Stay autumn, stay...

I am already sad that this beauty will be gone soon. I wish this autumn would last longer...

Perfect rainy day

Finally I can enjoy my life again, more or less. My Latin exam is over, but I do not have a good feeling about it at all. Next week I will know whether they are going to invite me to the oral exam.
But it was all so much stress. So I needed something to cheer myself up.
Today I went to the local market and got a basket full of goodies and a huge pumpkin. I do not know exactly what to do with it yet. Pumpkin pie, chutney, soup, cupcakes...

Afterwards I went to buy a new I. Nemirowsky book "Les Chiens et Les Loups". I love the way she describes characters and her style. So I sat in a lovely cafe reading, watching the rain from time to time and eating a lovely piece of tiramisu. :)
I am in such a rainy mood, so it is just fine. Time for Melody Gardot, Beth Gibbons and Dominic Miller's lovely guitar melodies. I bought Miller's "New Dawn" today as well. I will never forget a Sting concert I went to and they had problems with the opening act, so Miller did it. He was humbly sitting on a stool, playing all his best tunes in the sunset and this was definitely the best part of the concert. Lovely memory.

One of my piles of books right now

So here we have:
On top is not a book, but a CD: Harcsa Veronika's "You Don't Know It's You". (present from Zsofi) :) It is a great Hungarian singer.
Next one is my red note book. Just in case I find anything interesting I write it down.
The third is a book of Russian Poetry, the Silver Age (considered to be the beginning of the last century)
Followed by "Piano Notes" by Charles Rosen,
and two books with poetry and epic texts by Fernando Pessoa,
and "Alice in Wonderland",
and a Russian book with the title "The Fate is a Whore" with anecdotes from the life of a very funny Russian actress.
And then comes "I Ging" translated by Richard Wilhelm.
Next one is Sandor Marai's "The four Seasons" (I love this Hungarian writer) and
finally a book about Zen.
The last one is my moleskine notebook of recipes. I do not know how it came in that pile.

Cows

Recently I visited my friends, the cows on a nearby meadow. Whenever I pass them I have to get off and have a chat with them. About the quality of milk, the weather, green grass and other things that bothers them. They are very friendly to me and one of them said, she likes to be photographed and she said that she would be delighted to have her picture posted on my blog. Her name is Charlotte, she said. So here she is.

She also said that whenever I feel bad I may come and hug her. That is very kind of her.

Picnic Time

Yesterday I had a quite spontaneous idea to have a picnic in a lovely park nearby. So in the morning I prepared a cake with berries and because it was such a hot day I did not want to cook at all. Baking is always fine, but cooking, not really. I called Anna and we decided to have a Jacket Potato take away with different dips. Then we got a bottle of pear cider and water and then found a nice place to sit. The weather was fine, not that sunny as expected but warm.

Afterwards we were enjoying the afternoon and went to a swimming bath to get rid of the calories. Those evil little things that come at night and make your clothes smaller.

Walk in honey light

Yesterday I went out for a bath in honey light. Such a lovely summer day it was. Apples, berries, poppies, wheat - everything in golden light. I love this time of year and the warm evenings.
See more pictures on my flickr.

My first home made ice-cream!

I have got an ice-cram maker recently and now I want to experiment a bit. I started with a very simple recipe of yogurt ice cream and I also added some blueberries while mixing it. Next time I will add less sugar and no fresh whole fruit as it gets too cold. But in general it was really nice. My next aim is to produce some green tea ice cream.

My five sunflowers

My best friend Anna gave me a can with sunflower seeds last week. I had to water them and there they are. I am so curious how they will develop and if there will be a real sunflower. It is such a nice present and a nice symbol for friendship. Thank you, Anna.

Pfingstrosen

"Die Gärten füllen sich mit Pfingstrosen, und plötzlich wird die Welt so schwer und heiß, als trüge sie die Last einer Emotion und einer Erkenntnis; sie spricht stotternd wie jeder, den ein Gefühl überwältigt und trunken macht. Das ist nicht mehr Liebe, auch nicht der der vorlaute, eitle Lenz; dies ist bereits das Leben, mit seinem ganzen Gewicht, seinem Duft, seinem Schicksal."
Sandor Marai
(Sorry, I could not find a translation of this in Russian or English anywhere)

Quite busy

I have not written for a while, because I was on the run all the time. We had to prepare our moving to Germany. My Mum came to visit me and we have seen a lot during the last week: Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, York.

Apart from that I had to organise all the formalities, leaving flat, keeping everything tidy and clean. It was quite exciting and exhausting. I also have a cold (again), but not really a rest.
After the arrival at home there are plenty of things to organise, clean etc. This weekend we will have guests from Moscow and we have to prepare everything. I am so looking forward to see our friends. We are going to show them our beautiful town and the countryside and I am going to make a proper German cheese cake. I hope the weather will be fine.
Many things are also to be prepared for university. My master thesis, my Latin exam and some minor exams must be prepared as well. To be able to survive this stress I need to go to a strawberryfield and get a bucket of strawberries and eat them all at once. At the moment I just have my strawberry-cream candies from York. And my two new cds my Melody Gardot, with wonderful songs.
My favourites: The Rain, Our Love is Easy and Your Heart is as Black as Night.

Here I am.

Let's start this new blog then with a bowl of strawberries.
Have not written for a while, because I was struggling with the functions of the old blog. Finally, I hope this will work better and I will just see whether otherwise I might go for Mobile Me, but we will see.
I am feeling rather bad today because of my cold and sinusitis. Nevertheless I have found some time in between to take some pictures.