We spent the weekend in Berlin because of Valerie's engagement party. We saw lots of friends and had a really good time marching through wintry Berlin. This was taken at the Tiergarten in the former West Berlin.

Our last Zucchini

Today I harvested (and ate) what will most likely be our last Zucchini for the season. It was good!

The view from our bedroom window this morning. Fall is my favorite season.

The Great Biodegradable Bag Test



My dad sent me the new Sun Chips biodegradable chip bag. As we have a composting operation going on, I thought we'd see if this thing actually degrades. I buried it under some earth and now we will see what our worms do with it. I hear they like French Onion the best.

Magnus Finds His Way to Frankfurt

This weekend Magnus visited us in Frankfurt, the first time since my bachelors party in early 2009. He got to see our new place, and we took him on a long bike ride through the forest. He normally works night shifts, so we tried our best to get him in the sunlight and get him some exercise. It was really nice of him to come, and I think he enjoyed using his first class ticket to get here.

Potato Harvest



We finally got around to harvesting our potatoes the other day. Carola purchased a variety that is particularly purple. The seed potatoes were purple and the new potatoes are also purple. I guess the potato doesn't sit in the earth very far from the roots.


Naturally, we cooked them up, and they tasted like normal potatoes, only way tastier! They are even purple on the inside.

The Cousins Invade


Last week my Cousins (Jenna & Christian) came to visit us. We had a very Colorado-style holiday with lots of hiking, biking & scootering. We also visited some wineries, which is not particularly Colorado-style, but nevertheless fun. Having a rental car, we were able to get out and discover some areas around Frankfurt that we had not known before. It turns out that there are a few very well-regarding wineries only half an hour from our apartment. Who knew?



We worked our way south, as the Cousins needed to get their gold bars to the safety of a neutral country - Swizerland (sterotypes aside, the real goal was to get Christian his watch repaired). Along the way we stopped in Heidelberg. Allthough it was a cold and rainy day, we managed to see the sites and find a warm authentic pizza place to serve us some good food.

That night we ended our journey in Colmar, France. It is a pretty little town that Carola and I have visited before. Once we found a hotel and a place to eat, it was quite the nice visit. We played pitch in the restaurant until after it was closed. The owner was nice enough to allow us to leave via the adjacent hotel. Really nice people in France, but they take really ridiculously long lunch-breaks.

I was going through my memory card and I came across this picture from when my parents were visiting us last spring. I thought it turned out quite well, so I decided to post it. It is from our daytrip to Wiesbaden.

A visit in Tallinn - in June!

Although this is already a REALLY long time ago I would like to share some pictures of the time Dorothée visited me (Carola is posting here) in Tallinn, Estonia. There are actually not too many pictures of us in town but quite a few from the little excursion we did to go hike Lahemaa nation park about two hours east of Tallinn. It was not too warm out (keep in mind it was the beginning of June) and a relatively cloudy day. Nonetheless, we were determined to hike in the beautiful nature. And the beginning was truly nice!

Unfortunately, after not too long mosquitoes started following us so we put on our gear to keep us from getting bitten too much. I forgot the anti-bite stuff!!

But we still had fun:

On the tip of the peninsula we found this old lookout tower from the soviet era. According to the date on the tower it was built in 1985. Around the time that we made it to that point it even started to rain. It was kind of creepy to be there!

By the time we got back to the tiny village we had to wait an additional two hours for the bus leaving for Tallinn. We were completely soaked and cold and desperately trying to find a café to warm up again. The first place we found was a tiny place owned and operated by a family. They were all sitting around the counter waiting for us to finish our cup of tea! So obviously we could not stay there for the entire time.

Thankfully we found another place, a museum that had a spare room where we stayed until the time came for us to go to the bus stop. Thankfully we both did not get sick afterwards but it was for sure an adventure that will be remembered!

Here are some pictures of Dorothée in front of the house where our grandfather lived in Tallinn.

And one of me shortly after 11pm!!

A few weekends ago, Carola was visiting for the weekend, and after a big rain shower the sun was setting and we had an amazing rainbow form in the eastern sky. Frankfurt is not Hawaii, and these occurrences are quite rare. If you look closely it was almost a double rainbow with one inside the other. Given that it was exactly one year since we lost our brother, Alexander, it was a heartwarming sign. Carola and I stood at the window, hugged each other, and took time to let the memories of Alexander well up inside us.

Rather than start my usual blog entry with the repeated apologies of an irregular blogger, I will this time confidently say that I have not been lazy, but simply very busy with other things. While Carola is in Estonia working on her PhD research, I have been spending alot of time between work and German classes. What little time I have left is usually spent feeding and clothing myself. I also have been trying to take care of all the plants that have arrived on my doorstep. My neighbours have informed me that often during the day a guy dressed in red and yellow clothing, bearing the initials "DHL" has mysteriously left boxes containing a number of exotic plants. Once, he left a box full of straw that contained a few plants and a bag full of potatoes.



Given that it has been so cold in Frankfurt, we have been forced to retreat with many of our new plants indoors. Therefore, many have been placed just inside our south-facing windows that lead out to the balcony. I hope to be able to move them all soon out on the balcony and free some space from what has become our "greenhouse". These blue bins have worked out really well for plantings. They are wide, just the right depth, stackable, and can easily be carried around from place to place. Growing here are a couple zucchini plants, some strawberries, and some spinach.

Siting on top of the speaker are the potatoes left by the strange guy in red and yellow. They look like normal potatoes, but are purple on the inside. I am trying to get them to sprout a bit before they come into the earth.








Above is our new plant shelf that I painted with two coats of varnish, with a good sanding job in between. Walter helped my put the whole contraption together. I put little rubber feet on the bottom to also help protect from our rainy weather. I am curious to see how well it holds up. As soon as I get home I will move some of the plants outside and fill up the shelves.


Above is a picture of the anniversary present that my parents gave us: our newest piece of furniture. They gave us money to pick out what we wanted and we found a used side-board at a used furniture shop in Frankfurt. While there are some scratches here and there, the joints and the woodwork are of top-notch quality. So I purchased an electric sander, and we will see what we can do with this over the summer. (more about my really cool new sander later!)

I am now in Tallinn, visiting Carola, and it turns out that our good friend Liis is also visiting from Japan, with her boyfriend Atsushi. We visited the Estonian national art musuem, KUMU.



While one can no longer see cranes along the skyline of Tallinn like so many storks perched above the city (the recession has bit hard here), one can still see many manifestations of the boom years. When Tim and I visited here in 2003, this was a dirty rocky parking lot with many old shells of buildings and factories. Walking through such an area in the US as night, I would have felt distinctly unsafe. Now, these buildings have been largely rebuilt and renovated, or at the very least stabilized. This building to the right was expanded via the roof, in what I think is an innovative way to expand the useful space of a building without destroying its original architecture.

These are trees that were already leaning out over the street when Carola's Grandpa was living in Tallinn as a young boy.

Carola and I visited a used furniture shop in one of the more local parts of town. In this old communist-era building one can see the remnants of what was once the local BAAR.



Today we went and visited an old monastery that can be found a short bus ride east of Tallinn. It is remarkably well preserved for not having had a roof for quite some time. Construction started around 1417.






Here you can see the monastery from out in the harbour. This is the harbour where the regatta events of the 1980 Olympics were held.



From this same point in the harbour one can see the Tallinn TV Tower, also constructed for the 1980 Olympic games, so as to better facilitate communication between Tallinn and Moscow. It was also a central flashpoint during the 1991 coup attempt against Grobachev, where an attempt was made by the Russian military to retake control of the young Estonian state.

Moving time!

Carola and I recently moved to a new apartment on the north side of Frankfurt. Carola now has her own study room, and I have my view. We are both really happy that we found such a place that meets our needs so well. I think we are going to be really happy here. Many thanks to my parents, Carola's Mum, Björn and Diego for all the help!

Because of the way the timing worked out, it was best to move on a Tuesday. So I took a day of vacation and we decided to try and do all the physical moving in one day. I went early in the morning to Europcar and got our rental moving van. It turns out that left turns are hard to find in Frankfurt (where otherwise I don't drive so often). I wouldn't use the word "lost", but I got dead-ended quite a few times before I was able to make it to the new apartment to meet up with the others to get the key to the new apartment. It was all work from then on. Diego and I had the first load loaded by 1:00 or so and then Carola and I went back to Affentorplatz for a second and final load. I think we finished somewhere right before 10:00. It has been quite a few months since I have been so tired. But with the help of friends and family, we did it.




This big boy caused a good deal of pain getting up and down narrow staircases.



Diego was not looking forward to this guy.


I think this is me fairly early on in the process, I am not sweating too much yet. I was anxious that we would not get it all done in one day. Carola was thankfully more relaxed than me, and took some time to smile and take photos.




Thanks to Mutter, we not only had a Europcar van, but also a VW Minibus. This was very helpful for all those things that do not pack well in a big moving van such as plants, cowboy hats and other awkward items.


As we moved out, Affentorplatz started to slowly empty out. Many thanks to Dad, who removed all the window coverings, and patched all the holes. Without all this help, moving would have been much harder. This apartment served us very well for the close to two years we lived there, and so I will not say anything too bad about it. Nevertheless, it was time to move on.


This is the study. We are completely out of boxes now, but we still have a bit of work to do hanging pictures. Since Carola is away in Estonia, I have been holding off on this project for awhile.


Despite being on the north side of the house, the Study/Guest Bedroom gets a good amount of light.


Finally Carola can have all her Phd-related texts all in consolidated in one bookshelf. Another good point about moving.



Because the kitchen does not have so much cabinet space, we are using my old wardrobe (straight ahead) to keep dishes, vases etc. It is so tall, it would not have fit anywhere else very well. In fact, it almost did not make it there as the breaker box is almost covered by the wardrobe.


Thanks to Diego's hammer drill, I was able to hang the coat-rack. This is our own personal staircase. Our front entrance door is at the bottom of the stairs. Many thanks to Carola, who wired up the globe light you see hanging. It took some acrobatic skills.


It seemed like a natural choice for us to put our living space next to the good view and all the southern sunlight (valued like gold in the winter). I have been using my old iBook (that I got from Aunt Ardell) as US-DVD player and also this way I can listen to my music and Colorado radio this way.


This is our skyline view. The Magnolia trees have just started to bloom and they are very impressive. Many of the other trees are just starting to bud out.


Same view, different angle.


It is difficult to see without a before picture, but a part of the balcony used to be quite green with algae that had grown on over the years. I took a bleach-water solution and scrubbed alot of it off. I need to do a bit more work before summer gets here, but I like the idea of having a balcony that you don't have to think twice about going barefoot on, and don't track green algae back into the apartment.


This is looking back in toward the apartment. While the balcony is the cool thing in the summer, the stove/fireplace is the nice thing for the winter. Next fall I need to do some research about what kind of wood/sawdust bricks we use in the thing, without spending a fortune.