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 icecream prize for being a good girl and climbing all the way up.

The stairs wrapping around the building just wrap tighter and disappear.

 Odd.

So what do you think?
a) truth
b) lie
c) I’ve watched too much QI and I’m afraid that either answer is going to make the alarm go off.

The internet tells me: lie.

The architect died in his bed seven years later. Although the writer of that article also suggested that right-handed twisting is good so that the ‘left hand rests on the railing’ while you do your hacking.
Huh.

Despite having forgotten our swords in the armory, the three Wiszniewskis and I took the many stairs, through pokey stairways that often seemed closer to tree house ladders than deliberate and permanent architectural features, to the very top of the tower.

The view was terrific, making Church-Climbing a Compulsory Challenge for Copenhagen!

But it was also terrifically terrifying. It was windy, and after Andy mentioned it I kept on imagining that the building was swaying. Plus there were waaaay too many people trying to shove past, and the golden railing felt very, very low.

We also checked out the church itself. For me, the most impressive things were the elephants guarding the doors.

That may say more about me than the church though…

While we were clinging madly to the sides of the church spire, we momentarily co-clung with a fellow Australian- an artist who was visiting the city for a few months, and she happened to mention in detail the glory that was Christiania.

Which just happened to be our main sight for the sight-seeing of the day.

Christiania is basically a massive commune, occupying, according to Wiki, 34 Ha, and containing 850 residents. They’ve ‘separated themselves’ from the city, and have a certain ‘special status’ as far as some legal issues go, although the reality of what this means is apparently (still) being debated 40 plus years after its foundation.

And the reason law enters into it is that Christiania is very pro-marijuana. They’re anti- hard drugs, anti- violence and weapons, and fairly anti- ownership (of cars in particular). But if you go there, you go to see the ‘green light district’ where large piles of Cannabis, in all its incarnations, are displayed for sale.

Which is why I don’t have any photos. Marijuana being illegal in Copenhagen and all, the sellers are not so keen to have their photos taken. And like the Red-light district of Amsterdam, people who try to take photos in the Green light district apparently get their photos broken.

Which we did, partially because we had an ice-cream mission.

Our friend Joram had, very conveniently for us, been to Copenhagen just a few weeks before our visit, and being a man of fine taste, had marked out a few ‘must try’ places.

Sicilliansk Is.

Delicious icecream? Tick.
Nice little hipster Copenhagen boy behind the counter? Tick.

I went with my standard chocolate, plus the ‘butter milk’-ish flavour, which is apparently based on a Danish dessert, and a Sanddorn flavour, which I got because I had no idea exactly what Sanddorn was.

I’m still not exactly sure- but you should googleimage it just to check out the awesome berries these things make.

Next stop: Assistens Cemetery. The final resting place of Hans Christian Anderson (as if you didn’t know his name would pop up again sooner or later). Also of Neils Bohr, and a whole lot of other famous people who we didn’t know.

It was definitely a beautiful place- maybe not as ‘ethereal’ as the one we saw with Ashleigh, but still enough to think ‘hmm, I still would rather be charred and sprinkled, but I kinda get this whole in-the-ground-for-the-worms-to-eat thing’.

I had to catch the plane home that night, so we had an early dinner at a burger bar, possibly brining my burger total up to three in the four days I spent in Copenhagen. (I miss good burgers. Germans don’t understand the concept of proper burger bun bread, and their beef is terrible! Someone post me a Missy Moo Blue Cow?).

After our weekend, I’m seriously shocked that more young Aussies don’t go to Copenhagen as part of their traditional ‘eurotripping’. I know Rome, Paris, London etc are more classic, but Copenhagen has ample culture (although I barely got a chance to dip my toes in), beautiful parks to visit, and seems to have lovely urban jungle areas that are just good for the wild roaming. The prices are a bit steep compared to the rest of Europe, but seem ultimately pretty comparable to Perth as far as food and short-term accommodation go.

Seriously- check it out!

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…

The city was smaller and ‘quainter’ that I’d expected- although part of that was due to it being a Sunday- most things were closed, but at least not ‘German closed’. When we arrived we realised that the sunny ‘Copenhagen weather’ of the day before clearly didn’t apply to Helsingor. So we rushed into the nearest store and bought the warmest woolliest tights we could find, and (I) shamelessly put them on in the middle of the street.

The first and second floors had the adult sections, with all the books you can imagine, plus magazines and newspapers, reading nooks, a stunning view over the harbour and this:

 Do you remember Funny Face? I’m pretending to be Hepburn. Except that I’m actually pulling a ‘funny face’ because I put the camera on timer, and about two seconds before it went off someone walked in front of me trying to work out why the girl was clinging to the ladder posing and aiming a pose at a bookshelf.

Speaking of posing:

 They also had their own version of the little mermaid. Perhaps they thought it was sexist that a woman was getting all the attention back in Copenhagen?

All up the trip took about 20 minutes. Which, as I’ve mentioned before, is ridiculous. When we were on the walking tour we heard about a man who was working for the resistance in Denmark during the war (II). To get the information to the right people he had to get out of Denmark. The first time he practically made a working plane from scraps. The second time, he waited until it was a bit chilly, and walked across the sea to Sweden.

Having taken the ferry, I find the story somewhat more believable.

Although, it should be noted that you ARE going into another country: 

… And then, seeing as we were now in Sweden, we feasted on open sandwiches.

We then took the train down to Malmo- which roughly lines up with Copenhagen latitudinally.

After dinner in Sweden, we took the train over the bridge back to Denmark. This, say it with me now, is clearly ridiculous! 

While discussing this with a German at work, she noted that near her birthplace, you can stand on the spot that marks the corner of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

It is now my singular life goal to go to there!

Check out how hip these Swedish underground stations are. There is one drawback though:

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 of you playing at home). Photos of the coat to come in the winter. The dress will feature fairly heavily in the next couple of blogs.

We had a coffee before taking the 9A bus back to the centre. The bus was somewhat erratic in its schedule, but in the good ‘coming more than it should’ way- and Andy bestowed upon it the title of ‘Bus NineAnarchy’.

We joined up with a walking tour group- one of the free ones from Sandeman. Andy and I have done a couple now- in London, Amsterdam etc.- and they’re usually a pretty nice way to get a look around the city, to orient yourself and to learn a bit of the (slightly exaggerated) history of the streets.

This one went for a couple of hours, and lead us through some very picturesque areas, eventually ending up at the royal palace, somewhere in the vicinity of the Little Mermaid.

The building to the left was one of our favourites. It’s the stock market, and the spire is actually made up of the twirling tails of dragons (can you make them out at the bottom of the spire sitting with their bums in the air?). Apparently, like all great cities of its time, Copenhagen had some issues with flammability, and the dragons, while representing strength, are also supposed to act as protection from the fires.

Copenhagen is a pretty good place for elephant spotting: they’re the symbol of the city, representing strength and … possibly wisdom??

All good long walks should end in a large meal. And all large meals should end in a long walk. Herein lies the mystery of life (in my family).

We sat down for a rather splendid picnic in the park, and dined on fresh bread, cheese and meats, and a punnet of cherries.

European cities do very very fine botanical gardens. This one is quite central, rather large, and free (which, given that we’re in Copenhagen, is quite something!)

I suspect there’s a turtle somewhere in that photo, but I can’t for the life of me find it.

Look Ma! I found some tobacco (the plant I work with everyday).

Our plan to find the place where Andy’s sister once ate a rather nice duck sandwich led us to a beautifully cluttered indoor market place… but we were all too full of cherries (and was there icecream in there somewhere too?) to eat anything else.

It seemed it was time to do a bit more exercising (output) before we were allowed more input.

Tower Climbing Time!

When my sister and her friend did a eurotrip many years ago, they made a point of climbing the tallest building in every city. I think I see their point:

I feel there should be a cross indicating negation in this warning sign. Right now it’s just egging me on.

We seemed to have arrived at Mahlzeit again

And the day ended as all days should. With Andy sliding down a giant parrot slide:

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 and castles and sunshine, tastes like burgers and buttermilk icecream (more on that later!), and sounds like trumpets.

Our hotel was pleasingly red, and the beds pleasingly sleep-inducing, and we slept and lazed until well into the next morning.

And then set off to explore…

(Do you see the adorable little birds on the corner of this pillar?)

And to fill ourselves with food at the delightfully decked out Cafe Obelix.

I come from a family of horders with at least a sprinkling of gardening genes thrown in, so this sort of ordered chaotic clutter with plants and bottles and pictures is right up my alley.

Andy’s alley involved more food: bacon, sausages, fried AND scrambled eggs, a pancake, bread, fruit salad, juice, coffee….

 I went for a burger, which, I’ll have you know, is a perfectly respectable brunchtime meal option.

I promise you that the radioactive coloured goo translates to tastiness in one’s mouth!

More exploring, complete with multiple fountains, street art, statues and posing.

 After about 4 hours of walking, we headed to the hotel of Andy’s parents- conveniently located right across the road from ours. Onwards! to several more hours of walking/exploring, punctuated by icecream, which, for possibly the first time in my life, I felt too full to commit to.

Not that it stopped the others.

Finally, the group became aware of the repeated cries of Mari-Anne: it was time to sit down and have some solid food.

We stopped in a restaurant called Toldboden, situated not-too-far from the famous mermaid. It was incredibly packed, and I think mostly with locals, who were crammed around bowls of shrimp at wooden picnic style tables, or lounging in the sun on deckchairs. There was a fight to get a table, which Andy and I failed miserably at, but luckily the more aggressive older generation came to the rescue.

While waiting for our food, I ordered this really delicious hipster-y Rhubarb drink, while Andy’s mum, being the filthy little copy-cat that she is, went for a raspberry. We later branched out to the other two members of the collection- and tasted Holunder blossom (too flowery) and a blackcurrent one (very Ribena-y), but ultimately decided that we’d ‘won’ with the first choices.

And we all chowed down on some very delicious rosemary-salt chips, with crunchy fish pieces, fish rissoles and accompanying sides.

 We walked off our leafy greens, gradually making our way to the Mermaid.

Stumbling across some errant gym equipment, we jumped at the opportunity to work off our fish.

And then ambled home.

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 be very, very happy indeed in July!

Anyway, I was very lax/too busy stuffing my face with various species of fungi, and managed to miss all the food action, so we’ll have to move onto Tuesday: in which the parentals visit us at work and in our humble abode.

I’m not sure if any of you remember the photos of me squatting (in a non-vulgar sense) on a frozen lake on winter? This is that lake. It looks happier now. Speaking of squatting:

Did I tell you I love grasses? And they are native (probably) here, so Mother cannot scold me from pulling off the seeds and throwing them in the air triumphantly.

Back at the apartment we pulled out our Ikea table to fit 4, and loaded it with salad, speck, schmand, rosemary-garlic potatoes, broccoli and pork….

… and did what families do best: ate more than should be physically possible.

On Wednesday and Thursday we managed to couple the eating with a visit from Rob, who had ducked into Berlin for a few days. We extended across the continent, from French to Turkish- and heartily took to the eating of delicious stews and tasting plates at Knoffi.

I really love the atmosphere in Knoffi, they have strings of dried eggplant hanging form the ceiling, a massive cabinet filled with olives and artichokes and chickpea salads and hundreds of dips and pastes, and every corner is stuffed with baklavas and oils and various wares from that part of the world.

It’s everything a little horder like me could ever dream of!

 

My tasting plate- tapenade, stuffed vine leaves, homous and a chilli-creamcheese paste, plus artichoke salad and chickpea salad, and some various vegetables, and all served with a massive basket of turkish bread.

To walk off some of the food, we did a short wander around Kreuzberg, including through Viktoria park, which holds a large memorial at the top of the hill and is otherwise filled with flowing streams, windy paths and big grassy areas ripe for the picnicing.

Thursday was Italian, at Potsdam’s Pfeffer and Saltz- where they make their own very tasty pasta and rather delicious pizzas.

Mine had air-dried cured ham, fresh tomatoes, rucola, and thick shreds of some sort of strong and tasty Italian cheese.

Of course, the food required yet more walking, so we headed through the Innenstadt, through the park, over the bridge, and back to Schlaatzstrasse, to show off the apartment to Rob.

These blue ones were just amazingly vibrant, and there were whole garden beds filled with seas of different blues!

And on Friday it was time for a taste of Asia: we wandered around Kreuzberg for a bit….

… then made our way to Cuno, near U-Schlesisches Tor.

And ate what I think is easily the best asian food I have so far had in Deutschland. We had fresh prawn vietnamese spring rolls, satay chicken, fried vegetable spring rolls, maki rolls with duck and mushroom, papaya salad and a crispy thai beef salad, some delightful fried fish in a spicy red curry sauce, and superbly cooked duck in a mango curry.

… and then had to walk a bit more…

This was by far the poshest port we stayed in.

 (This one and below also from Marta)

Before we headed back to the boat, we ducked into a supermarket. Andy an I bought mopheads, because apparently germans don’t believe in the power of the string mop. Of course, it’s been weeks and weeks, and I still can’t find the right stick to allow attachment of the heads…

And 360 degree views across the whole city.

Although of course some people will be plant-nerds!

 Marta got heavily into the GruppenFotos- these next few are all from her:

(Above and below from Marta)

I think it’s actually impossible that any day featuring more than one dinosaur can be not awesome.

It started with dinosaur pasta!

As I have probably ranted to you before, I tend to morally object to ‘organic’ food (50 % on the basis of ‘I find it hard to believe that the carbon and whatever else inside your food is ‘inorganic’ and 50 % on ‘I am poor and this is probably a scam).

Which is why I haven’t really been into the new Bio store in the Hbf very much.

But what a treat! Dinosaur Pasta. And endorsed by T-Rex no less!

I will admit that I was a little sad that there were only three types of dinosaurs, imagine the outrage, for example, if alphabet soup came only with the letters X, K and R. But this was mostly due to the absence of my favourite friend- Parasaurolophus.

Onwards to the Hauptbahnhof, with the promise of possibly-not-real-but-real-life-sized dinosaurs to actually leave the house and possibly even go to the gym on a Lazy Sunday.

They had a kind of ‘Jurassic Park’ set up, with labs and eggs and… VELOCIRAPTORS!

Now, this might be a slightly controversial statement, but I would warrant that Transperth would get a lot more action if the Esplanade had dinosaurs.

Something to think about Perth Government!

And oldish man was looking at the sign for the T-Rex, and when we came back after 10 minutes he was still there.. but he very kindly moved aside and offered to take a photo for us. Clearly my camera recognises T-Rex as more important that us, focus-wise!

What was weird was that two hours later, after going for dinner and then walking back to the station from Potsdam, we were about to cut through the station when we noticed that the same man was still gazing at the T-Rex.

Andy’s parents are coming to visit in a couple of weeks, and we realised that we really haven’t tried enough of the local restaurants to make informed recommendations.

Also.. I promised some of you food porn…

This place was on the main street, and was apparently ‘Thai’ but also served Sushi.

As most vaguely Asian places seem to do in Germany…

Crispy duck! The duck was super tasty, but the sauce and accompanying veges were a bit- bleh.

Andy got some version of red curry, which had ‘two chilis’ and was therefore supposed to be ‘superhot’, but was, as usual, rather weak.

I was impressed by their fortune cookies at least! The last ones we bought (from Kaufland) pretty much said things like ‘Hello’ and ‘Sometimes, things that are red are pretty’. These ones seem to be proper Fortunes, with predict-y powers and everything.

And then we walked home in the crazy light of German Summer.

These photos are taken between 9 pm and 9:30. It’s just super mind-boggling how long the sun hangs around.

It’s pretty eh?

In addition to the strange light, one of the things that’s really playing with my senses, is these white flowers:

I swear they smell EXACTLY like pink hubbabubba, and every time we go past them (they’re just in front of the hauptbahnhof), I get assaulted with the scent of our childhood.

Our home is <—- Thataway!!!

How long does it take you to organise your snaps after a successful holiday?

Clearly the answer for me is ‘too long’- but that’s because I tend to be over-exuberant with the shutter button.

I think most of us agreed that Soller was one of the most beautiful places we visited. It has a decent amount of shops and restaurants around the port, which was filled with blues and whites and shimmering waters just as we’d come to hope and even expect:

Around the bay ran a tram line- one of the oldest on the island according to Marta’s travel guide, which took you past some beautiful scenery and up the hill to the main city.

 (These two photos are stolen from Marta- Thanks Marta!)

As you can tell from my whimsical poses, I’m pretending I’m a lady from….whatever the Majorcan equivalent of ‘colonial times’ works out as. I was glad to be wearing my ‘gown’, and it is very possible that at some stage during the day Marta and I had a discussion about how we wished we had proper hair and hats to match the period feel of the train that was hurtling us through the mountains.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is us being less refined.

 (These two photos are also from Marta)

The tram ride, which is a little expensive (5 euros per person), was definitely worth it for the landscapes. I’m going to use the word picturesque. As a Perthian- coming from a city without trams, I think it’s easy to attach a certain romance to a tram ride.

The city itself was everything a tourist coming to a small spanish town could hope for! In the centre was a square, with- what else- a church as feature point, and small streets, of the narrow and winding sort, radiated from it.

 We sat in the sun, and ate freshly baked pastries, and drank freshly squeezed orange juice.

There may have also been icecream.

It was incredibly beautiful. One minute you’d be hurtling past a valley filled with houses, then you’d be in a dark tunnel, surrounded by the smell of earth, then back into the sunshine and past orange groves, or almond trees.

Again, I think it was slightly costly, but I would very much recommend it. I guess it makes more sense if you don’t have a boat, and just want to go from Palma to visit the city of Soller.

(Photo from Marta)

(Photo from Marta)

When we arrived at Palma, the train was suddenly flooded with hundreds of German tourists. We sat tight and headed back to Soller.

Back in Soller there was time to have an underwhelming lunch under the watchful eye of the cathedral, and to explore some of those narrow streets in the search of fresh produce.

… and also time for more icecream…

As we headed back to the boat, the clouds descended, and the whole scene became a lot more dramatic.

Some of our fresh produce included loquats, which I hadn’t had for ages, and which the others hadn’t seen before.

And of course some of the delicious half-moon cookie-pastry things that had become a major part of our diet. I’m not sure if I described them before- they’re basically shortbread pastry, and filled then with apricot or fig jam or sweet ricotta or something else delicious.

(Photo from Marta)

That’s them in the top right of the photo. You can also see meat pies at the bottom, made with a similar shortcrust pastry. Andy and I scoffed a couple of these on the trip, mostly because there is nothing in Germany even slighly akin to a savoury pie.

We headed back out to sea…..

…and sailed into the next port as the sun was setting.

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 coincided with what I will disrespectfully refer to as my father entering his ‘dotage’: the period of his life in which he intends to watch a lot of TV.

The dotage part is that, with the possible exception of the Fussball, he intends for most of that TV viewing experience to involve some form of baby animal.

You will be surprised at just how many TV shows contain baby animals. And I do not refer to ‘incidental’ baby animals: a coincidental kitten, a puppy as a plot device. No no! I mean whole shows, revolving entirely around the things.

And my father watches them all.

So Father.

Behold The Baby Animals That We Saw At Berlin Zoo!

(Photo taken by Ashleigh)

(Photo taken by Ashleigh)

(Photo taken by Ashleigh)

What’s this- these are just normal sized owls you say?

Check out this fluffball:

(Photo taken by Ashleigh)

There are actually two owls in this photo. But the fatter one is basically sitting on the smaller one.

A baby Hippo is still quite large:

As is a baby elephant:

And a baby giraffe:

Did I hear you suggest that many babies are cuter than single babies??

Does that hold true if they are baby warthogs??

This little guy was pretty cute too!

I think that’s it of the babies. But there must be something in the water because every second animal seemed to have just recently birthed.

Anyway, we went to the zoo.

And some of the animals seemed to want out:

(I’m not sure what this bird is, but it looks pretty flightless, so I’m going to assume it’s from New Zealand.)

On the other hand, some animals seemed to be pretty happy just chilling, and others seemed to be having the time of their life.

This seal kept swimming around and jumping on the land and then diving in the water, sliding along the edges and generally showing off. He was fabulous. The thing is, I’m not sure if that was his way of saying he was bored.

It left me with mixed feelings.

I don’t like animals being kept in small enclosures, and ultimately, any environment that is not their native habitat is not ideal: taming a wild creature can be the most damaging thing you can do to it.

But we’ve already screwed up a lot of things so very badly, and in some cases, without zoo populations and breeding programs, many creatures would be well and truly extinct.

Furthermore, there’s a quote which I think comes from Gerald Durrell*, which basically states that when it comes to conservation, in the end we will save only what we love, and we can love only what we understand.

*Edit- the quote is from Baba Dioum, and it goes like this:

“In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught.”

And I agree with that wholeheartedly. If the next generation is going to have any chance of being better than us at this planet co-habitation thing, they need to love the creatures in the world. And I can think of few ways to do this more efficiently than to take a small children to the zoo, and let him or her see the elephants.

Or, if you’re like me and have a fondness for ‘Life in the Freezer’, the Penguins!

At the end of the day we listed our favourite animals, and I came down pretty firmly on the side of the ‘Italian Job Mafia Penguins’.

I also loved this little guy, who was running around his cage so fast it was impossible to get any sort of decent photo:

I’m pretty sure he was screaming ‘I’M A MONGOOSE LOOK AT ME I’M A MONGOOSE TOO FAST FOR A COBRA I’M SO MONGOOSEY’ the whole time too.

I also liked this guy, because I’m pretty sure it’s just a cat that they’ve given an exotic name to (Sandcat):

and because he’s being scratched on the head with a broom!

Ash loved the seals, and- for some reason, was pretty fond of the baby hippo.

But she was also impressed by the polar bears: although part of this was because it took us ages to find them.

 Andy was generally into the monkeys, but he liked the Chimp the best, primarily because it sat right up on the edge- as close to the visitors as it could be- but with its back to us, deliberately ignoring us!

 Feeding Time!

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- or at least it was in full sunlight. I wandered around with Andy and Kuba, and later Andy and Alvaro, with some ‘escape’ time in between for looking at girly shops, which sadly turned out to all be identical.

We managed to coerce Alvaro into taking several photos of us. Alas! our light sensing units had clearly senescence, or become augmented in the Long Darkness of Winter, and now we were overcome by an attack of the squints.

Here’s the pretty view without the sunburnt mole-people in the foreground. You can actually make out our boat in the background……………………………………………………..HERE

It was a rather beautiful day. Warm and sunny, but cool enough that we could wear our long sleeves to protect the now fragile skin.

Oh how much these trees remind me of home!!

By the time we left, it was looking a bit like a storm was brewing, but luckily the weather held out, and we were able to spend a very lovely afternoon and evening boating.