Holidays in Germany

After finishing our dog-yard, we traveled to Germany to visit my family. We first spent 3 days in Mainz at my dads place. He had been really nice and organized a barbecue inviting most of the relatives I wanted to see the first day we were there saving us from the stress to drive around like idiots to manage to visit all and usually not managing due to a limited time there. We had a really nice and cozy afternoon/evening with a lot of good german food (sausages! whatever is sold under this name i Norway simply can´t be compared), talk and laughter. It´s good to see family now and then! Usually I´m quite fine to live far away from them, but sometimes I do miss them and enjoy the little time I have together with them very much. We were lucky and my sister with her family came one day early back from holiday due to bad weather and we got a chance to visit her. Always good to see the whole bunch of "Kreisels". Of course I also met with my long time best friends Jan and Tina. Tina came all the way from München this weekend - thanks a lot. Even if we all changed during the years and see each other only occasionally, it still feels very comfortable to be with them and I still feel they know me better then most other people. There just is something special with friends who one has known through many years and since school. Probably it means especially much to me who has been moving so much and didn´t have a stable social environment since the start of my studies 12 years ago. I also met with the third good friend I still have contact with from school times - Tine - and some of her children. Strange to see how different lives turn out to be between myself and friends I´ve been to school with. It´s good that people are different, have different opinions and live different lifes. How boring the world would be otherwise. The cultural part of the few days around Mainz was visiting a medieval market and an old castle. I always loved these markets when I was a child (and later as well) and wanted to show one of them to Rasmus. We enjoyed our time talking quite some time with a guy who was extremely enthusiastic and knew a lot about the middle ages in Europe and gave us a lecture about how both weapons, armour, clothes and food varied through time and what was the background and consequences. I really enjoy to talk to people who are so enthusiastic about a subject and quite clearly spent time learning a lot about it. The same for some of the people who keep some old crafts alive. After the few days in more southerly parts of Germany we drove with my mum northwards, visiting a forest area called "Harz" on the way. I can´t deny that Germany has beautiful areas. We visited a wooden church - a bit of a curiosity in Germany where most churches are build in stone - a place where they make glass objects by hand, a big water reservoir and a climbing place. Arriving at my mums place we again had to convince her that we really were there to help with some work and not only to have a good time. A compromise was that we worked 2 days cutting and sawing our way around her garden and went 1/2 a day on a little trip. It is very satisfying to help her and see how much can be dine in such a short tie that she can´t do alone.