I’ve been to Switzerland the last weekend. Anja and Claudio Rathmann invited me to their belated wedding celebration. It was a nice party, even though we had what I call April weather (raining again and again but also some sunshine in between). I have to write that, Anja told me that she’s having a look at my blog. ;) But also if she hadn’t: I really liked it!! We had super-tasty food (and sorrily way too tempting tarts), the swiss youth choir sang some songs and the former guitar teacher of Anja and her sister Flavia played some songs in colloquial speech, that I understood only in parts. Judging by the audience, he must have had some very funny lyrics, though.

The choir even asked me to sing with them because I already knew all the songs from “our” performances in Holland (Listen Up and Sing! Seminar). But I was too tired and not warmed up, which is why I preferred not to sing. There was a reason for me being tired: My time management. As I had to prepare a project for my studies, which I of course put off for as long as possible, I didn’t have my wedding gift done the day before the wedding celebration, not even had I started with it. So when I arrived in Frankfurt City on Friday at 11 pm, I started finishing the wedding gift. As I am not sure, whether Anja already got round to opening all the presents, I better don’t mention what it was. But I can tell you one thing: I didn’t get to bed before about 3:30 am. And I had to get up at 7 am, as I had to catch up my car passengers to Zurich from the main station. So I definitely didn’t get enough sleep, considering that I didn’t get to bed early the day before, as well. So it’s quite amazing, in fact, that I successfully survived the celebration day and even was relatively awake all the time. Seems like the Switzerland has a stimulating effect on me.

As I sorrily also didn’t get around to take a photo of the wedding gift, I asked Anja to take one for me. When that is done, I don’t want to withhold that from you. I think the present is nothing to sneeze at, there’s nothing bad about being proud of my own creative work sometimes. And of course I hope that Anja and Claudio like it as much as I took pains to create it. :)

Sorrily the exam for the project I had to finish last week, didn’t work out as much as I expected (it could have been worse, though). As a consolation the new Relient K album was awaiting me today in the post box, which I of course had to listen to immediately. :D It didn’t quite knock my socks off, but I think I just have to listen to the songs a few times, before I start to like them. And there definitely were some good sounds in it! Those of you, who want to get an impression, can listen to the whole album for free online: AbsolutePunk.net offers all the songs of the album for streaming. The only thing you have to do is register.

The upcoming weeks won’t be stress-free for me, either. Next weekend I’ll visit a friend in Celle and Tuesday after that I’ll go to the Muse* concert in Hamburg. Only the following weekend will be free for me (and I really need that time), the weekend after that I will go abroad: I will go to Bavaria, visiting a friend (Valerie) in Munich, which I’m already really excited about. And the following weekend I’ll visit the Seybold family in Göttingen. During the week, beneath my job, I also have to work on a paper and webshop which will count as exam that I have to finish until the end of November. Additionally I have to work on a redesign for the Good Hope Sambia website which has to be done until the end of November, as well. So it’s going to be really stressful again. But challenges cause us to grow, as we all know. I’ll keep you up-to-date.

I wish you a good week, see you soon!

René

* For those of you who want to listen to the new Muse album legally and for free, just register to Muse.mu, there you’ll find all the albums of the band as streams.