Victoria – Dorl's Archive

Part 1

This box contained lots of papers and some peculiar items.

The blue binder on top contains a collection of thoughts and quotes by Dorl’s father who wrote them through his later years. Here is a sample:

Thoughts by Hans Haimberger

These could be Dorl’s own thought, too. He also shared the love of classical Greek.

Printer Ribbon for a Microline laser printer

Esbit cooker and lead pouring

Esbit cookers (link of 2007) could be used for many purposes, but it seems, that here it was tied to lead pouring, a custum connected to fortune telling at New Year’s Eve (- nowadays discouraged because of the poisenous fumes). The spoon and the tiny leaden eagle shape, that dropped out of the cooker, indicate such a purpose.

The set might have belonged to Aunt Nora, sister of Dorl’s father. Maybe it was part of the family life, too.

The cooker by itself would have been a possible something that was taken along on camping trips and excursions, which would it tie more to Dorl’s mother, who was keen on adventures of all sorts.

The actual Esbit solid fuel tablets I associate with model steam engines; they were used to heat the kettle. They were also used as a wood- or coal stove starter, although both of our families preferred newspapers. The waxen bars, Hexamine fuel, call back memories of times forgone.

Three old plastig bags

The era of sturdy plastic bags is coming to an end. For years we have been using fabric bags instead, but sometimes old plastic bags have a long life serving as waste basket liners or for storage or for re-use in other ways. I couldn’t say when, and which particular occasions brought these three bags into our collection.

Puffing leisure hours with tobacco and reading up on news

Back in Victoria, BC we frequented the Goodfellas Cigarshop (our choice for the pipes: Golden Virginia) at Glanford Avenue in Saanichton which still seems to run.

Back here in Berlin we purchased cigars, pipes and pipe tobacco at the Pfeifenladen in Steglitz, Muthesiusstraße.

We loved the Peterson, Standard Mixture with Latakia. It is reminiscent of the old museum in Dahlem which with the altarpieces and church sculptures (now in the Bode Museum) smelled of oak and incense.

Berliner Zeitung title 2018 edition – since 2020 without the bear crest in the title

Berlin has three major daily newspapers: Tagesspiegel, Morgenpost (nicknamed: Mottenpost – moth mail) and Berliner Zeitung, along with the maverick TAZ. When we returned to Berlin in 2007, we tried them all and stayed with the Berliner Zeitung, which had started as a state organ in East Berlin, has changed hands several times since the fall of the Wall and reports more or less lefty and freely. The Tagesspiegel bag could have been part of a student offer for a trial subscription, which you can sometimes get in front of the FU Mensa (canteen). Dorl rather used to study online news of many sources, often in depth, and exchanged and added what he heard from those who read the papers.