The in-laws humoured me in accompanying me to a Fleamarket on Saturday morning. I miss flea markets and proper opshops! Back home they were my main source of clothing (and jewellery and book and nic-nacs). Apart from the fact that I don’t feel so much like a filthy shallow consumer when buying pretty second hand frilly things, I also enjoy the ‘hunt’: the searching through racks and racks of crap to find something fancy. But, aside from a few fairly poorly outfitted Oxfams, the Potsdam-Berlin area seems to mostly be filled with fancy second hand and vintage ’boutiques’… not at all good for hunting. So I took advantage of the high-wage, high-cost Perth-like society of Copenhagen, and we all took the 9A bus to Frederiksberg where they run a pretty decent sized fleamarkets (every Saturday morning from 8am to 15:00). I shopped my little heart out and came home with a navy dress- decorated with slightly abstract Chinese characters, and a new winter coat- the latter being the equivalent of <6 euros (plus Karen Millen for those …

The parents (Andy’s) spent a week away from us, in Sweden, with plans to then cross the unbelievably narrow sea to Denmark by Friday evening. With that in mind, Andy and I headed to Copenhagen of Thursday evening, to scout the place out before meeting up with his folks. We arrived fairly early in the evening, after a flight which lasted literally 45 minutes and was therefore all take off and landing with no meaty flighty bit. Not that I’m complaining- but coming from Perth, where you can fly for about five hours and still be in Australia, I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to this continent’s tininess. We walked about ten paces from the main train station (in turn only 12 minutes by train from the airport), through a European summer night filled with trumpet sounds. They had some sort of Jazz festival on in the city, which meant we were also accompanied by trumpets the next morning, and on occasion throughout the following days….so Copenhagen looks like elephants and dragons …

This Monday, Andy’s parents flew in from Perth, so we’ve been meeting up with them after work every evening, to try to show them some of our favourite places. Of course, many of those places happen to serve good food. On Monday we went to the Big Smoke, meeting them at Zoo and then walking along the Ku’damm to a fairly decent French restaurant to tuck into some tasty food. In an unplanned coupling, the ‘girls’ went for truffle linguini with Pfifferlinge, and the ‘boys’ steaked it. Pfifferlinge translates to chantarelle mushrooms, and the people who know much more about these things than myself have noted that they are the first of the mushies to appear as the seasons change. And appear they have!: every restaurant we’ve passed in the last week has had at least two or three Pfifferlinge dishes. You all know how I feel about mushrooms. The Reign of the Spargel seems to be wanning, and the Pfifferlinge (plus the strawberry and its assorted berry friends) are rising: I think I could …