"Ape Saturday"

For those who wonder how the latest terrorist activities in London and Glasgow influences us: I expected it worse. The weekend when all this happened (the car bombs found in London and the Jeep crashing into Glasgow airport terminal) was the time I returned from Canada. Of course I heard about everything on the radio, but since we didn't go to London it didn't affect us. The only thing: I wanted to go to the airport earlier than usual. This is what they recommended on the radio. From outside Stansted airport the difference was that the road in front of the terminal was closed by police and only shuttle buses were allowed to use it. Inside the line at the security check was very long so we decided to skip the Sunday dinner and say good bye immediately. But it was worse than it seemed. It took me 50 minutes (which is more than usual, but less than expected) and they didn't do any further checks than normal. And actually, this was the only flight within the last 9 months that left in time.

Let me also complain a little bit about summer here in Germany. Really, up to now you can't call it summer. It is much too cold, at some days the temperature was only 55F, which is not nice for Germany. And it is grey. Like November, except of the leaves on the trees. Sigh. But last weekend we got a break from this. If you don't count the one shower on Saturday it didn't rain at all and Sunday was actually pretty nice with temperatures around 75F and sun. Dave visited me in Germany and we spent the weekend with Juergen and Ingrid from Cologne. They came visiting and Juergen wanted to visit a kind of "ape town". Do you have any idea what this is? It is a tree climbing area for adults and they are very popular in Germany though I have never tried it before. We paid 22Euros per person and got the equipment like ropes, gloves and all this climbing stuff. Then we had to wait for an instructor for explaining how all this stuff works. After the theoretical part everyone had to climb a small test round while the instructor was watching and deciding whether we were ready for the real adventure. And this adventure waited for us in the trees, 8m (26 feet) above the ground. We started by climbing up a steel rope-ladder to platform. From there the trees were connected by different kinds of "bridges". For example one was just a steel rope, another one was a log etc. I never had problems with heights before, but when I stopped and looked down for too long it really felt funny in my knees. The bad thing was the only rain shower (I talked about it before) of the whole weekend. Of course it took place when we were in the middle of the round. The scariest thing was the thunder I heard far away. Well, I didn't want to sit on a tree with a lot of steel ropes around when a thunderstorm is going on. But good luck there was no lightning and the rain lasted for only 10 minutes. Enough to make the ropes slippery and us wet, but not enough to make us end this adventure early. We had fun. And since we only had time to climb one out of 5 rounds I am pretty sure we will come back.
In the evening we had a nice dinner at a local micro brewery. Juergen and Ingrid invited us as they promised on my birthday back in April. We had a lot of fun. And we started to discuss some first plans for the wedding next year..... It seems so far away, but time goes by so quickly. We are pretty sure about the church part. Most probably it will take place on June 14th next year (when it is nice for every visitor from the US to travel Europe and summer school holidays for Dave's nephew). But we have no clue about the legal part. In Germany this is completely separated and we can't do the churgh thing without a legal wedding prior to that. We have some ideas, but nothing really planned. I will keep you updated ;o)