We’d both finished sleeping yesterday by 4:00 am: one of the problems of long days and thin curtains, I suppose.  We had guests coming for lunch, so we were well ahead of the game, with the vegetables prepared and a bit of tidying done in the garden by 8:00.

Meanwhile, as we were abandoning the idea of further sleep, over in Hampshire, my nephew Rick was probably just getting to sleep: his and Anna’s son Thomas James arrived yesterday – Fathers’ Day – at 02:00.  I had an ecstatic grandfather on the phone at around midday with the news: the parents had decided not to publish until they’d both had a rest.  All are well, we hear: we’ll hop over and see them at the weekend.

The guests arrived a little early: I was just getting into a clean shirt when I heard car doors closing outside.  Dorothy, aged a few days short of 90, was present and correct only 5 days after 3 hours of surgery to clear a blocked carotid artery.  She still had a big dressing on her neck, and some pretty impressive bruises.  Marion and John (Dorothy's daughter and son-in-law) and their friend Derry made up the six round the table.  We had a lovely afternoon together, and had the dining room and conservatory doors open for much of the time.  We’d got a leg of lamb from the local butcher, and as usual were not disappointed.  Martyn had made one of his celebrated puddings – a strawberry flan – yum!  John is a goldsmith, so I’d asked him to bring his tools with him: I have been unable to wear rings for some time, knuckles having grown a bit in recent years.  So, I’m measured up and John has gone off with the rings and a bit of Brazilian gold that I was given in 1979.  All the chaps at the conference got little gold key chains as a gift from the host government: a generous but rather impractical gift - until now: the colour is similar to that of one of the rings, so it will come in handy at last. 

The behaviour of our ducks has changed: I’m not altogether sorry: when they were spending hours on end in the garden the place was starting to get rather messy.  They are both still dropping in for meals, but rarely together, and only for very brief visits (eats, shits and leaves).  Both have been here this morning, but separately and briefly.  We’re starting to see quite a few juvenile blue tits feeding themselves too – the chicks from the nesting box over the kitchen door seem to have fledged now.  Must remember to get it down in  the autumn and clean it properly.  We have a family of blackbirds nearby – the five or so chicks are starting to feed themselves, though they’re still content to be waited on by a rather exhausted looking father! 

Nicer business today: once the washing was out, we headed out with a couple of family heirlooms in the boot.  Bonham’s were doing a valuation day at a nearby National Trust property, so we thought we’d see if we could get a view.  With one piece we got the advice and valuation we were expecting, plus an opinion on likely origins and materials but with the other, the auctioneer took a picture to send off to an Edinburgh colleague who was likely to have seen more by the same artist.  So we wait.  No question of parting with the picture in question, but we ought to know if on some remote off-chance we ought to identify it to our insurers. 

Nice surprise: as we shuffled along the benches waiting our turn and enjoying the lovely sunshine, a colleague from the the hobby that dare not speak its name hove into view with his wife.  Turned out that they were waiting to be joined by another of our colleagues and her husband.  She's from the same litter as me, as it were, having started with me in 2004.  She’s also the chair of governors at the college where Martyn taught.  I’m more and more convinced that these coincidences multiply with the advancing years.  Oh, and Martyn had met the valuer before.

The rain has held off so far, which is a great relief after so many diluvian days.  The pond is still high, and the grass is back to its winter state (quagmire), only it's growing like it's summer.  The mower is in dock, so we're battling on with the old mains electric job.  Not a problem - we wouldn't be able to cut the grass for a week or so anyway: just hope we can get it hacked down before we head up to our summer pastures.

Another small triumph for Bodgitt & Scarper

We hate DIY.  But we still baulk at the idea of GSI (Getting Someone In) just to put up a new light fitting.  We fitted a circular fluorescent light in the kitchen soon after we moved here, replacing a rather fantouche swivelling multiple spotlight thing that used five 100-watt reflector bulbs - and burned them out at a mighty rate of knots.  They were uncomfortably hot as well when one's unencumbered scalp was anywhere near them.  When we replaced the halogen bulbs with fluorescent 'equivalents', we were virtually left groping in the dark round the kitchen, so feeble were they.  One of our regular freecycle takers took it off our hands.  Well, the circular fluorescent was scarcely better, so when the tube failed, we decided to bite the bullet and put in a good old-fashioned twin strip light.  Much cursing and aching arms later, it is not unadjacent to the ceiling, and by some miracle, it covers the old holes - just.  But the quality is rather depressing: the steel is so thin that any self-respecting baked bean would turn its nose up at it.  And the plastic diffuser cracks as soon as you look at it.  But it's up, and it works, and it will give as much light as the original fitting for a seventh of the power.

Dentist visit on Wednesday: no excitements, fortunately.  He reduced my net worth in some degree by shaving a bit off a gold crown that had developed an edge.

Lots of heavy rain this week, so the garden is looking healthy if a bit battered.  Roses are coming into bloom, as are the little helianthemums.  The oriental poppies have taken a battering from the rain, and quite a lot of iris sibirica spikes were blown down.  The ill wind made for some components of a little posy to take with us on Friday's dinner date, however: a very enjoyable evening with Sandra and Michael.  Today we've planted nicotiana and the few rudbeckia we've raised from seed, and hauled out a few miles of brambles.

As I type, I'm being harangued by a wren and a chiff-chaff.  We see the wren scurrying round the garden now and then, but I can never pinpoint the chiff-chaff while it's singing, other than by sound.  I occasionally see it flitting away to its next song post.  We're providing food for blackbird and blue tit chicks: we have one family of the latter in the nesting box over the kitchen door, and the parents are busy flitting back and forth to the feeders.  There's another family in the conifer at the front (guess we'd better put up another nest box when we finally get the tree cut down), and we think there's another lot in the hedge at the back.  Of the ducks, no sign today, but I dare say they'll show up when they're hungry.

Back to rain.  So the pond is looking fuller, and so would the big water butt if I'd remembered to close the tap after cleaning it out.  But while HM was getting thoroughly rained on on the Thames, we were in sunshine near Brighton.  Barbara treated us to a pub lunch - at the third attempt, choices 1 and 2 being full - and at all of them people were sitting outside swigging pints of beer.  (We sat inside and sipped Chilean merlot...)  We left home in drizzle/heavy showers, and drove back into dull, grey and damp, and it appears to have been raining all night.  Oh well, good enough - it's washing some of the duck shit off the terrace and the grass, and  gardening is off the agenda for a day or two.  So, some of the much delayed filing has finally been done, and I shall do some baking today to replenish freezer stocks.  But trust the kitchen ceiling light to pack up on a bank holiday weekend!  We have a sort of flying saucer contraption that looks quite smart, but is really not up to the job, so shall revert to an old-fashioned strip light.  When the electrical wholesalers re-open.  What do you bet this'll mean re-painting the ceiling?

The mallards are still spending long spells in the garden, so I guess she can't have started laying - this is pretty late.  The way she has been poking about under the bushes suggests that she still hasn't settled on a nest site.  I can't think that our garden is a lot of use: we have too many foxes, and I gather that grass snakes are partial to eggs.  Magpies are another threat.  But the same is true anywhere around here, I guess.

The longish drive to find a decent pub yesterday meant that the warning light came on during the drive home, and I had to fill the tank a day or two sooner than planned.  £82.10.  We are starting to save up errands so as to make multi-purpose journeys.  I always try to book dental appointments on days when I'm due in court, for example, since both are in the same town.  Similarly, bottles get taken for recycling when we have to go to the nearby bird seed and/or fish & chip shop - though arguably, the latter excursions could be done on foot!

What a tonic it is to have a spell of decent weather.  It has stayed fine for the six days since we got home, and the grass is at last dry enough to walk on and to cut properly: it looks better than it is, actually: it is full of lumps and dips.  Martyn has put in several strenuous hours of weeding and edging, to which I've contributed a little, mainly with the lawn mower.  Between us, we've got it looking something approaching presentable.

I plan to plant out a few more seedlings today.  The few aquilegias I planted last year from a packet of bought seed are starting to flower with big, long-spurred blooms.  I hope they'll be as vigorous as their less spectacular neighbours.  We shall be very short of rudbeckias this year - germination from saved seed has been poor or non-existent, and the snails have been at them in the cold frame.  Cosmos seeds have done well, and a half-dozen are already planted out.  Dwarf nicotiana (bought) and antirrhinum (saved) also look promising. The orange oriental poppies started to show colour for the first time yesterday, so we're looking forward to seeing them in bloom.  I have potted up a handful of the seedlings of Immy and Jonathan's crimson one, and hope they'll come true to colour.

The art group met here for a change yesterday, since we had a project to debrief.  My colleagues and I were given the very broad topic of flowers, and the range of output was impressive.  We next bend our

minds to the latest topic - bird's eye view.  I have a 'here's one I prepared earlier' on the wall - the view of Lake Geneva from the Rochers de Naye, but suppose I'd better knock out something new.  Unusually, the female mallard (Doris Duck...) was here on her own yesterday.  She came crashing noisily in while the art crowd was here, much to their delight.  She was unusually vocal, calling for her mate (Arthur Mallard...), who systematically ignored her for five hours.  Later in the afternoon he started returning her calls, and soon afterwards came thumping in.  Their take-offs are short and powerful, but their landings are awful!  They stayed quite a while, and have been back for half an hour this morning.  Must take a stroll up to the pond to see whether that's where they spend the rest of the time.

Since Martyn first spotted Miniatur Wunderland on YouTube, we’ve been promising ourselves a trip to go and see it. It is an enormous model layout in Hamburg’s Warehouse City, largely dedicated to railways, but with aviation and shipping sections as well. He subsequently found that there’s a similar one in Berlin, a city I have been wanting to visit since a couple of quick trips during my short spell in Munich. 

So, after a bit of surfing for reasonably priced flights and a lot more to find places to stay and eat and things to see and do, we set off on Tuesday at an unspeakably early hour. We’d thought we’d be on one of the last few hundred flights into Schönefeld, since it was scheduled to close on 3 June to make way for the adjacent new airport, which uses the remaining Schönefeld runway, but not the DDR-era airport buildings. The current scandal is that the opening has had to be delayed by some 10 months because of safety concerns. The project management company has been sacked, as has the planning director. (Quite a week for sackings: Chancellor Merkel has sacked her campaign manager following a serious drubbing for the CDU-CSU alliance in the regional elections in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Her hold on power suddenly looks a bit shaky, particularly when sentiment, following French and Greek elections, seems to be moving from austerity to a more Keynesian approach.)

We were at the reception office for our apartment in Berlin soon after 10:30, having driven to Gatwick, done the flight, queued for our 3-day passes at Schönefeld, ambled into the Hauptbahnhof on a leisurely regional train and caught the one-train shuttle line from the Hbf to the Brandenburger Tor. It was just a few minutes’ walk to the flats, where to our great relief, our flat was ready, even though check-in is from 15:00 onwards: the reception staff were friendly and helpful, and highly indulgent of my shaky German: bad marks go to those who sigh deeply and shift to English: good marks here. To my surprise, it wasn’t just the block where the office is, but a whole stretch of apartment buildings snaking its way down two blocks of the Wilhelmstrasse, part long-term and part short-term lets, or so it appeared. Our flat was a pleasant surprise. I’d seen a few photographs taken by short-term tenants, and it all looked OK but basic: old-fashioned kitchens with cast iron hotplate cookers. Well, ours was spacious, modern and well equipped: the pots, pans, crockery and linen were old friends from IKEA. Oddly, for a city centre development, there was a big car park to the west of the blocks. An explanation emerged only after we got home– see later.

There was a supermarket nearby where we stocked up on essentials – and where I was nearly separated from my Visa debit card. While fumbling with the back pack and the wallet, I must have dropped my card. A helpful assistant caught us at the bakers, enquiring ‘sind Sie der Herr David Smith?’. ‘Der bin ich’, and he handed me the card. Phew. We sat back for an hour or so in our luxurious surroundings before venturing out again. One of the best free sightseeing tours of Berlin is the N°200 service bus, which also takes one to the Embassy of the Nordic countries, where the canteen is open to the public outside the hours of 11:30 to 13:00. We had a simple, wholesome lunch for €5 per man, then hopped back on the bus to Alexanderplatz, since it’s near there that one finds the Berlin model railway thing, Loxx. It’s stuck on the top of a big shopping mall, so were it not for the S-Bahn and ICE trains passing by outside, one might be anywhere in the world. The layout is pretty extensive, and Martyn was wondering how they got to the trains when they went wrong. Soon to be answered when a section of landscape popped up, followed by the head and shoulders of an employee who proceeded to sort out some misbehaving trains, popping up again a bit later from another trap. Impressive stuff. Good detail, nice reproductions of some of the Berlin stations such as Friedrichstrasse, which figures so prominently in the history of the divided Berlin. In view of the early start (we were up at 03:30), we decided to eat in the apartment and have an early night.

Much of the fascination of Berlin for me is the history of the four-power occupation of the city that lasted from before I was born until I was 40, punctuated with the airlift and the seclusion of West Berlin after the DDR found that its best talents were haemorrhaging to the west. So it was a pain to get to the Allies Museum to find that it closes on Wednesdays. Well it’s an ill wind: we wanted to go to the nearby Potsdam anyway, and on getting the bus back to the station in Zehlendorf, I spotted a Vodafone shop, where the boss didn’t mind giving me a driving lesson on my new phone – I hadn’t managed to work out how to get connected to the internet. (I think one answer is ‘ruinously’, but at least I could deal with a couple of urgent emails while I was out and about.)

Potsdam is a delight, before sampling which we took the tram up to the Glienicker Brücke, famous for its exchanges of spies during the cold war. We did the walk walked by Gary Powers, sometime U2 pilot, and Greville Wynne, dapper Humber Super Snipe driving import-export broker (spy to you and me) and numerous other denizens of the world’s second-oldest profession. It was suitably grey and threatening rain when we were there, which added to the atmosphere. Having crossed the bridge from the old East Germany into the outer limits of Berlin, we looked for a bus back to Potsdam. In a curious hangover from the cold war, the Potsdam tram stops on the old DDR side of the bridge, and the bus from Spandau (in the old British sector) loops round and heads back without crossing. There is a night bus that actually crosses the bridge, but no day-time service. The earlier Glienicke bridge was destroyed during the war, and replaced in 1949 by the DDR with the ironically named Unity Bridge, which came to symbolize the obsessive separation of the two German nations.

Glienicker Brücke

When the tram back into Potsdam was invaded by noisy primary school kids, we decamped and walked the rest of the way into town, striding the length of the Brandenburger Strasse to the gate of that name (not to be confused with the one at the top of Unter den Linden). Lunch in Café Babette, of a curious Norsky/Helvetic dish of gravad lax with rösti. Tasty and copious, and not a good idea given the evening’s dinner plans. We did the circuit of the Sanssouci park by tram, buses and hind legs, and liked it. We’re neither of us great visitors of stately homes, and in any case much of the infrastructure now houses the University of Potsdam. We hacked back home on S- and U-Bahn trains (the main line service is suspended at the moment for great works on the infrastucture). Mental note: do not change from the S-Bahn to the U-Bahn at the Zoo station – it’s complex and confusing, and not a good idea when you’re already getting footsore.

Footsore and altogether, we walked from the flat to the site of Checkpoint Charlie, and thence to the Hallescher Tor to get the train out to Neukölln for dinner. Martyn being a great fan of the Wiener Schnitzel, a place I’d found on the web seemed appropriate. Café Louis in the Richardplatz prides itself on serving the capital’s biggest schnitzels. Gawd. They’re the size of tennis racquets. We ploughed through about a third of a hyper-schnitzel per man, whereupon tin foil and carrier bags arrived unbidden. We’ll restrict ourselves to the small serving next time – someone at the next table who’d ordered one such also left with tin foil and plastic bag accessories.

Berlin's biggest schnitzels

On Thursday we started with a walk up to the Reichstag. But not before a visit to the monument to the homosexual victims of the Nazi regime. Standing across the road from the whole-block monument to the murdered jews of Europe, it is a restrained and stark monument, reminding the world that the persecution and mass murder of homosexuals was not acknowledged in Germany until many decades after the events. It is understandable that such a group should be overshadowed by the holocaust, and it’s also right that it should be commemorated in such a restrained and dignified way. It was vandalised soon after it was built in 2008, but has been repaired. But we got a disapproving look from a tall, blond-haired runner as we left the monument.

Monument to homosexuals murdered by the Nazis

The Reichstag tour is a must. Norman Foster has worked wonders to restore the dignity of the old shell of the Reichstag and turn it into a building suitable for the federal parliament. We saw the debating chamber from the lobby, from the visitors’ gallery, from the upper floors and from the roof, and heard all about the technology involved in heating and ventilating the chamber. Our guide was a superficially austere but dryly witty fellow, and we learned vast amounts not only about the building and its history, but also about the electoral system and the current preoccupations of Bundeskanzlerin Merkel (aka ‘Mutti’), who appears to be riding for a precipitous fall.

Martyn on the Reichstag roof

Thence to the Museum of Technology: a shade disappointing, I felt, though the coverage of WW2 was pretty frank: a number of mock-ups of V-weapons were on display, together with a Heinkel He-162 jet fighter, designed and built largely of plywood late in the war when strategic materials were scarce. There was a fine selection of old railway rolling stock, in two half-moon roundhouses.

Lunch at the flat – Round 2 of the schnitzels, as open sandwiches on toasted baguette (yesterday’s), followed by a siesta. This was Ascension Day, when German males are somehow licensed to go out and get wrecked with their mates. Wherever we went, blokes were staggering about, clutching beer bottles and behaving like British football supporters. It might not therefore have been so smart to head out to Köpenick, an attractive and historic town in the old East. The tram ride to Köpenick was instructive. Though much of the area has been prettified, there’s no mistaking the vast Soviet era apartment blocks (rather like Alexander Street in Dundee’s Hilltown, I should add). There were large areas of abandoned industrial land, and a lot of vandalized factory buildings at the roadside. The last couple of kms into Köpenick were flanked by grim four-storey blocks The museum was closing as we arrived, and pleasant though the stroll round the cobbled streets was, it was spoiled by the bellowing of drunks as they were kicked out of various Kneipen to be poured into taxis or piss on walls. Shame, since Köpenick is a pleasant town with a good waterfront and history both entertaining and grim. But we were glad to see that the S-Bahn was running, contrary to announcements, even if it meant changing at the drunk-infested Ostkreuz and Alexanderplatz, negotiating a path through the broken beer bottles. In the circumstances, we opted to eat at home– guess what: schnitzel leftovers.

Last morning in Berlin, first afternoon in Hamburg. We strolled up to the Hbf after breakfast, enjoying views from the waterside path along the Spree. On arriving at the station, I spotted a Deutsche Bahn Lounge, and went to check the entry requirements. We qualified, so could sit comfortably for an hour with complimentary tea and croissants, and a loan of the FT. The train, which I’d expected to be a DB flagship ICE high-speed electric train, turned out to be a diesel multiple unit, loosely badged ICE, but it got us to Hamburg in acceptable comfort, despite complete confusion over where to find our carriage and whether we were booked: well, we were firmly planted before the double-booked passengers arrived, so we sent them off in search of the conductor, who found them some seats, I think. (Martyn later discovered that they use diesels on the Hamburg to Copenhagen route to take advantage of lower Danish diesel prices, and that the trains are loaded on to a ferry for part of the journey.) We lunched on sandwiches of leftover chicken and – yes – schnitzel, and were in Hamburg before we noticed it, travelling in an odd little four-seat cubicle that blocked our view but failed to block out the grizzlings of the sprog next door. Easy connexion to the appropriate S-Bahn to the hotel, though we learned later that the bus would have saved some blisters. The hotel was disappointing: the receptionist was somewhat lacking in warmth, and the room, if adequate was pretty basic. It included a fancy tassimo machine that would only deliver beverages from the cassettes provided: there was no hot water option. Let the record show that your obedient non-coffee-drinking servant does not like plastic mint tea either. Didn’t help that, when reporting this to reception, I was referred to the barman, who referred me back to reception so I started my stay with a strop, I’m afraid. A little rest later, we hopped on a bus to the ferry piers, whence it was a hop in the U-Bahn and a short walk to Miniatur Wunderland. Schools seemed to be out, bridging from the Ascension Day holiday to the weekend, so the place was teeming with children who, like us big kids, were spellbound by the layout, the model buildings, the trains and the wealth of detail. It is laid out on geographical themes: there are German bits, based on Hamburg and including a faithful and functioning model of the airport; a mountainous Swiss section spread over two floors, complete with spiral tunnels, dizzying viaducts, cable cars, cows and even that most Swiss of experiences, a motorway traffic jam. The Scandinavian bit includes a tidal fjord complete with a remote-controlled ferry, and the American bit has large dollops of Las Vegas, plus a seemingly endless coal train. The Italian section was not yet open, and Britain and France are to feature later. Perhaps the most charming part both of Loxx and Miniatur Wunderland is the transition from day to night and back again: Loxx even features rather realistic thunder and lightning effects, though I’m glad to report that the torrential rain is audio-only. We struggled to tear ourselves away, I have to say.

Dinner in a retro Bavarian style beer hall, Paulaners Miraculum, attached to a big hotel by the main railway station. Good, brisk service, and a copious mixed grill per man, served with chips, a mixed salad and herb butter, and followed by Strudel for him and rote Grütze for me. If we go to Germany again, we’ll have to plan our eating a bit more carefully – I think my weight is at a record high, but the precise figures shall remain a state secret until I can express them in terms of kilos lost.

Who needs a Hafenrundfahrt? Our package included a three-day public transport ticket that allowed us to use ferries as well as buses and trains. We took a ride up the Elbe to Finkenwerder (not quite as far as the Airbus factory – next time perhaps). We’d thought of taking a connecting ferry across the river to connect with a bus to an S-Bahn station, but opted instead to stay aboard and complete the round trip. It took us in as far as Sandtorhöft, giving us a close view of HMS Ocean, a helicopter and landing craft carrier that had been visiting Hamburg for its ‘harbour birthday’ celebrations. We hobbled (I had a fine blister by this point) from the ferry pier back to the U-Bahn and on to the Rathaus, thence to the Alster arcade and the waterfront of the inner Alster. Finally back to the station to collect our bags and, I’d hoped, a copy of the Süddeutscher Zeitung, which a couple of girls were dishing out free. A condition was that you gave your address so they could canvass you for a subscription. ‘Ah, I don’t live in Germany.’ ‘Then I can’t give you a free paper, then’. Great marketing, eh?

David at the Hamburg Rathaus

The airport is unrecognizable from my last visit there in 1984 – but I guess that can be said of any airport, with the possible exception of the Soviet-era Schönefeld. Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel is now a super-modern, airy cathedral of a place, and quite a pleasant one in which to while away an hour or so with a salad from the buffet and watching the traffic. Unlike most over-cautious British airports, it has a big viewing terrace, and large indoor areas with views across the field. Less welcome was the very long walk to our boarding gate. One of the down-sides of using so much public transport is the prevalence of anti-social sprogs. We had a marathon sniveller on the train from Berlin, a yelling one on the S-Bahn to the airport and an ear-splitting screamer on the plane – she didn’t want to be strapped in for the landing, and wanted the other 150 passengers and crew to be in no doubt of the fact. It didn’t help that doting Mama had put her in the window seat, making it harder to get hold of her, hence prolonging the assault on the eardrums. We were decanted at the most remote point at Gatwick’s north terminal, which meant that your obedient but footsore servant had to negotiate miles of corridor and the bridge, plus a fair bit of the south terminal to get to the car park bus. I admit to getting off the bus and sending Martyn to fetch the car!

Back at the ranch, all was in order, and the ducks were in residence, if barely visible through the long grass. The good news is that the ground is finally beginning to dry out, so I managed to get the grass cut yesterday. The motor mower is still sulking, so I had to make with the old electric job – which I have to admit is easier to use round the edges. The grass, being so long, was pretty wet, so the mower kept clogging up, and it left a lot of cuttings behind. The job took the best part of two hours, compared with half an hour with the motor mower, and it’ll need revisiting in a day or two’s time, dammit. Otherwise, the garden is coming along nicely. The aquilegias are in full bloom, and the potentillas have started flowering. There are lots of buds on the oriental poppies, and lots of bugs on the surviving lupin, which will find its way to the recycling bin today at some point. The aquilegias, nicotianas and oriental poppy seedlings I pricked out before we went away seem to be doing quite well, and I’ve moved the tomatoes outside. I’m not sure how well they’ll take to the exposure, but we were getting fed up with the cats’ piss smell they give off, and of the clouds of fruit flies they seem to attract. One of the plants has set fruit already, so I hope they’ll ripen. They’re the ‘Sweet Olive’ variety – close to £7 for eight seeds - so the cost will probably comfortably exceed that of a year’s supply of the same from Lidl. But as one of the airlines used to say in happier times, getting there is half the fun.

Site of the Führerbunker

Since we got back, we’ve made a couple of interesting discoveries.  One is that the train we were on from Berlin to Hamburg will have completed its journey to Copenhagen via the Fehmarn belt ferry.  The other discovery has to do with the car park behind our flat at 90 Wilhelmstrasse.  Every so often, guided groups of people would stop while the guide addressed them for a few minutes.  There was a signboard facing away from the flats, and I did mean to go and see what it said, but forgot.  At one point yesterday, there was a sharp ‘aha!’ from behind the laptop opposite mine, Martyn having discovered that we had looked out on the site of Hitler’s bunker. 

Like the Roman geese, our part-time pet ducks raised the alarm the other morning when the heron landed by the pond, and my opening the curtain to see what was going on was enough to scare it off for a moment or two.  So an honorable mention to the gallant watchducks, and a photo.

We had a good lunch here yesterday with a former colleague, Martin Sharp, and his wife Kath.  It must be 20 years since we'd seen each other - longer still in Kath's case - but we chatted away happily for the best part of five hours while the rain came and went.  The garden looks OK from behind glass, but I do wish we could get out and walk on it - the photo above shows how badly the grass is in need of a cut.

While the weather has prevented gardening, I've been poking about for things to see and places to go (and eat) in Berlin and Hamburg next week.  I think we can just about survive on Wiener Schnitzel and Currywurst, but the potato salad may be a bit hard to take.