Oster in Ostern

Dear Gran

Last week I met Julie in Leipzig where she had given a paper at a conference. It is a beautiful town with an eventful recent past e.g. when the Stasi, the East German secret police, were based there and they monitored and controlled seemingly all aspects of citizens’ lives. Some of the bizarre surveillance techniques used by the Stasi included a strap-on false belly (with a microphone in the navel!) and shelves storing scent samples collected from suspects kept in bottling jars (just like Fowlers jars!). Today Leipzig is called the City of Heroes because this is where weekly public meetings in the local St Nicholas church (pictured) triggered the peaceful revolution of 1989 - which in turn led to the reunification of Germany.

We caught the train to meet Sean and Sandra last Thursday at the small town of Eisenach and we celebrated the rendezvous with the local Thuringian speciality of Rostbratwurst in the sun. Spring had finally sarrived – flowers were popping out of the ground as well as on trees, although not any leaves yet! Easter hares and decorated eggs were on display everywhere around the town in shop windows and in private gardens.

On Good Friday we all climbed up the hill in cold steady rain to visit the impressive Wartburg Castle (We assured Sean and Sandra that it was cold steady Spring rain). Wartburg is where Martin Luther spent a year hiding from the Pope.


On Friday evening we celebrated Sandra’s (actual) 30^th birthday at a local restaurant. Next stop was Erfurt for two nights – another medieval town that has a great stone bridge that is lined with shops, houses and a church.
Also in Erfurt, were the impressive catholic cathedral (Luther’s influence can be seen elsewhere in town) and the huge citadel, which was built by the conquering Swedes out of the stone from a dozen demolished churches. On Easter Sunday, we mad a day trip by train to the small picturesque town of Muehlhausen and walked along the city’s walls.


On Monday, en route to Berlin, we stopped at the city of Weimar – home to dead famous arty types like Goethe, Schiller (both pictured), Strauss and Liszt.

In the evening we celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary with wine back on the train to Berlin.
Love from

Brendan & Julie

Just in passing...

Dear Gran,
Hope you had a good weekend at the party in Canberra.
Yesterday, Julie made a Pear and Almond Tart from the recipe that Sue emailed last week. Here is a picture to record its short lived (but delicious) existence.

Today, we visited the Natural History Museum where they feature lots of extinct animals that the Humboldt University has dug up from around the world over the last 160 years or so and dragged back to Berlin .

Here is Julie in the main hall hanging around with a couple of Brachiosauri, the larger one is 12 metres tall.

Julie also made friends with this eine Dronte (also called ein Dodo) that has been reconstructed. They also displayed a stuffed Beutelwolf (literally: pouch-wolf), which is what we call a tasmanian tiger and a Beutelbaer (literally: pouch-bear) which is what we call a koala (and is generally considered to be not yet extinct, although it is locally endangered in some areas).

The charismatic Berlin Mayor, Klaus Wowereit, is the financial patron of this stuffed Wombat (pronounced vombat, although I don't know why they don't call it Beutelhund to be consistent with the other marsupial names) and is what we call a wombat. Neither of them are yet considered extinct, although the northern hairy nosed type of wombat is very close to it. The wombat is now named after the Burgermeister's nickname: "Wowi" (pronounced Vowvi) . They bear a certain resemblance, don't they?
love from,
Brendan

International Women's Day

Dear Gran,


For 'Frauentag' yesterday the ice-cream scooping man gave me a familiar looking flower.

The other news is that this morning (perhaps inspired by the wattle) Brendan confidently declared that Spring was here, that was It for the snow for this year.

Yep, that's this afternoon's fresh snow you can see out the window. Silly Brendan.

much love,

Julie

Walking on Water

Dear Gran,
after Julie's market visit on Saturday we went for a walk in the sun and admired this frozen canal near our house.

This afternoon we visited Teufelberg in Grunewald Forest with Josh and Emily. It is a mountain made of rubble from Berlin's WWII ruins, which the Americans took advantage of by erecting a spy radar on its peak. The facility is now in disrepair, but that didn't stop us re-enacting the cold war with snow balls.

We saw lots of kids were careering down the hill on elegant timber sleds and we also saw a black wild boar rummaging amongst some long grass that was still sticking out of the snow.

We then visited a nearby frozen lake where we saw people playing soccer wearing ice-skates and a family pushing their baby in a pram over the ice. Yet, we were all pretty nervous when we first stepped out onto it!
love from
Brendan

UPDATE by Julie on Monday morning: This morning on the S-Bahn, the back of the newspaper the woman opposite me was reading had a photo of people on ice and the title "Beautifully dangerous". On the U-Bahn, the in-carriage TV was carrying a warning from the Water Police about walking on thin ice...

Food from the market

Dear Gran,
Exciting stuff- the weekly food shopping.

The wedge is a fruit-yeast cake. This one had a bready base, like a pizza, with a sweet rhubarby top, and some streusel on top of that. The little plug is a goat cheese covered in hazelnuts.
Much love,
Julie.

Journey to the Harz

Dear Gran,
Even though its still been snowing on and off in Berlin, we caught the train to the Harz Mountains for 4 days to see some really deep icing sugar stuff as well as the highest hills in northern Germany.

Today the Harz region is very proud of its historic connection to witchcraft - with every rock, hill, valley, drink, dish and pension including the word Hexen.

Here I stand laughing in the face of Toten Weg (not sure if the name Deadly Way is a reference to witchcraft or just the steep descent). Of course, it was Julie who got all the laughs at my expense on our way down.

It was a lovely sunny morning when we started out to walk and ski up through the forest to the highest hill, Brocken Berg (1140m), but by the time we got there the clouds, snow and wind had set in taking the views away.

This old steam train was an impressive sight coming through through the forest on its way to the top of Brocken Berg. The train easily beat us up there, but Julie was only a few minutes slower than it skiing back down.
love from
Julie and Brendan