The german Nanny is back in town

Barcelona, June 2023

*** Published 6 weeks too late! ***

What had started as a 10th wedding anniversary gift, has become every year‘s procedure. Spending a week in June with the girls of Tamsin and Ivan, means they can buzz off alone on vacation once a year.

During those days, I had the girls more or less to myself, besides the days at school, the Ballett classes, piano lessons, volley ball, art class etc. They follow a tight schedule during the week, those girls, meanwhile I worked for the news magazine.

But we seized the time during weekend. On saturday, for instance, we went to a skate park -fully equipped with skates and cameras - had loads of ice cream, went nonsense shopping in a kid’s store, watched movies with sweet ‘n salty popcorn and relaxed to the max.

On sunday, we visited the Museo Marítimo, where a guy, dressed up as Indiana Jones, gave us a private treasure hunting tour through the museum. The girls were fascinated by his adventurous secret tour, hiding away from the other museum visitors and sneaking out through staff doors into restricted zones. He explained us how these beautiful war ships of the 14th century, the spanish galleys, were run by the enduring work of slaves, rowing to total exhaustion and controlled by brutal and sadistic overseers. Indiana Jones made me put on a leather coat with a huge whip. I had to pretend whipping the girls to work harder, as they pretended to be slaves. Better he did not know I was german. Too much political incorrectness at a time. Later on, we ran and jumped through the whole Museum fighting an imaginary war ship battle, whistling the sound of canons and rifles. We totally ignored the other visitor‘s reactions.

We ended up eating take-away Sushi in the park by the Ramblas, surrounded by thousands of pigeons waiting for the left overs. What a wonderful day!