Berlin

Some of my photos from Berlin...more to come. Or for those of you on Facebook (I love the ever-growing Poppink connection!), I have half the album up there. The rest to come when I get them from Wickus' camera. We had an amazing, Christmas market-filled weekend, that went by way too fast.

I've been bored silly today as I've been home with a sinus infection (the result of my head cold from last week), so I've been entertaining myself online-- last minute Christmas shopping, Berlin pictures, etc

Salz-dillgurken

My first decent dill pickle since moving to the UK

My favorite photo I think

Hee hee. I think that's an "I'm frickin cold" face, despite the outdoor heat lamp in the upper right corner of the picture. I say that's what he gets for drinking cold beer instead of steaming hot gluhwein like me! And boy, did I drink gluhwein on Saturday ;-)

A tired, but happy clubber, in the wee hours of Saturday/Sunday at Maxims!

A preserved piece of the infamous wall

Checkpoint Charlie

Our tour guide on Sunday was an American named Steve from Montclair, NJ, who has lived in Berlin for the past 30 years, so from before the wall came down. He used to use this American checkpoint at the wall to come and go from the two parts of the city.

Entrance to one of the many Christmas markets all over the city

A bit of history

Behind the seasonal ice skating rink is a memorial to the infamous Hitler book burning in Berlin...through a glass covering, you can see some books in a hole in the ground where the book burning took place.

Siegessaule

A Victory Column to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, and Franco-Prussian War. I love the way the surrounding sky looks...

Reichstag

Where the Bundestag, or Parliament for a reunited Germany, is located.

Chriskindlmarkt

A church just down the street from our hotel. It was bombed during WWII, which certainly gives it a lot of character! You can see the tops of some of the Christmas market stalls around it.

Everybody's waitin' for the man with the bag...

So it's only 19 days till Christmas now, and it's a mixed bag of things I have to report. I've come down with a cold--lovely--we take off for Berlin tomorrow and I've got a cold. I can't win, I wasn't well when we went to Amsterdam either!! And no rest for the weary, I have a friend I have to go out and meet in Wimbledon tonight (more than an hour's travel just to get over to that side of the city, and then again to get back) because she is leaving the country for good while I am gone this weekend.

But I'm still excited anyway. I've never been to Berlin before, although my family has done quite a bit of traveling in Bavaria. I can't wait to check out the Chriskindlmarkts, and we plan to check out the nightlife as well (read clubs!). And hopefully for my sake, a little history as well, maybe a walking tour.

For the upcoming Johnson Family Christmas, I think I've finished booking and confirming things. These include a Panto, a West End show, a lovely traditional turkey roast dinner for Christmas Eve, and something else I can't write here because it's a surprise for my parents and they do stop by and read this from time to time. Oh yes, and a big dinner with my family plus friends and housemates and significant others, so that my family can finally meet all the people I've been talking about. Then we'll spend New Years week in Italy at Jenn's parents' farmhouse--sounds like it will be a big family thing for New Years Eve, I can't wait! Last time I was there when Rita gathered all her family together it was as Italian as it gets. Good food, great wine and prosecco and grappa and limoncello, and lots of loud conversation with people talking all over each other. Love it. Tressa has apparently been promised to help out with the sausage making, so hopefully we'll do that too.