Goodbye Stephie & Henning

Unfortunately, I cannot add photos to this message. Which is unfortunate, because I have a lot of nice photos to accompany this message.... I hope to be able to add them later.
On Friday, my friend Stephie, whom I have known for years, arrived with her boyfriend Henning. They flew in from Germany, where she lives and came to stay for a few days. I hadnt seen them for more than a year, so it was really nice to be able to welcome them. Especially because they brought some lovely weather along with them. 23-25 degrees and bright sunny days! On Friday, we made our first little walk through town and went for Aperitivo with my PhD mates. We ended up, as many times before, in the beer-bar La Fontanella, where we drank a bit much. As always. But as Stephie and Henning actually had quite a lot of time available in Milan, we were able to sleep late and do things slowly. So on Saturday, Fedors birthday, we got up very late before going to the Cimitero Monumentale. A beautiful haze created an absolutely mystical atmosphere there (again: the photos are awesome). After lunch and Hightech, we decided to return home again. In a bit of a change of plans, we had pizza at home and went to a bar to go dancing. We were joined by Fedors colleague and friend Bellinda and her husband, as well as my PhD mates. An absolutely amazing and fun night ensued. On Sunday, we got up late again for the thing I have been trying to do since I moved to Milan: the antiques market. Once a month our area (including our own street) turns into a huge antiques market with about 150.000 visitors... But I never actually managed to visit it (for various reasons). And it was absolutely amazing. Gorgeous weather again and an amazing collection of items for sale (yes, we did buy a little something for on the wall). The next thing we did was return to the city center and climb on top of Duomo. We did this during the sunset and once again, the photos are gorgeous...
After another little walk, we ended up at the Bento Bar for sushi aperitivo and finished the night at home playing a card game. An absolutely lovely weekend, it was.
Unfortunately, I had to do some work today, so I left Stephie and Henning in Fedors hands and he made sure they would manage to get back to the airport and fly bank home again. At the same time, I did some work and participated in an experiment for a fellow PhD mate. Unfortunately for her, the experiment got completely out of hand and exposed a very serious design flaw. As a result she was going to have to pay out approximately 800 euros (incl 60 euros to me) for 45 minutes of work. So when the experiment had finished, she decided to cut the pay-out ratio by 2.5. Oh well, I still received 24 euros, which is a nice little bonus! And tomorrow, I get to participate in another one of her experiments... See if she manages to remove the flaws out of her research design....
Now I am at home, waiting for Fedor to come out of work so we can eat dinner (he usually comes home around 22.30 on Mondays).
Ciao,
OJ