A date with Hugo

I could be a dog-napper you know. I wouldn't put it past me. I've been broody for a little daschund (or Mummy dog, as they are known in this house) since before we came to Germany. And today we had a date with Hugo. He's lovely. So gentle, patient, happy to be patted, willing to let children squabble over who gets to 'walk' him. I could happily have taken him home. I'm pretty sure I could have got round Stevie by saying he's much better behaved than our 2 children, *and* he'll eat all the crumbs under the dining room table, *and* all the bits of snack bar, old toast, half digestives, etc, etc that can be found on the edge of the bathroom sink, or under cushions. I might need to help him up to the edge of the bathroom sink, but I wouldn't mind. Honest.

I'd never met Hugo before today, and rather funnily, I'd never met his 'mummy' or her little boy either. But in the strange expat world I inhabit, Hugo's mum (as I shall call her for ease) & I have about a dozen mutual friends on Facebook, and would often communicate with each other through commenting on other people's posts, and as we got on pretty well, we ended up becoming Facebook friends, and then today we finally met face-to-face. I was slightly worried that it would feel like a first date; I had a lot of questions for her: not quite "What's your favourite colour?", but as we don't have a shared history there was a lot I didn't know about her, and how she came to be here. But it was lovely. We all had a great time, the kids loved her little boy, and we had a rare opportunity for dog-patting.

After lunch we headed back home, and it just happened that we went down a staircase at Zoo station that we don't normally use. At the bottom we found a big glass case with loads of tracks and little people & buildings, & trains that you can control if you stick a Euro in the slot. It was a lot like Loxx Miniatur Welten in Alex. It looked kind of cool, especially as there are about 4 trains you can control and change direction and slow down and speed up, but the enthusiasm of my two wore thin pretty quickly. They found another machine that took money that they'd like to control. Oh well, I try...