Balcony :-)

Saturday I spent five hours at the Leipzig Book Fair - an annual event of intercontinental proportions. The Leipzig fair is the first major book fair of the year in Germany, and it has a long tradition, since Leipzig used to be THE publishing center for the German-speaking world. There were over 1,500 publishers present with live programs, live radio and tv broadcasts, and huge exhibit halls with so many temptations to buy books, but I resisted successfully, for I am saving my money....

And today Spring has returned again. After running for an hour in the forest, I enjoyed afternoon tea and lemon cake basking in the sun on my west balcony. This is quite the exception for Germany. Last year at this time we were just beginning to thaw from a long snowed-in Winter. So, things are a bit ahead of schedule.

So, how has your weekend been?

Wishing you a wonderful beginning of Spring,

your true

Euromark

Belated Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Sasha and Melanie - she is in the middle of an inspiring sentence...

Claudia, Tobias, and I: honestly, we didn't plan to all dress the same...

A belated happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of you! Were you doing something green on Saturday? Well I wasn’t – ha. But I was doing something red, as these photos betray. I met up with some friends – Tobias, Claudia, Melanie and Sasha for an evening in Kowalski, a nice modern pub in the university section of Leipzig. We ate and drank and talked until midnight; good German beer for all of us, and filling vegetarian entrées for me, and when they found out that I have never been to a disco in my life – gasp – they wanted to kidnap me on the spot and solve that statistic. But, we decided to wait for another time and go to the TV Club – a trendy student disco in the north of Leipzig – in a few weeks. Leipzig has quite an assortment of discos for a variety of music tastes, social segments, etc. from hip hop, techno, metallica, the “over 30” crowd, the “under 30” crowd (I won’t tell you whether I am under or over – you guess! lol) and gay and lesbian, as well as others. So, where were you dancing on St. Paddy’s Day? When were you last in a disco (you say “club” in the states…)? Well, I fear it’s been too long, so get your ___ in gear and go…. and happy landing…

Your true Euromark

The eternally fresh music of ABBA

During my last weekend in Pirna with friends we were watching a show on TV. During a scene in a disco the music changed, and my friends both immediately recognized “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. This impressed me, since the mother grew up in socialist East Germany, and the son is almost 19 years old. Even in the days of the Soviet East Block, ABBA’s music inspired the youth to dance and celebrate, and today their songs still help discos bring in the crowds of young Germans wanting to dance, jive, and have the time of their life, to quote the song. Not surprising, since this Swedish group had members well schooled in composition and two ladies with beautiful voices. When was the last time you heard an ABBA song? Was it Waterloo, Gimme Gimme, The Winner Takes it All, or It’s the Name of the Game, or something else? In all of these songs you hear predictions of the likes of Madonna, Enya, and hosts of other current chart riders. What is your favourite ABBA song? What do you think makes ABBA so timeless? Happy listening and dancing….

New Life in Spring

Sunday at Pillnitz Castle in Dresden - the Lion was so afraid of me that it turned to stone...
At this time all is bursting out in greens, reds, blues, yellows, whites. The birds gave me a beautiful concert during my 7 a.m. run last Friday morning; life is returning early to central Europe, and I am reminded of returning life when we think only death is there.

In the Summer of 2005 I began teaching English at the airport here. Among the many baggage handlers in my class was Christian, a soft-spoken kind husband with two small children at home and blond hair and blue eyes with boundless trust. After a few weeks I noticed Christian was not in class anymore. I asked some of his colleagues. It seemed he had been in a horrible motorcycle accident – his bike slid in the rain under a big truck, and he had countless broken bones and skull injuries. He was in a coma with uncertain prospects. Over the course of about a month I asked about his condition, and nothing was changing. I decided to stop asking – it was very painful to me. Then several months passed by. In the summer of 2006 I heard the manager mention the recent funeral of a colleague in the nearby village – a colleague who had been very sick for almost a year. For me it was clear, for Christian came from this village. I was tragically sad, and thought how I wish I could have seen him, but wishes….. I grieved for him and buried him in my mind privately.

In November I was preparing for class when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a face that caught my immediate attention. I looked round the corner and froze with a gasp – there stood the “resurrected” Christian in front of me and smiled his soft-spoken smile with those same blue eyes. I was speechless. Then I said, “Christian, you are here! I didn’t know what had happened!” I started crying some and asked him how long he had been back at work. He was just starting again. I told him I was so happy to see him and so happy that he was alive and could work again – he did not know I had thought he was dead. I saw him again last week at the airport, and again I felt I was looking into the eyes of the promise of the resurrection – time froze again as I talked to him told him again I was so happy to see him.

How deceiving are our thoughts – our minds! We delude ourselves to think we know all we need, we think we see the full picture, yet we can still be severely misled. After ages of living in deception, the simple truth stands in front of us, and we freeze as the reality we have constructed shatters before the astounding beauty of living truth. Now I am not talking about people we thought dead, but aspects of our own selves and lives we deny so long that we cannot even acknowledge they exist. And then events coalesce before us and in us, and we see the beauty of truth that makes us get to know ourselves dejà vu. And life begins anew with the promise of the resurrection – you shall know that which is real and true, and it shall set you free – the words of Jesus, another person whose reality was too much for his life context.