have been listening to gregorian music all day during work: kind of soothing & calming in its simplicity…bought them all at audiolunchbox (another music service “that get’s it”).

have been listening to gregorian music all day during work: kind of soothing & calming in its simplicity…bought them all at audiolunchbox (another music service “that get’s it”).

[[/blog/imgs/die_grosse_stille_detail.jpg]] went out tonight to watch a movie — which in itself is rare, as we rather watch “new” movies on DVD at home than go and sit with 50, 100, or even 200 other people in a more or less (un)comfortable seat, with a guaranteed tall person to come in at the last minute and take the seat(s) in front of you.

what was unusual about this movie was that it was shown inside the university church, the neustädter kirche, that it was shown using digital projection (not a beamer!, we were told), and the movie itself: die grosse stille (or into great silence).

the movie is about the life of the monks of the carthusian order and in particular about life in the mother abbey, the monastery of the grand chartreuse. it starts almost in silence, and we watch a carthusian monks as he prays. the only sound we can hear is the crackling of the wood-burning stove. eventually the screen switches to a closeup of snow-flakes swirling outside the monastery before slowly immersing itself (and us with it) into the carthusian life.

the trailer is very misleading: essentially they have just taken “action scenes” from into great silence. the movie itself is very much different. there’s no commentary. there’s no musical soundtrack, the only sounds we get to hear are the sounds of everyday life in the monastery: monks chanting, the sounds of hair being razed off, steps in a hallway,… a “scene” can take minutes, without much happening.

this all sounds rather boring…it’s not (and i’m not the person enjoying watching water come to the boil, not really). you have to be able to stand silence. this movie will force you to reflect on yourself and what you believe in, to reflect on what you think is important and why. into great silence very subtly takes you by your hand and while your still wondering what this movie is about, you are already captured; you are already wondering what those monks are thinking about, what they are contemplating about; you are already taking part in a two and a half hour meditation…

watch it — if you are up to it.

rainy sunday…take the s-bahn from mannenbach to kreuzlingen and thence to konstanz. continue on to friedrichshafen by the newly installed katamaran service. the trip is quite nice, quite a number of passengers on the kat, but not too many :-)

we arrive around 12:00 in friedrichshafen, almost right at the entrance of the zeppelin museum, our destination for today. inside we are at first quite surprised to see long queues but then remember that is fall vacation time, it’s raining, so what do you do when you’ve got a bunch of kids to entertain? right.

the museum is (as always) rather interesting. i’m still fascinated by the zeppelin concept — i guess if there were zeppelin operated flights, i’d rather take one of those than any of those crammed-and-we-don’t-give-a-fig-about-you-as-a-passenger airliners! alas, not an option (currently)…

up at 7:15, getting everything cleaned up and in ship shape…9:01, we take the RE train from erlangen to nürnberg, then the IC train from nürnberg to stuttgart, switch there to the ICE to schaffhausen and then the S bahn train to mannenbach-saalenstein…we arrive on time in mannenbach-saalenstein

our hotel, the seehotel schiff, is literally just around the corner from the railway station and only a 3min walk. it’s located directly at the shore of the bodensee (“lake constance”) — and from our room at the top of the hotel we have a very nice view across to reichenau and across the lower bodensee to radolfzell.

the weather, having been quite nice so far this week in erlangen, has turned autumnal: fog, an occasional light drizzle. as we are just in time for tea we have the same.

dinner is in the hotel’s restaurant. we are seated in “second row” not at the windows (probably because we are showing up “late”, around 19:30). we take the captain’s dinner, an assortment of local and not-so-local fish, quite nice.

breadmaker arrived today! so: after work, the first deed is to unwrap the beast, clear space in my micro-kitchen, and RTFM for it — for once…don’t want to set the kitchen on fire…am a bit scared by the “caution: gets bloody hot and can incinerate all your possessions” sticker on top of it (okay, i just made that one up, but the sticker said something similar, really). all sounds easy enough and i boldy venture into the unknown…