Since my last blog post we have been for holiday outside Antalya at the Turkish coast. The weather was excellent and the sea was warm so we had a great and relaxing week together with Tanya’s parents. In the end of that holiday week, we went for a 24 hour trip to Israel to visit Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Dead Sea. It was of course a compact trip but it was 24 well spent hours.
When we came back from Turkey, my parents joined in Zurich and the next days we were touring Switzerland all together. Regarding Germany in the headline of this blog post, before my parents joined we spent a day in Konstanz for some shopping and sightseeing. On Friday that week we packed ourselves in two cars (Saab and BMW) and went to Geneva. On that same day we visited the city garden and had a look at the city. It is still hard to believe that the fountain is 140 meters high but if wikipedia says so… On Saturday we went to Cern’s Open Days and took a peek at that collider of theirs. It is not easy to get an overview of all their activities and theories but we did our best. Since Geneva is a bit far away for a day trip, we stayed in a French hotel and drove via the south side of Lake Geneva on the way home which was a first for me and Tanya as well. All in all it was a pleasant finish of that two week holiday.
Regarding the ongoing renovation project, it has slowed down a bit but Tanya has recently finished off the kitchen including the interactive board. At the moment we are in process of moving the kitchen equipment in place. Tanyas’s father also quickly put up a roof for the winter garden when he was here in September. My most recent contribution is a shelf for the office which has been put in place today. I will spend some time the coming week to put things in order there. On the technical side of things, I have recently installed a wireless hifi system from Sonos. It is covering the apartment and I have to say that it is very intuitive to operate with applications for all major platforms.
The next step for some more serious renovation is probably to start with the restroom but we are hesitating since November and December seems to include some visits from friends.
The garden also got an overhaul recently, kicked-off by an initiative of Tanya’s mother. We now have some more thuja trees connecting the big hedge and the ones we got last year. Besides that we got rid of a lot of half-dead bushes and two trees plus replaced the old fence with a nicer one which includes a gate. Since Tanya likes walls, we have also built a little wall. Later on we should replace the tiles outside of the winter garden but I think that has to wait until spring time.
Today we went went for a day trip to Liechtenstein with Paulo and Monica. Initially we wanted to go with the Porsche but the rear seats are not really meant for grown ups so we went with the X5 in the end. The weather was perfect and we had a great stay in the small capital, Vaduz.
Tomorrow Tanya starts a German course in order to take her language to level B2. I need to improve my language abilities as well so on Tuesday I will check out a Russian course to see if I can take my Russian to the next level. Let’s see in a few weeks if we are on the right track.
Regarding weeks and future, we have decided to take the car to Sweden for Christmas and have booked tickets for Novokuznetsk for new year. In other words, we are ready for the fourth edition of our flying Christmas/New Year circus.