Thanks for All the Fish

Although we love to sleep in on Sunday mornings, we decided last night to be sensible and mature and get up early enough to go to a nearby flea market and then to the gym.

We actually managed! After a quick sensible breakfast of muesli with cranberries in some yoghurt, we packed our gym bags and left. Schatz, like most every other man I know, is not very keen on shopping. Unless it's for food. Anyway, he too wanted to have a look at the flea market.

And it was crowded! It seemed as if twice the sellers were there this morning than usual. The sun was shining, the punters slowly walked - nay, were pushed by those behind - along the stalls. There wasn't that much interesting ware, though.

Except maybe for the yardsticks, but we do have a good collection ourselves, really.


Until we reached the rope seller. No, not Monsieur Leclerc disguised as a typical rope seller, but a supplier of all types of ropes, from hemp via sisal to artificial fibre. Sisal also is called sisal hemp, by the way, but it is not hemp but stems from the Agave sisalana. They just called everything hemp ropes in the past as hemp was for centuries a major source for fiber for ropes. The same, by the way, also applies to Manila hemp. Neither are therefore acceptable for Early Medieval re-enactment.

Anyway, we needed more than just a few meters, not just for us but also for some friends of ours. His roll held about 200 meters which was about double of what we were looking for. Schatz and I discussed buying it all, but balked at the amount of money it would cost. The seller overheard us, of course, and came with an offer that we couldn't resist, and so now we own a large roll of rope. Enough for us and To&Bi and possibly our next tent.

200m of hemp rope plus some tarred hemp cord

One thing I've learned: some things you never can have enough of...

From the flea market, we went straight on to the gym. Warm-up on the stepper (I hate that thing), then a round of machines to do all sorts of strange things to muscles I have never heard of. I can handle a lot of things but the following machine really has me going.

lateral deltoid machine

The first time I tried this, without any additional weight to pull, my right arm sort of pushed up the roll, my left arm just stared at me and said wordlessly "WHAT?". It simply did not know what to do. I had to literally tell the muscle in my shoulder and upper left arm to lift that roller bar in a weird outward move. That first day I would manage a lift or two and then had to stop. By now, I can lift 5 kilograms (which is the machine without any additional weight, so it's really zero) 13 times without interruptions. Yippeekayay!

Bah! Schatz does 20 lifts at 7.5 kg. I'll have to do something about that.
Like make him watch this YouTube video:



Anyway, I stopped after one round on the machines and went to the studio part of the gym where, mornings and evenings, all sorts of courses are given. But now it was quiet and I had the mirror wall all to myself. I have started to do Pilates, and in a group there isn't always time to really work out all the details of an exercise, and that's what I focused on today. I'll see Tuesday morning at the next Pilates session, whether it helped.

While Schatz was working through a second round of the machines, I decided to cycle a few miles. Which is pretty boring, unless you catch a good documentary on the tv above. Fortunately they do have the Phoenix channel - German public tv documentary channel. Anything from science to natural wildlife to interviews to history. The other day it was a documentary on Gagarin, today is was German history of the early 1930's.

Back home, Schatz started contemplating what cake(s) to bake. It's his birthday tomorrow and it's customary to offer cake to the co-workers on your birthday. He rather wanted to play his newly bought pc-game and so kept juggling plans but in the end he baked two cranberry cakes - one with chocolate and one without.

Cranberry Cake Schatz Style

Before the cake, though, Schatz prepared dinner (okay, I helped with the veggies). First he harvested new potatoes from the balcony. No no, I'm not kidding.

Balcony Potatoes

Some months ago, he planted a couple of potatoes that were about to rot to hell and back in a plant box on the balcony. Today he figured they were ready, and they sure were!

Foiled Wolffish

With them, we had some wolffish (Seewolf in German, falsely also called Steinbeißer) fillet, baked in the oven inside a foil bag with spring onions, chili, basil, garlic, thyme, rosemary and a touch of sage. And some zucchini and aubergine ratatouille.

Fillet of Wolffish with New Potatoes and Ratatouille á la Sorte

A glass of Chardonnay or two accompanied the meal quite well, and so did the after-dinner whisky, a 12-year old Caol Ila Single Malt.

Caol Ila - from Islay

Sláinte! Here's to Schatz!