Märrie came for a visit, for the first time in over a year. She came by car, so we made excursions every day, in Switzerland but also across the borders into Germany and France. But we’d have had a great time even staying home all the time, because we always have lots of fun when we’re together.

The trips we took:
– Monday: A Magritte exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler.
– Tuesday: Bern, the Swiss capital, where we saw the floods from up close. Not that we’d planned on being catastrophe tourists, but it was fascinating in a scary kind of way.
– Wednesday: Along the Rhine to the Bodensee (Lake Konstanz), seeing the Rhine falls, visiting the old monastery island of Reichenau and spending some time in Konstanz.
– Thursday: Schloss Hallwyl, a beautifully restored castle that’s been owned by von Hallwyl family since the Middle Ages and houses a great museum.
РFriday: The Ecomus̩e in the Alsace, the biggest open-air museum in Europe, with about 70 rebuilt houses from all over the region.
– Saturday: The Roman festival in nearby Roman town Augusta Raurica.

On Sunday Märrie was supposed to drive home – but on her way down the stairs to put her luggage into the car, she slipped and hurt her ankle so badly that my mom had to take her to the emergency room, because unfortunately I had to go to work. The poor thing won’t be able to drive for a while – so yesterday, I drove her home and then took the train back. It was exhausting, to say the least, as I’ve never in my life driven such a long stretch (about 470km), mostly over German highways.

Now I’m back home and really have to work on my paper. I’m leaving for Singapore and Japan in 10 days, after all. Not that it’s going well at the moment. But I have to. If only I wasn’t so scatterbrained still…

Btw, the Firefly podcast I mentioned in my last post read an email I wrote to them (using my online nickname ‘Shirasade’) in last week’s show. That pleased my geeky heart quite a bit! *g*