Getting in the spirit

Well, December has finally arrived and despite leading a quiet life here in Berlin, we still have to scrabble to write Christmas cards to avoid missing the posting deadlines!

Today we went to Spandau (inspiration in the naming of pop group 'Spandau ballet') for one of the many Christmas markets being held in and around Berlin.

Here are a few self-explanatory pictures. I did try some video but having at least remembered to take the camera and, with fully charged batteries, I still have to master the video shoot of the digital camera.

Well, due to popular demand, here is a short but best of the bunch clip. Don't worry, it can only get better...

BBrrrrrrrr.....

Today started much like most other Saturdays here, a slow start to the day and a mid-morning coffee before going out on our English newspaper buying trip. Before we left the apartment the sun was out and the weather was bright although on the walk to the train there was a nip in the air.

Having bought the paper, once we arrived back in Mahlow, though the sun was still shining here, there were some ominous black clouds hanging over Berlin to the north.

It did not take long for rain, make that sleet, no, snow began falling! It didn't amount to much by our Canadian standards but below are a few pictures of the first snow of the winter.

Reformation Day

31st October is more commonly known for Halloween in the UK and USA but, thankfully, here in Germany it is more commonly known as Reformation Day. This day marks the day in 1517 in Wittenburg, Germany when Martin Luther grasped a hammer and a long piece of paper covered with his writing. He walked out into the street and straight over to the castle church door, where community messages were often posted.

He nailed his 95 points of discussion on the door. He only wanted to lay out his newly discovered views of the Bible to other church leaders in the Medieval Catholic church. He thought he was free to do so even though his thoughts were radical. After all, he was an Augustinian monk and a professor of theology.

Without his knowledge someone printed his words on the newly invented Gutenburg press, distributing it all over Germany. Within a very few days, Martin found that he was the subject of everyone’s thoughts. In the cathedrals and great stone castles of his homeland, the pubs and peasant’s cottages—everyone was talking about the views of Luther. Without a signal to announce it, the Protestant Reformation had begun!

Whilst we are thankful for the Reformation we also enjoyed the bank holiday now instituted in it's memory!

Being a very autumnal sort of day we drove upto Niederfinow, about 80 miles northeast of Berlin. Niederfinow is the site of one of the largest, if not the largest, boat lifts in Europe. It links two canal systems and allows a number of boats / barges into a kind of bathtub from one canal system and raises or lowers them to the other canal system. The boat lift structure is about 60 metres high but the actual 'bathtub' takes the boat a height of 37 metres.

Not for the first time, I had camera battery problems although I did take some video that I have not yet worked out how to load here. in the meantime I scanned some pictures from the accompanying brochure so you can see what it's like.

After we looked over the structure and watched some boats passing through the system, we drove to the nearby town of Eberwalde and from there took a scenic drive through the forested area in which the trees were nice shades of yellow and amber before heading back to Berlin.

Canada Thanksgiving

Having returned from spending Thanksgiving in Canada here are some pictures of our time with Gill, Daniel, Nat, Mike and Kira as well as some pictures of the house we have signed up to buy, "subject to financing". Due to cooler and wetter October weather than we hoped for, we took no pictures outside (apart from the house) though on the afternoon we left we sat on the deck in warm sunshine.
Thanks for your hopsitality, enjoy the pasties!

From the living room back to the dining room (on left) and foyer with Daniel and Gill.

Breakfast area and living room window on left

Roof almost sheathed

Didn't we have a luvverly day the day we went to the Baltic

Today, 3rd Oct. 2007, is German re-unification day and a national holiday. Not wanting to sit in Mahlow all day, we headed up to the town of Rostock in northern Germany and then a short drive onto a real seaside town before taking a drive into the country.


























It's getting a bit late now, and after almost 400 miles driving in a day I'm too tired to write much but here's the pictures. The town in the pictures is Rostock, the sea is at the seaside, the thatched cottages are in the country as are the windmills.


























The plant holder we bought at the seaside but now it's back in the apartment.

Country drive

This weekend we are having what we hope is not a last fling of summer. It's been around 22C Saturday and Sunday and nice and sunny. Saturday saw us doing our regular shopping and taking a trip to Tegel airport to make sure we knew how long it takes to get there and get familiar with place. This might be useful if we get to fly out of there anytime soon! On the way back we got caught up in a parade protesting the 'Big Brother' state. As well as the protesters there were loads of German riot police around though there was no problems as far as we know but we didn't hang around to find out! After church today (probably the best service we've been at since we've been here incidentally) we went for a drive into the country. We drove to where we knew there is a canal and weir. I was hoping there would be a picnic spot there but there was not. We had our own two person tailgate party and took a couple of pictures. It was a nice drive and place but we couldn't get the pictures to do it justice. I did take some video but I do not have the necessary cables here to upload the video. The video also shows a man on the opposite river bank just as he caught quite a decent size fish for his tea but you will have to wait to see it.

Checking in

After returning from the UK last Monday it made a change to only have a four day work week so that the weekend come around around a bit quicker than usual! After the UK trip one of us was keen on picking up some Scott's porridge oats. Unfortunately that is not available in our regular grocery store but someone in work told us of a 'top' store in Berlin where we could buy some. The store is known as KaDeWe and is likened by some to Harrods. So after leisurely getting ready, we jumped on the trains to get to the Zoo stop and walked a little way down the Ku'Damm to the store. The magical sixth floor is the food hall although it seems to be more a collection of wine bars in many nooks and crannies with partitions of food shelves separating them. The number of people sipping wine and enjoying a light meal at 11am on a Saturday morning was quite surprising.
We seemed to explore every nook and cranny but could find no porridge
:-o(

though we did buy an English (Saturday) tabloid.
Resourceful as ever, we didn't give up but headed over to Dunkin Donuts! We knew they didn't sell porridge but we did know that as well as coffee and donuts (and a very nice bagel - well, it was now lunchtime) they also had an Internet cafe in the same donut store. After knocking back our coffees,donut and bagel, we invested in an hour of Internet time at a spare PC. We quickly tracked down the street address of the "English" shops in Berlin. We entered our current location and the shop addresses into http://www.bvg.de/ (the local transit website) and that gave us all the details we needed to get to the shop efficiently! We called the shop before setting off and confirmed that they were still open (a previous experience saw us at one of these shop locations that had actually closed a couple of YEARS before!) and they did sell the porridge. A little over thirty minutes later and we were in the store buying porridge, Fray Bentos pies, crisps and 'dead fly' biscuits to name just some of the goodies on offer!
Then it was back to base and nap time!
Sunday was somewhat deflated with a trip to church and a lack of knowing what else to do with the rest of the day except watch the Turkey F1 grand prix in which even Lewis Hamilton didn't have a spectacular day, finishing fifth after a tyre blow out.
Suddenly it was Monday morning and back to the routine cycle of five days works. Speaking of cycle, that is how I get to work some days recently. I 'invested' in a 21 speed city bike, pictured here.







It takes me a little under half an hour to cycle the 7km (4.5miles) to work without arriving too sweaty, at least no one has complained yet!
Now we look forward to our trip back to Canada in just a few short weeks...maybe we'll see you then.

Sunday stroll, east of the pond

Not wanting to spend an afternoon in the apartment, after church today I headed off to explore another piece of Berlin I had not yet visited.

I took the 'S' Bahn train up to Halemweg station and took a short walk up to Volkspark Jungfernheide in the west of the city. It seems similar to the much more popular (i.e. busy) Tiergarten park in central Berlin but by being in the burbs is much quieter. The park has lots of tree lined paths, criss-crossing in all directions, some large grassy BBQ areas and more....

The sky was overcast with some occasional very light misty rain but it was dry enough to sit on a tree stump overlooking the lake and a deserted beach opposite despite being mid-August. In between eating my sandwiches I threw pieces of bread into the lake to watch shoals of small (3-4") fish go crazy over them, flashing their silver bellies as they fought over the bread! They frequently jumped an inch or two out of the water, presumably to catch the mosquitoes that were also at lunch, feeding on me!

Strolling through the park I stumbled on a football game that I watched for about half an hour before coming across these very nice carvings etc......





























On the way out of the park I also came across a water tower...

Then I eventually made my way down to the Zoo S Bahn station to pick up my Sunday Daily Express with the football results and reports in. Speaking of that, I have some reading to do....

Read all about it, news! news!

Hello, perhaps you thought we'd disappeared for a while but we've been here and that's been the problem!
The last couple of weeks, the weather has not been so good on the weekends and we've not been motivated to do much and even less inclined to take pictures.
We have started to go into Berlin on a Saturday to.......buy an English newspaper or two.
So, after a bit of a lie-in this morning, we got the 10.30 train into Berlin. We ('royal we') decided not to head to get the paper first but instead do some touristy stuff first.
The first stop on our travels was the Gendarmenmarkt, a large square with a church on both the north and south sides and a Cultural / Concert Hall in between. According to our tourist book we could go up the tower of one of the churches but, like so many other sites, there was renovation going on and the tower was closed. It was relaxing though, just enjoying the sunshine and wandering around.
Here are the pictures of the one of churches and concert concert hall.




The north side church

The concert hall

I also spotted a familiar looking tourist browing her guidebook.

Leaving the square behind, we walked up Friedrickstrasse, an up and coming shopping street. We went into Lafayette, an upmarket French department store. The store was above our C&A price expectations so we didn't stay long though we were impressed with the large glass panels arranged in a circle running through the middle of the store from top to bottom.

We left by a different exit that led into a small mall food court, a picture of which appears here!




Having decided where to go next, with our tickets for unlimited travel, we jumped onto a bus heading in the right direction. Not knowing where the bus was actually going was not much of al risk. We only planned to go a couple of bus stops anyway. The bus stops were further apart than we anticipated so we did end up further than we planned from our target. That gave us the bonus of finding and visiting St. Mary's Church, not surprisingly undergoing renovation. It has a nice organ even if you can see the protective plastic sheeting on the balcony edge!



The church also houses quite an art collection and also holds English language services on Sunday evenings as far as we could understand it.



From outside, it was quite a contrast to see the old and new towers 'side-by-side'. The church dates from the late 13th century though the tower is 18th century after a fire destroyed an older tower. The modern tower is at Alexanderplatz and is a TV broadcasting tower.


We made a stop at the National Gallery, though didn't enter in and found an unusual place to photograph Berlin Cathedral from.


A glimpse of the Cathedral

The National Gallery

Fitting in a bite to eat and drink, we headed for the train station to buy our newspapers and found a benefit to buying them in mid afternoon rather than the morning. By the time we got to the store, Saturday's delivery of the Saturday's papers had arrived, rather than reading Friday's or even older papers.

So I think the papers deserves a picture also!