Ich ass einen Berliner

And Stefan ate one too.

He turned up late morning unannounced just to say hello as he was passing. Stefan is the young electrician who did miracles in late spring last year, on completely sorting out our fusebox and managing the fitting of our solar PV units, as well of course of the entire jumble of controllers and the Mercedes Benz battery. He took a look at his work again, while drinking the first mandatory cup of coffee, nodded and said: "I'm still really proud of what I did".

Stefan is in the process of taking over the business from his old-aged boss and trying hard to fit in completing his "master craftsman" course with his young family and far too much work and too many new enquiries. In all sectors of building/craftsmen, demand exceeds supply. But he has to do those hours at the school desk as he can't legally run such a business without the master certificate.

While he was there, another visitor turned up who I didn't know but Angie had told me would be coming. He turned up 2 hours early and while she was away walking the dogs. As I wanted to get Stefan to look at something quickly and he never stands still for a second, there resulted in some hopping around. I phoned Angie and she was home 15 minutes later and I could then work with Stefan on the problem.

We didn't find a solution but gave up as it was freezing cold outside where we had to work and without gloves. He will work on finding a good solution, We returned to the kitchen to warm up, fill his coffee cup for the X time and saw a pile mountain of pastries on the cooker. And we dug in.

When Angie does her sports thing 2 or 3 times a week, she always takes a sauna too. Always the same bodies - Monday night just female but otherwise mixed. One evening there is a guy who she always gets advice on about our hens & geese. He has a sort of smallholding and loads of animals running around and slaughters and sells poultry, eggs, even makes salami from his sheep.

Last week he asked Angie if he could have 40 of our chicken eggs as he wanted to see if he could hatch some hens that would produce bigger eggs than his girls produce (our eggs are generally big). So Sunday she took him the eggs to the sauna, but not in it, and in return, he said he was going to a baker today and would drop by on his way home. Once a fortnight, he collects sacks of product the bakery hasn't sold and it includes pastries from the previous day. So while he and Angie sorted out the bread, Stefan and I consumed the day-old goodies.

Carnival is coming to a climax in Germany and it's the tradition to eat doughnuts. They are called "Krapfen" in Bavaria but "Berliner" in most of Germany They may also be called Kreppel , Kräppel, Krebbel, Puffel and even more regional names. Primarily filled with red jam in the north, yellow jam in the south but also with creams, custards, eggnog type liquor, chocolate or if you want to play a trick with mustard, wood shavings or similar.

Our selection also included strawberry roll slices, poppy seed pastries, chocolate filled pastries ....... and you may even spot the foot long sheep salami that the visitor gave us.

And as fast as the visitors came, so they went. Stefan to his next job and the other to collect up his lambs that are to be collected this afternoon for slaughter.

Times like these that vegetarianism has its attractions.

I am leaving my Reno, Nevada teacher, Evelyne to correct my spelling of today's title. I still don't know if I have passed my German language test. She told me off yesterday for my Latin title.

Ass is actually written with the strange German letter for "double s" - "ß". Aß comes from the simple past tense of the verb "essen", to eat.
Ich esse (I am eating) Ich aß (I ate).

We will soon have all Brits taking their cakes and eating them but IN DEUTSCH BITTE.