One week to go

I'm 30 days into my wheat free lent and I miss this:

Pancake Tuesday

Happy Pancake Tuesday!

It's pancake Tuesday, which means that from tomorrow, lent offers another chance for making up for a failed dry January! I haven't yet decided what I'm giving up, but there's one more night to sleep on it.

So, what are you giving up until Easter?

• Chocolate?
• Coffee?
• Alcohol?
• Social media?
• Complaining?
• Moderation?
• Your hopes and dreams?

Good morning!

Ho Ho Ho

Happy advent everyone! And a special happy Nikolaus and wedding anniversary to Maria and Dirk.

I found this in the kitchen one morning a few days ago:

 

Germany

I'm on holiday in Germany to recover from my stressful life in Edinburgh and to warm up. What I'm doing to spend my time:

• sleeping
• napping
• reading
• complaining about the heat
• eating wurst

Rejection and Cake Day

I have meant to talk about rejection-and-cake-day for quite a while now but never got around it with all the festival shenanigans going on. So here it goes:

As part of the volunteering I was standing one Sunday on the Royal Mile for 4 hours handing out flyers. People avoided me and looked away when I was talking to them, as they always do when someone is handing out flyers. Well, some people did talk to me and were indeed very grateful about the information I could give them - some of it festival-related, a lot just directions. One guy asked where the nearest casino was. But of all the festival jobs I have done, flyering is usually annoying, boring, and soul-destroying, and can only be half fun at times when you are in a very chirpy mood and don't mind the rejection. I think I was in an alright mood, but then a boy cancelled a date we had arranged for that same evening and that was quite an accumulation of rejection which I wasn't ready for.
So I took a long coffee break, bitched a bit with other volunteers about the bossy venue managers, and went to a live gig in the Spiegeltent right after my shift. To be fair, getting stood up didn't come as a huge surprise, so I had brought my dancing shoes into town for plan B, the gig, where I knew I would find some other dancers. And I did, I had a great time, and all danced out I went to get another drink at a coffee stall, where I was given free cake! I shared it with friends, sitting outside in the beer garden on a mild evening, already reconciled with the day. And when I got home, my flatmate gave me more cake even before I told her all about cake-and-rejection-day!

One is Fun!

For all the disheartened singles out there, join me in my appreciation for this uplifting find on our cooking book shelf:

Edinburgh Life

Today, I had an appointment with Lotti after work. Lotti is my flatmate's garden allotment, and whenever my flatmate is travelling I get to pick the strawberries and courgettes.

Lent

It's Pancake Tuesday today, and Lent starts tomorrow. I've never done Lent before, or any fasting for that matter, but I will give it a shot this year. Choosing the Lent period instead of any other time of the year is rather arbitrary, it could have been January or Ramadan really, but other people do lenty stuff and document it on Facebook these days, so it should be fun to jump on the bandwagon. Reading about others' successes and failures might also remind me of my own project and provide encouragement.

Winners and Prizes

Now, that I got my blog mojo back and the comments keep coming in I'll have to think about the grand prize for the 1000th comment. As I am not rich yet it will have to be something hand-crafted or homemade. A poem, a jar of pickles, a loaf of sourdough bread, a sonnet, a German cake, a short story, a painting, a dinner, a photo collage - any preferences or other  ideas?

Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving

Happy Anniversary

It was one year ago today that I first met my sourdough. He then lived in Tasmania at Kate's who hosted me via Airbnb in her lovely cottage in Cygnet and introduced us. I took him back to Germany and later to Scotland where he has made me many nice loaves of bread since, and after some months of getting used to each other we are now getting along very harmoniously. When he is hungry (he forms a liquid layer on top - saliva?) I feed him (water and rye flour). When I am hungry he feeds me. He's very accommodating and keeps getting stronger apart from the rare occasions that he's feeling a bit down and maybe under the weather. He never smells bad and never complains. He's been a good flatmate. Happy anniversary sourdough.

Scottish Winter

The Scottish winter so far has been much better than expected. It's been mostly dry, often sunny, with trees still wearing their autumnal colours. Edinburgh opened its Christmas market a few days ago, and while it's not exactly like the German ones it does come close (and I now know what was missing: Wham!'s "Last Christmas"). The smells are the same, and the Glühwein signs everywhere make me feel like home. The festive lighting and the setting underneath the castle add a lot to the atmosphere. And it turns out that two Glühweins with a friend are enough to make me perfectly happy, and in such a mood we went to a jam session at the packed Whighams Jazz Club where I was even happier to discover about 15 familiar faces in the crowd. Some of us squeezed around a table sharing two chairs per three people and getting really cozy. Some attempted to dance in the very small spaces between tables, and I walked around and handed out the first batch of Christmas cookies I made this year.

December Coming Up

I have a very exciting December coming up but without the Christmas stress working people might encounter. To get ready and prepare myself appropriately, I bought a Lindt advent calendar for my flatmate and me to share. She picked the even numbers so she would get the big chocolate on the 24th, but I get to go first. I already warned her that as a child I used to take the chocolates early and cover it up by closing the doors again - I hope age has provided me with a little bit of self-restraint.

I am looking forward to Edinburgh's Christmas decoration, Glühwein offerings, Christmas cookie bake-offs, two visits by friends from Germany, a week in Germany where I'll be bothering my family with my inept piano play, and an Edinburgh Hogmanay.

National Library of Scotland

The National Library of Scotland is a reference library, which means that you can read books there but you can't take them home. Membership is free, the reading rooms are very nice, warm, and quiet, there are lockers and a cafe downstairs (and should you ever order a hot chocolate there you will get mountains of marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles), and I have spent some time there studying Scottish public policy without distraction. However, today I found out about the multimedia room. The multimedia room is filled with microfilm readers as well as computers with free internet access, and as my book was in transit between shelves and therefore unavailable, I found myself in front of one of the rather fast computers, not studying or doing career related stuff, but procrastinating again. I also found an online version of my policy book, which I am now trying to read in-between surf breaks. At least I can't go to my kitchen to distract myself, or watch telly.

Sourdough Explosion

It happens. I fed the sourdough and put it back in a closed jam jar in the fridge before it had completely "digested" the flour. The jar didn't burst, but the pressure was high enough to unscrew the lid a little bit and for the dough to squeeze out into the fridge. The actual explosion happened, when I opened the jar, but no one got hurt. Even the sourdough losses were bearable.

It's strangely satisfying to take care of a living being and watch it prosper. And no, I'm not feeling broody.

Pentlands Again

Today, I assessed a couple of friends' walking abilities in the Pentlands. They passed, because they did everything right. No complains when I lost my way and we got really close to the military shooting area with the red flags up, they didn't walk faster than me, they brought plenty of food and first aid stuff and shared it, and they were happy to go to a pub afterwards. I'm not asking too much of my walking company, or am I?

Glencorse Reservoir

You bet

I feel like I should put it in writing and make it official that Kat and I have a bet going on. She recently deactivated her facebook account and I challenged her that she will miss it so much and will be back to using it in less than a year.

So, if Kat reactivates her facebook account before August 2014 she will have to buy me a bottle of Scotch whisky. If she doesn't the whisky will be on me.

And here's some support for anyone else who is inspired: How to Quit Facebook (*link*). Among other advice they mention Cold Turkey (*link*), an app which lets you (temporarily) block websites and programs - useful for people like me with no self-restraint who have to write job applications instead of checking facebook all the time.

Loch Ossian

I really am making the best of my current situation - living in Scotland with plenty of time on my hands. Somehow, I had persuaded Katharina to come visit me again and for some reason she kept extending the duration of her planned stay, so that I didn't know anymore how to fill the time with Edinburgh sightseeing and day trips and therefore suggested a trip to the highlands instead. She arrived on a Saturday and, after six hours on trains already, was willing to go on two more right away to travel via Glasgow to Corrour. In Glasgow, after less than three hours in the country, Kat already had had her IrnBru, pink Guinness, and Haggis, while we were catching up with Paul in a pub. We then set off to the highlands on a grand three hour train ride along firths and lochs, passing a few towns we had walked through on the West Highland Way two years ago (*link*), reminiscing. 

On our arrival in Corrour it was dark and the prospect of the one-mile-long walk to the hostel daunting, but the path turned out to be an easily visible dirt road, and the only one around, as Corrour, which consists of a rail station building and a restaurant, is only accessible by train. We didn't get lost, and after a few bends we saw the illuminated window of our hostel.

Pentlands in August

After the massive birthday dinner my flatmate made for me and friends with mackerel in rhubarb-ginger-sauce, tatties, runner beans, roasted courgettes and orange-courgette cake I put all these calories to good use the following day by doing another half-day trip to the Pentlands. Scotland in August is tinted purple with blooming heather everywhere. The weather was a warm, light drizzle with intermittent dry spells and one or two heavier showers - fine Scottish walking conditions.