From the top to the bottom: Claudia is definitely the naughtiest of us all - at least when it comes to snowball fights! Julia tries if the icicles taste good. Hmmmm, moss flavor! And: we used natural accomodations - these rock shelters are called "Boofe" and hikers are allowed to spend the night in them. Martin seems to take a fancy on this cosy place.
Here´s the group! From left to right: Wolle, Claudi, Helene, Martin, Seppel, Julia and Marcus. and I took the picture...
Outside again, yeah-yeah!!!! I decided to join the 4-day-tour despite my heavy cough & fever and it was more than worth it! The Sächsische Schweiz is located near Dresden. The canyon-like landsape is crosed by many streams and gorgeous views awaited us! It had begun to snow, so we had snowfights and tried to catch snowflakes with our mouths. That was so much fun!
This semester we´re having combined dinner & homeopathy meetings at our member´s homes. This time Eva, Claudia, Ute and I met at Claudia´s house. As you can see, Ute and I are happy with the dinner-at-home-homeopathy thing:)
There´s a falconry at the Springe Saupark and this magnificent bald eagle gave us a flight show - I was totally impressed by its phenomenal size!
Steffi, Arne and I took part in a 3-day meeting about European bison husbandry in Springe. We didn´t just talk about bison, but had a chance to visit the local Wildlife park and meet our colleagues from Bialowieza, Poland: Rafal and Dorota. In 2006, I spent 4 weeks in Bialowieza and took samples from bison that Rafal immobilized. That was a lot of fun although it was freezing cold (-20°C).
The terrarium for my cornsnake arrived. While I´m still waiting for warmer weather so that he can be shipped to me from southern Germany, I decided to use that time to paint the terrarium and prepare everything for my snake´s move-in.
The wind takes away the songs we sing, seagulls dive through the spume and I collect colorful rocks for my snake´s terrarium. The salty air blows through our hair and we´re happy to be here. But we also learn how sorrowful and alien a bird can be. We also got an insight on two birds by the trituration of nightingale and white-tailed eagle feathers, which was an veraciously enriching experience.
The birds are wild and sad, free and clearvoyant, lonesome and light and sometimes darker than I would have ever imagined them to be.
This is the best thing ever-ever: Ati is pregnant and we get to see her little baby even before it´s ready to leave her belly!
It´s Katha´s birthday, so the whole Unterhof-community came to visit her in Fulda. It´s always strange to be together again. We used to share a flat for almost 6years; not just a flat, but also our lifes and now we meet again and it´s as if time would zip us back and everything´s so normal and we eat, sing and chat until midnight. And we went to dee Basta... Oh yeah, in case you don´t know the U-hof-community: Katha, Ulli, Ati, Alice, Lars and me were part of it and Nic´té-há often came to visit us back then in good-old-Giessen:)
This cute vegetarian belongs to one of my favorite species that inhabits the Tierpark - it feeds of lettuce, squash and other healthy stuff and appears to be pretty easy-going. And what a service: there are hundreds of little fish that are always busy with cleaning the manati´s skin.
Seppel, Andi and Marcus obviously don´t want to percieve anything of this chaotic bunch of people anymore:). Unfortunately, they still have to bear with us for another 10 hours or so - we´ll be on the train for another day, Germany is far, far away, huhaahahaaaaa. So better start preparing yourselves, misters! Or Julia and I are going to plan the next trip:)
Two really nice guys tought me this song on our first day in the hut. It´s a story about about a linden tree and a bird that is singing, and about a girl who doesn´t want to marry an old man as well as two of three young men, cause they´re yokels and have no sense for the girl´s feelings. - I hope I got the message right? Cause I don´t really speak Polish, except from "zubr", "krowa" "byk" and "cielak"...
On our last day in Poland we allowed the city to take us over again. So bye-bye cabbage, hello pierogi! The shower at the hostel was so refreshing and the local food that we had in the restaurant was yummy-yeah. After Marcus had given us a private guided tour through the Old Town, we miraculously found a fun club that dindn´t raise any objections against us entering in hiking boots, so we danced until sometimes in the morning to celebrate our re-civilization.
The week in the forest in Southeast Poland went by real fast. We consumed tons of cabbage and carrots, followed tracks and Julia and me almost caused Andreas to go on the rampage - maaaaybe we taxed his patience a bit, but who can stay calm and well-behaved outdoors:)? And other than that? Katja had a bad cough, Seppel found some cool kind of woodpecker species and Julia drank more tea in a week than I can possibly ingest in a month.
One of our exercises was to imitate the locomotion patterns of some wildlife species - here we try to walk like wolves: the whole pack follows the leader and every animal sets its footprints in the tracks of the man in front. In this way, they firstly save energy and secondly, appear as one. For us humans it´s a bit difficult, because we differ a lot in height and everybody has a different step length. So either everybody has to make tiny steps if Heidi´s leading the group or Heidi has to jump if somebody else is in front.
These pictures were taken by Markus - I hope it´s okay to borrow them:)? 
