Unfortunately I seem to have brought back some sort of summer flu from last weeks vacation. Coughing and stuffy lungs. Fighting it with tea and vitamin-c now.

Nevertheless I had to deliver K2 to Hamburg for his two week hiking trip in Norway …

I hope he’ll enjoys it as much as his last hiking trip in Sweden two years ago.

Embassy

On Tuesday I accompanied the in-laws on their visit to the South African embassy in Berlin as a translator. They want to apply for a pensioners visa which requires a whole lot of paperwork.

We had to wait for about 4 hours until it was our turn. Eventually some stamps were missing … but that seems to be solvable. But of course will require another visit. But fortunately no help with translation was needed as the embassy staff speaks German really well and was very kind in general.

Ton, Steine, Scherben Podcast

found this marvelous podcast about germany’s first rock band with german lyrics. They are legendary in Germany although they hadn’t been commercially successful at all. What I think is almost unparalleled in Germany is their integrity to their original principles.

https://www.radioeins.de/archiv/podcast/ton_steine_scherben.html

Learning to swim

On Saturday there was an event at the grounds of the EST. This is the historic school side in Templin. During GDR times this was the place I finally learned to swim some decades ago. As member of “AG Touristik” we wanted to do a canoe tour. But for that everyone would have been able to swim. I wasn’t at that time, so they send us to the local rowing & canoeing club. There we got life safer vests on and were tossed into the lake to swim 😉 Eventually the life vests were omitted and we could swim 🤣