And this may be the summary you've (not) been looking for

[oloriel]

Or, I am too lazy to talk about last week at length, but I know I'll be annoyed that I didn't later on, so I'll try the good old "brief summary" routine. We'll see whether it actually turns out brief. (It could always be longer, at any rate! MWAHAHAHAHAH!)
Cut for length, naturally. Mostly interesting for myself, I suspect, should I ever look back at 2011 and go "First week of May... I wonder what I did back then?".


May 1st
started crappily, first by having to get up at 6:30, then by finding out that someone had thrown up in front of my car and apparently found it funny to twist off the antenna and play with the windscreen wipers and the rear mirrors. Very funny indeed. F*cking teenagers. Get drunk for Mayday if you must, but keep your stupid elsewhere. Loaded car. Searched for keys. Got into minor spat with husband because we were leaving "much later" than planned. Turned out that when he'd said "7:30" he'd actually meant "7:15", whereas when I'd said "7:30" I'd actually meant "7:40". (If I had indeed meant "7:15", I would've said "7 sharp".) The joys of communication!
After about an hour's driving, we realised that we should've checked for any damage to our birch trees. May 1st is (among other things) the proper lover's holiday around here, when guys put up birch trees (ancient heathen fertility symbolism ahoy!) decorated with paper ribbons in front of their beloved's house/flat/room. In some regions they only use birch branches and huge red hearts instead (my father comes from such a region), but that custom appears to be dying out because huge red hearts are the property of Valentine's Day. Birches, at least, are of little use in February, particularly as naked birch branches are associated with spanking rather than fertility. Which is amusing, come to think of it... I digress.
Anyway. When we came home we saw that no damage had been done to our birch trees. They are luckier than those growing around train stations etc, I guess, in that they are hard to access...
Despite leaving "much later", we arrived at the ferry port 50 minutes earlier than necessary to get the ferry we'd been aiming for. However, we were lucky in that, due to the end of the Easter holidays, the ferry service was sending additional extra ferries, so we could board pretty much right away and the ferry (that would not normally have been there) left port about five minutes later. We were also lucky in that it was high tide so the ferry could take a shortcut. Thus we had to wait for the appartment. Once we'd moved in (poor Jörg having to drag all the luggage up the creaking narrow steps), we went for a little walk and found out that despite the bright sunshine it was bloody cold due to the wind. Moreover, I had to stop for a toilet break every ten minutes and walking hurt my hips and back something awful, particularly against the wind. Felt rather miserable about that because the only things you can do on Norderney is go for long walks, go geocaching or die of boredom. Went back to appartment. Ate stuff brought from home and rhubarb cake donated by mom-in-law. Watched TV. Hoping tomorrow will be better.



May 2nd
Woke up to the news that Osama bin Laden was dead. Wondered whether it was April 1st. Felt kind of ambiguous ("Pragmatically... but morally... but pragmatically... but morally...").
Had tasty, tasty breakfast. Went for a walk to the parking space (you're not allowed to take your car into Norderney city proper except for one hour after arrival and one hour before departure) and drove to the Easternmost parking space. Still terribly windy. Walked along the beach anyway - but westwards so the wind was in our back. Went slightly better than yesterday. Saw one lonely heroic(?) elderly lady at the nudist beach, first bathing and then enthusiastically doing gymnastics (probably to warm up again?). Logged a geocache. Walked back eastwards away from the beach (less wind!). Felt weak and miserable again by the time we reached the lighthouse, though, so I stayed there while Jörg got the car. Pondered the disadvantages of pregnancy while waiting. Probably not fair to grumble when the first seven months were virtually free of complaints and only the final stretch gets difficult. Amusing self by watching retired couples walking around wearing the exact same outfit. Cute, but creepy. Surprised because Jörg arrives much sooner than expected: Poor worried fellow jogged to the parking space in order to be back sooner. Jogging in sandals not recommended.
Some lazy time at appartment, then dinner at a potato restaurant (they only serve potato dishes!). They might benefit from adding purple or red potatoes to the menu, but are awesome anyway.
Watching news to find out more about the Osama bin Laden thing. Still ambiguous and not certain whether to believe it. Remembering an LJ post I made about a year back where I noted that all the politicians who'd hated another politician suddenly all said friendly things about him after he'd died, and I was sort of snapped at that it was just decent to give condolences. Not today...



May 3rd
Wind getting less. Cynical, miserable mood also getting less. Around dinner time, mother-in-law and Jörg's brother arrive. After a short break at the appartment (eating the remaining rhubarb cake), driving to Ostheller (abovementioned Easternmost parking space) again. This time planning to hike to the wreck at the other side of the island. Taking a folding shovel along for geocaching purposes. After about two kilometers, Jörg's mom obviously has trouble keeping up (her knees are not what they were) but refuses to acknowledge it because she doesn't want to "spoil our fun". We've had that discussion before on the way to Sossusvlei and again point out that having to carry her back if her knees give up entirely would kind of spoil the fun, too. She eventually agrees to walk back, slowly. As she hasn't brought her cellphone along, I give her mine.
About 2 km further along, I decide that while I could doubtlessly reach the wreck (another 1.5 km), I'm not so certain about the return, so it's time for me to slowly walk back as well. As my cellphone is with the mom-in-law, Marc gives me his.
Jörg and Marc hike on, reach the wreck, try to be inconspicuous because there are other people there. Other people are likewise being conspicuously inconspicuous. Eventually all of them start to subtly play with their GPS, at which point it turns out that all of them are just waiting for the others to leave so they can look for the hidden geocache unwatched. As no Muggles are present, they now decide to work together, which does not take long. Afterwards, Jörg and Marc hurry back to pick up their mom and me. I have meanwhile reached the restaurant where their mother was supposed to wait. Restaurant has just closed for the evening, mother-in-law is nowhere to be seen and doesn't answer the phone. Later on it turns out that she decided to walk back to the car when the restaurant closed, and didn't hear the phone because it was buried deep in her backpack. Jörg and Marc meet her at the parking space. Twenty minutes later, they pick me up. Fortunately Marc has got Solitaire on his cellphone.
Dinner at the potato house again. Jörg takes such a huge starter that he can't finish his main course. Tee hee. I actually eat prawns! Fortunately they come shelled. My mother tells me that as a three-year old on vacation in Denmark I loved shelling prawns. Not anymore, though!
Afterwards, we pretty much all fall asleep in front of the television.



May the 4th (be with you!)
we had originally planned to take a nice walk along the Southern coast of the island, but Jörg's feet have taken damage during the last days and he can hardly walk. Mom-in-law's knees aren't exactly fit either. I, on the other hand, feel pretty good by now. :P It's still sunny but again more windy, but behind the dunes where we're sitting it's ok. Due to the wind, however, I completely forget how the sun is burning down, forget to apply a second helping of sunscreen to my legs at the appropriate time, and thus get a nasty sunburn on the shins which, one week later, starts to itch and peel. Stoopid. Otherwise, time is passed reading, collecting shells, and knife-throwing (Jörg and Marc): Apparently they always wanted to do that when they came here as kids and never were allowed to. Now they are grown up and can buy a proper throwing knife if they want to, they naturally have to catch up.
Dinner at a nice Greek restaurant in the outskirts. TV and packing afterwards.



May 5th
Going home, alas! Packing, loading car and reaching harbour go faster than planned, boarding ferry also goes without problems. We don't go straight home but visit Jörg's mother's sister up near Jever. She has a restaurant at the end of the universe, or at any rate on the water-side of the dyke. While going there, I am amused by all the beekeepers at work in the rapeseed fields and by the cows and sheep who apparently like the grass atop the dyke better than that beyond. (Nice and salty, I assume!). Mom-in-law is kind of embarrassed about her sister and thus didn't really want me to meet her because she's afraid of what I might think of her family. What I think is that she worried in vain. After all the horror stories I was told, "Aunt Uschi" is only half as big as I expected and her restaurant is actually very bright, clean and modern. Food is good, too. Getting there was quite exciting as only people who live/work there or people who have paid for it are allowed to use the dyke road - but Aunt Uschi got them to make an exception for her heavily pregnant niece, lol.
Drive home is, as usual, pretty boring.
Back home, speed-loading the washing machine, because the next day will take me on another vacation. Holiday stress!



May 6th
Jörg has to work, poor guy, but drops me and my father off at the train station in Lennep first. Although we are there super-early, the train actually arrives on time! And the next! And the next! And the next! And we catch all our connections! This is about as common as winning the big lottery, but somehow it always works when my father travels by train. Perhaps the DB feels how much my father adores trains (his first comment once he'd got over the shock of "You're buying an old farmhouse?!" was "Wow, there's a lot of room for model trains in that barn"). At any rate, we arrive at the teeny tiny train station in Baiersbronn so early that my super-punctual grandmother, who is picking us up there, has only just pulled into the parking space.
My grandmother has been going to the same super-noble hotel during the first week of May (when they have a hiking week, for a given value of "hiking") ever since 1985, and each year she tries to get at least my mother and ideally me, too, there. I only actually came along once, six or so years ago, and have been getting Christmas and birthday cards from the hotel management ever since. … This year my dad and I both happened to be able to join my grandmother and mother for the last weekend, but as the decision was made rather late, we have separate rooms. I have (as they tell me in the highly apologetic way of a Japan Rail worker who has to tell you that your train will be one minute late) the smallest guestroom, which is about the size of our dining room and living room at home combined. *eyeroll*
My mother is still off hiking, but arrives soon after. Apparently there is some sort of celebratory event where everyone who participated in the hiking week gets a diploma and lots of traditional Black Forest food. Although Dad and I didn't take part, my grandmother and mom manage to smuggle us to the event (drat!), where we are welcomed by my grandmother's holiday friends, "all normal people who worked hard to get where they are now" (quoth granny). They are all very nice, but it's a bit of a "parallel universe" thing. Picture me, smiling politely, declining the offered alcoholics, having to tell a bunch of people who are total strangers to me reasonably personal things because of course they know everything about me (or, at any rate, know everything that my grandmother knows about me). There's a German-Brazilian couple who come over for this hiking week thing each year (normal people, yeah. I mean sure, there are people doing the same thing for Ring*Con, but then, they aren't claiming to be "normal" in the first place!) who met my brother a couple of years ago when my brother visited his best friend who was studying in Sao Paolo back then. (Amusingly, they consider said best friend to be "a very wild character" because he has been studying "all over the place". Actually, all CRMW is doing is participating in an "International Bachelor" program in Business Studies, which for me is not "wild" at all. Anyway.) So they ask me about my poor brother too. Also, there are people playing the accordion and the trumpet (in a rather small room) and all the hotel people are wearing traditional costumes. After perhaps an hour, I shamelessly exploit my pregnant state, declare a dire need for fresh air, and go to my room for a quiet read. That way I miss the cake, but as dinner will be in two hours, I don't really care. (Besides, the hotel is so insanely noble that you have a big complementary basket of fresh fruit in your room, if ever you should be in danger of going hungry.)
Dinner is awesome so I'm glad I haven't spoiled my appetite. Afterwards we go for a short walk (very short, as these days my grandmother cannot walk all that far: she goes to these hiking weeks for the company, not for the hiking). Mom doesn't want me to go hiking tomorrow (about the only thing you can do here without dying either of boredom or of kitsch). I point out that, having met the other hikers, I don't expect tomorrow's tour to be particularly strenuous, but she only relents when she has seen the track, which offers several options of taking a short-cut to a restaurant...



May 7th
As expected, the most exhausting bit about the hiking tour is the weather, which is mostly bearable as long as we're in the forest (yay shadow!) but gets very oppressive when there is no wind. One reasonably young hiker (in this company, "reasonably young" means "in his mid-fifties") keeps saying repeatedly "Oh, we could've come here by car too, why all the walking?". When finally, after a lot of climbing upwards with no wind and the first cramps in my tummy, I declare that I'll go down to the restaurant now, he and his wife are the first to join me (only for company, of course!), even faster than my mom. *sad headshake* So we miss the actual point of the hike, some mystical stone or other. We did, however, see the remains of celtic walls earlier, so that's something. When the rest of the group is done hiking and joins us, there seems to be great disappointment that I find myself perfectly capable of walking the rest of the way back to the hotel (about 1.5 kilometers. All downhill. OMG!)... Lazy crowd, all of them. Why are you taking part in a hiking week again? An extremely expensive hiking week, I might add, that none of you are forced to do? Grown-ups Your generation, I do not get it.
After some rest (for the parentals) and reading (for me), we go to the swimming pool. Afterwards, awesome dinner again. I begin to suspect that the whiners are just here for the eight-course dinners, and just do the hiking to feel less guilty about them...



May 8th
After an extremely stressful drive (hot + no air conditioning) and a couple of crabby episodes from my grandmother (my father is driving; first, he apparently takes "too long" looking for a fuel station; then he wants to take a different route than the one she knows because it's a bit of a shortcut and avoids a very traffic jam-prone interchange; plus some of the usual unnecessary arguments) I am home again! Jörg and his mom are working on the house as usual. I find 'náro lying in the barn in an untypical place, find him reacting untypically to my stroking, and when he finally gets up to follow me into the cool house, he is limping badly; his left hind paw is swollen, though I cannot see what's wrong. Poor fellow.

May 9th
The vet says that 'náro just had an argument with another cat that apparently bit him. As cat teeth are both long and narrow, it is apparently common for the wounds to close before all the lovely germs and dirt can be washed out, which then leads to nasty inflammations. Unlike I, who naturally is afraid of hurting my beloved cat, the vet simply opens the wound, which weeps a lot of pus, and then gives 'náro, who isn't even fighting, an injection of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. Although the poor paw is still swollen (the vet says it'll take about three days until it's good again), 'náro is already running around like normal. Before I took him to the vet, Jörg and I were scared that the paw might be broken or that the wound might be really dangerous – after all it was so badly swollen and of course the poor cat wouldn't let anyone touch it to see what was wrong – so it's a real relief that it turned out so relatively simple. (And three days later, the paw is indeed back to normal size. Yay. Caesar, one of the uphill neighbours' cats, is however visiting uncommonly often, and behaving uncommonly aggressively, so I rather suspect that he's the culprit!)


Oof, done! Now I can finally get back to my normal blogging. Or normal silence. Or whatever. At any rate, I've beaten the "Can't post about that yet, you have to catch up on …!" routine – so yay!
Cookies to anyone who actually bothers to read all this. ;)

Comments

[naurring.livejournal.com]

Norderney! That's basically my second childhood home. ^-^ We have relatives up there, that's why.

May I ask in which area your apartement was? Just curious.

And ya know what? In all those long years I still haven't managed to get to the wreck, haha. So big YAY for getting there!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Just around the corner from the Milchbar! :D
It apparently was Jörg's and Marc's second childhood home, too - they went there every summer until their mother went on strike.

Well, this time I didn't make it there - I turned back halfway between the Mövenbake and the end of the island. I did reach it last year though. It's never the (almost-)locals who go visit all the sights, eh? ;)

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you had a good time! And I'm glad 'nàro's paw is okay again. Poor little kitteh. *sends huggles*

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Glad that got across - I was a bit worried this entry came over a bit too passive-aggressive. ^^
Poor kitteh indeed! He's such a sturdy and fearsome fellow, but somehow he always looses his fights (except that one time last year, where he by accident slammed Caesar into the ground, which led to a sort of truce. Seems the truce is over now, though!)...

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Fun read. I loved the lazy hikers group! So funny.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they were a weird crowd indeed!

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I want my cookies! xD god, that hotel sounds like out of this world.

And good to hear the kitty is fine again, poor thing.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

*offers virtual pizza for the time being*
It was certainly out of my world!

He seemed to be free of complaints as soon as he was back home and out of his transport box (poor kitty hates car travel, unless he is free to walk around the car, which is not exactly helpful to the driver) - although the paw still looked awful, he was already climbing chairs and walls and hunting spiders again. Amazing how fast they recover sometimes!

[hhimring]

Ah, that summary! Finally!!
Glad that 'Naro is ok again--he does look really cute curled up on your freshly-washed baby things [should I have labelled that "Spoilers"?]!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yes! Here it is!

Doesn't he just! ^^
Nah, I don't think that needs a spoiler warning. I mean, that isn't even under a cut or anything. Besides, the way things are listed on my flist, I'd actually see that post earlier than this one, so... yeah. Why bother? ;)