On friday Pat from Australia arrived and stayed with us til today. I have known Pat for almost 10 years now and it's one of these friendships where you don't notice that you haven't seen each other for two years. :-) It was so great to speak Australian English again but I also noticed that my skills have become rather rusty. I certainly need to get more practice!
On friday we drove up to Essen which isn't very far away from Dortmund. It's a funny thing about this area of Germany: One doesn't notice that one drives from one city into the other. We passed serveral on the 30 minute ride though...
In Essen the Spiel 2013 was on. It's the biggest international game convention in the world and another friend of ours was there to present his game. The name of the game is Relic Runner and it's Matt's first game. Therefore it's really amazing that he managed to get it published by Days of Wonder. Days of Wonder is a brilliant, brilliant game publishing house. I assume most of you know Ticket to Ride?!
I confess that I am a fan girl... Such a great stall! :-) I bought the Ticket to Ride Netherlands and got some translucant trains. Yay!
Buttt... Even more important: We met Matt there.
That's Matt in front to the wall which presents his game. The whole stall was covered in pictures from the game and tons of people were playing it. So amazing! You really should give the game a try! It's a strategic game (10 years up) with beautiful playing figures - looks like heaps of fun! I will certainly put it on my christmas wishlist! Have a look at the Days of Wonder Homepage ! They also have an interview with Matt on there!
On saturday Pat wanted to go to Cologne and I joined him. Of course there were some troubles with the German Bahn (as usual...). This time some crazy soccer fans were running around on the tracks and so we arrives in Cologne with a 45 minutes delay.
That's the cathedral of Colone. We went inside of course. I have been there some times but I always enjoy the windows a lot:
There is a new one which I liked a lot. It's like a Tetris window....
We went on a bit of a walk through the town afterwards.
The sun was out and it was rather warm for the end of October. Lovely walking weather really!
I rode home with Alex (who had a conference there) while Pat stayed some longer. We drove though the most beautiful autuum scenes. Everything was red and yellow! Unfortunatly there was no place to stop the car otherwise I would have taken some pictures... I really enjoy autuum here. As I mentioned we only moved there in July and are new to the whole mountain thing. The area around Oldenburg was really flat (which was great for bike riding!) but you certainly see more of the autuum colours here due the the mountains! It is storming right now however, so we'll see how much of the leaves are left on the tree by tomorrow morning!
That's definitely my favourite Cathedral window, too, though it's not exactly new! ;-)
ReplyDelete... and here I thought it was a new one! Opps. Still, it IS very pretty. :-)
DeleteBeautiful photographs. When you say "Essen" I think of O-bahn busways. My city has an O-bahn and I believe they were invented in Essen. Cologne looks gorgeous, especially with the autumn colours and dappled sunlight of your photographs.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that your friend has made a game. My son is interested in game development and he too had a display at a local gaming convention earlier this year. I will send him the link to your friend's game.
Cheers,
Jodie