Relative relations

Let me stay with language plays and curiosity for another post. If people end up in my blog through searches it is often Schiele, de Stael or Twombly that they are looking for. More infrequently it's a line from a Rilke poem, the search for interesting stuff on pastel, painting reflective surfaces or the like. Toulouse Lautrec's Suzanne Valadon is VERY popular and so is Feininger's Vogelwolke.

And while once in a while someone looks for the Baklava recipe, noone has done so, to my knowledge for my granny's Christmas biscuits - Kolutschen.

Until yesterday. I was thrilled. Well: it's cold and dark outside, it's almost the end of the year and so Kolutschen are in order. Someone else obviously thought so too. I have another look at my site stats and see a hit from Eschede, the village my mum grew up in, not far from where my parents live now. I look further and see that that person was looking for Kolutschen. How exciting. Eschede and Kolutschen. I need to tell someone!!! [and this is my 3rd... no 4th... round in telling this story, ;)]

I tell my brother this morning. He: How weird. I: And it's not our parents... it's a really unusual ISP. He: Oh, granddad's neighbours, D.'s have their own ISP. I look and it is indeed them. Out of more curiosity, I type in Kolutschen, first google.co.uk, my blogpost is the only entry; then google.de... And again: only my entry matches. 'Or do you mean Kolatschen?', 'No, I don't.'

Fascinating... this technology.


After the phone call, I realise that it's not any neighbour of my granddad, but my father's cousin's house. Where he used to spend his summer holidays, and where at their wedding he met my mother.

Often I giggle at the thought that someone is looking, e.g., for 'Moon + Trees + Romance' and ends up at the post about my neighbour, or for 'mugging Pollokshields' and ends up at Fully Automated Nikon.

But, now I see my gran's neighbours looking for, well, Oma Eschede's Kolutschen. And they did find precisely that recipe of their neighbour who hasn't baked these probably for more than 15 years or so.