Spring arrived in Jena!

Last Sunday it was so warm. The air temperature peaked at 19 C, but with the sunshine it felt positively summer-like. Here I am, sporting a summer dress, in front of a temperature gauge where you can see the proof:
See? It was so sunny I could barely keep my eyes open.

The night before was our friend Raul's birthday party, where a bunch of people went out for supper, and then later to the Rosenkeller, this club in an old stone cellar, for dancing into the wee hours. I don't have any pictures from the Rosenkeller itself, but I found this on the University website, to give you some idea of what it looks like.The next morning we went out for brunch, all a bit tired and hungover, and afterward Jeremi and I took a walk through the park on our way back home. The weather was too nice to go home right away, so we hung out on the grass for a while...There are also some new little yellow flowers growing in the Paradiespark, smaller than Winterlinge, as seen here:

(In that second picture they're growing all through the grass.) I remember seeing these last year when I went to Weimar with Anna, but I don't recall ever looking up the names.

And finally, a few more flower pictures. Here are the daffodils growing on the island at the corner of our street, which have been trying so hard for the last month to open...
...and finally on Sunday, with 19 C, one of them made it!
Now of course they've almost all opened, as it's stayed fairly mild and sunny throughout the week. And finally, one last flower picture, showing these lovely mini-irises, which came up around the same time as the crocuses (or croci?).
Hooray for spring!!! (I'm sorry to all of you who are still being snowed on and aren't enjoying it any more. You should know that we heard the weather reports and saw the pictures from Canada this winter with not a small amount of envy. Short days are made so much brighter when there's snow on the ground...)