Saturday 10 November

The morning dawned overcast, so I stayed in bed and finished reading The Dante Connection by Estelle Ryan, a novel about an autistic face-reading detective who investigates crimes connected to art forgeries. Again it’s strange that I am reading novels about autistic detectives while Rita is studying Music Therapy that can be useful for autistic people.

In the afternoon, we went across to Mutti's for take her for a walk. But as we were getting ready to leave her apartment, Lothar (Rita’s brother) arrived, so we had no walk, but shared coffee and cake.

As we were leaving the nursing home, I was once again reminded that most of the lifts in Switzerland are made by a company named Schindler. Does anyone else find it strange that they are called Schindler's Lifts?

After we left, we made a delivery to Kuno (Rita’s third brother) of items from Mutti’s old apartment.

Sunday 11 November

Today was the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day at the end of World War I in 1918; 100 years at 11:11am on 11/11/18, but we were so busy running around that we forget to observe the one-minute silence at that time.

The day started rainy, but then turned sunny, for which we were very grateful because we had to pack the car with lots of stuff, including some items of furniture that we were taking to the barge.

Once all this packing was done, we went over to visit Mutti for one last time, and played a game of Liars Poker with her. This is our annual test of whether she “still has her marbles”. Once again she showed that she still has a sharp mind and is able to bluff and lie with the best of them, as she wiped the floor with us again!

In looking at some of the stuff we had brought over for her, Rita was fascinated by the toy that her great-grandfather had made in the days before toys were commercially produced. Mutti was pleased to pose with a photo of her grandfather (who was a chemist) and the woodcutters toy, while Rita demonstrated how it worked.

Eventually we dragged ourselves away when Mutti went downstairs to have lunch with her friends, and we began the drive to Besain, where we had a quick coffee with Sarah and Albon and then drove on to Auxonne. The chairs and table from Mutti’s old apartment fitted very well onto the barge, and will be a nice reminder of Mutti every time we use them.

Rita then made a great pancake dinner, and we settled back into the warmth of the barge as the wind picked up outside.