Pianos, Anniversary, WW1

Hello subscribers!

This week, the other one of the joint winners of our latest theme poll went up on the blog, “Dark Tourism & Pianos”. Do go and take a look! It features an intriguing range from piano-shaped tombstones to ghost-town pianos and from a war-trophy piano to a piano used for Christmas carols in Stalingrad. It also features a funny story relating to the piano in the featured photo above. And for the first time I included a little video as well (for download, I couldn’t insert it to play from the post directly), namely of me “playing” an out-of-tune upright piano in Chernobyl by plucking its strings with my (gloved) fingers. The outcome is a kind-of impromptu “avant-garde” ca. one-minute piece that is quite fitting for a ghost-town setting ;-)

The response to last Sunday’s Newletter’s and the previous Friday’s first anniversary post’s call to action, namely to vote for your favourite blog photo, has not exactly been overwhelming, sadly. So let me urge you again: if you haven’t already done so, please go to the post and leave a comment indicating your choice of photo. I’ll let it go for another week or two and will then announce a winner, if there is one, in a future newsletter (so far most people have chosen different photos, only one was chosen twice).

On my main website, the remainder of chapters for the Somme have now been uploaded, so that is finished. I’m currently working on Verdun, and the first few chapters for that are now written, but I’ve still got another three to get done. After that I’ll take a deep breath and look forward to dealing with topics other than WW1. I’ve reached the “battlefield-tourism fatigue” stage.

What else is there to report … Yesterday I had my second Covid vaccination shot, so in a couple of weeks’ time I should be able to go out freely again, AND: make travel plans again. In fact, my wife and I have revived our long-standing idea of visiting Namibia this summer and actually booked flights. They weren’t cheap, but have the advantage of going direct from Europe to Windhoek, so not via another African country (most flights into Windhoek go via South Africa), and they are re-bookable for free, and cancellable for 190€, in case the virus has yet more nasty aces up its sleeve and we can’t go after all.

So much for this time.

Have a good week and stay safe.

Best,

Peter