Back home again

We enjoyed another half day in Florence taking a last walk by the Duomo and the Piazza de la Republica, had one last pizza and a tortina frutti di bosco (yummy!!) from our favorite bakery and a last nap in our T1-house (as Max named it, the engineer showing more and more clearly). Then a quick ride in the taxi cab and we took our seats in the Cisalpino. We had a reservation and it loked like this was a great idea as almost every seat in the compartment was taken. After we had stored our considerable luggage and traveled for less than half an hour we realized that we fell victim to the typical Italian efficiency: while we were sitting knee to knee with strangers, covertly pushing elbows of the people next to us off the armrest and were listening to half a dozen different cell phone conversation at a time - it turned out that the next compartment was empty but for two teenager and all the following ones pretty much empty as well. For reasons yet unknown every holder of a reservation was squeezed into one compartment and since we had five pieces of luggage all neatly stored away we couldn't escape. ... hell is ... were everything is organized by the Italians.
7 hours on a train is a long time but Max was a trooper. The DVD player with extra battery proved once again a lifesaver. His poor parents were also forced to tell and retell countless stories of Uxmal, Chitzen Itza, Old Kochi, and the Ghiralda in Sevilla. When we reach Zurich Max was dead tired - and so were we - but Jasi was waiting right there where or compartment stopped with a cart and in no time everything was stored away and we were on our way to Konstanz. We reached it just before mid-night so we could have a sip of "explosion-wine" for my mom's birthday.
And then, like a good girl, I went back to my bed and slept in the same sheets that I slept in as a teenager (these things last an eternity in this place). Strange feeling to come back to a virtually unchanged life. Obviously things have changed, there is a new couch in the living room and after 45 years of washing dishes my parents finally bought a dishwasher, and the shower door got renewed - but the basics remain unchanged, the look and feel, the interior decoration that is characterized by wildly growing plants (mom has a green thumb), wraiths with dried flowers, embroidery and much too full closets and cupboard because much gets bought and little ever gets thrown out. So I sank into my pillow weirdly feeling like the teenager I used to be.
Not much report about today. Didn't do much other than hang around the house and garden, shoot canons, have lunches, and dinners, chat. Max got a couple of walks in: to the lake and my mother's little cabin full of dangerous tools. Not much planned for tomorrow either. It is a holiday here in Germany (Pentacoast Monday) and so there will be walks to the lake and maybe downtown to what has changed for example that the Chinese restaurant at the market square changed it's name form Lotus Garden to China Delight or that the opening hours of the local museum have been extended on Thursday evening and such like.
Definitely entered the slower phase of our sabbatical and another distraction has emerged: after 4 months we have TV in a language we both speak well enough to enjoy and loads of old German crime stories to cath up on.