There was, of course, not only paddling and looking at scenery and architecture. There was also hanging out to relax. And, importantly: There was coffee, and cake, and knitting.

[caption id="attachment_4817" align="alignnone" width="640"] Cake, coffee, and knitting socks in Torgau - not my knitting, mind you.


With 2019 being the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, and the Most Patient Husband enjoying this style of architecture (I do, too, by the way), of course we had to plan enough time for our visit to Dessau. We did a little walk around the city and then went to visit the houses, which are partly turned into an info centre and partly into a museum, so you can get an impression of how they looked when they were in use originally:

[caption id="attachment_4816" align="alignnone" width="640"] Meisterhaus in Dessau


That was a very interesting part of the journey!

On the next day, we came back onto known territory: last year, we ran out of Saale before we'd run out of holiday time, so we continued down the Elbe to the outskirts of Magdeburg. This time around, though, we knew about the Pretziener Wehr before having paddled past it - and we took a little turn off the river into a flood canal to visit this very impressive weir.

We got stopped by the water levels, though - even for our canoe, it was too shallow for proper paddling. So we left our trusty Serenity and had a little walk.



Which was absolutely worth it. This weir was built in the early 1870s, and it is still in use, having been refurbished (somewhere between conserved and reconstructed) between 2003 and 2010.

[caption id="attachment_4815" align="alignnone" width="640"] Pretziener Tafelwehr


You can read more about the weir (in German only, unfortunately) on the Wikipedia page - and you can watch a video of it being opened during a flood in 2011 here.

Just like last year, we ended our trip in Magdeburg (though this time, we paddled to the other end of the city before stopping). We had a bit of a tour around, especially looking at the Otto von Guericke memorial spots:

[caption id="attachment_4813" align="alignnone" width="640"] Otto von Guericke and the Magdeburg hemispheres.


Since we were there, and it was on, we also visited a pottery market on the plaza in front of the cathedral. There may have been some buying of pottery (very restrained, though, knowing you have to carry it all home yourself makes restraint rather easy)

... and then our tour was over, and we cleaned and dried and folded and packed everything again.

[caption id="attachment_4811" align="alignnone" width="640"] Ready for the trip home... all packed up.


This time, we did a better job packing than the trips before (you learn as you go...) and getting through the train aisles was not a problem anymore. It's still a lot of luggage to handle, and you still need luck to have enough free space to put it, but that we did have and our ride back home went smoothly enough.

It's about 80 kg of stuff taken all together, by the way, with most of the weight being carried on the trolley thing - the boat, the paddles, the tent, and the kitchen equipment including some food. That makes the bulk of our stuff; the two backpacks are at about 15 kg each, and the stray blue IKEA bag contains our personal flotation devices plus some lighter-weight odds and ends, plus things that we need to have handy during the trip.

[caption id="attachment_4812" align="alignnone" width="694"] Our complete tour: a bit more than 330 km in 11.5 days of paddling.


It was a wonderful tour, and I loved being able to just pack up everything, hop onto the train and go home - no annoying fetching of a car from the start point of the trip. Which would have been another day, almost, as well: Going back by train all the way to Schmilka and then by car all the way to Magdeburg, and then home. It was definitely one of our better ideas to get a folding canoe!

Before the summer is all over, and the holiday pics get buried in the digital stack that is ever growing, here is how our paddling trip went.

We started out on the Elbe river close to the Czech border, in Schmilka, and got to enjoy the spectacular scenery there:

[caption id="attachment_4821" align="alignnone" width="640"] From Königstein to Pillnitz - Bastei near Rathen


We had very, very sunny weather, and it was really dry the weeks and months before, so just like last year on our Saale trip, water levels were very low. Which means that we had the river mostly to ourselves, no commercial vessels at all - as the water in the river was too low for them.

That made for very relaxed paddling wherever we wanted on the river, which was nice for us. The sunny weather also meant applying sunscreen generously, trying to get an early start for the longer days, and wearing sunglasses and hats as protection. So this is me, "hard" at work paddling:

[caption id="attachment_4822" align="alignnone" width="640"] Just taking out the paddle after steering...


We worked our way down the river, enjoying every bit of it. On some days, we really worked our way down - there was a headwind quite often. One time we stopped paddling for a short break and stayed completely in place... on a river that was technically flowing. (Not as fast as it would have been with higher levels, but still.) The wind was strong enough to sort of anchor us in place that day...

[caption id="attachment_4820" align="alignnone" width="640"] Wine grows here. As do beautiful buildings.


There was a lot of beautiful buildings as well - usually in scenic places on the higher places, right on the shoulder of the river valley. Wine grows in this area, and we often saw vinyards and wineries.

We made a lot of sightseeing stops along the way, of course - many interesting places with a lot of history are strung along the Elbe. One of them is Meissen (where we did not visit the porcelain manufacture, though, even though I come from a porcelain town - too far out from the river, and too many other things to see). While we had these very low water levels, we also saw marks from past high levels during floods. 2013 was a bad flood year, but in Meissen, we also found this mark from 1501, which was at about the same height:

[caption id="attachment_4819" align="alignnone" width="640"] High water mark at a building in Meißen - dating to 1501, when one of the bad floods of the Elbe occurred.


Another place where we stopped was Torgau, which was also well worth visiting, for the spectacular staircase in the castle alone - called "Großer Wendelstein":

[caption id="attachment_4818" align="alignnone" width="640"] Wendelstein in Torgau


One of the fairy tale film productions that the former GDR was famous for was filmed here: Sleeping Beauty. The actress is in one scene shown walking down these stairs...

Sometimes, with all the bad news coming in from all sides - climate change, weird politics and even weirder politicians, wars, people drowning in the Mediterranean, insects dying - I feel like anything I can do is just so small and so insignificant I might as well give up.

That's not true, though - and one reason I enjoyed the weekend excursion with the BUND so much was that we heard a lot of success stories. Yes, wild cats are still very rare, but they have a better chance now. Yes, it is still too dry in the summer, and water scarcity will become an even bigger problem in the next decades, but there are ways to keep trees alive without wasting water. Yes, there were new roads and new railroads built in the last years that made a huge scar in the landscape, but at least some measures were taken to give the wildlife a chance to cross those roads, and protected areas were enlarged to lessen the impact at least a little bit.

Sometimes it's just small things - small steps. But I try to remind myself that small steps are steps, too. We've switched from carton-packed milk to milk in glass bottles a while ago, and I'm amazed at the difference this made in the amount of our waste. There's still a lot of things you cannot get in returnable or re-useable packaging, especially a lot of dairy products, but every carton not bought - helps.

We've been bringing our own bags to buy loose produce for ages now, re-using the flimsy plastic bags that you get as often as possible. There's still one coming in occasionally, so we won't run out soon; they are small and lightweight, so I tend to stash one or three of them in backpacks just in case I need one when I'm somewhere. There's a sturdier folding bag in my handbag as well, also just in case. Some of the plastic bags, when they start to give out at the handles, get a last use to collect used cat litter or as trash bags for otherwise yucky trash (we usually don't use a bin liner bag).

As paper bags are not so much better than plastic bags, I've been trying to cut down on these too, recently. Most of the paper bags we have coming in are from buying bread at the bakery, and that is very easy to avoid: I just bring a clean cloth bag, and the baker drops the bread in there. No trouble, no fuss, no paper bag. There are still a number of paper bags coming home with me from bakeries, for instance when buying sticky, cake-y things that won't do well in a cloth bag, and they get re-used as liners for the compost bin.

Every bag counts. Every step counts. Even if it's a small one - it is still a step. If we all do the little steps we can, the world will move into the right direction. And while we might not be able to reverse every damage done to the planet, we can still do our bit to save as much as possible!

So what else is there to tell about my Dublin adventures? There was a talk about medieval textiles and textile crafts, which was very well received according to what I heard afterwards. I had the pleasure of sharing that panel with Jeannette Ng, who later during the convention accepted her award for Best New Writer (congratulations again!).

I also enjoyed my two other panels (proper panels, not talks, this time) about archaeology in SFF, and about costume research and documentation.

I also got to meet (and hold, for a short time) this guy:



and I got to meet a real Lady Astronaut, as Dr. Jeannette Epps was at the convention. Which was a "wow" moment as well.

There also was cake (because life is better with cake, even if it is only store-bought chocolate cake from Tesco's), and weird chocolate both from Ireland (Cadbury's Mint Oreo. Delicious, if you ask me.) and from Germany (I brought some Knusperflocken for people to try) and from New Zealand (which will host next year's convention) and, if you are generous in what you count as chocolate, choc-covered malty caramel Timtams from Australia.

Finally, one of the really nice things about WorldCon is how easy it is to meet people, and chat with them, making new acquaintances and learning things about their bits of the world. I was delighted to see again quite a number of people I'd last met in London, back in 2014 (one of whom saved my voice by bringing me a pack of Fisherman's Friends). Even though there's never a load of time to catch up, it was wonderful to see them again and chat. It was also totally delightful to see so many authors, whose work I love to read, and it felt like so many of them stopped at my table in the hall and enjoyed seeing (and, in some cases, buying) something completely different. (Which were the moments when I silently went "squeee!" in the back of my head. As you do. Right?).

All this would never have happened if not for Gillian prodding me to come to London in 2014 (because apparently, London is right around the corner from Erlangen, if you ask an Aussie) and for my wonderful Irish friend helping me out at the table, making it possible for me to sneak away to my programme items, the Escape Artists Live panel, and, occasionally, even to the toilet:



Thank you! (Also, I'm still bad at taking phone selfies. Obviously.)

 

I mentioned badge ribbons in yesterday's post, and some of you may have wondered what that is. This is one of the things I was introduced to back in London, at my first WorldCon, and I had so much fun with them back then already, which was repeated this year in Dublin. But I should explain first...

When you have an attending membership and turn up at the con registration, you are getting a badge with your name on it (or a badge name/alias/nick, whatever you put in the form when you got your membership), where you come from, and your membership number. This is your pass to enter the convention and all its panels and so on.

Underneath that plastic badge, you can stick ribbons - which are printed textile ribbons with a sticky stripe, (hopefully) in the width of the lower edge of the badge. You get "official" ribbons if you are a programme participant, dealer, or otherwise involved with the con; or if you are a Hugo finalist. You can also get ribbons from various other places - from authors, groups or societies, and from individuals who had an idea for a ribbon, had some made and now hand them out to those who ask.



There are some people (especially children) who make it a game to get as many ribbons as they can, and I've seen some kids walk around with a trail of ribbons that was about three times as long as they were tall. My haul was not huge - tiny in comparison, in fact - but each of them made me ridiculously happy. I got the "lack of yarn" handed out of the blue by someone passing my table, and thus could not even tell others who had given it to me, having no clear memory of the person in question. That was different for the "shiny" ribbon, whose maker walked around with a Kaylee parasol, and thus was relatively easy to spot. The TANSTAAFL came, of course, from the Heinlein Society table - it's one of my favourite bits of Heinlein's writing, and I was looking forward to getting one of these even before the con started... and the Cast of Wonders ribbon, obviously, also makes me happy, being one of their narrators.

So. Ribbons. Some don't care for them, some collect them, and it's definitely a thing at WorldCon. Plus they are a good conversation starter should you need one!

Dublin was... exciting, and wonderful, even though getting there was a tiny bit scary - I knew I'd be travelling alone, and taking two large suitcases. Plus a backpack. Plus a handbag... maxing out my luggage allowance on all counts.

[caption id="attachment_4776" align="alignnone" width="412"] Tell me again who is going to be lugging all this to Dublin?


Because I was rather nervous about not making the airport in time, I took a really early train, which meant, of course, that everything went smoothly and I arrived with plenty of time to spend knitting at the airport. Changing trains was also going well - I did have a helping hand for all exits and entrances that involved stairs, and a very friendly couple helped me (and a group of fellow travellers from Taiwan) to pick the right S-Bahn to get to Munich airport, as there were currently construction works going on, mangling the usual schedules. (Things like that are wonderfully reinforcing my belief that most of the human beings on this our planet are lovely people who are willing to help, and happy to make the world a little bit better by their actions. Thank you.)

So... everything went smoothly, we landed in Dublin wonderfully on time, I collected my things and went straight to this place:



which is the Convention Centre Dublin. And then I started getting to work, as in getting my stall set up. I had some help from Gillian Polack, who was one of the volunteers in the Dealer's Hall, helping everybody to find their way around and to get set up. (Of course, as always, I had to hand-write a few of the labels. And also of course, as always, I finished set-up the next morning.)

In the end, the table looked like this - at least it did so at one point, things changed slightly in their layout as some stuff was sold out:



Being at a WorldCon is something lovely, and special, and exciting - and for me, being part of it by having a stall in the Dealer's Hall is something extra-special on top of all the "normal" WorldCon excitement and enjoyment. Every show and every fair has their own distinct flavour, so to say, but I think that the WorldCon flavour is far, far different from any of the other fairs that I have done until now. And personally, I find it very, very tasty.

Speaking of tasty - I was totally delighted when I found out my accommodation came with breakfast included, and actually treated me to the possibility of having a Full Irish Breakfast each day, complete with white and black pudding:



That set me up nicely for the day to come - which was good, because between the programme items I was on, the programme items I got to see, and standing at my table meeting so, so many wonderful people (plus looking at their t-shirts and badge ribbons) did not leave much time for eating!

 

The last part of the excursion was a visit to Hütscheroda - that's a small place in Thuringia which calls itself "the wild cat village".

Wild cats live in the forest next to the village - but these critters are so shy, and so well-disguised, and so quiet that to see one in the wild is an extremely rare thing. So in addition to a small path through the forest, and a longer route if you want to see more of the beautiful landscape, there are a few enclosures with male wild cats (who come from breeding programmes, they are not taken out of the wild). Chances to see one of the cats there are higher - and you are guaranteed to see them three times daily, when it's feeding time.

You also get some info about the cats during this feeding time... and if you are lucky, a photo or two with more or less of the fence visible.

[caption id="attachment_4746" align="alignnone" width="640"] One of my lucky shots - that is Carlo.


If you are interested in wild cats, this place is definitely worth a visit! In addition, they are now having a lynx pair, in hopes of breeding some more lynxes. We didn't get to see these, as they are freshly arrived, but they will soon go into their enclosure.

[caption id="attachment_4745" align="alignnone" width="640"] Wild cats make funny faces, too.