My trip to Berlin 2009

Hi everybody!


I have been working away on some paintings in my "Nature - up close and personal" series and I will be putting some up shortly (:o). 


In the meantime , I will tell you about my first trip to Berlin in Germany in 2009 to see my youngest son, Glenn, who is also an artist.  
I was terrified of flying and usually I have a companion to go with me but this time I would be on my own and I was so scared that it was either "feel the fear and do it anyway" or stay at home! And as I really wanted to see Glenn and Berlin, I went ahead and I must say, the flight wasn't too bad at all for me. 
When I got off the plane and went for my luggage, I saw all 6ft 5in of Glenn towering over others, waiting for me to come through! It was lovely to see him again as I hadn't seen him for awhile.


We set off by bus to the train station and after a few changes of trains, we arrived in Berlin and I was amazed that it was different than I expected. The architecture in the buildings was beautiful, and very colourful. The people were very helpful and cheerful, even though I didn't know the language. And they are very inventive and recycle a lot, amazing how creative they are too.




Anyway, we set off for the apartment and when we had something to eat, we took off right away for a bit of sightseeing and headed towards the botanical gardens which was so beautiful! As it was early October and autumn, the leaves were  beautiful autumnal colours which was a feast to the eye and we even picked up chestnuts that had fallen by the side of the road on the way up to the gardens!
We stayed there for ages, and looked at all the flowers and trees and in to the hot house which housed fish and all sorts of exotic plants. We had a lovely meal in the cafe afterwards. 
I will just give a general sense of everything we did  for the week as it will take up too much time otherwise.

We went shopping to the big retail outlets and I saw where they have the christmas markets which were even getting ready in October for the christmas rush already!
We went to the tv tower which was so tall - beautiful building.  

On one of the days we went to see the where the original berlin wall was and the look out towers and they have all sorts of invited artist now from all countries putting up their murals on these mock slabs of wall now of which I will put up some photos. It was so interesting!

We went for a meal in a vietnamese restaurant too which was lovely and Glenn knew the manager and he came over to talk to us too.
But in all my visit, the most interesting was when the giant puppets came with their troupe of puppeteers from Nantes in France to perform a fairytale through puppetry on the streets of Berlin for 3 days. The story was of a little girl who somehow lost her uncle and she searched Berlin starting and finishing at the brandenburg gate, for 3 days to try to find him But he was a deep sea diver and had gone under the water in that time to dive and on the 3rd day, he came up and they found each other! it was a fabulous spectacle! 

I had a great time over all and will never forget it! 


I will tell you about my 2nd trip to Berlin soon........ 


                          Eileen    (:o)