Valentine's Day(s)

Now why do I start rambling about the peculiar occupation of my neighbours? Everyone: there is no need to worry! I do not live in a brothel. In fact, I live opposite the police station.
Manfred has been here last week to see with his own eyes that truly I am doing fine. As I had a tremendous writing-frenzy in the preceeding weekend, I decided to take the two days off and we explored Mainz together. It really was my first good view of the city, as so far I had not taken much time off. It is no fun on your own anyway. And I have to say, the WWII bombs have luckily not destroyed all the beauty of this city (just the part where I live,..). And sometimes, the destruction has led to very nice reconstruction as well. Our first stop was the St Stephan's Church, which was severely damaged during the war, but rebuilt in the seventies when Marc Chagall was asked to design the new windows. I personally found that the bleuness of these windows gave the church a rather unfamiliar and cold feeling, but they are definitely a sight worth seeing. The church now takes a strong interest in Jewish-Catholic reconciliation, and it was interesting to read what they had to say on the pope's decision to reinstate Williamson. Suffice it to say that they are not amused.
All our other sight-seeing was purely Roman. We visited both the Roemisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum and its dependence Museum fuer Antike Schiffahrt. They were both fun for me as well as for Manfred. I went in mostly for the social-economic history of the area and spent a good deal of time with the inscriptions while Manfred was intrigued by the weapons and boats. We also walked round the Drususstein, which was an impressive sight. I knew before that the Drususstein could not be too far away from where I usually run -actually today I have discovered that if I am not too exhausted to look at the surroundings rather than at the path I can see it- but my spatial awareness of the city has certainly improved over the last week.
For the rest we just enjoyed being together. We cooked some German specialities. Manfred made my favourite, spaetzle, for me and I gave him Semmelknoedeln with his steak, drank some good German wine and relaxed. That is, apart from one night when my ability to understand German was stretched to its limits during a staging of Goethe's Die Wahlverwandschaften. I could follow it quite well, but have to admit that large parts of the dialogue were still a little difficult.
Anyway, I am getting back to my normal routine, which presently consists of repairing all the language mistakes I made during my frenzy. There are many,...