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.