Official opening of Summer 2008

Past weeks the weather has been really beautiful here in Gräfrath. It´s been like in the middle of the summer. This weekend when our village had it´s annual 3-day fair, the weather gods decided to show we people should never take nature and weather for granted. Temperature dropped 15 Celsius grades, sky has been gray and rainy these past three days. Fair ends tonight, forecast shows warmth and sun are back tomorrow.

Early this morning. Cold and rainy, people still in church or home in the bed.

An hour later looking out from Kaffeehaus, my local pub.

Gray sky. Bier, bratwurst and brass band. So typical German!

I am really happy these ugly bear stands and tents disappear tomorrow.

I also made a short video with my mobile phone. If interested, click the video to play it. Video is quite big (86 MB), so you need a good, internet connection. First minute or so shows only the brass band from behind, so you might want to skip it. (TIP: With a slow internet connection, videos can be quite jumpy. When you pause the video, your computer continues to download it to a buffer. The longer you pause, the longer you can then watch it without annoying breaks.)

Hello again

I just noticed I haven´t updated this blog in over a month. Have been working really hard, slept more nights away than here at home.

This time at home in Solingen. Looks like the right place to be right now. My computer´s weather station showed this information a couple of minutes ago, 21:10 o´clock (9:10 PM, see the picture):

Helsinki 7 grades Celsius and cloudy. Our former hometown and still our mutual favourite Rome 16 grades and rain. The other hometown Leipzig 18 and sunny, but here in Solingen 21 and a beautiful sunset. Keep in mind I am talking about 9 o´clock in the evening!

Summer is finally here!

No time to write more, our village market square with it´s pubs is calling.

Home sweet home

We had a terrible storm here in Germany last Saturday. In Alps wind speeds up to 220 km (about 135 miles) per hour, inland up to 180 km per hour. Terrible drive for us both, but finally Sunday afternoon we were home in Leipzig. Some quality time together, tonight I have to drive, again, across Germany back to Solingen. My much awaited visitors from Finland arrive at 22:15 in Düsseldorf Airport.

For myriad of reasons Angie stays in Leipzig. In a way I think it is a good decision. This is Teemu´s and Eero´s first visit to me and Angie and me both thought it could be better if I can fully concentrate in my guests. We can speak and communicate only in Finnish, without need to translate all the time, both ways. One main point for me and the guys is Cebit, the computer fair I mentioned earlier; Angie goes to computer show only in her nightmares ;)

I feel incredibly good, having Teemu and Eero here. I hope in a few days I can post some nice photos here.

Now a cup of coffee with my lovely mother-in-law, before hitting the highway. One reason I like Germany: If you like driving fast, here it is possible. It is a nice feeling to accelerate to 210 km per hour and hit the cruise control button! From a bit more than 500 km between our homes, over 300 km is with no speed limit. The rest is limited to 130 km per hour, but it´s only good. You need these breaks; driving over 200 km/h you really need to concentrate.

If you are interested to see this route in a map, here´s route description: From Leipzig A14 to Magdeburg, then A2 to Kamen near Dortmund, A1 to Wuppertal and finally A46 to Solingen.