Sunday, 31-Jul-22 23:00:00 CEST

We got the staircase fence and reeling

Week 30 of 2022, according to the European week number system, started on 25 July and ended on 31 July. I went to Germany for work, and we got the staircase fence and reeling. At the end of the week, we went on holiday to our farm in Sweden.

This blog will be unique again because I am not making daily headings. It is funny, though, because something cannot be unique again and again. This week's blog started on Monday, 25 July. It was a hectic week all the way from the start. This evening I put the plants we bought on Sunday in the ground. I was delighted with the Scabiosa plant. The blue color almost lit up fluorescent in the evening. I tried to take a photo of that, but it did not show up in the photo as intensely as I experienced it.

On Tuesday, I went to Germany for work over the day and returned home in the evening. I was really tired in the evening. We drove to Cologne. There was a lot of concrete on the highway in Cologne; quite impressive, actually.

When I came home, DW showed me a plant that had come to our garden spontaneously. It is a Verbena Bonariensis or Purpletop vervain. It is perennial, so there is a chance it will come back. When I got time, I might transplant it to the flower garden where it can get proper attention.

Wednesday, I first worked at the office in the morning. In the afternoon, the carpenter came to install the staircase fence. The carpenter, Martijn, and his helper, Gijs, came again. We discussed how the wall was constructed and where the brackets for the reeling would be mounted. The challenge was that in that wall, the ventilation pipes were located. Drilling a hole in the wrong place could make a hole in a ventilation pipe.

I worked from home on Thursday, but not only that, I worked in the evening as well. There was so much work to finish before the holiday next week.

Friday, I tried to finish all work I had to do, but I failed. Now it has to be finished after the holiday.

Saturday, we drove towards Sweden for our first holiday in many years. Usually, we drove in one go, an 11-hour journey, but this time we had decided to do it more slowly. Take the time to stop sometimes. We decided on a walk in the tiny village Hassendorf in north Germany. It was lovely weather, and we did not meet anyone on our walk. I noticed a lot of pig stables and very few solar panels in this village.

After the short walk, we continued driving north; before Hamburg, we got into a one-and-a-half-hour traffic jam. It was not fun at all, exhausting, to be honest. After Hamburg, I could drive again, and then we stopped at a water tower along the motorway to find a hotel. We were parked at a cashier system shop.

We found a hotel not far away for the night that we could book on the spot: Hotel Maritim and Timmendorfer strand. This was a lot more luxurious than we usually do, but it was great to treat ourselves to that after the tedious traffic jam.

We got a room on the 14th floor with a sea view. On the horizon, there was one sailboat. I took a photo of the boat totally centered; I thought that was fun.

People were playing at the beach. Beach volleyball and Kubb.

We went out eating in the evening. Took a walk along the beach back to the hotel.

We had the window open; you could hear the sea. There was also music playing that stopped in the evening; it was just the sea. I slept well, but it was too warm for my taste. Halfway through the night, I arranged a lighter quilt. That was much better.

In the morning the sea was magnificent! It was a little cloudy, but there was an opening where the sun shined through spreading rays of light over the sea. Someone was swimming in the swimming pool. The cormorants held out their wings on poles in the water.

The breakfast was magnificent. We had a table on the terrace outside the hotel restaurant with the sea and the beach below. There were groups of people at the tables where each group minded their own business. Waitresses roamed in between the tables and served coffee. I suppose most people were German; there were other nationalities as well.

Sparrows were lurking to get breakfast, too, but they were behaving well, waiting for their turn, meaning if you left the table, they had full access. One seagull did not behave as well. She flew in, landed on a table, and walked over cups and saucers a little clumsy. It all happened quickly; she nicked a chunk of butter and took off.

Although this disturbance was annoying, I found it funny that for a brief moment, the people at the terrace connected and talked to each other at the different desks.

After breakfast, we drow to the ferry Puttgarden – Rödby. We drove along a beautiful road along the north coast of Germany. I kept thinking, "if just the motorway is far away." Eventually, we left the excellent road and drove on the motorway to Puttgarden. Then we took the ferry to Rödby, and I drove to Malmö in Sweden.

In Malmö, we had a lunch break at a large shopping mall. We have been here before but have never taken the time to walk and look around the mall. This time we even went to the roof of the shopping mall. The parking was not that full.

We reached our farm early evening and went straight to my parents for dinner. They had not seen us for a really long time, almost three years. I had no idea that a pandemic would hit the world back then.

This concludes this week's blog.