these are from a few weeks ago in the canal behind our house… it was quite magical to walk in the frozen ice and even beneath the bridges. definitely a new perspective, and only slightly scary!
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Author: ana
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kurentovanje, the carnival in ptuj
around this time two years ago, we watched the kurenti come to ljubljana on a freezing day… and we were so in awe of the whole event that we decided there and then that the next year we would go to ptuj and see the real thing from the source.
so we did! about a year ago, we drove all the way to ptuj on a mission. i remember it was unbelievably cold and windy, and yet we sticked around through the folklore and performances, warming our hands on steaming mugs of glühwein (one of the best i’d tried so far!) until finally the kurenti came out. i froze my fingers off making a video of the whole thing, and with the move to berlin, never got around to publish it… so here it is now:
quite something, isn’t it? i don’t think carnival will ever be the same without these big guys and their cowbell cacophony!
and of course, we stopped at the famous trojane krofi house that everyone had told us about, and bought a bunch of them for the road!
i don’t think they were the best we’ve had in slovenia, but there were certainly up there in the top 5, and well worth the short detour on the highway! :)
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walking on the outskirts of berlin
berlin is a curious geographical conundrum. wikipedia says it’s a number of times bigger than paris, and it does seem big to us. it takes half an hour by subway or bus to the center of the city (whichever “center” you pick). and since only 4 million people or so live in all this space, it doesn’t feel the least claustrophobic. the streets have large sidewalks and are lined with trees, there are parks and lakes and canals around every corner.
but, if you take the s-bahn in any direction and ride till the border of the AB zone, you’ll soon be in a completely different place. mind you, this is still berlin: a different berlin. like jiading is still shanghai… but not really.
up north in karow, for instance, close to where the wall used to be, horses graze on nearly frozen fields or around small ponds. there are paths marked by signs, paths that walk around small clusters of lakes, or up and down the soft hills. chopped trees, neatly piled on the side of the path.
near enough to the city that you can still see the omnipresent tv tower looming in the distance – but far enough that you can almost forget you live there.
we’ve discovered this path, the barnimer dörferweg through the couchsurfing berlin walks group, which we’ve joined. we’re looking forward to new walks when the weather warms up a little. they’re a nice and diverse bunch, so if you want to get out of the city for a while and breathe fresh air, you should come too! :)
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postcrossing cookies
(10 million cards is such a big number, i confess we still have a little trouble wrapping our heads around it… it feels strange to know that you are, in a way, responsible for all these postcards being purchased, written, stamped and delivered. 10 per minute, or so. yeah.)
we end up thinking about postcards (and postcrossing) all the time. that, and food.
so our friend c. surprised us by baking these cookies for us, a while back. she even did the icing with special sparkling dust!
we were so happy and surprised! aren’t they adorable? our friends know us so well! :D
there’s a discreet and intriguing memorial near the entrance of reichstag, a row of uneven cast iron plaques, with names and dates. no explanation is given for the curious tourists that wander around it.
the memorial was unveiled in 1992, in remembrance of murdered members of the reichstag. in the borders of the 96 plaques are the names of the politicians from the german parliament that were persecuted by national socialists after they gained power in 1933. it is a simple and inconspicuous memorial, but a noteworthy one.
more from this series.