Dresden's Frauenkirche

The TV has been on in the background this morning and we've been watching the dedication ceremony of the Frauenkirche in Dresden. This church was destroyed by Allied bombing 60 years ago, and we saw the reconstruction a couple of years ago when we took a little tour of Dresden. We attempted to tour the church when we were there, but a lot of it was still blocked off due to construction, and we ended up sitting through a lecture in German which for me was a yawn, but was way better for Bernd. We were however, very impressed with the whole project, especially the part where we not forced to pay for it via taxation, so we made a fairly healthy (for us) donation. Bernd noted this morning as he watched the ceremony on TV, and I think it bears repeating, that this is what the world should be focusing on....rebuilding instead of destruction. This church has been brought back to its original glorious state, and to read more about it, here's a link:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1265990,00.html

The Pillsbury Dough Boy

Well one thing about Uben has become clear....he lives lately to steal food from the kitchen counter. Actually, anyone's kitchen counter will do. Now I can sit at the coffee table with food, down on his level, and though he will sit there and drool, he knows not to help himself. I can get up and leave the room, and when I come back he will have his chin on the table with a look of starvation in his eyes, but he won't just take any unauthorized food. Different matter if food is on the kitchen counter...he has declared open season on whatever is there. Last weekend he went into my mother-in-law's apartment where he is welcome, and when she was not looking he took the hunk of raw yeast dough that she had just made, and gulped it right down. A few hours later he seems to be fatter than ever (we are trying HARD to control this boy's weight), and I asked Bernd what the heck he had fed him that day, and he said he had not given him a thing. He started to look decidedly pregnant which is strange for a neutered male dog. Then Uben starts to seem like he is not feeling all that swell....he would freeze into a certain position and start to shake. Then the farting started. Not normal dog farts, but loud, whoa, where did that come from farts. The mother-in-law finally came and told us about the theft of her yeast dough, and we realized that the boy was probably on the sick side. For the first time ever in his life he was not that interested in going on a walk that evening, but having more spirit than sense, he went anyway. Bernd said the diarrhea was just explosive, like a cannon firing. This went on for hours, and the next day he was back to a more normal size, but when I walked him there was still that cannon quality to the whole situation. Pow. Every time. We felt sorry for him but at the same time we were amused by the sound effects. I wondered if he had learned anything from this painful result. Nope, strolled right in next door to my mother-in-law's the next morning, straight to the kitchen with nose in the air, looking for whatever was on offer for the day. Sigh. He's such an animal sometimes.