Month: August 2013

She still didn’t finish writing about Hamburg.

Let’s get right on that. Day Two.Deciding to get a bit of culture, we headed to the art museum. The building itself was quite artsy, in an almost interpretative way that made it impossible to find the actual entrance.(This is not it:) You know what a snap-happy thing I am. I took quite a lot of photos of the art, but I’ll just show you a few. We were a little silly and posed with the art, which became creepy when I was posing as the girl in the painting above and sticking my bum out, and an old man wanted me to pose again so he could take a photo. We ran away. I think this is Rodin. Toulouse-Lautrec. These below are by Cezanne and Armand Guillaumin. The second copied by the first, and displayed side by side in the museum.  Spot the difference: The owl. A.K.A. the only cool piece of art that Picasso ever made. Ok, I only took a photo of this guy because he looks like he belongs in some sort …

The land of Hamburgers

It’s raining again in Potsdam, which means it’s time to for some reminiscing, holiday-sun-fun style. So let’s rewind a month back, to a magical time when the sun was high in the sky, Andy’s folks were visiting, and we all headed Nor-west to Hamburg. I rode in on the ICE train late Thursday evening, and began my exploration with ‘the Wizza Gang’ (who had been in Hamburg since Wednesday) the next morning. Actually, the Folks decided to head up to Luebeck- the famous home of the Marzipan, while Andy and I got to know the city with another Walking tour. Let’s take a look ’round Hamburg shall we?     I travelled to Hamburg with Lauren and Ashlee back in ’09, but mainly with the purpose of visiting my cousins, and only for a couple of days. I remember walking along the water edge, going to markets, shopping for chocolate, and lots and lots of earmuffed seagulls. But, with the exception of the Nikolai Church, I didn’t remember much about the physical appearance of the city. Let’s …

Potsdamer Schlössernacht

Once a year Sanssouci opens its gates at night, and, surrounded by musicians, actors, and period costumed extras, visitors can explore the beautifully light palaces and glowing gardens. I saw it as a nice excuse to dress up in a new frock (although it turned out that I was the only one not wearing jeans and practical shoes- I still have some assimilating to go). Andy saw it as an excuse to show off his wonderful new moustache: It was a lovely setting. We arrived just after 7pm, and wandered through the paths, occasionally passing a random flautist or violinist, or stumbling upon a gathering watching some sort of German period drama: This fellow was very ‘Let them eat cake’ (French and Saunders comedy on the french revolution- if you haven’t seen it you very much should. Slightly lowbrow, but excessively hilarious). Of course, you probably shouldn’t go if you’re not into ancient palaces silhouetted against swirling skies, or catching the last drops of sunlight. In addition to the Artists and their art, the gardens …

Copenhagen IV

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 …

Copenhagen III

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… Our plans for the day were somewhat grand- we were taking a train to the north, where we would visit Hamlet’s Castle at Helsingor. Then we would ride across the ‘sea’ to Sweden, have a look around, travel back down the Swedish coast and train across the Swedish-Danish bridge. Coming from Australia, where our borders are pretty well defined, I found the whole ‘ferry to another country’ rather amusing. But …