Meeting others in person (aquariumgirl) and on the phone (pthalogreen)

aquariumgirl is in Germany to attend the wedding of her cousin; we took advantage of the fact to meet her and her husband John.

We asked them whether they'd be visiting Hamburg tomorrow and they said no, they would have to leave fairly early to go down to Frankfurt. So we asked them whether they wanted to have a short look at Hamburg this afternoon and they said yes.

So I thought we'd take a little ferry trip along the Elbe River and then see where we'd go from there and looked up a connection while Stella fixed some vegetables for a snack to eat on the way.

The ferry was really full on the upper deck, which is not surprising considering that many people use the 62 for pleasure on the weekend if the weather is halfway decent, but we found four seats on the lower deck.

From Landungsbrücken (the main pier near the centre of town), we took the bus to Planten un Blomen, Hamburg's public park near the lines of the original city wall, and had a walk through it and especially the Japanese Garden; there we also sat down for a bit to rest before coming back home.

It's pthalogreen's birthday today and I wanted to call her to say happy birthday; since aquariumgirl was visiting, I asked her whether she wanted to talk to her, too, and she said yes, so we all headed back to my place.

pthalogreen had said before that she's pretty shy on the phone and I found that to be true :) But I said happy birthday to her and talked to her a little and so did aquariumgirl. It was nice to be able to put a voice to the person one had read from before. (Vaguely interesting point: it's cheaper to call the US than to call my next-door neighbours, at least with the carrier we chose. Probably to do with the competition on Germany–US phone service.)

Afterwards, we talked a little bit but aquariumgirl and John left fairly soon since it was getting on for nine. (Stella was pretty tired, too.)