A Breakthrough

New Colours of Spring in Front of the Cafeteria

Spring finally came and I restored my health totally. We used the last eventually warm but still inconstant weeks to create the garden around our cafeteria. During the week Inés and I planted lawn, bushes and flowers, built paths, replanted trees, watered, leveled, shoveled and raked like crazy. On the weekends even the children helped us and all together played mole. It was very funny and everybody slept very well during the nights and long in the mornings. That was really superb! Now the lawn is already springing and in every corner something is blooming.

Then I built a garden terrace out of old timber that was full with nails. It was one of the most terrible works I had ever done, the timber being horribly hard and all the nails, which I had to pull out of it, rusty. I almost despaired of it but roughly speaking I can say that it was worth all the effort. The whole area has a much warmer, more ordenated and more welcoming appearance now. I tend towards saying that it really looks great. At the end we hung the hammocks and so our little paradise is ready to use.

Right in time for this we also found an almost legal way how to achieve an official permit. That for we just have to make a few little adaptions and changes and at the end of November all papers should be ready to gain the municipal permit. Which according to a hint given to us by the municipality itself (!) we will only do in January to avoid paying fees for the whole second half-year of 2012. We will get a permit as a sandwicheria which means we will be allowed to make sandwiches (sic!) and similar small food like salads, toasts, hamburgers, hot dogs and so on. The sauna we will run without any official permission due to the fact that the term 'sauna' simply does not exist in the Chilean law. Our menu nevertheless will exist of more 'exotic' food like soups, lots of vegetables, toasts, Austrian delicacies, cakes and pastries. Many of that not really according to the permission but as the sanitary inspector himself told us, if not someone will make a report nobody will make us any problems.

That we will really get any permission I surely only will believe when I am holding it in my hands.

The cakes which I am making myself meanwhile already have become an unexpected success especially the typical Austrian Sachertorte. People ordered whole cakes to take them home. Because when starting a new business you have to kind of prostitute yourself, I took the order and so started a new unexpected "branch" of my business. So Wolli is even an confectioner now.

The next project will be to make calendula unguent to sell it. I am already looking forward to that.