This post has to be dedicated to my father. He’s always been fascinated with nature, and is a big part of why my sister and I spent a lot of our childhood gazing and poking at things (or if you’re me, trying to pet things, like bees, that should not necessarily be petted). He’s also always been what society would generally describe as ‘maternal’- very good with children and ga-ga over babies. I’m not trying to put a gender swing on him, but I think the connotations we’ve developed for the word ‘paternal’ involve things like scotch and driving lessons and golf and threatening of boyfriends or something… A couple of years ago my parents finally graduated from having a single, 30 cm TV in the house, to having a full fancy-pants with-bells-on Plasma or LCD thingame. This coincided fairly well with the introduction of 5-10 new TV channels in Perth, after years of us only having a few, and thus the need for new and exciting programming to fill the many hours. It also …

We spent a good part of the morning roaming around the German-crazy town of Cala Ratjada. In the early morning (by Spanish if not German standards), we headed to a cafe overlooking the sea…. and I stuffed in slightly disappointing pancakes while Andy, clearly missing his adopted home, attempted to eat his body weight in Brot. Being ‘little Germany’, the cafe of course came ‘with dog’ (I’m sure you’ve already read out guest-writer’s thrilling and daring expose on this matter: http://fishwithwhiskey.blogspot.de/2012/12/expose-into-seedy-underbelly-of.html). … but as there was a nice number of cats to balance it all out, I was pretty happy. Plus, it came complete with this Dapper fellow: I’m pretty sure he had mustard coloured pants on. Seriously rockin’ the look! But seriously. This couldn’t be more Germany if it tried (although I would also argue that perhaps it’s trying too hard and is therefore almost ‘more’ Germany than Germany and thus less.. if you get what I mean). Speaking of weird imitations, does this writing look familiar to anyone? Anyway, I think Ratjada is pretty- …

Cala D’Or was a rather beautiful port. Although some of my bias may have stemmed from the fresh feeling of un-seasickness, another part came from wonderful deliverance of Spain of that which it offers: Bright blue skies…. acting as a perfect backdrop for pure white buildings…. And sticky, Mediterranean trees, that smell like home: Andy, Martin and I headed out for breakfast, at a time that was more appropriate for brunch, but seemed to the Spanish to be ungodly as an hour for the service of food. We sat down at a cafe brimming with life, most of it Dutch (a crowd of orange-clad people had come to see the crowning of the new king), but were told that it was just too early for any food, so had to move across to the next cafe for some breaky. It was quite a nice feeling to just sit in the sun, and stock up on some vitamin D after the long, long, long, long winter. But sooner or later we had to head back to …

As part of their promotion of the OM-D E-M5, Olympus held a ‘Photography Playground’ in the centre of Berlin. One quiet Friday, Andy and I headed with Mercedes, and her lovely friend Babs, to what can only be described as a very hipster looking warehouse, in order to get our play on. The general concept is that they give you one of their shiny new cameras to play with for a couple of hours as you make your way through the floors filled with a mixture of art and play equipment. You look, you photograph, you get occasional instructions for use, and you fall in love. At the end, you hand over the rights to any photos you took, and they give you the SD card on which you took all the shots for free. When we arrived, despite bunking off work quite early, there was a massive queue, and only a couple of cameras left, so instead of waiting we decided to frolick on our own. Luckily I already had my (brand appropriate) camera …

While my cousin was here, we made an attempt to throw as many loud and colourful things at her as possible. The first weekend: Holi Festival of Colours, the second: Karneval der Kulturen in Kreuzberg. The day started off with forced labour: I made our houseguest cook everyone breakfast. I’m fairly certain that we don’t have this in Australia- my certainty in this case stems from the belief that my sister and I would be all over it if we did. In Germany, they have these little ‘authentic french’ croissants, and right next to them, also in tubes, Sonntag Brötchen (Sunday Bread Rolls). I’m assuming these are ‘a thing’, because in Germany, the concept of going a single day without fresh bread is akin to a violation of human rights (I’m pretty sure the ‘right to awesome fresh bread’ is on the German Constitution), and the supermarkets are closed on Sundays. Although the bakeries and the flowershops seem to be the two things that are perpetually open, so maybe it’s just emergency bread to keep …

Day Three: In Which Things Can Only Get BetterBy the morning I still wasn’t totally convinced of this whole ‘eating’ concept, but after a few dry things went down and stayed, I soon got back into the swing- and in no time had resumed my normal shoving of large fistfuls of cake into my mouth. In the six hours of horror, we had somehow made our way from Palma (pictured below, above Alvaro’s head), to Sa Rapita (near his stage-right shoulder). (Photo from Marta) I think the map makes the city look larger and more important than it seemed in real life- the town was way less touristy and much less ‘happenin” than most of the others we ended up seeing on the way, and all the people seemed to be Siesta-ing for…. all the hours we were there. Still, it was very nice to get off the boat and walk on non-wobbly land. To be honest, once I was off the boat, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go back on. People kept …

Day 2: I don’t feel so…..I have photographic evidence that the day started off just fine. Here is me, being a poser on the boat…. (This and the one beneath from Marta)  … and looking relatively happy. Some of these photos I even took myself. We sleep in:  then started our day with our new Mediterranean diet- Spanish bread, Jamon, tomatoes, cheese And then our Captain set sail. It was a little bit cold, there were hints of rain.   That’s the last photo I have of the day. The pharmacist told me that I couldn’t take the sea-sickness tablets before I felt sick- that I had to wait. It was too late. I spent the next 6 or so hours vomiting over the side of the boat. Intermittent time spent clinging to the side of the boat with my eyes closed, perched in the most uncomfortable position imaginable. Moving, opening my eyes, lying down, looking at anything, made me vomit. About two hours in I started begging Andy to stop the boat. About three hours …

It’s gonna be slow my friends. There were eight people with DLSRs (or the equivalent) taking, if we go on Marta’s count, something close to 1000 photos each. I’m going to use primarily my own stuff, but I have to say it was nice to have someone else taking some photos and thus be included in some of the shots- so there’s going to be some degree of integration. Sometimes I give my camera to Andy, and sometimes it works, but often the mere fact of him holding it seems to make my nose beaky(er), my hair oilier and all of me much more awkward. So thanks Marta for some pretty shots, and all the awesome group photos! Day 1: They Wanted To Escape The German Grey (Palma) I’m not sure if I told you all yet, but we headed off to Mallorca/Majorca a couple of weeks back. Our friend from work, Marta, came into my office one day and asked if Andy and I felt like sailing around an island for a week. Seeming …

Facebook, in my opinion, has become a little presumptuous with their advertising and recommendation of pages… I’m not entirely sure which of my activities they’ve been tracking that they now find it necessary to promote ‘Whiskers Germany’ and ‘Cat Playhouse’ or something on my page… I’m not THAT obvious about the CrazyCatLady thing right?? But they did well with recommending the Holi festival- which popped up in the sidebar of my newsfeed a few months back. The Holi Festival was started in Berlin only last year, in an imitation of the colour festivals of India. There’s live music- mostly electric- and lots of throwing around of paint powder. The experience is supposed to celebrate not only the coming of spring, but also the colours and joy of life, and, I guess by ‘painting them all green in the sunshine’, eliminate personal differences of wealth, class, colour and so on. (If you want to know more you can read/googletranslate about the history here: http://www.holifestival.com/wie-es-begann/). Andy, my cousin Ashleigh, and I, headed out at about 3 pm, followed …

This is the last one. I promise. Then maybe we can talk about Majorca. And spring. And sunburn. Our last day in Amsterdam was a bit of a half-day. We had to get to the plane by about six, and still wanted to check out NeMo- a sciencey place (being the nerds we are), and the Amsterdam Museum. So PowerWalking was required.  We PowerWalked through check-out of our dreadful hotel. We PowerWalked to the Central Station to drop off our bags. We PowerWalked across the bridge towards NeMo. And then we realised that Andy’s stomach was making increasingly angry sounds, so we slowed it all down and took in a massive and leisurely breakfast. Which included these delights: … and which was undertaken in a suitably hipster location, with seriously cool Alien-esque light fittings  To the NeMo!- the National Centre for Science and Technology on the (R)Oosterdok (I told you it’s a funny language). As you probably guessed, NeMo is like Scitech.But on speed.Squared or to the power of eight or something! I was stunned …