Trains and Umbrellas

It is Saturday morning, August 13, here in  Neugraben, , the Hamburg suburb where we are house sitting for two more weeks.

How many days of trains and umbrellas will that be?

Trains are bargains here:  a one-day state-wide train pass costs between $20-30 Canadian.  Such passes got us north to Lubeck and the Baltic Sea beach beyond, the other day.  Such passes will get us south to Lunenburg, which has a street market on Saturdays.  We could also get to Hanover and Bremen on the same pass.  Hamburg, its own state, borders two states, and these passes include travel from Hamburg to and from these states.

Umbrellas are also a good deal, especially for the people who get the ones we forget in various places.  My sister is very good at booking cheap train, plane, and bus tickets, and very good at giving away umbrellas.  Good heart.

On Friday, a rainy day, while she booked this and that train for our England house sit time which will follow our German time, I walked the two kilometres to the commercial area of this suburb and bought her an umbrella.  A day or two earlier, she had left behind her sixth umbrella, I think, since her arrival in Europe more than two years ago.

We Canadians are generous people, in this case helping others stay dry.  The other day, we saw an umbrella forgotten on a train seat.  Was another Canadian nearby, or is such generosity international?