Month: October 2016

Festival of Leaves – week 7

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It’s time for another year of Festival of Leaves. This is the place to share your love for autumn and rain, for dark evenings and cups of tea, of books and all that you love during this time of the year.

– Verena Cave

The last few weeks have been very grey with a lot of mist, but luckily the bright yellow leaves shining on all the trees cheer everything up. The pavement outside my work looks like a whole lot of yellow stars fell to the ground.

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The leaves are falling quite fast though – from the beginning to the end of this week one particularly beautiful tree has lost almost all of its leaves. I’m looking forward to getting out to the countryside in the weekend to really enjoy the autumn colours, before they’re all gone!

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Middle Europe Weekly Pleasures #27 – Autumn pleasures

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What are the little pleasures during the week that keep you going? This is the question that Mani at a New Life Wandering asks in her weekly series, Weekly Small Pleasures. It can be as simple as a good cup of coffee or a chat with a friend. Here were mine for this week (Friday to Friday), and you can check out Mani’s here and Thistle and Kiwi’s here. Continue reading →

Canary Islands Travel Diaries – Gran Canaria

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The last stop on our Canary islands visit was Gran Canaria, which is approximately in the middle of the archipelago.  We had travelled first to Fuerteventura, then to  Lanzarote, finding that each island had a different character, and finally arrived on Gran Canaria, which yet again had different scenery and a different atmosphere. On this island the mountains dominate, with the highest peak being 1956m. Before Europeans arrived, the island was populated from as early as 500BC by a people known as the Canarii. In their language, the island was called  Tamarán. There is a museum about this interesting civilization on the island, but unfortunately we didn’t manage to get there on our short trip. Continue reading →

Middle Europe Weekly Small Pleasures #26 – cold but cosy

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I can’t believe that three weeks ago we were swimming in the lakes. Now it’s about 10 degrees Celsius during the day and less at night! The cold weather sets in quickly here. Last week we had a brief respite from the lowering temperatures because I had a work meeting in Siena and afterwards my husband joined me for a long weekend travelling around Tuscany (3 October is a public holiday in Germany). However now we are back to face the cold. As usual the transition to winter with the rapidly decreasing light hours and cold temperatures makes me tired. However, here are a few of this week’s small pleasures. Thanks to Mani for hosting the blog event Weekly Small Pleasures. Continue reading →