Fish with Whiskey

Dresden is so ridiculously close, and so ridiculously beautiful, that I can’t believe that we’ve been in Deutschland for nearly 1.5 years and only just made our way down their last weekend.

Pau, Asdrubal, Andy and I caught the bus on Friday evening, and arrived in the city a couple of hours later, in time to eat and drink, and then meet up with Mercedes and her man Dirk to sniff out a bar for an hour or two, before returning to the safety of our hostel to crash into bed.

On with the show.
Saturday morning we were up early enough to buy all the best chocolates from the supermarket, and to catch a train down down down towards Czech.

Plan of the day: Explore the woods and rocks of the Bastei.

We leaped off the S-bahn at Kurort Rathen, walked to the river and crossed on the Ferry.

(A family preparing for Easter- Germans have the best seasonal traditions!)

The day was pretty overcast, but we managed to get pretty lucky with the rain, and spring -which is still in its first state of emergence in Potsdam, was clearly well on its way in the Dresden region:

Lookout over the river. See- I told you you can tell which photos are taken from someone else (Pau).

We surveyed our surroundings for a couple of minutes, then turned and walked up the road, into the forest.

I wish I could better convey the environment.

It’s colder, quieter, damper and stiller when you get away from the river. You walk over ground covered in old autumn leaves, past trees that are still resting in their winter state. It could look post-apocalypticlly desolate, except for the mosses that are covering everything with a rich, calming green.

There’s life at every scale- with the truly dead trees standing out from those just waiting by the presence of colonies of lichen and fungi.

Early in the trek, the ground is open, with slopes on either side of the track….

But you begin to pass the Mossy Monoliths, and pretty soon they’re looming on both sides…

 There are rocks in chunks, and wrinkled beauties, and marvels of marble designed from moss and water and stone…

 Sometimes you go under the rocks, sometimes you walk through, and eventually you go up and up and over….

At the top of the ‘mountain’, we took a break for tea, and stripped of some of our layers, before heading on to greener (technically less green) pastures, and scenic views.

 (From Pau x2- we seem to be enjoying ourselves)

Our travelling lead us to the Bastei bridge- which those of you who are historically inclined can read about at wiki.

Possibly not for those sensitive to heights.

GRUPPENFOTO!

This and below from Pau. I kinda love what Andy’s doing in the background:

We spent the afternoon resting (or if you’re me- sleeping) before donning our gladrags and heading to burgers and then a bar. Alas! My poor camera lens got damp from the rain, and had to spend the evening drying on the heater. But rest assured that fun times were had. Times involving ‘communicating with eyes’, collecting men (mostly Andy to be honest), latin music and some very brave attempts at conquistadoring, which can’t really be elaborated on here, but which I need to mention for future rememberings. We made it home after 5.

The next morning, seemingly bright and way too early, we fell out of bed, scoffed some pastries, and took up a tour of the town with guide Mercedes (Dirk fell back into bed).

Mercedes serenading Pau at the Zwinger.

The boys didn’t want to be left out of the posing:

 GRUPPENFOTO.

Pau was a Princess.
I must admit, I’ve always wanted more to be a King:

Tegan: ‘Crotch?’
Pau: ‘I can hear you two you know’.
T+M: ‘Teeheehee’
P: *sigh*

We wandered a bit more throughout the old city before deciding that it was time for rest, coffee and ultimately- to take the bus back.

Can you believe that we managed to find Snow in the middle of Sicily?

Following the Siracusa history lesson, we headed to Etna- which to be honest, was my primary sightseeing aim on Sicily.

First up (well first after breakfast, packing, leaving Siracusa, very stressful driving and navigating through tiny windy roads and small towns, and arrival into a small town near the mountain), we fuelled up at a slightly odd pub/eatery.

Here we ate fairly tasty food, got gifted some very tasty sweets, and were ‘strongly encouraged’ (in a way that only a lady-of-a-certain-age can encourage) to go across the road to the honey shop to buy some special honey for my cough.

There we met a young man, who was quite enthused that we came from Australia (he showed us honey with eucalypt), and even more excited when he told us about his cousin who was in a TV show in Australia, and we were actually able to guess with only minimal prompting, that it was Underdog.

The honey that was recommended to me tasted a lot like being beaten over the head with an aromatic stick. We bought some anyway.

We drove up the volcano, past some amazing landscape scattered with debris from larva, and the life which comes with it. More on that later!

And suddenly, we were past the snow line.

It was falling, it was landing, it was staying! We got out of the car to have an explore.

“Come back Tegan, there might be Yetis”

It was quite beautiful, especially where the white snow fell on black rocks (larva), and created a crazy monotonal world:

Of course, those loudly-dressed Ms A and Miss A-M have no respect for the serenity and beauty of the grey-scale:

We Frolicked back to the car (those of us with frolick-worthy dresses did anyway, others just slouched), and headed further up the mountain.

ALAS! Just a couple of more minutes into the climb, our car started making noises that I assume (I’m no car person) indicated a mild panic attack. We urged it onwards, but it was not a horse, and didn’t really respond to our gentle words of encouragement. The tires stopped gripping, and we realized in dismay, that we would have to turn back.

Back, back, back- below the snowline.

We made up for the disappointment of not seeing hot flowing lava, but leaping around on the ex-lava. The sensation is odd- almost like sand, but much lighter and springier.

In my mind, it’s a cross between beach and moon: One small step for Man…

The landscape itself is stunning. Or to borrow from Andy: sublime!

From a distance, and through the rain, it can look kind of grey.

If you look closer, you’ll see it’s filled with colour and life…

I mean- this landscape is just so many kinds of beautiful, and at all the different scales of vision imaginable..

There is flowing ex-lava!

There are tiny secret caves of life…

And there are Men! Of the Heroic Type who Brave the Unknown Worlds!

(Plus their women, who are much more frivolous)

Belpassso, our sleeping place for the evening- was a tiny little one-street sort of town. I should mention that that night was New Year’s Eve. At about 8:30- Andy and I went looking for the action, and all we could see was rooms filled with old grandfathers playing board games. Andy yearned to be let into their awesomely cool gangs. I yearned to move on.

We ended up grabbing pizza and heading back to the hotel (past an amazingly annoying town clock which rang for about 15 minutes). Andy, who was a bit disappointed by the lack of action- “I want to at least kiss you and say ‘Happy New Year’ at midnight”- ate his pizza and fell promptly asleep. At midnight, the local old men (I’m assuming it was them because those are the only people we saw)- set of hundreds of fireworks making the sound of a billion sonic booms.

Andy slept through it.

Another day on holiday, another day to visit the places of the pagan gods…

Syracusa is a nearly-3000 year old city on the south-east of Sicily, famous for being the birthplace of Archimedes, and for maintaining until modern times some rather spectacular ancient architecture.

It is also the home to pasta eating cats!

I’ve been putting off this post of a while because I’m not sure that the photos we took on the day really do the place justice, and I’m sadly lacking in the knowlege required to augment the story.

So, here is a bunch of poorly-captioned photos of the ruins we saw, in chronological order, but also in order of greatness: Archeological Park, The Amphitheatre and The Ear of Dionysius.

‘Ruins’ (From the 3rd century)

I call this one: ‘Mother, Inversed Height Relationship’

This one is: ‘An Ode to Lauren W’

‘There has to be a way into those tunnels’ (we could not find one)

‘Behold’ or ‘My Boyfriend is Much Better At Posing Than My Mother’

‘Trying To Be Small’

 ‘Peekaboo’

‘Spring Fluffy Spring!’

‘Roman Tango’

And so on…

Behind the theatre is a row of little caves- perfect for the selling of newt ears, frog tongues and bat eyeballs (if Monty Python is anything to go by)

One of the caves had its own little waterfall:

Andy, who is a much better and more patient photographer than myself, took some lovely shots..

Right behind the theatre is ‘The Ear of Dionysius’, and awe-inspiring rock-cave.

This perhaps gives you a slightly fake understanding of how large the cave is- but perhaps you can see the tiny little people in to the bottom of the photo?

You follow the curve of the ‘ear’ …

.. and gradually lose all light..

(Not the church, but a rather awesome tree- does anyone know what it is?)

Inside, the church is rather magnificent, but in a slightly intimidating way, and also contains a touch of the ‘communist housing’ theme with all the cement and lack of light.

The nooks created by the star-like shape of the building contained little worship areas, dedicated to some saint or another.

One of the nooks instead contained a Museum ‘Ex Voto’, which held a seriously creepy collection of wedding dresses, and lots of old braces/crutches etc:

Our guess was that it had something to do with faith healing or miracles.

And the crowning glory of the church? The ‘Reliquary’, a goblet which contained (verified by scientific testing no less), the tears of the Virgin. Which I think is probably at least less creepy than the ‘hair’ or ‘fingernails’ of so-and-so that I remember scattered throughout Italy’s churches.

In the evening, we headed down to Ortigia- technically an island but in practice connected to the city mainland by multiple motorways/bridges. Andy is posing here in front of the Temple of Apollo, which was not particularly stunning after the days touring.

We wandered around the Island, through the main Piazzas, along the coast, and up and down the very narrow streets.

At some point, we managed to find some amazingly cheap and delicious arancini (little oranges), and some sort of bread-based pie product, containing tomato, ham, cheese and eggplant. Dinner itself later in the evening was fairly disappointing, so I’ll leave you instead with pictures of us pleasurably stuffing our faces with these delights.

You should never go to bed craving sushi.

Pau learning to make sushi at our ‘movie night’ a couple of weekends ago. Any excuse to sit still for hours on end and stuff our faces with food.

Two nights ago I had a dream, featuring one of my most beloved Aussies: Ashlee. She was in Germany, and we took her to an asian restaurant. Andy and I were super excited. We miss asian food like crazy here, especially places which sell good Thai or Vietnamese food. Or Rendang, there are days when I would kill for a good rendang.

Many of the aisan-style food places here still sell very westernised cuisine and ‘asian fast food’ – nonspecific noodles with salty sauce and a bit of chicken thrown on top. Many more restaurants, even when selling a higher quality of food (and I’ll admit, some of it is super tasty), still tend to be ‘asian themed’. These places have a generic name, or claim to be ‘Thai’ but somehow still manage to have sushi slipped into the meno.

Which was the problem in the dream. We went for brunch at a dim sum place. We sat down, opened the menus, and our mouths began to water as visions of dumplings danced through our heads. But they were selling sushi. Ashlee, a lady of fine breeding and taste, wanted to leave. This place could not be both a good Yum Cha restaurant, and also a good sushi bar. Andy and I practically begged her to let us stay- oh how we needed those dumplings.

And then I woke up, and everything was ok, because ‘The Day of the Dumplings’ had finally arrived.

All the children were estatic.

Joram, who has recently returned to work to begin to his exciting life as a PhD student, took us to his favourite Dumpling restaurant: Wok Show. We’d been there once before, and were eagerly awaiting a return visit. This place is truly fantastic, but I should probably mention that it’s recommended only to those who are fans of the mighty dumpling: the rest of the menu is pretty limited.

But oh how delicious these dumplings are! And oh how cheap!

They come in a variety of flavours- but the pork ones are by far the best. This time around we also tucked into some veggie filled morsels and some with beef and carrot- also good, but not quite weighing up to the delicious mixtures of pork, ginger and assorted additional flavours.

You can order you dumplings steamed of fried (the latter is of course way better), and they come out rather unceremoniously dumped on a plate of either 20 or 40 dumplings.

Tada!

The people take a breif, contemplative pause, before rushing at the dumplings.

A possible dumpling convert??

This is how 20 dumplings look. See, it’s not so many- you might as well just go for the 40. And given the ridiculous prices (~7 euros for 20, ~13 euros for 40), you can afford to buy more and take the rest back for tomorrow’s lunch.

Andy: concentration, exhilaration.

After gorging on dumplings, we headed down the street, round the corner, up another street and 10 blocks over to find…..
WAFFLES

Not technically in the asian wheelhouse, but mine came with green tea icecream, so I like to think that it still counts.

In the name of complete honesty, they were chocolate filled waffles with chocolate (and matcha) icecream, and chocolate sauce. Mmmmmm!

And now, here’s a little montage of us eating things that taste like home:

Shall we go in for the close up?

We had to wake up ridiculously early to take the boat from Malta to Sicily and suffered for it during the remainder of the day. Maybe you can’t tell from the fine details of his face, but this is sleepy-face, not queasyface (I feel, sadly, that I am at a stage in this blog where I would like to acknowledge the fact that I did not heave up my food on the way over). Possibly there’s some hunger in there too.

Of course, at some stage in the morning, someone fed him caffeine, and he spent the rest of the day yo-yoing between super tired and super hyperactive. I’m not pointing any fingers here mother, but I’m pretty sure that someone wasn’t me. I know not to feed the gremlin after midnight.

Anyway, we arrived back on Italian soil, and spent 20 minutes discussing with the taxi drivers the fact that it was Sunday. We wanted to take a train from the Pozzallo city centre to Ragusa. They told us it wasn’t possible- we would have to take the cab. ‘It’s Sunday’. Which was the phrase they kept using instead of answering if there actually would be trains or not. ‘It’s Sunday’. ‘It’s a problem.’ ‘Because: Sunday.’

We went with the taxi, arrived at our accommodation, sat sleepily for a bit, and then some ridiculously nice people who were checking out agreed to drive us into the city (there would be a bus, but- say it with me- SUNDAY).

Ragusa is this beautiful city built in the hillsides. Fun to walk into. Less fun to walk back out of (uphill!). 

We walked around for a couple of hours, before settling down in front of a church to stuff our faces with Sicilian delights.

This photo almost looks like there’s a poster of a church behind her. I promise it’s a real church!

 

Told you it was real:

At one point, I sighted some Carob, and forced it upon Andy. He was.. not a fan.

We continued to walk around the city, stopping for a while to relax in the park…

Featuring Gum Trees!

Gargoyles for Ariel: 

Also from the sides of buildings, these death notices.

And these slightly more upbeat swirls of moss and stone.

We managed to find icecream at a place not-to-far from another place that had a little ‘Montalbano was here’ sign over the door. Which is as close as our ‘brush with fame’ got.

The bus services were supposed to come on again at 4pm (I refused to walk all the way back up the hill), where ‘4pm’ ended up being more of a ‘suggested time’ rather than an ‘actual plan’.

This would never happen in Germany!

Mother waited patiently..

Some of us found ways to amuse ourselves.

 

And then it came, and we rode away, and once more we were looking down on the city!

As a side note, the b’n’b we stayed in – ‘L’Abbraccio’, was super amazing. Not only was the place lovely, but the couple who owned it, were ridiculously kind to us- going out of their way to make us feel more than welcome. If you head to that part of the Island, you should definitely stay the night there.

We had a sweet little three person room, with double bed on the ‘second floor’ and kitted kitchen, bathroom, TV and single bed on the ‘ground floor’.

I’m not so sure why Andy’s face looks like someone just walked in on him in the shower. I think he’s trying to pose and be amazed at the same time?

The next morning started sweet…..

One of my plans for this shiny new year is to do more ‘art’ to balance out the science. You know, because sometimes pippetting thousands of samples, and then lather, rinse, repeat unto infinity, just doesn’t feel like it’s fulfilling me in every way possible.

The wonders of youtube taught me the most basic of basic stitches (behind, hook, pull through)- and how to stitch in a straight line.

So here’s a scarf I made for Andy.

Now to learn the stuff that requires actual skill!

The next day in Malta began with the traditional ‘coffee and proof of life photograph’.

The coffee, which came with a shot of burnt expresso on top of syrup, was horrible. Perhaps as expected. I really wanted to try the one they had with pistachio syrup because a) odd and b) awesome looking coffee.. but they didn’t have the pistachio, and then I panicked. On the plus side, I was able to pull funny faces and force Andy to drink the rest of it.

And here is Andy, proving to his Mother that no, we haven’t drowned or lost him.

Would you like to see some photos from a day spent wandering, posing, acting like lions and wishing we were Santa Claus?

Here goes:

Andy is Peacocking, but this Pigeon is doing it much better. Who’s a pretty boy then?

This will be our Christmas card next year.

Andy thinks I am taking a photo of him. He is outshone (you know, literally but also in the metaphoric way) by the building!

Andy has never really had any contact with animals, and- a bit like the painters of old who tried to make a lion by putting a mane on a greyhound- is a little unsure of what to do.

Mother is much more convincing.

Although possibly less fabulous than us:

We visited a(nother) church. One with decorators who had clearly never heard of ‘less is more’. I described the whole experience as ‘Rose Porteuos meets Bollywood’

They did have a whole lot of this very pretty etiolated grass though!*
*For those of you playing at home, my PhD project revolves around etiolation- which is what happens when the plant doesn’t get any light and fails to become green.

There were cats…

… and there was dramatic cloud coverage.

And the next day: the Brightest of Blues in the sky.

Mother is excited to go into Mdina- the silent city (there are no cars). Probably because Andy and I have spent the whole trip discussing the relative value of each of our destinations as a refuge in the coming zombie apocalypse and she is ready for some silence on the matter.

There were more lions, but they were too high for us to pose with.

M’dina has many churches, but apart from that there’s really not very much going on. You know that Joni Mitchell song about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot? Well it feels a lot like that there. They’ve taken away anything that could be interesting (except for the churches), and put in tourist shops. Which makes the quiet city kinda boring.

We stopped for lunch and.. Guess what granddad?? Brajioli!
This is thin meat, which is wrapped around a mixture of olives, bacon, maybe cheese- and then slow cooked for hours so that the flavours infuse the meat and the whole thing is a tender deliciousness.

My granddad used to make it a lot when we were kids, and I love it.

This, unfortunately, was not so great. They seemed to have forgotten the ‘slow gooking’ part- and the whole thing was quite tough, almost dry- and not particularly tasty.

Low walls and close proximity of the nearby cities makes this an un-ideal location for the zombie times.

Plus, the streets are very narrow. You want wide streets in a zombie apocalypse.

After a very short time in the old city of M’dina, Andy and I went off to explore the slightly-less-old surrounding city, while mum checked out some Roman Ruins.

I tried to concentrate on the dome, but got distracted by the tiny nuns running around in flocks.

Here’s why I wanted to go to Gozo.

I mean- seriously! Che Magnifique and all that! This, my friends, is the Azure Window- filled with prettiness and light.

This is what we got instead…

Man- it’s supposed to be Auzure!

I’m pretty sure that Malta sees good weather about 364 days of the year. The day that we went to Gozo clearly coincided with their ‘wet season’.

The trip to Gozo itself was fairly horrible if you are pathetically weak sea-dog like myself. The ferry ride from island to island was fairly simple- only about 20 minutes.. doable. But Maltese streets are some sort of windy horror out of the mind of Escher and Dante’s love child, and our bus stopped and started up and down all the little hills and all through the alleyways and…

Well, to make a long story short, it was a good thing I didn’t have any breakfast, because not all of my contents made it to the smaller island.

Here is an artistic impression of the joy of the journey:

We were some of the few people brave enough to sit on the upper level, and by the time we reached our first destination, we were all fairly happy to hop off.

The Ggantija temples are some of the earliest man made structures remaining: at 5500 years old they’ve been hanging around longer than the pyramids and possibly twice as long as Stonehenge. We entered through the Museum (which is some sort of binary to ‘exiting through the giftshop’), and met up with these tiny little guys:

Including my favourite of all- human figures carved from Cow Toebones! I mean seriously! that is some awesome up-cycling there.

One of the problems with having a ridiculously old structure, is that there’s not really much you can say about it. The museum itself was fairly small and mostly contained ‘we suspects’ ‘we thinks’ and we ‘wildly guesses’.

The Temple Itself:

One of the coolest things about the temple is the blatant vandalism that, due to having occurred itself many many decades ago, has become somewhat part of the history of the place. Luckily, the people who came, saw, and scribbled, also managed to draw out a couple of pics of the place at the time, allowing current researchers to have a slightly more accurate understanding of the temple in its pre-current form.

The temple was also filled with these deliberate holes, but once again- the exact reason for them was some what a mystery.

I tried to get in touch with my pagan side:

.. and Andy embraced the ‘slightly cold tourist’ within:

We managed to barely miss our next hop-on, and had to spend another 20 minutes hanging around a very small, dead part of town (although this was on Christmas Eve, so the deadness is fairly justifiable). We took shelter from the horrible weather in a tiny shop, occupied by a very fierce older couple, hell-bent on the upsell.

The bus pulled up just as we were about to convince ourselves that we really did need an 8 pack of matching doilies. The weather was horrible, and the bus was full to the brim. We smiled happily, and talked loudly about how awesome the temple was, in a vicious attempt to lure unsuspecting seat-hoggers off the bus.

Our next stop was a seven minute break which seemed to coincide with the bus drivers need to take a ciggie break. Down there somewhere is supposed to be Calypso’s cave- where she kept Odysseus ‘against his will’ for several years on his ‘attempt to return to his wife and kid’. Sure thing buddy.

We did managed to find ourselves some kickin’ Pasticci. Which is basically just deliciously layered filo pastry enclosing some sort of cheesy (or other- but the cheese are best) inside. These things- which have also made their way into my mongrel heritage- are magnificent, and tend to cost less than 50 cents on Gozo.

We made it to the ‘Ultimate Photo Spot’ on the island, and tumbled though the rain and wind in attempts to catch the Ultimate Photo.

This man is telling me about how awesome it is that there are many fossils that I am currently trampling on. He seemed upset that, in my soaking wet and freezing cold state, I couldn’t manage much more than ‘uhuh? Interesting!’

Andy was also Cold!

Look Ma! I found shelter!

Ma is to busy looking into the deep grey:

After an all to long time (those buses really should come more regularly), and several very long minutes in which the entire tour group feigned interest in ridiculously over-ornate and over-priced glass just so we could seek shelter int he glass shop, we got back on the bus again.

This time, Mother refused to get off again, and went straight for the ferry home. Andy and I got off at Victoria, and had a look around the old city.

There, on top of the fortressed city, the wind picked up, froze me to death, but at least made me feel quite dry.

We also got a very nice view, and some more pasticci.

Oh! And there was a church. It was fairly nice as church goes. You know, nice and warm and protect-y.

Andy bought some weird little pizza with sausages on it. Not the right choice.

Typically, the sun decided to come out just as the day was ending. On the plus side, it made the journey back much more pleasant.

Gozo: Go there when the weather is good!
Gozo: Go there for the pasticci!

On the only weekend during Mutti’s visit that we weren’t a) feeling very very sick to the stomach or b)Roaming through Rome, Meeting Malta, See-silianing Sicily and Visiting Venice, we headed to the Big City.

And introduced Mother to some of Berlin’s ‘Cuisine’.

We headed East to the gallery, to see the pretties and bathe in the sunlight.

Last time we visited the wall with Andy’s fold we found this rather racist and hateful message: ‘We want the Wall back’. Classy.
This time the word ‘don’t’ had been added, the whole message scratched out and the pleasing rebuttal of ‘you stupid meanypants, get the bumhole out!’. I am paraphrasing to make this blog ‘G for my Granddad reads this blog’ rated. But you get the point. Also ‘frigg you!’.

For Adam:

I spent about 3 minutes trying to work out what exactly this meant in English. Then Andy pointed to the left where they had the translation. Still, I was very proud of myself.

‘Those who want the world to remain how it is, don’t want the world to remain’

The little horns and tail make it deeper or something.

Andy really wants to reach for the stars and be an astronaut (actually Cosmonaut), but feels prevented by gates of oppression. Or something.

We walked, as people oft do. I quickly realised that my shoes are not appropriate for walking on stones in german winter.

My primary aim in the walking was to arrive at Knofi, in Kreuzberg- which you might remember we visited with the in-laws and Rob back in spring. I love this place- it has this crazy OTT sort of crowded-cozy-chaotic feel, with dried eggplant skins hanging from the roof and bottles and baskets and bags of goodies occupying every space imaginable. Andy tends to find the decor a bit claustrophobic, and is generally not as much of a fan as me. But the food is amazing- it has a crazy assortment of Turkish dips and pastes and olives and assorted bite-sized edibles.

Here is Mother tucking into a vegetarian tasting plate.

Almost immediately after which we forced her to try Curry ’36.

When in Kreuzberg…

I think, like so many before her, she didn’t really understand the function of the curry powder. I tried to convince her that the other true food experience she should have while in Berlin was a Doner. In the end, I never saw her eat one, but she swears she had one at the last minute on the way to the airport.

Jumping to the next day- when we headed to a couple of markets… Where I saw the man of my dreams:

This little fellow has clearly been painted for the express reason of matching mother’s coat.

I love the smell of cat man’s shoulder.

On Mutti’s final night in Potsdam, we headed for a fancy dinner at Chi Keng in Potsdam.

Chi Keng is a sort of Japanese fusion restaurant (because all asian restaurants in our part of Germany seem to serve ‘mixed asian’ as opposed to the precise country-based food suggested in the restaurant name). It’s apparently the spawn of Mi Keng, a tiny little place on the main mall of Potsdam city centre, which had to expand to a new location due to massive success.

We shared an entree mixed plate for two (the waitress was kind enough to tell us that the mix plate for three people was probably overkill), which was filled with fresh and fried spring rolls, salad, chicken skewers, fried prawns and prawn crackers, plus some super tasty crispy falafel sized salmon rissole things. It was all pretty tasty, and there was a nice mix between the fried and the non-fried.

For mains we went with a salmon sushi roll, which was filled with very crispy and slightly fatty skin-still-on salmon, and roofed with sashimi-grad salmon of the melt-in-your-mouth kind.

It was amazing!

We also opted for a prawn salad, which had beautifully cooked prawns, but was bit heavy in the dill for me…

… and a crispy duck red curry. Again, amazingly well cooked duck, great flavour, but unfortunately the curry was of the ‘with pineapple’ sort, and was super sweet.

So in the end, the two main dishes weren’t as amazing to me as the entrees, but all in all it’s definitely an experience I’d repeat. Interestingly, Andy and I went to Mi Keng- the Sire restaurant this Monday and were not as impressed. Possibly our choice of sushi was not as great- I was very put out that the sugared the top of the salmon in order to give it a nice caramel glaze. Furthermore the two people entree we ordered again this time was not as impressive in several ways- and was generally much more fried and much less fresh than at Chi Keng. Finally, as an un-alcoholic, I really appreciate that Chi Keng has a nice range of Mocktails and juicey mixes. Mi Keng had only Mango and Apple Juice (and respective Schorles), more fizzy muck and a variety of teas.

Once, many years back now, my family on my mothers side squatted on the Island of Malta for a couple of generations. Which, really, was our sole reason for traveling there.

Since that time, possibly only in the last few years, Malta has been trying to reinvent itself. It wants to be the cool hangout for the super (or at least moderately) rich. You can buy yourself citizenship (for just over 600k plus extras), and will be rewarded not only with a passport to the EU, but also rather pleasingly low tax rates.

The magazine on the airlines (Malta Airways of course) was all about pimpin’ the Island. Which came across as slightly desperate, and just a little bit tacky. Not what they were looking for at all. We were looking for this:

As my people (kind of) come from Malta, certain things have leaked into our fantastically Mongrel Aussie-hybrid customs.

Example 1: Mushy Pea Pies

Firstly, let me say that it is amazing to be in a country that understands the concept of a savoury pie. Here goes a standard conversation with a German about Aussie Meat pies:

Secondly, let me say that my Grandfather loves a good mushy pea pie. And my whole life my sister and I have dutifully pulled the ‘ugghhh’ faces that young girls tend to pull, as he recounted the joy one could have in eating such a thing.

Granddad, I hope it makes you proud to hear that my very first cultural experience on the Island was:

It was tasty! Although I would suggest that their peas could be a bit ‘mushier’- they were almost dry. But oh what flavouring! What flake of pastry! What delight of price (90c can you believe it!).

Mum and Andy weren’t brave enough to try the peapie, but they got in on the savoury action in their own ways.

On our first day in Malta, which was really a half-day, we had a little roam, and Andy and I gazed longingly, sniffed pleasingly and sighed regretfully at the sea. Hello old friend, it’s been a while.

We also sniffed- slightly less pleasantly- at a little ‘duck village’. Home to ducks, but also chickens, cats, pigeons, and hundreds of stuffed toys.  Later during the stay we saw another of these ‘villages’, this time I think just for cats- so apparently giving toys to pets is just what the Maltese do.

The next day- the-day-before-the-night-before-christmas, was business as usual as far as the beautiful blues go.

 Andy assured me that this is a toy cat, and not a real cat:

The two of us went for a walk, while mother headed straight for Valletta- the capital, which consists of a beautiful old city that you can see to the right in this photo:

We met up with Mother in Valletta, who had rather cleverly gotten her hands on some sort of Kahk-like thing.

For those of you playing at home, Kahk is a kind of traditional cookie my people make for special occasions. Usually only at Christmas and Easter because they are a pain in the bum to make.

The concept itself is simple- mashed dates (with butter and maybe some rum) inside a shortbread crust all shaped like a tiny donut (much smaller than the one shown below). The actual practice of getting the dates into the darn dough, is something very much more complicated indeed. Especially in Aussie weather.

Unfortunately, this version was not nearly as good as ours- it was very heavily spiced- tasting like old nutmeg and orange flower stems (barky and flowery), and was super dry inside.

One of the lovely things about Malta- or at least the parts we were in- is the presence of all decorative doorknobs and little icons that you see all around.

We spent a decent amount of time at the Barrakka gardens, which affords a magnificent view of the three cities and surroundings, which look particularly spectacular at sunset. Also, it has kitties!

We rode back to the city…

Here is a Maltese Christmas trees. A lack of tree and an excess of glass (made in Mdina)- all rather pretty with the lights and the swirly colours.

As a Christmas gift, my aunt and uncle treated us to a spot of fine dining. We started with a Maltese tasting plate, which featured some pretty fine Gozo goat cheese.

Afterwhich, mother indulged in an absolutely bulging-with-seafood risotto, and Andy and I both went with a freshly grilled catch of the day. After over a year in Porkland, this fish was the most delicious, succulent, tasty and juicy thing we had ever laid our hands on.

This, my friends, is Andy’s ‘Fish Satisfaction’ face.