We extend the notion of Zindler curve from the Euclidean plane to normed planes. A characterization of Zindler curves for general normed planes is given, and the relation between Zindler curves and curves of constant area-halving distances in such planes is discussed.

Let $B_Y$ denote the unit ball of a normed linear space $Y$. A symmetric, bounded, closed, convex set $A$ in a finite dimensional normed linear space $X$ is called a sufficient enlargement for $X$ if, for an arbitrary isometric embedding of $X$ into a Banach space $Y$, there exists a linear projection $P\colon Y\to X$ such that $P(B_Y)\subset A$. Each finite dimensional normed space has a minimal-volume sufficient enlargement that is a parallelepiped; some spaces have ``exotic'' minimal-volume sufficient enlargements. The main result of the paper is a characterization of spaces having ``exotic'' minimal-volume sufficient enlargements in terms of Auerbach bases.

By $\textrm{d}(X,Y)$ we denote the (multiplicative) Banach--Mazur distance between two normed spaces $X$ and $Y.$ Let $X$ be an $n$-dimensional normed space with $\textrm{d}(X,\ell_\infty^n) \le 2,$ where $\ell_\infty^n$ stands for $\mathbb{R}^n$ endowed with the norm $\|(x_1,\dots,x_n)\|_\infty := \max \{|x_1|,\dots, |x_n| \}.$ Then every metric space $(S,\rho)$ of cardinality $n+1$ with norm $\rho$ satisfying the condition $\max D / \min D \le 2/ \textrm{d}(X,\ell_\infty^n)$ for $D:=\{ \rho(a,b) : a, b \in S, \ a \ne b\}$ can be isometrically embedded into $X.$

We investigate the following version of the circle covering problem in strictly convex (normed or) Minkowski planes: to cover a circle of largest possible diameter by $k$ unit circles. In particular, we study the cases $k=3$, $k=4$, and $k=7$. For $k=3$ and $k=4$, the diameters under consideration are described in terms of side-lengths and circumradii of certain inscribed regular triangles or quadrangles. This yields also simple explanations of geometric meanings that the corresponding homothety ratios have. It turns out that basic notions from Minkowski geometry play an essential role in our proofs, namely Minkowskian bisectors, $d$-segments, and the monotonicity lemma.

The Bezdek--Pach conjecture asserts that the maximum number of pairwise touching positive homothetic copies of a convex body in $\Re^d$ is $2^d$. Nasz\'odi proved that the quantity in question is not larger than $2^{d+1}$. We present an improvement to this result by proving the upper bound $3\cdot2^{d-1}$ for centrally symmetric bodies. Bezdek and Brass introduced the one-sided Hadwiger number of a convex body. We extend this definition, prove an upper bound on the resulting quantity, and show a connection with the problem of touching homothetic bodies.

\begin{abstract} We prove that a Minkowski plane is Euclidean if and only if Busemann's or Glogovskij's definitions of angular bisectors coincide with a bisector defined by an angular measure in the sense of Brass. In addition, bisectors defined by the area measure coincide with bisectors defined by the circumference (arc length) measure if and only if the unit circle is an equiframed curve.

We study the dimension of ``random'' Euclidean sections of direct sums of normed spaces. We compare the obtained results with results from \cite{LMS}, to show that for the direct sums the standard randomness with respect to the Haar measure on Grassmanian coincides with a much ``weaker'' randomness of ``diagonal'' subspaces (Corollary~\ref{sle} and explanation after). We also add some relative information on ``phase transition''.

Let $(X, \norm)$ be a Minkowski space (finite dimensional Banach space) with unit ball $B$. Various definitions of surface area are possible in $X$. Here we explore the one given by Benson \cite{ben1}, \cite{ben2}. In particular, we show that this definition is convex and give details about the nature of the solution to the isoperimetric problem.