Keeping occupied

So, this time last year, Lady Kirsten and I decided to go house-hunting. We wanted to stay in the area but I wanted an easier ride to work in the morning. In Wiltingen, it took me 90 minutes to get to work and 2 hours to come home, which i didn't mind, considering I don't go every day and we lived in a water mill in the middle of some stunning countryside. Moving was always going to be hard, considering the nature of the place we lived in, so wherever we went would really have to be tip-top.
We didn't have long to wait. I ran a search on the main property website for the area, and found an absolute beauty in Saarburg. It was the very first place we viewed in the late autumn and we would compare it against any other property we looked at thereafter.

It was on a fairly steep incline, but the views over the valley and surrounding hills was memorable, and the roofed terrace (seen above on the right of the house) was perfect to survey the natural landscape all around.

The downside was that even though it bordered on the forest, there were some busy roads nearby, including a spaghetti-style slip-road system that is soon to be adapted, and the planned building of a supermarket only a minute away, with all the palaver of construction and destruction. However, the bus to Luxembourg leaves from only 200 metres from the front door.

The most poignant thing about the house was that it had a certain dignified air, as if to say "like me or loathe me, this is what you get". And considering its most advantageous selling price, there were no major renovation issues, which baffled me and still leaves me wondering why, come the following spring, it was still on the market. Looking at other houses of various shapes and sizes in the meantime, nothing compared to that one, and so we put in a bid for it. It was the best decision we made.

On the top floor are four light and spacious bedrooms, a bathroom and a hallway, on the upper ground floor is a huge kitchen, a large dining room, a living room and a smaller room doing nothing, so we converted it into a library. The ground floor is a second residence, which helps to pay a large chunk of our mortgage, and behind that, built into the land, is a cellar large enough to use it for washing clothes, storing a huge amount of boxes and housing the gardening equipment until I built a garden shed.

The roofed terrace is a delightful place to sit and we decked it out with hanging baskets filled with long-lasting plants. We added some further plants and even tomatoes and peppers, which produced a small but rewarding yield in September. The main work was in the garden and upper meadow, where there is a huge empty space, just waiting to be landscaped. This will not happen overnight, but I wanted to get things going this summer and I built a shed (as I mentioned), although not one of those you hammer the panels together, like there is already in the garden (see photo below), but rather a cabin-style shed where you bang in the planks so they overlap. It may take longer, but it is a satisfactory feeling to know you built it yourself. I had to shift a lot of earth, as the incline of the hill would have not been a wise place to build foundations. With that soil, I made a heather rockery and kitchen garden.

We hope to stay here for many years.

Uphill:

A balloon passes overhead. Our nut trees (right of photo) provided the local deer with a huge Sunday breakfast one morning in October.

Building a garden shed:
Lady Kirsten deciphering the instructions for putting on the roof. The hardest part about building the shed was shifting the soil beneath to level off the ground. I filled the hole with fine gravel to keep it dry.

Taking a short break:

Me, discussing a shisha break with Iman, our renter. As an Iranian descendent, he has access to some of the finest flavoured shisha tobaccoes in Germany.

The completed shed:

Roof on, wood stained and heather rockery planted, I built a bird house with the remaining pieces of plank. It has become a focal point of our cats' entertainment. I still need to affix the guttering to the shed and place the blue barrels below to provide water for the plants come the spring.

Old and new:

The old shed will be sawn up and used to heat us up in midwinter. In its place will come a pergola and seating area for us to relax with a good book, some cheese, wine and bread. The grass area between the heather rockery and the wheel barrow will become a terrace next year.

Deer in the garden:
We are frequently visited by all sorts of wild animals, including a trio of deer one Sunday morning. I spent about 45 minutes admiring them in our and next door's gardens, munching on the grass. My admiration turned a little sour when I went outside later on in the day and found they had eaten literally every living and growing thing in the garden. They were great substitutes for my hedge trimmers but they could have stopped when they got to the worcesterberry, raspberry and blackberry plants...
Still, it has solved one problem for me: I know what I'll be cooking for dinner on 25th December now.

The bus is a very good advert for the car

Honestly. You try your whole life conscientiously avoiding learning to drive, to the extent that people think you're poor, that in the end you start questioning if it is worth it...

When Lady Kirsten and I lived in Leuven, public transport was pretty OK. Not ideal, and often late, Belgian buses were often the only effective way of moving around the city. The trains are also pretty comfortable, although unreliable.

In our corner of Germany, I must say, the trains will work almost to the second, even in the coldest of snowy winters to the extent that you dare not be late. My criticism of them though is a valid one. They are not very frequent. Punctual, but rare. Efficient, but scarce. Clean, fast, even cheap. But if you miss one, it would be quicker to go back to your house and fetch your bicycle.

When we moved to Saarburg, it was great, because I could step outside, walk 200 metres (not even that) and jump on the bus straight to Luxembourg. It drops me about 5 minutes from the European Court of Justice and the Jean Monnet Commission building, two of the buildings I work in, although if I need to go to the European Parliament or Commission training building, I still have to get another bus. And it is this bus where the problems start. The people hanging out at bus stops have little or no sense of community spirit. They will get on the bus before everyone has got off and make sure they get the best seats. These buses are virtually empty and yet they are acting like it's the last bus from Armageddon.

The worst thing in Luxembourg is that many bus lines are so frequent that there might be another one right behind, similarly empty. Luxembourg's bus travellers don't acknowledge that probability though, and often make the experience so unattractive that you imagine you'd like to be sitting in the passenger seat of a ripoff taxi, which is the norm in Luxembourg. Although this is not the case every time.

But the bus taking me from Saarburg to Luxembourg is not squalid. Quite the opposite, but here lies a further, paradoxical complication. It is a luxury coach, with one of the most scenic routes in the world. It starts off in the Saar Valley where we are, rising up the steep forested hills to the open moors which separate the Saar from the Mosel, taking in the windswept beauty of the countryside around Merzkirchen before we plummet into the Mosel valley, crossing the frontier in some exquisite vineyard country, then rising up to meet the motorway into Kirchberg and Luxembourg City.

However, there are a few difficulties here, namely one of the drivers. He seems to think that everyone is an abstract object. When I tell him which stop I wish to get off at, he looks at me as if I have just said something philosophical and incomprehensible. When passengers buy their monthly ticket, he just takes our money and says nothing before handing it over, as though we are not interactive instruments capable of communicating on his wavelength. He does little to make us happy and you can never rely on him for a favour. I get on the bus at its second stop.

But there is an even more pressing problem here: the passengers. The vast majority are OK, but I sense that as they are from the country, they are not used to strangers taking their bus. So it came as a shock when I got on the bus and had the audacity to ask the woman who always sits at the front if she could move her light work bag for me to sit down. She huffed and puffed before mumbling something incomprehensible and thrusting her bag on the floor. I mean, she doesn't have a rental contract on that particular double-seat, and I need it more than her - she's so small, she could easily sit further back. Needless to say, she has not said a word to me since. There is a guy with extra long legs who deserves it much more than she does. Furthermore, that place is one of only three spots on the bus where I can put my work bag with all my books in it without taking up a seat which another passenger might need - it has extra room for luggage. One of the other two, just behind the middle door, is occupied by an enormous woman who needs two spaces anyway, and the last place is at the back where there is no light to read my book.

Opposite her, behind the driver, there is a further possibility, but the guy with long legs sits there when this other woman I mentioned steals his spot. The 157 bus from Saarburg to Luxembourg is full of little political quirks like this. My theory is these people are middle-class, and want to feel rewarded for leaving their cars at home. They feel they are owed a prize for being so green. The woman at the front obviously drives a car and treats it, like the rest of those car-driving individualists, like a cocoon, a four-wheeled haven in which she can block out those irritating other people who seem to be in her way. She should go back to the car, if you ask me.

A time for heroes - Chilean miners and Syrian bears

I was, like a lot of people, keeping an eye on the TV news this week as the 33 miners trapped underground made their escape from a cruel death deep in the Chilean earth, to become (inter)national heroes. Many of them will never have to work again, dining off the book deals and TV, newspaper or magazine features which will already be being worked out.

The BBC was criticised by the Daily Mail for sending 25 staff to cover the event, pushing it to cut down on their reporting budgets for the G20 and Oscars. Well good, I say. There has been so much bad news recently that I for one was overjoyed to tune in and watch the historic moment those men rose to the surface like modern-day Lazaruses (or is it Lazari?), to be greeted by close family members and the odd skeleton in the cupboard. The saga of Yonni Barrios's love life was gripping enough to permit myself to stay up a little later than normal to see his reaction when he climbed out of the capsule, which will one day be hoisted up in the Chilean National Museum. I am not normally a gossip reader but this was different.

It is every man's dream to be a hero one day. For me, the real heroes of this story were the Chilean military personnel, who dreamed up the scheme to drop a capsule down there, put it together along with a lift mechanism and drill out a hole, completing the task as quickly as five weeks ahead of schedule.

But I would like to bring up the truly remarkable story of an unsung war hero called Private Wojciech or Wojtek, enlisted in the Polish 2nd Army Corps, who supported his comrades across the battlefields of the Middle East, northern Africa and southern Italy in the later stages of World War 2. Remarkable because Wojtek was a bear.

In the middle of the war, a Persian boy came across an orphaned bear cub. In the nearby town of Hamadan in Iran, some Polish soldiers were stationed and the boy agreed to sell the bear to them for a couple of days' food. Initially, the bear was fed on condensed milk from a disused vodka bottle as he was still less than one year old. His benign character and playful nature soon won the hearts of the soldiers, becoming a celebrity even to neighbouring garrisons and local people.

He picked up human habits, like smoking and drinking (he loved nothing more than a good beer) although his cigarette consumption still proved he was not totally human as he ate them too. He was fed on sweet produce and slept with the men in their dormitories. When the company moved location, Wojtek went with them in a transport container, and he went through a lot of places - Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and Italy.

According to one account, the army was forbidden from having live mascots, so his company's commanding officers, in that most Polish of ways to find a solution, enlisted him officially in the Polish army, being given the rank of Private. His finest moment came at the horror that was Monte Cassino, when he famously carried crates of ammunition shells for his comrades, not dropping a single one.

His active role was brought to the attention of senior command and it allowed Wojtek's company, then called the 22nd Transport Company to use a bear carrying a shell as its official emblem. His main role though was as a morale booster, and more importantly friend to the soldiers, at once replacing their families, wives, girlfriends and mates back home. He used to wrestle with the soldiers and often made a fool of himself which caused great mirth amongst the men. He wasn't just any old bear though, as he even managed to chase out an enemy spy. Being nearly two metres high and weighing two-and-a-half times that of an average man may have helped, but it shows just how close some members of the animal kingdom can be to us if given the chance.

At the end of the war, the company, bear included, was based near the Berwickshire town of Hutton. Wojtek's final journey was to a specially-built enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo, where he lived out his final days in well-earned retirement. Aileen Orr, the granddaughter of one of the Polish soldiers, visited the zoo one day with a Polish friend. When Wojtek heard her speaking Polish, he waved to them both, causing Aileen to have a life-long fascination for him. She wrote a book entitled "Wojtek the Bear: Polish War Hero" and along with the Cardinal of Edinburgh, the Lord Provost and the former governor of Edinburgh Castle, she has been campaigining to have a statue put up in the city in memory of this most unusual of war heroes. It will also be a memorial in recognition of the enormously important Polish contribution to the Allied victory.

Wojtek was a much-loved resident of Edinburgh Zoo right up until his death in December 1963.

He wanted for nothing and was looked after by an ex-soldier. Discussions are taking place about where in Edinburgh to erect his statue.

What is the greatest nation in the world?

What is the best country in the world?

Surveys are made by newspapers and magazines on the subject. TV documentaries are broadcast showing people's opinions. Newsweek even put out a thirty-page spread about it. But these types of surveys don't talk about the real question: what is the greatest country in the world?

Firstly we need some criteria. So we must look at the country's history - what is the point of a greatest country without a full story behind it? Then we should look at its people, who will of course have a collective memory, a rough stereotypical peculiarity and a thriving culture, all shaped by its history. Finally, we should look at its present. How is it now? Is it a successful nation or just plodding along? Are there many things to ascribe greatness to it in the present day?

So, let's look at the candidates:


1. France

History - Solid beginnings, lost their way when dealing with the monarchy. Replaced kings (beheaded) with the same kind of thing but not (always) born in a palace (see here). Got ever so tetchy about being only the second or third largest empire in the 19th century and was doubly upset by being invaded in the mid-20th and having to be rescued by their old rivals. Twice.

People stereotype - food, strikes, attitude and hygiene issues. Mainly socialist in public and conservative in private. Good films, bad TV. Most of it summed up by this man here.

How now? - see here.

Chances of winning accolade: - I won't be hanging out the Tricolor any time soon...



2. The USA

History - Completely missed out on the Renaissance due to not yet existing. Once established, went around charging other countries extortionate fees for rescuing them from Nazism and Communism before electing a series of baboons as leaders and invading a host of independent nations if they had differing views to those held by their chief monkey. The whole country is held together by glossy magazine celebrities.

People stereotype - Gullible, trigger-happy religious fanatics with a penchant for only seeing the world in black or white. Four legs good, two legs bad, size also matters here.

How now? - Most have no idea of the difference between what's right and what saves a few bucksworth of tax per year.

Chances of winning accolade - No chance, unless they ban oil drilling and propping up despotic régimes, renounce their addiction to money and put out a decent cricketing team.

3. China

History - Despite inventing a whole load of clever technical stuff whilst we Europeans were still swinging about in trees, lost the plot fairly early on through obsession with self-image and pageant, getting by with a vague change in the standard of civilisation each century until the mid-20th century, when after overthrowing four thousand years of Empire, the country was set back yet another thousand years by misguided ideologists who liked to take whole crowds for long walks. Only in the 21st century have they reached the point where they have to share the status of biggest economy in the world, but in the leagues of spreading human indignity and suffering, lack of care for the environment and lack of morals will always remain first. And considering this planet contains such barbaric places as Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea, that takes some beating. Came of age at their Olympic Games in 2008, which were big on impressive technicalities and tiny on heart.

People stereotype - Don't ask - you'll get the same answer: "we're all happy and we love our country. And weren't the Olympics fantastic?" Mmmyesss.... Although if you turned the corner in Beijing, you wouldn't have known they were taking place.

How now? - Busy buying up minerals to sell to us when we run out, cosying up to dictators who can provide the elite classes with wealth beyond even Westerners' dreams, and destroying whole swathes of their own countryside with grand architectural projects to "civilise" their rural population.
Chances - About as slim as my chances of becoming next Pope. Will maybe be the biggest in everything one day not so far in the future, but never, ever the best. Ever.

4. Germany

History - Feuding princes and lords set about expansion in Europe quite early, developing a penchant for it. Did it every few decades or so. Country oddly disunited until the 19th century when someone had the brilliant idea of putting it together politically. A certain indiscretion in the middle of the 20th century sent this country's candidature to the back of the queue (except China) but its modern-day image is very good and continually rising.

People stereotype - Either über-efficient, über-capable and always blasting opponents off the football pitch, or sausage-munching, beer-swilling Lederhosen-wearing yodelers who drive at excessive speeds on Autobahns in their still German-owned cars.

How now? - A country at ease with itself these days, although still having trouble with foreigners (mainly French politicians and Austrian or Dutch maverick speakers), but still capable of impressing us with its stable economy and smaller but still thriving industrial base. "Made in Germany" still means something.

Chances - Would have been real contenders but for a slight misunderstanding of the territorial rules of the game of football in the mid-20th century, namely the game is supposed to remain on the same pitch.

5. The UK

History - Got invaded once by some angry Norman guy and didn't really enjoy the experience. Spent the next thousand years atoning for it by going off elsewhere so when invasion almost happened again, traded in their status of largest empire to keep their independence, only to immediately trade it in again for an equal share in a huge political pie with the very people they had only recently tried to fight off. Very dodgy infrastructure due to being the oldest industrialised nation. Has a language everyone speaks badly, and a reputation for the exportation of awful reality TV.

People stereotype - Badly dressed, or over-dressed, tea-drinking, umbrella-obsessed, aridly sober or gutter-crawlingly drunk, seagoing individuals who invent amazing stuff in sheds and queue up for the chance to get on overcrowded trains.

How now? - Refreshingly different to everyone else, although this may be its problem. The country was in the process of reinventing itself through the power of taking away from the people its centuries-old faithfulness to civil liberties, replacing the friendly policeman with a camera on every building. That was, until the 2010 election, whose outcome fortunately may have caused the reversal of this disturbing trend. Still the benchmark when it comes to innovation and invention (if the Chinese don't steal it and patent it).

Chances - Strongest contender so far, and not because I'm one of them.



But..........



I'd like to consider a dark horse in this contest, a country which if it were human you'd probably not notice, sitting there in its quiet corner being busily occupied with the continent's plumbing and electricity. This contender is entrant number
6. Poland

History - After driving out the Hungarians, the Germans, the Austrians, the Russians, the French, the Prussians and even the mighty Swedes over centuries and centuries of invasion from north, south, east and west, this prized strategic area of land had a powerful influence on early democracy. It was the object of the desires of the leader of our candidate number 4 in the middle of the 20th century. After suffering from the most abysmal atrocities it was saved by a neighbouring country which then occupied it for the next 45 years, subjecting it to humiliating acts of subservience from time to time. This did not stop the people from rising up against them in brave acts of defiance. Was quickly accepted into the EU after the fall of its occupiers, now one of the most respected members of its new family of nations, contributing a compatriot to be European Parliament President. Due to its people's practical skills, is well on the way to being the most needed nationality in Europe.

People stereotype - People speak a fairytale language full of tricky fricatives and nasal vowels, but "you have a leaky tap? No problem, my cousin Wojciech will fix it for you for a reasonable price and a happy smile on his face." For a nation that has endured so much, the fact they have such a happy attitude and a proper sense of community still, signifies something much deeper than what lies on the surface.

How now? - Although still has some catching up to do, the fact it has survived its centuries of invasion and reinvasion, occupation and destruction, it is a country at peace with itself. Despite not having many motorways, has some of the best driving roads in the world and gives ordinary visitors the kind of welcome reserved for princes elsewhere.

Chances - Maybe, just maybe...

I can't think of any other decent contenders.