Dear Gran,
Two Sundays ago we celebrated Mother’s Day (flowers from the market and cake by Julie) , and we then walked to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park where the 60 years after the end of the war was being commemorated at the graves of 5000 Soviet soldiers.
Last Saturday, we cycled along the charming Wannsee Lake and, as you might remember from the December 12 Blog, the island in the background is Pfauen Insel (pronounced Pfoofie Island by Lorraine, who had otherwise been doing a good job all week with her pronunciation).
As you can see, these rented bikes are built for cruising in comfort and style (particularly if you include novelty bike horns under the heading of style) because our previous tour customers had complained about the hard seats and lack of brakes on their borrowed bikes.
On Sunday we wandered along the green streets of Prenzlauerberg, regularly ducking into cafes to avoid the frequent torrential downpours of Berlin’s spring weather. Colin and Lorraine have returned safely back home now, so we have once again put up the Zimmer Frei* sign outside the building.
much love,
Brendan
*actually Wohnzimmerboden Frei would be more accurate.
Dear Gran,
Last Friday fortnight, Colin, Lorraine and I flew to Stockholm - which we found to be a splendid harbour town: a bit like a grander version of Hobart, only with more Volvos. Lorraine had been looking forward to trying some Swedish food, but found that the meatballs tasted exactly like what she was used to back home
The above photo is of Colin in the Town Hall courtyard, with the city across the water behind, and below is Lorraine and Colin overlooking the harbour from a cliff top.
On Tuesday, we took a train diagonally across Sweden (and a very big bridge) to Copenhagen.
In Copenhagen it seems that anything (e.g. street, boat, sandwich, beer etc) is either named after Hans Christian Anderson (or something he did) or it is named after Crown Princess Mary’s in-laws (or something they did). For example, in the main city square (above photo) is an equestrian statue of one of Mary’s in-laws (King Frederick VI, I think) crushing a defenceless enemy (or perhaps just a lowly commoner) under his horse’s hooves.
Here are two little hobbits in front of their little home in the Friland Open Air Museum. The museum is an assembly of ancient rural farmhouses from around Denmark and the bits of Norway and Sweden that used to be part of Denmark.
We caught a train from Copenhagen to Hamburg where we rendezvoused with Julie for the weekend. En route to Hamburg, we received a pleasant surprise when the entire train went onto a Ferry for the 20 km sea passage between Denmark and Germany (I should really read the maps and timetables a bit better next time).
Hamburg is the city famous for harbouring large container ships but also infamous for harbouring September 11 terrorists; so we expected a good turnout for the traditional May Day celebrations/demonstrations on Sunday. We were surprised, however, with being confronted on Saturday at the train station with a huge demonstration where every person and their dog were marching against the new mandatory Leashes for Dogs in Public Places Laws (above photo). The actual May Day march the next day had more people but, disappointingly, fewer dogs.
Over the weekend we stayed in a hotel by a lovely city lake and park, and we lazed in the sun, caught a harbour cruise, ate and drank (above photo) and checked out the Speicherstadt, the old warehouse island city that adjoins the harbour (below photo).
On Monday, Colin, Lorraine and I caught the train from Hamburg to Amsterdam and Julie caught the train back to Berlin.
Apart from Amsterdam's charming canal streets, I also enjoyed visiting the delightful courtyard housing, called hofjes (below photo). These are between 400 and 600 years old and were originally built to house the poor and also for religious communities.
We were in Amsterdam on the 5th May, the 60th anniversary of National Liberation Day, and we attended a small evening service in a public park. Surprisingly, the constant bustle of the city all stopped to observe the 2 minutes silence at 8 pm. Colin and Lorraine can remember when the minutes silence on Remembrance Day was as widely observed in Australia.
We stayed in a Amsterdam narrow house with a traditional narrow and steep staircase in a traditional narrow street (photo above: Lorraine waving from our hotel room on first floor). On Friday, we flew back to Berlin where we perceived everything with new eyes i.e. our flat had become huge, the stairs were now gentle and easy to climb, and the streets have become really wide. Colin has suffered a bad cold for a couple of days and has had to reluctantly exchange his daily pils for pills.
love from,
Brendan