Some more words ....

....about the first picture I posted yesterday.
The doormat you see is a reminescence of the most famous citizen of Weimar, the town where I live. A similar decoration you can see in the house of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - he had it made after he returned from his visit of Pompei. One of the many things he studied was oriental poetry. He read everything available in translation at that time (mostly the Persian poet Hafez) and finally published a collection of his own poems in oriental style called "West-östlicher Diwan" (unfortunately it is difficult to get an English translation). This means that one of the first and most important pieces of German "Orientalism" in literature has actually been written here... One of the many reasons why I chose to live in this lovely province town ;-)