Party time (part 1 - the party)

Yesterday was Stefan's 30th birthday. He lives in Cologne now, but was born in the Saarland and that was where he was having his party. Lovely friends that we are, we got into Anna's non-airconditioned car (four people plus the lady who lives in the navigation system!) and drove some 250k through the heat wave that torments this country. It takes about two and a half hours to get to Völklingen, Stefan's hometown. (Völklingen's other claim to fame is a World Heritage Site, which we couldn't be arsed to visit.)

The host was casually dressed...

All the ingredients for a summer party had been organised. Colourful decoration...

... an impressive sound system...

... a barbacue (being a veggie I had a minute's silence here)....

... some wine...
... and other beverages ...

It was great fun! I spent quite some time talking to Pascale's friend from Canada, who had come to the party with her husband, who is Croatian. She works for the Canadian embassy and they are currently based in Kiev in the Ukraine. Before that, they had been based in Barbados (or should that be "on Barbados"?). She said, that Kiev was the much nicer place to live in. The weather is not as good, but there is much more to do. On Barbados there is only the beach. Lots of interesting information about live at the embassy in general and the pitfalls of living in the Ukraine in particular.

Then I put on my dancing shoes and danced with Stefan's dad. I trained ballroom dancing for 15 years, but stopped when I moved away about 5 years ago. And I only ever danced well with my then dancing partner. Whenever somebody else danced with me, I was always confused about the steps and ended up on their toes more often than not. Well, some things never change and after trying to dance a disco-fox with me for a couple of minutes, Stefan's dad gave up and resorted to what I call the "bear dance". You just shift your weight from one paw to the other and back. Easy enough, even for me.

Stefan's sister's birthday present was a belly dancing performance (another thing I have also done in my life). She was really good and looked very pretty. It's much more difficult than it appears to be and she did some quite complicated moves. Impressed!

Went to bed at 3:15 am and fell asleep dispite the heat and music still playing loudly.