Frau Sparkle tumbles in the pool of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Still a pristine structure with its adjacent main stadium, it is austere, powerful, overwhelming and frightening. The water in the pool is glorious and clear, however as you will see here. It reminded us of Vanuatu's blue holes.
We counted 53 swimmers in Berlin's Olympic Pool, all but three of them -- before we dived in -- doing breaststroke! Even in the two roped lanes! It was a nightmare for freestylers, but a wonderful experience, so good was the water.
See for yourself why the architecture of the pool and stadium are desribed so. Not all affected the same way, of course. This is outside the Olympic Stadium's "Besucherzentrum", its Visitior Centre. That made us, we supposed, Besuchers.
Yrpean cities have a great tradition of public architecture, and the Germans carry it on. A wander around Berlin is a tour through some of the most magnificent, spectacular, bold and visionary public buildings, old and new. Here, the new German Chancellry, completed with the transfer of the German government to Berlin. It sits at the northern end of a line of glorious new structures, balanced at the other by a collection of buildings, which straddle the Spree, housing the Bundestag, the federal parliament. Sadly, we don't have vision like this in Stray'a. The new sits by the old, such as the Reichstag -- still housing the houses of Germany's federal parliament -- and the Brandenburg Gate, inter alia. The vision of Germany's leaders in this regard is breathtaking. You wouldn't get it in Stray'a.
Another magnificent new public building in Berlin, the Hauptbahnhof (central station), which not only is breath-taking in its design, but it works, too.
Above: Wally, indeed. There is a right Wally there, somewhere, if you can find him, preparing to queue for admission to the Reichstag. Truly, one of the world's great public buildings.
Left: The public need not book for admission to the Reichstag. Without bookings, you gain access, through the front door and up the lift to the roof, where the new dome -- a modern cupola -- provides perhaps the most spectacular views in Berlin.
Below: The highlight of Frau Sparkle's trip so far has been "James", the deckhand on the cruiser on the Spree in Berlin. She dubbed him "James" after her other favourite deckhand, on the Freshwater on Sydney Harbour.
Would you buy dried paw paw from this eastern street vendor?
Strawberries in Berlin.
oceanswims.com and Frau Sparkle had been approached by so many Germans seeking directions -- apparently, we looked like Germans, which doesn't surprise us, but it did Frau Sparkle -- that we figured we should bone up, so we could be more helpful.
They're a wacky lot, those Czechs: public art in Prague. The "spouts" rise and fall and the hips wiggle, just like a couple of good natured Stray'n boofheads in a display of exuberance after the footy.
The hall of the Old Castle inside the grounds of Prague Castle. The wooden floor, around 1,000 years old, is sprung.
St Vitus's Cathedral inside the grounds of Prague Castle. A bit awe-inspiring.
A typical lunch at Pragg Cassel, as American tourists pronounce it to bus drivers from whom they seek directions. Do you know, oceanswims.com has tried probably 25 different beers since our arrival in Yrp, and all of them come in their own, uniquely shaped, collectors' item glass. Yrp is worth a visit if only for a tour of its beer glasses.
On the grounds that most tourist information in Prague is in Czech only, we can't tell you much about this monument. But it has us pondering.
Wenceslas Square, Prague: another broad avenue defining a city.
Dresden, in the heart of Neustadt, the city's "arts quarter". When Frau Sparkle stayed there, it was just home to lots of stay-out drunks and bars that didn't shut until 4.30am, across the road from our hostel window. Bohemian, is a word to describe it.
In Dresden, a turn in the weather is never far away.
Dresden's Semperoper is one of Yrp's great opera houses, and scene of the premiere's of works by many greats, including Wagner and von Weber. It played host, too, to Frau Sparkle and her handbag for a moving performance of Mdme Butterfly.
After the opera.
Above: In our tour of Yrp's pools, the Grosser Garten job in Dresden stands out -- the only pool in which we've swum made of stainless steel. The 25 metre, six-lane pool was welded as a shell from stainless-steel sheets. As in Berlin, the water was pristine and, like the Berlin Olympic Pool, it was fast. But few seemed to swim in it. In three dips there, Frau Sparkle and oceanswims.com were the only swimmers doing anything other than breaststroke. But it was a glorious pool, never mind that the closest structure we've seen to it in that material is a urinal. Go to Dresden pools website for more info.
Left: Along the Elbe, the banks are lined with Saxon history. What happened to these places during the 45 years of Iron Curtain rule? And who has them now? We were curious to know their antecedents, but the commentary on the Leipzig, the 1826 side-wheeler that took us to Pillniz and back was all in German. We got a few words and phrases, and some nuances and thrusts along the way, but not enough detail for all these places.
Below: Pillniz, home to the Saxon monarchy until it was abolished in 1918. Who does the vacuuming in these piles?
Cop this from Left: Another pile; wine on tap.
Dresden was victim to one of the great bombing raids of the 2nd great war: just before it ended, as we understand it, allied bombers levelled the place, destroying many of the 800-year-old city's glorious civic buildings. But why? Dresden wasn't an industrial centre, and the war by then was as good as won.
Cop this from schoolnet.co.uk (clicke to read more): "In 1941 Charles Portal of the British Air Staff advocated that entire cities and towns should be bombed. Portal claimed that this would quickly bring about the collapse of civilian morale in Germany. Air Marshall Arthur Harris agreed and when he became head of RAF Bomber Command in February 1942, he introduced a policy of area bombing (known in Germany as terror bombing) where entire cities and towns were targeted.
"One tactic used by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force was the creation of firestorms. This was achieved by dropping incendiary bombs, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as magnesium, phosphorus or petroleum jelly (napalm), in clusters over a specific target. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire.
"In 1945, Arthur Harris decided to create a firestorm in the medieval city of Dresden. He considered it a good target as it had not been attacked during the war and was virtually undefended by anti-aircraft guns. The population of the city was now far greater than the normal 650,000 due to the large numbers of refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army. On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000."
As it happens, reading the Guardian on the train down from Dresden to Munich, there was reference to all this prima facie gratuitous late-war bombing in a review of a book on the Nazis' management of their occupied territories. A few years back, there was a statue unveiled in London to this chappy Harris, known as "Bomber", which drew criticism from the humanists. To one critic, a pro-bomber remarked: "If we hadn't bombed them, they (the Germans) wouldn't have learnt to behave themselves!" Stories like that take one's breath away, just as do scenes like this: Dresden threatened by another storm.
Frau Sparkle marvels at the depth of colours, and the sizes of plants and animals, such as swans, ducks and popular flowers. Our Aunty Win would marvel at these hydrangeas, too, parked in an alley in Dresden's old quarter.
Where's Wally? Mrs Sparkle at one of the most spectacular, and moving public edifices in the world, the Brandenburg Gate. You can find her if you look hard.
Yes, we have spent some time swimming. This is the pool by Prinzenstrasse station in Berlin. There are two 50m pools and an enormous recreational pool for the layabouts that must be 100 metres long. Don't swim in that one. Neither of the 50m pools had lane ropes, and 98 per cent of the lap swimmers were doing breaststroke! But Mrs Sparkle forged a course up and down the line on lane 1, and no-one got in her way, except us. It was a very nice pool, thank you very much, with water c. 21 deg C. It was, without doubt, the slowest pool in which we've ever swum. It was very hard work. But we needed it. And after thw swim, there were acres and acres of parkland under those glorious Yrpean oaks and poplars and so many other trees, and many young ladies, and boofheafs for that matter, sunbathing topless. It was a very pleasant morning. Tomorrow, we're heading to the Olympic Stadium pool, from the '36 Games, which is resplendent in Nazi statuary, so the info man at Berlin Hauptbahnhof tells us, quite unsolicited.
That aside, this really is such a stunningly beautiful city. 30 deg and unseasonally oppressive the day we arrived, June 3, Tuesday, the skies cleared overnight, the breeze sprang up and Wed, June 4, was the most beautiful of days. Brilliantly clear sky with that soft, Yrpean light, as seen through the haze of the activities of many millions of residents, a gentle, dry cooling breeze coming in from Poland or the Czech Republic or somewhere, and a heat that was warming but by no means stifling. And the city! We understand now why people rave over Berlin. Saturated with the drama of history, it buzzes and hums with life. The formerly eastern quarter -- where it seems most of Berlin's famous public architecture sat unappreciated for almost half a century -- is a vibrant urban precinct. Teeming with people, all of them, it seems, stylish in that classical, understated, unpretentious Yrpean way, streetscapes are defined by human scale buildings, both the old and the new ones, the clinically modern interspersing the classically old, harbouring and fostering life in so many different forms: commercial, social, recreational ... And, do you know, for the capital of a major nation with 80-odd million punters, we have yet to spot a street congested with traffic;. Even at its heart, Berlin operates: It ticks over, like a Swizz watch. And to think we spend so much time hunched over a computer at Rhodes Waterside, Meadowbank, and Goymea while all this is going on!
Some ocean swimmers with corporate memories will recall a pic just like this, from Mrs Sparkle's Big Sleepover, some years back, But this time, we're not in Colefax Chocolates at Haberfield, we're in Fassbender u. Rausch in Berlin. It was amazing, the gall these people have, for almost every one of the chocolates in this display window were direct rip-offs of similar chocolate models in Colefax. It reminded us of Norman Gunston's observation that so many of the game shows on US network TV were almost carbon copies of shows produced by Mr Reg Grundy. Yes, history does repreat itself. Mrs Sparkle was mesmerised, indeed. Indeed, Fassbender u. Rausch had plenty more on offer than Colefax. They must have pinched them from other people, too. Mrs Sparkle, with her dodgy heel, had been looking a bit weary until we stumbled upon Fassbender u. Rausch, but she perked her little eyesy pies up at this little shop window. She was moved to comment: "This is so amazing. And so unexpected ..."
The showroom of Fassbender u. Rausch is a spellbinding display of what you can do with chocolate, although there was no mention that we could find of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful. What they did show us, though, was some extraordinary chocolate craftspersonship, and Mrs Sparkle was in her element. With Euro 08 about to kick off, there was a chocoalte soccer ball. Or it could have been a disco ball. We weren't sure. Then there was a chocolate Brandenburg Gate, and a chocoalate Reichstag. There was a chocolate volcano, too, about 75 cm high, that was bubbling away in the window as we inspected it. Bubble, bubble, it went, rolling out the top and down the sides ... Mmmmmmmm.
Left: We found a bit of Berlin Wall in front of a shop along the main drag, Unter den Linden, just along from the Brandenburg Gate and the gummint area, and, as we attempted to capture Mrs Sparkle alongside it, having a quick cough and a drag, it was discovered, too, by some Japanese tourists. Not being up in the latest renditions of Japanese, we used body language, signing, to ask them to move out of the way, which they did, removing themselves right in front of Mrs Sparkle. We gestured again. In the end, we had to take a pic of them, for them, with their camera, just so we could get a clear shot.
Below: Mrs Sparkle in Hog's Heaven -- the bay window above the front door of Fassbender u. Rausch. This is the chocolate cafe upstairs, where one goes when one has been seduced by the shop downstairs and needs, urgently, desperately, to do something about it. Whilst there, we were approached by a camera crew from German television who were doing a story on Fassbender u. Rausch, who wishd to film us quaffing our grub in the window. As a photographic model, Mrs Sparkle was only to happy to oblige, as proof, if nothing else, that she was there. Coincidentally, Colefax of Haberfield are in the process as we speak of installing a chocolate cafe into their shop, too. Funny how these ideas just spread. Mrs Sparkle wishes her Fairy Oddmother, Rosie Lang-Langley, to know that she did this (above) for her.
PS: Thank you to all those cobbers and others who have sent us appreciative messages, by email, after our first offering went up from
Singapore (see below). We're here to tell you, Germany -- Berlin -- is very different from Singapore.
Mrs Sparkle was agog at her first Azhian food court in Singapore. In three nights, she's eaten Chinhese, Indonesian, Indian and Nepali cuisines, not to mention Singaporean versions of " Western".
Detail on a Hindu temple in Little India.
Mrs Sparkle, Raffles, and her first Singapore Sling. And her last. At $S22 a shot, and at $S18 for one Tiger beer for us, one drink amongst the detritus of the cast off peanut casings strewn about the floor was enough for us.
