Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau

This morning we left Munich in Bavaria and drove towards the Alps to see two castles close to each other: the famous Neuschwanstein in the hills, with Hohenschwangau in the valley below.

The Short Story Intensive Workshop

On the last weekend of July 2016 I was fortunate to be able to participate in a short story workshop taught by Mary Robinette Kowal over a Google Hangout, with seven other students. It was advertised as "Intensive" and it sure was! But even though it turned out to be a bit too intense for me (I wasn't able to complete the Sunday exercises due to brain weasels and other problems), it was enormously valuable.

The Lessons of WXR17

I’ve divided my blogging about the Writing Excuses Retreat 2017 into travel (the last few entries) and lessons from workshops (this posting). We were asked not to record the sessions, to respect the intellectual property rights of the instructors, so I’m not going into a much detail about the presentations. Instead, I’m focusing on how I think the retreat has affected my writing and me personally.

Tallinn

Wednesday August 2 involved a short three-hour tour of highlights of the city of Tallinn, Estonia, particularly the upper and lower parts of the Old Town.

Copenhagen and Stockholm

I’m dividing my blog entries into travelogue and writing; this is the description of the travel from leaving Kiel to touring Stockholm, with Copenhagen in between. Unfortunately wifi on the ship was sufficiently slow I couldn't upload photos in realtime, so this is several days late.

Kiel

I found out a little about Kiel a week before the trip; a researcher who lives here was visiting one of my colleagues at Queen's. He said there wasn't much to see that was old, because the city was bombed out in World War II. It was a major submarine base and submarine construction dockyard, so was a major target.

Traveling to Germany

I'm composing this on blogspot.de because I'm in Kiel, Germany for the start of the Writing Excuses Retreat 2017 --- a writing conference taking place on a cruise around the Baltic. This post is about getting here; I expect to post more whenever I have Internet access.