Weekend snow-tripping

We've had several day trips over the last few weekends, taking advantage of the snow up in the Harz Mountains since Göttingen's hardly gotten any. On the map, Göttingen is circled with yellow and the Harz mountain range is in red.  The Harz are apparently northern Germany's prime ski location.
 
With an inexpensive group ticket that includes bus fare on many local buses, we;'ve headed out to Sankt Andreasberg and to Brocken.


Our first trip to Sankt Andreasberg happened to be on a cold and wet day - it alternated rain and snow - but we were all in good spirits and it didn't bother us much.  We visited an old silver mine called Grube Samson.

 The tour was in German and about all I understood were the various numbers, but I had no idea what they were in reference to except that it took the miners about 90 minutes to climb the ladders out of the mine.

 

reproduced photo of NY canary sellers with German canaries

As you are probably aware, miners often took canaries into the mines to serve as early warning "systems" for toxic gasses.  In Germany canaries were bred intensively and for some time in the 1800s they were shipped to the US  (from what I can gather, though according to this wikipedia article the birds were considered too valuable to go into the mines) .  This explains why there's a canary museum dedicated to the Harz Roller breed at the Samson Mine.

A family makes cages for miners' canaries.

 

I was kind of enchanted by the canaries (they had live ones there, singing up a storm), and their history. It's a very small museum, only 3 or 4 rooms, but it really gave a feel for the era displayed in small details.

(to be continued with the following weekend's excursion...)

Snow(ish)

I am, in case you hadn't noticed, amused by weather.  It's not just a conversation filler, it's interesting! So many variations, options, effects...

Anyway, here I go again.  It's been getting steadily colder and then suddenly we had frost and our little pond froze over.

This morning, the girls set off for the bus stop and within a minute or two the phone rang - I panicked, realizing Merlin had forgotten her clarinet, said to Devin who was on the other end saying, "It's snowing!" that I was bringing it; grabbed it, dashed out the door (at least I put on shoes, didn't deal with a coat over my sweatshirt) and then realized... it was snowing.  Well, snow enough for us, I guess, more like spitting little ice pieces.

It did this to everything outside:

 I didn't realize that spiderwebs could get iced up:

And then if they get jiggled the ice breaks apart:

It's really pretty and really cold and Merlin's quite entranced by the ice on the pond.  She keeps getting me outside to look at it and watch her poke it to break up the ice.  Some folks are easily pleased. :)

On the bus, later, a lady told me it wasn't actually snow, but something I've now forgotten, maybe Schnee regen (snow rain: sleet).  I find the German word for snow hilarious.  Say it several times and see if you don't laugh. Schnee Schnee Schnee.

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Here, a snippet of today's poem on The Writer's Almanac, by Kenneth Rexroth.

...November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream...

Autumn

Finally! Autumn at last! These last few days we've been waiting for autumn and it hasn't been here because autumn starts early um I mean we haven't see the actual happenings of autumn until today, so what I mean is that it doesn't give the trees a chance to start mmmm... lets say becoming pretty? No not that, yes that's it! Leaves falling to the ground and begging to be picked up because they're soo colourful. I think I got it right! It seems like it's only the spiky leafed trees, the yellow err... golden colored ones with a hint of red and orange.

It's a nice day actually. The sky matches the leaves, a nice baby blue with golden leaves against it I like it! Oh yeah just to add a nice touch a grey bluish building (just the tip anyways) in the back left corner, I think it's our apartment from the outside.

Merlin holding a nice leaf infront of the the new camera, a nice touch with the background, some dappled cement (the sunlight that shone through the bush in the back).
Just got home, thought it be nice to take this picture of a messy but... stylish or um... fake version of a you know one of those cheesy pictures that goes on the front of a journal.
Merlin just insists that we walk through the leaves on the corner sidewalks once more, but I mean who can blame her, it's her first experience of Autumn in Beijing, so my mom and I had to agree after a minute of hesitation. Oh! I just wanted to include my final sentence, that this day was a very windy one, as you can see Merlins hair blowing across her face.

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by Devin