Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Occupy Frankfurt

I was up in Frankfurt today and saw the Occupy Frankfurt camp. It is located just outside the European Central bank (the big Euro sign belongs to the bank, not the protesters). It looks like the protesters have set up a nice place for themselves there considering that they are living outside. There were tents of different sizes – for one to six people, there are areas for getting together – complete with sofas and ottomans, a kitchen (which I did not see), and even an herb garden. It was raining pretty hard while I was there, so not much was going on in the camp.


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The big Euro sign outside the European Central Bank

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They made a nice sign to let us know they are still here (according to Wikipedia, the camp has been here in Frankfurt since October 15, 2011)

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Source – I think it is pretty nice that they have an herb garden. It looks like it is doing very well too.

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A big tent – probably one of the common areas

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On the left, you can see the welcome desk – I guess they want to help people have a pleasant stay in their camp.

According to Wikipedia: The Occupy movement is an international protest movement against social and economic inequality, its primary goal being to make the economic structure and power relations in society fairer. Different local groups have different foci, but among the prime concerns is the claim that large corporations and the global financial system control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and is unstable. Although most popular in the United States, Occupy has seen protests and occupations in dozens of other countries and on every continent. Each Occupy site set up a camp - including tents and outdoor kitchens - in a park or other public space, often near the city or town's financial district, to establish a semi-permanent protest area.

Monday, June 4, 2012

The Garden Grows On

Our balcony garden is still doing very well. It is fun to go outside every morning and see what is new. The morning glory vines have reached the top of the rose arch, are a just about to the end of our first pea harvest, our 6 tomato plans are taking up more and more space every day, and our petunias are flowering like crazy.

Our tomato plants already have little tomatoes!

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I counted over 40 petunias blooming the other day.

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A whole handful of pea pods

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Big, lovely, blue morning glories. The flowers only bloom for one day, then die and the next day a new flower blooms. We have a different number of flowers every day – one day we had 9, another day we had 6, I think today we have 5. They are so pretty.

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Robin Bakes

This past week Robin was home from work recovering from his surgery and concussion. He decided to try out a new recipe for Apple Muffins (it seems here in Germany cupcakes and muffins are the same thing and the words can be used interchangeably). He chose the recipes, did most of the baking, and frosted them himself. They look good, but he wasn’t satisfied with the end result (they taste fine, I think it just wasn’t what he was hoping for).

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Decorating the cupcakes

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Just before I took this picture, I asked him if he would mind if I took a picture. His answer was, “Will I be famous?” He just loves it when I take a picture of him and blog about it.

Leaving the Nest

This spring, it seems that several bird families have taken up residence in by our apartment. There is one nest in particular that we could see directly into from our balcony. Compared to the other bird nests, these birds were very loud. The little birds kept the adult birds busy from morning to night with their cries for more food. Then, something happened… the story is shown below. One of the baby birds decided it would be fun to leave the nest. He waited until both the adult birds were gone (the picture below shows him peeking out of the nest and waiting for the adult to fly off). Then, out he comes! He tried out his wings a bit and hopped around some. Then, it seems he decided it wasn’t so great outside the nest and wanted to get back in. He couldn’t.  So he landed on a bit of wood and waited (and he cried)… until help came…. I don’t know what happened to him next, but the next day, the nest was empty. It seems the adult birds decided it was time for the little birds to be out on their own… they all left the nest.
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