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