We took a boat-trip on the Wörtersee to Velden and back. (Here are the outward and return cyclemeters.). My notes remind me that we tried to buy individual Guglhupf tins in a local supermarket, and as I write this I recall having coffee and Pommes in a lake-shore café.
I have an ambivalent relationship with borders. That is, I like borders that say ‘these people provide public services in this area, while those people provide them in that area’ but I dislike just about all other meanings. I hate borders that say ‘this area is only for this ethic, linguistic or religious group’, especially those that carry the meaning of everyone else being untermensch. We are all human and hence very fallible, so there is no logical basis for this type of border. Perhaps because of this relationship, I like to visit border triple-points. The triple-point between Austria, Slovenia and Italy is uphill from the village of Arnoldstein.
We started today with coffees in the hotel bar, and amazement that a hotel this posh couldn’t provide a soya latte. As I write this (31 August), I seem to recall that Elly was more upset than me about this, which is surprising because generally I’m the cantankerous old git.
My German wasn’t good enough to understand more than the gist of a newspaper article about Kärnten’s debt-explosion. (I’m now taking lessons via Lingoda: it initially assessed me at A1·2 mostly because I can’t decline articles. I like to think my vocabulary is much better.)
Today was our first opportunity to explore Klagenfurt, Kärnten’s state capital. Our hotel was a couple of miles from Klagenfurt city centre, so we bussed into the city centre and made like tourists. Perhaps the most memorable sight was the Lindworm fountain. Klagenfurt felt quite modern and friendly, with good public transport. Coffees seem to come with the option of pancreas-destroying amounts of sugar. Because I have the memory of a stomped-on slug, and didn’t write any notes until much later, everything else about today is an indelible blank apart from our first of many visits to Burger Boutique. This is in the university area, only 800m from our hotel. My legs appreciated this much – they hurt if I walk more than a couple of hundred metres.
So we’re off to the Muttiland again, this time to spend over a week in Kärnten, a southern state that borders on Slovenia. So yay, opportunities for even more border-crossings before we need visas. We’re going by train; even if we were fit enough to cycle, we’d have had to start back before we even got there.
My sister has a friend who lives in northwest London and had a significant birthday on Saturday 6 April. My sister can’t travel that far on on her own, so I went south to take her to the birthday party. Our travel should have been
Our first visit was to the Stadsarchief (city archives). It’s very worth visiting, not least because it appears to be on ‘Weasel Street’. (Here’s the tram-journey.). Then we took another tram as far east as we could get (IJburg) and watched boat-traffic along the IJ. Then Elly took me to a wonderful place. (here’s how we got there and back.)
Amsterdam was filled with LGBT+ flags. Gemeentearchief buildingThe building is a former bank HQ.Maria Austria institute?pink elephantarchitecturemore architecturealong the IJIJ-IJ sailorwhere we wereground-level diversitypropagandamore propagandaYou must do this!my spiritual home, says Elly
tram terminusThere’s a familiar name.Where it isuntranslatableopen-air gymShe blows!I wonder what they sell here?We went in for a drink, and they place was lovely.Elephants are everywhere.Yes!ready to leave – and ready to go back.Why is this boat taking in water?land’s endwhere we wereaquatics
Berlin baby! Here’s how we got here. First, a train from Zaandam to Amsterdam Centraal; next, a train from Amsterdam Centraal to Berlin Haupbahnhof. (I have no idea why Cyclometer stopped recording before we even got to Hanover.) We arrived in the late evening, so don’t do any more than install ourselves in a hotel, then go back to the Haupbahnhof to eat at Hans im Glück. (Eating at Hans im Glück is one of the Deutsche Heilige Dreifaltigkeit: the others are shopping at a DM and doing laundry at an Eco-Express Waschsalon.)
Digital evidence that Bruce might have a life 