Raining

It's raining outside, which is wonderful. We've had quite a bit of rain in the last few weeks, so all the weeds have sprouted with a vengeance.

Last week I went to Bunbury with Annette and Maddie to see my mum. We took her for her swim at Koombana Bay. It was really cold and windy - here is our 91 year old mother in the (freezing cold) water. You can just make her out in the distance. Needless to say, neither her daughters nor her grand-daughter ventured anywhere near the water!

Back on the subject of gardening - I really need to do a lot of work with the veggie garden beds - dying basil to pull out, seeds to plants, as well as the aforementioned weeds to pull out. I pulled out the rest of the beetroot this morning, and have a spicy beetroot soup bubbling away in the slow cooker. I'm trying to emulate a spectacularly wonderful soup I once had at this restaurant in Melbourne. The beetroot is from a punnet of Digger's Club heirloom seedlings. Who knew beetroot came in so many lovely colours?

It's stopped raining for now - I should get out there and do SOMETHING. But I'm sure there are lots more grey clouds looming. A cup of tea and a good book sounds like a much better proposition...

Another week

What I've been up to in the last week -

I've been to the football! Yes, me, at a football match! Martin & I were invited to last Sunday's Eagles versus some other team at Subiaco Oval. I managed to grasp that the basic plan is to get the ball to one end of the oval and then kick a goal, but some of the finer points totally eluded me. There seemed to be random cheers and roars from the crowd for no apparent reason. Still, the atmos was great, and so was the food & wine. Here are some photos just to prove that I'm not making this up.









We celebrated Martin's birthday on Wednesday. We had a very pleasant lunch and then went to the movies. (Potiche - silly, but very enjoyable.) There was, as usual, tiramisu for dessert.

My shoulder is still not completely better, so I haven't done a great deal of housey/gardeny stuff. Still, I have planted broccoli, carrots, peas, broad beans and cauliflower. Just in time for the promised rain - winter is finally on its way and not a moment too soon!

Finally, here's something great I found featuring the lovely Old Spice guy. There's also this one - both have been widely appreciated at work!

Plan B

I've taken a week off work - the plan was to paint the kitchen, do lots of gardening, reorganise everything...

Anyway, I've managed to injure my shoulder somehow, so it's a case of the best-laid plans, etc etc. So apart from some gardening done with Martin's help, I haven't managed any of the planned projects. Instead I've been reading, playing scrabble, watching movies and generally mooching around. I've also managed to knit a little more of the Debbie Bliss cricket sweater - what's a little shoulder pain when there's time for knitting?





A little enforced slothfulness is a wonderful thing.

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.