Marktbreit, GERMANY

AW off to Eindhoven, me off across the border to finally meet a good online friend, Grunhilde.  She lives in a hamlet next to Marktbreit.  She's actually quite a celebrity in her field, which is in the arts.  I met her through someone connected to the rise of the online haiku movement almost 20 years ago.  That person is a doctor in Japanese studies and moved to Japan in the 80s or 90s, so I'll most likely never get to see her unless I visit Japan, which isn't likely anytime soon because Japan is rather distant and far above our budget, we think.  In comparison, Grunhilde lives almost 'around the corner' ... yea, about 7 hours away by car.

Detoured through the A61 because the A3 has a lot of road construction going on and isn't anyone's favourite motorway at the moment.  Ended up on an extended tour almost to the edges of the Black Forest, then back north on the A81 towards Wurzburg, which turns out to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so on to the A3 at that point, then right onto the A7 and her place.

Grunhilde has a house full of coffee pots and teapots, and books from the floor to the ceiling and on every flat surface.  She's had quite an interesting and colourful life, the life of an artist, and you can see it on her walls, her rooms, her furniture.  The whole house is her working area as she has four children who used to live with her but are now independent and don't visit at all.  Grunhilde has filled her life and space with her passion, respects their distance, and makes sure she has something to look forward to every morning.  Truly, life is what you make it and the reasons to go on come from you alone.

I had brought my laptop along with me, not least so that I could post-process the shots I took during the day, including several of her wonderful living room.  Unfortunately, though, right after I uploaded them onto my hard disc, it decided that it had had enough after about 8 full years of service and simply died.  Thankful that I already have a new one and that it's been 'broken in', which is why I'm finally able to post this.  It took a while to get used to the 'new' post-processing program, but there is no more upgrade for the other one, so I will do my best with this.

There's an extra of one of her garden lilies. I stayed overnight!