Blogs from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Europe - page 6

Have you ever heard of cities like Bielefeld or Stemwede? OK, Bielefeld is a bigger city, but Stemwede. Being german, I myself (Nina), had to look it up on a map. OK, it is "somewhere in the north" but honestly I had no clue where. Well, and Bielefeld is a city you only go to when you are born there, when you have family relations or when you work at Dr. Oetker ;-). As our spiritual master Paramahamsa Vishwananda was giving Darshan in Stemwede, we were ready to visit this not so well known region. Originally, we had planned to go camping at the beautiful looking Dümmersee, a holiday destination. But with a wet tent from the previous night and more rain and storm about to come, we decided to go for a hotel room. Well, ... read more

In late July I went on a two-week Satipatthana retreat with my friend Christiane. The retreat was intended to explore the Satipatthana Sutta, a text describing the foundations of mindfulness. I guess most of my readers have heard of mindfulness before: it refers to non-judgementally drawing one’s attention to the experience as it arises and being present in the moment. We can be mindful in whatever we are doing, be it talking to another person, doing the dishes, or writing an email. According to the sutta, mindfulness can be the direct path to enlightenment, or the termination of all suffering. Thus, the mental capacity of mindfulness plays a key role in Buddhist practice. It is always available, but must be cultivated systematically, and for this the Satipatthana Sutta gives instructions. According to the sutta, the four ... read more

Major props to Clarion Frankfurt - when I checked out I got a very heart happy birthday from the staff at the desk. Again, the area might be super dodgy but the hotel itself I can't recommend enough. The same, sadly, is not the case for Flixbus. If you're in a rush or have a lot of baggage, save yourself the potential hassle. Please. Bus was 50 min late today. I heard "5 more minutes" 4x from the employee at the station. Funny, I heard that a lot in Nuremberg too when the bus was 70 min late. I was giving it 10 more minutes before I was going to march into the ticket stand, cancel my ticket, walk back to the train station and pay the 40 euro to take a train to Cologne instead. ... read more

I am still on the train, and am going to attempt to bust out another entry for this rather nifty city. I must say in terms of the actual city, I wasn’t overly impressed by the majority of the architecture, most of it seems like many other generic cities, albeit with some old and impressive buildings interspersed with more modern buildings. My primary motivations for visiting this place were to see an old friend of mine, and of course to see the Cologne Cathedral. My kiwi friend, Erin had moved over to Germany with her German boyfriend of whom she’d met while she was living in New Zealand, and whilst he was travelling within New Zealand. She’s spent about 6 or so months living in a town called Euskirchen, not too far from Cologne. She has ... read more

Kisbee was very keen and ready for the off this morning. Last time out was in the Lake District in May when the ignition lock was failing so Kisbee has been in the garage and is now very much good to go. Weather forecast was rain at 7am and again at 10am. They were right about the 7am but fortunately wrong about 10am and we had a really lovely sunny day. We headed up the steep hill to Solingen. 1 in 10 (or 10% for my younger readers), I sat well forward, as one does uphill on a horse, to make it easier. We are after all between us up to poor Kisbee's weight limit. Bob found our way through this quite large town with the help of Tomtom which has a special "Bob-made" bracket on ... read more