I have returned home. It was a long time – six weeks – I am all new now with a second new hip and still on crutches for another six weeks. It is when you feel that you start lacking joy of life and pain has become a constant companion and sleep avoids you, that you say enough is enough and you decide to have a hip replacement. To replace parts of your bone structure has today become a routine thing, my operation took not more than 40 minutes and my surgeon had on that day 10 such replacements. I was told that alone in Germany more than 200 000 hip replacements are done in a year. That is an enormous figure. My health insurance company paid for the operation and stay in hospital of five days and later in rehab clinic for 3 weeks, my contribution was Euro 10 per day. A nice place in Upper Bavaria, on the way from Munich to Salzburg, close to the Alps. 320 patients on crutches, hips or knees, I called us The Crutches Colony. We were very well cared for.

You know the area? Within the triangle of Chiemsee, Rosenheim, Wasserburg? Famous for its hospitality and village and folk festivals, and famous for its good climate. Many artists are known to have settled in the area and there are always excellent art exhibitions on the agenda and during my last days in the area I was visiting two of them with excellent works.  I had my own exhibition in Rosenheim which had been organised by an artist friend of mine.

The ‘Lokschuppen’ in Rosenheim was hosting a mega exhibition The Inkas, people were coming from all over Europe to see the exhibition.

Close to Rosenheim is Bad Feilnbach, famous for its spa facilities and health clinics and the peat that is cut there, where I spent three weeks in the rehab clinic, in a single room opposite a farm house with the famous haflinger horses. On one weekend the villagers celebrated St. Leonard with hundreds of horses decorated with bands and flowers and ox carts drawn by heavy working horses with the villagers in their traditional costumes on top.

It is a pleasure to get to taste from the very big variety of bread and cold meats that are produced in Bavaria but to be honest, after some time it is better to avert your eyes from the tempting displays, just imagine: a true Bavarian has his/her white sausage in the morning before the stroke of twelve together with a buttered brezel and half a litre of Bavarian beer….but not only the Bavarians, just go and see the crowd sitting in open air at wooden tables at the famous big city market in Munich, in cold November air, mind, and have the traditional meal, tourists of all colours and from all continents, all sitting together. I went there on my last day with my family to watch and smile a little sadly, an emotional journey, and to smell the typical air.

And I got to taste the golden October days with all its warm colours and the November fog hanging over everything like wet rags which dampens all noise and your mood.

I am back now and very slowly I will re-enter my old activities, will take up my work on my website, will go and visit exhibitions again and meet my friends and see what they have been doing. I did already visit one exhibition, on the very first day of my arrival, that was Alashia at the Bedesten, just a day before it was closing. I will write down my impressions for my website.

I hope, you all have been doing well and I see you soon.  Heidi