Konigswinter, Germany, 2009

Theo and Katrin are on the right.
On New Year's Eve, called Sylvester here, we were invited to eat with Gerti's friends Theo and Katrin. They live above their shop and studio where they produce handmade pottery using a wheel, and various ceramics. We had a lovely rachlette meal with their friends. At midnight we went up on the balcony overlooking the Rhine to see all the fireworks along both banks. It was a white New Year.

In this kind of weather people spend a lot of time inside so the house was full of interesting traditional art and crafts. The heat from the candles make the propellers above turn. We have seen several kinds of these crafts.

This folding painting with four wings was painted all all sides. Katrin`s family owned it and one of the sides shows a traditional nativity scene and the other shows Katrin and her family as children, gazing at the nativity scene.

Theo made this outdoor nativity scene in the garden. It was made on a wheel so it could stay outside without being damaged by freezing.

We spent the early hours of the New Year walking home in the snow listening to fireworks all around us.

We visited Gerti`s daughter Tania and her husband Detlev and enjoyed a lovely meal with them. Tania works as a flight steward for Lufthansa and her husband is a vet. It has been 25 years since we last saw Tania, and hope we don`t have to wait another 25 for the next time.

Gerti`s son Ralf returned from a skiing holiday in Austria so we were able to catch up with him and Angela and his family too. He works as a detective for the German police. His son Lennart served us coffee and his daughter Lara-Tabea posed in front of a painting that she had painted herself.


Ralli took us walking in the hills near Konigswinter and for a tour of the new Bonn police station where John was processed as a criminal would be.