So, here’s the deal: I’m leaving home to go home. Does that sound confusing to you? It sure is for me. Because I’m glad to go home to where my real life takes place with work, friends, and all the obligations. At the same time I’m sad to be leaving home, where I’m among like-minded people, where also a lot of my friends live, and where my family is, too. So, these days, I’ve been slowly saying good-bye. Good-bye to my little hometown, to all the old familiar places, and I’ve been trying to imprint on my mind all the details of home and the life that I’m going to be leaving behind here. It’s a very slow good-bye!

We have a lovely visitor among us this days. My sister, coming all the way from the south to see me. This, however, means that my time in Germany is coming to a closure (because she came to see me one last time before I’m heading out). It also means that I won’t be here any more when the time of the apple harvest comes (which is almost here already), nor will I be able to enjoy the plums, and nuts and all the other yummy things that are growing in my parents’ backyard. So, actually, though it makes me very happy to see my sister, it also makes me very sad, because of what her coming really means.

Check this out:   This is my mom’s oven. Or rather, it used to be my mom’s oven (she just got a brand-new oven, and so my dad had just put this old one in the backyard before he takes care to dispose of it). And the little guy in there is a pigeon. A rather curious pigeon that decided that a discarded oven would be a much more fashionable home than whatever used to be his home so far. So, promptly, he took possession of this thing, and spent not only the rest of the day in it (despite the fact that we were busy all around him), he even stayed over night. But I’m sad to disappoint you, because this story doesn’t have a happy end. The pigeon’s new home was gone the next day, and Pigeon needs to look for another home once more.

Guess what this is:   Yes, you’re right. It’s a tractor, on a field, during harvest. But you see, this is not just any tractor, and it’s also not just any field. It’s actually an onion harvesting tractor on an onion field. Note the “onion” here. Now, I’m not one who dislikes onion per se. In fact, onions can be a very delicious addition when it comes to your cooking; and they can be most welcome in such cases. In this case, however, I wasn’t too happy about the onions and the field, and the tractor, and the fact that these onions grow in immediate proximity to our home. You see, all summer long there’s been that peculiar smell in the air. The smell of onions. But you can’t just take these onions and put them away in a closet; or throw them in the trash, or cover them up. No, these onions are, more than anything, in your nose, and that’s where they’ll stay until they’re gone. So, today, the big secret that has …

When it cooled down not long ago, I thought summer had waved us its final good-bye – meaning it’s going to stay cool and get colder and colder as the year progresses. What I didn’t expect was that summer would give us quite the comeback. And so, these days it’s been all glorious sunshine, blue skies, nice temperatures, just as perfectly summer as perfect can get, in terms of summer!

My aunt has a cup. Not just any cup. It’s a very special cup. Not only does it look rather skew-whiffed (as if it had to stand the tide, barely making it), it even comes with rather peculiar abilities. It can tell you the tide. Yes, that’s right. It’ll always tell you quite accurately whether there’s high tide (Flut) or low tide (Ebbe) in the cup! Smart thing! No wonder it’s been quite a favorite of my mom’s, though I must confess that drinking from this skew-whiffed thing can be quite the challenge for my not so seafaring little person!  

I learned a new dance today. A so-called table dance. No, not the kind of table dance you might think of. A table dance of the kind where instead of getting up and moving around, you get to stay seated at the table (thus table dance; comprendo?). It’s the sort of dance old people would do. And that’s why we “danced” it, because it was all about the old folks. What got me into spending an afternoon with people well beyond my age? Well, it was because it gave me the chance to meet an “old” friend (though, technically speaking, she’s actually quite young). But we hadn’t seen each other in years, we live in different parts of the world, and we ended up getting a chance to meet up when those old folks got together, and so you’ll gladly learn the moves to the table dance, if that gives you a chance of an afternoon spent with a friend!

So far, this summer has been incredible (and you can’t say that of every summer in central/northern Europe). We’ve been having week after week of glorious sunshine, of heat, blue skies, and all the joys that summer brings. And I’m someone who still knows how to enjoy the simple beauties of a fine summer day!