Audiostretto 59/4/24 English

When bread is baked, as we know it, the outer part of the loaf is logically the most baked because it is most exposed to the heat of the oven. It has to withstand the heat the longest and strongest - until the entire dough is baked so that it is ready for us to eat. Exposed area, we would say. I have observed people who, when it comes to bread, cut off this outer part and don't eat it, simply leav...

Hardly anyone likes to receive it, but we are rather quick to give it to others: Criticism. According to an online source, this is how it is defined: Criticism is the judgement of an object or action based on standards. If we are honest, these standards are very often very personally coloured and are not only often very subjective, but also change relatively quickly depending on the situation and...

It won't be long before the time comes when there will be lots of baking again and plenty of delicious biscuits, gingerbread and all kinds of Advent and Christmas biscuits. While much of it is mainly sweet today, there are also traditional biscuits that contain certain spices. Gingerbread is not only sweet, but also has a savoury flavour, gingerbread has special spice mixtures and cinnamon is an i...

I recently dreamt that I was living with others in a reasonably spacious bathroom. In other words, we had both our sleeping area and the bathroom for personal hygiene in this room. And then we had visitors. All of this in one room. So there was nowhere to retreat to and it wasn't very private either. Nevertheless, it was a place to live, a kind of home and a spatial point of orientation - knowing...

When I was a child, the saying went ‘A real boy or man always has a pocket knife in his trouser pocket.’ I didn't have one back then as a child because it was too dangerous for me. Today, I actually always have such a knife with me - unless I have to travel with hand luggage on a plane, where this is now forbidden. It gets to the point that if you forget it, you feel almost naked or simply not rea...

You can buy cat grass in the shops. I've never done this and to be honest I don't know what it's for. But I notice that the plants in these grass pots are always the same height and dense. It just looks very neat and tidy. If the individual stems weren't so dense, they might break or die more easily and if they were tighter, they might have less nutrients or light. There seems to be a good, optima...

I recently came across a name I didn't recognise: Meremoth. Apparently he was a priest's son among the people of Israel at the time of the return from captivity. As the son of a priest - I assume - he was a priest himself. What a privileged position. His name appears in the context of at least two tasks: On the one hand, he was a witness or responsible for weighing the precious and holy temple ute...

Are there people around you who annoy you, who get on your nerves? I suspect we all know people like that. Sometimes we can't avoid them either. They are people in our own family or at work or in the neighbourhood. Assuming they are not there by chance and there is something like higher guidance, then you can ask yourself: why are they there or why am I around them? Maybe it's just to show us a mi...

Have you ever noticed that the shells of nuts are not the same? A hazelnut has a smooth surface and thus protects the edible kernel. This is not the case with tree nuts or walnuts: the two halves are wavy and their surface is irregular. This is because as the inner shell of the walnut hardens, its shape and structure changes, resulting in an irregular, wavy surface. The hazelnut, on the other hand...

Are you good at proverbs? There are quite a few in our language. As a child - or so it seems to me - proverbs were quoted even more frequently in everyday life and had a stronger presence in everyday life. Today, I hardly experience this anymore and many seem to have been forgotten. Unfortunately. Because they often contain valuable wisdom that comes from the experience of previous generations. On...

If you imagine a fir tree, you can see how the individual branches with their twigs and needles overlap each other from the top, creating a kind of roof which, despite the small width of the needles, provides a certain amount of protection from the rain for everything underneath. This principle also applies to some extent to targets: they are not built seamlessly against each other, but partially...

I'm happy to admit it: I've been a watch lover since I was a small child. I was fascinated by the hands, but even more so by the fact that you were measuring something. There are so many different types of clocks: analogue, digital, colour-coded, binary and many more. Large and small, portable, fixed, etc. What they all have in common is that they are like a thermometer and not a thermostat: they...

You have probably used pliers at home, at work or as a child at school. Their functional principle is based on the law of leverage. They have two opposing handles that are connected to each other around a joint as a pivot point. By squeezing the handles together, the force is transferred to the tips of the pliers and something can be held or squeezed. Interestingly, if you push downwards, the corr...

Did you know that the term fireplace is derived from the Latin word caminus, which means ‘fireplace’ or ‘stove’? It is related to the Greek word káminos, which also means ‘oven’. Originally, caminus referred to a device for heating and cooking. That sounds understandable. Where fire is made, smoke is produced. Where we humans live, we produce things that need to be disposed of. It's relatively eas...

As far as I know, there are no different cups for different types of tea. It's different with wine. I don't know much about it, but I think I know that red wine is served in completely different glasses to white wine and that red wine even has many different glasses in itself to serve the corresponding wines appropriately for optimum enjoyment. Coffee is also served in the right cup size depending...

Are you a chess player? I am not. I barely understand the rules, but I'm not at all skilled and I'm probably very bad at it. But I do understand that there are pieces with different movement rules. A pawn can't move the same distance as a bishop and a rook can't make the same move as a horse. And all this on clearly defined black and white squares. The latter in particular is not popular today: cl...

When I think of a tent, images of a circus tent come to mind. It's big and has a peak in the centre and is basically just a roof that runs steeply downwards from the top. It's not really cosy in it because it lets the wind through pretty well and really only protects you from the rain. Of course, there are also other tents, such as those for camping. These are much smaller and also provide a littl...

A free rider is someone who shares in the endeavours of others and tries to profit from them without doing anything in return. In other words, a kind of parasite. The image can therefore be used polyvalently or is used in this way in different contexts. It is an image of a vehicle on the road and someone standing on its running board and being transported from one place to another without any acti...

Certain sweets are wrapped in a piece of paper: Lollipops and many more. They are wrapped in such a way that you simply have to pull on the ends of the wrapping paper, i.e. pull the whole thing apart and then the wrapper opens up and you can remove the sweet. This is possible because the two ends are wrapped in opposite directions. This is often the case with us: at first glance, opposites look po...

When parliamentary elections or other voting proposals are due, residents receive election documents and propaganda material. These documents vary greatly in terms of layout and quality. The layout and therefore the appearance play a major role in whether the content is read and viewed. For example, the elements in the flyers must be well presented graphically and aligned accordingly. This also ap...

In the morning, you can see how moisture has settled on the grass or an object that has been outside overnight. If you walk over grass on a cool autumn morning, you will very quickly have wet shoes. The moisture in the air, which is not visible per se, condenses on the blades of grass due to the lower temperatures and thus becomes visible. The same happens in the sauna or when you take a hot showe...

We all know nervousness. It's a very intense feeling that feels very special, incomparable. It has something of an inner tension and is often triggered by uncertainty or perhaps even fear of what is to come. Sometimes it is also called stage fright. What is interesting about nervousness, however, is that it leads my perception to a strong focus. Focus on the trigger of this state. It becomes diffi...

Our autumn fair is coming up soon and balloons will be sold along with many other things. They look different today than they did when I was a child. Back then there were only round balloons, which differed only in colour and print. Today there are the classic ones - albeit rather rare - and then many modern ones made of aluminium and in almost infinitely different variations as animals, mythical...

In my childhood, Velcro fasteners were used to close trainers. So instead of having to tie your shoes, you could simply use a Velcro fastener - great for children who had trouble tying their laces. But the effect was still not the same. Tying the shoes was better, the shoe held better and so this technology did not last. Apart from that, a tied shoe also looks nicer than a Velcro fastener. With th...

You've probably noticed it when you've opened or closed a window: depending on the opening angle, you can see through the window and recognise what's outside - or inside, if you're looking from the outside. Or then the reality of this world is reflected in the window and you recognise more of a mirror image or sometimes, very rarely, a kind of combination of mirror image and view. However, this is...