t is always a pleasure to enjoy our nearest park - Nerotal - just blocks from home, but this week we've had an extra treat - summer art (kunstsommer) in the park. While neither of us are the biggest fans of modern art, it's always nice to have something else to appreciate in town.

Over the past few days, we've taken a few photos of the exhibits:

Thought for sure these were signs to keep pesky dogs like Bailey away from the art, but in fact they were the art themselves. The one on the right says something about charges for growing plants are removed, and the left one basically says to leave the park as you found it (I think).
These were two of our favorites (Bailey liked them too). Hope the yellow benches stick around after the exhibit is over.
Bailey's not so sure about the framed mounds of dirt. I'm not so sure about the "wolf in sheep's clothing," fur-covered tree. At least it all did what art is supposed to do - promote thinking and conversation.


On a side note - Germany and USA won their last matches this week and will proceed onto the next round. Go teams!

*Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

fter today, we will likely never take the train to Frankfurt again. What we were expecting was a nice, quick ride to enjoy the scenery and try out public transportation; what we got were rides each way that took twice as long as they usually do because of all kinds of delays (if only our German vocabulary were better, I could say what caused the continual stops). Our anxiety about this was compounded due to the fact we had left Bailey back at the apartment and were doing our best to make it a quick trip and get back to her. The German rail service had other plans. Luckily, Bailey was a good dog and was well-rewarded with some of our chicken dinner. 

Aside from the crummy train ride, the trip into our closest metropolis was quite nice. The reason for our trip: the Seurat exhibit at the Schirn. I had picked up a brochure on it at another of our weekend excursions and put it on our to-go list. We figured a trip into Frankfurt was the perfect opportunity to learn the train system and thought Sunday afternoon, when nothing else is open, would be perfect. It was a small exhibit and didn't take us much time, so we stopped at the museum cafe afterwards to enjoy some refreshments and a bite to eat. Directly behind the Schirn is the Dom in Frankfurt (see photo above) and the Roman ruins (neglected to get photo, but we're talking 1000s of years old), so we walked around to get a peek at it before the wind nearly blew us away and forced us to take cover back down in the train station. Even with a great exhibit, a nice coffee break and amazing architecture, I still think the highlight of our trip was the ad we discovered at the station, and than at every subsequent S-Bahn stop (see my TwitPics).  

With Saturday's errands came another bucket of paint, so my project this week is the office. It's so hard to pick paint colors here with no swatches to take home and test in the light of your room, so I'm hoping it turns out ok. Although anything would be better than what's in there now. It's almost as if they started at the bottom of one wall, quickly learned how much work it was going to be and then gave up in decreasingly dark smears as they went up the wall  (I'll be sure to take before and afters). I'm actually going to attempt to do this room on my own, but I make no promises that my husband won't come home to find me collapsed like a puddle of pudding in exhaustion. Wish me luck ... three meter ceilings - here I come!

*Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische