Birthday princess

Kate and I eventually made it back to Hotel Schlössle just before ten, and we still had to primp ourselves for the party. I had told everyone that we´d be in the common room from eightish, so we were very unfashionably late...

But everyone was happy to see us, and I enjoyed chilling with new friends, and making some even newer ones, while improving my pidgin English. Eszter gave me some bangles, and Kate gave me a good-luck charm from Naples. My funniest present was from DJ Daxxter - a princess tiara.

It was DJ Daxxter´s birthday on 7 October (he shares it with thom e. yorke), so as the bells chimed midnight (and they really do in Vaduz), there was another surprise for both of us...

Charles and Lufa and the Mona Lisa had baked us two birthday cakes. But first we had to search the common room to find them, with Sebastian accompanying our hunt on guitar, while singing "hotter / colder". Eventually we located two gorgeous cakes (one chocolate-orange, and one a fruit tart), balanced on the window ledge.

Everyone wrote birthday greetings in my notebook, in an international array of languages: Deutsch, Čeština, Magyar, Italiano, Vlaams, الْعَرَبيّة, and last, but not least, English. A suitably fabulous occasion, and I was very glad I´d decided to stay in Vaduz for my birthday and party with my cosmopolitan new friends. But the evening wasn´t over yet...