A sleepover in Cospeda

This weekend we sort of went away for the weekend, but only to Calin and Susanne's place in Cospeda, which is just up the hill from Jena.

But we didn't actually head there until Saturday afternoon, so Friday night we were home for a delicious supper of deboned and stuffed chicken, roasted potatoes and carrots, and a green salad. I worked really late on Friday, and was it ever nice to come home to such a nice Jeremi-prepared feast.

Then on Saturday Calin and Susanne drove into town to pick out some movies and to drive us up the hill. It's really not so far away, and not so bad for walking up, but on a bike it's murder. It's better just to get off the bike at the bottom of the really steep part and walk up, but I insist on riding until I'm almost dead, and then walking for a while, and repeating the process. This time I was also intent on riding up the hill nonetheless, convinced that if I keep at it I'll be able to ride all the way up by the end of the summer, until some incredibly strong thunderstorms started rolling through just before we were leaving, complete with hail. This changed my mind, and I accepted the offer of the ride after all.

Last time we were up there for grilling Jeremi ate a truly prodigious quantity of meat, which he heartily enjoyed, but Calin and Susanne were intrigued by our stories of BBQed vegetables and bread as well, so they asked us to prepare some veg to bring along. And they supplied us with some nice trout, shown here with Jeremi,

and we brought a variety of marinated vegetables as well as some bread dough.

All in all, the food was marvellous, as was the company, as were the several beer and five bottles of wine, which consisted of two rose, one sparkling rose (Rotkäppchen, which translates to little red riding hood, from a winery near here), and two red. And so Calin slept through most of both movies, Jeremi slept through half of one, and we were all a bit slow-moving this morning. Still, we had a nice leisurely day of watching movies and trying to do crosswords in German.

Finally, a little before 6:00, Jeremi and I headed out for the walk home, which was a very pleasant one across the big nature preserve behind their building, by the monument to the 1806 battle against Napoleon's troops there, and through the woods, where we had fun playing on the circuit training course set up there (one of a few in town, I'll have to get pictures of us doing them one time), and on a giant teeter-totter. And then back through town, where we stopped to check out the graveyard surrounding an old church. The graveyard has been around since at least 1307, but the church wasn't built for another three hundred years or so, which I thought was funny.

And then while heading home I realized that we were walking on Straße des 17. Juni, or June the 17th St. Seeing as today was actually June the 17th, we thought it worthwhile to take a picture.

Upon getting home we asked Wikipedia what that was all about, and it seems that in 1953 there were big protest against the labour (and other) policies of the soviets in East Berlin and across East Germany. Many people were killed during these protests and afterwards, with estimates ranging from 55 to over 250. Before reunification, June 17th was a holiday in West Germany to commemorate this fact, but this holiday has since been moved to October 3rd, the date of reunification. You can read more about it here.

Oh, and Happy Father's Day!!!