Country counter

Those of you paying attention to the country counter will see that it has gone up. It has been brought to my attention recently that under the agreed rules of country counting, I am allowed to count all the countries of the UK individually, thus the increase.

Rome redux

This weekend we went to Rome to see the sights. This was the second trip for me, so I took on the role of tour guide. But, for a change, I managed a leisurely trip without feeling rushed. New sites were the baths & Villa Borghese. At Villa Borghese, we rented one of those pedal bike/car things. It was fun for an afternoon and we put it through it's paces. We did a powerslide, a handbrake turn, and then we took it off-roading and down some stairs! The scary thing was that the brakes were terrible and you never really knew if you were going to stop in time or not. Fun! That said, some of us had a better time than others...

Berlin & the north

Last weekend I took a trip to Berlin via Rugen & Peenemunde. Yes, I know that is the long way to Berlin. The most important thing to note from this trip is not to drive through Germany on a holiday weekend. My trips out and back both took hours longer than expected and involved lots of traffic jams caused partly by the traffic volume and partly by the volume of roadworks on the autobahns.

First stop was Rugen, a nice little island that is quite popular with the tourists. Due to time constraints, there was only enough time to visit the famous high cliffs.

Visiting the cliffs was a bit trying. First, you are not allowed to take the road to them and must instead go to a paid parking lot 3km away. From there you have to walk to the cliffs. Once there, you then have to pay to get in. After paying to walk 3km, I am not generally in the mood to then be asked to pay again. So for a scenic view, it's quite expensive and time consuming. On the other hand, if you're on Rugen, you might as well do it.

Next stop was the technical museum at Peenemunde. While there is very little to see today at the Peenemunde site, the museum does its best to describe what it used to be like. Lots of very interesting documents and artifacts relating to the history of rocketry and the V2 on display.

It also is beginning to house a museum of the Nationale Volksarmee.


The last stop was Berlin.

I was very impressed with the city. I thought I would sense a clear east/west divide in the style and feel of the city, and I found that not to be the case. In fact, I think I prefer the east for being quieter and having more interesting sites. It's an old city

but also a very modern one.

The highlight was just walking around the city from one end to the other past all the different sites. This is no trivial task as the city is extremely spread out. The Kaiser-Wilhelm church, the Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, Alexander Platz are all worth visiting. Berlin also has a tremendous amount of really good museums. Since the weather this trip was so beautiful, I skipped most of the museums in favor of doing stuff outside. The museums (and Potsdam for that matter) will have to wait until the next time.

The galleries are here and here.

I now have the ability of embedding slide shows directly into the blog. Let me know what you think of this and whether I should continue including this in the future. Right now I'm not sure that an embedded slide show fits aesthetically with the blog.