Bruce’s Report #12
I’m on the flight from Frankfurt to Beijing. It’s Tuesday evening (Deutsche Time, early in the morning Beijing time). Unfortunately we’re in the middle two seats of four on a 747, and the flight is packed. Adam has used nearly all my laptop batteries, so I might not get very far. No matter. After an uneventful drive back from Passau to Frankfurt we ended up in a small village outside of Frankfurt called Obernhaim which is where the Knoeble’s live. Stephan had arranged for us to stay there the night which was fantastic as we hadn’t really had anything arranged for Monday night. Geog and Barbel (sorry, no umlauts on this keyboard!) have a lovely house complete with a set of pools and fountains in the back garden. Oh, and of course the German Shepard, Fiona. Georg works for the networking section of the Deutchesbank. Later we met their other son Markus who is at University studying Electronics Engineering. Stephan, as you have already seen, was able to send out my two recent reports. Thanks also to Rainer for sending out Report 9 !
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| The Knoeble’s House | A Swiss Log Fire | The Fountain Garden |
We were treated to afternoon coffee in the garden, and later on to a BBQ, accompanied by a Swiss fire. This was a pine log standing vertical. It had been cut into quarters most of the way down with a chainsaw. It was a first time experiment for Georg after he had seen it working elsewhere. The log cuts act with a chimney effect to keep to log burning, and it did (after some initial tribulations). Most impressive, and a great BBQ too with pork steak and weiners. After showing off our pictures of the German Championships (aren’t digital cameras great ?) and Markus showing us his work for encouraging junior ARDFers in Germany, it was suddenly quite late, so off to bed.
Today was pretty relaxed (nice sunny days of about 25 degrees in Germany at the moment). Stephan had to head off the school early (good luck in the French Region 1 championships, Stephan), but Markus took us on a tour of the surrounding area, including a replica/rebuilt olden village where we had lunch, a quick tour into the nearby town of Bad Homburg (Markus also does volunteer work for the Red Cross Ambulance so we had a look at these too). Then he took us to the Frankfurt airport for this flight. Thanks to the Knoeble family for putting up with us !
Tommorow (today) we’ll land in Beijing. Mr Han ahs given us directions in Chinese to get the bus and taxis and so forth, so hopefully all will go smoothly. We also hope to leave the Roller Hockey bag at the airport since the baggage is restricted on the return flight from Mongolia (please note Bryan !).
Bye for now,
Bruce, from somewhere over Russia.
(Yay, I made it before the batteries died !)