Heidelberg

I'm now in Heidelberg for two weeks, following an intensive German course at the "Collegium Palatinum". C, who is in Frankfurt for a dental operation over the same period, dropped me here on Sunday after a relaxing day at her parents' house chatting in rusty German and trying to hide the foul hangover that Mac and Lucie inflicted the night before on Lower Marsh.
My host family runs a metal bashing business from a workshop in front of the house. Four of the six children have left home and the parents rent the spare rooms to various odd-bods, currently including a German theatre set designer, a super-earnest public health researcher from Harvard, a demographer from Burkina Fasso, a jurist from Budapest and me. As the only language student, I get to eat dinner with the parents and their two teenage sons, quite entertaining although the father is a little obsessed with house prices. I think he's also the one who made the weird metal scultures that dot the house.
At breakfast, I have a table for one in the kitchen and never see the others, perhaps they're still in bed.
The house is in Handshuesheim, a suburb of out-of-town stores and farmland north of the old city. The jurist, who has been coming to Heidelberg since 1968, told me that the locals have been trying to form a break-away republic from Heidelberg but no one has taken them seriously so far.
Twenty minutes bike ride across the river Neckar is the old town, beautiful old squares and ornate pubs and shop fronts. The school is in a high-ceilinged villa next to the law faculty and a short walk from the pub area, which we will explore tonight.
I am nearly 20 years older than the other students, who come mostly from eastern and southern Europe and the states, and the only Englishman. The students are shy but friendly and speak English to each other during the breaks, though I am stubbornly sticking to German. Bets on how long that lasts?
Tomorrow we will spend the afternoon on the Philosopher's Walk.
G

ps - more NY blogs to appear here soon...

Rhode Island

I know, we are behind with the blog... sorry! But we are catching up and will post more in the next few days.
So on Monday we spent the night at Jessie and Alex's house in Rhode Island, the house that Alex built with his bare hands (and some help from me, if you look carefully above the front door you can still see the plank I nailed on). It's always impressive to visit and think back to the patch of mud that Alex showed me five years ago. We make a good construction team, no doubt about that.
When we arrived Jess was baking cookies to welcome Ian, who is now SIX, back from his first day at summer camp. Ian lost no time showing us how Luke Skywalker stands with a light sabre, which was lucky as I had forgotten, and telling us all about camp and his baseball team. He is a great talker and very entertaining. Alex then told us about his windfarm business and the big project they have won to install 60 turbines, good luck! Then we had a lovely evening of homecooking, whisky drinking and gossiping.
Next day we took our hire car down to Newport, the seaside town favoured by millionaire industrialists at the beginning of the last century. It has a Great Gatsby feel (though far from Long Island); the centre piece is Bellevue Avenue, a street lined with swanky mansions in various European styles. To C's delight, we visited The Breakers, the 70-room summer home of the Vanderbilts, and had an hour's upstairs/downstairs tour, taking in the sea views, gold-inlayed dining room, platinum-inlayed music room and dozens of slightly gaudy but impressive rooms.
The tour tells how the house was built and lavishly decorated in only two years, with whole rooms assembled in France and shipped in boxes, Ikea-style.
There are also tales of famous parties, the social heirachy of the day and the sad family history.
From one millionaire's mansion to another, that evening we drove back for a dinner party in NY's Upper West Side hosted by our mergermarket boss Charlie in his newly acquired "brownstone". Rick proudly showed us around, while caterers made dinner for a room full of editors (not sure what the collective term for editors is, a correction?) That was a great evening too, and a nice boozy way to start thinking about work again
G

New York ... part 1

Like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, I have a long and enduring love affair with NY – how can one not love a city that is at the same time full of familiar sites and new discoveries, where the streets are constantly buzzing yet a short walk through parts of Central Park makes you think you are in a forest far away from all the craziness, where you meet people from all over the world who all share my enthusiasm for the city ... what can I say, I just LOVE everything about this place!!!!! Our love affair started after a weeklong trip to the city that never sleeps with the Raisig clan in 1997, blossomed during a short visit a few years later and fully came into bloom when I spent 6 months working there. Ok, enough of the smoochiness otherwise my HTB may get jealous!
We have arrived in NY on Friday and take up Jess and Brian’s kind offer to house us for a few days ... little do they know what they are letting themselves in for  A short trip from the airport takes us to their wonderful flat in Jackson Height’s, Queens. Both J and B are very artistic and so their flat is full of little quirky touches which we will shamelessly copy as soon as we are back in HTB’s flat in London. Our two hosts are out-and-about and so we just drop our bags and no 10 minutes later are on the F train over to Manhattan where we meet my good friends Abby and Charles for a speed dating session disguised as a salsa class ... seeing that Abby and I are both spoken for we feel it wise to leave the venue after the lesson and dinner and spend a wonderful evening sitting in a street side bar. When the evening draws to a close, HTB and I discover that getting home by cab is not an option ... please learn from our mistake: DO NOT MENTION that you want to go to Queens before you are seated in the cab, buckled up and well and truly on your way! We spend the entire w/e with J and B and afterwards, HTB and I once again remark that really the highlight of our trip is the fact that we can spend some serious time with our friends! J and B take us along to a wonderful bbq where delicious food is accompanied by far too much wine and beer and interesting conversation, after so many weeks on the road and only eating in restaurants it is a real treat to be in someone’s home and eat home cooked food! Sunday we go for a bike ride in Central Park and chat the afternoon away in a little bar in Long Island City. In the evening J and I pretend we are domestic goddesses and cook the entire content of their recently delivered veg box ... yummy!
Next we are off to Rhode Island to visit Greg’s friend Jessie, who along with her husband Alex and son Ian lives in a beautiful New England-style wood house in the middle of the RI countryside!