Home again

Annette, Arabella, Maddie and I are back home again. We left Prague on Wednesday, and arrived back in Perth on Thursday night. (We won't talk of the 5-hour stopover in Dubai.) Susan and Fred went on to Vienna for a few days - they should be on their way back now. Kati flew to England (she had an invitation to the royal wedding, but declined), and will be back in two weeks.





It was a wonderful trip. I loved each and every city we visited - they were all very different, and I'd really like to visit each of them again. So thank you, Maddie, Kati, Annette, Arabella, Susan and Fred - for making it such a great holiday!

Prague

The final city on our tour - and a lovely way finish our holiday. It's no secret that Prague is a really beautiful city - it's often referred to as a "petit Paris".

There are some amazing old buildings and mazes of winding cobblestoned streets.

We saw the astronomical clock

and walked across the Charles Bridge and took in the breathtakingly beautiful vistas of the city.

We visited the John Lennon wall - some of us made a few additions!

After a restoring lunch, we visited the Estates Theatre, where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni.

After that, it was a visit to the Palladium Shopping Centre - just like any shopping centre anywhere in the world, unfortunately.

Like all of the cities we've visited, there's far more to see in Prague than we've had time for. Maybe next time?

More from Berlin

On Saturday we took a day trip from Berlin to Moringen, where my mother lived from 1946 to 1956, when she came to Australia. It took several trains plus a bus to get there - it's in the centre of Germany. It's a very pretty little town, with many traditional half-timbered buildings.

My mother lived at 34 Lange

Straβe. Back then, there was a bakery downstairs. There's a bakery next door now.

We had a lovely lunch in a pub - the very friendly lady who served us our meal filled us in on lots of local information about the town and its history, as well as people our mother knew when she lived there. It somehow didn't seem quite real that she lived and worked here for ten years.

On our last day in Berlin (Easter Sunday), we went our separate ways. Maddie, Kati and I went to a fleamarket, and had wonderful coffee and kuchen in a nearby cafe.

Later in the day, we met up with Annette and Arabella to go to the Schloss Charlottenburg. Susan & Fred had ventured much further - to Frankfurt an der Oder.

The things I'll remember most about this wonderful city - the delicious sunflower seed bread, the very efficient U & S Bahn rail system, the urbane-looking locals, the familiar sound of the German language ... and the ubiquitous Smart Car - they're everywhere!

Wir sind Berliner

Sorry for the title - it's really hard to get past JFK's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" quote.

It's definitely springtime in Berlin - as soon as we came up out of the underground station, we saw blossoming leafy trees and flowers - quite a contrast from Helsinki. The temperature is in the mid-twenties, and it's quite warm.

This is an amazing city - grand avenues, monumental buildings, with its history there for all to see. We visited the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust memorial and Checkpoint Charlie all in one afternoon, and it was all rather overwhelming. Seeing the last remnant of the Berlin Wall is a very moving experience - it's very stark symbol of the oppression under which so many people lived for so long.

We've also been to the wonderful Berlin Zoo...

...and visited the Wannsee - a huge lake not far from the city. My mother only visited Berlin twice in her life - on one of these visits, she swam in the Wannsee with a handsome young soldier she met while she was a kindergarten teacher.

More of Germany next time.

Helsinki

We were in Helsinki from Monday to Wednesday, staying at the Radisson Blu Seaside - seriously the best bed I've ever slept in. We took the M/S Star from Tallinn - Helsinki is two hours across the Baltic Sea.

My first impression of Helsinki was all the building going on - cranes everywhere, a bit like Perth!

The other thing that struck me was the people - to me, they looked, well...familiar! Perhaps there's some Finnish intermingling with Estonian in my father's ancestry.

Helsinki isn't really that old a city - most of the buildings we saw were anywhere from Georgian to Art Deco to post-modern. It's a very elegant city - the buildings look very bright and clean in the northern light.

On our first day in Helsinki, the weather was clear, sunny and chilly. The day we left was grey and cold. Like Tallinn, there's still ice on the ground, and lakes are still partly frozen. The trees are showing signs of coming into leaf, but are still bare.

This was the most northern city on our trip - next we're heading south again.

Vana Tallinn

We arrived in Helsinki today, after spending two days in Tallinn.

We set off for Tallinn from Stockholm on Friday evening on the Baltic Queen. It was like sailing on a small cruise ship - bars, restaurants, duty free shopping.

We arrived in Tallinn on Saturday morning - the weather was quite chilly while we were there - they've had a very cold winter and it only stopped snowing two weeks ago. There's still ice on the ground everywhere.

My first impression on our walk from the harbour to the hotel was that it looked rather Soviet-y. This all changed once we got to the old town -Tallinn is a truly enchanting city. It's medieval, with influences from all the invaders (Danish, Swedish, German, Russian) over the centuries. The newer parts are very modern - Estonians are very proud of how technologically advanced their country is nowadays.

My father (known to us as Pop) grew up in Tallinn - his family owned the Kino Amor cinema, which was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War. This park (looking pretty desolate after the winter) is where the cinema once stood.

There was a plaque commemorating the cinema for a long time, but that's gone now. We had a lovely lunch at the cafe (called Cafe Amore) over the road.

On Sunday morning, we set out to find the Domschule, where Pop went to school. There were lots of photo opportunities along the way.

We came across the Domschule by accident - it's now a ballet acadamy, hence the ballet poses. (We all took ballet classes when we were young.) I can imagine my father walking the steep streets each day and climbing the steps to go to class.

We also visited the Lindamagi - Linda was the wife of Kalev, the heroic first leader of the Estonians. There's a statue of Linda on Toompea, which is supposedly Kalev's burial mound. Here I am, with my namesake.

Old Tallinn has many wonderful buildings, some ancient. There are so many amazing old doorways.

It's always been a proud city, resistant to external controls. I sense that it's still quite activist - there are some great signs and graffiti around.

We were also lucky enough to be able to meet some relatives of my brother-in-law Juri. We had a lovely lunch with them on Sunday - they are truly delightful, charming people.

I would very much love to go back and see more of Tallinn. Today I read a little more about it in a Lonely Planet guide - there are lots of great attractions for tourists which we didn't see. I'm very happy that I've seen my father's city - I can see now why he was so proud of his country.