The farewell party for Eduardo was a good one, attended by every Spanish-speaking student in Karlsruhe and many more people besides. Edu and Ignacio made about 200 Spanish omlettes, which were supplemented by the 300 omlettes other people brought, containing every combination of mushrooms, vegetables, herbs, chorizo,.. we drank prosecco, rioja wine, french wine, sorbeto, before moving into the bar for dancing and tequila. At this point, your correspondent's memory becomes a little hazy, and though there are photos, they are unlikely to appear on this webpage in anything but a carefully edited form

Saturday was appropriately restful, then on Sunday Edu, Ignacio and I had lunch in their residence before taking a little cycling trip in the Stadtwald. They have a path called the Gedichtspfad (poetry path) where poems by famous German authors are nailed up to the trees. Some of them are very good. They also have trees with faces carved into them, and to add to the magic-forest effect, I saw a couple of deer.

After the requisite amount of horsing around, we had a last drink in the Vogelbräu pub before I said goodbye to Eduardo. By now he should be in London, where he's changing planes to fly home. It was sad. As well as giving me the flat he'd found, helping me move furniture into my flat when I arrived, coming with me to the hospital the day I had the operation and sleeping on the floor of my flat the next night, Edu was good company every day in the office. It's now very conspicuously empty here.

A couple more photos from Ignacio: a spectacular fountain in Aachen and street artists in Köln.