First Full October Week

Last week left nobody here in any doubt about it being autumn. It wasn't overly cold yet, and there was still plenty of sun, but the hours between sunrise and sunset are considerably reduced now, and we've had some nights and mornings as cold as 6C/42F. Also, I've been wearing my red wool coat for the first time this season, as well as ankle boots instead of my beloved New Balance trainers.

My trains home from Offenburg were more or less on time on Monday (5 October), and I worked from home until it was time to pick up my new specs from the optician at 4:30 pm. After that, I didn't have long before I left again, this time to meet a former colleague who has retired earlier this year.

We met at the train station and walked to the pub where we spent a lovely chatty evening. It was good to see her, and see her so well! Her last couple of years at work had been quite stressful, but almost as soon as her retirement party was over she and her partner went on a long trip to Japan. She told me a lot about that trip, and apart from the scary experience of an earthquake it all sounded very good and quite fascinating.

Tuesday (6 October) was sunny throughout and mild at a high of 22C/71F after a chilly morning of 10C/50F. Once again I worked from home, and afterwards enjoyed my customary walk to Benningen.

I spent Wednesday (7 October) at the office in Weilimdorf and went to my Mum's afterwards. We sat on the balcony for a while as it was still mild and sunny-ish when I arrived but retreated indoors to eat the semolina dumplings soup I had asked my Mum to make for us some time now that cooler weather was here.

By the time I left, rain was imminent and did indeed catch up with me about half way home. But it wasn't a problem, since the entire distance doesn't take me longer than 10-15 minutes, and at home I could get out of my damp clothes right away. After the long dry months we've had, I'm still at the stage where I welcome every drop of rain!

Thursday (8 October) saw me taking a long-distance train to Cologne. I was there for a workshop about the use of AI in the insurance industry, and while not every topic was equally interesting (or well presented), overall the event was important and useful for my work. Also, everything was well organised and the catering was excellent - always a plus, although of course I don't attend workshops or other events merely for their culinary benefits :-D

The rooms were we worked were on the top floor of a modern office building with access to a roof terrace from where some of Cologne's most iconic buildings were visible. The first three pictures were taken during coffee break, the sunset one after the workshop ended at about 6:30 pm.

On the way in, my train was 50 minutes late which wasn't a problem because I had planned very generously. On the way back I had a long wait at the station in Cologne but eventually arrived home with only 40 minutes delay; sometimes the long-distance trains can make up for some of their delay along the way. I was home shortly after 10:30 pm, glad to shut the door to my flat from the inside.

It was cold on Friday (9 October) morning - 6C/42F - but sunny until grey clouds came rolling in, bringing the odd shower in the afternoon and proper rain at night.

Mid-afternoon, my book-swapping friend A. came for a mug of tea and of course to swap books. It is interesting how sometimes we feel exactly the same about a book when at other times we recommend something to each other that the other person doesn't enjoy at all.

Before that, I'd been on an errand for my Mum, and afterwards I did my usual weekly cleaning.

My husband arrived a bit after 9:00 pm, and we enjoyed the start of the weekend with a meal of steak and salad. I'm not very good at preparing meat, but I was quite happy with how the steaks turned out; they were of good quality, organic and accordingly expensive, which is perfectly alright for me (I don't buy cheap meat and rather don't eat any if that's the only option, such as at the canteen at work).

Saturday (10 October) was off to a leisurely start and a breakfast of eggs on toast before we headed into town for an espresso and a stroll at the palace grounds first and then, because it was very crowded, away from there and to a quarter of town where recently a new park has been opened and a new neighbourhood is being developed, with the buildings all supposed to be to high standards in terms of climate-friendly materials, energy consumption and so on.

The least crowded part of the palace grounds

Autumn flowers in the palace grounds

We had a look at the new park, where nobody else was around, and walked along the fence around the large construction site to give us an idea of it all. No doubt we'll be back to check on the progress.

After a brief rest at home, we left for my Mum's again. On the ground floor in the same house lives family friend R with her brother, her two cats and most recently two baby turtles. R's birthday had been in late September, but she did not celebrate on the day. Instead, she invited all of us - my Mum, sister, O.K. and myself - for dinner that evening.

The food was very good, and the animals - mostly the cats - provided extra entertainment. It is just never boring or dull when animals are around, is it! The male cat is a Maine Coon mix with the size and fur of that breed. He is very friendly and took an instant liking to my husband, laying on his lap with his face turned up towards him, purring and being VERY warm with all that fur, for the time we sat in the living room until the meal was ready.

It was a nice evening and made even better by us being able to walk there and back, not having to think about a parking space or the many roadworks dotted around town.

Sunday (11 October) was another autumnal day. It started wet and chilly but eventually the sun came out.

The four of us (Mum, sis, O.K and I) were invited for coffee and cake at 3:00 pm at my godmother's in Tamm, a nearby smaller town. I had last seen her two years ago at my Mum's 80th birthday, and she had wished for us to visit her since I had told her of our wedding. She's in her mid-eighties and not very well, but her three children (my and my sister's age) take turns in looking after her, and we were delighted to find that all three were there, too.

It's like this with people you've known from earliest childhood; no matter how many years you have not seen them, you instantly "know" them again, and there was no shortage of things to talk about as well as plenty of laughter around the table.

After a couple of hours O.K. drove us back to Ludwigsburg. The early evening sun made me want to stretch my legs and catch some daylight, and so my husand and I went for a quick walk around the fields in the neighbourhood before I prepared a frittata for our evening meal.

O.K. left for the long drive home at about 8:45 pm, and I snuggled under my blanket in front of the TV, watching "Sunday Best" on Netflix (a documentary about Ed Sullivan, both the man and the show).

Read in 2026 - 28, 29

I am finally catching up on my book reviews and have decided to make this one a combination of two reviews which I will try to keep short-ish. There is one more waiting to be written, but it will have its own post.

#28: The landscape of Death

M.S. Morris

This one captured my interest because it is set in and around Scarborough, where I have spent several holidays with my late husband. I've not been back since but intend to walk down those particular memory lanes some time.

DCI Tom Raven grew up in Scarborough but has not set foot in town for decades, leaving his past and some traumatic memories behind. Now he has returned after his father's death to sort out things and is promptly drawn into a murder investigation that involves some of the people from back then.

As this is the first of a series (and therefore was offered as a freebie at Amazon's Kindle store), you can imagine that the investigation was successful and in the end Tom decides not to return to his job and life in London but stay in Scarborough.

I liked the book well enough to consider buying the next one.

M.S. Morris is, by the way, not one person but the pen name used by a duo of authors, Margarita and Steve Morris. You can learn more about them here on their own website.

#29: Two Birds With One Stone

Sigrid Vansandt

We're once again in Yorkshire for a murder investigation, but that's where the similarities with my previous read end.

This time, the place is a village and the investigators are amateur sleuths: Two expat American ladies of middle age meet quite by chance literally over the dead body of one of the most disliked characters in the village. They quickly decide to work together on this, since the local police seems to be both unable and somewhat unwilling to interview the right people and ask the right questions.

Needless to say, the two ladies succeed and eventually not only manage to rope in the local police force but also to secure themselves great jobs, become friends and even take the first tentative steps towards their respective romantic interests.

This was a much lighter read than the book set in Scarborough, and while I found it entertaining, I am not inclined to follow the series (in spite of its Yorkshire setting).

The author does not appear to have her own website anymore (the link I found on Goodreads leads to an error page), but Goodreads says she was born in the US and started to write in second grade. Being from the US herself, she was obviously able to incorporate personal experience in the expat characters.

Read in 2026 - 30: Four Letters of Love

Don't worry - I have not lost the ability to count. My last review said "Read in 2026 - 27", and this is #30 because #28 and 29 will be reviewed another day when I get round to writing them.

Four Letters of Love

Niall Williams

My book-swapping friend A. lent me her copy of this wonderful book which I can highly recommend. 

I'd never read anything by this author before and didn't know what to expect, and here is what I found: 

A quiet book in spite of dramatic events happening, an ability to use language in a poetic way even to describe sad and dreadful things, and leaving me with a mix of sadness for what the characters went through and hope that there might be a brighter future ahead for some of them.

The story revolves around a young man who grows up under peculiar circumstances after his father stops going to work because "God told him" to go and paint. Go and paint he does, leaving his wife and boy for months on end struggling at home with no income. 

The boy grows up and without wanting to tell you too much let me just say that eventually he goes on a quest to find one of his father's paintings which happens to have ended up in a village school on a tiny island off the coast.

The school master and his family welcome the stranger into their home, and this leads to consequences nobody could have foreseen, changing the lives of those involved forever.

There, I won't say anymore, because I'd like you to find out for yourselves what happened and how it all came about.

It was definitely one of the best reads this year.

If, like me, you know next to nothing about the author, his wikipedia entry is here.

Last of September, First of October

Last week saw the end of September and start of October, in some ways almost the same as the end of summer and start of autumn. It is a time of year I love particularly, as for me it combines melancholy for the summer that was, joy and pleasure at the colours and abundance of autumn and anticipation of Advent and Christmas.

Monday (28 September) was still summerly warm at 29C/84F and sunny. I arrived home from Offenburg on time but then shut myself out of the flat, leaving the key inside - something that happens maybe once in ten years, if that! Fortunately, I had my mobile phone with me and could ring my Mum to make sure she was home; among the three of us (Mum, sister and myself) we keep keys to each other's flats. It cost me only a total of maybe 25 minutes, walking to my Mum, picking up the keys and walking back, but I was quite angry with myself.

The rest of the day went by without any further incidents, and I enjoyed my after-work walk to Benningen in the evening light.

I worked at the office on Tuesday (29 September) and chose to walk home from Kornwestheim afterwards. Later that evening, for the first time since the spring my team and I met at "our" Irish Pub for the quiz. Only four of us could make it, but in spite of being such a small team, we did well, coming second with just one point less than the winning team. It was good to see the others after the long break.

Wednesday (30 September) was my second day at the office, and like most Wednesdays I went to see my Mum after work. The day was so nice and the evening still warm enough without being too hot that we sat on the balcony, surrounded by my Mum's beautiful flowers, enjoying food & drink together as much as our chat.

Last Sunrise in September, as seen from my kitchen

Thursday was the 1st of October, and although it was still warm-ish at 21C/70F, a grey sky and a succession of showers made for more of an autumn feel. I wore my rain coat for the walk to Asperg after work, but only for the last third of the walk did it rain properly. The feeling of wet clothes and partly wet feet was quite unfamiliar!

After a little rain, Friday (2nd of October) turned into another sunny day. After work and cleaning my flat, I took the trains to Offenburg where my husband picked me up; I was only delayed by about 8 minutes, but the train had been VERY full, and a young woman in the seat behind me was permanently snivelling and coughing. (So far, it looks as if she has not managed to pass her cold on to me.)

On Saturday (3rd of October), O.K. drove us into Offenburg for a walk in a quarter of town we quite like. We finished the walk with ice creams in town, possibly for the last time this season. 

Offenburg

Late afternoon we drove to the nearby village where O.K.'s sister and her husband live to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. The food was delicious!

Sunday (4th of October) called for a hike. We started straight from the cottage and opted for a tour mostly on flat terrain with hardly any ups and downs. 

Through the neighbouring village of Zunsweier along the river (Kinzig) to a beer garden for a refreshing shandy in the sun (which by now was warmer than what we had expected from the forecast), then skimming Offenburg by lake Giffiz, leaving town and walking past the small air field and another lake back to the village.

We found this caterpillar crossing the path. It was as long as my finger, and according to photo identification on my phone most likely a hawk moth (Agrius convolvuli).

We made sure it reached the other side of the path safely. According to wikipedia, though, its chances of survival are slim, as this is the second brood of the year and it won't be "finished" in time to leave for warmer zones before winter sets in.

"Großer Deich", the place where we stopped for a shandy

At the cottage, we had my mother-in-law's home-made apple cake (from her own apples) and coffee on the balcony. For our evening meal, my husband prepared a zucchini ratatouille with couscous.

Phew! I have finally managed to catch up with most of my back log of posts since our holiday in Austria. From now on, there will mostly be one post a week from me, not one almost every day. I still want to write up a couple of book reviews, but generally I am now "on top" of my blogging again.

Last Full Week of September

The last full week of September, the second week back from our hiking holiday, was nearly completely sunny with not a drop of rain. For the first time this season, at night and early in the mornings the thermometer sunk below 10C/50F, the lowest being 7C/44F on Thursday morning. By Sunday we were back to almost 30C/86F during the day.

On Monday (21 September) I was happy to find my trains back from Offenburg on time and arrive in Ludwigsburg without delay - a rare enough thing to happen,  certainly worth mentioning!

My after-work walk to Benningen was beautiful in the golden evening light.

On the way to Benningen

Sunset that evening as seen from my study...

...and from my living room.

Tuesday (22 September) was a cold enough morning for me not to leave the windows open all the time. It definitely felt like early autumn and not like late summer anymore.

I worked from home and afterwards met my sister at the train station where we took a local train into Stuttgart to meet a couple of friends for a meal. We had not seen them in a long time, and it was good to catch up. The food was very nice, too.

Unfortunately, we met with utter chaos at the local train system as soon as we arrived at the underground station. Information was confusing and unreliable, and when we turned to one of the manned information points, we found that the staff knew no more than us. I think it took us about an hour to get home, twice the regular time.

As usual, I worked at the office on Wednesday (23 September). Because the after-work gathering at the bar of the Holiday Inn next to our building had been such a success in May to celebrate my wedding, I had arranged for another such gathering (this time "just for fun", and everybody was paying for their drinks). Only four of us could make it, but it was a nice hour spent chatting with my colleagues.

It was still only 6:00 pm when I left the bar, and so I decided to walk home from Zuffenhausen. Like the evening before, local strains were still (or again) chaotic.

I took these sunset pictures starting at 7:10 pm and ending at 7:36 pm - it was breathtakingly beautiful, the colours were much more luminous in real life than what my phone's camera picked up:

I was back at the office on Thursday (24 September) but only for the morning. Around lunch time I took a train to Feuerbach where I had been invited to a conference of Data Protection Officers in the insurance industry. This particular meeting was new to me, and I didn't know what to expect. However, I must say it wasn't worth attending. The man who organised and MCed the meeting liked to hear himself talk more than anything, and he went off on a political rant every chance he got, whether it suited the discussed subject or not.

Still, something good came out of it: I met one of the professors who had taught me back in 2014, when I did my training for Data Protection Officer (DPO). He is semi-retired, not teaching at the academy anymore, but he is as alert and interested in  matters relevant to our work as before. During coffee break, we had a good chat and exchanged email addresses so that I can invite him to the meetings of the Stuttgart group of DPOs I organise several times a year.

Along the way between the train station and the conference venue

My Mum had invited me for her home-made savoury onion pie, a typical dish for our region at this time of year, so I went there after the conference. Delicious!

I worked from home on Friday (25 September) and had a quietly productive day. The opposite of it was the chaos at Stuttgart Main Station when I arrived there late afternoon. 

In the range of half an hour, six out of 10 trains were delayed, one was cancelled (at the bottom of the board), three had changed platforms. This, I'm afraid, is nothing out of the ordinary for Stuttgart on a Friday evening.

My trip to Offenburg was about half an hour late, and so my husband and I sat down to welcome the weekend with salad, cheese, bread and wine as late as 9:30 pm.

On Saturday (26 September) the village band were scheduled to perform at a traditional fête in a small village in the High Black Forest, about a 2-hour drive from O.K.'s village. Reiselfingen has less than 600 inhabitants and is within easy walking distance of the Wutachschlucht (Wutach Gorge), where O.K. and I went hiking nine years ago. Click here for my "main post" about that holiday.

This time we were not there for a hike. The musicians were of course in their uniforms and had to get ready for their performance as soon as we arrived. 

The venue

Only a small "fan club" this time - we've had more on other occasions.

The band getting ready

While they were playing, I sat for the first two pieces with the other spouses who had come along on the bus chartered for our group, and then went out for a little exploring on my own around the village.

Reiselfingen church

When I stood at one of the roads, a car with two ladies pulled up next to me. They asked whether I needed help, or was I looking for something? I needed neither help nor directions, I explained to them; I was just going for a stroll and would return to the fête shortly. Of course I thanked them for their kindness, and they drove on as I made my way back to the fête.

After the village band's performance, our musicians were free to eat and drink with us and we all listened to the band whose turn it was next. It was a nice, cheerful atmosphere with nobody overdoing things too much, and we were back on the bus and ready for the long ride home at 10:30 pm as scheduled.

While the ride there had been in beautiful sunshine and I had really enjoyed seeing the countryside in its early autumn colours, it was of course too dark to see much on the way back, and we were glad to reach the cottage at around 1:00 am.

Sunday (27 September) was the warmest day of the week, almost a little too warm for a proper hike, but we chose a long walk that would at least partly be in the shade of the woods. 

Starting right from the front door, we walked to the next village (Niederschopfheim) and from there to Oberschopfheim, into the woods to Lendersbach-Hütte (a shelter) where we had our sandwiches, from there to Diersburg and back to Hofweier, a total of 14.5 km. It was warm and therefore somewhat exhausting (especially the uphill bits), but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless.

Back home, we sat for a bit on the balcony before retreating inside - the mozzies were really pestering us, and it was getting dark fast. We ended the evening and the week early-ish as usual on a Sunday in view of the early start on Monday morning.