April 1 to 18, 2011

Written April 24

Friends and Families ,

This is another catch-up diary, one mostly for ourselves perhaps.

Spring has become my (our?) favorite season here in Germany. The winters are fairly long and very gray. In our farm neighborhood, the fields spend the time brown , with bare, bony trees around the edges. Our own back yard stays a dull gray-green, decorated with our own spindly fruit trees. Bright, white snow is more interesting, but it is generally not the norm for our part of Bavaria; dull colors are.

Then, over a week or two, the fuchsia jump to life and the flowering cherry trees remind us that winter has its limits. The white magnolia follow close behind and even the growth on the rocks and the weeds in the field add their contribution to color.

The sun comes out and we need our sun umbrella again. And we need to get in our potato and onion crops. These things are not cost-effective, but they make us feel like we belong in our agricultural neighborhood. Finally, the sunsets are back too, a treat we treasure from our patio almost as much as the sun.

Spring is also the start of the village festival season, a season that runs all through the summer and into the fall. Germans, and American transplants, love street fairs and coming up on Easter we start. One of the first is in Ebrach, an historic village 20 or 30 miles away. Their first fest of the year features fresh plants for gardening as well as the standard fare of too much food. This particular fair features a fancy town well festooned with colored eggs, a tradition in many villages here in Bavaria. Click here for past years' well pictures. The display tends to be the same so taking pictures every year seems wasteful.

Meanwhile, on the work scene, things are "normal", if you can call "normal" an industry suffering a massive accident (heard of "Fukushima"?). This has been a very busy time for us as we try to get a glimpse of a completely different future for nuclear power. I remain a believer, and think there is no easy way to make the massive amounts of electricity a modern society demands, but we will all need to learn. Nevertheless, my career is running out of time to be part of a new-plant project so, I suppose, retirement is coming closer, thanks to events half a world away.

The good news is that I will probably get to go to company headquarters in Paris a bit more often. A few days ago I had a quick trip and the spring in Paris is even better than in Pommersfelden. My hotel room looked out on the sprawling city and the Eiffel Tower seemed much closer than it was. My little camera does not do the view justice, but I was traveling for work after all.

Speaking of traveling, Easter weekend is coming up and we have another road trip planned, but that's another story

John and Marianne