arunadasi

  I rented from Buchbinder in October, pick up Munich airport, drop off Frankfurt airport. I told them I'd be visiting Austria and France and there was no extra charge. I got a lovely car in a higher class than I had booked, but decided to pay extra for an automatic. In the end I changed the drop off back to Munich. All very easy.

Daughter's parents in law have a dog, Judy, who visits sometimes. Seriously, she is terrified of Judy! Judy is a small terrier who chases her madly around the garden. Father in law said Judy might kill Roony if he caught her. So that's not working. Daughter would love a dog, but the present house is too small. Maybe if they ever move, but then a stable, gentle dog. We have to see. Judy is a sweet dog but over excitable. Plus, as is the case in Ireland, she is allowed to roam the streets. I've often seen her trotting down the high street and she comes to visit on her own (but has no access to the garden).   When driving here you always have to be on the watch for dogs on the street. For anyone with a German background it's crazy, but it's what they do, especially in rural areas. They don't even have insurance.   Thanks to all the feedback. Even if it means I've had to disillusion myself re the budding romance! I'll certainly check out some of your tips. Poor Roony, having her space invaded, and poor Finny, denied friendship. Ah well, such is life

That is encouraging, LeonG! It's my impression that this is the beginning of a long friendship/romance, but there are things I don't know about cats, for instance, does a spayed female still accept courtship/mating from a male? Does she emit some kind of aura that deters the male, can he tell?   On another not, I tried to give Optimista a greenie but got  a pop-up saying I am not allowed to. What is that about?

Nd here they are, just hanging out! Left is Roony, right is Finny.

This is a tale of two kittens, who turned into cats. It could be a romance.   Kitten Roony was a stray. She wandered into my daughter's garden when she was just tiny -- no more than maybe two or three weeks old. We don't know where she came from. The place is a village, but nobody knew of a cat who had recently had babies. My daughter had just given birth so they kept her and raised her on breast milk at first, fed with a pipette. She thrived, and became a well-loved pet. She has a large garden to roam in and beyond that, open fields and behind that, forest. She's an outdoor cat who comes and goes as she pleases, very independent. She quite likes sitting on a human lap and being stroked, but might very suddenly and quickly snap and bite the hand that stroked her. When she was a kitten, biting was a real problem. She would bite people's feet,  persistently, as if in play, but quite hard. I googled that a mother cat teaches her kittens not to bite by hissing, so we hissed at her when she bit, and she improved. Now that she's adult the biting only comes suddenly, after a cosy stroking session. She then runs away. She's not terribly fond of humans. She likes to be outside, catches and kills mice and birds (occasionally) and likes to go upstairs to sleep on the beds. She is spayed, now about 18 months old.   Daughter thought a second cat, a kitten, would give her a new focus and help with her biting, and since my granddaughter, 10 years old, longed for a kitten. we got her one when she came to stay with me and my son in July. I have a town flat. We thought the kitten could stay there while granddaughter is with us, then move to my daughter. This was Finny. We got him as a female, but he turned out to be male. We don't have a garden, just a balcony and a sort of outside courtyard. He was six weeks old when we brought him home. We took him straight to Roony, and Roony immediately hated him. Hissed at him while he was still in the basket etc, and wouldn't go near him. So it seemed the plan would not work and we'd have to keep Finny in the flat, which I'm not too keen on. Granddaughter went back to Austria, and my son is Finny's chief caretaker. We take Finny over to my daughter occasionally. He is now five months old and just as big as Roony. Roony still hates him.   When Finny comes to visit, they seem to be always together. Finny just sits there, and Roony sits watching him. If he comes closer to her, she hisses and swipes at him. Finny is very calm, very steady, and doesn't seem to mind being hissed and swiped at. He just moves out of the way, sits and watches. Sometimes they both go upstairs and lie under the bed, quite close to each other, watching each other, Roony hissing if Finny gets too close. They are definitely interested in each other, and I suppose for Finny it's a courting thing now. Roony is just not interested. They seem to be always near each other, stalking each other. I watched them once when they were both outside: they were running round and round a large container thing, for ages.  Sometimes Finny stays overnight. SOmetimes he sleeps in Roony's bed. He is very confident, now that he's just as big. sometimes they are just near to wach other, resting, or staring at each other.   Once, they both had a bowl of food in the kitchen, around the corner from each other. Finny, who loves his food, didn't bother to eat his, but just say watching Roony. Then Roony came and ate Finny's food, and he didn't mind.   I have to say that Finny is a very friendly, sweet natured cat, a "people" cat, As we don't have a garden he's a house cat, and whenever we come home there he is, rushing to greet us. He follows my son all over the place, like a dog, and even sits behind him on the toilet. He comes when called by name, even if he's at the back of the garden, at my daughter's. If anyone is at home, he'll be with that person, on their bed or their lap.   The time is going to come when my son will stay at his sister's house for a couple of weeks, while we are away, looking after both cats. Our hope is that Finny's persistence and good nature will win through in the end.  I don't have much experience with cats, so I thought I'd put it to the good people of TT; assuming that Finny is indeed courting, is there a chance he will eventually win over Roony? Can they ever be friends? I have to say it is fascinating to watch. I do feel for Roony, having her home invaded, and Finny just doesn't seem to understand rejection.    Of course, it would be best for them to be friends eventually. Finny might be a house cat, but he loves the garden and it would be paradise for him -- of only Roony would give him a chance. He's not being macho about it, just very sweet and patient.    

In the end we decided not to go anywhere. It just seemed a bit self-indulgent. But thanks for all the suggestions and sorry for not coming back to the thread. Maybe others can use the suggestions! We are now all going to India in December for three weeks.

i recently did not use a return Ryanair flight so I tried to get the tax back -- they have a page specifically for this. I did not have much hope as they say that they only return anything above the admin charge. As I suspected, there was nothing to return. But it should be different with serious airlines, like the Lufthansa one in the post above this. There's probably a form to fill out online, like with Ryanair.

  Nope, that won't do it! Already at it.  I'm OK, off to Guyana next week. 

My daughter is feeling a bit down due to the  grey Ireland weather. So I promised her a week's holiday (with baby) in November. She was in Lanzarote last February and loved it, and I remember fondly an intransit day in Tenerife many years ago. The temperature should still be warm then. But it's a four hour flight.   Any suggestions for somewhere really warm in early November, and maybe not so far from Dublin?

  I  learn something new every day.

      These days you have to appear in person: they take your photo "vor Ort" as well as your fingerprint. It;s not so easy for my daughter to fly to London and back just for that -- she has a baby and is breastfreeding.    

I understand that -- (though I didn't know she'd have to pay emplyees out of her own pocket!). I still think it's awful to leave the post unattended for six whole weeks.   In fact, I'm even more flummoxed, after reading  your link!  That a country like Germany can't pay for its own Vertretungen abroad, can't pay for a decent office in Belfast.      

  I was flummoxed earlier this year when my entire faith in Germany as the epitome of efficiency was shattered. I mean, surely represention abroad should stand out as a glowing example of how perfectly smooth everything in Germany works.   But not so with the Germany Consulate Belfast. My daughter's passport is about to expire so she needed to apply for a new one. She contacted the Belfast Consulate via email but received no reply. So she went online and discovered that there actually is no German Consulate in Belfast -- there's a German Consul who actually lives in Londonderry which is at the northernmost tip of Northern Ireland. I assume she must have an office in Belfast...   Anyway, my daughter called this consul only to get the message that the consul would be out of office until early September. That's all. No mention of a stellvertetende Konsul or any such thing, or what to do in an emergency. She called the Dublin Embassy -- which is the opposite, a state-of-the-art setup currently undergoing renovations, but super efficient-- and they said they cannot help; her only option it to go to the German Embassy in London.   I mean, come on. Even I, as a lowly social worker in a hospital, had a Vertretung when I was on holiday. I find it super lax. The consul was unavailabke for six whole weeks.   Often these German Consuls are just ordinary people given a Mandat. The German Consul in Guyana for many years was a German expat who ran a furniture store and changed money (illegally) on the sly. A very shady character.   More recently the German Consul in Guyana is actually Dutch. Were I to live in Guyana I'm sure I could be a German Consul (if I were younger maybe). for that matter, I told my daughter she should apply for the job.

  Sometimes it is these Asian and African countries that lead. I believe it was Rwanda that was the first country to ban all plastic bags. I was in Tamil Nadu, India, last year when the ban on plastic came into effect. It was interesting, because I had actually seen plastic bin bags in the supermarkets in December but didn't buy any. Come January, they were all gone, from all the shops. So I googled and sure enough, Tamil Nadu had banned all single-use plastic as of January 1st. Now all of India has banned single use plastic. It was inconvenient at first we we soon got use to improvising, finding ways of rubbish disposal with newspaper etc. I was in Sri Lanka in 2017 when a ban was imposed, or about to be imposed. I remember there were actualy demonstration in Colombo against the ban.   It's easy to dismiss them third world countries, but it's not always fair. I'm always impressed in India at how resourceful people are with what they have. The repair things over and over again before chucking them out. They can make anything. Years ago, my baby buggy lost a wheel during the flight over. I asked around, and in a cople of says some local workman had made me a new wheel out of wood -- and fitted it, and it worked!

  Well, living as I do on the Irish border and crossing it (or family members crossing it) sometimes several times a day, you never know after Brexit. My daughter lives in the north, I (and my son) in the south. We all go back and forth. Son and I are her main babysitters.