Neil & Sue Visit

Dear Gran

Our latest guests have now departed to fairer climes (although the late summer weather is holding out pretty well here). Here is the obligatory Schloss Cecilienhof photo.


And here in front of the Orangerie Schloss you also get a better view of their ingeneous Klapräder. Actually, their bikes were damaged en route here and required a morning spent at various bike shops to fix - hopefully they will prove more robust in future!


Finally, we have become devoted customers of Potsdam's Maison du Chocolat
although, as you can see, Neil wasn't tempted by the Hausspezialität.

love from,
Brendan

99 Red Luft Balloons

Dear Gran
Yesterday Julie, Oliver and I went on the second of this year's berlin bike ride with thousands of others. It happened to be held the day before the federal election was held here, although the bike ride was planned first. Unlike the June event, yesterday stayed dry and there was big turn out.

Here we are riding down Karl Marx Allee.

So political parties were giving out balloons for people to carry on their bicycles. It was a little bit like the 99 Red Luft Balloons german pop song from almost 20 years ago except in addition to about a hundred red balloons there were many thousands of green balloons. (Although I believe that the original song in German was simply called "99 Luft Balloons" and there was no mention of colour. The red was just added to make the words fit into English, because, as we all know, english numbers are at least a syllable shorter than german numbers.)

Here are the backs of Julie and Oliver riding towards the Golden Angel of the Siegesaule victory column.

In case you are wondering what these balloons might mean signify for the election results, allow me to explain. Red is the colour used by two of the left parties the SPD and the PDS. The current ruling coalition are Red-Green coalition because the SPD are in coalition with the Gruen party (who use the colour green). Orange is the colour of the conservative CDU, but I did not see any orange balloons. Now, the red balloons at the bike ride had PDS, not SPD, markings on them - although I think some people were flying them because they had mistaken them for SPD balloons. I certainly had.

Other people had combined red and green balloons together - which might have meant that their preferences were undecided or that they would like another coalition government (although whether SPD-Gruen or PDS-Gruen, I couldn't say). But then again these Red-Green balloon people may have been just getting into the festive spirit - particularly because many of them were children!
love from
Brendan

Andrew, Meg and Pete Visit

Dear Gran
Last week we had a visit from Andrew, Meg and (Meg's) Pete.
Here we are at night at Hackesher's Hoefe (a tourist mecca.)

As you can see Andrew has got pretty good with his new camera.

We decided this office courtyard near our home was like a disco.

Actually I can see now, in hindsight, that perhaps it was just me who decided that it was like a disco.

Meg adopted Julie's bike for our day trip to Potsdam whilst Andrew and Pete adopted laid back cruiser attitudes to go with their laid back cruiser rental bikes.


Finally, a picture of Andrew in the act of doing something he does very well.


love from
Brendan

Cherie in Bärlin part 2

Dear Gran,
The Indian Summer over the last 2 weeks has been amazing: Cherie (and her inseparable friend) couldn't have timed the visit better.

At Wansee (the water temperature was great for swimming)

Kaffee und Kuchen in Mitte.

At Pariser Platz/Brandenburger Tor.

At the Symphonie.

At Schloss Cecilienhof.
Cherie has moved on to Italy for a couple of weeks and we are expecting Andrew, Meg and Pete on Sunday.
huru
Brendan