Update: there is an error in the write-up:

  print p

actually returns the path string. However since I was using IPython, showing `p` without printing it displays the object representation:

  In [20]: p
  Out[20]: local('/home/user') 

This story is nothing I am proud of, but I wanted to share it anyway, I think there are a few interesting facets to this, e.g. how I got there:

- not discovering the solution through the documentation,

- hacking away instead of asking,

- lack of attention to detail when hacking through it (do I really wanna do this on my homefolder???),

- also: forgetting about the incident right away

I guess that makes me look bad, but I believe such errors happen everywhere and all the time. So there is the question, why did the solution not occur to me? Am I really just stupid and I am the only one? Or should the `__str__` method be included in API-documentation?

I don't know, but I'd like to hear your thoughts!

(edit: formatting)