Strange things happen.

I remember one night at a friend’s apartment in Cologne where we talked about García Marquez’ Cien años de Soledad, with some fellow students, a professor, and Pat (from Ireland:). We concluded that the only deficiency of that book was that it hadn’t been written by an Irish person. Ok, it was early in the morning, after a long day and a nice meal… but the point we agreed on was that there was at least as much ‘magic realism’ in Ireland as there was in Aracataca, Colombia.

Here is an example of both: a bit of realism and a bit of magic – from Germany, the place you’d expect to find a lot of ‘realism’, a bit less of magic, but where, surprise surprise, you’ll find both!

Realism – This is the first page of our 20 page ‘Jahresabrechnung’ for our apartment. Check out all the items: For the last 16 days of December ’13, we have to pay for, among other items, street cleaning (0.55 euro), the gardener (1.55 euro), and – avid readers will remember these, because they were checked one morning in December at 07:15 – the smoke alarms in our apartment (0.34 euro).

 

 

 

 

 

 

I call the above an example of ‘realism’ – although in Ireland, you’d probably use it as an example of ‘magic’ because no one but a wizard could come up with such a bill.

Magic – Here comes the magic. The clock in Pádraig’s room this afternoon.

Watch it. Again. And a third time! This is not made up. This really happened! And it went on for much longer than this clip!

The other thing that really happened was that we went out a second time ‘into the wild’ of the rose garden and the grounds of the Schön-Klinik with Pádraig! (Thank you to the nurse who made this happen.) I still don’t know whether this was real or whether it was magic. Whatever it was, I am sure it happened!

To be honest, I can’t get enough of it. And I’m sure, Pádraig can’t get enough of it either! There is life out there. And he is part of it, again! – A sign of things to come! – Anything is possible!