Day two in that foresty Jewel that is Freiburg. This, my friends and enemies, is Martin’s gate- one of the original entrance points into the Old City. Now also known, as a result of a beautiful salute to capitalism, as ‘McDonald’s Gate’ . Schade, but at least they didn’t put the golden arches on. Saturdays, like Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and also Wednesdays, are Market days in the Church square. I followed my nose to the berries, and Andy followed his to a spicy sausage. This is his guarded ‘get away from my sausage’ look: They had spices and fresh fruits and dried fruits and baked goods and cured meats and all manner of things that are pretty for the eyes and tasty for my breakfast. Including some very, very tasty raw bliss balls, made from dates and figs and cashews and a little bit of cocoa, which seemed to come with obligatory ‘eye contact’- the seller was the type who stares into your souls as he serves you his produce. I wasn’t allowed to …

This week I’m attending my very first out-of-town conference. Actually, it’s technically  a ‘Summer School’, but as it includes the exchange of scientific information, and involves the spending of the intitute’s money to send me ‘away’, I’m going to call it a win. The train from Berlin to Freiburg is only about 7-8 hours, but, as it turns out, no-one in Europe expects to travel for that long, so instead I was given an Easyjet flight to the quaint Swiss-French-German ‘Euroairport’ located on the edge of the three countries. I bought an extra ticket, grabbed my Andy, and we packed ourselves off to Euroairport (physically Switzerland but somehow either that, France, or Germany, depending on which bus you get into once you exit the airport). Somehow is somehow a very German word. Freiburg is an old university town situated in the (most) south-western corner of the country on the edge of the Black forest (Schwartzwald). The city itself is not huge, but it seems to act as a gateway to both the forest- for hiking and …

You can NOT go to Hamburg without going to the Sunday morning fish market. Or at least so said my mother-in-law, again and again, until the three of us agreed that yes, Mari-Anne, waking up at 5am to get the opportunity to smell fish by 6am was actually what we really, really wanted to do while on holiday. It turned out to be rather beautiful. Beautiful enough that I’ll tell the next load who come ‘You can’t go to Hamburg without going to the fishmarket’. You all know I love early morning crispness when it’s coupled with the selling of wares. Sure, in a perfect universe they’d be selling frocks and not fish, but not every reality can be one with a fleamarket. In the centre was the market hall, complete with cover bands and folks clearly still dancing from the night before- including at least one bride and groom set.  This was my favourite spectacle of the morning. The Flowerking, who would pack boxes with house plants and ‘backwards auction’ them. They were super …

Summer in Berlin is very, very beautiful. I’m sure you’ve heard me natter on already about how Perth has bluer skies, but Berlin has greener grass (possibly in part because you’re not allowed to walk on it)- and how the Deutsch really revel in the sunshine, unlike us wossy Aussies who are busy slip-slop-slap-wrapping* (slip on a T-shirt, slop= sunscreen, slap=hat, wrap=sunnies) and scuttling around in the shadows to really get our frolic on. *Side note- I just goggled it and realised that they’ve changed it to slide (instead of wrapping the sunnies on) and seek (for the shade). Anyway, let’s check out the east of Berlin, and this lovely old couple who seem to be basking: We visited the east side gallery, which has been described by one of my german colleagues as ‘the least impressive tourist destination in Berlin’, but which is so famous that I only realised I hadn’t been in 2009 when I saw the three or four out of the 100 murals which I am not already familiar with from …

Let’s get right on that. Day Two.Deciding to get a bit of culture, we headed to the art museum. The building itself was quite artsy, in an almost interpretative way that made it impossible to find the actual entrance.(This is not it:) You know what a snap-happy thing I am. I took quite a lot of photos of the art, but I’ll just show you a few. We were a little silly and posed with the art, which became creepy when I was posing as the girl in the painting above and sticking my bum out, and an old man wanted me to pose again so he could take a photo. We ran away. I think this is Rodin. Toulouse-Lautrec. These below are by Cezanne and Armand Guillaumin. The second copied by the first, and displayed side by side in the museum.  Spot the difference: The owl. A.K.A. the only cool piece of art that Picasso ever made. Ok, I only took a photo of this guy because he looks like he belongs in some sort …

It’s raining again in Potsdam, which means it’s time to for some reminiscing, holiday-sun-fun style. So let’s rewind a month back, to a magical time when the sun was high in the sky, Andy’s folks were visiting, and we all headed Nor-west to Hamburg. I rode in on the ICE train late Thursday evening, and began my exploration with ‘the Wizza Gang’ (who had been in Hamburg since Wednesday) the next morning. Actually, the Folks decided to head up to Luebeck- the famous home of the Marzipan, while Andy and I got to know the city with another Walking tour. Let’s take a look ’round Hamburg shall we?     I travelled to Hamburg with Lauren and Ashlee back in ’09, but mainly with the purpose of visiting my cousins, and only for a couple of days. I remember walking along the water edge, going to markets, shopping for chocolate, and lots and lots of earmuffed seagulls. But, with the exception of the Nikolai Church, I didn’t remember much about the physical appearance of the city. Let’s …

Once a year Sanssouci opens its gates at night, and, surrounded by musicians, actors, and period costumed extras, visitors can explore the beautifully light palaces and glowing gardens. I saw it as a nice excuse to dress up in a new frock (although it turned out that I was the only one not wearing jeans and practical shoes- I still have some assimilating to go). Andy saw it as an excuse to show off his wonderful new moustache: It was a lovely setting. We arrived just after 7pm, and wandered through the paths, occasionally passing a random flautist or violinist, or stumbling upon a gathering watching some sort of German period drama: This fellow was very ‘Let them eat cake’ (French and Saunders comedy on the french revolution- if you haven’t seen it you very much should. Slightly lowbrow, but excessively hilarious). Of course, you probably shouldn’t go if you’re not into ancient palaces silhouetted against swirling skies, or catching the last drops of sunlight. In addition to the Artists and their art, the gardens …

I was a bit lazy with the photo-taking on my last day in Copenhagen. Please forgive me. This rather stunning spiral building is Vor Freslers Kirke/Our Saviour’s Church. We heard about it a bit on the walking tour, when our guide mentioned that generally, towers like this were designed to have a left handed spiral. This purpose of the ‘chirality’ being to give a right handed castle-dweller an advantage in defence of his home, against other right handed, sword-holding attackers, who might be trying to come up the spiral. Easier to hack at steel and flesh when you’ve got a bit of air for the swinging. The story, as told by our guide, is that the architect built it wrong, and then, as some sort of self-imposed punishment, threw himself from the top. Sound a bit far fetched? It gets outright ridiculous-sounding if you actually make your way to the top of the 90m building: the whole spiral just kind of… peeters out. No doors leading inside, no ledge, no flag post. No nice little …

The horrible realisation hit us on the morning of the third day in Copenhagen: We’d been in Denmark for 40 hours, and not eaten a single danish! Luckily, this was a situation that could be easily rectified: we rushed to our local Lagkagehuset (a bakery chain that produces goods above and beyond what you’d expect for something of its ilk), where I scoffed down a cinnamon pastry, and a truly delicious chocolate rye ball.* *we managed to discover that the rye balls will last several days without any major changes to their composition. So if anyone’s in Denmark and wants to post me a few… Our plans for the day were somewhat grand- we were taking a train to the north, where we would visit Hamlet’s Castle at Helsingor. Then we would ride across the ‘sea’ to Sweden, have a look around, travel back down the Swedish coast and train across the Swedish-Danish bridge. Coming from Australia, where our borders are pretty well defined, I found the whole ‘ferry to another country’ rather amusing. But …

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 …