Tim Visits...

Three days after we returned from Berlin, we were thrilled that Tim could stay with us overnight during his post-Eurohash journey around Europe. While Jimmy worked, Tim joined me and Kati for a walk. 

We were quite intrigued when we spotted a dad and his three kids with a homemade boat. 

Honestly, we didn’t think it would float...

…but it did.

The design error wasn’t with the boat’s shape, but rather the rowing mechanism which quickly broke and left this little one having to be pulled back to shore by the attached rope. 

Later that afternoon, we headed to Leiden where we enjoyed a beer at a café table temporarily placed on one of the bridges...

…and then took a walk around in search for some dinner.

 

A Bonus Trip to Arizona...

After learning that her flight back to London had been cancelled, Veronica started exploring options. Since Brett was leaving the day following the wedding to drive to Sedona for a family holiday, it dawned on her that there might be a silver lining to the cancellation: Brett could drop her off to visit Rachel, who had just moved to Tempe, Arizona to start a PhD at Arizona State studying coral reef health (like Brett, she also skipped doing a master’s). Here are the girls, who became best friends in kindergarten, enjoying a traditional British dinner of Cornish pasties and mushy peas. 

Not only was this the first time they’d been reunited since April 2014, but it was their first visit without their mothers along. Luckily they got along as well as ever! Here they are trying on clothes at a secondhand shop....

….and enjoying bubble tea after failing to escape from an escape room with Rachel’s new friends.

In an attempt to escape the 110° stifling heat, they headed into the mountains one day. This was their lunch stop on their hike, which was cut short due to approaching thunder.  

They then drove to see this huge arch. The Tonto Natural Bridge is believed to be the largest natural travertine bridge in the world, which they were able to walk under. Although she understood the reasoning, that didn’t stop Veronica from being disappointed that they weren’t allowed to swim in the pool underneath. 

Luckily she was able to swim once and thoroughly enjoyed a lake swim in very warm water at sunset.

It is funny to think that those little girls who met in kindergarten but grew up an ocean away, ended up with so much in common. 

Veronica was incredibly weighed down by too many bags for one person flying from Phoenix to London and then taking multiple trains and a ferry to get from London to Holland. 

 

Back to California...

After Brett returned from his scary difficult hiking trip with his college buddies (you can read about it here), he and Veronica left Grandma’s to head back to Brett’s house. He drove down Highway 1 so they could stop in Big Sur...

After spending so much time exploring the coast of England, Veronica really enjoyed finally getting to see the dramatic California coastline.

They spent the night camping north of Santa Barbara. 

The next morning, Brett showed her around where he lived for four years while he studied at UC Santa Barbara. 

They arrived back in San Diego in time to attend Nick and Megan’s rehearsal dinner (at The Boathouse, where Jimmy and I had our third date and first discussed how many kids we’d have)...

…and their wedding at Liberty Station. Not only was this Brett’s first time being a Groomsman, let alone the Best Man, but it was his first time ever attending a wedding.  

The ceremony was beautiful and Veronica really enjoyed getting to meet and party with so many of Brett’s friends. Despite no masks, it wasn’t a superspreader event, which Veronica was nervous about. 

Their final night in San Diego was spent sleeping on Brett friend’s floor without their beloved sleeping bags.
 

Summer Pigs...

The piglets had first arrived in early May. This photo was taken in mid-June and they had grown a lot.

I really like these shots: a piggy covered in mud...

…a piggy reflection...

…and a very happy piggy. 

At the end of August, we finally spotted one of the pigs in the pond. 

Veronica bonded with one of the pigs when she returned from the US.  

Sadly, it was only a short time later that there were no more pigs in the paddock. Presumably they had been fattened up enough.

 

Summer Swans...

We spotted cygnets in our neighborhood for the first time in 2021 in mid-May.

We encountered them several times over the summer along our usual walking paths.

Here is Jimmy encouraging a cygnet to clear the path so Kati could get through without being attacked by an aggressive parent. 

Luckily there was no attack. 

By mid-August the cygnets were pretty large.
 

Final Day in Berlin...

Around the corner from our hotel was the Topography of Terror, an outdoor and indoor museum built where the Gestapo and SS Headquarters once stood. We only visited the outdoor exhibit, which was deeply disturbing, yet very well done. 

While it is difficult to learn yet more about how man can brutalize man, it is important that sites like this don’t sugarcoat the realities of what happened during that horrific war. 

Luckily not our all of our day was about sadness. We said farewell to Steve and then met up with Bjarne at our hotel. We had last seen him nearly a year earlier. Here we are in front of the remnants of Anhalter Bahnhof, a train station which opened in 1841 and was used to deport Jews to concentration camps until it was severely damaged in bombing raids in 1943. 

It was demolished in 1959, but the portico was refurbished in 2005. 

We took a nice walk before settling at a small café where we had a deep conversation about first love. While Ashlynn and Bjarne had broken up nine months earlier and weren’t in communication at the time, it was very nice to catch up with this sweet young man that had lived with us in the White House Commune. 

Afterwards we returned to the hotel to grab our luggage and caught the subway to the main train station to catch our train back home. 

I spotted another bear, apparently called a Buddy Bear, this one featuring wild animals.

There were long lines at many of the places to grab some dinner for the train, but we finally managed to get some food and then waited for our train on this rather dramatic train platform.

Our journey home went smoothly and brought our adventure to a close.

 

Walking Around in Circles...

We eventually took the subway to the area where Jimmy and Thomas had eaten with colleagues the evening before so we could have some dinner. 

Then we set off in search of somewhere interesting to grab some drinks. Along the way we saw this neon-lit train station...

…some bits of the Berlin Wall...

…this elaborate ceiling of a mall behind the station...

…and this insanely brightly lit office building.

We eventually picked a bar that wasn’t too crowded as Jimmy was determined to orchestrate a whisky tasting for Thomas’ sake.

Steve was hesitant to walk through the Holocaust Memorial, but we convinced him that it was the right thing to do. It was incredibly eerie walking through the dark sloping aisle between the concrete slabs which appeared to grow around us.

In comparison, the nearby Brandenburg Gate, which somehow survived World War II, seemed light and festive. 

Not so festive, was walking past various people sleeping on the streets...

…and this bronze sculpture from 2009 called Trains to Life, Trains to Death. This side of the sculpture symbolized the Kindertransport, which saved approximately 10,000 Jewish children before the war by bringing them to the UK, Holland, Belgium and France. 

This side represented the 1,600,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children that were brought by train to extermination camps. The artist himself was saved by the Kindertransport and has placed similar sculptures in several cities including in London and Hoek van Holland. 

Our search for a cool bar failed and we ended up back at the same place we had dinner for a final beer before catching the subway back to the hotel.