A Quiet Day Here in Zum Stollenkeller. . .

The Swedish Chef and a friend from The Muppet Show. . . My particular culinary idol.

Happy Friday everyone! Not a whole lot to report here at the moment. Picked up the Grand Duchess yesterday evening from the shuttle bus that shuttled her from Chicago-O'Hare, mowed the grass today, and puttered around the house a bit.

Here in the United States, we are gearing up for the long 4th of July weekend that marks our "succession" from British rule in 1776. However, I harbor no grudges. I mean, the nation that gave the world The Beatles, Micheal Caine, Sean Connery, Donald Featherstone, and Charles Grant can't be all bad, right? ;-) The weekend is also seen as the traditional half-way point of summer, which has always struck me as a bit odd since summer more or less begins on June 21st each year. Strange.

The poor Grand Duchess hurt her back weeding the vegetable garden earlier this afternoon, so she's having a rest at the moment before I fix us dinner. We'll probably have it on the foot of our bed as we watch a DVD of those great old Peter Gunn shows from the late 1950s. They just don't make TV programs like that anymore, but fortunately we have Net Flicks! Depending on how Sonja feels later, I might slip back down here for some late night painting, to begin finishing up those last 20 RSM Prussian Fusiliers that have waited so patiently on the painting desk for the last few weeks.

On a related note, The Plastic Soldier Review (the link is at right) will shortly review the newly released Zvezda set of mid-18th century Prussian grenadiers -- Keep an eye out for that one! While I have a self-imposed a moratorium on the purchase of any additional figures until my lead/plastic mountain shrinks a bit, I am very interested to see what the PSR people think about this particular figure set. In general, Zvezda figures are very nicely done, and this latest release could possibly provide a reasonably priced alternative to the various metal figures currently on the market, an important consideration for younger wargamers, those on a budget, or those who wish to "try on" the mid-18th century for size without laying out too much hard earned cash.

Oh yes. There was one more thing. About mid-November this year, the Grand Duchess and I are expecting the arrival of a tiny heir to the Grand Duchy of Stollen. . . In other words, Sonja is just over five months pregnant! I am simultaneously thrilled, nervous, scared, excited, and just about any other adjective you might be able think of. But, from everything I have read on the subject of expectant fathers so far, this is not unusual.

So, besides the usual state of affairs here in the Grand Duchy, we have a bedroom to paint and convert into a nursery, a hospital to tour, a few more routine check-ups, and all of the other usual things you do to prepare for the arrival of a baby. I imagine it will be a terrific period of adjustment, but I'm confident that we'll manage just fine. And time passes so quickly anyway. By the way, Sonja is doing very well, and, her tender back muscles notwithstanding, looks and feels fantastic.

Now, it's off to the kitchen for me, men! Tonight, it's going to be simple -- pasta with some sort of sauce followed by fresh fruit for dessert. Hey, I can't walk in Julia Child's shoes all the time, you know.

Home At Last!!!

Well, after about nineteen hours in transit, I'm back home in Zum Stollenkeller and exhausted. The Air France cabin crews are truly amazing and how they remain so pleasant is anyone's guess, but air travel sure ain't glamorous these days. I don't think I have ever been as glad to get back on the ground and walk off that big ol' jet airliner as I was this afternoon when we landed at Chicago-O'Hare.

So, after deleting more than 800 spam e-mails, sorting through three weeks of snail mail, and giving some love and attention to the Grand Ducal feline, I will have a shower, make some coffee, and head off to bed to watch Cliff Richard in Expresso Bongo from 1960 (I think). Yes, the rock&roll B-movie marathon continues! "We're all going on a summer holiday. No more worries for a week or two. . ."

Sorry, but extreme fatuigue makes one a little strange you know. But tomorrow, the Grand Duchess returns, and all will be right with the world once more!!! Look for some vacation photos here in the next few days plus some teaser shots of the Holger Eriksson cavalry and Garrison artillery crew.

While the Grand Duchess is away. . .

The Grand Duke will play! Sonja is off visiting an archive today, so after a lazy morning with plenty of coffee, a large breakfast, and several hours of German news and culture on the radio (auf Deutsch naturlich!), I've managed to pull myself together to head out and run a few errands. First off is our local internet cafe, but the real point of the trip is to find a card and flowers for the Grand Duchess since tomorrow (June 24th) is our third anniversary.

We already purchased a porcelain tea service for each other while we were in Bremen last week, but I want to have a few additional small things to brighten the apartment when Sonja returns home later this afternoon. Then, this evening, it's off to dinner with a few friends. Tomorrow, we'll pobably kick around Berlin, specifically the Kreuzburg area of the city where Sonja lived for about two years in the mid-90s when she was a graduate student, doing research for her doctoral dissertation. Thursday, I will visit Berliner Zinnfiguren at some point and maybe find some additional figures to splurge on. We'll see.

Yesterday, the Grand Duchess and I toured the city, including the former site of Checkpoint Charlie, Humboldt University, and the large hole in the ground where the East German Palace of the Republic once stood (the former site of the Royal Palace -- The Schloss). We also had a delightful late lunch on the top floor of the Ka De We department, in the former West Berlin. Sonja tells me that the changes in the city over the last ten years or so are hard to fathom. Indeed, there is much high-end shopping along with expensive restaurants, bars, clubs, and cafes in both halves of the once divided city. In the former eastern half of Berlin, most of the buildings have been refurbished or replaced, and many inhabitants of the city are very well dressed and display conspicous affluence even if Berlin has the reputation of being a largely working class city.

For me, it's hard to reconcile the city I am in now with the black and white images of the former East Berlin, which I saw periodically on TV and in news magazines as a child, teenager, and young adult. The changes are simply amazing. But, the Grand Duchess points out that they have come at a cost, and the city of Berlin is now broke, so doing anything else generates considerable discussion and debate among the citizens and city government.

Just a few days remain now before the two of us head home next week. There is still a lot I'd like to see, but time is always a problem, and some things will just have to wait until a future visit. Sonja is already aiming for two years from now (Summer 2011)! Apparently, there is some kind of big grant that she wants to apply for before too long since the cut-off point is 42 years of age. It's some kind of big stipend meant to assist younger female academics. I think she has a good chance given her record of generating funding for her research, but the Grand Duchess tells me that the competition for these grants is stiff, so we'll have to see how it goes. In any case, we'll be back here before too long one way or another, so if there is something I miss, I'll see it the next time around. Ok, I've got some flowers and a card to find. . . Bis später männer!

Hello from Berlin!

The Grand Duchess asked if we could drop by an internet cafe after dinner this evening, so here I am, making an unexpected entry to the GD of S blog. Almost two weeks into my visit, and things have been great. We got back from our anniversary trip over to Bremen and Lübeck earlier today. Neat to revisit both areas, but things have really changed in the 20 plus years since I was last in these two smaller cities. Among other sites of interest here in the Berlin area, we have also visited the old Spandau citadel on the outskirts of Berlin early on as well as Sans Soucci Palace and the extensive gounds around it in Potsdam, both of which were fascinating.

On the figure front, The Holger Eriksson cavalry, mentioned in a previous post, are lovely, and the Garrison Prussian artillery crew were waiting on our kitchen table thanks to our landlady, Frau Grossmann, who picked them up at the past office while we were away last week. Equally wonderful miniatures there. I will take and upload a few photographs in early July once I'm home again. Next weekend, we are off to Usedom on the Baltic coast, to visit the experimental rocket site, where Werner von Braun developed much of the know-how that was later used in the space race of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Best of all, my German is improving by leaps and bounds. The Grand Duchess and her friends here in Berlin have been instrumental in this regard. I'm nowhere near fluent of course, but lots of new vocabulary every day, and the German way of constructing sentences has finally started to make sense. Plus, I find myself understanding quite a bit on TV, radio, and in conversation, even if it is still a bit difficult to say something appropriate! All great fun really, and something that will help to make this trip particularly memorable.

Berlin or bust!!!

About this time tomorrow morning, I'll board the shuttle bus for the ride up to Chicago-O'Hare and this time Wednesday (Berlin time that is), I should be disembarking, collecting my baggage, and stumbling into waiting arms of the Grand Duchess, a weary, jet-lagged man. I'm taking a couple of P.G. Wodehouse novels (Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and one other title) to pass the time since I rarely sleep on long flights: O'Hare-Charles DeGaul-Tegel.

The last few days have been fairly calm with bit of work on the wargaming book project that languished on the back burner during last fall and winter while I worked on that translation. Yes! I managed to write almost 2000 words yesterday afternoon, so another short part is almost done, barring some revision today. And the final twenty RSM Prussian fusiliers all have their tan undercoat and are awaiting their coat of white. Don't know if I'll actually get to any of that step before I hit the sack this evening, but we'll see.

Best of all, the corner room of Zum Stollenkeller that was all wet a week ago has dried out completely. Cheap carpeting, the concrete floor beneath it, everything. And almost none of that tell-tale, slightly damp basement odor either. Hopefully, there will not be any deluges of rain while I'm away. Keep your fingers and toes crossed!

Otherwise, that's about it for right now. I may, or may not, make a few blog postings while in Berlin. It depends on how often we walk to the internet cafe that the Grand Duchess reports is near our apartment. The wireless internet connection there does not work with Sonja's laptop for some reason. Anyway, part of me wants a few weeks away from a computer screen and keyboard. We'll see whether that happens or not, but there will be so many other things to do too, and then there is our trip up to Luebeck, where I have not been for almost twenty years, to celebrate our third anniversary. Where does the time go?

Ok, everyone. See you in July! Paint' em well and roll'em high!

The HE figures have arrived in Berlin!!!

The late Holger Eriksson with a few of his masterfully designed and executed figures.

The Grand Duchess informed me in her e-mail this morning that the thirty Holger Eriksson cavalry and two Charles XII guns I ordered recently have arrived from Sweden. Hurrah! She received a notice in the mail yesterday and walked to the post office to retrieve the package. Later, Sonja opened it to check that everything was ok. Verdict? Everything passed with flying colors. Wow, talk about rapid service! So, that just leaves the Garrison Prussian artillery crew, which will be sent on or about the 9th or 10th of the month. I can't wait!

It's very interesting, this whole notion of rapid, courteous service. All of the companies/retailers I have dealt with in the past three years, since beginning the Grand Duchy of Stollen project, have been great (Tom at GFI, Rich at RSM95, Peter at Spencer Smith, Rob at Garrison, and Peter at PB Toys, et al). The various miniatures I have purchased have all arrived quickly and, except in one instance, undamaged. And these were replaced at no charge just as quickly. Neither has it made any difference where these orders have come from -- Russia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain, or here in the United States. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Back in the early 1980s, when the teen-aged, long-haired Stokes began painting 15mm Napoleonic figures, it was very different as many of you will, undoubtedly, remember. I liken it to the stone-age. You had to write actual, REAL letters, requesting figure catalogs from a given manufacturer or retailer. It took a long time for the sometimes badly mimeographed, unillustrated catalogs to arrive. Sometimes the envelopes arrived opened, minus the requested sample figure or two. We had no internet. PayPal had not been thought of yet. So, you wrote another letter, detailing your order very carefully and including payment with it. I paid for my very modest orders of figures with either a check or money order, sometimes giving my money to either my mother, or grandmother, who then wrote a check for me. And it took weeeeeeeeeks for orders to arrive, even if you paid extra for air postage. And when your order turned up, something was invariably missing.

Given my intital expereince with one Baltimore retailer (The Ship Shop) in early 1984, it's a wonder I even began painting figures at all. Following the Christmas holidays, I made a small order in early January for some 15mm Jacobite French and British Napoleonic infantry as well as some lancers and hussars. When the order finally arrived in March, it contained only the infantry. It took until mid-July to get the cavalry part of the order filled, and that took repeated letters of inquiry and telephone calls to the Baltimore-based retailer in question, plus a letter or two to Jacobite HQ in Britain.

To be fair, I finally recieved an apologetic letter from Jacobite HQ, explaining the various problems -- including a nasty accident suffered by the guy who cast the molten metal in the molds -- that had prevented them from filling a number of orders during late 1983-early 1984. I was obviously not the only one inconvenienced. But all of my letters and calls to the American retailer, who advertized the figures in his ads in The Courier and Military Modeling, went unacknowledged and unanswered. Incidentally, the cavalry figures that finally completed my small order were sent directly from the U.K. free of charge. So, service eventually came from some quarter, but it took too much work, and I never ordered Jacobite figures again. Too bad really, but there you are.

My, how things have changed in the last quarter century. We really have been spoiled by rapid and usually very good service. While the basis of the Grand Duchy of Stollen project has to do with old school wargaming nostalgia, the once slow, at times rather poor, service is a facet of the hobby that I certainly do not miss. It will be fun to get to Berlin, greet the Grand Duchess, recover a a bit from the flight(s), have a cup of real coffee or two , and then set up the thirty Holger Eriksson cavalry on the coffee table to ogle them.

Zum Stollenkeller is drying out!

. . . ok, maybe to quite to the extent of the Namibian Desert pictured above, but we're getting there. I've run and emptied the dehumidifier almost continuously since the water seeped into the basement a few days ago. The water has receded and the (luckily) cheap carpet is drying out little by little. The cooler, more arid weather has undoubtedly helped things out a little bit too. No unpleasant smell, so I think we're almost out of the woods, though whether I have time to set up my table again before I leave for Berlin next Tuesday is doubtful A number of little things to take care of between now and then, as is always the case before you leave town, but there you go.

I did manage to do some painting for about two hours last night -- tan undercoats on those final 20 RSM Prussian fusiliers -- the final draft of Zichenau's 7th (Von Flickenhoffer's) Fusiliers. Later, I watched the DVD that arrived from NetFlix in the mail yesterday. "Beatniks" (1960), a really, really. . . REALLY bad teenage exploitation film, capitalizing on the fear off disrespectful juvenile delinquents at the end of the 1950s. "Beatgirl" (1960) with Bardot look-alike Gillian Hills, Adam Faith, Christopher Lee, and Oliver Reed was much better when I watched in last Saturday night. Can you tell? I've been enjoying old juvenile delinquent films lately. It's just for kicks Daddy-O!

But anyway, tonight I'll finish up the tan undercoat on the fusiliers and get started applying the white topcoat. Probably won't get these all finished before I leave, but most of the time-consuming, tedious painting will be out of the way. When we return in early July, I'll finish these up (no more 80-figure regiments for a while) and move onto the 30-figure regiment of RSM Austrian cuirassiers, which has been waiting on the painting desk since last November. Somewhere in there I need to finish that third squadron of plastic Revell hussars too. And then I've got a 60-figure unit of Huzzah musketeers to paint, and then we'll see where that takes us.