The wedding planning continues…

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(Look away now if weddings bore you.) I’ve just discovered the world of online shopping. And let me tell you that many hours can pass while you are looking through online catalogs of wedding paraphenalia. You can find almost anything you want on ebay or in online stores (I switched to looking at German online stores, since the postage from other places is pretty high on average). Once you start looking, you see things that you hadn’t thought about, but of course you need at a wedding. Pininterest is another good place for getting wedding theme inspiration, although I don’t find it very practical for finding items, it’s more just eye candy. Weddix is a useful German site, I spent ages looking at all their table decorations, guest presents and other ideas. Giving sugared almonds is a wedding tradition I remember from childhood; you can buy different kinds of sugared almonds and bags now. I chose bags to match with our planned woodland / nature theme, but there are lots of options. Continue reading →

March: Wildlife in the Garden

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Bumblebee enjoying some echinacea flowers.

We are in the dark days still here in Berlin – lots of gloomy grey skies, and I am counting the days until spring! This is the time of year I feel most homesick, and miss blue skies, sunshine and greenery. From our laboratory window we can see a two crows building a nest in the tree outside. The one flies back and forwards with new twigs, clearly preparing a nice home for some little ones. In the evenings now it’s a little bit lighter, and many times at twilight I’ve heard a nightingale singing. It’s amazing to hear its melodious, loud song calling out over the grey, empty streets, sometimes I just stop and listen, and I’ve seen others doing the same. It’s a song of hope, spring will come! Soon the gardens and parks will be bustling with life again, insects and birds, frogs and foxes. In the meanwhile, I decided to dig up some old “garden wildlife” photos from previous years to take part in Heyjude’s Garden photography event. We have until the end of March to submit some photographs, so perhaps I’ll find some early spring garden wildlife before then, but in the meanwhile I thought I’d post some old photos.

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My fiance volunteered his finger to show how tiny this pretty little frog is.

Heyjude has some inspiring advice for taking photos of garden wildlife, and I’d encourage you to check out her page. Every month she has a different garden-themed photography challenge. Here are the instructions for this month:

“This month I want to see photos and stories about wildlife in the ‘garden’ – insects, spider, birds, rabbits, hedgehog, fox, snake (!) whatever you can find in your garden, public gardens, lakes, parks. But please not the family dog!”

Like most city-dwellers, we only have an apartment balcony, but luckily Berlin has lots of parks and botanical gardens to enjoy, and when we visit my fiance’ s family in the Czech republic there is also a garden. Here are some photos of the garden wildlife we’ve spotted in Berlin and in Czech republic, and even some old ones from my Cape Town garden. Continue reading →

The Garden Route, South Africa

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The Garden Route is a popular road trip that many tourists take when they come to South Africa. Officially it stretches from Mossel Bay in the Western Cape to the Storms river in the Eastern Cape, but many people make the whole road trip from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. ending at Addo Elephant national park.

Why is this drive called the Garden route? The simple reason is, it’s very green. This region has the second mildest climate in the world, with temperatures rarely falling below 10 degrees C or rising above 28 degrees C. The route lies between mountains and the Indian ocean; inland on the other side of the mountains it is hotter and there is another driving route with beautiful mountain scenery called Route 62.

Why is this drive so special? There are many nature reserves and coastal towns on this drive, which makes it easy to find great stopovers for exploring. For example, you can visit the forests and rivers of the Tsitsikamma national park or the Knysna forests and lagoon, where once a year there is an Oyster Festival. Activities like hiking, canoeing, surfing, sailing, wind-surfing, and fishing are all popular in this area. The area from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth is also great for whale watching, and in the De Hoop nature reserve you can walk the Whale Trail, passing through fragrant fynbos and over white sand dunes. At Addo Elephant National park you can watch families of elephants hanging out at the waterholes, and see many other animals such as warthogs, zebras, kudus and even some lions.

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Our Garden route stopovers: When we visited South Africa last year, we spent five days driving from Cape Town to Addo Elephant park and back again. We had planned stopovers for accommodation at night and unplanned stopovers while driving along. Five days is not so long and we could have spent longer in all of our stopovers, but we had a great time nonetheless and saw many amazing places. This was our itinerary: Continue reading →

Tübingen in Photos

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Tübingen is a picturesque, hilly university town in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, only 30km from Stuttgart. To the north is Schönbuch, voted one of the most beautiful forests in Germany, and to the south east are the Swabian Alb mountains. The river Neckar flows through the town, which has many beautiful old buildings, canals and cobblestone streets. In fact, Tübingen has one of the most intact historic old towns in Germany, so it’s surprising that it’s not on most people’s tourist radar. Like in another famous university town, Cambridge, boating is popular in Tübingen, which has its own version of the famous Cambridge punt boats, called Stocherkähne. It’s very pleasant to visit Tübingen and wander its streets. Here are some of the photographs I took during my visit. Continue reading →

Les Diablerets in the Swiss Alps – Photo Diary

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As I mentioned, recently I spent a week in the village of Les Diablerets, tucked away in the Swiss Alps at 1160m. There was no time for skiing unfortunately as it was a work trip, but in the evenings I went for a few walks in the woods, and on the last afternoon I went up to the glacier with some friends. When I arrived the forests were quite green, the paths were icy, and the snow levels in the village were not as high as the previous years – it was a snow-poor winter all round in  Europe this year. However on about day two or three it started snowing…and snowing…and snowing…the mountain disappeared in mist, and soon the forest and village were transformed into a winter wonderland. Following that was another day of snow, and then the sun came out and we were able to experience the village and the mountains with sunshine and deep blue skies, perfect for a visit to the glacier at 3000m. It was great to experience the area in all types of weather. Without further ado, here are some photos from my visit. Continue reading →

Planning our Czech Wedding

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Finally some free time I could use to work on my literature review write a blog post  (:-)  and what do I end up doing….playing around making example wedding invitations online.

My Invitation (4) My Invitation (5)

But it is addictive, see here. With the online templates you can change the text, add your own photos and so on. So far J says all of my creations are too pink (even the purple ones). He is now keen to have a simple invitation with a protea on it, the South African flower I’ve chosen for my wedding bouquet. Let’s see how that evolves.

This past weekend we were kicked into wedding planning gear by J’s sister (and rightfully so, since we’re planning a June wedding but have not organized much yet at all). We’d done a bit of research about all the forms required to get married and had visited a priest at Christmas in Hradec Králové who’d informed us that to get married in a church we’d have to do the marriage preparation course. We’d also located a church in Berlin where we could do the course, although the usual parish priest was away so we’d have to wait before meeting with him. Other than that, we had not settled on either a church or a reception venue. Continue reading →

Cross Country Skiing in the Harz Mountains

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When my Czechman moved to Berlin over three years ago, he brought his cross country skis with, ever hopeful that there would be enough snow one day for him to ski to work. So far it hasn’t happened! Rumour has it when it snows enough you can cross country ski in Tempelhof, the old airport that is now an open park in Berlin, but that hasn’t happened yet either. But for cross country ski lovers, never fear, the beautiful Harz mountains lie only three to four hours away from Berlin. Continue reading →

The Year 2015 in Instagrams (Part 2)

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Time for part two of my recap of 2015 using some of the Instagrams I created on my phone throughout the year! I don’t have Instagram photos of all of the places we visited, but going through my Instagram folder has given me an overview of 2015. When I ended off in the last blog post, we had just reached summertime. Along with a lovely trip to the Ostsee (Baltic sea) in summer, we also took a four day trip to visit some friends in Seville. Together the four of us also travelled to Granada, where we visited the beautiful palace of Alhambra. Continue reading →

The year 2015 in Instagrams (Part 1)

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As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look back on the year and prepare for the next one. Since my phone is overloaded with photos I’ve taken during the year, I decided to clean it up to make space for next year’s adventures, but in the process ended up browsing through my old Instagram photos and thinking about the year that has passed. For those of you who don’t know Instagram, it’s a phone application that allows you to edit your photos easily and share them with others. The instant filters are fun to use and sometimes help capture the feeling of a place better than the original photo, since when you’re taking photos the light isn’t always ideal. So without further ado, here’s a look back on 2015 with the help of some Instagrams. I’ll split it into two parts as it’s a lot to go through! Continue reading →