Egyptian Goddess in Germany

For his 60^th birthday, my dad got a tour with a ‘Draisine’ (handcar) from my mum, my brother and me as a present. As my dad will turn 65 this year, my mom and I decided last year that it was high time for us to finally deliver what we had promised. So we checked for a place where you can rent one of those handcars to travel on old railway tracks which are not used any more by the German railway. A place not too far away from Mannheim was found pretty quickly, but our disappointment was big: All handcars had already been booked for every single weekend of the whole 2006 season! So we decided to be earlier this year and enquired again in January. –Just to discover that every single handcar had already been booked for every single weekend apart from two Sundays. Of course we did not hesitate and booked one of those funny handcars and last Sunday our present was finally redeemed!

Our trip with the cycle handcar (sounds a bit contradictory, doesn’t it?) took us from Staudernheim, a tiny village somewhere in the palatinate, to Lauterecken, another tiny town somewhere in the Palatinate. It was a great trip, different from the usual weekend bicycle trip. Certainly something worth to be repeated, so I think I will try to book again tomorrow to make sure that our second trip takes place before 2009…

On the road, uhm… track again!

The king of the railway tracks

The sign says ‘club provisions’

At the beginning of May we had a friend with us who studied online journalism and who was writing his final thesis with the big German weekly paper ‘Die Zeit’. Part of his work was to shoot several short documentaries on ‘integration’ which were then to be published on the paper’s website. He filmed Kshitij on his way to work, at work, making sandwiches (which does not happen terribly often… usually he avoids the kitchen…), having a BBQ with friends, going jogging along the Rhine with me and teasing me. I will of course let you know once the whole thing is online so that you can watch our new movie star’s first (almost 8 minute) ‘movie’.

Yesterday we went to visit my grandma. When I had just got out of the car and walked up the stairs to the main door, this cute fellow sidled from the right of the door to the left and then rolled up there cosily under the dust bin.

Initial speculations that it might be my grandma’s new pet turned out to be wrong. What we did find out though was that the cute slithery animal is only a harmless grass snake or ring snake and no threat to anyone bigger than a frog, toad or mouse. But be aware, next time you leave your house you might find this guy’s big sister (females can be up to 2 m long) lying in front of it!

At the end of May my brother and my nephew Dominic came to Marburg for a week. Of course we did not want to miss the opportunity see them again and joined them for a weekend.

Dominic had a great time on the playground. When we came back home everyone was very tired… everyone but him!

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too great. However, as we all know there is no bad weather, only wrong clothes!

“How does one say YYAAAA…?”

Kshitij enjoyed colouring easter eggs for the first time (!) in his life. The technology was a bit too much for him but he managed to get along

Some results of the hard work we put in. The eggs were boiled, coloured, dried, “labelled” and presented in matching wild-coloured crockery

One can also make lots of animals — enough to fill an “easter zoo”!

And of course, in the end, we enjoy Selket’s home made easter carrot cake
“Niemand darf das Häschen esseeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnn!!!”