Family trip to the zoo to celebrate once more Mait's birthday.

Just taking the turists around in Cologne.

Visiting the Eifeltower of Hiiumaa, build by a single man in only 3 months.

Since today was not so warm we skipped the afternoon beach visit, and instead we went to visit the highest lighthouse in Estonia.

This week we have been with grandpa in Saaremaa, and  we got the chance to attend a concert with Mait.

The music was good and Mia was happy, but the most incredible is that we met several estonian friends from Germany: Kadri, Karin & Heiko.

Wonderful view on the ferry from Stockholm to Tallinn.

Lately almost everytime we go out Mait's knees end like this.

On sunday, we went to Hagen to show Mia.

Mait playing with water at the botanical garden.

Afternoon walk at the botanical garden.

Thanks to Pilleke for the invitation for dinner at El Inca, one of the few places in cologne where you can order a Piscola.

Here there are two videos of this carnival's sunday. On the first one, tiger mother playing with lion son in their natural habitat. And on the other one, father cow sledging with lion son :p

The 'angels' drawing angels on the snow :D

This winter has been specially cold and Mait has been enjoying very much the snow.

At estonian grandparents place in Brussels.

The winter finally arrived very suddenly.

Mait had lots to do on Sunday at the estonian xmas party in Annaberg. First he had to act as a spruce and then he had to unpack his present.

I had my first real holidays since ages!! Mait and Margit went with the estonian grand parents for a 5 days trip to Paris and Normandy. (But i did missing them...)

We went to celebrate the Chilean Independence Day to Antibes, France. In the video you can clearly see that no man can dance...

Last week we went to the Games Com 2009 here in Cologne, and i was hoping to be able to play for the first time Starcraft 2, but at the end i thought it was not worth to queue more than 4 hours to be able to play for 15 mins, so i will have just to wait until the game is officially released :(

Here we are at Fühlinger see, which is 30 minutes away by bike from our home.

This is really weird, to find a cuban guy offering original cuban food in Hiiumaa. mmm, how do i love yuca ;). And it was also good chance to make friends and to practice my spanish!

Beautiful sunset in Hiiumaa at almost midnight.

After Pille's comment i just had to check the rodizio restaurant in Tallinn.

First, i have to say that it works a little bit different than normal rodizio, specially if you go for early dinner and you are alone in the place. Because of the small electric grill they do single portions on the spade.

The rodizio includes salad buffet, one drink and one dessert. We got fried bananas as starter and grilled ananas were missing. The salad bar was not the richest i have seen, but it was ok, and the desert we had was really good: some mandarins on cream, hardly brazilian but good.

And the meat? i have to say that the meat despite not being anything special, compared to the rest of the beef you can get in Estonia, was really outstanding!

And the waiter, a south brazilian, who spoke good english and spanish (no estonian) was kind but a little bit shy and dressed like an argentinian gaucho. My conclusion: quite ok, but a little bit expensive, specially the drinks. But since i have the choice i will continue to eat meet at Pantanal.

The second and last day was completely different to the first one, first the weather was better, second the audience was bigger, about 68000 people. Enjoy these 2 videos.

This was my first song celebration, and despite that nor me or Margit are singing, we were honored to join the 7km walk from Tallinn's city center to the song celebration site with the european choir of estonians along many friends and the rest of the 24705 singers. And, on our way, we were even greeted by ministers and former presidents.

It seems to be that the walk took longer than expected since the celebration itself started at 20:45 almost 2 hours later than planned.

And at the end the weather turned against the event, and we had to leave as well as more than (i guess) half of the whole audience just in the middle of the concert.

Every 4 years Estonia organizes a dance and song celebration. Yesterday we were at the first (of three) show of the dance celebration.

This year the event counted with 7460 folklore dancers and the main topic of the choreography was the sea.

So enjoy these 2 videos of the birth of the sea. But, sadly we were located against the sun :(

Already in Tallinn we organized a big welcome party with many friends, big and small ;)

After 3 Days driving we finnaly arrived to Estonia and we stopped in the south to visit Margit's relatives in Viljandi.

I had no idea that the pope's name was 'Jana Pawla II' in polish, his own language, as written in this street name sign in the middle of Warsaw. We saw this on our way by car to Estonia.

This weekend Mait made a round trip in Luxemburg with his grand parents.

And today we discovered the Bulbflowers world at Keukenhof in The Netherlands.

We are again traveling, this time we are based in Brussels, and went yesterday to Oostende at the west coast of Belgium.

Take a look to this car we saw today driving in the Rhein river! And you can even rent it out.

On the way back from the montains we passed by Annecy, but we should not have because at the end we were really late to meet Radu in Lausanne. Surprisingly, there was a kind of (very boring) carnival.

Just a very cool picture ;)

And finally we did make it to Radu's place in Lausanne, but we were really late and had no time to see the place :(, but it was still nice to chat a couple of hour with this old chilean friend ;)

Here has been snowing a lot, and this is the daily picture. Good that we took tire chains with ;)

We have no picture in action, since we can not go together tothe montain because of Mait. Here is Margit at the end of the slope.

We have been sledging with Mait almost daily and he has enjoyed very much.

It has been a hard week for us. We have been skiing, snowboarding and sledging in Les-Contamines-Montjoie close to the Mont-Blanc in France. And here we are on the way, in Switzerland.

Cologne is just a big crazy party during Carnival...

For the people that does not know yet, we like to eat good meet.

Despite we knew that in Cologne there are 2 rodizio restaurants(for eating all the meet you can for only around 20€), we have been for long time only going to Pantanal Rodizio, but yesterday we tried for the first time Maracana Rodizio.

And i have to say that despite the starters where better at Maracana, and that they also provide desserts. The service and the meet is much better at Pantanal!

Just having some interesting fruits.

First "papayo" some ugly relative of the, for me, familiar "papaya"? That does taste more like a sort of melon.

And huge and delicious avocados, one avocado is like 1500 grams!

Here we are hiking close to the "Roque Nublo" at more than 1800mts above see level.

Seniors dancing under the sun of canary islands in Puerto Mogán.

Mait on a short trip on a ship, we even (almost) saw some dolphins...

Really cool Mait with his sunglasses!

Me enjoying the live ;)

We just realized that we had very few pictures of Margit carrying Mait, so here is an update from the canary islands :D

Mait in the aircraft.

This video features Mait really laughing loud! with Siim.

Mait playing with Siim in Brussels.

Here are 2 pictures of Mait's latest trip to visit the grandparents in Brussels.

Video recorded at Imbi & Siim's place in Brussels featuring Mait playing with a compass.

This is a picture taken during our last few days in Estonia.

Mait and the stone crocodile of Von Glehn in Nõmme.

On the 2nd Xmas holiday we went to discover Saaremaa, our first stop was the Panga cliff in the nord.

Today Mait took part of his first Christmas party at Annaberg manor with other Estonians. He could also enjoy being on Santa's lap.

Yesterday Alkacon had its xmas dinner. This time we were invited to the Fantissima Gala and i would say it was the best xmas dinner ever... Until they throw us out at around 4am :D

First visit to Cologne's biggest xmas markets at the cathedral :p

Yesterday we went to Brussels to help Imbi to find a flat since she (and Siim) are moving there in January.

We used also the ocassion to meet our friends Reesi, Giuseppe and Tancredi, and we went all together, including Mait, to have a good Kriek in the legendary Mort Subite pub. :p

We have winter - Yesterday was snowing all the afternoon, at the end there were as much as 5 cm high snow outside. Cologne people were playing snow-war outside and sliding on streets. Even cooks from one restaurant made a snowman outside their kitchen.

It has been really strange year with respect of snow - the first snow of last winter came in March and now it already snowing in November!

It’s really Christmas weather outside! By the way - Christmas markets will be opened this week and all Cologne is already decorated.

Mait served as main dish in a georgian restaurant in Tartu, Estonia. :p

Mait has already travelled a lot for his short age. He has flown already 6 times and travelled 3 times by train. Here is a picture of his second train trip.

Yesterday came Gonzalo from England to visit Roberto, and Karin invited us for dinner to 'celebrate' :d

Today i took advantage of the nice weather to take some pictures of cologne's cathedral.

After more than 2 Months (shame on us :$) we went last Sunday to visit our family in Hagen. Everybody was very happy to see the small 'big' Mait once again :d

This weekend the european choir of estonians, where several friends of ours are taking part of, met again in Annaberg (Bonn) for an intensive exercising weekend in preparation to the Estonian Song Festival 2009, where more than 25,000 people gather to sing together.

We went first on Saturday evening to a dinner, and on Sunday to a concert at the St. Paul Church.

The first picture is a exercising session on Saturday after dinner and the second is from the concert on Sunday.

Here you find also more videos from the concert:

• Estonian Choir at the St. Paul Church 2/5
• Estonian Choir at the St. Paul Church 3/5
• Estonian Choir at the St. Paul Church 4/5
• Estonian Choir at the St. Paul Church 5/5

We went yesterday, after long time, to visit Margit's relative Anita and her partner Michael, who is btw an excellent cook :p.

I am really upset. In less than 24hrs. i was questioned two times by 'buttinsky' grandmas about how do I care of Mait. :@

Yesterday, one old lady told me at 19:30 at the supermarket that i should not take Mait out so late, and this morning in the market another old lady told me that we should have taken a blanket with for Mait. (Where, by the way, we were nicely surprised to meet Katja with her 3-months-old daughter Aljenna :)).

We were quite busy here with the estonian grandparents visiting us this week... one of the places we went was Altenahr.

Siim walking with Mait in cologne's botanical garden

We showed Siim some of the niciest corners along the Rhine, Koblenz and St. Goar.

Yesterday we went out to celebrate Mait's 2nd month and estonian grandfather's, Siim, first visit to Cologne. Note the difference how grow-ups celebrate compared to the small one... ;)

Yesterday we did celebrate the chilean independence day at Yenny's place... lot of interesting people, food and alcohol ;)

(But despite i took the camara with, i forgot to take pictures, so i got this from Kathi's blog)

Viva Chile Mierda

Just to tell that the carrying sling has been really great... it is so confortable, and so easy to use, we took the pushchair with to estonia, what we did not use it much... next time we will not take the pushchair with.

First walking with the carrying sheet, and i have to say that it was very confortable, for me at least, but i think also for Mait...

Second walk with the pushchair... i just forgot the camera the first time :(