weird words

He was checking his selfie game on his phone, arranging his curls & his facial expression.

She was looking at her compact mirror, applying liquid make-up, putting on lipstick & her smile.

They sat only two seats apart but they were totally oblivious of each other and of the family of three sitting opposite them.

He was young and very pretty - alabaster skin, dark curls and a full lips. His long legs spread out, he leaned back into his seat. He hled his phone at the perfect angle, looking at himself full of concentration, his hand messing up his curls and then just for a second he became completely still, his eyes locked onto a spot in the distance, his sensuous lips pouting.

She was a little older, Asian and tired, but that's what the liquid make-up was for. With quick strokes she spread it across her face, taking care to fix the dark circles under her eyes and checking her progress in the small round mirror in her other hand. Sitting up straight, she replaced the make-up bottle with a lipstick and continued her transformation.

Such intimate moments shared with strangers.

Continued from last post:

( Pictures and German )

We spent part of the crazy carnival days away from the crazy going to Hamburg by train. Here is my account of the journey - in German.

( Cut for German: Die Fahrt )

English summary: The local train we should have taken to big city to take the fast train was delayed because people were walking near the tracks. We had to improvise and took another fast train an hour later. Then changing trains there were problems again: the train we caught with not much time to spare turned out to have a technical fault so we had to change again. Still, despite all this enjoyed the comfort of first class train travel.

I am starting this with a map of the three maars in Daun:



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You may know the common German word for lake, which is der See. Yes, it looks a lot like sea, but that's more commonly known as das Meer unless you're being poetic and then you can call it die See. German is NOT straightforward - a claim I've heard recently and which I find a little naive.

To make it all the more complicated there is also das Maar, which is a special kind of lake (and even that is not always true).

The word derives from the dialect of the Eifel region for the lakes of the region and in its most scientific definition it pertains to a broad, low-relief volcanic crater caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption (an explosion which occurs when groundwater comes into contact with hot lava or magma). Thanks, wikipedia! Often, these craters fill with water and then you get a Maar lake, but they also dry out (on their own or through human intervention) and then they become known as dry maars or Trockenmaare.

Among the most famous Maare are three lakes situated in close proximity in the Eifel near Daun. Here is one of them, the Schalkenmehrener Maar named for the village of Schalkenmehren which you can see in the background.



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