Thursday - Fried rice

Peter and Philip go to Bregninge for bread and yummy Danish pastry Te-birkes (tay beer erkis). Kwan has lovely fresh yellow cherries juice made by Peter from the cherry trees in the garden.

Kwan and Philip decides to cook dinner and we drive to the nearest biggest town Nykobing (1/2 hour drive) to find ingredients. On our way back we stop at the local egg farmer to get the freshly laid eggs.

Sunbathe in the afternoon – a little windy. Peter invents insect protection for Kwan. Philip cooks his famous Thai dish, garlic chicken with lots of garlic, of course, and coriander and Kwan makes the easy fried rice. Peter and Pia make Kwan’s favorite German potato salad. Rhubarb tart for dessert.

After dinner, a recap of Peter and Pia’s trip down under on the video and we have so much fun.

Wed - Skjoltrup on Falster

Pack up for Denmark. We depart at 12.30 pm and arrive at Puttgarden to catch the 1.15 pm car ferry. We have quick lunch on board and arrive 40 minutes later at Roedby in the Danish island of Lolland. No customs, immigration or other formality, we just drive off the ferry and continue our journey. Another 1 hour and we arrive at their home in Skjoltrup on the island of Falster. The Danish queen has a country house in the area which she might visit once a year. .

Pia and Peter’s summer house is a lovely 200 year old thatched roof cottage with very small doors throughout – bumped heads no matter how careful you are. Philip and Kwan have a few casualties.

Kwan is not impressed to hear that there are mice around in the roof and walls and of course all the humming bees in the garden stimulate much animation.

We take in the sun in the beautiful garden surrounded by flowering cherry and plum trees. Kwan works the Sudoku and Philip reads. We walk in and through the nearby forest to the beach. This is the Baltic sea and Peter tells us it will not worm up for another couple of months.

Peter makes a yummy dinner, Danish hamburger meat and white fish, Plaice, which he has got from a local fisherman. Dessert – a special Danish soft jelly, Roedgroed. Early rest.

May Day in Hamburg

We go for a 3 km walk in the park near Pia’s home which is absolutely beautiful with ponds, marsh, woods, lots of green.

Late lunch with beef goulash and pasta made by Peter. Head for Kirsten (Pia and Peter’s daughter) and Martin’s house in Hamburg at 3 pm. 1 ½ hour from Bad Schwarthu and enroute to do a little sightseeing around Hamburg.

We go for a walk around the area and see the beautiful lake with sailboats and rowing boats, peddlers etc. Hamburg on this sunny day is very agreeable and much nicer than we had expected. BBQ dinner on the second level balcony. Say goodbye to Romy and Victor (2 kids) around 8.30 pm and head home to Bad Schwarthu.

Schiffergesellschaft

Breakfast in Northern Germany looks familiar. We have chopping boards for the bread and a selection of hams, herring and liver; variety is achieved with some cheeses, butter of various fat percentages, jams and a soft boiled egg, and of course there is some mango baked cheese cake available.

We do a self-guided tour in Lubeck in the morning. Very interesting architecture and lots of churches (10 at least) in such a small town. We are told later that it is because people go to different church according to their status or profession.

Lubeck is a seafaring town with an active shipping industry to this day. It is from here that Peter Kaminsky

sailed his ship to Finland 3 times a week carrying over 2 kilometres of cars and trucks as well as approx 300 passengers. The journey would take 36 hours and they would have a 9 hour turnaround in Finland.

Lubeck is surrounded by water which provided natural fortification in older times. It suffered massive devastation by allied bombing during WWII.

After 4 hours in town we return to Pia and Peter’s home around 3 pm. Had a late lunch then get ready to go dinner at Schiffergesellschaft at 7 pm. It turns out Peter is president of Schiffergesellschaft (a group of sea captains in Lubeck) and the Nordic Society.

Schiffergesellschaft (Seamen's Guild) was acquired in 1535 by the Seaman's Guild. The old building was then demolished but later rebuilt in its current fashion. Then as now, it was used as a meeting house for seamen and sail-makers. The famous Schiffergesellschaft restaurant also considers itself to be the "oldest pub in the world." Revenues are still used to support indigent boatmen and boatmen's widows. Many memorabilia from centuries past, brought by seafarers from all over the world, create a wonderful ambience.

The restaurant has a special spring menu to celebrate the season and May 1^st is a special day for them. Tonight is a special night and Peter has to use his influence to get us four places as it is booked out for months in advance.
Kwan has the very special white asparagus while the others have fish and German potato salad (very tasty).



Dessert is served with warm cherry sauce (with whole cherries). Then people start singing all the seamen’s songs – very entertaining and noisy evening.

Sunday - Berlin - Frankfurt - Hamburg & Herring

Pack and head out to Museumsinsel (Museum Island) which is wedged between the river Spree and Kupfergraben and the Pergamon Museum which houses the famous Pergamon altar. Truckloads of tourist buses just arrived and there is a long queue. Since we only have 2 hours, we decide we will go to the next door Bode Museum instead. A newly renovated museum. On 19 October 2006, the Bode Museum was re-opened in its entirety, displaying the Sculpture Collection (much Italian and German), the Numismatic Collection and works from the Gemäldegalerie - Old Master Paintings. The museum is absolutely stunning - wonderful space.

We buy some German sausages from a street vendor for lunch before heading back to the hotel.

Crazy flight departing 3pm to Frankfurt (south of Berlin) – 1 hour flight - 1 hour transit – 1¼ hour flight to Hamburg (north of Berlin) arrive 3.5 hours later. Frustrated when we learn that we could have taken the fast train which only takes 1 ½ hours.

Pia (Danish) meets us at Hamburg airport and drives us 1 hour to their house in Bad Schwarthu (near Lubeck). Peter (German), Pia’s husband, a retired sea captain has been busy preparing dinner. He presents a spread of German and Danish foods; pickled raw herring, smoked fish are amongst the seafood; hams, liver paste, hot pork and beef, several breads and cucumber salad. More than we can eat in one session. A selection of German white wine, Chile and French reds round out the evening – and dessert is mango baked cheese cake.

Sat shops and museums WestEast

Brief look at the shops in the main street in Kurfurstendamm, the main shopping strip of the west side. A department store called Ka De We is fantastic like Galeries Lafayette, with a huge gourmet food level.

Take a U-bahn to Friedrichstr. Lunch at Lutter & Wegner. We order the signature dish, Wiener Schnitzel with potato salad. Also white asparagus is in season and almost every restaurant has asparagus specials. We conclude that nothing will taste as good as the schnitzel we had in Vienna but these ones are still very good.

We come across a street market just next to the museum. It has lots of local artists paintings and jewelry designs. We visit the Altes Museen where they have the most beautiful and famous Eygtian bust of Nefertiti and a Greek exhibition. Kwan is pleasantly surprised to see her favorite artist, Renoir, is also there.

We take a boat cruise along the Spree. It is supposed to be the one with English commentary, however it is apparent that the English is a very much abbreviated version.

Walk around the young fashion area again before heading home around 8 pm.

Snack at the hotel and early night ready for departure tomorrow to northern Germany.

Friday - cool and hot Berlin

We take the Hop on Hop Off bus at 10 am and familiarize ourselves with Berlin. Berlin was over 80% destroyed during the WWII. Unification in 1989 and the reassertion of Berlin as the capital of Germany have, and is continuing to, transform Berlin. It has a mixture of post war buildings built by both the east and west, rebuilt and repaired classic buildings, some wonderful new modern architecture to house government, commerce and industry and there is some very interesting urban renewal and transformation going on in the former east sector. One can still see buildings with the pock marks of war.

Lunch at Keno café. Kwan thought she ordered a salad but ends up with satay beef and schnitzel on top of some very nice salad leaves. Still very nice.

Its by now a very hot day in the high 20s. We work out the U-Bahn (metro) and hook up with Anna, a daughter of Philip’s friend who we are going to stay with on Sunday near Hamburg, a young artist who moved to Berlin a year ago. We look at the remains of the Berlin wall briefly, then head towards the Parliament House, Museum Island and the new train station, all in East Berlin; we walk along the Spree and to the Hackesche Höfe area – it reminds us of Soho and Greenwich Village in New York; very hip. She takes us to the young designers area and check out a few gallery openings which are all very exciting. We walk past a lot of outdoor cafes and squares full of young people and lots of fun.

It is wonderful to see Berlin through the eyes of a budding young artist who tells us that this is the most exciting, and only place in Europe for creative people at this time. Not just artists, but also musicians, designers and the like. We can feel the excitement and electricity as we walk around these creative precincts with Anna.

We split around 7.45 pm totally exhausted. We have snack from the hotel club lounge and skip dinner. Early rest.