Half-day off

Had a beer with Ingrid and AY at his third-favourite restaurant late last night, sitting outdoors under a clear, starry sky. The curators were decisive and un-farty and generally pleased with the project and our work, all systems go but my gods what a lot of going remains. AY saw the extent and quality of our work for the first time yesterday, and declared himself to be highly impressed with both. And it was indeed impressive even to me: we produced an inch-thick pile of drawings from a standing start in three weeks. Pats on the head and skritches between the ears all round.

We talked about "home" and what it means to feel "at home" in a city (we are all new to Hamburg, AY and I are from Stuttgart and Ingrid from Kiel): finding five or six places to which one can return, "my" newpaper stand and "my" cafe and "my" grocery store; being recognized and greeted by someone who is already at home in the place; being able to give directions to someone who asks for help. And of course, having a familiar and comfortable room of one's own to stay in.

Yesterday was spent principally in dodging sudden, violent rainstorms and basking in the quarter-hours of brilliant sunshine that followed them. The weather up here is strangely rapid: one might forecast "overcast with clear skies, bright sunshine and heavy rain" all summer long, and be right nearly every day. Ingrid and I sometimes walk to the Bootsmann for lunch in bright sunshine, huddle against the rain under an umbrella while we eat, then walk back to work in sunshine again. The rain is often of a kind previously unknown to me: nearly invisible tiny raindrops barely the size of a pinprick in paper, almost undetectable on the skin but which still soak you to the core after an hour.

I walked downtown, browsed in a few bookshops (but bought nothing), visited the Speicherstadt office (very dubious wall-to-wall carpet reeking of industrial chemistry), and took a canal boat tour which I am sadly unable to recommend. There are at least two different tours; that which I took duplicated the Alster boat trip on Saturday with the addition of two smaller waterways. Don't take that, it adds little to the experience of the Alster trip; search around until you find the tour that goes along the Goldbekkanal and take that instead.

Today will be a half-day only, which still means about eight hours' work; we will meet at noon to consider how my remaining three days are best spent. The programme is unlikely to include "biting her arse."

Something else that I've been meaning to mention concerns a bit of self-knowledge, always a good thing, which I have acquired through this project: I miss cooking. (My sister is now laughing hysterically.) I almost always cooked lunch for myself when working at home, and after three weeks here I'm getting quite sick of bought food. I shall be glad to be home and pottering about in my kitchen again.