Knoops Park (repost)

I blogged a post about this beautiful park in the northwest of Bremen in 2007 already. This sunday our way lead us there again. We enjoyed it so much and found it so very special again, that I decided to repost some words and new photos about this park again.

"Knoops Park" situated in the north of Bremen near the river "Lesum" was one of the nicest parks that we have seen around Bremen. It is not only the tidyness and the old, old trees (some of them more then 100 years old) that make this park special to me. But because it was founded and by an old Bremen merchant who also had kind of a castle in this park, it still has something like an aristocratic touch...a very special charactere. Hard to describe...come here and find out yourself ;-)

So, the park is about 65 hectare large, named after the founder "Baron Ludwig Knoop" (1821-1894). In 1870 the Baron gave order to the garden-architect "Wilhelm Benque" to build a park along the banks of the river "Lesum". The result was a huge park with lots of narrow, winding ways and many resting places. The area itself is a bit hilly and gives the viewer a good look over the whole scenery including the river.
Only 16 years later the castle "Schloss Muehlental" was built in the centre of the park. The castle was not really in use and none lived in there for a longer time, so, in 1933 the shabby castle was totally demolished and today there are only some rocks left that give an idea of where the castle once stood.

Musikfest Bremen

Musikfest in Bremen? Ein lauer Sommerabend? Da haben wir uns kurz entschlossen auf den Weg gemacht um uns einmal selber von dem "stimmungsvoll illuminierten Marktplatz" faszinieren zu lassen.
Als wir ankamen dämmerte es gerade erst und gleich um die erste Ecke spielten irgendwelche Lebenskünstler mit sog. "Klanginstallationen"...ouh...Geige, Akkordeon und Bass sind ja eigentlich nicht die schlechteste Kombi und obwohl ich mein komplettes Wohlwollen aktiviert habe, habe ich nix Tolles an diesem schwurbeligen Krimskrams finden können. Lustig war, als ein Opa vom Bratwurststand kam und sich beschwerte, er könne nicht in Ruhe essen...da hieß es von seiten der "Performer": "sie können gehen, sie müssen nicht bleiben"! Opa konnte aber nicht weil er da nun mal sowohl Wurst als auch Frau und Sitzplatz hatte...lapidare Antwort des musizierenden Volkes: "Das ist uns scheißegal"!
Am Ansgari Kirchhof spielte zu der Zeit das "Power Trio Romero" die uns dann wieder mit der Welt versöhnten. Die 3 (Schlagzeug, Standbass, Sax) spielten friedlich, akzentuiert und auf den Punkt ihre swingenden Interpretationen in einer Art von Smooth Jazz (keine Ahnung ob man das wirklich so nennt).
Der Gang durch die City war denn auch nicht so wirklich angenehm weil es sich richtig füllte. Kein Wunder, denn auch die Geschäfte hatten bis Mitternacht geöffnet. Wir, die wir keine Karten für irgendeines der Konzerte hatten, haben uns einfach mit einem ausgedehnten Spaziergang begnügt und die Beleuchtungen auf dem Marktplatz waren wirklich klasse. Hätten wir unseren Zwerg nicht dabei gehabt, wären wir sicherlich noch länger geblieben.
Alle Gebäude (Rathaus, Dom, Bürgerschaft, Schütting) waren dezent mit blauen Lichtern erleuchtet und auf dem Marktplatz wurde mittels mächtiger Strahler und ner Menge Kunstnebel ein eindrucksvolles, stimmungsvolles, ständig wechselndes Bild in den Abendhimmel gezaubert.
Alles in allem ist mir die Stimmung beim Musikfest allerdings ein wenig zu steif. Sehr viele ältere Leute in sehr feinem Zwirn geben der Veranstaltung sicherlich etwas stilvolles, für mich ist es aber ein wenig zu steif.

Ein paar Fotos im größeren Format sind mir gelungen, die Video Aufnahme allerdings nur bedingt. Für diese Art von Illuminationen ist meine kleine Canon dann doch nicht gemacht. Na, egal, hier ist sie:

School Enrolment

Saturday finally was the big day: School Enrolment for Jale! We all have been excited during the last days but JJ seemed to be pretty cool. Before the celebration at school we attended church and I was surprised to see that the church was nearly full. I did not expect as many young families still believing.

After that there was a 30 minutes celebration and welcoming in the gym of the school. Grades 2, 3 and 4 performed different dances and lyrics on stage to welcome the new pupils.
Then it got serious: The new pupils were called by name and had to go to the middle of the hall to get together with their teacher and classmates. And this time Jale was first. Grade 1A and a family name beginning with B...one day she will hate it! But this time she was pretty cool and very proud.
So was I!! They left the gym then for their first lesson and after that lesson we went to a restaurant where they did not charge anything for the food and drink of Jale. That was nice.

Even more nice to me was the fact that JJ did everything well so far at school. Seems as if this 2 days already made her do a big step. She is developing pretty fast, seems to act somehow responsible already. She wants it and she must have been pretty bored at Kindergarten during the last year.

And for me it is as if a rock has fallen off of my chest.

Wangerooge - Laziness

Rain, rain, rain...

Today the weather is really bad. It got colder and it is raining sinced hours. Since it is the last day of my vacation (we will be leaving tomorrow), I decided to be totally lazy. The weather usually is not holding me back from bicycling (I have good rain protecting clothes) and wind and rough climate belongs to the north sea islands for my oppinion. But today I don't even wanna go out at all. When will I have the next chances to sit in silence, read a book, write some notes??? I will probably have to wait another year for the next chance.

So, lets enjoy the silence and peace on this beautiful island.

Wangerooge - Geocaching

Geocaching did not really keep me busy here. I had a maximum of 7 caches to find on this island. One of them is a webcam cache. I find those caches to be senseless and so I left it. Another one was said to be a 4 kilometre walk through the Dunes and another one was 222 steps up a tower. I couldn't do any of them since my achilles tendon is always hurting after a few steps already.

Besides those unsolvable caches, I had one DNF and 4 founds. The DNF was funny...because I still have no idea of what I did wrong. It was an easy multi cache with 15 waypoints. At home I would not even try to start with such a monster. But here it was a nice walk through the village and I found every station and solved every riddle. But in the end I could not find the cache location. The calculated coordinates led me to a house that was situated less than 100 metres from another cache final. So, I must have done something wrong. My smart sister will be here next week and she will surely tell me what I did wrong.

Wangerooge - Jale and Winni

This is how a day with Winni and Jale looks like...in a few words:

bicycling, beach running, bungee, telling each other fantasy stories, bicycling, pizza, ice cream, playing games, horse riding.

It is real fun and so nice for me to be able to spend so much time together with Jale. Since Julia spends her days with her mother, I have Jale all for my own...perfect! Julia kept telling me that family holidays with Jale are stressfull and exhausting, but she is wrong. She is the same wrong as she is in many other topics.

Wangerooge - Geocaching

After a nice morning at the beach, I slept 2 hours (!!!) in the afternoon. Some clouds came up on the far horizon and I thought that it was now time to go for some geocaches. There are not many on this island and they all seem to be fairly easy.

I did 3 caches today and they kept me busy for not longer than 2 hours. First I was wondering why there are so many micro caches here in unspectacular hiding places. There are so many untouched places and cool hiding spots here. But then I thought it over and think the cachers have done good with their decisions of hiding geocaches. The whole area is a nature reservate and it is forbidden (for good reasons) to even leave the paths. Let us keep it like that. Respect nature!

As I said, The caches have been unspectacular but they gave a lot of informations to me and showed me some quiet and peacefull spots that I would not have discovered on my own during one week. So, again I can recommend you to do some geocaching first whenever you go on vacation. It will provide you with informations about the surrounding, history and „insider“ tipps.

Caches today:

GC17VQH

GC14Q89

GCGWCJ

Wangerooge - Comparing Islands

Größere Kartenansicht

During our vacation we spent 2 weeks on the Island of Mallorca/Spain and 2 days on the North-Sea Island Wangerooge so far. No wonder if I am comparing those locations sometimes even though it is is impossible and unneccessary to compare them.

Wangerooge is a small island (maps link) in a fairly rough and open sea while Mallorca is large and situated in the mediterranean sea.

So, I should not compare...but I still do! And here are some points I could mention:

Climates:

Wangerooge: The german north sea islands are said to have the most healthy climate. Situated offshore it is like high-sea climate. Air filled with jodine and salt, good for your lungs and skin.

Mallorca: The climate is smooth and the air is always gentle to you. But you will never smell the sea or the air....except when the dustbins have just been emptied. But over here you will never face temperatures below 25°C in summer. Usually it will be around 30°C.

Beaches:

Wangerooge: The high tide brings you enough water for bathing only once a day and many tourists are disappointed when they look over the dike and don't see the expected ocean but only brown mud everywhere. To me this high and low tide is fascinating and I can watch the sea come and go. This changes also make the beaches here more wide. Fine white sand with a lot of mussels, crabs etc. to be found near the waterline. Even at low tide I can walk for hours, enjoying the air, the sound of waves, the smell of the sea. (yes..over here the sea smells like sea should smell. Salty, fishy.....different)

Mallorca: Weather guarantee and a calm sea make the beach easy to enjoy for little kids as well as for drunken tourists. But the beaches are not really tidy and on the westcoast there are nearly no waves. Besides that, it is so very crowded that it is nearly impossible to play around with kids in the sand. Beaches on westcoast Mallorca are boring!

Tourists:

Wangerooge: Mainly germans and so everything is in order and well-organized on Wangerooge. None is too loud, they behave well on the beach and they are separating their waste. Boring... just like home! Unfortunately no swedish people here...hehee!

Mallorca: A mix of different languages, nationalities, characters and habits. You don't need a book or TV or iPod to entertain yourself. Just keep your eyes, ears and nose open and you will be a part of a vivid documentation on human behave and misbehave.

Let's just say that those spots are not to be compared. Their characters are just too different. For those who prefer to feel, smell and explore nature, for sure Wangerooge is the better choice. Those who want to do a pure beach vacation with weather guarantee and a lot of life around everywhere should chose Mallorca.

And after you finish your Mallorcan vacation, you can still go to Wangerooge to relax from Mallorca.

Wangerooge

We had only one day at home to do our laundry and catch Julias mother from Hanover airport. Today we left again for another, totally different island: Wangerooge. Wangerooge is one of the seven islands situated just a few kilometres from the mainland of northwest germany. It is a nature reservate where cars are prohibited and nature takes priority over human living.

So it was the total opposite of Mallorca Island. We live only 110 kilometres far from Wangerooge but the trip to the island was the same long as it was to Mallorca. By car, ship, train it took us 4,5 hours to get to our flat!

The first think I did was to rent a bicycle and to discover the west of the island. The island is only about 6 km wide and so it is easy to drive from east to westcoast in less than 30 minutes ... if the wind is not too strong.

I even did some geocaching today. There was a simple traditional cache on the westcoast of Wangerooge. It was hidden already in 2003 and is still there. I like those nearly historical caches and decided to go for this one first.

The second one was a simple multi-mystery-cache that provided me with some interesting informations about the „moving“ of the island during the centuries.

I easily found out what the final location was, but 222 steps were too much for my damaged achilles tendon...so I left it.

Los Linkos:

East Frisian Islands-Wiki (engl)

Wangerooge-Official homepage (german)

Wangerooge-Wiki (engl)

Mallorca, Day 14, The End Is Near

Think this will be the last post via my inofficial sponsor Playa Santa Ponsa and I don't wanna miss to thank them for letting me crawl into their network/wifi sometimes. They may not even know about it, but hey...thanks Dudes!!!
On my last night at the beach I noticed that I missed 2 events that I think I shouldn't have missed:

Booze Cruise (A Catamaran Sailing with free beer and sangria...)
Foam Party (in a local disco, but I am not sure if they would let old aged in...)

Everyone who knows me, will know how much I will miss those events...and how perfect they would have been for me....heheeee

Damn...have to put that on my list of things to do next time here...after arranging a trip to Sweden!

Mallorca, Tag 14, Das Ende ist nah

Wie ist das für euch wenn das Ende der Urlaubsreise naht? Traurig das es vorbei ist aber glücklich wieder nach Hause zu kommen??
Bei mir ist es immer so, das ich nicht unbedingt traurig über das Ende der Reise bin aber generell traurig bin das es wieder in den Alltag geht. Mit jedem Kilometer der Heimreise werde ich trauriger und würde am liebsten sofort auf dem Hacken umdrehen und irgendwo anders hin fahren. Fernweh oder Unruhe? Egal, Julia ist da anders. Die freut sich imemr darauf in ihr trautes Heim zurück zu kehren. Also kann sich wohl jeder vorstellen wie gegensätzlich unsere Stimmungslagen auf morgiger Heimreise sein werden.
Ein ziemlicher Trost für mich ist diesmal allerdings das wir nur 2 Nächte zuhause sein werden bevor es weitergeht zur 2ten Urlaubsreise, diesmal nach Wangerooge.

Mallorca, Day 13, ¿habla español?

As if we were expecting it, our little Jale got sick last night. No vacation without some health troubles. Last night at the beach she did not want to play on the playground or anywhere else, just wanted to sit near me, telling me how much she was missing Grandma & Grandfather.
After all JJ had some temperature at night at 38,5°C and a little throat ache. I went to the „Pharmacia“ and bought some drugs for her.

I did not sleep at all that night and for Julia it was not much better I am afraid. But I can get along with less, bad or without sleep at all when I am on holidays. One of us always had to stay home today to care for JJ and the other one enjoyed the day as good as possible.

On one of my freetime shifts, I went to the „parrot park“ here...a nice place with some shadow places, perfect to read and just relax. I did not really begin to read when an old spanish man took his seat near me and immediately asked me suspiciously if I was german or english. German seemed to be he right answer cuz he was very friendly and talked to me for about an hour. Talked to me in ...spanish! And I talked to him in denglish. He knew only 1 german word and my spanish vocabulary isn't much better. There it was again: the conversation with hands and feet...funny...interesting...I loved it!! When I got back to our flat, I told Julia about it and when she asked me what we were talking about, I noticed that I understood pretty much of all this improvisating conversation. Of course I am not a 100% sure if I got his words right, but...hey-that was fun and now I know what I was missing on my last vacations: the improvisations, the things aside of perfect organization, the surprises!

Now it is 10.30h p.m., JJ got her medicine and I am ready for another sleepless night.
Adeu (mallorquin) Adios (spanish)

Mallorca, Day 11, Geocaching

After being in a state of dizzyness (nothing else but beach, eating, beach, sleeping, beach...) for a few days I went all the way to the last reachable cache for me. It was the one that I couldn't reach on day 5. And I can tell you that all the sweat and energy have been more than worth it.

I had some 2 kilometres to walk (one way) and half of them went straight uphill but since I started only around 7.00 p.m. it was not too hard and I was nearly alone in that archaeological park. The last 400 metres however were leading me higher and higher on a small stone covered path..a steep climb towards the top of the hill. The cache was hidden off of the normal path and I had to do some kinda acrobatic hill climbing, 1 m away from the abyss. One wrong move and I would have fallen 50 m down! I even found a several Tb's in the box but took only 2 of them. They are competing in a race to Denmark and I think I should give them a 1500 km lift.

After signing the logbook I sat there for about half an hour and enjoyed the silence and peace of this place. None around and the wind was gently stroking my face. Since we stay in a tourist centre, we are usually in a huge crowd and the stay on this rocky hill was like a holiday from holidays to me.

Mallorca, Day 10, Observing

Observations on Beach Life, Part 2
Since I had the opportunity to look at even more people from different nationalities, I must add something today and I hope that none of you takes my words serious....did anyone ever take them serious??

It sems as if all the Dutch people on this beach want to prove that the prejudices about them are false. Have not seen any Dutch with pale skin here.
There can be a several reasons for that:

• They all love their solarium at home
• They are here like consant residents
• They are all only making a stopover here on their way from the carribean back to Holland
• Or...maybe Dutch are not pale at all and a smooth brown tan is their normal skin colour and we just have met only the few pale Dutch in our life.

Swedish people are not too different from the average but they are all blonde. I even saw blonde women who obviously dyed their hair even more blonde. Maybe they wanna be a 100% sure of their „blondness“...
They may act as the average but I tell you that the Swedish women are definately the most beautiful women on the beach!!! Without an exception. I won't go into details but I desperately have to prepare for a trip to Sweden...alone!!

Udo Lindenberg - Stark Wie Zwei

So, jetzt muss es endlich raus, hier ist mein coming-out: Ich mag Udo Lindenbergs Musik. Mochte ich schon immer. Bin ja damit aufgewachsen. Nun hab ich allerdings das eine oder andere Problem mit der Person Udo Lindenberg heutzutage. Dieses übertriebene und aufgesetzt wirkende Genöle und Genuschel finde ich einigermaßen lächerlich.

Die neue CD „Stark wie zwei“ hab ich seit der Veröffentlichung, also schon ein paar Monate, auf dem iPod, hab mich bisher aber nicht getraut die CD anzuhören. Ich hatte wohl ein bischen Angst das meine letzten positiven Eindrücke von Udos Musik auch noch zerschlagen werden oder das die CD einfach nur wieder belanglos und/oder aufgesetzt ist.

Aber nix da! Ich hab sie in der letzten lauen Nacht von vorne bis hinten durchgehört...und das sogar zweimal! Ein eher untypischer Opener ist „Ich Zieh' Meinen Hut“ - eine Ballade als Respektbeweis, herrlich. Single Auskopplungen wie „Wenn Du Durchhängst“ und das herrlich powernde „Ganz Anderds“ mit dem ebenfalls herrlich rumnölenden Jan Delay sind ja schon bekannt. Die nächste Single wird dann sicher „Mein Ding“ sein. Und das beschreibt auch schon dieses Album. Udo greift bekannte Themen auf und die Texte wirken immer engagiert und couragiert ohne belehrend oder aufdringlich zu wirken. Nicht mehr so sehr politisch sondern sich eher über zwischenmenschliches Gedanken machend. Einfach unterhaltend. Das überraschende für mich war diesmal sicher die Musik. Sehr druckvoll und voluminös produziert...überraschend modern würde ich das für ein Fossil wie Udo L. nennen. Vom sogenannten „Krautrock“ ist hier jedenfalls nicht mehr viel übrig geblieben. Außer Jan Delay tauchen als Gastmusiker noch Silbermond und Helge Schneider auf. Und bei dem Song „Chubby Checker“ mit Helge musste ich ja nun wirklich laut lachen. Ist wohl der einzige Song der hier als Klamauk zu bezeichnen ist. Aber auch der Song macht riesig Spaß und hört sich wirklich so an als ob er von Udo und Helge mal „eben so“ bei einem Gläschen Eierlikör aufgenommen wurde.

Man merkt Udo Lindenberg auf dieser CD wirklich den Spaß an ohne Druck produzieren zu können. Zu tun was er möchte, sich nicht verbiegen zu müssen und seinen Gedanken freien Lauf zu lassen. Viele Rückblicke und versteckte Hinweise auf seine äußerst bewegte Vergangenheit machen das Ganze noch persönlicher und authentischer.

Mallorca, Day 7, West Coast

We still had the car today and made a little excursion towards the north of this island – the only place that we have never been to before.
First surprise was already after only 10 minutes of driving: Camp del Mar! Wow, a rough cliff-lined coast with very few hotels around, clear blue sea and a very relaxed atmosphere because no beach around. It was possible to swim though, between the rocks there always were small spots of white sand to reach the sea. To me, the nicest place on the West Coast of Mallorca!
Then we went further on to Port d'Andratx. I was a bit disappointed of this place. Said to be the romantic port where only the rich and beautiful live, I found it to be very common, narrow and unspectacular. A nice view anyway because of the many many sailboats in the bay.

I found another place to be much more exciting and adventurous: On our way back home our way lead us through the mountains of the „Sierra de Tramuntana“ and we went for another geocache there. And this really was kind of a lost-place that I liked. „El Molino Escondido“ is situated only 100 metres from the street. I think it must have been kind of a mill in former times because I saw some old mill-stones around. It is a huge building, built on a mountain side and we really had to climb up pretty high. The search was not easy, because we had no GPS signal and no spoiler-photos with us. But after some 20 minutes of climbing and searching, I saw the very „obvious“ hiding place.
This time even Jale was excited and loved the „cache-hunt“ because we were playing as if this was kind of an old castle where we were searching for the gold treasure of those knights. FUN!!

Mallorca, Day 6, Cuevas del Drach

Beach Life was getting boring now. So we rented a car and visited the „Cuevas del Drach“, situated about 90 km from here at the East Coast near Porto Cristo.

Those caves are really fascinating. We have visited them twice before but even the 3^rd time now made us shut up staring in awe at this wonder of nature. Founded in 1835, there were excursions being organized already since 1878. When you enter this underground world, you walk nearly 1 kilometre. You will see Stalagmites and Stalactites of tremendous sizes. At the end of the way you reach Lake Martel, one of the worlds largest underground lakes. Thre are seats for about 1000 people and a classical concert is being performed on the lake. In total darkness, the 2 violinists, 1 cellist and 1 pianist are being carried on illuminated boats across the lake. The beauty of these caves is considered to be exceptional. The combination of illumination and classical music make this underground stay a geographical-romantic adventure. Even Jale was whispering like „how wonderful“ all the time.

After that, it was time to switch on the GPS unit and I found out that there was a cache only 2 km far. The description of the location was like „...a bay perfect for families to enjoy a day with waves and swimming“. So off we went there and really it was a bay there like taken from a picture book or a painting. The waves were about 1 metre high and we spent all day with wave-jumping. Funny enough, but we discovered that here on the East Coast there is much better and clearer water with a lot of waves while on the West Coast, where we are staying there ain't a single wave in sight.

Mallorca, Day 5, Geocaching

5 days on this beautiful island already and not a single cache. Hmm...not that this fact was really bothering me but what will my fellow geocachers say?? Maybe like „haha...vacations on Mallorca Island...drinking and sunbathing!! That's no vacation“! So, to not look like a typical german, beerdinking, sunbathing tourist, I turned into a typical, german beer drinking geocacher.

Seriously, I was prepared to do at least 3 caches here that I could easily reach by bike. Today it was again hot hot hot at 37°C and I went by bicycle to the first cache: MOLI DE VENT, a very beautiful mill and had no problems with discovering the well hidden box but if I would be 10 cm smaller, I would have had no chance...must be disappointing for those who make it here, discover the hiding-place but cannot reach it. The Mill was giving me a nice shadow place where I drank my first litre of water today.

The next cache was said to be only 2 km away. I made it uphill and uphill and uphill while my shirt already got so very wet from sweat that it seemed to be pulling me down. The cache location was situated in kind of an archaeological park, that meant: again uphill! My GPS said: 150 metres to the cache when I noticed a lot of noise coming from the top of the hill - the cache direction: workers everywhere around the cache location doing some kind of re-organizing there :-( So I turned around and went downhill downhill downhill without logging the cache. I was really pissed off...150m only!!!!

That was it for today. The third cache would have been 3 kilometres far on a cliff near the sea with Terrain 3,5, but I had no water and energy left anymore.

Caching on Mallorca Island in summer during the daytime is for idiots!! So, it is maybe perfect for me, but I think I won't go again...maybe by our air conditioned car that we wanna rent tomorrow to make a trip to the „Cuevas del Drach“.

For today I will close the day as I am expected to: drinking beer, sunbathing. Cheers!

Mallorca, Day 3, observing

Observations on beach life

Today I was able to go on with my observations on beach life and I found out some very trivial but still very interesting things. You don't believe me?? Right u are...but I'm gonna tell you about my very subjective observations anyway:

1. the most stylish people on the beach are spanish. No matter if they look good or not, they just act, dress and behave cool. Not that high-headed kinda coolness, but very relaxed and kinda stylish...

2. you can spot english people easily from others. They have a skin mix between pale and red...and it won't change, no matter how long they stay here. Must be some kind of pigment thing at them.Besides that, they also drink alcohol early and in unbelievable amounts...now I know why I always felt well in GB...

3. the germans have themselves under control. They try to control everyone else too (didn't they try that in former times before??) but over here they only earn a stylish-high-headed-spanish smile and probably get kicked out of a row in the supermarket by a red-skinned, loud and drunk english. Did I mention that the spanish are stylish? Yes?...oh!

4. Russians are said to be everywhere on this island. Over here I have not met more than 1,5 Russians so far. From this minority I can tell that they are loud too, eat strange food and drink far too less alcohol!!

5. French people on spanish beaches never smile. At least I have not seen any of them with a smile on his/her face. They always seem to be bored and whenever they see someone having fun, they seem to slightly shake their head in disbelieve.

Mallorca, Day 2, Swimming

Today I we got up at 8.00h and went straight to the beach for some refreshment. In our flat, without aircondition, it was hot all night and we all sweated a lot.
Later on, we checked out the near surroundings since we noticed that we need some stuff for our meals. A fact that we hardly paid any attention to so far.
Prices over here are just strange...fruits and vegetables are expensive as can be while alcohol, cheese and meat in a supermarket are appoximately the same or even less expensive than in germany. In a holiday region like this I would have expected it to be the opposite.

Oh yes...we also went swimming a several times today. Besides the cold showers in our flat, the only working way of cooling down a bit. I had an inflatable mattress with me and Jale and me played as if it was our boat or island or something. That was really fun, until I realized that we were already in an area where our feet could not touch the ground anymore. Pretty brave for a non-swimmer, ey??