Lithuania - Neringa/Nida

We are staying in a nice guest house in Nida on the Curonian Spit. The town on the spit is known as Neringa and we are staying in the Nida part of it. We went for a nice bike ride and saw a huge sand dune - the biggest in europe. The spit is very beautiful - just a very thin strip of land off the Lithuanian coast. It is possible to see both sides of the spit in some places - one side the Baltic and on the other the lagoon.

Lithuania, Druskininkai

So we are in Lithuania now. It is a beautiful country - hilly landscape and many pine forests.
A great place for a visit. Druskininkai is a small Spa town that has been here for nearly 300 years. It was originally used by royalty from Lithuania, Poland and Russia and after the revolution by the soviets.

We are in a beautiful Spa hotel. Lian Choo is having lots of treatments in the clinic and she is really enjoying it.

We are going to the Baltic coast on Saturday for a few days.

Berlin - 7th to 10th April

I was last in Berlin about 35 years ago. So then the wall was still here and because we went from West Germany to West Berlin, I had to pass through checkpoints Alpha and Bravo in East Germany. Unfortunately I did not have to pass through Checkpoint Charlie, that would have been great.

Now - Berlin is so different. The wall is gone, the death strip is now redeveloped with much fabulous modern architecture. Potsdamer Platz in particular is incredible - and of course until very recently - a wasteland between two opposing countries.

We visited the Jewish Museum, The Monument to the Murder of European Jews and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Don't let anyone tell you that Germany is trying to hide the dark times of the Nazi era. For example, it is compulsory for all German children to visit a concentration camp at least once during their school time. We rode the metro and passed through the "ghost stations" - these are the ones on the S1 Line that were closed after 1961 until the fall of the wall because they were in East Berlin - the West berlin trains would pass through the darkened stations without stopping.

The Brandenburg Gate is beautiful - it is all cleaned up and renovated and it is a moving experience to be able to freely walk through it. The Gate was also in the death strip during the time of the wall.

Most of the monuments to the recent past have been done with restraint and taste. Although Checkpoint Charlie is a bit different - there is a re-built border station - I think it must be a copy of the one first built straight after the wall was built. There are people dressed in American and East German uniforms posing for photos with tourists. I suppose in a way it is appropriate for it to be such a tacky area. The Checkpoint Charlie museum is not State run, the copy of the border station was built by a private group and they no doubt are making lots of money from it all. After all, this area was the front-line of the face-off between Capitalism and Communism and therefore is above all, about the triumph of Capitalism. There is a Mcdonalds being built just next to the location, which will just about put the icing on the cake.

Spain

We leave Spain for Berlin now. Spain was a great experience. It is so beautiful - I will miss the scenery, the cities, the old preserved parts of the cities, the people who are so warm and friendly, the food - especially the suckling pig. I won't miss; smoking in restaurants and bars, witnessing the abuse of planning laws and too many housing developments in scenic places - the bribes to planners in order to gain permision to build must have been extensive.

The mix of cultural influences in Spain has left a rich culture that remains very strong and distinctive. It is even possible to still see in the faces of the people the mix of races that go to make up modern Spain. Moor, Jewish, Romany, Goths. The further south we went, the more we saw in the faces, the arabic and jewish past.

Sevilla 040210

We went to a Flamenco place last night. It was in a back street and there were no signs outside to say where it was. We asked 4 people if they knew it before we found someone - 2 catholic priests who knew it. The performance was great - the singer was so emotional, he had a sob in his voice as he sang. If he does that every night, he ust be exhausted all the time. The place was recommended by Lonely Planet and the place where we are staying. I think we were lucky, it was a very simple venue - brick walls with just a few hand-drawn pictures of dancers on the walls. It was packed with people, but we were near the performers. The performers just wore ordinary clothes, the two men jeans and open-neck shirts and the woman a black t-shirt and long skirt.

Seville really is beautiful, we walked around much of it yesterday.

Sevilla - 1st April 2010

We went to the Alcazar today. It is much more intersting and beautiful than we expected. As beautiful as the Alhambra. Very intricate Arabic tiles and plasterwork, lovely arches connecting the rooms and fabulous gardens with a heavy scent of wisteria and orange blossom - it seems this is a good time of the year to visit.

The cathedral is huge - apparently it is the biggest church in the world. It has the Giralda tower - which was originally part of the islamic building that used to stand there. The tower is obviously islamic, even though the christians added a top tier to house bells.