Where have all the days gone?

Welcome September! Autumn is about to fall on us, and we – in the northern hemisphere – will fall back into another time, as the sun will rise earlier after the time change. Where has time gone? I apologize for not updating this e-diary called a blog sooner. Summer seemed not to exist for me, I was so busy working. What was I doing? Translations, more classes, and now another new job teaching in a private business school every Wednesday and on some Saturday mornings. And the pay is good, so this also helps. I will teach the Saturday morning group how to make small talk in English. Not a bad way to spend Saturday morning: teaching people to talk about “nothing” and walking away with some nice money for it!

A week ago Saturday Sebastian and I went to Weimar for a day trip. We took the train on a weekend ticket deal, which meant per person we paid only 13 Euros for the round trip. Weimar, as you may know or remember, is a cultural center for Germany. The famous Anna Amalia Library is there. It burned down in 2004, sending numerous pricelss books up in smoke, but it still houses some essential original books, documents, and monographs of German literature. Weimar is also the namesake for the Weimar Republic, the German nation as it was known between the two world wars, before the national socialists under Hitler took power. And Weimar is also associated with Buchenwald, a concentration camp from WWII just a few kilometers from Weimar. And finally, the Weimaraner is a hunting dog which was carefully breeded in 19th century Weimar – a fabulous dog. I know, for my family had a Weimaraner. What else is there to say? The whole city has been restored, so you can visit the garden house in which Goethe wrote some of his Faust. Schiller also has a house in Weimar. What a strange mixture – a train station that brought many Jews and other undesireables for the Nazis to their death was our arrival point for a leisurely day of tourism. Our last stop before heading back to the train station was a splendid little café in Biedermeier style, where I had one of the best cups of coffee and almond apricot torte I have had in a long time. And the bill for this was 3 Euros 50 – less than 4 Dollars – not bad. Unfortunately, the rechargeable batteries for my digital camera need just that, so I cannot transfer my pictures of Weimar into my computer so you could see them. I hope to rectify that soon, though.
In Berlin at the New National Gallery there is a special exhibition of impressionist paintings from NY’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I hope to do the 1 hour train ride up there to see it before it leaves in October.

Oh, I have seen a number of films this summer. Bettina, I did see Shortbus – a good film with a comforting message that actually had nothing to do with sex, in my opinion. I saw Battle in Heaven – a Mexican film that was in my opinion a terrible film. Also Adam’s Apples, a funny Danish film about a crazy pastor in the Danish countryside, and a hilarious British film, the name of which I only know in the German: Sterben für Anfänger. And I saw the Simpsons film last week.
So, how has your summer been?