Late summer in Germany is back to normal, following the sweltering heat of the last three months. A pleasant 26 degrees Celsius and already cool nights of around 14 degrees. We’re prepared for anything, though, and I will shed a tear or two in memory of the heat. I’m a sun-lover through and through.

Thomas really did himself a favour last year with his new drip irrigation system. His plants are looking absolutely splendid and are competing to see which can bloom the most. There’s a constant buzzing and humming all round, and I have to be careful not to disturb all the insects whilst taking photos. I will defininetly coming back later this month …

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My wife and I spent our summer vacation this year on the Polish Baltic coast. It was a welcome relief from the unbearable heat in Central Europe. As the 8-hour drive seemed a bit too long for us, we stopped off for two days on the way up in Potsdam, the former royal residence of the Prussian kings, foremost among them Frederick the Great, who shaped the country like no other.

The city is right on the doorstep of the mega-city of Berlin, but has largely retained its old charm, which is no doubt due to the fact that it was part of the former GDR until 1989 and it was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the city’s tourist potential could be fully exploited.

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Over the past month of August, I’ve collected 13 links for my link journal.

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0:0

Before yesterday’s home match, I was already a bit worried, as Essen had knocked out second-division team St. Pauli in the DFB-Pokal at the weekend, whereas we, as everyone knows, lost 0:4 to Leverkusen. Either a win like that gives a team a boost, or they’ll be too tired for their next league match.

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People who live by a river are used to seeing more or less water flowing past them at different times. We live in a city by the Rhine, but not right next to the water, so at the weekend we popped over to the nearby Rheingau to take a closer look at the current drama of the lowest water levels in decades, although the situation has already eased somewhat over the last two weeks thanks to a bit of rain.

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When Robert Birming, following Junited and JulyReply, called for contributions to AuguStory under the heading ‘The Story of your Blog‘, I thought to myself: If there’s one thing I can do, it’s write about my blog … but I found it much harder than I’d expected, simply because I’ve written about it so many times before.

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0:4

It’s been a while since I wrote my last post about a match involving my favourite club, SV Wehen Wiesbaden. I’m not quite sure why, but I promise to do better, as I still have a season ticket and try to watch every home match. I’ve even convinced my wife. She has one now too ;)

The start in the new 3. Bundesliga season wasn’t exactly thrilling. We lost our first home match against Preußen Münster 1–3 right off the bat. I was looking forward to the match because my favourite player from last season, Ryan Johanson, had transferred to Münster and immediately had to return to Wiesbaden for the very first match.
The second match, away against Würzburg, was unfortunately also a disaster. The final score was even 4–0.

Today, however, there was a break in league play, and the first round of the DFB Cup was played. In the pairing draw, we immediately drew a tough opponent: the 2023 German football champions, Bayer 04 Leverkusen! Since the Cup is known to have its own rules, and we put up a really good and “close” Cup match against Bayern Munich last year, some of us were feeling a little hopeful.

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