German Summer

Time to write a blog. What was the address to log in to Buruwang? What is my password? Where do I click to write a new blog post? I can tell that it is a long time since I last posted an entry here.

But I have a good excuse. OK! It is the excuse I always use. Life happens too quickly to find time to write about it. But the six months in Germany were so packed that we didn’t even have time for living all the life we needed to live.

Heidi was immediately back in to paid life with a job in her bosses new practice and another as a waitress at the Hotel Krone in Mittelberg. She loved both jobs but some days she was hardly at home.

Luckily the German government decided to reform the property tax. The execution of this project was completely incompetent which resulted in loads of unwanted extra work for the tax advisors. While some just panicked, Barbara employed me to deal with the project. A fantastically enjoyable job with great colleagues. I also worked a fair few overtime hours.

Our sailor friends from the sailing yacht Sybo visited us and managed to experience a day of winter, a day of spring and a day of summer all in the same weekend. We enjoyed showing them Allgäu and reminiscing.

We visited my sister and her family in the UK. While there, I proposed to Heidi and she accepted so we had to fit in getting married before we left Germany. Heidi also had a “little bit” of work helping her daughter, Julia prepare for her wedding.

A few years ago we bought an apartment that was being built. It was finished this spring so we bought the furnishings and kitchen, installed curtains and fittings and completed everything so that our friends Caro and Stefano can now rent it as a holiday flat.

We cycled with Wera and Gremmel in Allgäu and, during a long weekend, in the Bavarian Forest. We also cycled to work and back each day but that is commuting and therefore not officially fun.

We visited friends, friends visited us and we went out with friends. All the children were four years older and some new houses had appeared, but it was still sometimes hard to believe we had been away four years. Real friends are those who you can visit after years and it seems like yesterday.

And then last week Julia and Michael drove us to the airport and it felt like we had only been picked up by Daniel a week before but had lived a year in the last six months.