Ancient German Fire Engines and the Pilgrimage.

A new dawn, a new day here in Fulda. The seventh since my return. I will be the first to admit that not much as been achieved. I am still in the process of moving house and have stuff waiting to be sorted in both flats. My visions of not only reading all about EU law (and gaining a whole new understanding of it in the process) but also reading many novels, have been somewhat put on the slow-burner. I have managed to read one book since returning to Fulda - Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage. Definitely an interesting book and a nice accompaniment to my 'lets take it easy and do very little' attitude to my first week back in Fulda. I must admit though, despite enjoying the read, I remain somewhat sceptical of the contents. Some of the mind exercises seem intriguing and I think it would be interesting to give them a go, but some of the things he describes - the incident with the dog being a key example - remain a little beyond my perceived scope of reality. It could easily be a fictional novel he has written and in some ways, I think I read it as more of a novel than an autobiographical book. Anyway, next on my list is Watching the English - a book that will fit very nicely into my studies (intercultural communication) and that should prove pretty interesting for an English person living in a foreign culture, totally alienated from all other English folk. Hmm, we shall see if I agree with the author's observations about the English...

Other things of note before I prepare myself for another day of very little. Over the past few days me, Ragil and Firdavs have discovered that there is more to Fulda than we first thought, but ironically, part of this newly discovered bit of town feels so completely villagey that I feel really at home - birds, fields, no noise. It's really peaceful and not far away at all. There is absolutely nothing to do in this villagey part of town. The only thing we found was a peaceful (naturally) cemetary, but it is nice just to wander around. Whilst heading en-route to 'the village' and then continuing our walk we discovered further things of interest - most notably, the German Fire Engine Museum. I know! Pretty cool. Who'd have thought such an institution would be hidden in sleepy little Fulda?! It looked like they had shut up shop for the day (must have heard we were coming) but they had kindly left a tankesque German fire engine of old outside for Ragil and Firdavs to climb on and for me to admire from the ground level. There was also a fire ship standing in the middle of the car park. Hmm, yes. Suitably random... We also, eventually, found the 'lake' although it was totally frozen over. But nearby there's a reasonably large sports complex where we whiled away an hour or so watching football training and then borrowing a ball and showing them how it's done (ahem!). We got back and all felt utterly exhausted. Far too much physical exertion for one day...

Yes, today I plan to do some more packing/unpacking (depending on my location at the time) and then me and Ragil are going to head back to the village. I might make it to the library to get the book on EU law, but I might not. And lets face it, even if I do, I probably won't start reading it for another few days. Still, any day now I am going to wake up determined to achieve lots. I will let you know when it happens. But don't hold your breath...