Exploring Västerås

Variety filled the day, especially as regards the sky, which changed from moment to moment, heavy, black rain clouds sweeping dramatically through the Lake Mälaren region with vivid white cumulus in a bright blue sky between. The wet foliage, spring flowers, rocks and man-made surfaces gleaming in the sun added to the appeal of Västerås, a city in the midst of redevelopment, it seems. The docklands are full of new buildings; I'll come to that later.

Sculpture in Stora Torget

Getting off the stopping train from Eskilstuna (having come through familiarly northern scenery: pine trees, lakeside wharfs, islands, cottages), I walked through a park and Bauhaus style town hall to the concrete town centre that looked like any other town at first with its kebab shops, MacDonald's, shopping malls, H & M store, abstract sculptures, and bought a latte at the Espresso House to watch the biogas-bussar going by. Further on though, it became more interesting. A number of spacious squares give the town some individuality. The market square where nobody was bothering to shop at the fruit and flower stalls because of the cold weather had a notable sculpture on a wall, a line of men on bikes from the old days half a century ago, busily cycling to work. Beyond this square (Stora Torget---the -et suffix in Swedish means "the", so I learned the other day) I could see some of the old town and the cathedral spire, so I headed that way down cobbled streets shiny with rain and more of those red stained wooden walls and fences.

Djäkenberget

Chris sent me a text message to say his Swedish trainees had told him this was the coldest May here since records began. By that point I had crossed the river bridge and climbed, out of curiosity, up the hill called the Djäkenberget, a park established in 1862, with lookout points and shelters. It was obviously a paradise for children, groups of little ones being herded along in colourful raincoats by their supervisors. There were mossy rocks to climb on with irresistible pathways through the pines. I followed some of these myself. Standing stones were inscribed (in the 19th century) with quotations from poems. Lawns, ponds and flowering trees enhanced the charm of the place, and the local birds (tree creepers, great tits, robins, fieldfares, chaffinches, jackdaws, etc. were much in evidence). At the bottom of the hill swathes of daffodils were still in bloom.

Djäkenberget

The district on the cathedral side of the river is all about a bishop who lived in the 17th century, called Johannes Rudbekius, and his wife Malin. This enlightened couple, inspired by Martin Luther and his wife, it seems, were bold and determined enough to establish a sort of welfare state in this part of Sweden and their influence still lives on. This is enthusiastically documented in the interior of the domkyrka, in both Swedish and English. Rudbekius founded a free school for boys where Theology, Physics, Mathematics, Latin, Logic, Politics and Hebrew were the subjects taught, and his wife ran an equivalent school for girls, the first in Sweden, teaching her protégées Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, the Catechism, Housekeeping and Needlework---true Enlightenment still had a way to go in those days, but it was a start. The couple established city hospitals too, in an age when the plague and other epidemics were rampant.

Bok, beech.

Behind the cathedral was a small botanical garden with all the plants labelled in Linnaeus' fashion with their Latin and Swedish (common) names.

Back in town I found a cafeteria serving vegetarian lasagne with a buffet salad. I made my way back toward the station via the tourist info centre where perhaps I should have started. The girl there did a good job introducing me to Västerås, selling me a couple of little dala horses to take home as gifts and encouraging me to look through the virtual reality headset at scenes from a zoo with local animals and from the concert hall where I was suddenly part of the local symphony orchestra playing Mendelssohn's Hebridean Overture. I asked the girl if it was worth my while going to look at the docklands the other side of the railway tracks and she said, "Oh yes."

So with an hour or so to spare, that's where I went next. I was strongly reminded of Malmö where we last year, although because of the weather the crowds were missing. The docks are being reclaimed as a desirable and probably quite expensive residential area decorated with boardwalks, gardens, shallow ponds. A metal bridge leads to the lake shore from which you can see boats ferrying people across to islands in Lake Mälaren, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Sweden, 120 km from west to east; it drains into the sea at Stockholm. A sculpture of an osprey stands at the waterfront in Västerås; those birds are common here. I saw a pair of Canada geese avoiding the waves; it was a windy day under those livid clouds. I also walked across to the ferry docks passing some large, brightly painted, privately owned vessels named Bore and Anna, fishing boats probably. And a red tug whose name was Stora Le, Big Smile---I did like that one!

In Eskilstuna, first impressions and two suppers

The hotel where we're staying is across the road from the station, so if I sit at a window table for breakfast, as I did today, I can watch the commuters arriving by train or by bus---either a Biogasbuss or one with drivmedel: 100 % förnybar el---across the station square. Apart from Sweden's environment friendliness, almost everyone wears sports shoes here and you rarely encounter someone who's overweight; it's quite remarkable, especially as the meals from Eskilstuna's eateries seem quite heavy and greasy, served in large portions. Yesterday, in cool but sunny weather, Chris and I walked and walked round the town, largely deserted because it was a Sunday with the shops closed: exercise enough for us. We peered through the windows of some large gym clubs full of exercise machines. People were walking, jogging and cycling through the city parks. Same thing in Stockholm, though there you have the added option of renting one of the electric scooters available for pick-up on almost every street corner. All you need is the app. on your smartphone to set it going.

Pretending to scoot, in Stockholm

Eskilstuna is just over an hour's ride on the train from Stockholm. Buying the tickets, we'd treated ourselves to 1st class seats, but when the actual train pulled in we couldn't find our allotted carriage so travelled 2nd class instead. It was old with grubby windows, maybe a replacement train; we enjoyed the late afternoon ride even so, through urban territory as far as Södertälje where (a year ago) Chris met employees of Scania AB, and then through rocky, forested landscape with occasional lakes or grassy fields, similar to Ontario. I caught a glimpse of Eskilstuna's riverfront as we pulled into this town and felt that this would be a very pleasant spot to spend the week. Sure enough, it is pleasant. The light in the sky on that first evening, after our supper at the sumptuous Lebanese Meze Lounge on Drotninggatan, was delightful, falling on the colourful houses that line the Eskiltunaån River in the older part of town.

Chris by the river at Eskilstuna, on our first evening here

While we waited for our supper we'd been interested in the party taking place at one side of the restaurant, maybe a special birthday or anniversary, with balloons and speeches, the attendees smartly dressed and on their best behaviour. At one point they sang a congratulatory song  to whomever they were celebrating---Ja må han leva!

Yesterday (Sunday) evening we had supper at the Bishop's Arms; it seemed an authentic copy of an English pub, complete with a quiz night in which we could almost have taken part, had we been more daring or better at guessing what was said. The questions read out over the microphone by the quiz master had multiple choice answers. Groups of anglophones in the pub, who understood enough Swedish to participate, were enjoying this, giving one another spontaneous translations. In spite of the English atmosphere I was able to order a Czech beer and a typical Swedish dish, råraka, a deep fried potato pancake garnished with loganberries, sourcream, parsley and gherkins.

Restart

I have screwed up my blog, so far this year. And at the end of last year. Finally, during the next week, I might be able to record some of my juxtaposed thoughts and experiences: we're setting off for Sweden where I'll have a week to myself in a place called Eskilstüna while my husband is at work there. I'm starting this post in the Departures Lounge at Ottawa airport. This evening we board a flight for Copenhagen in YYZ, Toronto, travelling on a Dreamliner for the first time. With any luck we shall be in Stockholm by "lunchtime" which I put in inverted commas because there's a 6-hour time zone difference to contend with. Some SAS flights are being cancelled, due to their pilots' strike, but we were told by Air Canada that ours (SK1420, CPH to ARN) is not. We are booked into a Scandic hotel just a block away from the one where we stayed about a year ago.

Unlike my husband, who prefers to be under his own control and fly his own plane, I like the setting-off moments. As soon as we reach the airport, he feels tense while I begin to relax, with a tune humming round my head:

... Heaven is in goodbye, my dear, it's time for me to go ...

with the effort of preparation behind me and the latest adventure ahead. We are leaving disruption behind in any case; the basement of our house is going to get new floors, etc., so we're well out of it. We had to move everything movable out of the way before the contractor and his colleague, the electrician, start work there tomorrow. Some people think I'm too trusting, leaving them to it like that.

I'm leaving work behind me too. Cleaning and tidying, gardening, shopping, washing, cooking, editing. I edited seven issues of the Capital Carillon and am happy to take a break now.

Bristol

Bristol is largely built from pale yellow, local sandstone, although not as predominantly as its smaller neighbour, Bath, where we went afterwards. Bristol Cathedral is not as old as it looks although the site is old. I'll mention Bath and its Abbey in my next post.

The Royal Marriott, Bristol

After a stopover in Reading to recover from our transatlantic flight, walking by the Thames and the Kennet on Saturday afternoon, we attended a Sunday Meeting at the Friends' Meeting House in order to meet Martin and his wife, (the novelist Annie Murray), both of whom are very involved with the Reading Quakers. We shared a very enjoyable lunch out with them before retrieving our luggage from the Ibis on Friar Street, took the afternoon train to Bristol and checked in at the more upscale Royal Marriott Hotel. As before, this was the venue for Chris' SCSC symposium, serving good quality breakfasts!

In the Cathedral Close

As I have mentioned in other blog posts, Bristol Cathedral stands beside the hotel and this year I attended Evensong again, twice, in the Quire. On Wednesday evening, the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne in 1952, the organist gave us the Crown Imperial March by Walton: a thrilling piece to hear in that setting; it had been played at the Queen's coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1953. When the organist pulled out the stops at the end of this voluntary, the stalls and stones vibrated. So did the congregation! Another lady shared her enthusiasm about this with me, as we left. On Monday evening I'd heard the lay clerks and choral scholars (two earnest young women) sing; on the Wednesday Evensong the boys' choir sang. I heard Howells' and Long's canticles, and settings of Psalms 19 and 30. The Wednesday Evensong included the Old Hundredth as its concluding hymn, which I remember almost by heart from my schooldays. It was not altogether a nostalgic experience: after the 17th century collects and other prayers, the vicars also prayed aloud in modern English for people who are worrying about Brexit, for people awaiting the results of cancer scans, and for victims of addictions. That brought us soberingly up to date. Outside the Cathedral, a tree in the close was hung with knitted roses as a reminder of St. Valentine's Day and of the victims of heart disease, with a collection bucket for donations to patients at the city's hospitals. One morning there I talked to the two girls from Above and Beyond who were decorating the tree and I promised to give them publicity on Facebook and in this blog.

There is one theory that the famous but incognito graffiti artist, "Banksy", was once a schoolboy at the Bristol Cathedral school, but nobody really knows; my sister thinks she does who he is (she has a different guess). He did paint a lot of graffiti in Bristol, anyway.

Up Brandon Hill in the park with the climbable Cabot Tower (not to be confused with the one in Newfoundland) were lovely patches of snow-bells in the green grass, a delight to someone coming from the midst of a Canadian midwinter. At the base of the tower is a plaque that says:

This tablet is placed here by the Bristol branch of the Peace Society in the earnest hope that peace and friendship may ever continue between the kindred peoples of this country and America. 'Glory to God in the highest and on Earth, peace, good will towards men' Luke 2.14

30,000 people had been on Brandon Hill park when the SS Great Britain set forth on her maiden voyage.

The hill up from College Green has some more good stopping places, such as the art shops, the student-y cafes, the Oxfam Shop selling 2nd hand DVDs and The Last Bookshop (recommended) in which all books on sale cost 3 pounds or less.

Wakeful babies at lunchtime, after the concert

On Thursday, my sister brought her three daughters and two of their children (the babies Caden and Freyja) to visit us in Bristol from Wales, a very happy occasion. Chris was at work till the end of the afternoon but the rest of us went to a lunch hour piano duet concert at the beautiful venue St. George's, on Great George Street. We heard piano duets from the married Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins: Mozart's Andante mit Variationen, K 501, extracts from Weber's Huit Pièces, Op. 60, Debussy's Petite Suite (that Faith and I used to try to play with our Mum) and two of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. The two young babies breastfed almost throughout, the rest of the audience apparently not at all put out by their happy suckling noises to judge by the smiles we got at the end while people were going out (we were sitting at the back of the concert hall). Chris was able to sit with us in the Watershed cafe at the end of the day where little Freyja had fun pulling at his beard.
couple

Left to my own devices I walked beyond the centre of Bristol up the hill to the village (?) of Clifton, beyond which is the the famous suspension bridge engineered by I K Brunel over the Avon Gorge. Parallels with Ithaca here: bridge over a gorge, a nearby university with hundreds of students, nets to discourage them from suicide. On the grassy hill in the park near the bridge at Clifton is the building once used as an Observatory, with its 19th century Camera Obscura preserved in a room at the top of the tower, up a spiral staircase. I went in to take a look at this, but the young man at the desk let me off paying a fee "because you won't see anything up there today", it being too cloudy and dark—true. The suspension bridge was constructed in the first half of the 19th century. Back at the museum in town I found a 1840s painting View on the Avon at Hotwells, with new bridge in background (it didn't open to the public until 1864) and a man carrying a turtle on his head in the foreground, near the seagoing boats on the river.

By Epstein

The Museum and Art Gallery is in the university area, on Queen's Road. It has a wide-ranging collection: Chinese glassware and pots, a gypsy caravan, intact, dinosaur models and bones; in a corridor between rooms I found Japanese prints from the 18th and 19th centuries (a current, special exhibition) alongside Hokusai and Hiroshige prints (a separate collection) and in the adjoining rooms a superb permanent collection of artworks besides those Asian treasures: Dürer's painting of Luther, 18th century Italian cityscapes, a Barbara Hepworth sculpture, a bronze of Epstein's model and muse Kathleen Garman, a Pissaro garden in oils. Leonardo drawings were on show too, in another special exhibition, but I didn't see those. The haunting portrait of Charles I as a solemn and sickly looking four year old made me feel sad, an unhappy little boy in a long dress with a tragic future ahead of him. I was also taken with Edward Lear's oil painting of mountains beyond a rocky plain, at Thermopylae. La Belle Dame sans Merci was a large scale, over-the-top painting depicting a moment from Keats' poem of that name, leaning down from her horse to seduce the knight in a thoroughly decadent (in my opinion) pre-Raphaelite manner, her long auburn hair everywhere, painted by Dicksee in 1901.

Luther, by Dürer

By Pissaro

Charles I as a child

By Barbara Hepworth

Bristol's waterfront today

On a different day I visited the "M-shed"— another big museum with historic maps of the city, an obsolete double-decker bus, an exhibition about Bristol's events past and present: the annual Balloon Festivals and Carnival processions for instance. I liked the way the city was documented, in the M-shed, in terms of its various districts and suburbs, and I got some historical insights. A medieval map of Bristol, walled, didn't seem to bear much resemblance to what is there now; the waterways and of those times having been reorganised since. The sugar trade based in Bristol was tied up with the slave trade. On either side of the river are rail tracks, no longer in use, and mooring spots for barges.

Also close to our hotel is the Millennium Square with its shiny giant ball and water features. There's plenty of choice for places to find lunch or supper in that area. In the morning rain of our departure day, we visited the Bristol Aquarium and its rainforest-themed indoor garden. Still in a fishy mood after that, we lunched at Catch 22 opposite the hotel.

On the way to Temple Meads, on foot and too laden with our luggage to manage our umbrellas, we were utterly soaked by a downpour from Storm Erik, the first named storm of 2019, hurrying through the deep, muddy puddles in the roadworks currently surrounding the station area. We sat dripping for half an hour on the slow train from Bristol to Bath, that was late leaving. Our passports and computers were among the wet things in our luggage, without any permanent damage done, fortunately. I spread everything out to dry in our hotel room once we reached Bath and we changed all our clothes.

Fifty-six years later

Sachseln on the Sarnersee, from the fields above the town

The Luzern-Interlaken train at Sachseln

I was eleven years old when I first saw Sachseln and the Sarnersee. My sister was seven. In April 1962, we went "abroad" for the first time in our lives, on holiday with our mother and father; our destination was this lakeside village in the canton of Obwalden, Switzerland.

Sursee, between Zofingen and Luzern

Sarnersee at Sachseln

In the last week of November (2018) when the morning mists were starting to lift off the valleys and lakes, I caught a train from Zofingen to Luzern, passing tranquil Sursee on the way. At Luzern I changed trains, sitting in a two-carriage cross-country one, bound for Interlaken, getting out at Sachseln station. It was a lovely day. Looking towards the both ends of the Sarnersee, the mist still dissipating, I recognised the old view beyond the willow trees and pebbly shore, with the snowy slopes of Mt. Pilatus beyond. It looked familiarly wonderful and I had it to myself. Coots, whose ancestors we'd met 56 years before, were swimming around. My sister, reacting to the e-photo I sent her, remembered having sketched a close-up of their feet. I couldn't find the lakeside guest house where we'd stayed in '62; perhaps it had been demolished or re-purposed. I made my way towards the centre of the small town. The road to Brienz, as I passed the school and turned round, pointed straight towards the high mountains of the Bernese Oberland. At the crossroads, the old Gasthaus Engel was not the place where we'd originally stayed, but looked similar. I treated myself to lunch there, sharing a table with another solitary diner. The shops were full of things Swiss, including bottles of "Dole" wine (I carried a small one back to Zofingen, to another Engel hotel). A couple of friendly horses lived at the bottom of the Wanderweg I followed steeply uphill from Sachseln into the fields with their picturesque farms, and from a grassy lookout point, which had a cross that added to my impression that I was on a pilgrimage, I could look down over the whole town. Mountains in all directions, fortunately clear; I'd have been most disappointed had the clouds hidden them. The autumn leaves on the small trees in the village square near the substantial, 17th century, Catholic church, were still colourful. I recognised the names of nearby villages, too.

The village church, Sachseln

View from Alpnachstad

On my train ride back to Luzern, I stopped for half an hour at Alpnachstad, so that I could take a look at another lake, an inlet of the Vierwaldstättesee. Ferries run for most of the year, but they were having a Winterpause just now. Alpnachstad is also the base station for the cog-wheel railway that takes tourists to the summit of Mt. Pilatus, the steepest such railway in the world. This had stopped operating for the winter, so everything was deserted. The advantage of being in Alpnachstad without a swarm of tourists around me was that I could appreciate the waterfront with its pollarded trees at my own pace. Back in Luzern, seeing the lion memorial was another story, popular with foreign visitors year round. I enjoyed the views from Luzern that Chris and I would have had a few days previously, had it not been so wet and overcast. Crossing Luzern's Seebrücke festooned with dangling lights, I could see the Rigi on the horizon this time. The Uri was moored at her dock, decorated for special Christmas cruises.

The Uri

Early December in southern Germany

From Vaduz, on Sunday Dec. 2nd, we caught the No. 11 bus that runs from Sargans railway station to Feldkirch railway station via Schaan. It was a short ride with sensational views of the nearby mountains through the windows. The route was built up most of the way. The flatter part of Liechtenstein seems surprisingly industrial.Craning my neck in all directions I appreciated the scenery but failed to notice the border markers between Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Liechtenstein again, then Austria. Austria (in the western Tirol) looked slightly less prosperous than the other two countries. When we got out at Feldkirch, that was Austria, and we had to purchase some euros to buy a ticket for our next leg from an ÖBB machine. I thought, that's how borders ought to be the world over, unnoticeable.

At Feldkirch station we had a short wait for our train to Lindau. Running along two walls of the station concourse is a quotation from the well-travelled Irish novelist James Joyce, translated into German and transcribed in lower case. It said, "dort drüben auf den schienen wurde 1915 das schicksal des ulysees entschieden." On the rails over there in 1915 the fate of Ulysees was decided."

I didn't have any such inspirations on our half hour ride into Bavaria, but it was another quiet and pleasant journey. Grey skies over the grey lake: the eastern end of the Bodensee (Lake Constance). Lindau is just around the corner, a medieval, walled town on an island, with a causeway linking it to the shore. We could have cut the corner by catching a ferry there from Bregenz, but there are few boats running in the winter. Our hotel for the night was the Lindauerhof, an attractive building with pink walls, right next to Lindau's Christmas Market, so that you could smell the roasting chestnuts and cinnamon flavoured hot drinks from its front door. A brass band was playing, and later a jazz band, and people were thronging there to such an extent that we had to keep saying Entschuldigung! as we trundled our suitcases over the cobbles, through the crowd. It didn't help that, with the rain starting, everyone was carrying umbrellas. It rained all evening so we never took advantage of the voucher for complimentary glasses of Glühwein in the hotel courtyard. Chris wasn't feeling too well. He had a bad cold that lasted for the whole trip. I went down with it too, in the end.

We walked along the arms of the harbour next morning, seeing the Bavarian stone lion and the stone watchtower, the Mangturm. These landmarks had been floodlit the evening before making for a pretty view from our (upgraded) front bedroom window. The winding streets through the old town were very picturesque too. It must seem like an awful tourist trap in the summer but in the quieter season, it's worth being there. The express trains to München pull into the station there and then back out again down the causeway. We took a midday one and reached the destination around 4 p.m. having seen a distant line of snowy Alps to the south for most of the way. The woods, farmland and unfenced lanes in the foreground looked appealing too.

Munich, by contrast, has a big-city feel. Our hotel there was a few steps, once we worked out the direction to walk in, from the Nord-Friedhof underground station, near the top end of the long park known as Englischer Garten, off Ungererstraße. We tried exploring the park but it was muddy on the paths and getting dark; we turned back in the direction of the Leopoldstraße where there was food for sale and found first a tea shop, then the small outdoor (Christmas) market outside Münchner-Freiheit station then, for supper, an excellent Afghan restaurant, the Khorassan, at the end of Dietlindenstraße. It was as well we took note of these places because Chris needed to bring his colleagues and all of his trainees to the Khorassan the following evening, as an emergency measure, after there had been confusion over a group booking at some other restaurant. Men are not good at organising meals out, and I was nowhere to be found at that point. Chris led an all-day workshop on the Monday, which left me free to explore by myself. I take such days at a slow pace, all on foot, which suits me. It was raining again, but I had an umbrella. I had an agenda too, to discover the spot where my Ottawa friend Dagmar used to live as a child in the early post-war days, on the quiet corner of Arcis- and Adalbert-Straße, in a Wohnhaus now painted yellow, a short walk from the Siegestor, Munich's Arc de Triomphe, with its four lions, not looking so fierce or triumphant in the rain. Dagmar remembers this, of course. I took photos to send to her afterwards, that she was pleased with. Another short walk past the Alter Friedhof that's mentioned on the first page of T. Mann's Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) brought me to the Pinakothek complex which Dagmar had recommended for my stay.

I have been to the Alte Pinakothek before but it is worth multiple repeat visits, its modern interior housing a superb collection of European art from the 14th to 18th century. I get emotionally drained in art galleries and have a bad habit of muttering my thoughts aloud as I walk past the pictures. Rembrandt's lovely and sincerely imagined picture of the holy family in the stable made me think of my two nieces who had very recently given birth. You stop and gasp, oh wow, that's famous! as you approach the faces by Rembrandt, Dürer, Giorgione ..., but less familiar pieces grab your attention too. I soon needed a sit-down at the last available table in the cafeteria downstairs. After my light lunch I felt I might have enough stamina left for the Pinakothek der Moderne across the road as well where I lingered in the Blaue Reiter collection and among the expressionists. Marc, Kandinsky and Klee were well represented in these rooms. Early 20th century art both thrills and disturbs me. The colours were radiant, the paintings stylishly displayed. There was no way I could also face the Neue Pinakothek (19th century art) after this, so I continued towards the city centre, finding a traditional Bavarian supper at a traditional tavern where I was lucky to get a table.

Christmas Markets everywhere. I happened upon the Wittelsbacherplatz where a medieval market (Mittelaltermarkt) was in operation despite the rain. Stall merchants were wearing medieval costumes; people do enjoy dressing up and acting a part. Open flames and ages old traditional food and drink were in evidence and ancient music was being performed. In the dim light my attempts at photography weren't successful.

On my second day of explorations, meandering past the Hofbräuhaus (out of curiosity I had a look inside this tourists' hotspot). I also browsed the Christmas market stalls at the Residenz, nibbling the obligatory roasted chestnuts and sipping Glühwein, as well as in the Marienplatz and in the Viktualienmarkt. The latter was the best place for this, the stalls selling fresh, local produce, the Christmas decorations featuring fresh flowers and fir branches smelling wonderful. I would have lingered there far longer and perhaps found a souvenir worth buying, but had to pick up my stored luggage and meet Chris at the station, so that we could catch our train to Stuttgart. At this point we both felt unwell. I was beginning to notice the cold I was trying to throw off, the same as Chris' cold which after a day of teaching had reduced his voice to a mere squeak. We were in an enclosed coach with other people so didn't talk much in any case.

In Sindelfingen, which we reached by means of a crazy ride from Böblingen with an expat Turkish taxi driver claiming to have a personal connection with Erdogan and complaining of his lowly status and inadequate income in Germany while driving in a very erratic and dangerous way, Chris had to keep working, at the usual December conference in Sindelfingen. He gave a presentation right at the end of the day, before which the poor chap felt faint from nerves and fatigue, but once he got up on stage it went well and the questions continued long afterwards. Meanwhile, I enjoyed another few hours of sheer respite, at the place I'd been looking forward to for weeks, the Böblingen Thermalbäder, swimming and relaxing in the blood-warm water. In the evening I led Chris and three of his German QNX colleagues through the Altstadt to a meal at the Fässle pub, a place I've mentioned before in this blog. It didn't let us down.

Since Vaduz

This could be a long post, if I'm not careful, not having updated my blog since we were in Vaduz on the 1st of December.

Since then, for the record, I have crossed the Atlantic 4 times. I've been to Lindau, München and Sindelfingen (Stuttgart), to London and Cardiff and back to Ottawa. The day after we returned, on December 15th, my mother died. I'll write more about it, eventually. Between that day and the day of Mum's funeral (January 10th) came Christmas, which I hardly noticed with so much else to think about, although our friends Elva and Laurie were very kind to us on Christmas Day, allowing us a moment of tranquillity over a lovely Christmas dinner at their house, with a log fire in their living room. We felt exhausted. On January 7th I was back in the plane to London, returning (after the funeral) on January 13th. In Ottawa I had to hit the ground running, as the cliché has it, in order to finish editing the February edition of CFUW-Ottawa's newsletter and get it published on time. That, while fighting a virus of some kind, was also exhausting. The outside air temperature felt like -35 C for a few days, which didn't help.

It wasn't all bad. Among the good things were a couple of gemütlich and stimulating meetings with my German-speaking friends, swimming at the Chateau, walking in crunchy snow, flying over the hills in the Cessna, playing the accompaniments to our Schubert songs, seeing the special exhibition of Paul Klee paintings at our National Gallery and highly entertaining documentary film about four famous British actresses. On January 25th I had another treat, a horse-drawn sleigh ride after snowshoeing.

I'm writing this in Bristol, in a hotel room with my husband who's about to join the annual SSS (Safety-Critical Systems Symposium), having flown to England again on February 1st.

*****

That was not such a long post after all, a mere summary. My next post will go back to our week in Germany at the beginning of December.