This picture is of the least important thing that happened today. But it was something that has stayed me all day long. This is a coffee cup heater so that when you pour the coffee in to the cup it will stay warm. Isn’t that ingenious? Have you ever seen now before? – I’d never seen such a gadget in my life, up to this morning.

Last night we stayed with Pádraig in a guesthouse that couldn’t have been more German in many ways. The apartment we’ve rented for ourselves for the coming three weeks is in an attic and could not have been reached by Pádraig. The advantage was that we could stay right beside the Therapiezentrum Burgau – and that we had the best breakfast I’ve ever had, including piping hot coffee!!!

There was another note about Pádraig’s “Return to the Cape”:

Padraig Schaler returns to Cape Cod five years after devastating accident

Padraig Schaler was injured in a cycling accident in Cape Cod while on his J1 five years ago. This month, he returned back to the scene of the …

We’ve been here in the Therapiezentrum Burgau a few times to meet and to talk to people and to look at how they do neurological rehabilitation here in the therapy centre, set up almost 30 years by Mr Schuster following an accident of one of his daughters.

The strangest thing of it all is that Pádraig will stay in the clinic and we don’t. For three weeks. This has never happened in the past five years. If it all works out well, Pádraig and us will have learned at least one new lesson: that he can be independent of us if he wants to or if he needed to be.

That can only be a good thing. (But is still weird…)