Well, I tried here a translation of the today’s blog posting – with the help of leo.org and google-translater. Not perfect, but perhaps able to give our english visitors here an idea of the irgendlink-blog-stuff :-)
Mit Hilfe von Leo und Gugl versuch ich mich hier mal als Übersetzerin. Trainingshalber sozusagen. Und ganz und gar ohne Perfektionsansprüche.
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„Well, my little boy, let me see if you can already write your name.“ Said the man with puppets disguised voice. „Mhmm,“ I was at a loss but proud. The man handed me a pen and paper. „Well, let’s see what you can, look, there in the white box inside you can write.“ Like a little lamb, drinking at the teat of the mother, I am excited to feel comfortable and secure because of the attention that gives me the guy with the beard. With my scrawly childishly font, I write „i r g e d i n k“ on the paper.
Decades later, northern Scotland.
This could be, considered photographically, an oppulente day. Just three miles east of Tongue I stand in front of a sunlit bay. The outgoing tide releases sandbanks, one of them looks like the artificially reclaimed Palm Island in Dubai. Small and undeveloped. The sky shows all gray tones. In the north, a rainbow plunges into the sea. THIS IS MY SCOTLAND! As I’ve always imagined. That moment alone was worth the 2800 km long slog with the bike. Chased by rain I take some pictures and a movie clip. The wind is still at 25 miles per hour, fortunately from the west. 
Later I must acknowledge that this is the only strip of sun I experience that day. Just like it says on the paper on which I signed long time ago with my name.
How Speedy49 has written in his commentary a few articles ago, the area is hilly. It’s beautiful, bald, petty whin, many small lakes, little brooks, moss, brown and olive tones dominate and the ubiquitous gray sky. If here and there would not grow a little grove in the valley, it could be smoothly Iceland, which I cycled around 1992. The bike path runs along the A836, which is largely between Tongue and Strathy one-lane road, with passing places every few hundred meters. Only the two or three times while the Zweibrücken-Kreuzberg-high gradients have two lanes. Two fully loaded trucks are thundered past me.
On a hill a lonely bright red phone booth, a wonderful photo opportunity, I have to cold-shoulder because of the rain. I confine myself to the „duty Photos“ every ten miles that form the backbone of the streetart-concept. Even them I made sloppy, with no exposure compensation. The whims of nature are wonderful to read in the ten kilometer photos. Do I have to pinch myself to the curb, because the place is cluttered and cars passed me, the images will be eccentric. I’m holding the camera crooked, the pics get blurred. But if I have time and it is not dangerous, I can get off from bike for photographing slowly. The weather, criminy! If I only would not signed this contract with the God Of Weather who has only done as be a good puppet-uncle who would be interested if I can already write.
I roll from Thurso to Reay on a small road through flat land of sheep. The pastures are divided, surrounded with about 80 inches tall stone slabs. For miles. On a muddy construction site two men are sorting stones. I eat two bananas and a pear in fast forward. As soon as I stop cycling, I’m freezing, I’m wet with sweat. Rat race. I think myself to John O’Groats. I’ll send Thurso to Conventry, I decide. With the lousy weather I will not ride one more day through Scotland. Or should I have to cross from Thurso to Orkney?
The wind puffed me past on sheep number 64 on a two pitches large meadow on the left. Right a lot more with numbered animals, huddling from the rain in the meadow. Number 56. I could play lotto of sheep. I choose an adjudgement of blog (as sometimes before): when I find on one of the next meadows the one and onyl sheep of Douglas Adams with the answer to the question about the meaning of life (No. 42), I take the boat from Thurso. If not, I cycle straight after John O’Groats.
Sheep number 9 I met a few miles further. On another field, the sheep have just colored dots. Are this codes? Similarly marked as on electrical resistances. Actually, you might as well paint emoticons on it or cool comments. I would print my flock with words. On the first sheep I would write „Welcome“, on the second „To“ and on the next „Scotland“. Also, a sheep Col Art-action would be conceivable where well-known artists of the region would paint the animals lovingly. Artistic sodomy. I’m crazy. That no graffiti artists have come to the medium of sheep. Consider the possibilities.
With 20-30 things (kilometers per hour) I rave to Thurso, drop in the tourist office, loll round on the River Thurso port and watch the waves as they foam on the sea wall. Breathtaking.
Buy money at a cash machine, check Bed and Breakfasts,’m almost back out of the city. It rains just not. In my mind I’m already in Gills Bay, where there is also an Orkney ferry, just want to ask quickly Waterside House B&B. It’s so cold. They let me in, so it happens that I write these lines in room number 5. Myself wondering in the morning, for heaven’s sake, how the apple tree outside my window is always managing to flourish.
Exactly two minutes of sun per day subject to the regulations with Mr. Link. Facing the wild sea two miles east of Tongue on the A836
(translated by Sofasophia/Homebase)
