Friday 31 March 2017

Alphabet Club Catch Up - O

Another week, another letter to catch up on - I feel like i'm getting a bit closer now, but then it's almost April and everyone will be another letter ahead of me then. I better had get to it, right?
Here are a few Owls I worked on in the last years - I really do enjoy owls, sorry, Carla! Actually, in German it's 'Eule', but I just couldn't find something I had stitched that worked in both languages.




Now for ma word of the week, I think this is again something uniquely German, and as I just spent a wonderful weekend in Leipzig (which is in the former 'East Germany' or DDR), I think it is quite fitting - 'Ostalgie'. This is a combination of 'Ost' ('East') and 'Nostalgie' ('Nostalgia').
Now, as you probably all know, from 1949 until 1990, Germany was devided into a West (BRD) and East (DDR) part. And of course, quite a few things were different 'over there' - apart from politics, there were different products, different TV shows, even the people on the traffic lights looked a bit different. And while lots of stuff (again, politics...I don't really want to get into that here) weren't exactly handled 'well' in the DDR and I don't think many people actually enjoyed living under those conditions, nostalgia tends to shed a softer light on things, and today, many people who lived in the DDR (and even some who didn't!) are getting nostalgic for the positive aspects - and so we have a huge market for 'DDR products', shirts with the distinc traffic light guy, revivals of certain brands that were sold only there, TV shows on DVDs...you get the picture. For me (being just born about the time of the reunion) it's quite interesting to get this kind of 'living history' today! 

6 comments:

Linda said...

Love all of your owl pieces Leonore.

Linda

Katie said...

Beautiful owl pieces.

Susan said...

Love the owl bag and all the other ones too. Very interesting word of the week and discussion.

Pamela said...

Owls are popular in Japan. Interesting how new words come into a language!

Brigitte said...

Bei mir ist es ähnlich mit der Aufholjagd, die Monate gehen immer schneller vorbei und immer, wenn ich meine, ich habe ein wenig aufgeht, posten die anderen schon einen weiteren Buchstaben, seufz. The story of my blogging life ...
Deine Eulen sind alle ganz toll, vor allem die gehäkelte Tasche gefällt mir gut.
Aug Ostalgie wäre ich nie gekommen - so was von typisch deutsch.

Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...

The owls are great, love the bag.
I like the word too. I guess it's similar to how our older generation are nostalgic for the war years even though they hated living through them!
I hear that there are still Trabants in the former East Germany? A friend went to Berlin last month and saw some.