Every day, twice, on the way to Hamburg and then back to Tating, I am passing the ‘Ausfahrt’ to the little village of Wacken. In case you are not a fan of heavy metal ‘music’: it’s the place where, every year over the first weekend in August, the band of the “Freiwillige Feuerwehr”, the village’s voluntary fire fighters, opens up the world’s biggest and best heavy metal music festival with close to 80,000 guests. I have a friend and colleague who is a fan of “Rammstein”, regular guests in Wacken. Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of them either – but it turns out they are great fun. There is even one particular song that is really good for learning German. More on that later.

131203 xmas tree

Christmas Trees going up – Schön-Klinik

Today, one of Pádraig’s good friends arrived for a visit, he’ll be staying in Hamburg for a few days. It is really great for Pádraig to continue to hear the voices and see the faces of his old friends from home – that is if he can see the faces, given the fancy face masks we are still made to wear when entering the room. Their presence and support is invaluable… A colleague today told me the story of someone who had been in a coma for 9 months. When he woke up, he told everybody that while he had not been able to see or hear the people around him, he could feel their presence and, more surprisingly, their energy. Awake, he could still identify nurses he could now see and hear by sensing their energy – positive or negative or indifferent. So, having positive energy around must be a great boost for Pádraig. Thinking about the centurion again, maybe positive energy even travels and can be felt remotely!

When I came into Pádraig’s room today, I had a flashback from Beaumont where we, at times, picked up ‘stuff’ from the bed or even the floor that had been ‘attached’ to Pádraig but had fallen off for some reason. Today, it was the air tube that blows oxygen across the tracheostomy that had gone ‘missing’. Rather than attaching it myself, I called a doctor who said that it had not fallen, but taken off – and that he was doing fine without it so far.

This was the first time in more than five months that Pádraig was off the oxygen and absolutely and completely breathing by himself without any support or additional oxygen, for hours. (Remember ‘optimism’, ‘remote’ healing, and all that stuff?)

In the meantime, I set up a calendar for friends visiting Pádraig and shared it with everyone who wants to check it out. I thought that people could also put in the dates of their visit themselves, but that does not seem to work (yet?). So in the meantime, if you send the dates of your visit to myself or to Pat, I’ll put the dates in here:
https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ejbikhh20hgf5i87d88fenj9ns%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/Dublin

Today’s German Music Tip
Rammstein, Ich will (released in Germany on 10 September 2001, not released in the US, as planned, on 11 September 2001. The lyrics are great for learning German:). Rammstein are regulars in Wacken, as are Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, and Scorpions (probably one of the best German music outfits, that is if you are into heavy metal:) (Check out the song starting at 1:02 if you are not a heavy metal fan).
What’s hot
Breathing
What’s cold
Breathing support
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Waaackeeen!!!