with the sound of panting … it’s me. Trying to make it up the long, steepish hills around here on my bicycle. But yesterday – May Day – Willi, our host finished repairing an electrical assist bike and I’M IN LOVE. This bicycle is so sweet! You still have to peddle but it’s like having someone hand you the end of a rope tow – up you go – barely breaking a sweat. It’s been raining a lot here the last two weeks and there is promise of more, much more, to come but I’m thinking I can hold an umbrella over my head or just buy a raincoat already. This thing is too much fun to miss.
I walked down to the market this morning, about 5 kms there and back, just to prove that now that I had access to battery power I wouldn’t become lazy. Anyway, if I bike I miss looking at all the schneken along the path. I’ve got this theory that slugs are homeless snails and that the yellowish snails are hippies and the largish beigeish ones are staid and practical snails, just trying to get along here. On the way back from shopping I stopped and talked to the woman who made this garden. She was outside with a barn coat, gloves and a tin can, walking around the vegetable patch picking off the caterpillars. They eat her vegetables but she didn’t want to harm them because they would eventually turn into butterflies. And yes, the whole conversation was in German. I may have missed some of the particulars but I got the gist. My German is getting better though once I answer a single question correctly the native speakers take off and I have to ask them to slow down. The Germans are extremely tolerant of non-native speakers which makes it easier to bump along and practice.
We’re in a little studio apartment – a bedroom with a separate bath and kitchen. While we are doing fine the rainy cold weather is complicating things as the two of us in one room all day – well, let’s just say it’s a bit touch and go.
Our room is right above those first barn doors from the left.
We make small excursions – places we can get to by bus. Today though, we may bike down to Willhelmsdorf (if the rain stops long enough) just to go out of the house. And to replace the exploded cutting board. But that’s another story for another time. Maybe.
