Two minutes in paradise

At Jena Paradies the train that took me from Berlin to Nürnberg stopped for two minutes. I got a short glimpse of the green area called paradise close to the station.
Travelling through Germany from northeast to southwest was nice, but tiresome. Luckily I had found the new Jasper Fforde on Nursery Crime Division at Dussmann yesterday evening, before going to the Akademie der Künste and the festival "Macht der Sprache".
Crossing the boarder to Baden-Württemberg, heavy rain started, hitting the landscape, the train, the floor inside, and even my luggage. We were all dry again when arriving in Stuttgart.
Anna and Alex met me at the station, both happy to have finished their hard work and exams, and we went back home to Felix and Emily. Leaving Gustav and Emil in my Berlin flat had been a bit hard, I admit, but Christel and Ute will look after them, so we're all fine.
It was great to meet Ute Würfel again after so many years, she's an artist, and we worked together in our union. We enjoyed some great time then, fighting for artists' rights to get payed for exhibitions, (see our website "Profession Artist" from 2001) and again last saturday at Bergmannstraßenfest, listening to music, and talking about what had happened during the last ten years. She had been granted an award and lived in Paris for some time! Lucky her! She's so nice, she'll move into my flat for the time until I'm back, to look after flat, flowers and tomcats.
Now to celebrate a bit with Anna and Alex, I invite them out to dinner in a restaurant somewhere closeby. I meant to buy tickets for a trip with the new TGV to Paris, but they're all sold since months. I only read about it today. So we'll travel around the Ländle a bit, Heidelberg, or even to Switzerland and Basel. Tickets are only 27 Euro for up to five people for a day!