notes

A very nice few days in Prague. Of course a few days is not enough to see even a fraction of what this city has to offer. We had a very good time. Old Town and Castle bit too crowded, but I spent a very nice day in Libeň, trying to trace some place associated with Bohumil Hrabal, one of my favourite writers.

Johan and I climbed Petřínská Rozhledna, from which we saw wonderful panoramas of Prague.

We are planning on going again, as it’s just 4,5 hours by train from Berlin.

A very nice visit of a friend from London. We have similar tastes and interests, so sightseeing together was a delight. Two highlights.

• Hamburgerbanhoff
  Amazing architecture. And the right to be lazy in the front.
  An exhibition of  Gülsün Karamustafa, a Turkish artist, whom i didn’t know before. Amazing. Very difficult subjects, striking, beautiful art.
• Berlin botanical garden.
  The best botanical garden I’ve ever visited. We spent there 5 hours, and managed see only half of glasshouses and maybe 1/3 of the grounds.

And now I have a cold. No, not because of visiting. I have it from Johan. Johan had it and he gave it to me and now I have it.

Last Saturday Johan and I spent a very nice afternoon at friend’s allotment. Help was needed with fruit. I hoped there would be sour cherries.. and they were! We were told to pick as much as we want. So, with me being greedy, we got about 8 kilo. It’s good we had a tubtrug with us (i thought i was being overoptimistic, but apparently not!). Also we got red currants. Otherwise known as Johan’s berries. (they are called Johannisbeeren in german). So following Sunday I spent on washing fruit (2 hours), searching my neighbourhood shops for sugar (found only 1 kilo of sugar i liked), removing currants from stems (3 hours), stoning cherries (6 hours). umph…

But all the hard work was worthwhile. I have 7 jars of currant jelly, 2 liters of cherry syroup, 8 jars of cherry preserve and also big jars with cherry liqueur and currant liqueur in the making. Yummy!