Radio Recuerdo: Sounds from the past

As promised, here is another story from our reader Renata. 
This you gotta hear. ;)

Ok, this is another thing that happened to me, also in Germany, but the year was 2008.

This is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me and I am so glad I have a witness so I know it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me.

I went to Germany for the first time back then to practice my German with my German class. We were a bunch of people from Mexico staying at some hostel in some small town in Thüringen [Weimar].

We had been there for 3 weeks already and this is the kind of place (well, I guess most hostels are like that) where you can cook your stuff in the kitchen and then you're supposed to wash the dishes and all that. I mean, it's nothing like a hotel or something like that, in case you're not familiar with hostels. 

The radio was always on in that kitchen and there was always a man talking in German about politics and stuff ALL THE TIME. We, of course, didn't pay attention to that. 

That was our very last day in this town, we were staying in a building that had been built on the XVII century, it was very old.

That day, me and a friend were doing the dishes in the kitchen, listening to the same radio station, the German man talking and talking and talking when suddenly something strange happened. 

Suddenly we both heard what it seemd to be STATIC, the German man's voice was gone and then we heard the strangest thing ever. 

It was a jingle that we had never heard before BUT this is the strange thing about it: 

1)the jingle was in SPANISH, our mother tongue 

2) the voices sounded to me like voices from long time ago, don't know how to explain, the melody and everything, sounded like something from the 50s 

3) we realized this was a jingle from OUR COUNTRY! since the very last word they sang was the name of a city in Mexico, the city of "Monterrey" (we're not from this city, though).

The jingle said something about "your memories' station". 

When the jingle was over the static was gone and the German man was back. He didn't mention anything about what we just had heard, like nothing had really happened. Me and my friend stared at each other and we were like DID YOU HEAR THAT?? omg, we didn't know how to explain it.

The weirdest thing is that I don't think we actually cared very much about it after that. We forgot about it, maybe talked it over with some friends and then just forgot about it. (Now I wonder why we forgot about it, I mean, it wasn't something normal AT ALL).

Well, the years passed and last February I was surfing the net when, by complete accident, I found a jingle on youtube. Yeah. IT IS the same one!

This is the link: 

I could remember it as soon as I heard it again. It was the same melody, the same old-fashioned voices, the word "recuerdo" (memory) and the name of the city of Monterrey.

I did some research and this was indeed a very popular radio station in this city back in the 50s and 60s but it's no longer on the air, according to some friends I have in Monterrey. It hasn't been on the air for a couple of decades now.

So WHY ON EARTH did we hear this thing in a faraway country like Germany? Why did we hear something from our country, and from the past, when we were just doing the dishes? And nobody else seemed to have heard it.

I have friends in Germany that don't understand what happened either, cause of course, they say there is no reason why such a jingle would be heard in their country. I agree.

This has got to be one of the most endearing stories ever published here. :)
I don't know why, but stories about sounds that appear to be coming from the past always get to me. (Perhaps because I had an inexplicable event featuring singing once.)


Based on this and the previous story, I could speculate that Renata has the uncanny ability to conjure up images and sounds removed in time/space.
How? 
What am I - Einstein?
But it isn't as implausible as it may appear. After all, there is some evidence that visions perhaps can be shared. (See The Ultimate Tourist and We'll always have Paris... or whatever that was.)
Why not auditory events too?


But why a jingle she had never heard before, so she couldn't have cared for it?
Again, no idea. I have no insight into the inner workings of the cosmic jukebox. :)
Just thinking aloud here.
Maybe there had been some other person in that building, perhaps someone from Monterrey or someone who loved that jingle, who kept remembering that tune. And we all know that old walls - apparently - can "remember" things... :)


Or... I have no idea.
And that is, I suspect, what we love the most about such events, don't we?
The fact that we don't know. Faced with the mystery of the universe, we rejoice in our unknowing. Because it gives us hope that we are wrong about our fears, after all, and that perhaps even the wildest of our wildest dreams can come true. 




P.S. I love that jingle. 
Please, mister speaker, could you tell me what time it is....? 
Thank you very much!
Priceless. :)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, it was 12:49.
On which date of which year, that's what I'd like to know!

The mysterious cat

This is a personal account - the kind we like best :) - from one of our readers, Renata. It is reproduced here verbatim.

This is a strange, yet explainable thing that happened to me about 2 months ago. 

Last May I was in Berlin visiting a friend. That was a relaxing day, we were tired and decided to do some grocery shopping and then stay home.

We went to the grocery store which was about 10 blocks from her street and we went by foot. 

On our way back, we were talking about my cat Irene and I was telling her about how much I was missing her and that I wanted to go back home to see her cause seriously, my cat is my EVERYTHING,believe it or not, and she was my only thought that day. 

We were already on my friend's street when I noticed that there was a black cat crossing the street, about 10 meters from where we were. 

I was excited to see a cat (thing that hardly happens in Germany, at least you don't see cats on the streets often) and I asked my friend if she had also seen her, but she said she didn't.

It was weird cause I know I saw that cat. I saw he was black and I saw his tail and everything.

I remember I noticed that the cat walked towards the building where we were going to, and I saw him "enter" some door (or I thought there should be a door over there, cause the cat just vanished, as if he had crossed through the wall). When I got closer, I realized that there wasn't a door over there, nor a window. There weren't bushes or anything around. Only the building where my friend lives, which has 5 floors, by the way.

I swear to God, I saw that cat entering the building but I was surprised to find out there was no way that this cat could have just crossed the wall like that.

Don't know if I can explain myself here cause English is not my first language.

I think I was thinking SO HARD about my cat Irene on that day, that she for some reason wanted me to see "her" (although she's not a black cat, she's a calico cat) in that cat. All I know is that I called home right away to ask about her. She was sleeping peacefully. 

Marcel-Louis Baugniet, Black cat in profile, cca 1924

Cats are odd creatures. They appear to know things beyond human comprehension; and perhaps they do. Maybe that's why they seem to perform things that seem impossible - that are "impossible" to us, humans, with our limited perception of the inner workings of the world.
And I sometimes wonder... did the old saying that a cat has "nine lives" really originate simply from cats' ability to save themselves from impossible situations?
Or is it maybe that people before us, in ages gone, when science was not so advanced, but individual observation of the world was, noticed cats they knew had died being alive (as I seem to have)?

Whatever it is, all creatures deserve not only to be treated with the utmost respect, but also "listened" to, so we can perhaps learn from them about the mysteries of this wide wonderful world - mysteries that purely rational thought cannot even fathom, let alone unlock. 


This story is also available - in Spanish - on Renata's own blog.
And do stay tuned because there is another story from Renata coming very soon. ;)

What are parallel universes like?

Here, knock yourself out.
(Which, by the way, may be a very real possibility if you take these people seriously.
We do.
Which should explain a LOT. :))

But aren't multiple universes simply a theory, a fancy?
A theory, yes, but not really a simple fancy.

Here's what Aurelien Barrau, a particle physicist at CERN, has to say about it:
"The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models".

And it is to a parallel universe that Michio Kaku speculates humankind will migrate at the end of our earthly history.


Finally, here is a fabulously interesting (if not exactly brand new) documentary about it. Don't miss it.
(If you've watched it before, re-watch it. 
Even if you don't believe in watches. :))

Scientists say the darnest things...

You've probably read it by now: a group of scientists from Spain is predicting that time will come to a halt in the future (billions of years from now, I am afraid).

Scientists predict time will stop completely

Why exactly this is making headlines now, I am not sure, as it is not a novel concept. Maybe it's the identification of the purported cause or underlying process what makes it novel. In a nutshell:

Observations of supernovae, or exploding stars, found the movement of light indicated they were moving faster than those nearer to the centre of the universe.

But the scientists claimed the accepted theory of an opposite force to gravity, known as dark energy, was wrong, and said the reality was that the growth of the universe was slowing.

Professor Jose Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raul Vera from the University of the Basque Country and the University of Salamanca said the deceleration of time was so gradual, it was imperceptible to humans.

Their proposal, published in the journal Physical Review D, claimed dark energy does not exist and that time was winding down to the point when it would finally grind to a halt long after the planet ceased to exist.

But what caught my eye was this snippet of their statement:

Professor Senovilla told the New Scientist: "Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, for ever." 

It appears to be a quote, therefore it is safe to assume those are his exact words.

Either prof. Senovilla has a very good sense of humour - perfectly possible, for all I know - or... Well, I am not sure about the alternative.

Duration is time.

Time is the name we give to duration.

It is clear that either prof. Senovilla cannot speak outside the framework of time-defined language (and language is a time-defined framework for thought), or he thinks the readers cannot.

Both is true.

But it does have some bearing on the theory itself, wouldn't you say?

Think about it.

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE: The End of Time?

(In fact, it would be a good idea to visit it even if you did not like this.)