Ein Jahr im Himmel aber stürmisch am Ende

Meine Engelin, 2011 war wirklich ein Jahr im Himmel mit dir, wir haben so viel zusammen gemacht, dass es ist schwer, das Beste zu bestätigen. Ich versuche trotz unseres Jahr in Frankfurt heute zusammenzufassen.

Zuerst möchte ich über Reisen schreiben. Reisen gefällt dir nicht aber du hast es gerne mit mir gemacht. Ich muss dir dafür ewig danken. Wir sind nach Köln, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Würzburg, Brügge, Dresden, Nizza, Monaco, Mechelen, London (für ein NBA Spiel), Slowakei (dreimal), Norwegen und Ablanque (Spanien) gegangen. Die Reise nach Norwegen war ziemlich hart für dich, aber endlich haben wir sie auch genossen.

Aber nicht nur haben wir gereist. Wir haben auch so viel zusammen in Frankfurt gemacht. Erinnerst du dich an die Rosen bei Palmengarten? Und am Grill, der im Bullworth gekauft wird? Wir sind zusammen zum Schwimmbad gegangen (meistens Freitags abends), wir haben so viele Japanische Restaurants entdeckt,... Kurz gesagt: ich kann nicht mein Leben in Frankfurt ohne dich verstehen. Mit dir wird einfacher, im Ausland zu leben.

Ende 2011 hat uns hart geschlagen. Unser Traum in Frankfurt wird zerbrochen und du musst in April zurück nach Bratislava. Das hat wie eine Bombe in unserer Beziehung gefallen. Plötzlich haben wir bemerkt, alle die Defekte, die wir vergessen hatten. Kleine Defekte sind riesig geworden und nach Vordergrund gekommen. Wörter wurden missverstanden und Stillen haben unerwartete Bedeutungen gehabt. Viele Tränen sind gefallen und schlaflos Nachte sind gekommen.Ich hoffe, nein, ich wunsche, dass wir zusammen alle Schwierigkeiten besiegen können und dass ich nächstes Jahr, in Dezember 2012, wiedermal über ein Jahr im Himmel mit dir schreiben kann.

Danke schön für in meinem Leben zu sein, meine Engelin.

Frankenstein

This semester, in my studies of English Language, Literature and History, within the subject of English Literature, I must read the novel "Frankenstein", by Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel with just 20 years. The novel has been versioned too much and the it goes much beyond the image the cinema, among others, is given to us.

The creature is benevolent at the moment of inception. It is the refusal of other human beings to accept him, starting by his creator, Viktor, what drives into an spiral of crime and violence. At the moment when the creature opens his eyes, it is him the benevolent and Viktor is the one who refuses any contact with him. Such is his disdain that he does not give any name to his creation. It seems that Mary Shelley adopted the idea, quite spread at that time, that society corrupted human beings, who by nature are born benevolent, even in the case of somebody built from corpses.

Nature plays an important role in the novel, which is mainly set in the Alps and Scotland, two impressive landscapes. The fight between the creature and his creator ends in the way to the North Pole, which provides a perfect background, amidst the powers of the nature. In this sense, Frankenstein is a perfect example of a novel from the Romantic movement.

But there are many more features there: feminist argue that the unnatural birth of the creature results in pain and suffering in Viktor, for breaking the rules of nature; the complex narrative structure may imply that the author wants to distance herself from the content of the novel; uncontrolled advances in science, without due care to their consequences, may be openly criticised;...

As you see, much more than a big head with two nuts in his neck.

To Amélie

I first knew of your coming to the world in summer 2008, when your mother had to rush into a hospital after an intercontinental flight to Canada, as she did not know she had Joaquin and you with her. Then, after quite tough pregnancy you were born on 15 December 2008, some weeks before foreseen. But that was not the start of an easy life. You had a very difficult start, you were so small and not yet developed, so you had to stay in hospital some more months. I have saved in my brain the picture of your brother Joaquin the first time he saw you...

But your life was not going to be easy. You were always connected to machines for breathing and for feeding, sleeping was a torture for you. The first time we met, you hardly noticed me, as I could feel how sick you were. But it did not matter; your parents, and everybody around you, gave you all the love they had, because, in your case, a trip between Frankfurt and Mechelen was worth only for touching you, only for getting a smile from you: they were scarce, like diamonds, but true, and one had to keep them as treasures, like diamonds.

Yesterday, though, after months of quite good evolution, which brought some optimism to us, you decided to leave us. Why? Was it written to be your destiny? Were you tired after a tough three years of life? Your brother to be born in a few weeks will not meet you, your brother Joaquin will not see you while both of you grow up, your parents will not take care of you, ..., I will go to Mechelen and you will not be there. The void you leave on Earth, which you created in just three years, is enormous, Amélie, but I am sure you will cover also an enormous void up there in heaven. I hope you can find there the rest you did not have among us.

From there, you will watch us. From now on, take care of your parents and brother as they were taking care of you on Earth.

Now, you have become inmortal, Amélie: I will always have you in my mind.

Tempête parfaite

Parfois on est dans un rêve, où le bonheur nous fait penser seulement au présent et pas à l'avenir. On devient aveugle et uniquement est important le aujourd'hui, où tout est parfait. Toutefois, il y a une semaine une nouvelle nous a réveillé et a changé nos vies. La destruction au weekend a été immense: un trou noir dans nos coeurs, que a absorbé le monde autour de nous. On n'est possible de souffrir plus en deux jours. Lentement, après un lundi horrible, nous avons mis nos coeurs en ordre: les dernières deux jours ont été plus faciles et les sourires ont retournés à nos visages. Mais ça ne veut dire que tout soit résolu. Nous avons encore beaucoup de défis dans l'immédiat mais on ne peut pas souffrir tant. Il ne faut avoir peur: nous sommes ensemble et le temps nous aiutera.

High Tatras, one year later

The silence in this blog during one week was caused by my business trip to High Tatras, in Slovakia and subsequent stay during the weekend in Bratislava. Last year I also made the same business trip to High Tatras, with enormous amounts of snow and other difficulties (see the post http://antsanch.blogspot.com/2010/12/in-slovak-mountains.html).This year was different. My plane to Vienna was not delayed and was not landing amidst a snow storm. I could take the taxi easily and drive without further problems to Bratislava, where I had time for a quick, although not very nice, lunch. Then, we took the van to High Tatras, with no snow in the horizon. This time we took the highway to Banska Bystrica, which was completed just few months ago. One could even smell that it was brand new (like in cars).

From Banska Bystrica to Ruzomberok, we faced some difficulties in going uphill to Donovaly, a sky resort, which were under a snow storm, which took by surprise trucks drivers, which soon found themselves trapped in the snow or trying to go downhill. But our driver is a master of driving under snow; I would like to see some Formula 1 drivers driving in such conditions. For a few seconds, I had the perspective of a truck going backwards downhill and my window was too close to its expected way. There were a few seconds only, but certainly it was an experience hard to forget.The remaining of the trip was easy and quick. Of course we had some snow in Starý Smokovec, but it was fully under control. The stay there was very pleasant, specially the visit to the spa area one day after the sessions of the seminar were over. For the way back, we took the same route and this time the trip was easy... Well, not that easy, in the new highway I mentioned before, we felt the need to stop for a visit to the restroom but the highway is so new that there are no petrol stations yet! So we had to wait 50 kilometres for the next petrol station, in the oldest part of the highway.

Concerning my stay in Bratislava, it was very nice, as usual. I somehow do not feel like a tourist there, even if I cannot feel like a native either. For the first time in my life I ice-skated and I enjoyed like a small boy. I even managed not to fall down a single time and in the end I was able to skate on my own, hands-free and, needless to say, not very fast.

However, not everything those days was nice and wonderful. The weekend was a period of great turbulences in my heart, but that story belongs to a different post...

El cambio climático está aquí

Hoy es 4 de diciembre y todavía no ha nevado en Fráncfort. En mi primer invierno en Fráncfort, en 2008, recuerdo perfectamente la primera nevada: el 14 de noviembre. Y el año pasado por estas fechas, ya me había tenido problemas para aterrizar en Fráncfort viniendo de Malta por la nieve y estaba volviendo de Eslovaquia, de unos días de nevadas de verdad y frío polar. Este año, en comparación, apenas hemos tenido temperaturas bajo cero un par de días y de la nieve, por ahora, ni rastro.

Pero es que no es solo esto. El mes de noviembre ha sido el más seco que se recuerda en Alemania y en algunos sitios han empezado a restringir el uso el agua (supongo que con las lluvias de este fin de semana, esto cambiará). Y al frío le costó mucho llegar: a primeros de noviembre se podía andar por el centro de Fráncfort con un jersey, sin necesidad de abrigo.

Todo esto para indicar que algo está cambiando en el clima. Según la gráfica que adjunto a esta entrada, la volatilidad (o divergencias) de las temperaturas parece haberse disparado en los últimos años, en comparación con los años de los que tenemos indicios (me pregunto quién mediría la temperatura en la Edad Media). No sé si es parte de un ciclo natural de altas y bajas temperaturas o de si el hombre está ayudando a acelerar el proceso, pero está claro que ya no hace el frío de antes. La gran cantidad de contaminación que genera el ser humano (y más ahora, que el "desarrollo" se está extendiendo por Asia, el continente más poblado del planeta) puede tener algo que ver, porque sería muy extraño que llenar nuestros cielos de gases nocivos no tuviera efecto alguno, pues si así fuera los gases no serían nocivos, sino inocuos.
En fin, en conclusión, que negar el cambio climático es, actualmente, de miopes, pero sigo pensando que exagerar sus efectos sea quizá de apocalípticos (también conocidos como asustaviejas). Y a ver si esta semana consigo ver algo de nieve en Eslovaquia.