More UK

It was so HOT in London...



...everyone seemed to be lying on every inch of lawn available...



...we couldn't do too much ourselves so we spent lots of time lying in the sun...



...until we came to COLD Scotland. Lucky we packed the big coats, too. That's Jay Fraser.



We visited the ruins of an old castle at Loch Ness. Nessy didn't come to say hello!

London in May, too!

Well what can I say...we came back from our Paris trip with a broken camera and lots of good memories. Yes, that's right, Michael's camera broke. He was pretty heartbroken I can tell you!
I was in such a travel fewer that I pleaded and begged and carried on until Michael agreed to go to London and Scotland for another week. We hadn't even booked the trip yet! Michael was feeling quite unwell at that stage AND his camera was broken but I wanted to use our remaining spare time travelling because a few weeks later I was going to start full time work. So we booked it and flew to London - with my dad's camera in the suitcase while Michael's was being fixed.

First we stayed with Michael's former Mildura housemate Bree, lovely Bree the journalist, and her boyfriend Gary in their wonderful flat just out of London. We had a GREAT time with them. Except for that one night when Michael was feeling really really sick and we went to hospital the next day. They didn't know what was wrong with him but as we would find out later, he had pneumonia!!!
After some great days in London we flew to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands where we visited a pen friend on mine. Mrs Jay Fraser. She is 86 and we met 12 years ago when my parents and I spent a holiday in Portugal. I had just started English classes and struck up a (very basic!) conversation with her. We've been writing letters ever since. When we got off the plane her first words were 'Maria, you've got so tall!'. I haven't heard that in a while :) Well, the Scottish countryside is probably THE most beautiful thing we had seen in a long long time. AMAZING. Breathtaking. The pictures just don't do it justice. But have a look for yourself.

LONDON!!!



We had to have lots of rests...including this one in Hyde Park



...sitting on the lawn for 3 hours!



The man who discovered Australia: Captain Cook!



Bree's still quite Aussie at heart...having a BBQ with Bree and Gary.

More Paris in May

It says "Here is the Empire of the Dead"



And there it was...



Very creepy!



Back in the world, this is La maison de les Bessigneul's (The house of the Bessigneul family)



French kiss!

PARIS in May...

Bonjour mes amis, hello friends,

in May we decided to visit our friend Marie-Laure Bessigneul, a crazy French girl from France's beautiful capital PARIS. I got to know Marie-Laure as a backpacker when we shared a flat together in Sydney in 2005. I hadn't seen her since so you can imagine we had LOTS to talk about after 5 years! Michael had both been to Paris before so we didn't feel obliged to tick off all the major sights...instead, we had a rather cozy stay in Paris. We stayed at Marie-Laure's great aunts flat in the centre of town, went on long strolls through town, sat in LOTS of cafes and visited a few unusual places...like the catacombes of Paris - where the bones of 6 MILLION Parisians have been stacked up to make room for more bodies on the cemeteries while the Plague was raging. That was certainly a very creepy experience! We also caught up with a friend of Michael's who is doing what Michael's doing this year - discovering the culture of his French wife! We had a great time in Paris - see for yourselves:



The Bessigneul Family - a typical French family?! I don't think so!



French parking - could it get any tighter?!



French shoes...no seriously, if you go to Paris, they all walk around like that!



Marie-Laure and I and some metal construction everyone took photos of...



Got to live up to the Parisian clichee!

Berlin in May !

In May when it was still wet and grey we decided to visit our capital BERLIN. Berlin is one of those cities you either love or hate. As for me, I don't love it particularly. It's all over the place, messy, dirty and full of contradictions. Throughout its history it has been split up and divided so many times that there is no real centre and bits and pieces are happening in every corner. Berlin was heavily bombed in WWII and many ugly (and few nice) buildings have been built to fill the blanks. What is Berlin's identity in the 21st century? They might not even know themselves. I find it fascinating for its history, and I think Michael, too.


Brandenburger Tor.



The Holocaust Memorial.



Inside of the Reichstag, the German parliament.



Reichstag from the outside.

WE HAVE BEEN LAZY!

Dear friends,

it happened - blog-o-laziness has set in. It is what always happens...People start beautiful blogs with photos and all and then the excitement of life is so overwhelming that the blog is forgotten! That's what happened to me, blog-writer and guilty of neglecting our beautiful blog. I know you have been following our blog faithfully and have been waiting for an update...SORRY FRIENDS! I will now keep updating our lovely blog. Where to start?! So much has happened! Be patient and I will slowly fill you in on what we've been up to! Here's a little sneak-peek at what's to come in the coming posts: I'm going to tell you about our travels...Michael's amazing timelaps photography...Maria's new fulltime job - and much more! Stay posted!!!

Love
M&M

The colours of Spring

As promised, here are some photos Michael took of SPRING in our garden!!!

Tulips from my mum's flowerbed behind the house...



The cherry blossom!



Beautiful yellow flowers in the garden...



A male squirrel chasing the female - there will be babies!


A bumblebee in action...



There are so many flowers in the garden, so many colours...

Our April experiences so far

Dear Blog-readers...

if there are still any seeing the blog has become a little less then regular! Dear loyal friend, which you must be if you are reading this new blog:

April is almost finished! We've started the count-down until the 30th of April, my mum's birthday. It is also a day of celebration in the whole of Germany for a very different reason. An ancient heathen tradition is celebrated in the night from April 30th to May 1st, one that has survived centuries of Christian influence. Big bonfires are lit all over the country and people gather round them and celebrate with food, wine, music and dancing. The bonfires are called 'Hexenfeuer', which means 'witch fires'. If you know Johann Goethes 'Faust' at all, a very long scene is dedicated to the description of just that festival. It is not only celebrated in Germany but also all through Scandinavia and some other European countries and traditionally served the protection from evil spirits.

There is so much else to tell you about April. The month started off with a very enjoyable holiday together with my parents...we spent a week in a holiday apartment on the German island of Rugen in the Baltic Sea. Wonderful walks along beaches, chalk cliffs, little fishing villages, sunshine, and Easter...it was a great time.





From there, Michael and I took the ferry to Sweden and stayed with our friends Evelina and Lars and there wonderful children Tilde and William in their house between Malmo and Lund. It was fabulous!!!



Then M&M took a train across from Malmo to Copenhagen and enjoyed three amazing days in Denmark's capital...





And then we took a bus to Hamburg and spent four days with our friend Nicole and her fiance Alexander there...and their two cats!!! For all literature fans: We happened to meet Gunter Grass, the 1999 Nobel Price of Literature Winner and very influencial German author. I got an autograph!!! We also spent a day in Lubeck, a very very beautiful and historic hanseatic city.









Apart from all these adventures, spring is here now and it is MUCH WARMER!!! Michael has been very very busy taking photos. I will display some of his magnificent shots in the next post!!!

The blog has been neglected!

Welcome back after this amazingly long time of silence! We've been neglecting the blog terribly. Well, that is, I have. It's like writing a diary. I have been given about 10 diaries in my life and I always set of with the best ambitions of writing things in each day. A week later the entries got smaller and smaller and two weeks later I tossed the diary in a corner and forgot all about it. But the blog shouldn't end up like that. After having received some emails from faithful readers who were wondering whether we were buried under all the heavy snow in Germany and therefore unable to reach the computer ever again, I decided that it is finally time to get back to the good old discipline of sharing our Germany adventure news with you wonderful people. And now that I've restarted I can already say that it is not as much a discipline as it is joy to be able to let you know what we have been up to.

The truth is, our life has finally gotten into some kind of routine, our German routine. In early March, Michael enrolled in a German course in Leipzig (at the Volkshochschule if that rings a bell for anyone). The course goes through to May and he has classes Monday to Friday until 12 or 1pm. He loves it although it can be hard keeping up with the vocab and grammar. He's making great progress and I am confident that he will be good at German by the end of the year. Papa spends many evenings at the dining table to teach him German with a Saxony accent, I'm not quite sure how that goes down =)

Spring has finally arrived here and we've had some very lovely and pleasant days of sunshine and blue skies. These days are still very rare but at least the days are longer and it doesn't get dark so early anymore. As soon as the snow started to melt, a multitude of flowers fought their way through the snow out of the ground. The trees are budding, birds are giving us concerts every morning outside our window and the first migrant birds can be seen as they return from Africa. Nature is re-awakening which is so suitable as we are in the Easter season which is all about resurrection. The world around us has been resurrected and reminds us each day of the resurrection of our Saviour.

I have started a job at a furniture shop the size of Ikea. It's lovely work in the office helping costumers finance their purchases. Lovely colleagues, nice work, and I'm finally earning some money!

Michael and I have been enjoying the culture in Leipzig. This year is the 325th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach and as THE Bach city in the world, Leipzig is putting on many events in celebration. Past weekend, the new Bach Museum and Bach Archives opened and we attended a very impressive concert at the Thomaskirche (St Thomas Church) with the Thomanerchor (St Thomas Boys Choir). Tonight we have St Matthew's Passion in the Gewandhaus to look forward to.

My dad has been taking a week of work and together with Michael he has been busy extending our house by a whole room! Michael has been learning a lot of practical skills, I think. He's also busy taking many photos of all the flowers in the garden and has built himself a tripod!

Life is good. We are enjoying each day as it comes and are feeling very happy being here. Stay posted. There WILL be more posts and the blog won't be neglected that much anymore...

Lots of love from the Rudolph's

Michael's arty Switzerland photos

In case you didn't know: Swiss people are generally terribly well off. One of rich people's favourite hobby is collecting art. Thus, Switzerland is full of the most divine art galleries and museums. We had the pleasure of visiting many and Michael fell in love with Modern Art. He got so inspired that his photographic ability was influenced...

Switzerland photos

Finally we are putting up some Switzerland photos! This breath-taking country is just too beautiful to capture on film but Michael has done (once again) an exquisite job!

Michael and Maria on their way up Mount Pilatus 2100m at Lucerne (it was -20 degrees at the top!)



This little church is almost at the top of Mount Pilatus and chiefly used for weddings. How would you even get there?!



We took a boat cruise across the lake and enjoyed the scenic view



This meadow (now covered in snow) is the cradle of Switzerland and therefore a national monument.



Our view at lunch...