From a very first time and a regret afterwards (Part 1) I was born and grown up in a small and innocent town somewhere in the north of Germany's nowhere. It was the time of the 1980s and whatever had happened in this decade, it had reached my hometown at least two or three years later as the rest of the world but nobody there was sad about that. Many things had happened. Important things. Things like Sony’s Walkman, Commodore’s C64 or Apple’s first Macintosh. And of course things like the Chernobyl disaster, the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the Fall of Berlin Wall. I guess the first ones were responsible for my later interest in technical stuff and I think as well that I was too young to understand the importance of these last ones. What had in fact really gripped me at that time was that we get a couple of new private television programs beside the three public television channels which we only had. And so for many years my cultural horizon existed of such kind of things. Opera was beyond everything what was thinkable in this small place. Off course I had heard about it but they had told me about Santa Claus and about the Yeti as well, and none of them have I ever sawn in my town and so I had put the opera in the same drawer as those possible but highly unlikely things.

How do I get to the Dom? If you visit Hamburg and you ask this question, you should be sure what time of the years it is. Normally you will get a directions to the St. Mary's Cathedral (cathedral in German = Dom). I think Hamburg is not very well known for its cathedral like the cities of Cologne, Aachen or Speyer, but it has such one. When you are visiting Hamburg in Winter, Summer or Spring, probably you will get the directions to something very different: the directions to the ‘Hamburger Dom’ and this means one of Germany’s biggest traveling funfair! ‘Hamburger Dom’ is celebrate three times a year and it takes four weeks each time. It has in total some ten Million visitors per year and you will find over 250 rides, roller-coasters, fun-shooting-ranges, lottery stalls, snack stands and whatever else you like there. Each individual one of this three fairs has its own atmosphere and its own compilation of attractions, so they offer you every time a new event. If you are in Hamburg while the ‘Hamburger Dom’ is there too, you should visit it, it’s great! Let me explain why Hamburg’s funfair called like the German word for cathedral: Dom… Hamburg is an ancient trading city and like other trading cities in the Middle Age and later they had in regular intervals big markets to sell and buy whatever they need, instead of permanent traders or stores such we have them nowadays. It was usually common that this markets looked for shelter in the cathedrals if the weather was too bad to have them in the outside – the cathedrals were the biggest covered buildings at that time. And beside the traders and craftsmen there were also clowns, artists and quacks to bring the folks pleasure and diversions from their hard lives. The markets disappeared over the time or rather the became less relevant for the trading, but what has remained till now was the phrase ‘cathedral’ as the name for the place where you can find the kind of clowns, artists and quacks at our time. Of course there is no regular cathedral or any other church on this funfair, but the place where the “Hamburger Dom” resided now is called ‘Heiligengeistfeld’, in English: ‘Field of the Holy Spirit’. Whether or not you can find the Holy Spirit during your visit of the Hamburger Dom is another story…

I fell in love with... radio When I was a child - maybe in the age of 10 or somewhat around this – I got a special gift, which I couldn’t let it go for the next decades of my future life. It was one of these kind of things to which we create a so purely personal affair, that it is almost impossible for anybody to understand that mystical connection. And even today, almost 30 years later, it is also very difficult to explain what was happened on this day and all the time since then. This gift was a radio, one from those which we called in German „Weltempfänger“(world receiver). It was my one and only door to a new world… and how I understood much time later, my personal door into a close relationship with many kinds of new technologies! Just for the protocol : with a world receiver you can receive radio stations from all over the world, if they are sending on a short wave frequency. Radio stations in many countries did this. They sent information and reportages about their own country and people – also in German. And I was keen to find and hear the German ones. Almost every night hidden under my blanket, one ear strongly pressed onto the loudspeaker, because so I was able to hear the voices with minimum loudness and my parents couldn’t catch me while I did this. And that was the point… to search, find, and hear without any rules or interferences from the grownups. A very huge feeling of personal freedom in the universe of a ten-year-old shy boy, with a large ugly pair of glasses and without any talent for every kind of sport or whatever was so cool at this time. My own borderless freedom under my blanket that I did not need to share with anyone. It was the beginning of a never ending love to spoken words in the middle of my head. Short wave has gone, Podcast was coming. And with these Podcasts my interests changed fundamentally. But my passion is the same! Whenever I put headphones into my ears, I feel like a ten-year-old boy, hiding under a blanket, sheltered in a place where nothing can disturb…

From an exhibition with a little disappointment I visited an art exhibition here in Hamburg yesterday. Its titel was “From Poussin to Monet. The colors of France”. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was one of the leading French painters in the 17th century during the period of baroque and Claude Monet (1840-1926) was one of the founders of French Impressionism, which is one of the most important painting periods for nowadays understanding of design and of visual illustrations. Between these two painters there was a timeframe of three very eventfully centuries including Luis XIV, the French Revolution and Napoleon. Therefore “The colors of France” means not only the influence of French art inside Europe, it also means the influence of those politically and culturally upheaval toward French art. To realize that social changes and evolutions in arts are two size of a coin that is one of the reasons why I am very in fond of arts. Every time it is exciting to find out how a painter or an art period was affected by things that happened in their time or to find out in which way both were influenced by their time. The goal of this exhibition I visited was the same: to show how arts and society are inseparable tied up together. So far so good! But this goal was to much big for a single exhibition with some 200 paintings. There were countless very important painters and a couple of huge painting periods (with a complicated puzzle of sub-periods!) during this long time! So this exhibition could only be a small spotlight, maybe a kind of an introduction for a series of many other exhibitions which will follow the same main theme. But none other similar exhibition will follow after that one, what a pity…

What do you prefer: real books or ebooks?

There are many books around me. Several thousands, I guess. To holding a book between my hands was a major part of my past life.

As you know, since a couple of years ebooks are an rising star. Maybe at first for those who are technical nerds, but meanwhile it seems that there are more ebook-readers during my daily train ride than real books.

In the past I had often said: I will not enjoy those ebooks! For me books need to smell like books or rustle like books and, of course, I need to put them into my cabinet!

I did said so, indeed! But now - without I had aware my own changing - I often catch me by my own with searching after an ebook just befor I wish to know wether there is a real book and how much it will be cost... that is crazy!

Not to holding a book in front of me is a major part of me, to expand my mind, that should I say.

What about you? Do you prefer real books or ebooks?

How importan is motivation for learning a foreign language? I read an interesting entry on this platform yesterday: Motivation is the most important thing for learning another language. Yes, indeed, motivation is of course very important. But the whole day long I can't stop thinking about wether motivation is also the most important element for a successful learning or not? In my opinion there are two needfull things more, wich I would call "disciplin" and "have a good plan".     To learn a language is a matter about to learn as often as you can. It is certainly better to learn nearly every day a trife of your excercises as to learn ones in a month the whole material. And for this part you need disciplin! But to learn eyery day without a reasonable structure you could learn as much as you wish, your effort would not be successful. So you need a good plan for your success. (In German we say to have "a red string". Is this also in English possible?) How about you? I would love to know wich things are important for your learning strategy?