In Germany

We have been in Germany again. For me, this combined a business trip to DESY in Hamburg with the chance to see family and friends, in Mainz, Hamburg and Cologne. Deviating from (my) habit we took the train, which really was a good thing as we put the time spent in the train to good use, first for ourselves and when I continued on, to get some work done.

So we stayed for a night with Sylvia’s family in Mainz/Nieder-Olm and had dinner  in an inn in the countryside, celebrating Sylvia’s stepmother’s birthday. This brought back good memories (I used to study in Mainz in the 70s), but I hardly remembered what little I saw of Mainz.

On to Hamburg where I stayed with Manni (by now familiar to readers of this diary) and worked with my colleague Desmond at DESY. We got four intense days in and made good progress. While Des & I communicate often via email and phone, working together really helped us to get through some technical issues and also increased our understanding in a much more focused way. With Manni I had a very enjoyable outing to the North Sea, a beach near St. Peter Ording. I haven’t been in that area for umpteen years. We walked quite a bit on the beach and over dykes and marshes and also visited the lighthouse of Westerhever (which sits in quite a peculiar arrangement flanked by two houses).

Peace, near Westerhever lighthouse (My friend Manni)

On the way back I had a brief stop-over in my home town and visited the cemetery where most of my family (motherly branch) lies; sadly, there are more and more names of those I used to know. I passed by Cologne and stayed a night with the other half of Sylvia’s family. My father in-law (Ulrich Schiller) actually had published recently a book, about which I will write a little in a separate post, suffice it to say here that I am very impressed. Sylvia is staying with them while her sister Ele is on vacation (in France, ironically).