Occupy Frankfurt

I was up in Frankfurt today and saw the Occupy Frankfurt camp. It is located just outside the European Central bank (the big Euro sign belongs to the bank, not the protesters). It looks like the protesters have set up a nice place for themselves there considering that they are living outside. There were tents of different sizes – for one to six people, there are areas for getting together – complete with sofas and ottomans, a kitchen (which I did not see), and even an herb garden. It was raining pretty hard while I was there, so not much was going on in the camp.

The big Euro sign outside the European Central Bank

They made a nice sign to let us know they are still here (according to Wikipedia, the camp has been here in Frankfurt since October 15, 2011)

Source – I think it is pretty nice that they have an herb garden. It looks like it is doing very well too.

A big tent – probably one of the common areas

On the left, you can see the welcome desk – I guess they want to help people have a pleasant stay in their camp.

According to Wikipedia: The Occupy movement is an international protest movement against social and economic inequality, its primary goal being to make the economic structure and power relations in society fairer. Different local groups have different foci, but among the prime concerns is the claim that large corporations and the global financial system control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and is unstable. Although most popular in the United States, Occupy has seen protests and occupations in dozens of other countries and on every continent. Each Occupy site set up a camp - including tents and outdoor kitchens - in a park or other public space, often near the city or town's financial district, to establish a semi-permanent protest area.

The Garden Grows On

Our balcony garden is still doing very well. It is fun to go outside every morning and see what is new. The morning glory vines have reached the top of the rose arch, are a just about to the end of our first pea harvest, our 6 tomato plans are taking up more and more space every day, and our petunias are flowering like crazy.

Our tomato plants already have little tomatoes!

I counted over 40 petunias blooming the other day.

A whole handful of pea pods

Big, lovely, blue morning glories. The flowers only bloom for one day, then die and the next day a new flower blooms. We have a different number of flowers every day – one day we had 9, another day we had 6, I think today we have 5. They are so pretty.

Robin Bakes

This past week Robin was home from work recovering from his surgery and concussion. He decided to try out a new recipe for Apple Muffins (it seems here in Germany cupcakes and muffins are the same thing and the words can be used interchangeably). He chose the recipes, did most of the baking, and frosted them himself. They look good, but he wasn’t satisfied with the end result (they taste fine, I think it just wasn’t what he was hoping for).

Decorating the cupcakes

Just before I took this picture, I asked him if he would mind if I took a picture. His answer was, “Will I be famous?” He just loves it when I take a picture of him and blog about it.

Leaving the Nest

This spring, it seems that several bird families have taken up residence in by our apartment. There is one nest in particular that we could see directly into from our balcony. Compared to the other bird nests, these birds were very loud. The little birds kept the adult birds busy from morning to night with their cries for more food. Then, something happened… the story is shown below. One of the baby birds decided it would be fun to leave the nest. He waited until both the adult birds were gone (the picture below shows him peeking out of the nest and waiting for the adult to fly off). Then, out he comes! He tried out his wings a bit and hopped around some. Then, it seems he decided it wasn’t so great outside the nest and wanted to get back in. He couldn’t.  So he landed on a bit of wood and waited (and he cried)… until help came…. I don’t know what happened to him next, but the next day, the nest was empty. It seems the adult birds decided it was time for the little birds to be out on their own… they all left the nest.

Balcony Gardening

In our new apartment, we are lucky enough to have a nice size balcony and lots of sun. I started planning our garden in February – drawing diagrams, researching plants, and buying/starting seeds. Our garden is doing really well so far - we have been having really nice weather to help things along. These are some pictures I took a few weeks ago – everything looks different already. The top right photo is of live plants that we ordered online – that came just like that in the mail. We have morning glories growing on a rose arch – they are already over 3 feet high, had TONS of flower buds, and it looks like we might see our first bloom tomorrow or the next day. Our peas are going crazy – we have lots and lots of pea pods growing now and more coming. Our tomato plant is now at least triple the size it is in this picture – it has several buds as well that are starting to bloom. Our petunias are doing wonderfully– I counted over 20 blooming flowers today. It is nice to see all the effort in our urban garden paying off – it isn’t even officially summer yet… I am excited to see how things go over the next few months. No doubt, I will be writing more about it and posting more pictures.

Robin’s Tonsillectomy

Warning: at the bottom of this post is a somewhat graphic picture of Robin’s tonsils four days after the surgery. If you don’t want to see it, don’t go all the way to the bottom :)

After having trouble with Robin’s tonsils for quite some time and at the recommendation of two doctors, we decided to have Robin’s tonsils removed. The operation was last Wednesday (May 16th). It is a fairly standard procedure and our Doctor was very confident that everything would go fine. So far, I would say the recovery has not gone quite as planned. In Germany, a short hospital stay is to be expected after the surgery – for Robin it was 5 days. Between day 2 and 3 in the hospital, Robin lost consciousness in the bathroom. He fell and hit his head resulting in a concussion. He spent the next day in bed feeling dizzy. He came home on Sunday morning. He had a few things to eat (ice cream, water, a slice of cheese) then took his medicine and threw up. There is a risk of bleeding after the surgery, so I had to check the vomit to make sure there was no blood in it (there wasn’t). After that, he decided to stop taking his pain medication because he felt it was the cause of his queasiness. After that he was feeling better and the pain was manageable. Tuesday night he woke up at 2 AM, told me he was tasting blood and proceeded to spit saliva into a cup. Again, due to the risk of bleeding, I got to check the saliva. Some blood, but not too much. We waited… slowly, there was more and more blood (until he was only spiting out blood). We left for the emergency room. By the time we arrived in the hospital Robin’s spit was not quite as bloody. The nurse on duty called the ENT (ear, nose, throat)  doctor. Once he arrived they started checking things and yes, Robin was bleeding – not much but it was not stopping very quickly (we were about 2 hours into spitting out blood at this point). To stop the blood Robin received a shot of adrenaline and got to stay in the hospital for 48 hours for observation. Only 5% of tonsillectomy patients experience bleeding afterwards – Robin now belongs to the 5%. Assuming everything goes well, he comes home from the hospital tomorrow. The nice thing about the whole experience is that we have learned quite a bit about hospitals and dealing with doctors. It isn’t quite over yet, but we think everything will work out fine in the end.

Robin turns 33!

We celebrated Robin’s 33rd birthday last week.  He decided he wanted a Fanta Cake (which I had never heard of before, but I found a recipe and it turned out pretty well). We also went on a walk in the fields near our house and enjoyed a nice evening at home.

I made an invitation for him (yes, I made an invitation for just him to his own birthday party. What fun is a party if you don’t get an invitation?)

His cake

A tree we saw on our walk.  I can see this tree from other places and I find it fascinating that this lone tree is just standing out in the middle of the fields… it is all alone and has to face the wind, rain, snow, and whatever else comes it’s way year after year.  It must be a strong tree.

This was another tree we saw on our walk, it had such beautiful flowers that I just had to take a picture.