IN THE MORNING WE FOUND

a touch of snow on the branches of the trees and roofs of the houses.
The sky stayed grey and dark.
Bread had to be bought in town. We walked down the valley and went to the supermarket. Then we made a little tour, first to the harbour. It is empty for months now and it will probably take a long time before all the stone walls have been repaired. There is a plan to make the harbour a real harbour again.
And that is a magnificent plan I think. It will not only take time but first of all the plan must be approved of and money supplied.
The big house in the picture stands at the harbour, in baroque style, build in the beginning of the 18th century.
All the houses of the original city plan are white and form a big rectangle around the harbour.
From there we walked to the Weser and were greeted by the ducks and the swan pair. That is when we had brought bread for them. We had and they all came to us. One pair of ducks however flew away from us. They are so shy and hate (?) persons. They are a special kind and beautiful.
It is more difficult to identify this pair.
The male swan got very angry at some duck and bite him and did not intend to let him free, no, we were actually afriad that he would drown him.
Some minutes went by before the duck eventually could free himself.
The shore is high up and we could not help the poor duck. The pictures I took I do not want to show.
One word about our trains of yesterday. Our first train lasted 2 hours, till Venlo.
From Venlo till Viersen, in Germany, nearly half an hour for the second one.
The third lasted one hour and a half, the fourth one hour, the fifth half an hour and the last one 15 minutes.
The Deutsche Bahn is no longer the only company that is master of all the railroads.
Like in other countries d ifferent companies have taken over in the regions and the result is that with little luck one's journey is cut up in different pieces.

My haiku:

Did we bring the snow
With us all from the North Sea
In our luggage?

We travel lightly but still we carry a backpack and have one rolling suitcase each.

And the proverb:

You may as soon shake a coat for the moon.

1678 in J. Ray, A collection of english proverbs.