June 2017 Things

There was a tremendous storm in Berlin midday yesterday. It was so intense you could hardly see out of the window. All you could see was a grey mist. It marked the end of a nice period of sun, blue skies and 30°C temperatures. One of my AWO Oldies said she wanted it to rain for her plants. Five minutes after she said that the heavens opened! The other Oldies made jokes about her wish.

As May ended, I enjoyed watching a number of football matches to decide which teams came into 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th place. Now for a football free summer. I shall stay in Germany until August when I shall fly to Hungary and from there to the UK and return at the start of September. All I have to do is book the flights - and pay for them! I have to admit that I no longer like flying. All remind me of supermarkets competing to offer the cheapest but worst service.

Yesterday I met another John. He comes from the USA, but his family originally came from the south-west of Germany. He is staying with Stefan and visiting family and friends in Berlin and other parts of the country. Here is a photo of him. He is also a 'hobby cook'. We are meeting in two weeks when he returns from his wandering around other parts of Germany. I am going to show him my bit of Berlin including a very special museum.

Looking at my diary for June I notice a concert with Jutta next week, all my usual Oldie meetings, a range of SPD meetings and activities and a special garden party at the end of the month. For details you only have to read my reports as the month progresses.

Who has a birthday in June 2017?  Nicholas B. in Yorkshire start us off with his big day on the 3rd, my iMac will be 10 years old on the 6th - I wonder how much longer it will operate. On the 19th my father would have been 105 years old and my mother 99 years old. I shall have an extra glass of sekt to celebrate on that day! On the 23rd, Teresa P. will celebrate with friends in Berlin and my Oldie Friend Hermann hits 80 on the 25th. Should be a special party with his family on that day. And so he ends our birthday month. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EACH AND ALL! 

el abuelo

Yesterday was a very special day. El abuelo Juan (grandfather John) met la nieta Emma (granddaughter Emma)  :-)) Papa and Mama Jan and Arancha flew into Berlin on Tuesday evening for a busy few days meeting friends and family and introducing la nieta Emma to them.

It was great to welcome all and then pick up a very smiley, happy Emma and give her a big kiss! She just smiled back and kicked her legs and waved her arms as she smiled again. What a beauty! I was allowed to push her in her pram as we went into the centre to find a place for a snack.

I met a couple of friends on the way who were both surprised and happy to see me pushing a pram! By then she was asleep and as we arrived at the restaurant and ordered some food she slowly began to wake up. It was interesting to see how quickly Ma and Pa reacted to her movements and sounds.

The visit was over all too soon. I have happy memories of seeing her for the first time. I look forward to our next meeting and taking her out in the pram. As I write these words she is on her way to the airport with Mama and Papa. Have a safe flight home all!

A Müggel Day

Yesterday really was a great day. I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't want it to end. It started at 8.45 am when I met most of my Müggelsee-Gang at my local railway station. ''The Boyz' also arrived and with Papa. We managed to squeeze into the Regional Train and put our bicycles into the bicycle section.

The squeeze got tighter as more and more people tried to get onto the train at each stop. I was surprised to see many women trying to get prams and babies into that section of the train. They had no success. Still squeezed into the section we finally arrived at Potsdam, where we all spilled out onto the platform - and could breath out again!.

Off we went, led by Uli who had organised the even,t so BIG thanks to him. The first stop on the lakeside was at a large restaurant area with a stage and lots of people all eating roast sausages, drinking beer, singing along to the music and smiling. The latter was most important. It was nearly 11.00 am so I had a late breakfast of sausage with a glass of locally brewed beer. I was not the only one!

More cycling around the lake with a picnic stop, then off again with a later stop. Near the final stop was a bridge with some creatures. 'The Boyz', including Papa, could not resist sitting on the creature and doing a few poses. Here is one I like.

More cycling and back to Potsdam station. Again the train was full but I was able to squeeze in with 'The Boyz and Papa' as we waved goodbye to the rest of the Müggelsee-Gang as many took other trains home and some waited for a later train. Thanks to all for a wonderful day and let's have another day out together as soon as possible.

Müggelseegang

I'm meeting my Müggelseegang tomorrow. It is a public holiday here - but not in Brexitland! The day is called Christi Himmelfahrt (Ascention Day) if you are religious, and if an atheist/secular person you say Männertag (Men's day).

I really enjoy this day with its culture of 'The Lads' setting off on bicycles for tours to and around nice places with lots of stops for beer, singing songs and eating grilled sausages before drinking even more beer. In the areas around Berlin you can still see men sitting in carts drawn by horses and all are drinking and singing drinking songs.

What a pity many tourists never see this aspect of life in Berlin when they arrive here. You need contact to locals and an invitation to just join in otherwise you do not know about it. I'm meeting my Gang at my local station at 8.54 to jump onto the RE7 train to Dessau. . I'm sure the bicycle section will be full, but no matter.

Then to Potsdam where we start our day. Uli has organised the day and I note that just south of Potsdam is a place called Forsthaus Templin which sells beer brewed there. I shall be very surprised if we do not stop there for a taste :-))

The tour around the lake covers 32 klm with stops including one for a lunch picnic. Really looking forward to tomorrow and seeing my Müggelseegang again.

Turned out hot again

Summer has finally arrived. I held back saying this last week for after one day of 30°C and sweating, the temperature dropped and the blue sky disappeared!  We've had three hot sunny days since then so I think it is safe to say that summer has finally arrived.

I have spent more time on my balcony enjoying the sun in the morning and reading. I finally finished my book this morning and as I closed it I felt a sudden loss. What now! No problem for I have lots of other books on 'My Future Reading List'. Even so, it is a strange feeling to turn the last page and put the book down.

The book is called 'Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries 1776 - 1871'. The author is Adam Zamoyski. I posted about this book earlier when I first opened it. It really is a remarkable work of historical study and very readable. I thought I knew more about that period of European history than most, so I was surprised at just how much I still had to learn. Put it on your must read list.

Just had a visit from Bro2 who needed help with his German homework. A bit like the blind leading the blind but I was in fact able to help him and together we wrote the text he has to give to his teacher tomorrow. I told him he had to more forceful and tell the teacher when and if he does not understand anything. I think he listens and says nothing so the teacher thinks everything is okay. I told him to open his mouth!

I'm taking him and Bro1 with me on Thursday when I meet my Muggelsee Gang for a bicycle tour around a lake south of Potsdam. They need the exercise and to see a bit more of the area around Berlin. It is a public holiday here and if the weather is good there will be lots of people on bikes not to mention sipping a few beers and getting some Bratwurst down them! Looking forward to that.

Eat Up

Yesterday was rather special. Since I got to know The Family, we have talked about meeting to cook a tasty Afghan meal. Earlier attempts failed but yesterday we did it. The family arrived together with the main ingredients and I sent The Boyz to my local supermarket to buy the rest plus lots of cola and fruit juices for the children to drink.

The parents settled into my kitchen and started to prepare the dishes. I sat with Bro2 in the living room and helped him with English homework. Bro2 sat on the balcony and did his German homework. Sister sat opposite him and did lots of sketches and drawings, which she is good at.

The clock ticked away until we finally heard the cry, "Dinner's ready!" They wanted to eat in a traditional way so I cleared a place on the living room floor and the dishes were set out for our delight. Here you can see the family about to tuck in. The glasses contain cola and not red wine!!

It was delicious. What did we eat? Basmati Rice cooked with spices and sultanas. Potatoes thinly sliced and fried. Chicken pieces cooked with spices, onions and tomatoes. A large fresh green salad and all washed down with water, cola and fruit juices. I really stuffed my face but there was still enough for the family to take to their quarters to enjoy today.

Thanks and Desk

I've had a 'normal' week and even sat on my balcony in the sun on Wednesday. Wow - and it got to 30°C this afternoon. I hope summer is going to be more than a few days of blue skies and high temperatures.

Last Sunday started slowly as I dozed into the day. Suddenly the phone rang. Two ladies rang about my desk and asked if it had been built. I said no and they said they would be at my place in an hour. They are relatives of Jutta and one is a qualified and experienced specialist for building things.

They duly arrived and looked at the A4 paper showing how to build the thing, which I did not understand. They did and started to built it. They brought their equipment, including special drills, and the desk slowly began to take shape.

Meanwhile, the male part of 'The Family' arrived. Papa wanted to put his laptop onto my internet cable to catch up on news in Afghanistan, Bro1 needed help with his school English homework and Bro2 just wanted to be there! They got on with their respective things as my desk took even  more form.

Here you can see the completed desk and 'The Lads' saying 'Thanks' to Peter and Andre and guests who had given money for the family at Peter's birthday party. I told you about it in a recent post. I told them to make some faces and here is the one I like best. Hope it makes you smile :-))

More my day

This morning I went to the Docs because of the persistent throat pains, coughs and sneezing. We also talked about my visit to the local hospital and discussion there about my spine/disc problems. I told him I had rejected an operation this year. He just nodded his head then wrote me a prescription for more antibiotic tablets.

On returning home I found nice surprises in my postbox. More cards and greetings. I really smiled when three of them had pictures of drinks and comments about having a drink.

Just look at the one on the left of the photo. "Don't worry about your age.....ALCOHOL will make it all better." Now that is my kind of humour and thanks to A&T in London. How well they know me :-)) The others came from Hungary and Silsden!

Yesterday evening Marita and Birgit dropped in and so we sipped cool sparkling wine as we caught up on news and relaxed. I've really enjoyed having a 3 day birthday. Try it!

My day

I've had a nice day. It was my day. Once a year I can say that. I enjoyed the recent comments by Barbara all the cards, greetings, telephone messages. This included a long chat with Ian in Sydney via Skype this morning.

As usual I went to the AWO this afternoon to meet my group working to improve their English. What a surprise when I got there. The Boss gave my a big hug and greetings in Spanish as she gave me a bottle and card. Other co-workers greeted me warmly and then the students came into the class.

Lot of happy faces and greetings plus another bottle of sekt. I was presented with a selection of musical things including a CD of Joseph Haydn's works. We then started the lesson with a glass of sekt which another student had brought.

Later I went to another meeting and arrived home in time for a nice chat with Heike in the city of Brandenberg. Celebrations will continue tomorrow when Birgit and Marita come for a Kaffee und Kuchen but of course with a few glasses of sekt!

Talking of bottles, when Daniel was here last Sunday and we tried to build my new writing desk, he gave me a bottle just before he left. Here you can see him with a special bottle of Opa's brew. He said it was made from wood and not fruit.  I'm not sure if was another one of his jokes. I'll know when I try it!!

Failure

This morning Daniel arrived with muscles ready and usual smiles to 'Do The Job'. One month ago I bought a new writing desk then had to wait so long for delivery! It arrived last Thursday. Daniel does regular training and has muscles in all the right places so picking up the desk parts would be no problem. And so it was.

The first thing was to move the TV to the old desk. That was heavy work but he did it with no problem. Then moving other things such as the computer, printer, audio system etc. Finally we had the corner of the room free to set up the desk.

We unpacked the parts and put them onto the floor. We found installation instructions on one piece of A4 with parts missing - and the rest was difficult to understand. Fortunately Daniel has more patience than I and with his mathematics, physics and logic studies was able to work out what the mysteries on the A4 meant.

So far so good. I brought my work box into the room full of things such as screwdrivers. After working out that we needed to connect part C to Part C1 then with H, off we went. We then noted that part H had no drill holes to connect to C and C1. Checking the A4 it said again that the connection had to be made using long metal screws but with blunt ends!

After 15 minutes of screwing a blunt metal screw, without success,  we gave  up and had a coffee break with some apples slices I had bought ready for such an occasion. We decided to try again but with screws and then replace them with their blunt ended brothers. No success! We did not have an electric drill with exchangeable parts and that was the problem. I told Daniel to stop work, which he reluctantly did.

We packed the desk parts into a corner as you can see in the photo. Now he is going to talk to his Papa who knows more about such things than we do. Hopefully we shall solve the problem later in the week when Papa and Daniel have time to come to my place. Who said assembling things bought from furniture markets was easy :-((

May 2017 Things

I'm late with this post. No excuse except increasingly forgetful! Looking back on April, I can reflect on some nice meetings and concerts/opera, very tasty meals with my K-Gang and meeting Colin a number of times. He is now snoozing in a plane en-route to Australia. Birgit left for Ozland yesterday so she is now home with Ian and no doubt telling him about her time in Germany.

Yesterday I went to visit Oldie H for a chat with Kaffee und Kuchen. No big changes in his health but still problems with breathing and now more dependent on his breathing machine. He really enjoys people visiting him so I took along Sailor R. They immediately got into conversation about current events and made comparisons to the ex-DDR. I just smiled as I sipped my coffee!

I then went to a Farewell to Colin evening. I arrived late but just in time to see the meal set onto the table. Very tasty with lots of interesting conversation and mixture of red wines! This morning Daniel came to help me construct  my new writing table. We had problems, but more about that in the next post. My diary tells me that next week has all the usual appointments plus a few more. The main one being a concert on Wednesday with musicians from Die Komische Oper Berlin. Thanks to Neil for the joke on the right >>>

Who has a birthday in May? Max started us off with his 34th on the 2nd of May. This was followed by my godson Marcel who hit 23 on the 6th. I wonder if they have any grey hairs by now = getting old :-) A certain Dr without Dr. Hot and Cold Johannes von-zu-und-mit Müller will be 74 on the 8th May. That is a good age and he is now clearly losing his hair! Hans R. will probably smoke even more to enjoy his 66th on the 11th May. Special thoughts go to the south-west of Turkey where Trish will celebrate her 65th on the 13th May. I wonder if there will be an extra round of Champers to celebrate getting to the official retirement age. Back in Berlin, Heike D. will celebrate with her family on the 16th. Sylvia will be 61 in Brighton on the 21st May. A day she shares with my wonderful cousin Barbara in Silsden who will be 72 on that day. She is one of two people I started writing this blog for. Holger W. in Bremen will be 53 on the 31st May and so ends our birthday month. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EACH AND ALL NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE!

La Opera

Last Wednesday evening, Johanna and I went to the Staatsoper to see Verdi's opera La traviata. It means 'The Fallen Women' in English. Our visit there was courtesy of Birgit. She had bought two tickets but due to illness could not go. She gave us the tickets. Very generous of her.

The opera was in Italian with translation to German on a screen at the top of the stage. The performance was first class. I was very pleasantly surprised to see/hear such a professional performance. I was particularly impressed with a singer called Ailyn Perez who sang/played the main role.

I was interested in the origin of what is now the most played opera worldwide. You may know some of the arias from recordings made by Maria Callas and still worth listening to. La traviata is a three act opera by Giuseppe Verdi. It runs for 2 hours 10 minutes without a break so have a drink before the start!

Verdi set it to an Italian libretto by Francesco Piave. This is turn was based on La Dame aux Camelias (1852) which was a play adopted from the novel by Alexander Dumas. Phew ... but what a history! It was first performed in March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice. Then it was performed in London in May 1855, in New York in December 1856, and in Paris two day later.

 In case you don't know, it is about a courtesan torn between the love of two men who is slowly dying of consumption.

On the same day I got a postcard from Alan and Lynne. They had a holiday break in "Skeggy" = an English east coast resort called Skegness. I guess they also went to Scarborough from where they sent this card. It is of the staircase in the Royal Hotel. I think Verdi must have walked up/down many such staircases in his lifetime. Perhaps when he was sketching the music for La traviata in his head!

Mittelalter-Fest

I had a nice holiday weekend. It started last Saturday morning when I went to a local SPD meeting to plan for the election in September. In the evening I met my Kowalke Gang and we went to a Vietnamese Restaurant known to them, but not to me. A very pleasant evening.

On Monday 1st May, I went to the park next to Lichtenberg Town Hall. On that day each year there is a Mittelalter-Fest. This means a middle-age festival. It surrounds a stage with different events and music shows during the day, including a show for children in the afternoon. All participants dress in clothes from that period.

I met my SPD Gang at our local office, which faces the park, where we picked up the things we needed for our table in the park called an 'Info-Stand'. Next to it I set up a wheel-game for children. They had three shots at stopping it on the SPD slogan to win a prize. I made sure it did and each child won a prize plus some sweets. Great to see so many happy faces, and also from their parents who noticed I was cheating to make sure the kids won :-))

Later I met 'The Family'. It was really nice to see them together. Here is a pic of them in front of our Info-Stand with our candidate. His name is Kevin Hönicke and he is a local 'lad' and works as a teacher of maths and physics when not campaigning for the SPD. After that they wanted ice cream, which you can see they enjoyed.

We then wandered around the park and the kids enjoyed themselves at different stands, challenges and games. I gave each some money donated by guests at Peter's birthday party the weekend before so they could choose which activities to take part in. At the end of all their activities they relaxed with a bag of 'pommes' = chips covered in ketchup!

As the clock ticked and it got darker and cooler we slowly made our way home and very happy with the time we spent together.