The good thing about traveling for work is that sometimes I end up visiting places I might never have heard about otherwise. Last week I had a meeting in Ulm, and since I had not heard much about it before I was surprised how interesting and beautiful it was. Continue reading
As Mani from A New Life Wandering says: Share your happiness! I find that the small things that make us happy every day are easily forgotten. This blog event is simply about remembering and sharing those small things that made you happy during the week.
Technically this is two week’s worth of small pleasures as the last two weeks have been quite busy and sort of rolled into one! We took a weekend trip to Cambridge, then I had to prepare a work presentation and poster, and we had our work retreat. Here were some of the highlights of the last two weeks. Continue reading
It feels like it was a short week, as we just returned from our bike trip in the Alsace, France, on Tuesday morning and now we are off to Cambridge to visit a friend for the weekend. But here are this week’s small pleasures nonetheless. This week I tried to take note when little happenings (rather than things) made me happy, so they were not always things that could be photographed. Continue reading
We are headed off on another adventure in few minutes, but before we go I wanted to do a Weekly Small Pleasures blog post. Weekly Small pleasures is Mani’s blog event where you highlight the little things that made you happy this week. For her post and other people’s, head here. Here are mine:
It’s May.
What’s not to love about May in Berlin: it’s a month full of public holidays. 1 May is Worker’s day, but this year it was a Sunday and they didn’t give the Monday off, so we lost out on that one. Then there is “Himmelfahrt” (Ascension Thursday – date varies by year) and also “Pfingsten” (Pentecost – date varies by year), which seem to always fall in May too. So last Thursday instead of sitting in the office I was kayaking in Neu Venedig (New Venice), and this weekend is a long weekend and we’re headed off for a bike tour in the Alsace wine region of France! This promises to be quite an adventure (possibly an uncomfortable one, since we’re taking two night trains and sleeping on tatami mats in a Yurt one night, with a dry toilet and cold shower, oh the horror) – but I guess that’s what the wine is for. Unfortunately being away means this year we’ll miss the Carnival of Cultures.
It feels like not long ago I was wearing boots, a jacket, scarf and gloves, and now I’m in a T-shirt and need to carry sunglasses. This is how rapidly the temperatures can increase in Berlin! But I’m not complaining, I much prefer warm weather. Plus, I’m pretty sure my vitamin D levels must have been super low after the long grey season and now is a chance to soak up some sun and make some more! I feel more energetic already.
The trees have flowers.
I haven’t got over the novelty of flowers on all the trees yet. Yes, the little pieces of flowers blowing in the wind get into your eyes when you’re on the cycling lane – but everything is so beautiful!
What’s one thing that doesn’t come to mind when planning a summer holiday to Germany? Beaches! But in fact the north of Germany has the lovely Baltic coastline, called Ostsee by the Germans, and you’d be missing out if you didn’t go there. My first experience of the Ostsee was on the lovely isle of Rügen, north of Berlin; home to seaside towns, countryside, beautiful beech forests and white chalk cliffs. Next I visited the Darss peninsula, where the waves were wilder. Last summer we went to Boltenhagen, a lovely seaside spot with long beaches and great cycling routes. And more recently, last week, we spent some time after a work trip to the north around the lighthouse at Bülk Strand near Kiel, and at Haffkrug Strand and Timmersdorferstrand towards Lubeck. It’s still a bit early for swimming, but it’s always good to see the sea! We”ll be back in summer!
The waters were amazingly clear, and standing on piers we could even see jellyfish swimming below in the water. Continue reading
Actually, we weren’t supposed to go to Paris in the springtime. We were supposed to go in autumn, but exactly one week before our trip we were checking the news before going to sleep at night and read, to our shock, about the terror attacks that had occurred. In the wake of the sad events, it did not seem the appropriate time to visit the city. So, we postponed our trip to April. Then at the end of March, there were more terrorist attacks in Brussels. It was therefore with a slight feeling of unease that I set out for Paris, hoping we would have an uneventful trip. Well, luckily we did, and once you are in Paris you start to forget about what happened, because everyone is just going on about their daily lives, enjoying life. The city is huge and there must be only a handful of people who would go so far as to harm others. I did feel a bit uneasy traveling on the metro, but otherwise enjoyed walking around the city, eating in cafes and mingling with the locals.
Like this local
Not wildfires, but fumaroles in Furnas
Before our Easter trip to São Miguel, Azores, I’d heard that the Azores islands were volcanic, but had assumed that all the volcanoes there were extinct and didn’t realize we’d see such fascinating volcanic activity. If you’re interested in volcanoes, it’s definitely worth a visit! I lost count of how many volcanoes are in the Azores islands since different websites say different things, but there are a lot, and it seems there are six volcanic zones on São Miguel. As a result the island has many calderas (craters formed by eruptions), each with its own character. Many of the villages are built in and around these volcanoes, and one of these is Furnas. Continue reading
You will learn an important word if you visit the Azores islands of Portugal in the Atlantic, and that is miradouro. It means viewpoint, but my mind now translates it as “beautiful view”, because that is what we saw whenever we stopped at a miradouro, labelled with a binoculars sign. Doesn’t the word miradouro also sound a bit like admire? Continue reading
About an hour from Prague are other cities and towns well worth a visit. We’ve made a couple of day trips to several of them. Two cities, Pardubice and Hradec Kralove, lie relatively close to each other, and not far from Pardubice lies the town of Chrudim. We visited this lovely town again this weekend and I thought it was about time I posted some photos of it. Continue reading
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.
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
