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.

A German Thaw

After a wet, dark and cold winter, the first signs of spring are starting to slowly creep into our consciousness. Flower stands are selling bulbs and the light arrives at a steeper angle, one we have not seen since the sun deserted us for the southern hemisphere last autumn. It is not yet time for restaurants to start their annual tradition of erecting the mazes of tables and chairs on any outdoor surface that may catch even a sliver of the promised spring sunlight. But it is close. One can feel it.

Nevertheless, the Winter Games continue to play out in Vancouver and also on our TV. It still makes me a bit sad to see the snow start to melt away, because I still have hopes for cross country skiing, tour-skiing, downhill skiing, snow-shoeing and everything that an open snowy meadow has to offer. It will happen and we will for sure make it out at least one more time this year, but the thaw has started. Granted, as soon as I write this we will get hit with a spring blizzard, but no matter how we get there spring is on its way.


This winter we have already had so many good ski days, many more than our count of null last year, I have nothing to complain about. Still, it would be nice to someday have a car with good snow tires, a ski rack and at least a nearby cross country ski area. We will work on that.

Carola and I went out among the hoards of Frankfurters and did some shopping yesterday. The book store was full, particularly with people huddled around the travel guide section. Keenly and methodically, the locals were weighing how to re-balance their endowments of sunlight (too little), warmth (way too little), vacation days (ridiculously too many) and euros (never enough).

Afterward we stopped by the market for some home-made sausages and apple juice. While we were enjoying these culinary arts, we noticed an uncommon sight. An American evangelical missionary was loudly yelling about the Bible in accented German. This is, actually, quite a common sight in downtown Frankfurt. However, some young Muslim women took issue with his characterizations, it seems in particular with the book of Matthew. They got into a heated discussion. It was great to see this intercultural mix embracing freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But I was also left with the feeling that exercising a freedom is a messy process and results squeeze out in so many directions. When the young women withdrew and continued on their way, one had the feeling that the two parties do not really understand each other any better, but perhaps only used the occasion to deepen the suspicions and stereotypes previously held. We wondered a bit more around the market, absorbing all the sights, sounds and delicious smells. Then we got on the train and headed home.

This weekend we were both finally free to enjoy a weekend at home. We hung the paintings that my parents gave us as a wedding present. We picked them out on our trip to Colorado.



We also had some Carnival people go past our window...

One of the coolest presents I received for Christmas was a beer brewing seminar south of Munich. The first weekend after we came back from Colorado we headed toward Rosenheim so I could attend the brewing seminar with Carola's dad.

It was a good time, and we learned alot. We started off the morning with grinding wheat, barley and all the necessary ingredients. Then we had a weißwurst breakfast with some of the house beer. We went through the whole process of brewing the beer, ending up pumping the beer into a big barrel to cool and interact with the yeast.

The bucket of yeast had to be "woken up" by drawing it into the air and stirring it around.

Jakob arrived after our Colorado Christmas, and we headed up into the mountains. Above Cripple Creek, I took this photo of Carola with the Sangre de Cristo Mountians in the background.


After some more enjoyable days in Colorado Springs we headed up to Winter Park for our ski trip. Cousin Jenna organized a very cool condo at the base of WP. Above is the view from our balcony.

Once we arrived in Colorado, it was time to celebrate Christmas with my family. Ardell and Grandma Franson came down from Denver to open presents with us. Unfortunately, George was not feeling well and could not make it down.


Jet-lag held at bay, we really enjoyed relaxing with family. I enjoyed being so far away from the work place.



Dad was having a good time...and Grandma was evidently quite good the past year, because she had quite a few presents.











I, with some artistic direction from Carola, made my mom a photobook of our wedding events in 2009. She was happily surprised.

The end of 2009 brought with it some success at work. We are working on a project that is well described here:

http://www.ebrd.com/projects/psd/psd2009/40986.htm

My firm's website is here:

www.finance-in-motion.com

After a strenuous time at work, it was time for Christmas. Carola and I headed toward Rosenheim to spend the holidays with Carola's family. It was wonderful to spend time with Carola's brothers, sisters and many other family members. It was cold and the snow sparkled in the moonlight. Happy moments were mixed with sadder ones, but that was appropriate and to be expected this Christmas. I personally enjoyed singing Christmas carols that I knew (even though all the lyrics were in German).

We came back to Frankfurt afterward and prepared to leave for Colorado.