SUPER ADULTS* got married

Germans have many traditional wedding games, these super adults had to do their duties right after the wedding ceremony in a romatic church (the Wehrkirche auf dem Florenberg in Künzell bei Fulda): he skiing with a down hill ski in his right foot and a cross country ski in his left foot, she cutting the heart out of the bedsheet and then both going together through the heart shaped hole. The super adults managed these tasks superb!

Wasn't that cool, driving in an autokorso from Künzell to Eichenzell! Super adults are old enough to afford nice cars, too. Old? Groom is my sister's twin brother, count the rest yourselves. And read this post's last lines, too.

What a fantastic place to celebrate weddings: Fasanerie in Eichenzell, close to Fulda. And we lucky people had perfect weather, could have the "Kaffee and Kuchen" as well as the perfect dinner on the terrace.

Known as one of Hesse’s most beautiful Baroque palaces, Schloss Fasanerie is located on a gentle slope four miles south of Fulda, a city less than halfway from Frankfurt to Kassel. Adapted harmoniously to the terrain of rolling hills, the attractive location was approached with great sensitivity by the builder and his architects.Today Schloss Fasanerie belongs to the Hessian House Foundation (Hessische Hausstiftung), which operates a museum in the castle’s interior where rooms are gorgeously arranged and exquisite works of art exhibited. The castle also houses the archive of the Hessian princely family.

(http://www.schloss-fasanerie.de/)


And here the super adults are admiring their wedding cake, probably imported from Pisa... why not, the bride is half italian ...! Her dress was really, really beautiful, congrats!

In between happy dancing sessions hot air balloons were sent to the skies, what a dramatic sight in the middle of the night.

Thanks super adults for the great party. Thanks bridesmade for driving us!!!

*super adults are people who are getting married but too old to have any kids ... that is how the priester named our friends!

Friedberger Platz Freitagsmarkt

Another place to see and to be seen in Frankfurt: market at Friedberger Platz on Friday Nites. The insider Nordend people's place. They do sell vegetables and fruit and sausage but I bet the best profit they get from the wine. There is only one wine stand but that is where everybody gets together, that is where you meet people. Mostly people who live in the neighbourghood, and some of their eastender friends ...


Until 8 p.m. you can buy things, afterwards you just sit underneath the trees.

From now on these Nordend girls are going to be here more often, that is for sure.

The ultimate airliner gathering ...

... after only two .. three ... glasses of wine. Listen people, prices are GOOD.

Sitten VIVA ESPAGNA

No niin, nyt päästiin asiaan ja lyyti rupes kirjottaan eli sunnuntaina keräännytään telkkareiden ääreen ja toivotaan että tänään tuli vimosetkin ukkossateet Itiksessä. Sunnuntaista peliä ei katko salamat, ei sähkövirrat kitkastele, saapi Saksan kansa katsottavaa, jalkisjengi jännättävää, ilman taukoja takkusia, paljon maaleja makosia. Kenen joukoissa seison ...? Nyt istun, mietin sitä seisomista sitten sunnuntaina. Barcelona olis kanssa mahtava stadi asustaa.

Turkki hävis, Saksa voitti, mitä sitten?

Hei futiksen ystävät

peli oli jännittävä ja turkkilaiset pelas paljon tehokkaammin kuin sakut, jotka maalikoneidensa Schweinin ja kumppaneiden ansiosta sai sen voittopallon vihoviimeisillä peliminuuteilla osumaan maaliin, melkein onnenpelillä. Jännittävintä oli tunnelma kuppilassa, kun television kuvayhteys katosi, jengi tuijotti ensin sanattomana tyhjää, harmaata ruutua ja puhkes sitten yhtäkkiä hirveeseen valistuskaakatukseen. Itävallan kautta televisioitu ohjelma katkesi rajuun ukonilmaan moneksi minuutiksi, eikä telkkarijuontajat huomanneet ensin mitään. Kellään ei ollut kapakassa ensihätään edes radiota. Kiihkeiden katsojien verenpaineet sai vauhtia ....

Essen war lecker und Bier hat geschmeckt, danke Lisa für die Organisation!


Yöunet jäivät vähälle sen takia, että saksalaisten fanien autot kruusailivat kaupunkia noin kahteen asti aamuyöstä, torvet soi ja laulu raikas. Pari peliä vielä ja sitten on tämänkin sirkus ohi. Kunhan vaan venakot ei voittais loppupeliä.

Danke Harald für die Bilder!

One week in Europe

HI FANS!

Moien letzeböier!!!

Week ago we had the great honour to participate the 15th anniversary of FINLAND-LUXEMBOURG Society in hotel Royal in Luxembourg city. I was honoured with the title of "idean äiti", the first mother role for me ...

Thank you so much for inviting us, and vielmools merci for the absolutely funny evening.

Special thanks go to our good old friends:


Yves Piironen, the very first chef of FinLux, and his wife Helena

Marianne, still an active member, and her hubby Luc

Hanna and Nick, our dear neighbours in Rue Ermesinde

These girls wanna have fuuuuun! Heavy dancing started immediately after dinner.


VIP drinks for VIP guests in VIP LOUNGE!

Did we have fun, folks, wow wow wow.

Next morning we two had less fun, but managed to catch our flights, first from LUX to AMS and then from AMS to EDI. Our bags made it a day later, we received them in our hotel in Stirling at noon ... as pretty frequent travelers we have got used to this procedure already, and carry the most important stuff in carry on bags.

Scotland is a green country, indeed, this is a view down from Stirling castle.



From Stirling we drove east along the coast to St Andrews, "said to have been founded by St Regulus, who arrived from Greece in the 4th century bringing the bones of St Andrew - Scotland's patron saint". (Lonely Planet Scotland). Known as GOLF and university town. A lot of nice ruins, though, as everywhere in Scotland.

Then we made it up further north, to this little town called Pitlochry. On the right is the pub (run by a hungarian guy) in Pitlochry where we watched the football match Germany against Austria, 1-0!


Next morning we drove to Blair Castle, what a charming place. And the northest one in our tour. "When the Atholl family first made their home in Strath Garry, more than seven centuries ago, it was a wild and dangerous place. It was also a strategic one. Whoever held Blair Atholl was gatekeeper to the Grampian and the route north to Inverness." (Blair castle guide book)

Our journey continued back south, along Loch Lomond, being the biggest lake in mainland Britain, and driving my hubby almost crazy - no time to take fotos. And the scenery is quite similar to Finland anyway ...

And what did we see in Glasgow? Well, this guy looks familiar, remember Saturday nite ...! Yes, Nick happened to be in town on business and spent us dinner, thanx so much, Nick!

We also saw this necropolis next to Glasgow Cathedral. From here you have quite a good view over Glasgow. I just wonder if it is true: In 1999, the city was designated UK City of Architecture and Design?! Yes, there are a few cute art nouveau buildings, but it will take many more years to come to get this city look like a nice place.

BUT: they surely had many fancy indian restaurants, would be a reason for us to return there again.

And finally, here we are, in EDINBURGH. Yes, we did this hop on and hop off bus tour, and it was very good.

Alltogether we learned quite a lot of Scotland's history, in the magnificient Edinburgh Castle there are several museums and interesting expositions, it is a place worth visiting. NO, hubby did not have to buy this helmet, I did not hit him, no, no, no, he was allowed to watch further football matches!TV screens were the thing he watched ... it is amazing how many "not so thin" girls there were in Scotland!

There was also Edinburgh Film Festival starting on 18.6. We did see one pakistani film, in down town movie theater close to our Mercur Point hotel. Somehow the big stars kept hiding, we only saw Sir Sean Connery posing in between Keira Knightly and Sienna Miller in the newspapers, and Prince Harry we missed by an hour, he was parading in the old town when we were returning our rental car to the airport.

What do you eat in Scotland? We tried pub food (chicken/fish and chips) (and learned again that Kartoffelchips are called crisps in UK) and Indian (chicken and nan). In EDI there was at least one very nice Turkish restaurant in the Hanover Street, go and try and tell us how it was, please. We also went to two jazz bars, both nice with live sessions.

Many tourists travel to Scotland because of the whisky. Well, we are no whisky lovers and didn't become any but we did the "Whisky Experience" tour and learned that drinking scottish whisky is like drinking wine, to appreciate Scotch whisky you check:

colour - light blond, bright copper or rich amber?
body - light, medium or full?
nose - are the aromas malty, smoky, fruity, chocolatey?
palate - is the character softly sweet, rich and fruity or peppery and spicy?
finish- does the flavour remain for a long time or does it disappear quickly?

You can enjoy whisky in many ways ... "warning: do not drive whilst using this product".

This is the "Birthplace of Harry Potter", it is THE pub where Ms Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter scripts.

And this is the Balmoral Hotel at Princes Street. Why? Well, this is where the criminal russians* stayed in Ian Rankin's novel "Exit Music", which is the final case of Detective Inspector John Rebus. Being my preparation book for this Scotland holiday.

I do like the kilts, but the music ... the music ... no thank you!

* Russians. They kicked the Dutch out of the games ... what a sad thing to happen. I held my orange umbrella so proudly over my head in Scotland. I actually do have Dutch ancestors. We saw very many sad Dutch people in Alt-Sachsenhausen last nite when walking to Schweizer Strassen Fest. Such a great weather for a street festival!

Juhannus? No se meni siinä siivellä, Skotlannissa oli yllättävän valoisaa, paljon valoisampaa kuin täällä Mainin rannalla, jossa nyt odottelemme ukkossadetta, ilma on tosi hikinen.

KIRJAKURIIRIIRIIRUKAJRIK

Finnisch für Anfänger:
kirja = Buch / book / koob / hcuB = ajrik
kuriiri = Kurier / courier / reiruoc / reiruK = iriiruk

Jihuu, a huge pile of books arrived from Helsinki to Frankfurt! LIKE/Rosebud was generous enough to give me a nice bundle of new, actual reading matierial, which is actually a donation to the library of the Finnische Gemeinde in Frankfurt. Dear fans, if you did not know, that is another one of my hobbies: taking care of the finnish libarary twice a month, together with two other finnisch ladies. Even if I am not a church member.


Those books will be available for all library customers after the summer holidays, 20.8.08.

This book camel did deserve her apple wine! Thanks - KIITOS!

As "Gegenleistung" I could offer absolutely great summer weather, cool drinks, nice views to the river, the usual BBQ dinner and of course: shopping company.

Not to forget the grooviest lounge, the beach club. Which is a fantastic place to have a drink and a snack at lunch time and early afternoon. Next year even better when the loud building site is finished .... glonk glonk glonk ...

Moneymakers at Main

Moneymakers? Yes, this weekend's feature: making money.

Here the serious money makers: company called ACATIS (do it Warren Buffet way) brought their own food, how nice.

How tolerant, too: our Peps was allowed to keep his (chairman) position at the dinner table!

Here the small money makers at Main: FLOHMARKT in Sachsenhausen. This time we were lucky with the weather, but there were almost more sellers than buyers. Which made the money making a bit slow. But why do you do the fleemarket thing? FOR FUN.

Newzealanders know how to protect themselves from the burning sun!

Last time we stood in front of the Weltkulturenmuseum, yesterday's location was next to MAK = Museum für Angewandte Kunst - formerly known as Museum für Kunsthandwerk. Not a bad example of postmodern architecture.

Californian-Newzealandian salescombo.

Saturday evening wasn't less international: french-swiss-german (confirmed with bavarian jacket) - turkish-south african quartet - boy group OBG (oldies but goldies), comparing their gadgets. Men at work. Moneymakers as such.

The glamour girls continue their planning for real money making: E for ... elbows ...? .... not really ... this business idea is extremly exciting, elegant, eclectic, enviromental, exclusive ... give me more E-words!

A tip from me to E-girls: I think you should have a word with the car producer Ford, they should start developing their E-model to a fancier direction!!!

Vielen Dank, Lisa, ich muss wohl für Deutschland stehen, da die Finnen nicht in EM mitspielen.

Vihreä villajulkkis

Yrittjäystäväni Lea on puskenut villalankaa Suomen markkinoille jo kymmenen vuoden ajan. Nyt on todellakin aika toitottaa Hakaniemen Hallin Vihreästä Vyyhdistä laajemminkin.

Tässä alkutekstit, koko artikkeli on mulla esillä olohuoneen pöydällä.
Yleisön pyynnöstä: MODA kotimainen käsityölehti numero 3/2008, sivut66-67.

My friend Lea has this little wool shop since ten years in Helsinki Hakaniemi market hall, second floor, next to the coffee place. Pop in and get inspired to start knitting! See link on my link list.

PS. Did you notice the colour combination in the article: green and lilac, just like our living room - welcome to the trend club!!!