Flowers

Just a touch of spring... but still the Chritsmas colour... 50 tulips from Holland, that make me smile

Korean Food

Tonight we went out with some friends to a Korean restaurant. It is a long time ago I went to a Korea restaurant the last time. I think the last time it was a kind of farewell dinner for some friends in Beijing, oh please do not ask me the year it was. It must be ages ago. :) I really liked the food tonight. I had Bulgogi., prepared at our table. The restaurant was cute with nice interior decoration. Korean food is for me a typical winter food for me. Did you know that traditional Korean food is also dog meat? Well, not in Germany. Thinking of going there with some other friends on Monday..

Nice ...

New Chinese Artist

I got a great book for Chritsmas. A catalog of an exhibition of Yang Yongliang in Luxembourg. The photography work of this young artist (born 1980) is very impressive. Knowing the traditional Chinese painting and caligrahy his work and the combination of photography is really fantastic for me. The beauty of his work is amazing. This was a great gift. I hope to see his exhibition one day. Maybe somewhere around here.

 

It is a bit difficult to recognize the difference from the photo to a traditional Chinese painting. This pictures are combinations between photography and caligrapaphy.

X-Mas leftovers

My friend and I we went to Roermond today. We wanted to go shopping, but after all we did not shop much. Because of the weather we did not get even out of the outlet center. Somehow a pity because this city is really nice. At the outlet center there were some things left of X-Mas everywhere. In the rain they looked quite abandoned. Just have a look:

fallen angel

lonely tree

X-Mas tree decoration down

Don't you think it looks a bit strange? Maybe we should consider it as art.

Bubble Tea

Tonight I met some of my friends from university. We had a really good time together talking about everything what is happening in our lives at the moment. People getting married, people becoming parents and people opening new business  - like one of my friends who opened a bubble tea shop. This is a fancy kind of drink from Asia and since all of us tonight knew it from our journeys there we were happy to see it coming to Europe now. Funny we all had crazy  great ideas how to expand this business, advertising ideas, taste development.... we should open a consulting firm together... ;) Next I will have to go and try it!!!

Promotion of the new bubble tea shop in Duisburg

X-Mas all around

R. arrived from Japan yesterday. Funny to see so many Japanese people at the airport. I have forgotten how huge the airport in Frankfurt is. After parking my car (on a central parking lot!) I still had to walk a while to the arrivals.

Frankfurt airport

I have found a great picture from Guadeloupe.I remember walking around a small town on the west coast of Grande-Terre called Le Moule. There was this nice shop already decoreted for Christmas. Nice! We have seen some houses decoreted with chains of light like the people do in the States. Unfortunately I did not take a picture.

Somewhere in the old town canter in Le Moule

Merry X-Mas

Beach in Guadeloupe

Well, I feel Christmassy since yesterday! Eventually. Due to too much work, our holidays in the Caribbean Sea and lack of snow, for me there was not really Christmas feeling coming up. But after arriving at my parent’s house yesterday everything has changed. 
My father decorated the rooms very nicely, my mother is baking some Christmas cake and I feel so much at home and there it is the familiar feeling and smell of Christmas! Well, on our last day on Guadeloupe there was a Santa Clause at the beach! It was funny to see Santa under the palm trees. I have managed to visit the Christmas market in Cologne this year and really the Christmas markets all over the city are really special.  And it is nice to stand in the shadow of the Cologne Cathedral. But it is here where I feel Christmas coming!

X-Mas market in Cologne

Tomorrow R. will came back from Japan and I will go to the airport to pick him up and then we will celebrate Christmas Eve all together. The holidays are coming. Time to spend some nice time with family and friends. Before New Year’s Eve there are great possibilities to meet some friends, who are visiting family and live and work all over Europe normally. We have already made some arrangements I am really happy about. Nice times coming up!  

Merry Christmas to all of you !

Finally made it...

Yeah, after all the time trying to get on holiday ... We managed to get out and fly to the Caribbean Sea... well, to be precise we stayed in the European Union :) since the islands of Guadeloupe are French... Great holiday, relaxing!!!!

Our private beach ( notice - empty, it was only us!!!)

It is getting cold over here

November and it is getting really cold over here... 2°C today in the morning, but another four days and I will hopefully be somewhere where the weather ist fine, the sun is shining and there are 30° more that here...

Temperature outside my car today in the morning before getting to my office

Great Day

Another great day, my dad turned 70! Wow, time flies so fast. I cannot believe is so old, well him neither.... he is so great! We had a nice time together and fabulous cake!!!

Japan everywhere...

We visited some friends in Lüneburg last weekend. Lüneburg is in the nothern part of Germany, half an hour by train south of Hamburg and look what I saw there....

Yeah, I know after all 8,917 km to Noruto it is a long way... :)

He is gone!!!

Walking downtown I was always passing a house with a statue outside, a knight, I think and I really liked him.
But suddenly he was gone and today even the whole house disappeared !!!

????

From Hanjo to Carmen

wow, another month passed by and my life has been full of love, travel, fun and meeting with friends..

.. well I did not write about that amazing piece of opera we saw at the Ruhrtriennale any more due to time lack. Hanjo was great, so great and different to everything I saw before. I really liked it. The clash of eastern Opera with western quite touched me. I am still thinking about the statement, that sometimes it is the state of waiting which makes the difference not the end of waiting.... Godot is greeting ... maybe I saw something looking back in my life.... life... my life is so amazing... last week I had the pleasure to meet a precious friend of mine I have not seen for nine years. Nine years... we are getting old....  It was so incredible to see him again. I feel such a great respect for him, I always did. He is simply great, calm and reliable, having so much dignity and proud. One day he will be a general. Back in my other life he saved me, saved me from so much and now in his presence I feel so great. We walked down the streets of Cologne together for some time smiling passing by so many restaurants where we wanted to eat but could not enter simply because it was so great to walk together, smiling at each other in silence. I know most of you would say - that's crazy but I felt so happy, so unbelievable happy. And he felt the same. Gosh R. is getting jealous for sure....

So now he will stay in Germany for some months and I longing to see him again and show him Germany and talk about life how is changed since our time in China.

I have to tell you about the amazing meeting with my friends from Berlin, who came over for some days and their daughters who really brighten up my days... well being an aunt is really fun...

Amazing buffet we had here...

competition... showing teeth how a monster does look like best :)

And we went on a  trip to Hamburg.... great city with no sun...

The new concert house in Hamburg, Elbphilharmonie

harbor

city hall

So much to tell you, well tomorrow I will go to see Carmen at the opera house in Duisburg with some friends.... another tragic love story...

Tonight Hanjo!

I am going to see a play tonight, well something very special a chamber opera.
Have a look:


http://www.2011.ruhrtriennale.de/en/programm/2011/hanjo/

I think it will be great, will tell you more tomorrow.

An evening at the EKÔ-House

Beautiful Japanese garden waiting for the autumn colours

Friday night there was another vernissage at the EKÔ-House in Düsseldorf, this time Japanese scroll paintings. Special scroll paintings, kakemono, also called kakejiku, with stamps collected at pilgrimage. The focus was the 88 Temple Pilgrimage at Shikoku Island and the 33 Temple Pilgrimage close to Kyoto. We had a possibility to listen to a presentation about it. Really something completely different. Well, for me since I have some kakejiku (normal one, not from a pilgrimage) it was interesting to see the beautiful scroll paintings. And the presentation was well done and not boring at all.

Before the opening the was a small meditation at the temple at the EKÔ-House and since my friends were late... I was alone there and I had the opportunity to meet two English men, who only came to pray at the temple. They were fluent in Japanese and sung the sutras. Impressive. My friends came afterwards to the presentation at the begin of the exhibition.We were impressed and amused listening to the stories about the equipment and the rites at the pilgrimage. Funny since more and more Japanese like to do a pilgrimage the are also some for children. Well, somehow there is a whole industry behind it.

The weather was great at the evening, being hungry we went to an Indian restaurant to have dinner afterwards.

yummy, Indian food....

something different to the Japanese temple....inside the Indian restaurant

Did I show you??

The alien plant ... she grows and grows... and reminds me of Audrey... do you know Audrey of The Little Shop of Horrors??? Well maybe not that hungry....

She just has grown 20 cm during the last two weeks. She blooms. 

Japanese influence

150 years German Japanese friendship and a beautiful Ukiyo-e exhibition we could not miss.  I am looking forward to more nice events to come. Next time Akiro Kurosawa at the cinema museum

I hope we can go to a vernissage at the Eko House on Friday night.

Suddenly...

... I have realized I am getting old...
do I want all the changes? Or am I running away from the change in my life?

Crazy stupid love

... Ryan Gosling was much better in Lars and the Real Girl here he is only good looking and yeah he is good looking... well, movie was better than expected and funny. This week seems to be my cinema week. :)
Summer is back tomorrow!! And probably gone on Sunday.... expecting 30°C ..

My Blueberry nights....

... Tuesday night... went to cinema with the girls.... well, movie was okay, but still at home I could not sleep. My thoughts were so war away, somewhere above the sky. Watched My Blueberry Nights by Wong Kar Wai before going to bed. Wong Kar Wai's first movie in English. Wow, there was so much talk... very nice movie, Nora Jones was sweet and Rachel Weisz's performace really great, the best I have seen by her so far. The movie reminded my so much of In The Mood for Love. The colours and camera work were great. The movie touched my soul so deep. There it was again - all the thoughts and desire and the question which will always be there: Why am I here and not there? The days keep coming back in my thoughts and as long as I am trying ... time passes by and still life is not mine.... happiness, happiness... I have loved the movie In The Mood for Love so much, but I am not sure I could watch it now again... the story is so true...

.... well and life over here? Guess what: again some friends from Japan coming over at the weekend! Fun, fun, fun.... not sure where we will be going, but for sure there will be beer :)

art...

We went to K21 and saw "Big Picture" a really great exhibition, but not that great as Nam June Paik,
http://www.kunstsammlung.de/en/home.html

I liked most this two pieces of art .. the combination of painting and moving pictures by Zilla Leutenegger was something I haven't seen before and I was fascinated by it somehow. And yeah I know the second one is again Asian, but what can I say, we just got a different view on it... knowing the history, but after all it was a Spanish artist ;)

Recently in my life..

Friends from Amsterdam came over.... weather was great, wow.. could not believe it, 29°C and bright sunshine... we spent the whole weekend outside in outdoor museum and inside museum....

Langen foundation

Feels like in a James Bond movie

More about Langen Foundation  here

or waiting for the visitors from outer space

visitors....

or lovers...

:)

at the end there was a poetry slam...

Yeah pizza of course...

great evening with champagne

and charity concert for Japan with Tempei  http://www.myspace.com/tempei

Recommendation of the week...

FUGA!!!!! best okonomiyaki in town. Got there yesterday,  had another cool girls night and ended up at Ellington's  for a great drink!
What more can you ask for....

Have a look: http://www.imbiss-fuga.110mb.com/

Sorry, no pictures at the moment...

Rain on my skin

The sunny day is over and it is raining again....

what if the rain
referred to something else?
and bowling
and shoes
were done with the mouth?

by Gary Barwin, I think

Have to return to my office.

Night out with the girls

Yeah, yeah met my friends tonight, had a great time with the girls. Lots of things to discuss coz we could not met for so long... everyone is fine and everyone wants to meet again next week!!!! Great! I am so happy about it!!!
We had some nice tapas at a Spanish bodega in Duisburg! Since the weather turned well tonight, we could sit outside at the waterfront at the inner harbor.

But.., since the taste was not soo Spanish as we had expected, it will be next time Japanese food for sure!!!

On my way back home I saw Duisburg's landmark again. I remember seeing it from a distance in a sleepless night. It is still the same, so green.

Picture taken frommy car.....no, not while driving...

A knight to remember

well, after all I think it is a knight, but everytime I pass by I wonder if someone will ever take care of him...

Brussels... again...

Belgium is special! Well, after all for me! I really like to travel there. I like the food. I love the possibilities to see all the fantastic museums and I love the Art Nouveau houses. We had a nice time over there. This time celebrating my mother's birthday at a nice Belgian restaurant and of course some sightseeing! We bought some chocolates, too, of course! Funny my mother said first she will not buy any. Hahahahaha.... What can I say - she could not resist!

Newly renovated Atomium. Still like something out of space. Imagine how the people felt looking at it in 1958!

Simply fantastic!

Brussels

View from our hotel room

I like her soooo much....

Sorry, in front of Manneken Pis there were too many people

Amazing!!!