Farewell dinner - Berlin

Berlin was the final destination for our Trafalgar tour. We were treated to an entertaining evening at a local restaurant with music and karaoke. Our Tour Director, Malcolm, sung a song and surprised us all with his great voice. We sat at a table with some fellow Aussies and were by far the loudest table and having the best time.

A table of Aussies enjoying our last supper.

The following morning we said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch by email.

 

Berlin

Berlin is a city alive...there is much construction and restoration work being done and the skyline is full of cranes and buildings with scaffolding erected around them.

We visited the remains of the Berlin Wall that divided the East from the West, also Checkpoint Charlie, the point where people from the West could pass through to visit relatives in the East.

We saw the Brandenburg Gates. During the time the Berlin Wall was constructed the Brandenburg gates were in an area known as no-man's-land because people in the west were not to go past a certain point before the Gates and the Wall was just the other side.

Another interesting place was the Palace of Versailles where the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28th June 1919. Next was a tour of Sanssouci Palace and its surrounding gardens.

Brandenburg Gates in the background.

Some of the remaining Berlin Wall.

Checkpoint Charlie, the only entry into East Berlin between 1962 and 1989.

The Palace of Versailles.

Sanssouci Palace.

Belarus - Minsk

Before leaving Moscow Malcolm treated us to a little gem that is a very interesting tradition followed by the Muscovites. It is something they call a Christmas Tree. When a couple marry they buy a lock and take it to a special 'tree', lock the lock and throw the key into the river in the hope that their marriage will last forever. There were hundreds of thousands of locks on many of the 'trees' as can be seen in this photo of just one 'tree'.

Traveling to Minsk we passed a collection of Russian tanks that had been used to help Russia win the war against the Germans. Of course the 'boys' couldn't resist climbing all over them.

Our local guide for Minsk was Malcolm, the Tour Director, as he actually resides in Minsk with his wife of 12 months. He took us to an appartment building where Lee Harvey Oswald, (the alleged assassin of President John F Kennedy) lived in a subsidized apartment after defecting to Russia in 1959.

The Lee Harvey Oswald apartment building.

There's a monument of a little boy in Minsk and Belarussian women rub his private parts in order to promote fertility, as you can see it is very shiny.

We had pestered Malcolm to bring his wife to the hotel so we could meet her. On the morning we were leaving Minsk he presented us to Anastasia, an extremely attractive, petite blonde. She spoke perfect English and it was pleasure to meet her.

Moscow

Moscow is different in many ways...there are 12 million people in the city and 9 million of them use the Metro every day. We were taken on a tour of the Metro which was an experience in itself. The underground rail stations are fitted out with chandeliers, paintings, statues, stained glass windows and mosaic paintings, which are the very last things you would expect to see in a railway station.

Red Square by night is beautiful...there is a large very modern department store that is positioned on one side with churches at either end and then of course the Kremlin wall forms the other side. In front of the fort there is a cemetery containing the graves of all the presidents except for Boris Yeltsin and Khrouchtchev. Because many celebrations and rock concerts are now held in the Red Square the cemetery is going to be moved because it is the general consensus that it is no longer an ideal place for a cemetery.

Us in The Red Square.

We toured inside the Kremlin...not very interesting except for the museum containing clothes worn by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and many others from that era, along with gold trinkets, bowls and serving dishes, Faberge eggs, armory, carriages of gold encrusted with jewels and much much more. No wonder the starving peasants wanted to kill the aristocrats.

The traffic is horrendous. When Mr Putin drives to work the police stop all traffic five minutes before he is due to travel along a road causing more chaos. His officials have chauffeur driven cars with a blue light on the top and a police escort. These officials are able to drive wherever and however they like, often causing fatal accidents. This has angered the public.

 

St Petersburg.

St Petersburg is amazing, so much history, so much extravagance, so many people and so much poverty. We visited many palaces and learnt about Rasputin, Peter the Great and many more. I'll never be able to remember everything but found it so very interesting. The gold gilding throughout the palaces is extravagant, especially when you are told that it has to be re-done every 25 years. In the suburbs the poorer people live in high rise boxes with no lifts or air conditioning. The majority of the outer suburb accommodation buildings were erected in the sixties and are in need of some serious repairs.

The palaces are now museums and in every room there are ladies sitting, watching everything you do with eagle eyes and solemn faces! They are there to make sure you don't touch anything. Malcolm calls them Net Net ladies (net is 'no' in Russian) and I was Net Neted twice for leaning on a pillar.

St Petersburg is known as the Venice of The North, so it was understandable that we went for a cruise through the many canals. Malcolm produced two bottles of vodka and multiple bottles of Champagne. By the end of the cruise the tour group was very merry and we were constantly waving and greeting the passing Russians with a cheery 'how ya goin mate' in order to squeeze a smile out of them...it worked!

Several of the palaces had to be restored after the war, fortunately many of the gold ornaments and chandaliers were buried before the Germans invaded and then dug up afterwards.

Another highlight was a Russian Folklore evening with Cossack dances, songs, instruments and costumes from the region. The costumes were magnificent and the Cossack dancers were a sight to behold.

 

 

Stockholm and Helsinki

I've been extra slack in updating the blog due to the fact that for two days I was sick with a head cold and also because we haven't had Internet access for a couple of days.

Stockholm was beautiful, the architecture there was so pretty. The highlight was the viewing of a 17th century Galleon that was recovered from the seabed in Stockholm's harbour after more than 300 years and is now displayed in a museum. It was amazing to think it hadn't rotted away, but because Stockholm is in the Baltic sea and the salt level is low, the timber was in near perfect condition, also the sea wood worms don't survive in the Baltic.

We travelled overnight from Stockholm, Sweden to Helsinki, Fiinland by cruise ferry. The ferry can carry up to 2,800 people. The sea crossing was very smooth thank heavens. In Helsinki we experienced a traditional dinner of reindeer on mashed potato followed by dessert of colostrum, which was the milk from a cow straight after the birth of her calf! It was served up in slices and was like rubber, I have to say I was able to eat Rudolph, but when it came to dessert I was only able to take a couple of mouthfuls. It's not that it was awful, but the more I thought about it the more distasteful it became. Dan ate the lot with no problem.

Stockholm Royal Palace

Lost camera update.

Just to update you on my lost camera, I received an email from Eurostar directing me to the Brussels web site where I am required to fill out a form, but guess what? I only have the choice of French or German. Tonight I'm going to try to translate it into English with Google. Otherwise we have a lady on the bus who speaks French so I'll ask her for some help.

Of interest to my writing friends...I had photos of Chipping Norton and it's post office. You might all recall my Elizabeth story began in Chipping Norton and Elizabeth worked at the post office owned by Annette. I'd really like to have those photos back to be able to include them when I have the story printed.