Crane

This is one of the drawings my grandfather drew. A crane in a birch forest.

My grandfather was a micropaleontologist, studying fossils that could only be seen under the microscope. He was however also a very keen ornithologist and did some study on the archaeopteryx (the original bird), a model that he devised hangs in one of the schools in Basel.

When I think of my grandfather I can see the long corridor in their flat, one of the smaller wardrobes held his collection of bird's wings smelling of naphthalene. He would take them out and show us how it made it possible for a bird to fly with it. Luckily we never tried to fly from his balcony, they lived on the 13th floor (cheaper by far than the flats on the 12th or 14th) and you got a good bird's eye view over the town, but it was really, really high.

I wish I had inherited his ability to draw.