Last month Lucas turned four. His birthday was celebrated in the Yacht Club at Lake Illawarra. From the club one has a good view across the lake.
The family birthday party was on a Sunday, the day before the actual birthday. Matthew, Peter and I had earlier on that Sunday picked up Caroline from Sydney Airport where Caroline had been flying in from Darwin via Adelaide.
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It had been Daniel’s birthday and he invited all his family for lunch in Alt-Tegel.
Some more pictures of that family lunch I’ll publish in another blog.
It was a rainy day. None the less we walked passed the duck pond through the Stadpark towards our destination: Die Pusteblume Cafe!
The next three pictures show some of the food we had at a restaurant in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:
This was a great meeting place for Australians who happened to be in Berlin at the time!
Peter took the above pictures near the Brandenburg gate where the kids were entertained with chasing soap bubbles.
A mother holding her dead son, a sculpture by Kathe Kollwitz inside of the “Neue Wache”
And here are some more of Peter’s Iphone pictures from the first week of our stay in Berlin:
Above is the video that was taken in the Volkspark am Weinberg.
We had arrived on Saturday, the 4th of June. Ilse’s sons had come to Tegel-Airport to pick us up and drive us with all our luggage to our apartment in Rubensstrasse. It was so good to have the two cars waiting for us. Klaudia as well as Ilse and Finn had also come along and we took off on the Autobahn that took us from the airport to our apartment in just a few minutes! Once we were settled in our apartment, we were given huge amounts of food, especially Ilse and Finn had brought a lot of food along. So all of us stayed together for quite a while, talking about lots of things and having a nice meal.
Strangely enough we did not feel too tired to go out to the Brandenburg Gate after our Berlin family had left us. So it was the five of us from Australia, namely Martin, Caroline, Matthew, Peter and me, exploring Berlin on our own on our first day in Berlin after we had only just arrived on our very long trip all the way from Australia.
The following morning we went out for breakfast. Die “Wolke” was just around the corner. They were doing pretty good business on a Sunday morning. We noticed a constant stream of customers. So we had a good breakfast sitting down in the Wolke Cafe.
Steak tartare is a meat dish made from finely chopped or minced rawbeef.
I seem not to have taken any pictures from that afternoon we spent near Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor) and where we had gone to by public transport.
But on Sunday the five of us did – also by public transport – go to Alexander Platz and from there on the U-Bahn to Rosenthaler Platz to meet my niece Corinna and her son Carlos for lunch.
The above picture I still took at Alexander Platz. After Alexander Platz we took off to ROSENTHALER PLATZ.
When we left this interesting place we were heading for the park where – as Corinna promised – there would be some dancing on display together with great swing music from the 1940s. Carlos had made his good-buys in the meantime. (After all, it is only a certain amount of time a fifteen year old is willing to spend with the ‘oldies’!)
Peter and I found the music quite electrifying. It reminded us of old times and the swing music that we used to like. During the 1950s, when we would often go dancing, swing was still quite popular.On that Sunday afternoon in the park inspired by the music Peter and I actually tried a little bit of dancing of our own. To our amusement, somebody videoed us while we were doing this! (See video at the beginning of page) We found this absolutely hilarious. Later on we watched for quite some time the dancing of the very young people. They seemed quite familiar with this type of dance music and danced very well indeed. A lot of these young people had dressed up in the 1940s style. There was even one young guy who had dressed in something that reminded us of the post WWII period when the young Americans of our occupation forces looked in their uniforms a bit like this guy did. Quite amazing!
It was a balmy early summer afternoon. We enjoyed our drinks, listening to the music and watching the young people dancing. The place is called “Volkspark am Weinberg”.
A few steps away from the ALDI shop is the entrance to S-Bahnhof Friedenau. We used the S-Bahn (city-train) frequently. Martin often went to do some shopping at ALDI’s for us. He did not take very long to go there and back. I probably needed at least twice as much time to walk there for I walk so much slower than Martin.
We had also an EDEKA store very close by to where we lived. Martin would quite often do some shopping there as well. The following pictures I took close to Rubensstrasse.
This Berlin visit was a true family event for Peter and me. I would like to tell about the 26 days in Berlin in three different parts. First there were 8 days with Martin, Caroline and Matthew, then 9 days spent just with Martin and the last 9 days in Berlin we saw a lot of Monika and her family who came to visit Berlin from the 21st to the 30th of June.
When we arrived in Berlin on Saturday, the 4th of June, we were five adults from Australia, and we were renting a three bedroom apartment in Rubensstrasse, Berlin-Friedenau. Our rented apartment was just great, very spacious and well equipped.
The other family group from Australia had booked an apartment in Prenzlauer Berg which is a bit North-East from the centre of Berlin, whereas Friedenau is South of Berlin’s centre. Monika’s group stayed in Berlin for 9 days after already having visited London, Paris and Zuerich. On Thursday, the 30th of June, they travelled back to London to stay there for another four nights and then to fly back to Sydney, Australia.
Thursday, the 9th of June was my brother Bodo’s 78th birthday. Peter, Martin, Matthew and Caroline went on that day to Kreuzberg (Cross-Mountain). Peter wanted to show them the place where he had grown up. My brother Peter Uwe came to go with me to visit Bodo.
Bodo is being looked after in a home for the Aged.
We walked along here to get to the home where Bodo lives.
Below a few pictures I took one morning in our apartment. Matthew is in the background, Martin is on the left, and Caroline and Peter on the right.
There were Touch Screens on the last leg of our flight back home to Sydney. For instance I very much enjoyed the Louis Armstrong music.
I listened to the whole tape twice in a row, even though there was plenty of other music available that I could have listened to.
Also, bottles of water were frequently passed around for whoever wanted them. We did fly right through the night till we arrived in Sydney at 6 am. Some people slept most of the time, but others had their screens turned on in front of them. I very much liked these easy to handle touch screens. I ended up getting very interested into an American TV series called ‘The 100’ and copy here some information about it from Wikipedia.
“From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The 100 (pronounced The Hundred is an American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama television series that premiered on March 19, 2014. The series, developed by Jason Rothenberg, is loosely based on a book of the same name, the first in a trilogy by Kass Morgan.”
I do find the plot very interesting. Here I copy again from encyclopedia something about the plot:
“The series is set 97 years after a devastating nuclear apocalypse wiped out almost all life on Earth. The only known survivors lived on 12 space stations in Earth’s orbit prior to the apocalyptic event. The space stations banded together to form a single massive station named “The Ark”, where about 2,400 people live under the leadership of Chancellor Jaha.[1] Resources are scarce, so all crimes – regardless of their nature or severity – are punishable by ejection into space (“floating”) unless the perpetrator is under 18 years of age. After the Ark’s life-support systems are found to be critically failing, 100 juvenile prisoners are declared “expendable” and sent to the surface – near former Washington, D.C.[7] – in a last ditch attempt to determine whether Earth is habitable again, in a program called “The 100”. The teens arrive on a seemingly pristine planet they have only seen from space. They attempt to find refuge and supplies at an old military installation, Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. However, they land some distance from the intended target and soon face other problems. Confronting both the wonders and the dangers of this rugged new world, they struggle to form a tentative community. They soon discover that not all humanity was wiped out – some survived the war: the grounders who live in clans locked in a permanent power struggle, another group of grounders who have become cannibals are known as Reapers, and Mountain Men, who live in Mount Weather, who locked themselves away before the apocalypse and are killed by the residual radiation outside.
In the second season, the remaining 48 of the 100 are taken to Mount Weather, where they discover a community of survivors. It is eventually revealed that the medical staff are extracting bone marrow from the 100 and the grounders so they will finally be able to survive on the outside. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the Ark have successfully crash-landed various stations on Earth and begun an alliance with the grounders to save groups of people, naming the main settlement at Alpha Station “Camp Jaha”.”
From Singapore on we had been flying Qantas. This was a really great experience. Also, Singapore turned out to be a lovely break for our transfer to our flight home. First of all, after having landed in Singapore I needed quite a bit of recovery from that 13 hour flight from Frankfurt. I must have been very dehydrated, for within half an hour or so I consumed a lot of water. The water and some rest in pleasantly warm surroundings soon made me feel on top of the world.
In Frankfurt the airport staff looked after us very well. Since it is a vast airport and we oldies had very limited time to catch our connecting flight, we had asked to be driven to our point of departure, just to make sure that we would not miss our flight. This worked out very well. A very nice young lady drove us in that airport buggy car over vast distances and through secret passage ways all the way to where we had to go. Our son Martin was allowed to join us on that buggy car.
So this went very well.
Unfortunately we had not managed to acquire seats next to our son Martin: At Berlin Tegel Airport we had found out that three connecting seats were not available anymore. Even to get two connecting seats was a bit of a problem. Peter and I ended up having two seats in a middle row. Peter had a lady to his right, I had a young Asian student on my left. We think these days it is not a good idea to book seats at the counter when checking in because most people do book online. By the time one gets to the check-in counter, one has to put put up with whatever seating is still left.
Martin got off the plane with us in Singapore. He went on to Melbourne soon after our Qantas plane had left for Sydney. But first we could spend a few hours together with Martin.
We had left Frankfurt on Thursday, 30th of June, late at night. We were given an evening meal and then the lights were switched off. Everyone went to sleep, including me, for I was very, very tired. I noticed that the air-conditioning was blowing quite a bit, however there were only light switches, nothing to turn off any vents. I wore my thick winter jacket which I had with me, for I knew it would be cold when grtting off the plane in Sydney. Peter ware his thick jumper. We used the thin cotton blankets that were provided. Being so tired, Peter and I slept soundly for a few hours despite the cold air. However when we woke up, we were both frozen stiff. Peter said, the plane felt like an ice-box. I don’t know for how many hours the lights were still switched off with every one was being asleep. I think it was about two hours before landing time, when finally there were lights and some movement started. We were offered very cold orange juice. Feeling so very cold and starting to shiver, I asked for some hot tea instead. Alas, tea was not ready yet, but the kind hostess offered to get me some hot water to drink, asking me with concern in her voice whether I felt all right. I assured her, that I was all right, that I just felt very cold.
One week ago, on Saturday the11th of June, we went to Alt-Spandau. It was a market day. In Germany June is the time for white asparagus (Spargel) and all sorts of berries (Beeren).
In the picture it says “frisch vom Hof”. This means the things for sale are fresh from the nearby country site and presumably organically grown (bio). I think that day we bought ca. 125 gram of blueberries for 1,50 Euros (a bit over two Australian Dollars).
It was the 11th of June, just a few days after Daniel’s birthday. We did meet Daniel and quite a few relatives for a family get together for lunch at the BRAUHAUS IN SPANDAU.
AuntyUta 