Nice day at the Christmas markets

Flying high

We spent the day in town. Trouble is, with the kids, you don't get to see much, as we got stuck with all the rides they needed to do. Lucky for the ferris wheel, Fil, Dave and Mill got to look over town a bit.



On the 2nd last day, we went straight into the old town area, and avoided the rides. There are a lot of shops, so me and the boys went to the kids playground to let off some energy.

Waiting to go up up up.

The trapeze was not for Ollie who went for the walk thing.

Got to visit the old town, on the 2nd last day here.

Chatting up the guards

Mill leads into turn one, a touch of understeer.

Can I stay at your place? Outside Albert's

 Everyone wants to go to Monaco when they visit. After 5 trips, we finally discovered the old town, which is beautiful.



Mill took the chance to chat to a handsome guard with a load of medals pinned on.



The boys and Mill got to race in the miniature grand prix.



Sadly most of Monaco is taken by a lot of ugly modern buildings. This describes a lot of towns.

Monaco: some parts look good.

Felicity David and Mill visit

Ready for takeoff!

Same same but different.

 The very first day that Fil and co arrived, everyone was tired as. Noone had slept very well on the plane. Mill only slept 3 or 4 hours the whole trip.





We had an easy day after the long flight. We just went down to the beach for a walk, and to throw stones into the water.

Kids defy death on the rocks

I'm in the CP!!! The boys show Mill their school.

The update before Christmas

If you can keep a secret, the boys are getting scooters. Santa will delivering those in only a week. He'll be leaving some chemical snow footprints that don't melt, from the front door to the tree.

Up in the mountains, there's plenty of white. Hope it stays a bit cold up there for our visitors! Down here it's 13 and almost balmy.

So here's the news:

Giving away some work shirts
I had a few old shirts with work logos which I never wear. It was hard to give them away. They were size medium, but almost no-one in the team would fit them. Medium in Australia is about XL in local sizing. One guy is 6ft/183cm and 72kg for example. Seems skinny, but the BMI calculator I used says he's right in the middle of healthy.

Paying the electricity bill
Sadly we'd just received an electronic remote key from our bank, and been locked out of our account. So I:
1. go to the electrical company website, enter all details, press pay. Then get asked for code received by sms. But the phone number is old.
2. ring up the bank to unlock the online access, register the electronic key device, turn it on, enter my pin, get a one time key, enter that all good. Each time I log on, it asks me for the name of my old cat.
3. repeat step 1 as it's been a while
4. get back online at the bank to phone number. It's not changeable online.
5. Try download the form to fax my new phone number.

On the to do list: installation of a giant pair of underpants.

6. get latest Acrobat,
7. log in and try getting the form again.
8. Give up and mail a cheque


The Space Smoker
When we first got here, the messages they put up at work seemed a bit weird. Now they're just plain funny. Recent announcements of upcoming events, in writing, on the walls:
- Wash Ecological Automobile
- Cover of the space smoker
- The Christmas chalet suggests you discovering our range of residential products.
European English speakers all understand each other. The native speakers speak funny it seems. We've got an Indian, a Scotsman, and an me at work. No-one speaks like they speak on TV, and less so like the locals. It's hard for them to tune into 3 different accents.

Things now in place: restoring company sells bread.

Olives pulped, and in the press.

Last weekend
And in other news, we went to visit Marie's cousin Jelena and her family. It was a lot of fun as far as I could tell. We stopped at Pavia on the way through. It's got an amazing bridge, and a lovely old town centre.

Jean Louis, Romain, me, Louis, Marie, Ollie, Leah and mixer.

The weekend before
We went to see some olive presses. We watched the crusher, the mixer, and finally the press. The boys had a good time, and it was fun watching the olives go round. We tasted a bit, straight out of the mixer.

Louis rides again!

Louis's bike in green, 1.6km each way, v. good!

Louis rode properly for the first time. He can pedal, and stop. He can't start, but he's nearly doing that.

It was about 3km all up. I ran along behind him, ready to catch, and broke my back a bit holding the handlebars through the skinny bits, and on crossings.

Tourrettes sur Loup

Another day, another village. Tourrettes sur Loup is beautiful, perched up on a mountain, and in really good condition. Seems there's several places in town for sale, so am continuing to dream about retiring in a place like this.

Tourrettes sur Loup

The girls from school.

Robina and Leonie.

And lastly, today I scored 100 on a diabetes test. Apparently that's good, and I've never got 100 for a test before. No you can't cheat. Apparently if you get 200 you need to worry.

Bernauer Strasse

Bernauer Strasse now has a fantastic green belt, lovely.

Sunday - we went to Bernauer Strasse to see the open air wall museum. It is well worth a look. They have a section of wall, a watch tower and the no-man's land, all as it was - scary! They explain people were forced to move from their houses, then the windows were bricked in, then the wall started to develop from there. The wall with the rounded top, fiendishly hard to clumb, is about the third or fourth generation of improvements.

The posts on the left mark the wall, the grass is no mans land.

We flew home and started work/school Monday.

Original part of wall, no mans land, grim lights, watch tower.

Escape tunnels are marked. The round building is/was a church.

Friday-Saturday

The boys like the S-bahn.

Louis a bit cold.

Friday - we hired bikes and went around Potsdam.









With a lot of encouragement, Ollie cycled about 20kms, which is fantastic for a 6 year old. Louis was in a kiddie trailer, and surprisingly happy despite the rain, cold etc. There are castles, including the Potsdam conference one, a bit of Berlin wall, and lots of lovely parks not yet ruined by freeways.

Potsdam - really nice.

After Germany was conquered, Stalin had detailed plans made to invade France, Italy and Britain. Why stop at Germany? At the Potsdam conference, Truman told Stalin that he had the bomb. Talk about an important conference.






Saturday - went to the Kommunication Museum. The boys LOVED it again, eg two cans connected with a string, written messages sent by vacuum tube, and a floor based video game.

Ollie racing around some castle.

The kids and Marie went to a movie about a racing snail. It's in the Sony Centre, where they tried to assassinate Hitler. While I went to Checkpoint Charlie and the museum to see the people who escaped or got shot trying. This is depressing. The Legoland interpretation was much more fun. Abductions, imprisonment, east German life was not as funny as in the DDR museum.

The Griswalds.

Finally we saw a Christmas market, had a chocolate crepe, and slid down a fake snow hill in a tyre tube.

This one's famous for the Potsdam conference.

Churchill and Truman let Stalin achieve what Hitler didn't.

Tuesday-Thursday

Nikolai quarter with the East German TV tower.

Tuesday - did the Berlin for beginners walk via the Rathaus, the Nikolai quarter, the Koncert Haus Humboldt Uni, a shopping strip, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Bundestag, Tiergarten and the Red Army memorial, which ended up on the west side.

The Koncert Haus is on the left.

The pictures of the ruins of the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag there are impressive. 70 odd thousand people died in the taking of Berlin as the Germans would not give in. The big guns have some extremely bad welding done, and a T-34 tank looks like it was made from crazy concrete, not steel. I suppose they never lasted too long with all the battles.

Me, and the boys, at the Red Army memorial.

They're redoing Berlin. The centre is beautiful already. There are cranes all over the place. Plus they're putting in new underground rail U5 and U6 lines.

We're goin to the zoo the zoo the zoo

We went home by the main station, the Hauptbahnhopf. It's amazing, like George Lucas set it up for a Star Wars film. It's got shops, escalators like the endless staircase puzzles, and the S-bahn trains traversing the whole station overhead.



Wednesday - was in Spandau. Besides the famous rock band and the citadelle/prison, there is a nice pedestrianised old town and Rathaus or Town Hall, not for rats.



The late afternoon, we head to our local park with its flying fox, climbing net, jogging tyre thing, and a couple of things for children. Louis squeals with joy, the poor deprived thing.

Hanging around.

Thursday - we went to the zoo to see the monkeys swinging, the apes humping and the sea lions doing tricks. The lions pace their cells. The penguins look depressed. Only the jackas penguins look like they're having a good time chasing each other.

Monday

Protesters gather at the Lego wall with jackhammers.

The boys watch the fall of the Lego Berlin wall.

Monday - we end up at the DDR museum to see the way of life under a German commie dictator. The masses learn to throw wooden hand grenades at school, a brand of forklift is a byword for unreliability and the leaders got to shop at special stores not open to the public, just like in North Korea etc. School teachers pressed the kids to join the army - they had quotas to meet. Other highlights are the Trabant car, the interrogation room and the prison cell. Marie pretends to close the door on me, but the boys protest and won't let her, even when we explain it can be opened again.

We spent 3.5 hours in the afternoon in Legoland. History is everywhere in Berlin. There is a model of the city and every 2 minutes a grafitti covered Berlin wall falls. Strangely, it's good fun to watch the protest, the fall and the celebration every time. The boys build cars and race them down a ramp. 

All the grafitti on the walls around here, the buildings and the trees are reminiscent of a WW2 film. No need to change anything just start filming.

Berlin day 1

Cobblestones mark out the wall.

It's true: can't keep my eyes off of you.

Sunday - went for a walk along the canal to reach the Berlin wall. It's about 160km long, so everywhere, and you can walk or cycle it all. Now it is just 2 rows of cobblestones marking where it was. There are a couple of sections preserved, but not much. Sadly, it mostly got smashed down. I say sadly since it's one thing that's really unique about Berlin, having been divided after the war. Don't mention it!

Chewing them up.

We stopped at one of the high square watchtowers, got 2 kebabs, really delicious, and a historic bridge. Two large steel men wrestle on the line where the wall was in the middle of the river.

The man from the East versus the West on the old border.

Gorby was driving the change.

Further on there's the Eastside gallery - a couple of hundred metres of wall with frescos painted on, eg Gorbachev driving a hammer and sickle for a wheel, and Brechnev kissing the communist German puppet president on the lips. I thought this was some statement, but it seems they all do it.

The leaders greeting, showing higher brotherly love.

Later we saw a photo of Gorbachev kissing the same old man. Bleuck! I hope Louis didn't notice, but he is inspired to give me one too. I'm too old and queasy for this.

West Bank Israel 2009 - photo on the Berlin wall.

One side is a photo display of other walls around the world - Belfast, Israel, USA/Mexico and Spain/Morocco.

School holidays were in Berlin

West Berlin buildings same as Soviet side, + the U1 train.

During the school holidays, we went to Berlin for a week. Berlin has it all from WW2 history, to Soviet repression. The historical buildings are all being completely rebuilt. The city has cranes all over the place. It's going to be amazing once it's complete.

Saturday - landed and got to the flat no problems. German public transport is again A1.

The U1 train near our place

Bernardo our landlord meets us. He has his head shaved on the side, and wearing all black. I'm feeling old fashioned.

The flat is opposite a raised train line, just like in the Blues Brothers. The stairwell is like in the movie 1984. This is the west side of Berlin. We debate if we're on the old Soviet side as the buildings here are ugly, but no, it's the west side. On the east, some buildings are grandiose and ugly, but on the west some are ugly and cheap.

The boys are excited to be on holidays again, and settle in quickly. Louis's speaks English French style: "It's this one of which I speak" and "I've had enough, me".

East side - same, but more stately.

Yves and Meri visit

Marie talks to the tourists.

 Yves had to come over for work, so his wife Meri thought she'd come too. They're both from Sydney, but Yves lived in France until the age of 10 odd, so no problems getting around. They started in Amsterdam, got their bikes nicked, then bought two more in France, and cycled down the Rhone valley from Valence towards Marseille.

Hugues, Robina, Gabriella and Lionie happened to walk by.

Then they stayed at our place for the weekend to check out the sights. We went for a bike ride up to Cagnes sur Mer old town.




It was nice to have them stay!

Yves with Ollie's bike,mine and their folders in the old town.

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