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Where I was recently

I am currently visiting Sri Lanka, after having been to India and Nepal in the past few years.

With JavaScript enabled, you can cycle through the pictures in ascending or descending order (starting with a random location). I’m to lazy to label the images correctly, so you will have to guess the place names; on average, about two or three pictures per week are added. My route was, approximately, India (North West, Central, East Coast, South) Nepal (from East to Central/West), then again India (mainly North West to West). Then, after a long stall, I resumed travelling in Rajasthan, Himachal, Karnataka and finally the Northeast; then Nepal, a short Indian intermezzo and currently Sri Lanka. In case you can deal with German, you might want to look at my detailled travelling reports.


Portrait of Gernot Katzer Thank you for your interest in contacting me. Rest assured I will try to answer any letter I receive with respect to my spice dictionary within a few days.


There are some questions I have been asked many times since this dictionary is on the net. I’ll take the opportunity to answer them here in bulk:


  1. I need a separate index for the XXX language!

    If XXX uses the Roman alphabet (or if it doesn’t but you prefer romanized names to native script names), then try your luck with the Alphabetic Index. It offers rather efficient options to generate an index for any possible combination of languages. For languages not appearing in this index, I simply lack data and rely on future help from competent persons or books.

    If XXX uses any other script, then the Alphabetic Index is a suboptimum choice; better try native script indices. Note that there are some languages which I currently support in romanized but not in native mode; this is an unfortunate situation, but it will persist till I stumble over some person or book that helps me out of it.

  2. Can you give me a hint about how to grow plant XXX?

    Sorry, no. If talented gardeners are said to own a green thumb, mine is probably all black. So, you’d better ask a gardener. I have, however, included some gardening information in my list of Spice Sources.

  3. Can you provide a contact to the spice industry?

    No. I am a private individual, and spices are my hobby, not my profession. I have no significant ties to spice growers, sellers or manufactures.

  4. You are totally wrong on spice XXX …

    Please explain!

    Actually, I have been wrong several times in the past. These errors have now mostly been corrected, or so I hope.

  5. … and your English is horrible!

    Any comments for improving my English are welcome.

  6. My browser cannot display your pages in a way that seems correct to me.

    Begin of March 2006, I reloaded my spice pages with a completely new layout involving CSS2 instead of the problematic frames I had used before. Despite a lot of tests, there might still be problems with some browsers. In that case, please read the Technotes and send me a bug report describing (a) what system you have (operating system, browser, version, possibly window size), (b) what you see on your screen and (c) why you think that this is wrong.

  7. I know of a spice plant you have not included in your page.

    This is a common feedback comment, and I’m glad about every new idea. I have included several plants suggested by readers (e. g., Eryngium foetidum, Myrrhis odorata, Papaver somniferum, Polygonum hydropiper); still, there are some open requests (see also the geographic index). I will write about a plant only if I can either refer to personal experience or to several different sources which I hold trustworthy. In some cases, honest silence is better than meaningless twaddle.

  8. Are you interested in names for spices in language XXX?

    Yes, certainly. If you have a new language to offer, I am always interested. I do not want to have dozens of languages with only a few names in each of them, so I beg that you provide names for at least 20 herbs and spices for a new language, the more the better. For languages using non-Latin script, I am also much interested in native writings.

    If you are a native speaker of language XXX and if you want to revise my spice names in XXX, then I can easily send you a list of all my current names in XXX, which you then can skim over and, if necessary, enlarge or correct.

  9. I am doing some research project on spice XXX. Can you provide more information on it?

    Maybe. But you might get your answers more quickly if you hit your browser’s net search button right now.

  10. Where can I obtain spice XXX?

    If you happen to live in Central Europe, my spice sources may be of use to you. Otherwise, it’s quite improbable that I know more about your region’s infrastructure than you.

    Anyway, I get asked this question so frequently that I decided to set up a document (Spice Sources) that is intended to answer all such questions; unlike all other documents here, it is mostly of use for inhabitants of Europe and Northern America. If you have additions or corrections to make, please do so.

  11. What does the word treabgxngmre mean?

    Nothing. I use it to keep track of my presence on Web search engines.

  12. I like your site. May I invite you for dinner in my home?

    (Why do I get this one so rarely?) Yes.


Access Statistics Map
Accesses to the English Spice Pages during the first two weeks of July, 2006. The smallest marks represent 10 or more visitors. Click to enlarge.

analytics.google.com

One more comment: Please do not send any attachments in proprietary formats. You can use the following formats for document exchange: JPG, PNG, SVG, HTML, PDF, ODF; less useful but still possible are PS and RTF. Other file formats will most probably get ignored.

Since I get a lot of spam these days, you must first circumvent my spam filter in order to reach me. Choosing a reasonable subject for your mail increases your chance to pass my spam filter, and also allows me to retrieve your message more easily at a later time.

If your question or comment is not covered by the list above, click on my email address:


Thank you very much for your interest in my spice pages.


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