Category Archives: Travel

Erdbeben!

Last night I was sitting at my desk marking some tests (again!) when I felt the floor shake a little at ten past eleven. Hey, i thought, an earthquake?! But André thought it felt more like a small explosion.

At a quarter to one – I was still working but André had gone to sleep – the floor shook again. This time I was quite sure it was an earthquake, but the earthquake website for our state (Landesamt für Geologie und Bergbau Rheinland-Pfalz, Erdebenbereignisse) doesn’t update in real time, it seems.

Today, both earthquakes showed up: the one at 23:10 and the one at 0:46 (the times given on the pages are UTC, which is one hour behind us). We live on the lower left corner of those maps, by the way.

The earthquakes had a magnitude of 2.3 and 1.6 respectively, which is not all that much even when the epicenter is only ten or twelve kilometres (about seven or eight miles) away. Take a look at this map of Rhineland-Palatinate (we live a bit to the Northwest of the W in Wiesbaden): Quite a few earthquakes have happened around here between 2000 and now, but we’ve been living here for only a few years, so I still find it noteworthy when one happens.

Maybe I won’t be quite as excited and more scared once I experience one that’s over a 5.0, but fortunately those are very rare here.

Little Adventures in Autumn

In other news, I enjoyed the autumn holidays (we had two weeks off from school) – we went to a friend’s birthday party and another friend’s wedding near Stuttgart the first weekend.

On the second weekend my sister and her boyfriend from Hamburg visited us. Together we went to the Rhine and visited Boppard (where we rode the chair lift to the Vierseenblick which offers a great view over the Rhine valley) and the Marksburg castle (good website if you turn off the sound, check out the panorama photos) which dates back to the 14th century.

During the last week I spent two days in Stuttgart visiting with a friend. But now I’ve been back in school for a week and will have three math tests to grade by tomorrow, two of which I’ll have to finish preparing now.

The weather has been really nice in the past couple of days – if you want to know how nice, check out André‘s photos from today! I especially like the peacock butterfly and the dandelion.

Sunny autumn

Yesterday and today were beautiful days here in the Hunsrück – there was fog in the morning, but it cleared after a few hours, and then it was sunny and quite warm (though a bit windy today). Since the weather was worse during the previous week this inspired me to take a few photos in the garden.

Here’s a late insect (I don’t think it’s a bee, it just mimics one) busy gathering some nectar – I didn’t think I would see any this late in the year.

bee on a yellow flower

And here are some pretty purple flowers for you, Garret. Happy Birthday!

bee on a yellow flower

Click the photos to enlarge.

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Einen Tag vor den Herbstferien komme ich mal wieder dazu, nicht nur die Zeit am Tag des Erscheinens zu lesen, sondern auch auf ein paar lesenswerte Artikel aufmerksam zu machen:

Wirtschaft: An die Kette gelegt. “Die Buchpreisbindung sollte kleinen Händlern und Verlegern das Überleben sichern. Doch inzwischen fördert sie die Konzentration in der Branche.” Von Jens Uehlecke.

Aus der Reihe Patient Kind: Fataler Irrtum in der Abwehr. “Neue Therapien sollen Allergien bekämpfen. Die Ärzte träumen von einer wirksamen Prävention.” Von Ute Eberle.

Literatur: Krimskrams ist Gold wert. “Die Jury von ZEIT und Radio Bremen stellt vor: Antje von Stemms Kindersachbuch »Extrembasteln«”.

Leben: Wohin mit den Eltern? “Weshalb wir überfordert sind, wenn Mutter oder Vater zu Pflegefällen werden.” Von Susanne Mayer.

»Sie ist eine Lady« “Wie ist es, wenn die eigene Mutter wieder zu Hause einzieht? Ingrid Noll kennt sich damit aus – sie pflegt ihre 105 Jahre alte Mutter. Ein Gespräch mit der Schriftstellerin.”

Reisen: Gut gepolstert zu den Göttern. “Komfortabler kommt man nicht von Mumbai nach Goa. Der Luxuszug »Deccan Odyssey« lässt Indiens Wunder wie einen langen Film vorüberziehen. Draußen ist es 43 Grad heiß, drinnen reicht Pravakar Schnittchen.” Von Karin Ceballos Betancur.

Schule: Die Mathe-Revolution. “»Sinus« verändert den Mathematikunterricht an deutschen Schulen. Ein Beispiel aus Brandenburg zeigt, wie.” Von Julian Hans.