Aside from the business of 'renovating' our old and new apartments, the last few weekends have also been filled with visits from some of our favourite people in the world.

First up, Richard, who came to StillRespectsAndGivesMoneyToScienceDeutschland (that's a German compound word) for a job interview in the Cologne direction, and who was kind enough to then head east to check out our lovely little side of the country.


He came to us on a Friday, and we spent the day catching up on two years worth of gossip, and then stuffing our face with Greek food.

Saturay was the day for the Big City, and much, much walking.

Ok, also posing.


..and also Mushrooms!


At one point, we walked past a 'dance protest' vs violence against women. It was supposed to be synchronised globally, but seemed to have a pretty small turn out for the Berlin chapter. We watched for about five minutes, but as this consisted only of a very shrill German woman shouting very shrill German into a microphone ('Move back, spread out!! You need room to Dance!'), and no dancing, we soon moved on.


Andy has a new obsession with climbing things, which I think might only come from the fact that he has a Fitbit fitness counter that can count not only steps of the forwards kind, but also the kind that you go up.

He made us climb the victory column in the centrre of the Tiergarten.

Great view, very low cost (3 euros) compared to other high spots in the city, but with a very small staircase taking both up and down traffic, and not much room at the top.

Your three euros will also get you the round tour of a rather terrible 'museum' at the base of the column. It shows pictures and little figures of some of the other famous tall things in the world (think the leaning tower of Pisa, etc.).


Brilliantly, I managed to take one photo of the view before my camera ran out of batteries.

Sunday was the day of Potsdam. Plus, we evolved from the foot to the wheel, and took our bicycles for a spin.

Actually, we spent about an hour trying to change my flat bike tire, then wheeled the thing to the nearest gas station to pump it.. only to find that we'd failed somewhere in the whole process and the thing was still leaky.

How many doctors (and hopefully-nearly doctors) does it take to change a bike tire?

Luckily, it was super sunny that weekend, so despite it being way too early in the year for the bike season, one of the hire places had opened early.

We rode for five minutes, before I felt a strong need for icecream.

Dicky looked demure...

...but the lady behind him was not to be outdone on the 'snuggly sunbathing' front.





















Aww Potsdam, I'm gonna miss you!



While we were at the Amazing Victory Tower Museum on the Saturday, Andy saw a picture of Potsdam's Famous Einstein Tower, and insisted we ride to the top of Potsdam's only hill to see the thing.

This building, which I think is amazing and beautiful and magical, is not it.

This is:

Pretty disappointing eh? I'm not sure that it was worth me pushing my bike all the way up that hill

I'll leave you with a photo of Andy and Dicky riding off into the sunset. The way it should be.