On the way back to the boat, after I had sent yesterday’s blog, I ran into two German bicycle tourists. Mario and Bianca (tomorrow I’ll probably run into a couple Italians with names like Marcus and Bärbel) from Berlin. They were doing the Danube tour, like Jiel, the Dutchman, and are also heading to Constanza on the Black Sea. A few minutes later Damien, a Frenchman, joined the conversation he was also heading to Constanza.  The Berliners are also sailors and would eventually like to see more of the world by sail boat. I hope they will and I might have possibly inspired them. The one thing that I’d like to convince others of is that it takes a lot less money and a simpler boat than most people are made to believe. The bigger the boat and the more equipment the more time is spent in port with mechanics and sailmakers, etc.

I spoke/wrote too early about the second life of the Bosch sander. It was more like a swan song. Please, pray that the sick disc sander will hold out another couple weeks.

The thunderstorms came back in late afternoon and it rained hard for a couple hours, after I managed to get back to the camp, in a dry spell. What Marian was butchering Monday evening turned out to be a lamb rather than a calf. He had barbecued it for the gathering they had last night for the directors of the camp. She had made a terrific fish soup with the large fish I wrote about. They made up a plate for me in the kitchen. Last Friday Aura cleaned my room again and changed the linen, another version of the Disney characters, and put a nice table cloth on the porch table. What a sweetheart she is.

A thick fog this Wednesday morning. In the meantime the sun has dropped under the yard arm. No need to pray for the disc sander unless you can revive the dead and walk on water. So, I’m down to my new angle grinder and hand sanding. I may become fluent in Romanian by the time I get this job done.  The problem with the Bosch orbital sander seems to be a frozen bearing.  A Good Samaritan thinks he can replace it.

Here is another “small world” experience. Seventeen years ago, today, we were having lunch in our  favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Tacoma,
“Vien Dong” (Far East). With my twin brother, Jan and his wife Catharina who were visiting from Germany for the first time, and my # 2 daughter Rose Marie.  But we ended up having to get up in the middle of the lunch because Rose Marie broke water on her first son, Elliott. My favorite restaurant  in Saigon, when I spent the winter of 2009/2010 in Indo China, was “Saigon Xua va Nay” ( Saigon then and now). The owner is a Vietnamese American named Mike.
When I mentioned how much I liked “Vien Dong” it turned out that he had been the original owner of it.