The cat is back!

Simon's cat is back, with a new movie, a book, and a website! Check here and enjoy!
P. S. And hopefully soon I'll find the time to tell you about all those days that passed since my last blogging...

Saturday pleasures No 2: eating out at the greek

When at Winterfeldtmarket, I often choose some greek snack for lunch. Yesterday, it was for dinner, and very delicious. Some red wine to go with it, since my wine merchant had told me red wine would actually be very healthy for my stomach. Good to know - and it was!

Saturday night in Schöneberg

Everybody is outside, in one of the many cafès, for some dinner or a drink to cool down from the heat of the day. It's still warm outside, great to walk around leisurely, with a break every now and then for a snack.
So when leaving Saturday jazz at Tiergarten, I decided to walk home, and enjoyed the evening turning into night. You can tell the long days are over, the sun sets a lot earlier now than it did in June. But still it's lovely and cosy, and the lights of "La Cocotte" shine with a warm glow onto guests and passers-by.
I woud have loved to stay a bit, to read and to have a glass of pineau de Charentes. But no empty table, so I'll have to postpone this pleasure until tonight.
And now off to a wonderful Sunday in Berlin! :)

Running people and more sports

12th IAAF world championships in athletics started yesterday, and today there's friendly people from all over the world running around Berlin center. Not to win a medal, but to do some sight-seeing.
Like these two from Zimbabwe. They were the first I met when strolling along Tauentzien, but for sure not the last. Nice bunch. Pity I'm so not into sports at all. ;)

20 years ago

1989 - a very important year in the history of Germany when the wall fell and the old GDR as well shortly afterwards.
Berlin is filled with memorials, exhibitions, events to commemorate the so called silent and peaceful revolution of 1989 and 1990 when the German Democratic Republic was transformed and then taken over by the west.
I'm working on a website about these exciting months, and today saw the exhibition at Alexanderplatz. Very nicely done, with the sounds, flyers and feelings of those days.
On Sunday, I'll take a trip by boat to learn some more. So much has changed since then, and sadly not all to the better.

Getting ready for the elections

Berlin streets are plastered with messages and posters whom to elect and why. So is Steglitz where I found this advert for the left wing party "Die Linke".
But oh dear! What a huge mistake they made!
Have a close look on where they put it.

Heavy cycling at the doc's

Heatwave over Berlin, and I'm due to see my doctor for another check-up. They want to make sure my heart is fine, so I had to go and do some heavy stationary cycling to proove my heart is beating steadily all the time.
Which of course it did.
But before being told the nice news that my health is just perfect (at least my heart is), I was sweating and swearing (only silently), giving my best to make it through all the stages of the test. With the most beautiful, sunny, hot, somewhat damp weather outside.
Oh, how I wished I could have swapped with these guys at the fountain!

Sunny weekend with Micha

Lots of sun! Too much to stay downtown, so we chose to go to the lakes, for a boattrip on Wannsee, some walking around Schlachtensee, with a stop or two at one of the famous beergardens. We did all of that, and had some nce breaks underneath the shady trees at Loretta am Wannsee (which will be closed down soon, since the owners of the area want to make more money, so they have to leave after more than 30 years) and Fischerhütte.
The beer is some refreshing weizen without alcohol - way too hot to have alcohol before the evening cool down.
In the evenng, Micha left to Stuttgart. But before, he filled up my fridge and deep freeze with lots of meals to last me a week. Nice guy!

Greetings from Stuttgart

This morning, the bell rang - the postman. He rang twice. ;)
He even came upstairs to bring the mail. What a surprise: Volker had sent me greetings, a beautiful bunch of flowers.
Thank you for helping me with proofreading my thesis, he said. How sweet!
Don't they look ever so lovely!

A man in the house

There's a man in my house, and the bath is fixed, I have home cooked dinner each and every evening - Micha is just great! He's a friend and collegue from my early years in Stuttgart, when we both worked on the small magazine our union IG Druck und Papier published for the Stuttgart members almost 25 years ago.
He came for a week, to have a close look on Berlin after the wall fell (ok, right, that's twenty years ago, but he hasn't been here since), and decided he'd fix my flat and my food. Our evening meals are italian dishes washed down with lots of rosato. Hmmmmmm, delicious!
Pity Micha is only staying until Sunday!

The BUS

When buying special and very expensive food for my dear tomcat Emil today, I saw this bus parked opposite the vet's. So like the bus I used to travel with around Europe in the 70s and 80s!
How I miss those adventures, going where my bus would take me, exploring places I had never even heard of, making friends with people living there, enjoying new ways of life. Sigh.
Will there ever be a time like that again? I truely hope so. There's another bus waiting to take me around. Somewhere. Sometime.

Heat over Berlin

What to do on a hot summer weekend in Berlin? Go to Schlachtensee for a swim. Great idea!
So Seàn and I did this Sunday, took the S 1, walked around the lake surrounded by trees, had some beer at "Fischerhütte" (no hut any more, but a huge beergarden) to cool down, and then plunged into the water to cool down some more. It worked.
But as soon as we stepped into the s-train to get back to Schöneberg, the heat was back. Duh!

Last week in Stuttgart

My niece Cathy and her son Marius came to Baden-Württemberg to spend a week with friends, party at CSD in Stuttgart, and of course visit Anna and Alex in Vaihingen. Looks like they had lots of fun in the city. :)

Saturday pleasures No 1: churros

There's so much I love doing on a Saturday in Berlin. One of them is strolling along Akazien- and Goltzstraße to Winterfeldtmarket, browsing the shops, having a bite at some of the foods, and buying some of those I like best.
Which today was - among lots of other delicacies - churros, shared with Seàn. So nice, and so much like Spain, even though this smiling man was from Peru. Looks like I will have to go again next week to try some more.