Summerfestival 2014

Yesterday we went to former GDR.
My boss invited us all - and with partner, too! - to visit the Elbauenpark in Magdeburg.

Mind you - this is an offer, huh? With partners!
Not even half showed up! What a sad sign. And guess what? Boss himself was on holidays.
Now what is this supposed to tell me?!

Actually it says, "dudes, I pay, but actually I don´t care about you", no?

All my fav collegues didn´t show up, so actually I didn´t want to go, either, but Ingo insisted we go.

Good thing he did.

We were the first ones at the bus station (you guessed, so, huh? :-)...) next colleague O showed up.
He never spoke to me untill I broke my foot, since then he does!
He´s got Parkinson, but manages good so far.

He had been to Magdeburg several times when it really was GDR and had a lot to tell.
That´s a lesson in history I never got at school.

At the park ### waited already, but I managed to get away. Maybe it was a tad obvious, but really, I don´t care anymore!

First thing to do was riding the "Monorail" (without T I found there aren´t much Simpson´s fans around, though).

I am afraid of heights and T had sent me an article that only last Sunday that damn thing broke down, firefighters had to help the people get off the 10 m by ladder - oh what joy for me!
We ended up in a cabin with ex-colleague G. Her husband is still in our company, hence she joined.
Back then we didn´t like each other that much but she has changed a lot. It was fun!

We joked about my fright of heights and her fright of being locked up and Ingo added, if we fall now, we end up in water, too, which lead to her asking me. "you cannot swim?" - that´s how rumors start, huh?

The rail did not get stuck or fall, luckily, instead you really got to see what is offered, pic: labyrinth.
There is also a rose-garden, an orangery and much, much more - you´d need several days to see it all!

Whew, off the monorail:

And on we went to the millenium tower.

It´s made of wood:

And what does this tower of knowledge show me first?

Right... ducks!

But actually really it´s about this pendulum that doesn´t change it´s position yet knocks over the little sticks due to the earth´s rotation:

We seperated into two groups and I sadly managed very obvious to get away from # - let´s see what he says come Monday...
But it was so worth it! We ended up in the fun group, yay!

Here you see the chain of bowls a tad bigger:

There were heaps of stations like these but actually more for pupils than for peeps who´re done studying.

The only interesting station, optical phenomenons I have no pic of.

Can you believe it.
"I need the smallest and the tallest person in this group."

Yeah. That was it. And no, I wasn´t the tallest...

From high up:

After this back we went to where dinner was served, again with G and her hubs.

They´re older than us, have no kids, either.
Ingo told them we´d married and she was really interested in the details - without envy!

The lake-stage:

Beautiful, no?

There sure was a tad of envy from all of us - the ex-GDR gets all the money, all new roads, parks, renovations and "the west" degenerates.
Can you believe we still pay a solidarity fee for the East?! The wall is down since 1989, I wonder when those seven years of payment will be over?!

Here´s where we got a bbq, they have Lions here, too :-)

I had my very first Solyanka, a typical GDR-soup and wow, it was dang yummy! I had two bowls!

With more talking, I saw G reminds me a lot of my Mum. The eyes, the lips, even the haircut and the ears. The way she looks. It was really hard, I missed Mum so much.

Back on the bus G told us they went on a fab boats-tour on the cross-way Elbe - Mittelland Canal in Magdeburg - guess we´ll give it a go, too. The zoo isn´t bad, either, she said, so... why not? It´s just an hour away from us.

After we survived the A2, the most risky highway of Europe (there is even a highway-church!) we hopped off the bus and went to the station to the left - it was a 50-50 chance and we took the good one: After only 3 minutes the bus bringing us home arrived!

In the aftermath I have to thank Ingo for making us go.
There is another Iris - her ex-boyfriend´s name is Ingo btw... - we know each other even better now (in contrast to me she is really, really funny), the secretary might be casual with me now, too, I´m even glad my fav colleages weren´t there - we would´ve stuck together and that´d be it.

It is just very, very sad the boss was missing, right?

East-Germany, we might come back! (yes, the wall very likely will remain in our generation´s brain forever).

Happy weekend!