HODGEPODGE OCT 23

 1. What do you like most about your family? 

Everything and nothing ! We are only 4, one teenager, one midlife crisis man, my DIL and the Nonna (grandma) 

2. What's something nice that's happened to you recently? 

I am just under the X

 

 to go to the theater with my girlfriend and watch a very funny play.

   

3. Do you like the color orange? Besides a pumpkin and an actual orange, what's something orange you love?

 

my room
 

I really like orange, it's a cheerful color and my curtains and the bed cover are also orange.

 

4.  What's something you have now you couldn't have imagined having five years ago? How does that make you feel? What's possible now because of it? 

What I have now ? A new life, I became a widow and I live in a castle which is a retirement home.  I like to live here, it makes me feel less lonely and I feel safe. 

 

And I also have this beautiful view out of my window

 5. Let's wrap this one up with an October this or that...

• pumpkin bread or apple cider donut
• cozy sweater or cozy hoodie
• apple picking or pumpkin picking
• scary movie or Hallmark movie
• hay ride or corn maze
• twinkle lights or candles
• autumn hike or autumn bonfire 

Nothing of the listed things, besides a bit of Halloween decoration, Halloween is not celebrated here. Insert your own random thought here. The elderly have only heard about it through their grandchildren. The young generation celebrates Halloween ! 

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

This morning I heard an interesting interview with an actor. He spoke perfect German, and I thought he was German. But then he said that his mother was Russian and his father was Ukrainian. They met in Russia and lived in Moscow. then they fled to West Berlin, the wall had not yet fallen.

He himself was still a baby and grew up in Berlin. He lived there until he was 19. He still speaks Russian and Ukrainian. His native language, however, is German because he went to German schools.

He then went to an acting school in New York. After he finished his studies, he didn't want to stay in the USA he didn't like life there. 

He ended up in London, where he still lives.

Somehow I thought people like him and I, can't talk about a homeland, we don't have one, at least not the one on our passports. 

I've lived in Belgium for almost 70 years, but I still speak German. It's a country I hardly know at all. Besides, I married an Italian, and our son married a Dutch. So when I hear the word "homeland," I always say I don't have one, except for Europe, which includes all the countries of my family, but an united Europe doesn't exist yet.