My parents went earlier and visited Dresden together with my aunt Leona, before all three met up with my brother and I in Germany's capital. I liked it better than I expected, truth be told, although the weather was quite dreadful and I was cold most of the time.

Highlights, roughly in chronological order: visiting the Pergamon museum; meeting and going to see X3 with her; yummy Chinese food in the historic Nikolai quarter; a boat trip along the Spree and the Landwehrkanal, past many of Berlin's sights including parts of the famous Wall; DVDs at good value; spending an afternoon with some distant but very nice relatives.

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Therefore I thought I'd share some of the pics from my last visit with my German friend Märrie this November. We had, as always, a wonderful time, with lots of talk and laughter – and a couple of special highlights.

We went over the border to the Netherlands one day and spend a day sight-seeing in beautiful Maastricht.

Me in front of one of the buildings of the university there, and Märrie on the old city walls.

The church of St. Servaas was very impressive – I have never seen so many holy relics in one place! On the other hand there was this one church that had been converted into bike parking – and some really cute houses.

So I really liked Maastricht – but the climax of this visit was the day we spent at RingCon in Bonn. My very first convention and a day full of cool experiences and cool meetings with fellow Lord of the Rings fans.

We even dressed up (as Eowyn of Rohan and an unidentified dark Elf) – but ours were by far not the most original costumes, as you can see.

The con was also an opportunity to get to see and meet some people involved in the making of the movies.

Bruce Hopkins plays Gamling (King Theoden's right hand) in 'The Two Towers', and I had a nice chat with him. I also had the special task to give some of the guests tiny braids for the Fellowship of the Wee Scarvies, as a way of showing them our appreciation – so that's what Mark Ferguson (Gil-Galad from the 'Fellowship of the Ring' prologue) and Roger and Carola from Weta Workshop (while turning a harmless girl into a really evil-looking Orc) are holding in their hands.

In the evening there we got to see the star guests. John Rhys-Davies (Gimli the dwarf) was amazing, and Craig Parker (Haldir – the Elf who dies at Helm's Deep) managed to crack us up in his show with Mark Ferguson. I filmed a couple of short .avi clips from their panels: Two clips of John Rhys-Davies, about a boating accident with a certain Elf, and one of Craig Parker trying (and failing) to get out of saying Haldir's line “The dwarf was breathing so loud, I could have shot him in the dark!”

There were many more experiences, of course, but I think that's more than enough. Except that I still want to post the pic from the birth house of Beethoven, which stands in Bonn:

Now that that's done, I promise to post pictures from down under soon! But first – a wonderful holiday season to all of you! *hugs*

The first one was to my good friend Märrie, who lives in a village near Bonn. We had a wonderful time again – her family is lovely (and loving) and we drove all over the place, did some serious sightseeing and had generally a lot of fun together. She'll be coming to visit me again in October (when I'm back from my two months trip to New Zealand and Australia) and I can't wait!

We went to Aachen, where Charlemagne was crowned – a city full of interesting fountains, like the Puppenbrunnen (dolls' fountain).

On the way to Aachen, we stopped in Kornelimünster, a very picturesque little town.

Another trip led us to the imposing Marksburg, a still intact medieval fortress above the Rhine.

I felt very much at home with Märrie's family – they even invited me to a festive Whitsun lunch!

In Bonn there was a fascinating exhibition with replica of the famous clay army of the first Qin emporer. In fitting with that day's theme we went to see the movie 'Hero' that evening, which plays just during that time of Chinese history, before the kingdoms were united by the Qin.

That day in Bonn was an exception weatherwise – it was pouring as we walked through the gigantic park along the Rhine (the Rheinauen), and amused ourselves on a very funny playground…

Märrie also went to visit my grandparents' grave with me and helped me plant a rosetree there – it was a hot day, and afterwards we had icecream in the café at the village square. Childhood memories…

The second trip, following right after I returned from Märrie, was a trip to Dresden with my family, to a family reunion. My dad was born in Dresden in 1936 and lived there until after World War II, so it's a lot of family history on top of being a very interesting city in itself.

We were about 25 people this time around (it's the third reunion of that kind that my dad has organized) and were staying on a hotel ship, anchored on the river Elbe. We had a good 2 1/2 days together, and afterwards my family stayed for another 2 1/2 days. I had been in Dresden before, on the way to Prague in 2001, but my brother hadn't, and it was an interesting week, all in all.

Our complete family group on board of our swimming homestead, a YMCA ship on the Elbe.

An evening spent playing cards in the common room. Starting with myself clockwise around the table are my cousin Otfried, my uncle Gerhard, my brother's legs, my fourth (or something like that) cousins Maximilian and Arvid, and my second cousin Paul-Philip. You can't see my aunt Monika and Maxi's and Arvid's sister Franziska, who were also playing – other than myself. I amused myself by watching and peeking into other people's cards. *g*

But my favorite pastime however was looking after my youngest second cousin, Leander, the most content and happy baby on this planet (even if he doesn't look it in this pic).

After the reunion my parents took us to see the Elbsandsteingebirge, the famous 'Saxon Switzerland' – it was a lovely walk up a mountain, through a wonderfully shady forest.

Once we had reached the top (where we met up with uncle Gerhart and aunt Monika), we had a lovely view over cliffs and the Elbe. The yellow sandstone is typical for this area – most historical buildings in Dresden were built with it (as was the royal castle in Copenhagen). Unfortunately it turns grey, as you can see clearly in this picture .

At the moment I'm slowly growing more and more excited about my trip down under.

The first month I'll spend in New Zealand with friends that I met in California after graduation, doing what is called a 'field trip exercise' for my university major Cultural Anthropology. That means that I'll have the chance to learn about Maori culture, especially about the means and importance of transmitting identity-forming knowledge. Will be very interesting, I'm sure, and I am very lucky and grateful to have found in my friend Denise someone who knows a lot about these things and has great connections, enabling me to go to a camp for young Maori and talk to older Maori women.

After that I'll head over to Australia and will travel around the east coast there – and hopefully I'll see Adam and Willa again, who I met in Washington D.C. last fall. So yeah – this will be my big trip of this year. Can't wait and am enjoying the planning immensely (as usual)!

Hope everyone who reads this is fine and enjoying summer – and if you're interested in reading about my day-to-day life, you can check out my weblog on my new domain, chocolate dream. *hugs*

Edited with two more pics from Bonn that Märrie just sent me – plus I made an entry about her last visit in Basel.