China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

My last day in Germany was nice. It stared with a breakfast with a friend from Hamburg in the traditional „Tee-Haus“ in Erlangen. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture. We will have to do that next time we meet. Then I went to say hi to some friends in the nearby bike shop and get some things sorted at my local bank. After that I had a very delicious goodbye dinner at home. My parents cooked fine beef roulades with Franconian dumplings, red cabbage and a variety of garden salads. That tasted so good.

And then it was time to say goodbye and realize how heavy my bags were. It is good that you do not need to book a specific train in Europe, but you can take any similar connection with the same train ticket. There was one train that I wanted to get, but the time was flying and there was some probability that I could miss that one. Many discussions on what would be the best route did make us take the most efficient road so that I arrived with a comfortable 10 minutes before departure.

After check-in in Munich I met another friend that I have not seen for a while. He looks great like always. And then it was flying back to Beijing and arriving only 9 hours later.

Herzogenaurach is famous for two brothers that continued the show making profession handed down by their father. But as they did not get along with each other they both opened their own companies – today known as Adidas and Puma.

Some years ago Adidas build a factory outlet shop in the outskirts of Herzogenaurach. Many people from all over Europe drive by to get special discounts here.

Puma of course also has a factory outlet, but is now building a huge new Puma-City.

Here is a view towards the village where my parents live. Actually most of the village is hidden in the valley behind the forest and in front of the antenna in the far distance. It was great weather today and not as cold as the past two weeks.

Between doctor’s appointments I had a picnic on a meadow. Nuremburg sausages, pepper sausages, ham wraps on a stick, filled zucchini, potato salad, red beet salad, cucumber salad, German bread and red current berries from the garden .

In the evening I met a friend from Berlin. I had last seen him when he visited Beijing 20 months ago. We first had some Franconian dinner (Schaeufele mit Kloessen) and then some weird named cocktails in the rain. It was nice to see him after such a while.

Back in Germany I decided to look through some of the boxes that I had put on the attic of my parent’s house some years ago. One was my theater accessory box that I had long forgotten about. When I was 9 to about 12 years old me and the daughters of my parents friends used to play spontaneous theater, something like improv theater. We would roughly think of something, like who we were (sisters or friends or a family) and where we were and then invite our parents and just play whatever came to our mind first. That resulted in some funny conversations. One that I remember was us wearing grandma’s fur coats and fur hats and winter boots and then saying that we will go to the beach in Spain. We would dress up in clothes and worn out shoes that we found on the attic and use various accessories that I had collected. I am not sure what the main topic of our spontaneous theater acts was, but the huge amount of similar accessories that I discovered in that box does make me wonder…

On the attic in other boxed I found some of the trophies from competitions that I participated in. I decided to take Chinese style pictures with me and my victory cups from competitions in cycling, gymnastics and even diving and skiing.

In the evening I took a picture with my parents in their garden.

This morning I packed up my trick bike into my bicycle travel bag and got my things ready for my trip to Spain. The flight is actually shorter than all the travel by buses to get from the airport to the venue where I am booked to do trick bike performances. Here is a goodbye picture with my mother.

Today was a full day meeting many friends. Some I met for breakfast or a tea.

Then I went to the artistic cycling training and practiced for my upcoming performances.

After that I went to the artistic gymnastics training. It was nice to see some friends from years ago. And it was even more fun to do gymnastics, especially on the horizontal bar, as they unfortunately did not set up the uneven bars.

And as I still had some energy left I went to the juggling meeting. But as somebody had brought a delicious home made cake I actually did not do anything other than chatting.

I met a friend of mine on the outskirts of Erlangen which is the beginning of Franconian Switzerland. We went to a farmer’s beer garden even though we both only drank apple juice.But is was nice and quite there with a beautiful view that my camera could not capture.