Sunday in Bregenz and Lindau

Sunday was a very busy day. We drove to Bregenz from the Bregenzerwald on Saturday night, and stayed with Jim's cousin Markus and his wife Karin. They have two daughters, Caroline and Alexandra. They let us stay in their guest apartment, which is so beautiful and comfortable I want to move in and stay there! On the left is Alexandra with their new dog, Amy, a long-haired Chihuahua. Amy tries to be ferocious, which is pretty funny.











In the morning after breakfast, we went to the famous Kunsthaus in Bregenz (photo left,) the museum of modern art, where Jim's cousin Rudi is the curator. Rudi always gives us terrific tours through the museum, which mostly does one-man shows every two months in its four-story building. This time, we caught the last days of the exhibit honoring the architect of the Kunsthaus, Peter Zumthor. Soon they will be starting an exhibit of the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, and I am looking forward to seeing that too.










After the exhibit, we took a walk along the shore of Lake Constanz with Rudi. We walked to the Bregenzer Festspielhaus, an opera stage built on the water, where this summer they will be performing Tosca. Jim and I expect to go to the Bregenzer Festspiele for the first time this summer, because we are planning to go to a reunion of descendants of the Jewish Community in nearby Hohenems (from which Jim and his cousins in Bregenz are descended) at the end of July.

What was really funny is that the next James Bond movie is going to be filmed in Bregenz this spring, and that next door to the Kunsthaus there was a casting call for extras ins the James Bond movie. 4,500 people have shown up there, in evening dress as requested, to be interviewed to be extras in the film. Many of them were in line and were milling around in front of the Kunsthaus. One of Rudi's friends, an architect, was very pleased to note that by the time we left the Kunsthaus, the line to get in to the Zumthor exhibit was longer than the line of wanna-be extras for the James Bond film!

After our walk, we went to Jim's cousin Theresia's apartment, where we spent a few very nice hours with her and she served us a terrific lunch. That family are great cooks!! She lent us some of her books in German to read. She had recommended Martin Suter's "Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes," which I am really enjoying. It's about a merger-and-acquisitions lawyer who takes a bad mushroom trip.

Theresia wanted to take a walk with us, but we already had an appointment to drive just over into Germany into the next town, Lindau, to see my cousin Jutta. Some of you may remember her son Christoph, who came and spent three weeks with us in Newton and New Hampshire eleven years ago. It was nice to see Christoph again, he was there too, with his fiancee Andrea. So we had coffee and cake with Jutta and Martin and Christoph and Andrea. It was really nice to see them.

This is me with Jutta below.

After coffee with the Cosalters, we drove back to Bregenz to have dinner at Jim's cousin Otto's house. Otto and his wife Lisi recently built a beautiful new house, very modern, on a hillside looking out over Bregenz and Lake Constanz. Otto is a fabulous cook, and he spoiled us with another great dinner. Rudi, Theresia, Markus and Karin were there too. So it was a really enjoyable family evening.

We received a nice e-mail from Otto's younger daughter, Bianca, who lives in Innsbruck and just had a baby, a little boy named Konstantin. We are hoping to get together with Bianca soon. She is a professional chef. (No big surprise there!)