Header picture: Back on the lake
(6 July)

6 July - T, T & Katie have relocated to Germany for the summer. We are, however, able to keep up with the important issues at home via the NRK news. Here we read that the Troll Thing is now re-stuck. You can see a timelapse video of the process.

Comments joanna - July 8th, 2017 The Troll Thing has made it to BBC news online!!

We, in the meantime, have enjoyed some quiet days in Germany, with swimming in our local lake and today, our first kayak outing — a beautiful, peaceful and warm 16km journey across the lake and down a river (Photo, left).

Click here for short film from one of our kayak journeys (12 minutes of short scenes).

10 July - As the blog is on holiday, we're not providing blow-by-blow accounts of our doings, but here are just a few pictures:

• For a bit of local atmosphere, how about this shop?
• Police vehicles
• Katie at the nearest lake
• Local roads
• Roadside flowers
• Bridge over the River Havel
• Back home in the evening, a corner of the lounge in the flat

We're a bit too used to the laid-back way of things in Norway. If ever we needed someone to come to Ørsdalen — an electrician, say, to connect something — we would ask around the neighbours to find out if anyone else was expecting a visit from an electrician and whether we could piggy-back on that visit, failing which we would begin negotiations and probably get someone to come within a couple of months. If we were lucky. In roughly that frame of mind I emailed an electrician in Neustrelitz today to ask whether he might be able to come round sometime to fix the bathroom fan in the flat. Within minutes the reply came. "I'll be there at 7am tomorrow". Tomorrow? 7am? We've not seen 7am since we arrived here, but it looks like we're going to in the morning. And being a German we can't depend on him being late, either.

11 July - And today, complete with its early start, was T&T's 30^th wedding anniversary, celebrated with dinner at a buffalo farm and ice cream in Neubrandenburg.

Comments joanna - July 12th, 2017 Congratulations, and the ice creams looked fantastic I hope they tasted as good as they look! Was the electrician on time? Tim - July 12th, 2017 Thanks Joanna! Yes, the ice creams tasted even better than they looked. German efficiency, though, has been cancelled. The electrician's office had the calendar open on the wrong Tuesday, so he never turned up because he was expecting to come next Tuesday instead!

12 July - Wonder Woman goes to the cinema - Tucked away around the back of Neustrelitz’s OBI (a German equivalent of B&Q) is a huge concrete building that once housed the town’s cold-storage facility (where they kept the Cold War). A big yellow star now announces that half of the building (the half that isn’t Aldi) is the Movie Star cinema — an ambitious multiplex whose four screens offer everything from family films to Arthouse. Katie and I turned up to see if there were any seats left for Wonder Woman. There was one other car in the car park, even though we only had a few minutes in hand. The attendant swivelled his electronic screen towards us to offer us a choice of seats — only two had been taken (presumably the occupants of the other car, which presumably also meant that the three other films were completely unviewed). The film was set during the First World War, with Wonder Woman teamed up with some courageous British spies to defeat the machinations of the evil Huns (represented by one of those archetypal German colonels rather over-endowed with body and under-endowed with brains and human qualities). Of course, all the dialogue was dubbed into German, which added to the surreal nature of the experience. For Katie, who lip-reads perfectly (a relic of deafness as a toddler) it was extra-confusing to be able to see what was being said in English while hearing it in German which really didn’t make sense with the nature of what was being said.

13-14 July - Katie has left for a short trip to visit her Grandma Hazel, so after dropping her off at Berlin airport, T&T drove on to explore the other end of the River Havel; the area to the west of Berlin. Again, we're not providing a long description of the journey, but here are a few photos from the trip:

• The wonderful and querky town of Tangermünde
• The odd things you see in shop windows in Tangermünde
• Tracy bought a new communion set there
• Birdlife in Tangermünde
• Even the restaurants are odd in Tangermünde
• We stayed the night in a manor-house hotel on the banks of the river, just outside the town
• Nearby Havelberg is also lovely
• Spectacular field of wild flowers on the way home

15 July - Film clip of kayaking through Diemitz Lock.
Here, though, is a kayaking alternative to a lock (between Wesenberg and Userin).

Comments Norah - July 16th, 2017 I am glad you are enjoying such a lovely time in Germany. Life in the pretty towns does not seem to have changed much in centuries. Can hardly believe you have celebrated your 30th anniversary, Congratulations! Hazel - July 17th, 2017 It's lovely looking at the old Germany that I remember. Did you get up and preach in the pulpit in the restaurant? It's all lovely! We're just about to take Katie to the station. Mum

21 July - Cascading cows and mischievous mopeds - While we are enjoying ourselves by and on and in the water, it is comforting to know that life is going on as usual back home in our part of Norway. Today's news tells us that "On Friday morning the Egersund police had to mobilise on account of a suspicious moped" (here) (thanks to Thomas Andrew for pointing that one out), while on the main E39 Oslo to Stavanger road at Ålgård (half way between Vikeså and Sandnes) a motorist reports that: "I was driving along the E39 when a falling cow entered my field of vision. I ... wasn't expecting that a cow would arrive from above ... I was a bit shaken afterwards. It's not what you expect to arrive". In other words, everything is as normal at home.

22 July - Today was a day on land; we went for a long walk around the edges of Neustrelitz. From the old harbour (although we're miles inland, the lakes and rivers are navigable all the way to the sea, so this was an important trading harbour in the Middle Ages) we followed the historic road (now a footpath) out of the town along the lakeside. This weekend is the 90^th anniversary of the old harbour railway, so the local railway association was running steam trains and historic trams along the line, with much whistling and tooting (click milestone, left, for photo series).

22-24 July - an unexpected visit - One evening last year we wanted for some trivial reason to find the duty chemist so I dropped in at our local hospital, which is less than a mile away, to ask. It's a nearly new building — 6 years old or so — and extremely well laid out and equipped. It serves a large area, so it has its own helicopter, which we hear occasionally from the flat. I went in through the main entrance - deserted - and found the solitary reception lady at her desk. She greeted me warmly and invited me to sit down. Told me straight away where the duty chemist was - "but is there anything we can do for you? I can call a doctor down if you like. No problem." She gave the impression that everyone would rather welcome something to do. In any event, it was a good experience and encouraged a repeat trip this year. I (Tim) had an insect-or-something bite on the calves of both legs, and they were turning redder by the minute. So at 10.30 or so on Saturday evening I called in to see whether the offer still stood. It did. Within five minutes a doctor was looking at my leg. Just imagine, for a moment, a British hospital's A&E late on a Saturday evening. This one was peaceful (ony one other patient in sight) and relaxed. The doctor tutted briefly at the red swelling and before I knew where I was, a nurse had turned up with a wheelchair and was wheeling me into a room. Pleasantly decorated with contrasting walls, a table and chair by the big open window, large bathroom and a bed on which I was coupled up, given IV antibiotics and told I wasn't leaving for "a few days". To cut a long story short, I managed to get out again on Monday. Was very well treated and cared for. Meals provided and help-yourself flask of coffee just down the corridor, radio and television by the bed, patient garden to amble around in, and lots of staff on hand ("anything you want, just ring") — but it was still good to get out and back "home" to the flat, clutching a week's supply of antiobotics and a letter formally addressed in normal German style to "Respected Madam Collegue or respected Herr Colleague", authorising a repeat prescription. The letter is signed by the Consultant, Dr Hünemörder (which translates as Giant-Slayer). Not sure whether his first name is Jack. Very impressed. Recommend it most heartily. Just come to Germany and get yourself bitten and you too can enjoy first-class accommodation and treatment.

Today's news, however, supplies a cautionary footnote. The story concerns somebody-or-other's mother from Sweden who had the misfortune to die in Germany (she obviously didn't make it to Neustrelitz hospital), where she was then cremated. Like you do, they popped the ashes in the post back to Sweden. The only problem (well, apart from the dying bit, you understand) is that the Swedish post office has lost the parcel. "It's kjempekjedelig", says the Swedish post office (that's a tough one to translate because it's a slightly flippant kind of word: "a real bummer" might be a good equivalent) "and we're sorry that a parcel has disappeared". The moral seems to be that if you put your mother in the post, don't send her to Sweden; or if you do, don't expect too much sympathy when she doesn't arrive.

26 July - Tracy is back in Norway for a few days in connection with work, so for the moment it's just Katie and the increasingly unswollen Tim left in Germany. We had decided that today we would take the train to Berlin to explore a couple of museums — but we're on holiday and it all seemed a bit too much. So we went down the road to explore Neubrandenburg (our nearest large town) instead. It's an ancient town (founded in 1248) which retains what are apparently the world's best-preserved brick medieval city walls, as well as a brick gothic church which looks every inch Victorian but which I'm astonished to learn was built in 1298. We have to drive round Neubrandenburg to get anywhere to the north-east of here and we used to find it very confusing indeed. The road to Neustrelitz is located directly opposite the ornate medieval city gate, so it ought to be easy to find the way home — but whenever we got to the gate the road seemed to have vanished. We noticed later that the town is described as the "City of Four Gates". Half-timbered houses are set at intervals into the city wall. The road back home (easier to find now we know to count those gates) runs alongside a huge lake (the Tollensee) and on a sudden impulse I turned off onto an unmarked lane leading in the direction of the lake, just to see if I could get down to the water's edge. The lane became narrower and narrower and more and more potholed until eventually I had to park and walk the last hundred yards down a track. Even the track deteriorated, first into a wooden bridge and then into a narrow dirt path between the weeds, before turning a corner and emerging onto a long wooden pier with fancy lamp-posts and big cast-iron signs. A timetable announced a twice-daily ferry to a variety of destinations including Neubrandenburg. Katie and I half expected to find "Kafka was here" spray-painted onto a wall, but there was nothing. So we headed back between the weeds, re-found the car and drove home. (click picture, right, for photos).

27 July - Our own little town, Neustrelitz ("New Strelitz"), was the residence of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz after his castle, together with the rest of "Old Strelitz", burned down in 1712. The new town was then planned and built over a couple of decades, which explains its elegant Baroque streets radiating out from a central circle. Even though the Duke's palace burned down in 1945, there are still beautiful gardens and some interesting smaller buildings such as the orangerie (I parked outside it this morning, hence the photo), built in 1755 and due to be restored for a staggering 3.5 million euros over the next three years. Even during the past year or so we've noticed the amount of restoration work that is going on all over the town to return it to its former glory.

28 July - Beautiful sunny day, so I set off for a walk from the flat towards Lake Zierker (half a mile away) — the lake on the banks of which Neustrelitz is built. On the way, I accidentally found out some more about the last Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (see link from last photo in the series, left). There were striking differences between this road and those in Ørsdalen (click picture, left, for photo series). Amongst other things:

• the animals were in the fields rather than on the road
• they were not sheep
• there are street lamps.

30 July - Sunflower time again in the fields around Wesenberg (right, enlargement)

It's a funny thing, but every weekend (some combination of Friday/Saturday/Sunday) there is a brief but energetic chorus of bangs and flashes from the town centre. The first time it happened we rushed to the window, thinking that war had broken out. Although we're used to it now, it's still a bit puzzling. Four or five minutes of spectacular fireworks, before darkness and silence falls again and the town goes back to sleep. Photo of tonight's display here.