A short time ago, Andreas sent me the following email:

Hello Roland,

today, I write about a totally different event. I occasionally manage my girl-friend’s affairs and therefore sometimes organize a concert for her. Being an “opera singer poaching in diverse genres”, she also – along with opera pieces and classical concerts – has an evening about Zarah Leander in her program. Knowing that you are rather interested in art, I thought maybe I should not leave you in the dark about the evening on April, 13th, in the Gasteig “kleiner Konzertsaal”. I would be truly glad if you found the time and inclination to go and see the performance!
Andreas

Andreas Lehmann is an old acquaintance of mine. Time and again, our paths met. Decades ago, it happened at IXOS – that was during the “wild times” of the “new economy”.  IXOS was a very special DAX- and NASDAQ enterprise. The last time chance brought us together was during the “ISARNETZ – die Münchner Webwoche” in 2012. All of a sudden, we sat facing each other on the board for deciding who was to get the “Isarnetz Award”.

Of course, I will follow his invitation. Here is the text informing about the event. I find it truly exciting!

Zarah Leander returns to Munich!

To be sure, it is not the Diva – whose Munich performances probably were more than 70 – herself. Standing in for her, the ”Duo InterMezzo!“, starring singer and author of the work Tatjana Conrad, are preparing to back-trace the great star under the German heavens of the 1930ies.

On Saturday, April, 13th, 2013, Tatjana, whose adopted home is Berlin, will present her theatrical jewel „If you want to see a star, look at me! The light and shadowy sides of Zarah Leander“, directed by Philip Lüsebrink in the Gasteig Kleiner Konzertsaal. The role of Arne Hülphers, who was the third and last husband of the great chanteuse, will be played by David Grant.

Who was Zarah Leander? Mythos. Diva. Well, that much is certain. Culprit? Victim?

<The two artists invite you to investigate those questions together with them and finally, perhaps, not really come up with an answer, but a little more understanding for the star who graced the heavens of the “Third Reich”. You will not have any reason for sadness – on the contrary: Conrad and Grant want to tell you in words and sounds how this woman captured her audience and they wish for her humour, charm and wisdom to also spread a little shadow and light over the evening.

Besides musical surprises, earworms such as ”Eine Frau wird erst schön durch die Liebe“ and ”Yes, Sir!“ will contribute towards ”Ufa Nostalgia“ in the same manner as ”Waldemar mit dem schwarzen Haar“ and evergreens like ”Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen“ and ”Sag’ mir nicht Adieu“.

This and some more “hurly-burly” will await you on our concert evening. We want it to be a musical- historical “red carpet” that might reach the audience via memories of the great Zarah Leander.

Consequently, I will be at the Gasteig Kleiner Konzertsaal on April, 13th, and I look forward to a very special evening. It would be doubly nice if I were to meet a few friends, as well! So why don’t you come – I am sure it will be a great evening.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

Today, I had another discussion with friends who feel desperate about the stability of our currency. One function of money is to transport values into the future – and by now, the future is “Greek”.

Wise people discovered this a long time ago and therefore came up with their own Solar Riester concept. In this case, the winner is the German Michael directly, instead of around the detour of political distribution. We are talking twenty years of secure retirement money for the capital you invested and no government can abolish its debt with just a stroke of the pen – as the Greeks already show us.

Mind you, I believe you should calculate with no more than ten years of uninhibited money flow and also with some cuts in contracts already valid. The social pressure will increase, which is in accordance with the concept of an Augsburg enterprise: “I cannot make money with my roof and let the people living under it pay the price, can I?”

Of course, you should buy realty without using the Riester legislation, because otherwise they are truly immobile and cannot even be exchanged for the flat you will need when you enter the third phase of your life, because it is more suitable for senior citizens.

But the true winner is the marriage Riester concept. “Investments” into your shared future with children, hiking tours, evenings to play, shared visits to the cinema, taking responsibility for others and also letting others take responsibility for you – ethics, no gold in the safe because you were scared, no cat gold on the raw material market.

Time for your partner, time to ponder on your own development and to think about what others discovered about you.

I wrote a small book on meditation: “How to lengthen time“. I think this is the true meaning of the Riester legislation: to fill the time you have anyway with the sort of careful life that makes sense.

wl
(Translated by EG)

Last Tuesday, Wilfried Bommert of the WDR was our guest at Unterhaching. Wildfried Bommert is a well-known expert when it comes to “feeding the world”. He also published several books on the subject. Currently, he and a few partners are establishing the Berlin  “Institut für Welternährung”.

Our last presentation in the series “living and surviving in a sustainable way” was yet again another highlight of the 2012 IF Forum. Herr Bommert deliberately kept his presentation very short and concise. We had planned this, because, after all, we wanted to produce an attractive video recording for Youtube as an extra value.

I think we succeeded. Every single sentence uttered by Herrn Bommert was right on target. Without employing unnecessary emotions and questionable judgements, he reported facts in a very objective way and came up with simple, logical conclusions.

Consequently, there was a long discussion after the presentation. It was extremely constructive and passionate. And we agreed: the messages sent by Herrn Bommert are important. He demonstrated in a very simple and rational way how feeding the world dangles on a thin string. And how easily this string could and perhaps will break.

However, Herr Bommert also showed us ways to change matters. And he also showed us that it is, indeed, possible for us to prepare for the time after our stupid and eventually fatal economic habits will have caused a collapse. Consequently, his finishing lines after a very thought-inspiring list of facts and judgements were rather nice and optimistic.

With Vienna sausages and meatloaf (of course from the butcher Schlammerl of Ottobrunn), we spent quite some more time discussing things in small rounds. And finally, when the hot spiced wine and ginger bread were served – also from a local bakery: Götz of Taufkirchen – the general atmosphere was one of courage in view of a possible future and joy about all the interesting information and the culinary delicacies.

I already look forward to watching the video recording by Friedrich Lehn. As soon as it is finished, we will make it available for you on all our diverse Youtube channels.

RMD

Here are a few pictures to refresh your memory and maybe arouse your appetite for the video.

Wilfried Bommert talking to Mr. and Mrs. Gerlach. Thomas Gerlach works for the Bayerischer Rundfunk. He was the one who first introduced Herrn Bommert to me.

The introduction to the presentation. It will start right away …

As so often, all pictures were taken by our Rolo Zollner.

Immigration

Since I myself am now also an immigrant, I made myself knowledgeable on the subject.

For information about Australia as an immigration country, you might wish to start with the Victorian Immigration Museum. Up until the 1960ies, the government encouraged Australian citizens to talk to friends or relatives in Europe about immigrating to Australia.

Without the immigration waves between the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries, the conquest of this huge country would not have been possible. (It is a separate story how the rich Aborigine culture was almost totally destroyed in the process).

By now, much has changed. To be sure, in absolute numbers, Australians with origins in Europe and the USA are still the majority. But immigration from India and, above all, China, increases considerably.

A few days ago, there was a long article in the local newspaper „The Age“, announcing that apartments in a new building in the district of Glen Waverly were open for inspection on the weekend (that is standard procedure if someone wants to sell or rent out property: a certain day for inspection of the objects is set, and then they are sold according to the principle „first come first serve“). For the agent, it came as a total surprise that the interested parties were almost exclusively Chinese. Some of them were actually prepared to pay up to 40,000 $ above the asked price for a certain apartment. The fact that 16 apartments were sold for a total of 40 million dollars on that day shows how solvent the interested parties were.

By now, the ratio of Australians with Chinese origins (who have a permanent permit to stay) in those 15 districts of Melbourne where Chinese like to live is between 27% and 16%. According to a survey, these districts are chosen because they have good schools, good public transport and an active Chinese community. For the Melbournians of Caucasian descent, this situation is a challenge, because they witness how – right under their noses and quite obviously for everybody – Melbourne is changing. Unfortunately, it also causes numerous racist escapades.

The name of the first Chinese school in Melbourne is quite remarkable: „Xin Jin Shan Chinese Language and Culture School“. Xin Jin Shan roughly translates into ”New Golden Mountain“. Incidentally, that is the name the Chinese gave the Australian gold mines in 1850 to distinguish them from the Californian gold mines that were running dry at the time. Those were called Jiu Jin Shan (”Old Golden Mountain“).

Mind you, today the majority of modern Chinese who immigrate to Australia are no longer looking for their one chance in life; they are already a success and wish to secure and maintain their prosperity.

Downtown Melbourne

Here is a totally different issue: to be sure, we live quite nicely in the outskirts of Melbourne at Williamstown, but downtown Melbourne (also known as CBD “Central Business District”) has an inimitable flair. In fact, it can even hold a torch to Paris.

Traffic is more or less what you would expect to find in a city with 4.5 million car enthusiastic citizens. Even a reasonable public transportation system, along with the fact that one hour parking at the garage is 16 $ and a parking ticket costs a minimum of 180 $ do not seem to make any difference. In between the densely packed cars, you will frequently find bike couriers maneuvering their way through the traffic. They must either have finished all they ever wanted from life and are thus ready to die, or else are practicing for the next Tour-de-France.

Information for all car drivers: in the city centre, you will find so-called Safety Zones where you will have to use the left (!) lane if you want to turn right – it is the notorious Melbourne ”hook-turn“. It is supposed to make it possible for those on the right lane to go ahead unimpeded; however, it will only work if the first driver who wishes to make a turn starts in Formel-1 fashion; if he fails to do that, there will be an ear-splitting signal-horn concert, because, naturally, nobody behind him wants to remain sitting in the middle of the crossing.

Many houses in the city centre were built in the middle of the 19th century, when Melbourne was the world’s richest city. Of course, this was due to the gold rush – at the time, around 1/3 of all the world’s gold was mined in Australia, with the most yielding gold fields in Victoria, not far from Melbourne. To this day, this prosperity is obvious if you look at all those noble bourgeois and business houses.

The special flair of the city centre is also due to the arcades and lanes, the creative (sometimes also endearingly scurrilous) shops and the thousands of bars, coffee shops and restaurants. The most beautiful and elaborately decorated one of them is the Royal Arcade.

The Royal Arcade is guarded by the biblical giants Gog and Magog.

Apparently, some of the arcades in a side lane simply came into being because the owners of the restaurants and bars joined forces and had some protection against rain spun over the street; all you need after that is a few chairs and (in winter) an electric heater and the place will quickly be so crowded at lunch and in the early evening hours that you can no longer pass.

The place is particularly full on Fridays after 4.30 p.m. – because that is when almost all employees working in the CBD offices go to the pub for a pre-weekend drink. Now, in spring, you can hear street musicians playing at almost all corners. To me, it seems that the quality of the music is considerably better than, for instance, in Munich. In Australia, Blues and Country are particularly popular.

Chocolatiers and candies shops are currently very much loved in Melbourne. In fact, the Melbournian love of sweets sometimes borders on the bizarre. For instance, there is an Italian restaurant in Carlton where you can get “Chocolate Pizza“.

In the CBD, there are excellent restaurants serving Mediterranean cuisine (Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Moroccan,…). Melbournians are enthusiastic about European cuisine – if you want to eat out for dinner, you have to make a reservation no matter where you are going.

For the critical immigrant from Munich, it remains to be noted that the price-performance ratio cannot always come up to Munch standards. To make up for it, many restaurants and bars have the sitting-room atmosphere of first-class English pubs.

I will be back with my next report – No Worries

JRO
(Translated by EG)

IF blog is now in the middle of its Summer Slump . I am staying near the beach for two weeks, seeing to duerre.de. And I add a few “catch phrase articles” to the “keywords”. Today, I will write about the “Zeppelin”:

I never dreamed of having a camper or a yacht. Regardless of me actually appreciating the Nomad life very much. Luxury cars, too, are something I can easily ignore. But there is still something I would like.

I would really like to have a zeppelin. Now that would be it: a zeppelin for sailing over the land, the mountains and the ocean. With a flat hanging down from its gondola. Said flat would have a small kitchen, a comfortable bedroom and a salon. The salon would have to have glass windows on all sides. Perhaps even a floor of glass. And, of course, there must be a nice big outdoor platform. Just like there must be a steering bridge for the pilot.

A zeppelin, moving quite slowly and being driven by the wind without any noise, like a balloon. But it would also have to have a powerful motor, to enable it to glide through the air at a speed of 100 km (?) per hour.

It would be best if my zeppelin were powered by solar energy. And, of course, my zeppelin would have to have a small bike garage.

Using my zeppelin, I can always travel ”as the crow flies“. That would mean I could travel quite far, even at “only” 100 km/h. It would be the most efficient way of “slow travelling”.

My zeppelin would also be able to land and start on meadows. Or perhaps only drop anchor. So that I could get up and down using a gondola tied to a rope. And provisions and bikes would be sent up and down at a hook.

Travelling over the oceans of this world, I would then look down on the luxury yachts of the rich. And once in a while, I would accompany them on their travels. And over the land, I would occasionally sail over the motorways and look down on the big cars standing bumper to bumper.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

I have now been staying at this wonderful place directly near the coast since Friday. At night, I hear the sound of the ocean.

In the daytime, I sometimes sit in the sun and sometimes in the shadow. My daily experience is of the power of wind and waves and I enjoy the fruits of the land. A little riding my bike and a little swimming. That is it. And I am so very lazy and content.

No – I am not totally content and lazy. I notice that it has been quite some time since I last wrote anything on duerre.de. In particular, I have recently neglected my “keywords ” on that site. Those are the words that, for some reason or other, give me pause.

Consequently, I will now, during this vacation, deal with the keywords on duerre.de. I want to put several more of those to “green”. And whenever I very much like an article on a new keyword, I will publish it in the IF blog. Which makes life considerably easier for me, because it saves a lot of time.
Because I want to be lazy …

RMD
(Translated by EG)

“8% interest is too much for the Southern European nations“. – “If the Euro fails, Europe fails“. What pitiful sentences!
Yet the historical truth is so near. Firstly, the ratings of the Southern countries (and of others, too) were certainly wrong. The agencies gave their readers the wrong impression of security and should be admonished for it. But they certainly should not be admonished for now slowly approaching the truth.

As to the market: now, as they took off the blindfold, the players on the market want to get rewarded for the risk they took. Well, to be sure, this is now the only way to wake the political classes from their dreamy fantasies: I do not believe in < self-imposed moderation as Germany propagates it. But considering the moderation effect of interest rates, I would be quite optimistic.

A consequence of this would be that the gentlemen JunkerHollandeMontiundCo would not get interest assistance. But, ladies and gentlemen, feel free to put all your – certainly considerable – wealth into southern state government bonds.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be a mouse and listen? Which government bonds do Roth and Steinbrück buy? Do they really, out of sympathy, only buy those from Greece, Portugal and Spain? And then, when finally the entire mountain collapses, we will dance Sirtaki with Anthony Quinn: “Don’t be sad, dear boss, life is too short”.

In order to show the truth about what nations can stomach and what they actually did stomach in the past, you can look at the figure below. It shows 10 years of government bonds and I took it from Markt-Daten.de.

In the past, many nations successfully coped with higher interest rates, for instance the FRG when we had to finance the re-unification. I remember well the malice at the financial centre of London when they saw our high interest rates – did any of them volunteer to help us finance them? No. All over the financial centre of London they were quite happy with the high German interest rates.

But now let us enjoy the life of this summer, all the Junkers, Roths, Steinbrücks, Trittins and the other good people! This is the end of investment, the end of the film, Anthony Quinn and the duped financier. There is no alternative. Here we have life without old age, without civilization, living now and ignoring tomorrow… how thoroughly nice and absent-minded.

wl
(Translated  by EG)

Save the date – Make a note!
June, 24th, 2012   

(how about you register right now!)

June, 24th is Barbara’s birthday. We want to celebrate it. She celebrates because she is still so young, not even 60 yet. We both celebrate because we feel healthy and well. And because we are content with our lot.

We would like to have many of our friends with us. All those who like us and are close to us. We have not yet decided on the exact itinerary for the party. The program is still in its planning phase. But we already know that we will start in the afternoon, at four o’clock.

The end will be around midnight. We want it to be as uncomplicated as possible. With good food and beverages. And with a lot of very special music.

We can easily do without presents or other kinds of gifts. We have all we need. Besides, we will soon move. That will be bad enough without some additional stuff to carry. Owning too much is a true burden, as I am sure will be brought home to us when we move from our huge house to a smaller house.

Consequently, I would ask you to bring nothing. Just bring your good mood. And if you really have to bring something, then only bring something to eat or drink. Such as wine or chocolate. But, please, buy moderately!

Above all, we wish for nice weather. If that is what you bring, you will be more than welcome. Because it would mean we can make good use of our huge garden.

I like many people. Consequently, I will invite many people. Most of the invitations will be sent by email. I will be very diligent about it. Since, however, I am not quite as well organized as I would like to be, I am sure to forget some of you.

There is no doubt that some of the people I am going to forget are quite dear to us. Which makes me truly sad. I would ask those I “forgot” to forgive me. Please do not hold it against me. Instead, why don’t you just invite yourself! Just take all the steps as described underneath.

Here we go: If you feel dear to me and wish to come, please send an email (E-Mail) and put your name here (http://www.doodle.com/qq6w5bb2s4r7qmnt). I would recommend you write both your first and second name, because I know many people with identical first names. And please do not forget to click on the checkmark – this will make the list nice and green.

I will send invitations starting next Saturday, June, 2nd. But do not hesitate to register right now!

Because we need to plan how many barrels of beer and wine and other beverages we need. And we also have to see that there is enough food.

Now I hope for a warm summer night suitable for a lavish celebration with music, food and drink. And I look forward to seeing you all. If you all come, there is no doubt it will be a nice party!

RMD

(Translated by EG)

As far back as I can remember, I have always loved shorts. Even when I was at school, in summer there was nothing else an option but wearing the leather shorts. Even when it rained. We are talking the 1950ies.

Then came life as a student and a professional. And the shorts disappeared from my life. With the exception of sports and at home in the garden or when camping, it was out. Because some way or other, it was taboo to go to work wearing shorts – let alone if you went to a business meeting with a customer.

How I often envied the girls when they whirled around wearing short skirts or airy dresses in summer!
Consequently, I will now practice equal rights – and I have the best of intentions to do without the long leg cover this year whenever the temperatures halfway allow it.

If there is anybody who feels disavowed  having to see me in shorts and with unprotected legs, I hereby already ask their forgiveness.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

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