Its a funny thing to come back to a place; you can leave it for years and years, and fail to give it any thought, yet when you do return, there's an instant connection. Things inevitably change in you, and there's bugger all you can do to stop it. Once you are back, you are back. I find myself reflecting on things I normally over look. Small things, little things. The colour of the leaf of a rose bush; the feel of the road as you drive along; the kind of look people are sporting in the supermarket. Most of all, I keep coming back to togetherness. I'm with my sister and my mother 24/7, we are constantly surrounded by old friends and family, and there's always something going on or about to take place. At ... read more

Die Kaffeedose. The coffee tin. I'm in love with it the second I pull it out from the shelf. It feels right; its the right height, width, depth; it has the right colours; the right shape. It will be perfect for i-have-no-idea-what. The lid is dark brown, just like the Kaffeedose that used to sit in the cupboard above the kettle in my Oma's little kitchen. And the lacquer on the main body of my Kaffeedose is a shade of white that I forgot still existed. It has painted flowers and birds on it, like botanical specimen drawings. Like I said, its perfect. I line up at one of the Kassen, cash registers, in the busy Dallmayr foodhall. The lady in front of me orders 700g of Arabian blend for her perculator; the one before her ... read more

I'm sitting with my back facing the front of the train; we are whizzing along, passing meadows and canola fields. A few shopping bags sit at my feet. When the regional express is in fact going 'express', it feels as though I'm in a time machine. The windows here on the upper level slope inward; the colours and impressions blend together and I'm transported, well, literally. I am, in a way, travelling in a time machine. Its been a while since I've been down south in Germany, yet things seem unchanged, nearly the same. All the oldies constantly tell us now everything has changed, nothing is the same. They lament, frown, throw their hands in the air before clapping them together in utter exasperation. Am I in italy already, I wonder? For an Australian, as we ... read more

A very old friend of mum's meets us at the airport in Frankfurt at some hideous hour in the morning; we are, however, entirely awake and extremely excited. Mum talks of kissing German soil when we land with a big grin on her face, then we clap loudly as the plane slows on the tarmac to indicate the landing was well handled - its something only truely cringe worthly stiff Germans would normally do, but we can't help it. All three of us are German afterall and right now, we want the whole world to know. Its so green everywhere; thick, lush chlorophyll spreads along the Autobahn only minutes from the airport. Its like a mural; the artist has lost all inhabition and splashed shades of deep green all over the canvas as though his pot ... read more

A very good friend of mine wrote me an email after she read my last blog entry about the clown on the streets of Mexico. She said, “Maria, yes there is so much of this contrast in Mexico and I am happy that it is making you feel a lot of different things. But I hope you went away with more than this feeling of helplessness and confusion…” She made me realise that I had missed something very important in my story of the clown. Something that shines through in Mexico and her people much more than the glumness and sadness I had described earlier. What is it? It’s hard to describe, to pinpoint with words, because it is such a simple and beautiful phenomenon. What, what? It’s the purity in watching a young child shriek ... read more