Oct 23 & 24th in Bielefeld

I slept in until 9:00. I woke to a European breakfast of juice, coffee, a variety of buns and bread with cheese, meat or jam to put on them.  After breakfast we made our plans for the day. I signed cards in the morning. I love looking at the variety of cards that people bring. Many of these aren't available in Canada. Everyone here loves our nature views and complains about not finding them in Europe. They love the cards of trees in autumn. LadyP says all she gets are Mounties and Squirrels and she would like some view cards please.
After a hot spaghetti lunch with chocolate pudding for dessert Leonie, Desmonia, Killiwips and I went to downtown Bielefeld for a shopping expedition. A large factory in Bielefeld is the Dr. Oetker plant. I buy Dr. Oetker food in Canada. Downtown we found the pedestrian streets. I love Europe because of the pedestrian streets. No traffic lights you can wander across the road. It's great. I had a chocolate and vanilla softserve ice cream. Best buy so far. It was huge and inexpensive. I only bought a small. We did a lot of window shopping and the others bought some postcards. I have too many as you get a pile free when you come and I will buy some from the postcard people who come to the event and give us a discount.
Back to Einshlingen for more signing, a glass of wine and supper. Pixelpups is a teenage boy who comes with his mom and gets bored so he plays the piano for hours. It is very relaxing to sit and talk and stamp some postcards with piano music in the background.

Oct 24th

More of the same during the day. I took a walk through the park area here for a break. Sometimes the house is full of laughter and sometimes the noise level gets high.
In the afternoon there is a lottery which is really just a present exchange. I got a lovely gift bag of stickers and tape and stamps and Stroopwaffels, so I know it came from Leonie. She will take it and a bag of extra things to the Netherlands for me so I keep the packing light on the way to Portugal.

In the evening I packed as I am up early to catch the train to Switzerland. We all sat around and read off weird Canadian place names off the internet. Everyone here loves Crispy Crunch chocolate bars. I may have to send some for Christmas. Everyone said goodbye tonight. Lots of hugs and of course everyone wants me to come back next year. I don't think so. We will see.