Berlin

Last week I met up with Linda in Berlin where she was at a conference for work.

Even though I was only there with Linda for a few days, and it was anyway quite busy during that time, we managed to see quite a large part of Berlin although I'm sure its the sort of city where you could live for years and still be discovering new things.

We saw most of the major sites starting, of course, by walking up Unter den Linden towards the Brandenburg gate.

Then we walked along the line of the old Berlin Wall towards the parliamentary area where we went onto the roof and into the dome of the Reichstag.

The dome is really impressive on the inside and puts an interestingly modern cap on the historic Reichstag building.

We also made sure to sample the local cuisine, such as the currywurst (not terribly impressive) as well as the famous Berliner jam-filled donut (which I was unable to find an optimal sample of). Aside from this the food was actually very good and surprisingly cheap. Even the coffee was unexpectedly good, and the large Turkish community meant we had a delicious Turkish dinner one night.

In Berlin you can't escape the history of WWII, and we did visit the Holocaust memorial which was as sobering as you expect, and we also visited the checkpoint charlie museum which was meant to have uplifting escape stories but again just made us quite depressed.

We didn't to go Berlin to be reminded of these difficult times, however, and we spent most of our time visiting more uplifting sights and museums.

We visited the ultra-modern Potsdamerplatz area, where large glass-fronted buildings and open squares have been constructed over what was a void between East and West Berlin.

 

We also went to the "museum island", where we visited the Pergamonmuseum and Neues Museum and saw some amazing antiquities from Egypt and Babylon.

And we went to the DDR museum, which is a more lighthearted look at life in Eastern Germany, including a Trabant, and a replica apartment from the time. This was actually quite interesting and fun, and even managed to illustrate some of the positive aspects of living in a socialist country that we don't often hear about.

We went up the TV tower to see the view (not that amazing and a pricey to go up), and went to the zoo where Linda happily watched the Bonobos for quite some time, as well as the big (and not so big) cats, and we were impressed by the nocternal display where bush babies bounced around the rooms.

We also tried to see the famous Knut but apparently he's been misbehaving lately.

While in Berlin we managed to share a beer in "the oldest beer garden in Berlin" with Stefan, a friend of Linda's from University.

And finally visited the flee markets at Tiergarten.

We had a really good time in Berlin. As usual we were surprised how much we enjoy countries in ways that we don't expect and I think we found Berlin a more relaxed and friendly city than we previously imagined (and of course being there during the Football World Cup while Germany is performing well probably didn't hurt!).

Hiking to the top of La Dole

This weekend I woke up on Sunday with hope that it would be a nice clear day after several days of cold and rain. I walked out the door in shorts and a t-shirt but quickly put on a fleece by the time I was on the train and my rain jacket once I got to La Givrine, which is just past Saint Cergue and the start of my hike.

I had an espresso and croisant at the restaurant there (it's a mistake to let me go too long without coffee) and then headed off.

I soon began to wonder if I'd underestimated the conditions, since it was by now quite cold and rainy - I seemed to be the only one out walking and even the cows were looking at me like I was crazy.

Regardless, I continued towards Cuvaloup but got a bit lost when I missed the turn-off which would have taken me up the mountain, and I spent a bit of time in the 'wilderness' under the ski lifts before getting back on track.

Then, as I was puffing my way up towards the peak, a woman actually ran past me up the mountain, and a bit further on a guy ran past me going down! I saw more people running up the mountain during my hike, as well as a group of unhappy cyclists carrying their mountain bikes up on their shoulders.

It was really cold and windy at the top and I swear there was flecks of ice amongst the rain.

On the way back down the rain and clouds cleared a bit and I stopped at a mountain restaurant for an assiette de viande seche and to warm up before continuing my hike down the mountain.

As usual when hiking, I took far less photos on the way down. I did take a lot of photos of cows but the clouds meant I couldn't take any panoramic pictures of the mountains.

I did, however, take a few movies with my camera. This was quite fun but the work involved in turning it into something I can put on the web means I probably won't do it too often. It's too big to embed on the blog, but you can find it here.

Tomorrow I plan to have another go at hiking in the Jura and I bought myself some Komperdell hiking sticks today so I can blend in with the Swiss, with whom they seem to be mandatory!

Bathing and Hiking

Well Summer is officially here and we've been trying to get out into the sunshine over the last few weeks. However apart from a splash of sun early on we've had lots of grey weather recently.

It started out at Ovronnaz in Valais, where we spent a very relaxing couple of days in the natural hot spring baths and lying in the sun (Linda lay in the sun, I lay in the shade. We both got sunburnt).

We also had massages which pretty much put an end to our plans to do some hiking in the surrounding mountains because we were just too relaxed! I guess we should have done it in the reverse order.

We did, however, drive the car up a mountain road and wandered around a bit in the beautiful fresh growth forest and crisp mountain air.

The following weekend we had a bit of a wander around the Jura above Nyon where the flowers were all out.

And somewhere along the way we nipped across the lake to Yvoire in France where we checked out the gardens.

Then we had a weekend at Chateau D'Oex where we were meant to be going ballooning, but apparently a breath of a breeze was enough for it to be cancelled so we had a rather more quiet weekend driving around the Bernese Oberland and doing some hiking in the mountains.

This was quite a frustrating weekend because we'd taken a day off work to do the flight and instead we had rainy days and Linda even got caught with some urgent work. We did however manage to see some cool waterfalls and lakes, and we visited Les Diablerets which is one of our favourite places in Switzerland.