A week ago on Wednesday we were in Newcastle. Our son Martin drove us there to see Lauren, who is his daughter, Peter’s and my granddaughter. We had lunch together at the beach.
We like to have lemon/ginger tea in the morning. A few days ago we went outside for our morning tea. The pot in the middle of the above picture is Peter’s pot for his drinking water. He has to drink each day a minimum of two litres of water to cleanse his bladder!
We had a lot of tomatoes growing. We very much liked the taste of them. Now there are only a few left.
Last Sunday afternoon we listened to some beautiful music:
It was the Europa Konzert der Berliner Philharmoniker from the year 2000. Among other things they played Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Wonderful!
On that Sunday we had also gone out for lunch. We went to have lunch in the Illawarra Yacht Club at Lake Heights.
The parking area was quite full but we found a good spot.
There was a bit of a misty view across the lake.
Peter chose Fettuccini with some ham and I had Fettuccini with lots of olive oil, tomatoes, asparagus, feta cheese and pine nuts. Tasted very good. However the servings were very large servings: All together a bit too much for us!
We also listened to another concert from the year 2001 from Istanbul:
This was a live concert from the Hagia Irene Church in Istanbul.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Irene
On another day, Peter and I had a few games of Rummy Cub, and while playing, we listened to some CDs with MUSIC BY GLENN MILLER !
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”.
Today we went to the German Club for lunch. Since Peter’s birthday is tomorrow, which is a working day in Australia, we celebrated with the family already today. Peter took some photos of some of the family. We were a dozen people and had booked a table for our lunch. Every one was very happy with their Mittagessen, meaning we could all order whatever we liked. There was some dance music from the 1950s that Peter and I liked very much. We even had a little dance! Lucas and Alex, our great-grandchildren, enjoyed themselves too. It is great that children are so welcome at this club.
The other day at Merrylands we bought this NATURAL SOURDOUGH bread. I just have been eating a few more slices of it. This bread tastes very yummy! It is called ‘Roggenmischbrot’. It is a product of Australia and has a ‘true European taste’! There were 650g of it for five Dollars. I think, it is very good value.
Last Saturday we went to the Griffin Theatre in Sydney. We went to a Japanese Restaurant before the theatre. Caroline and Matthew were with us. I had a vegetarian dish, which was very good. I liked it a lot.
On Friday the 13th our group of women went out for lunch together. This had been quite a hot day too. After lunch we were at Erika’s place for our game of Scrabble, for coffee and cake and later on we played Rummy as we always do on a Friday afternoon. Today is Friday again, and I just came home from our games afternoon at Irene’s place.
http://belvoir.com.au/school-performances/mother-courage-children/
“HSC Drama: Significant Plays of the 20th Century
Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children really needs no introduction to teachers.
Anna Fierling is a refugee. She has three children, a shop in a cart, and buckets of chutzpah. She buys and sells her way through a massive and pointless religious war – gulling, lying, charming, inveigling. Will those great capitalist qualities save her from the common fate?
Mother Courage and Her Children is a magnificent pageant of humanity in extremis. A 20th century colossus about a 17th century war is a vision of the 21st century – of globalisation, religion, violence, capitalism, love and pity.
Eamon Flack (Once in Royal David’s City) directs Robyn Nevin in a Michael Gow translation of this epic play.”
As far as I know, Bertolt Brecht asked the question who profits from war? And I would say his answer was that the well off always did profit from wars, but never any of the not so well off.
Today, Sunday, we met some friends for lunch at the OAK FLATS BOWLING AND RECREATION CLUB. We had a very good lunch there and later on coffee and cake.
We took advantage of the beautiful winter sunshine spending some time in this Park at Lake Illawarra.
Since last night it has been raining off and on. Today the temperature is only in the low twenties (Celsius!). Still, we decided, it would be good to have lunch at the Forest Grove Cafe. Last time we went there after lunch and had only coffee there. But we like the place for we can sit there in the open with a view onto the lake. And it is only a very short drive from where we live!
So today, we went for lunch to the Forest Grove Cafe. One of the lunch specials was grilled fish. Both Peter and I ordered this dish. It came with baskets of chips as well as a good selection of salads and a dressing of our choice. We were served a huge platter of food. It was really a bit much for me. After the meal I finally remembered to take a picture of our table with Peter’s camera. Peter had taken the photos of the lake before the meal arrived.
Yesterday morning I cut once more a bit of grass using the big scissors while Peter was doing in the house some vacuuming-cleaning for the weekend. When he was finished, and it was my turn to wipe the floors, I suggested to Peter that maybe he could finish the cutting of the grass while I was wiping the floors. It did not take Peter long, to cut some more of the tall grass. Then he decided, he could really use his push lawn mover to finish cutting the grass properly. By the time I had finished with the wiping of the floors in the house. he had already finished his outside job! From inside I observed how he took to pushing the lawn mover. So I took some pictures of it through one of the windows!
The above is a view through our kitchen window (facing westwards).
I like it that we did get a bit of rain overnight, as well as a bit of drizzle today. Hopefully, very soon our little grass area is going to show a bit of green again. This grass never grows at all when it doesn’t rain enough. It is at the northern side of the house and a lot of very tall trees take the sun away from it in winter. I hope some more grass is going to grow before the dark winter months are upon us! 🙂
This picture is from yesterday (Tuesday) morning. Marion, one of my neighbours, came along to ask for our gardener’s phone number. Peter gave her the number. I showed Marion in the computer the photos that we had taken on Monday morning at the lake.
Here is another photo that I tried to shoot with my camera from the computer screen. It shows part of that beautiful playground near the lake.
Marion asked me whether I still felt to be in a celebratory mood. “Very much so,” was my reply. Tuesday morning was a lovely morning: Wonderful sunshine, the air felt balmy. When Marion arrived we had already finished our morning tea outside in front of the house.
These are the names of the ladies who gave me these beautiful flowers. Joan came a bit later after work. Her name is missing on the card. Anyhow these are the flowers I received from the ladies on Monday. Aren’t they beautiful?
So Tuesday morning I went around enjoying all the flowers. I kept shifting them to different places and took pictures of them from different angles. I just love taking pictures of beautiful things!
Here you can see Peter in the kitchen busily fixing the curtain rod.
Here is this week’s TIME magazine. On page 14 it says:
ON A HUMID MID-SEPTEMBER NIGHT,
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY
ARRIVED AT THE ROYAL PALACE ON SAUDI
ARABIA’S RED SEA COAST TO BEG
THE FAVOR OF A KING
The writer of this article says that Abdula bin Abdulazis is perhaps the most powerful man in the Middle East.
It is said in this article that the U.S. has built a fragile web of alliances to fight ISIS.
The question is being asked: WILL THIS SHAKY GROUP OF PARTNERS HOLD?
I, Uta, ask myself, how can we as ordinary citizens possibly grasp all the complications? It’s of no use working myself up, right? But I still want to know as much as possible where we are at at present.
Back to my flowers. Here is another glance at them:
Kerry leaves a photo op with leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, on Sept.11
Here comes the food:
Ebony showed Lucas the display about an Austrian village at Christmas time. There was a moving train and a moving ski-lift. I took the pictures. I’m sorry that the quality of my pictures isn’t very good. But the display looked beautiful and Lucas looked at it for quite a while. This display was just part of the Christmas decorations in that German/Austrian Club where we had lunch.
We took some pictures with the whole family outside the club as we were leaving to go to the car-park.