in the afternoon you're out on the stone and grass

My brother has taken my camera out to take some pictures of the newspaper office he worked in last week, so there are no pictures to show right now.

But I'm back from the lovely Netherlands. The journey from Utrecht to Schipol Airport and then home was exciting in itself. The train took aaages, almost an hour! I thought it would carry me off to a strange place like Gouda. Well, I arrived happily, checked in, bought an i-D magazine yadda yadda, then wandered off to my gate. Suddenly I was surrounded by about fifty Japanese persons, dressed in that strange, hyper-stylish way that only 20-year-olds from Japan can work. Turns out they're all heading to Vienna as well. Imagine me sitting there for an hour, waiting for my flight and being surrounded by tiny girls in high heels (for a flight!!) with weird make-up and boys with truly adventurous hair-dos. The businessman next to me and I smiled woefully at each other. Very much Lost in Translation, as much as I hated that film for the weird Western arrogance it seemed to embrace.

On to the airplane. The Dutch men next to me didn't want their desserts (lovely, LOVELY vanilla cream!) and gave them to me. Yum. Vienna was warm and dark. My bag arrived and I managed to carry it like Lindsay Lohan carries her horrible oversized Chanel bags. The doors to the entrance hall opened and suddenly I was surrounded by camera men and press people. Ah, they didn't go for me of course. The star of Die Fälscher had just arrived from the Oscars, I didn't recognise him at first because to me, interviews at airports are all about people who do sports and never about actors.
And there was my mum! All in cream and green and orange and smiles! Ah, it was wonderful. We drove on through the dark and she repeated several times how well and relaxed I looked, how fresh and fine and that she hadn't noticed before how drawn and ill I had seemed from all the work. I couldn't even reply adequately, there are no real mirrors in Utrecht. I seemed to have caught something like a tan though, and where did that come from??

It's sunny today. I finally got the results of my exams and almost cried with happiness when I saw them. Konstantin has had a pretty disgusting skiing accident, my mother told me about blood running down his leg in the car. Nikolaus has managed to grow the few centimeters he needed to be taller than I in the few days I've been away. I never feel tiny, but then I stared at the polaroid of me sandwiched between David and Quinten and my mum cried out, Are they giants, are they two meters tall?
I talked to Lisi and Kevin and Max who is backing cake right now, I'm really happy for him.
Sometimes life is really alright. I'm really, really looking forward to getting my bike out from the basement, cycling to a "pink tearoom" and reading A Posthumous Confession in the sun.