oh, october

my niece picking blackberries. in fact, several nieces picking backberries, even though you can't see them all here. and the little crop was delicious - offered from stained little hands, slightly squished and with that special sweet-sourness.

also: thank you so much to everybody for making yesterday a special day: you can't really beat getting up and finding a breakfast table laid out with flowers, cake and a candle, and getting kind messages all around. dankeschön!

p.s.: should the images not load properly, please try reloading my blog outside your reader, i've had a technical glitch this morning. should be back to normal with the next post though!

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changes

this morning, it's been raining for hours. it's been much cooler than yesterday, change is in the air. letting summer go always makes me a bit sentimental and i'll savour every summery moment while it lasts. this afternoon, the sun came out again - guess who was happy then?

remember my weekend at the baltic sea and our apple picking there? well, we picked some green ones too. i really liked that old ladder.

thanks for all your comments on my last post. let me know how it's going if you're giving it a try.

happy monday

i'm tired but happy - and you?

i'll postpone the post about bigger pictures for a moment (it's not forgotten though!), since i doubt i'd be able to string together too many sensible sentences this morning. let me leave you with a few pictures my five-year-old nephew took the weekend before last at my parents' at our family party, following everybody round with my little point-and-shoot camera. what fun!

have a good start to your week, whatever you're up to!

apples

my friend eva convinced me to come and join her on usedom (an island in the baltic sea) last weekend by texting me: 'it's wonderful here, the garden is full of apples. you must come, we can cook.'

and so i went. a four-hour train ride later (it's not that far really, but the regional train stops just everywhere) i was there. i love that garden. we picked some apples and gathered others that had fallen off the tree and made apple cake, apple jelly and a savoury dish with apple and onion sauce.

as you can see, eva is not only very convincing but also a mean hand model.

corner view: music

lisa picked music as this week's corner view theme. and what a lucky coincidence - last saturday berlin was full of music. a couple of years ago someone must have thought how lucky the french are, having their fête de la musique - and why not jump on the bandwagon, too? ever since, the idea seems to have gathered momentum and there are stages - professional and make-shift alike - in many parts of town where people gather for free open-air concerts. the weather has been good, too (not a given this year, it has rained and rained and rained in june so far), so everybody was out and about and making, or listening to music. i went to see a stage not far from my house in prenzlauer berg. see how everybody was there with friends and family? they were sitting on the sidewalks, on the street, on the scaffolding, on windowsills, on bikes and tricycles. wish you could have been there too!

take a look at the other corner views around the world via jane's at spain daily. what a great idea to make us share glimpses of the corners we live in - thank you so much jane!

see that little guy on his tricycle? he was fast as lightning! (hm - looking at it again, it's not really a tricycle, is it? more of a fourcycle...)

corner view: out your back door or window

this is not really what i meant to post, but i left my digital camera at a friend's house and had to go through the pictures i already have instead of taking some new ones for this week's corner view. hope you'll come along for the ride anyway!

i live at the end of a street, very close to the former berlin wall. my part of the street was actually considered borderland before 1989. today, that's hard to imagine, but in berlin, history isn't something that's confined to certain places, it's everywhere and often quite poignant. the stretch of the wall that ran behind our street has since been turned into a park (mauerpark). not far from here, small remnants of the wall are still up (on the second image you can spot some at the very top of he hill) and the wall memorial centre is less than a five-minute bike ride from my house. i think it's a good thing that this no-man's-land from cold war times is now being reclaimed by the local community and visitors alike. on sundays, a big flea market takes place and people hold picnics, there's a little city farm for children, some playgrounds and a freeclimbing 'rock' wall, too. if you happen to know which part of the fences bordering on unbuilt plots and industrial sites behind the park has a hole in it through which to climb, you're bound to find the odd alternative club in an abandonded shed. maybe i'm getting old, but i don't have the first clue of where the current holes are to be found - i just sometimes hear the music drifting our way when the wind's right. 

take a look at other corners here, there and everywhere (many of them much more idyllic than my urban corner):

jane, ladybug-zen, ian, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad,

caitlin, joyce, ani, kim, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe,kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t., jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva,francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana,denise, cabrizette, bohemia girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, a girl in the yellow shoes, mister e,janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate,mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte,kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa,britta, virgina,april, rebecca, b, kyndale samantha, karen, kristina, angelina, dorit,goldensunfamily, sophie, janet, mcgillicutty, desiree, di,travelingmama, aimee, sunnymama amanda, ali, jenell, guusje, britta,juanita, pamela, inna, daan, myrtille, cris, ibb, susi, jodi, lily, gillian,doobleh-vay 

corner view: beach

hmm. berlin is not on the coast. so where do i find a beach for you?

then again, if you took a map, you'd see that the city is dotted with and surrounded by hundreds of lakes, some bigger, some smaller. many of them can be reached by public transport and/or bike, which is just fabulous. it may take a while to find a place where you can actually access the water, since there tends to be much reed and some people have their houses built directly on the lake, so some of the lakeside is private property. but keep looking and you'll find small beaches, some of them tiny, where you can have your picnic and even go for a swim. i've still got plenty of lakes to discover, which i can't wait for. so far, my favourites are wannsee (which is huge) - where i love to take the ferry (some pictures about wannsee and the ferry over at my other blog, mostly berlin) - and sacrower see, a very small lake not far from potsdam. this is where i took my pictures. what a lovely day that was.

have a good one yourselves!

take a look at other corner views around the world here:

jane, ladybug-zen, ian, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad, caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, kim, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage,trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana,denise, cabrizette, bohemia girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, a girl in the yellow shoes, mister e,janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa,britta, virgina, april, rebecca, b, kyndale

samantha, karen, kristina, angelina,  dorit, goldensunfamily, sophie, janet, nicki, ruth, mcgillicutty,

desiree, di, travelingmama, aimee, sunnymama, amanda, ali, jenell, guusje, britta, juanita, pamela, inna, daan

p. s. : there are some beach bars in berlin as well. i haven't been in a while, but jeanne at sans soucis recently posted some pictures of a 'strandbar' in potsdam and you can also see some here.

oh architecture

there are so many beautiful buildings to be admired. often i look at them and am really grateful for those architects who thought them up and the many people who helped realising their plans. one of my favourite buildings in berlin is haus der kulturen der welt (house of world cultures), a real midcentury-modern gem. there's a post about it over on my other blog, mostly berlin.

today was very sunny and i started my day with some coffee and raisin toast for breakfast, then cycled over to the museum, where i was helping out in the book shop this weekend. loved it. but ouch, my feet are hurting.

the pictures were taken some time ago at the house of world cultures. sadly, one of the hinges of those much-loved vintage sunglasses has since broken and i'll have to find out if it can be fixed.

anyway, time to snuggle up on the sofa with a blanket now. have a good start to your week! 

the old garden

around this time last year we went to usedom, an island in the baltic sea and stayed in a friend's house. there and then, i fell in love with the old garden and the shed. this is how i would like my allotment to look if i'll ever get round to having one. the house itself it refurbished with all mod cons, but i love the charm of the old, unchanged bits. they quietly tell their stories. a shame though that places like these are ever harder to find these days.

and next up

haven't seen any lilacs for some days now, they've quietly gone, it seems. which makes me a little sad. but then again, peonies are up next - and that's quite alright by me!

more film

remember i told you about our day trip to sacrow, when we took the ferry across wannsee and cycled to sacrow to see the church and then on to sacrower lake for a picnic (where the photos in that post below were taken)? well, i took some pictures of the church as well, again using cross-processing. i know my friends sometimes have to roll their eyes at me lately for lugging around two cameras and taking pictures all the time. they have a point. but i just had to take home some memories of that lovely day.