Last note from Germany...

Hi again! Just a quick one, since then I'll be off to explore the villiage of Oppendorf once more, before I leave for home tomorrow. By the way, New Years was fun but I forgot my camera. Lots of fun and silliness with the basketball crew!

New Years day we went for a walk along the beach called "Kalifornien" (yes California), but can't say the remaining coating of snow was reminiscent of the American Sunshine State. It was nice nevertheless but amusing! (Doesn't Oma look happy?:)

I'll miss my German friends very much, but am also excited about coming home again, to my lovely family, my fantastic friends, and my wonderful Sean :) Will see you all soon, and bye until next year Germans!

Love, Gilly xoxox

Hanging around in the 'hood'

Hi again! Gee it's great to be able to just lay around and relax, meet up with old friends and basically lead a lazy life of leisure for a week or two.....although some sad, somewhat-too-fanatical part of my soul is crying out for less yummy Christmas cuisine and a decent battering in the gym!

I must admit to not having been totally lazy, quite by accident I went for a 20km jog/walk with the dog on New Year's eve...we got a little lost and ended up trampling through knee deep snow (OK for the dog it was more like swimming, so funny) for hours. More deliberately, sledding is no piece of cake, there are no ski-lifts on the golf course, and it's hard to run up-hill in Bundeswehrstiefel (German Army Boots - from Ernie, to keep out the snow). But soooooo much fun, and has given me a few good ideas for some personal training sessions ;)

There's been more snow this December in Kiel than there's been for about 8 years (source: Manfred Mareck, who, by telling me today how he fell on his head 25 years ago whilst ice skating may have reduced the credibility of these facts;). In any case, there's been a lot of snow, and it's been beautiful!

A few photos for your entertainment:

Lanweg 15, home of the honourable Familie Mareck (Wie ich eben von Manfred gehört habe: schön und reich, hi hi)

This is the pond in the Mareck's backyard, as you can see, the boat looks very useful in it's current predicament!

The track through the forest just out the back of our house, on the river Schwentine. It's so beautiful here, I've taken the dog for heaps of walks because it's so nice!

My lovely lady Sophie, who would like to say hi to my mummy!

Conny and Melli! These beautiful girls prepared a wonderful pizza for us in their fabulous flat. Poor Melli is recovering from a knee arthroscope is working hard on her Physio exercises, good girl:) I will miss these girls!

This is a picture of beautiful old Goslar, one of Germany's oldest towns at over 1000years old. Back in the day, the town was extremely heavily fotified against invasion, and I took this picture from the top of the Zwinger, the largest fort/watchtower, which now is a museum full of medievil weapons and torture devices, from catapaults to stretching racks and finger traps, to the medievil solution to marital disagreements: a cage a couple would get locked in where they were separated but forced to look at each other, which was located in the town square and passers by and cheeky little children would throw rotting fruit at them until they promised to make up and then they were allowed out! What a great idea!

Another day of travels...to Lübeck. This is another gorgeous old town, used to be one of the richest towns in Germany. This is a picture of the Marienkirche (Maria Church), taken from the observation platform of the Petrikirche, from where you could see the whole town.

I went to Lübeck again with the Mareck's on the 30th Dec to check out the 'Ice World' an exhibition of ice sculputes in a big hall frozen to -8°C, i.e. so cold that no matter how much you walk/jump/dance around/wiggle your toes you cannot feel your feet...the sculptures were amaying, and since it's Germany, so was the schnapps! There's also an ice skating rink, which I tried out, as can be seen by the many bruises on my knees as I type...

29 Dec so much snow!

Elke and I after an awesome midnight walk and play in the snow with Ernie on the 28th. There was sooooo much fresh snow, and we were the first to run through some open fields where the snow was shin-deep and powdery. Köstlich - delicious!

Next morning, Ernie, Bini and I headed out to join the littlies for a morning of kiddy-sledding-fun!

We found some massive mountains to conquer....first up...

and what goes up must come down...
but sometimes not so gracefully!
The view of the Schwentine from the rail bridge. Just lovely!

Cocktail Party with the neighbourhood "kids" 28 Dec

The old kids on the block!

Holli, Lars and Elli, with Cocktails, schön garniert ;)

Katha and Bini

Gill and Melli!

A few photos from a wonderful Christmas in Kiel

Holger with Oma and his girlfriend Katha

Christmas Eve coffee time

The beautiful Christmas Tree, with all the presents underneath (yes mine is the biggest;)

"Bunten Teller" = "colourful plates" filled with lollies, nuts and fruit

Time to open the presents!

Christmas Day Lunch...BEFORE (actually this is not the first picture of this goose I could have shown you, but I think we'll leave it at this one):

AFTER:

On Boxing Day it really started to snow, and we had a great big snowball fight!

My first attempt at blogging...

Hi there. Reading Jules' blog I thought it would fun to try my own luck...and thought this would be a really easy way to share photos and silliness with those friends who are scattered around the world :)

I'm in Kiel, Germany, at the moment, Christmas has come and gone and left behind a whole lot of fabulous prezzies, chocolate and beautuful snow for playing in! This is a wierd, interesting and exciting time for me at the moment since I'm in-between everything, finished uni and about to start a new job, and most excitingly move in with my gorgeous Sean.

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and are planning great New Year's Eve parties!
Love Gilly

A few more pictures collected on my travels thus far...

Elke and me in her flat

Manfred freut sich (he's excited:)...

und Poldy sich auch! (and so's Poldy!)

So nice to see everyone again, auch meine alte Oma ;)

The girls in Flensburg...typical German "Futter", ein paar Bratwürstchen

und 'ne Menge Glühwein!

A whole week in Berlin's not really enough time to see what the town really has to offer. I think I slept for about a total of 20h in a week, this town is jammed full of things to see and do! A few touristy happy snaps:

The Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) and me:

After surviving a 9 1/2h walking tour of Berlin (one of the most interesting days I've ever spent doing anything - make sure to do a Brewer's Tour should you ever find yourself in Berlin), I was coaxed into joining a rowdy bunch of Aussies (16 of the 19 on the English speaking tour were from Oz!), an lone American (who'd, appropriately, for the Gershwin enthusiats, just been to Paris) called Kyle, who I ended up wandering around the place with for a few days, and 2 Mexicans on a "Nightlife Tour" of the city. We visited pubs, lounge bars and finally an awesome club called Watergate, which was right on the Spree river and on that Wednesday evening rocked into the early hours of Thurrsday. So my first full day in Berlin, which started promptly at 10am found itself an end at 8am the next day, with a spinach pastie from the Bakery, he he!

Next afternoon (after a short nap) I ran into Kyle again and we explored a little more of the town and ended up taking in a dose of good old German Kultur - Kassler mit Sauerkraut and Der Nusskanacker (The Nutcracker) in the Berlin Opera House Unter Den Linden. What an awesome night (Kyle at the opera...I think he is smiling because it's so funny that from our cheapo €5 seats you can't see a thing)!

For those of you who are concerned that I am better at kicking your bottoms than my own, a little bit of proof that incidental exercise never hurt anyone (ha ha...unfortunately this incident my have been the reason for one weird Indian doorman's stalking me through the streets of Berlin, but that's another story)

My hostel:

No only joking, but I thought I'd scare my mother for a minute;) This building is actually the remaining part of a old big Jewish shopping centre, mostly destroyed in the Third Reich and WWII but exists now as a kind of upper class squat, home to a few alternative art galleries, more grafitti than I've ever seen in my life, a cinema and a few cool but suprisingly expensive bars. Since I was too scared to go there alone, with the lovely company of Robert Moritz, I discovered that in the top floor you can sit down on crusty old couches, rest your expensive corona on an old TV or radio doubling as a table and take in the nice view of Berlin Mitte or admire the current interesting piece cinema projected onto the wall of the building opposite and wonder what they were thinking (/taking...) when they chose the footage. All very strange indeed, but Kyle, I am still alive!!

This picture is from Panorama Punkt, on the top of the massive Daimler Chrysler building in Potsdamer Platz. The big onion on a stick you can see in the distance is the TV tower, which has a spinning restaraunt, from which you can also see the city, but a student tip: the Daimler Chrysler building's heaps cheaper, the lift is the fastest in Europe (100m in 20 seconds) and the guy in the lift will ask you how on earth can you be Australian when you have such white skin, explain that you are riding in Europe's fastest elevator (I wish I'd asked where the fastest in the world is - anyone know?), as well as try to confirm or disprove other Australian stereotypes (all in the space of 20 seconds:).

Saw so many castles and big old buildings and monuments and memorials and so much more - but there's volumes of photos so I'll not bore you on with more, however, this city is one of the most intersting, and although there's a mixed and dark history to the place, splendidly ecclectic and vibrant cities I've ever visited - definitely worth a visit!