Twice in one month!? 😱😱😱

Hello again! In my previous recap of many things that have happened since March 28th I overlooked something that was coming up right after that date. I even mentioned it in the first paragraph:

"on the eve of a stressful (to prepare for) Easter road trip that will bring us through Switzerland, Austria, stopping in Piemonte in Italy, then on to Provence, and finally a couple of nights on Lake Annecy"

Unfortunately at 45+ years old I hardly remember what happened last week let alone five months ago. Luckily, however, I've got photos and my Apple Calendar (formerly iCal, RIP) to help jog my memory.

It was indeed literally the eve of our departure as according to my calendar we took off most definitely not bright-and-early on the morning of March 29th for a long drive to Borgo Casa Scaparone in Alba in the Piedmont region of Italy. The drive took us through the Swiss and Austrian Alps and I can remember vividly leaving Munich to cold rain, driving through a snowstorm in the mountains in Switzerland, and then finally ending up in Alba around 8pm to a warm spring evening. The accommodation was quite something:

 

We spent two nights at the Borgo Casa Scaparone during the lull before the Easter weekend. While there we visited the town of Barolo, we went to the Cascina del Monastero in La Morra to stock up on wine, and tried to find a nice winery to make an offer on. Unfortunately none of them were expensive enough.

Our next stop on the road trip was La Ferme Constantin in Provence. This was the shortest leg of the trip at somewhere around four hours but we broke it up by stopping for lunch in a tiny town called Pieve di Teco in the Province of Imperia in the mountains. We found the one restaurant that was open and the Nonna running the place spoke no English but some French so we could communicate. The kids love Carbonara so they asked if she could make that for them and she was happy to oblige. Hugo calls it the best Carbonara he's ever had.

La Ferme Constantin is in the town of Fayence about 45 minutes inland from Cannes. We had our own farm house on the property which consisted of two bedrooms plus a living room and kitchen. Despite it being Easter it was also the down season in the South of France and so we had the whole farm to ourselves besides the owner Sylvie who showed up from time to time. Being early April we were very much ready for some warmer weather and Fayence delivered. It felt like summer most days with sunshine and 20+ degrees. We explored nearby villages for meals and made some on our own at the farm. We went to the sea one day but it was still too cold for swimming. We visited some wineries, bought some wine (long since drunk), went on some hikes, and for an Easter special we visited a different farm where there were all kinds of activities including, for Hugo, riding a horse!

 

 

 

 

And then we were off to our final destination on the road trip: Annecy. This was a fairly long drive at about 6 hours (but not as bad as the drive back to Munich would be at around 10 hours or more!). There were many reasons that we wanted to visit Annecy including the fact that it's a really nice city but it's also a potential future home for Pemulis & Co. so we wanted to see if it was really all that it's cracked up to be (of course we'd been there before but it had been years). We also planned to meet up with friends who drove from Grenoble to spend a couple of days at the lake.

Annecy treated us to REAL summer temperatures. Both full days there were sunny with 30 degrees. People were swimming, stand-up paddle boarding, and generally seemingly living a summertime lifestyle. I guess it could be a good place to live but then again so would a lot of places...

 

Finally our trip came to an end and I had one day to recover before participating in the Munich 1/2 Marathon on Saturday the 11th of April. Definitely not my finest performance of all time but given my recent (I'm talking over the last ~15 years or so) problems with chronic injuries, the fact that I could do it all is something to celebrate!

Crazy how the time passes. It feels like we were just about to leave for this crazy road trip and now it's but a hazy memory.

Upcoming Exciting Stuff

Before I sign off I will prime some hopefully future posts by opining on some upcoming exciting stuff in the lives of Pemulis & Co. First, obviously tomorrow is a big day with the eleven year anniversary of Kit & Tim. Two weeks from that we will run the mostly (for us) yearly Oktoberfestlauf 10 km race. Just a short 7 days after that Sandi / Joelle will participate in the "OTF Wendelstein Ultra" deep in the Bavarian Alps: this is a 57 km mountain race with more than 3000 metres of elevation gain starting from the town of Oberaudorf. On Dad's birthday we'll also do our yearly Thanksgiving celebration in the Zellerhornstraße just before Pemulis heads off to Berlin for a one week long work trip. And then just a few weeks after that it will already be time to meet Oma Lisa and Aunt Kit in Florence for the big marathon. Will Pemulis make it to the starting line alive? Only time will tell...

Still here

Looks like the last update here was in March! That's five months ago! That's a long time but definitely not as long as Jonathan Franzen makes us wait. So what has happened since March 28th? Let's see...

As hinted (well, literally said) in the Digital by Nature post, Pemulis went to Brazil! Pemulis and Joelle had last been to Brazil (the only time actually) way back in March 2008 where we celebrated Joelle's birthday! This was us the night of her birthday:

And this was the morning after:

Good times indeed. When I went this time -- 18 years later somehow -- it didn't seem like a lot had changed in Rio de Janeiro. Still a great city, great beach, nice people, interesting food. Pemulis himself, however, had probably changed. For one, Joelle had become Mrs. Pemulis in the interim (see below), and for two, Pemulis did not drink any Vodka-RedBulls this time. He did have a lot of ice latte (also see below), mate, and of course caipirinhas. 

 

Another thing that happened over the course of 18 years is that somehow Pemulis not only got older but now looks a lot older too. Strangely, his friend Gustavo did not age at all. Compare and contrast:

 

Not entirely fair, but there you have it. Brazil was great and here's one picture hinting at how nice it looks in Copa Cabana:

Another bunch of things that have happened since March 28th include...

1. We participated as a family in the "Giro di Monaco" to support housing for refugees in Munich

2. My work sent me to Paris

3. Sarah came to visit and we went to a Ben Harper concert in the Italian Alps. We also celebrated Sarah's birthday at a fancy Italian restaurant... IN ITALY!

4. Then my work sent me to Toronto!

5. Joelle and the kids then came to meet me and we visited Canada for a while (and we did a triathlon in Deep River, drank wine in Niagara, and even played mini-golf in London!)

6. We went swimming in the Eibsee

7. And we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary in Austria!

Finally, I went back to work...

Oh!!! And the kids started school

Until next time!

Digital by Nature

It took me almost two months but here I am, on the eve of a stressful (to prepare for) Easter road trip that will bring us through Switzerland, Austria, stopping in Piemonte in Italy, then on to Provence, and finally a couple of nights on Lake Annecy, that I should be getting ready for (and that would also likely lead to some nice Blog Moments but will sadly in all likelihood never have its highlights featured on GWMD because who has time for anything these days), writing the long-awaited Miguel Chevalier blog on the exhibition Digital by Nature that took place at the Munich Kunsthalle from September 12th, 2025 to March 1st, 2026 and which we visited at the beginning of February this year.

But first: when Pemulis was a much younger man he spent some time in the early part of the millennium hanging out in the North of England with some shady Brazilians who were big fans of Jorge Ben Jor and his classical Brazilian anthem País Tropical. One of said Brazilians was such a fan that he went to the trouble of translating the lyrics (pre Google Translate, pre ChatGPT) into English. We sang that song so many times that to this day I remember the whole introduction (the English version that my friend translated):

I live in a tropical country blessed by God

And beautiful by nature, I'll tell you what

In February (in February)

There is Carnival (there is Carnival) 

At Carnival I have a car and a guitar

I am Flamengo

And my girl is called Tereza

When Jorge Ben Jor talks about his car and guitar in the original Portuguese he literally says that he has a VW Beetle but I guess Gustavo (the modern translator of Leeds fame) decided that "car" and "guitar" rhyming worked nicer.

Now why this digression you ask? Well only because the line "And beautiful by nature" now keeps popping into my head thanks to this "Digital by nature" exhibition. And isn't it a strange coincidence that I will be (as long as I don't just completely shutdown out of exhaustion from this year and its relentless ways any day now) back in Brazil in just three weeks time? Strange days these are.

But back to the topic at hand: digital art. For those who aren't familiar, Miguel Chevalier is a digital artist who is fairly well established as one of the pioneers of digital art. He has been making art with computers since the 1970s! The show was cool and very kid-friendly. One personal highlight was an Amiga 1000 on display with an explanation that it was the first computer that Chevalier was able to use at his home as previously he would rent time on university computers in the late 70s and early 80s.

The show features many "static" pieces but also interactive displays where you could be part of the art and one highlight for the kids especially was a generative 3D flower art program that the artist developed that allowed anyone to choose from several building blocks on a computer including style of petal, style of leaf, style of stem, etc., and then modify the shape in different ways, the colours, etc., allowing for many thousands of different possible flowers. Once you were happy with how it looked, you submitted it and then later you would see it magically "grow" in the digital greenhouse that you visited afterwards. Good times.