Wrap up!

For a long long time I did not post here. In the last five weeks this was mostly due to the fact that I was walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, in northern Spain. Before that there were some few things that I would like to wrap up in this post. About the experiences of and on the Camino I will write in a separate post later on.

Now to start with: I handed in my thesis one day before deadline and during my walk I received the message that my thesis was accepted and that I am invited to do my colloquium. This basically means that I am graduated if no tremendous discrepancies between my thesis and my knowledge become apparent during my oral exam. Furthermore the Finnish University has prepared my maturity test, which means, they also accepted my thesis. (Short note for better understanding: I was doing a double-degree program, my thesis is accepted as Diploma thesis in Germany and Bachelor thesis in Finland. With this I am going to receive - yes, I am pretty sure, that I will pass the last two tests - a German Diploma and a Finnish Bachelor).

Anyways, in the time before the Camino my parents visited A. and me here in Hamburg. My dad had also some work related meeting here in the city and so they extended their stay over the weekend and we were spending time together, which was very nice.

Then later also my brother came to visit. We were doing some tourist stuff, were going around the city by tour-bus and were also visiting the Miniature Wonderland, the world's biggest model railway system. It was quite impressive and also funny to see what ideas the makers had and how many details the put in. In between we were sitting by the Alster enjoying our beer and the last days of summer in the city.

Soon after that A. had her birthday and we were celebrating it here at home. A. had taken the day off and so we were enjoying the day. In the evening we had some people over and later headed out to the city.

Shortly before leaving to southern France, my starting point of the Camino, our "pet" Garfield, a cat that is living here in the neighborhood paid a visit and for the first time since we are living here came into our flat to explore it. Now it already is a habit and he regularly checks out the whole apartment.

 

For now this is all that happened before my walk. I then went to Aachen to buy the rest of the gear needed and eventually left Germany by train via Paris to the South of France to a small village called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. From there I started my walk to Santiago de Compostella. About the walk I will post later on, maybe today, maybe tomorrow or later this week, depending on how I feel!

~M~