…the Baltic Sea hasn’t frozen yet.

Few countries have suffered as much from the global financial meltdown as Lithuania, which has seen its gross domestic product shrivel by 19 percent this year. As the jobless rate soars and the government struggles to pay its bills, one of the biggest casualties has been the Royal Palace.

Hampered by an empty treasury and huge cost overruns, construction has come almost to a standstill on the palace: a white-walled replica of the colossal 15th-century castle complex that once dominated Vilnius’s baroque Old Town and represented the seat of an empire that reached from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

The original palace was razed in 1802 by Russia, which demolished it so thoroughly that it even sold off the rubble. Lithuanian nationalists, who have dreamed about resurrecting the castle for generations, finally got their chance after the country of 3.5 million people declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.

With the palace about half-built after seven years of labor, Lithuania can’t afford to scrap the project, but it can’t afford to finish it, either. The total price tag has tripled from original estimates, and government officials say they can’t foresee when they will be able to come up with the $70 million necessary to complete the job. “I’m afraid there is truly no chance in the near future for us to finish even such a revered building as this,” Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte told reporters last month.

Officials said they would slash by one-third the already meager construction budget for the palace next year.

Along with its Baltic neighbors — Latvia and Estonia — Lithuania experienced an economic boom after it joined the European Union in 2004, with plenty of easy credit as foreign investors poured money into the region. The credit bubble popped last year, however, resulting in an enormous reverse flow of capital that has forced the government to implement draconian spending cuts.

The palace complex was supposed to have been done in time for the country’s millennium celebration in July — the 1,000th anniversary of the first recorded mention of Lithuania. (In 1009, a nun in the German city of Quedlinburg wrote that a local missionary, Saint Bruno, had been killed at the hands of pagans in “Lituae,” or Lithuania.)

The palace did briefly open its gates for the Millennium Day ceremony, which was attended by several modern-day royals and heads of state from neighboring countries. Although the public was allowed a peek inside for a few days, the site has remained off-limits since then.

The new palace is intended to remind Lithuanians that their small country — today about the size of West Virginia — was once a great empire, ruling over much of present-day Belarus, Ukraine and Poland.

Supporters of the palace acknowledge that popular backing has waned since the economy crashed last year. But Kazys Almenas, founder of an advocacy group called the Palace Support Fund, said the cost of finishing the project would still barely make a dent in Lithuania’s national budget.

“There are those who like to grandstand — ‘Oh, you’re taking away money from the orphans,’ ” he said. “But eventually there is no question that it will be built. The question is just when.”

Almenas, a retired nuclear engineering professor from the University of Maryland at College Park, was displaced from Lithuania as a child during World War II and immigrated to the United States. He returned to Vilnius in 1999 and has lobbied on behalf of the palace ever since.

He conceded that many Lithuanians still don’t see the need to rebuild a palace that vanished more than 200 years ago. But he argued that the return of the royal quarters was the only way to fill a long-standing void in the city center.

“When the castle was razed, you walked down Castle Street and what was there? Just a bunch of trees. Something was definitely wrong,” he said. “What kind of Castle Street is it if you don’t have a castle at the end?”

It’s well known, that a little bit of sunshine is good for the heart. So why does mankind still depend on the weather for this “therapeutic pleasure”? In wintertime, some places have six months of abstinence of sunshine! To stop this injustice, we developed a way to capture, store and discharge sunlight.

To capture the sunlight, we directed an old satellite disk towards the sun on a bright summer day. A tin can was positioned in its focal point, with a cap made of one-way mirror glass. Light can be physically explained as a stream of particles, Photons. The sunlight that entered the tin can was infinitely reflected by the mirror coating inside. After about one hour, so many photons were trapped, that they condensed and became liquid sunshine.

The filled tin cans can be stored for dark hours. Even the character of the light will be preserved! A completely new business will arise with the sales and marketing of different flavours of sunshine:

• Baltic beach (Intense and refreshing)
• Sunset (Irresistible romantic)
• Siesta (Noonday sun for a relaxing break)
• Caribbean (Also a holiday-pack)
• Death Valley (Caution, extra strong)

The installation to collect sunshine can be easily converted for sunbathing. When a can is opened, the liquid sunshine starts to vaporize, and a stream of photons will be released. This light is reflected in the satellite disk, which appears to be a natural sun.

On top of all, this business has a positive effect on the economical perspective of African countries, and will fight the climate crisis. That, my dear Billy the Kid, will fill your hard with joy!

The Quatschtronauts

Natural Baltic Amber

The Beauty of Amber
By Arsene Bergkamp

When it comes to jewelry, there are refined pieces and all natural ones. Amber definitely falls into the natural beauty category.

Amber is one of the most interesting materials that is used in jewelry production today. This natural material is not mined nor created in a lab, instead it is a fossilized part of history. Pieces of amber can be traced back for 90 million years, with most of the world’s amber dating between 30 and 90 million years old. This ancient tree resin is found in several beautiful colors, and can be shaped into many different types of jewelry pieces.

Most of the world’s most beautiful amber gems (this fossilized resin is considered a gemstone even though it does not have the properties of most gems) come from the area around the Baltic Sea. This amber is called Baltic amber, and it is found in marine sand known as “blue sand” in this area. It is believed most of the amber originally came from the sap of one particular type of pine tree, known as Pinites succiniter, and this tree appears to be related to the pine trees of North America and Asia.

Amber is a beautiful, warm gemstone – but it can be made even more interesting if the piece contains preserved life from millions of years ago. Items that have been found inside fossilized amber include plants, insects such as small ants and flies, and even tiny tree frogs that existed millenia ago. Most of these animals and plants decayed within the amber, leaving only the impression (or occasionally, shell) inside the resin.

There are several different colors of amber available in the Baltic area – specifically, Russia, where 90% of the amber on today’s market is from. Most amber is a warm honey color – the color known as amber – but there are also cherry red pieces, lemon yellow and green ambers available. In the Dominican Republic, a special type of amber is found that is called blue amber – this amber appears blue when held against a dark background and is honey colored in the light. Blue amber is highly prized among collectors.

If you are interested in buying amber jewelry, be sure to buy from a reputable source. The popularity of this resin/gem in recent years has led to a large amount of counterfeits. Most of these are resins like plastic that are colored to look just like real amber – they may even have bubbles or inclusions like true amber has. Buying from a jeweler or other reputable source can assure that you are not fooled into buying fake amber.

Find jewelry stores and information at JewelryStoresforyou.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Arsene_Bergkamp
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Beauty-of-Amber&id=553897

Hier ein Auszug aus dem Interview von Regine Rost mit mir im Aquarell Forum.

1) Kannst Du uns erzählen, wie Du zum Aquarell gekommen bist?

Ich male eigentlich schon immer, wenn auch mit Unterbrechungen und habe schon so ziemlich alles ausprobiert, bis auf das Thema Öl.
Was übrig geblieben ist, sind das Aquarell und das Pastell. Das Aquarell bietet die meisten Möglichkeiten die brauche, um ein Bild zu malen, egal ob in einem Atelier, zuhause, vor Ort oder in einem beliebigen Hotelzimmer.

Der Reiz am Aquarell ist seine Vielfalt in der Arbeit auf verschiedenen Papieren und Leinwand, egal ob Nass in Nass oder min Lasurtechnik. Der Vorteil ist, dass die Farben in kurzen Zeit trocknen und die Utensilien zusammen gepackt werden können und dann wird das Bild an anderer Stelle zu späterer Zeitpunkt fertig gestellt.

2) Bist Du schon mal an einen Punkt gekommen, wo Du das malen aufgeben wolltest?

Na klar immer wieder   Hier eine der Geschichten:

http://frankkoebsch.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/wie-malt-man-baume

„Vor einigen Jahren waren wir gemeinsam mit Renate Pfrommer einer Berliner Malerin und einer Malgruppe auf dem Darss und in Ahrenshoop unterwegs. Es kam was kommen musste, bei mir lief gar nichts, absolut nichts klappte. Es war alles wunderbar organisiert. Vormittags skizzierten und fotografierten wir an verschiedenen Orten am weißen Strand, der „roten“ Steilküste, der Boddenseite, urige Weiden, Reed gedeckte Häuser, Motive im Hafen und und…. Je nach dem wie weit wir kamen, zogen wir uns spätestens mittags in die Atelierräume der Ahrenshooper Strandhalle zurück, um aus den Skizzen und Fotografie Bilder zu machen. Ich konnte nicht abspannen, kein Blatt gefiel mir und wanderte umgehend in den Papierkorb. Ob es daran lag, dass ich durch die Vielfalt der Motive und Möglichkeiten überfordert war, keine Ruhe fand, denn ich hatte wegen dem Job das Handy nicht zu hause lassen können oder … Ich wurde knurrig. Nun ja abends sind wir dann immer die paar Kilometer nach Hause gefahren. Am dritten Abend hat mich meine Frau zum Elternabend eines unserer Kinder geschickt. Sie konnte mein Knurren wohl nicht mehr ertragen. Da saß ich nun, in irgendeinem Klassenraum, es ging um die üblichen Dinge, nichts Interessantes. Wie in meiner Schulzeit fing ich an zu kritzeln, wenn es langweilig wurde. Auf Notizblättern 8 x 8 cm, ein Kuli in der Hand, die Frage im Kopf, wie kann ich morgen vernünftige Bilder malen. Nach dem dritten Blatt war es klar, ganz einfache geometrische Formen, Rechtecke, Dreiecke und es entstand eine Vorlage 8 x 8 für einen Windflüchter und eine Boddenlandschaft mit einer Zeese. Meine Frau und unser Kind fragte nach dem Elternabend, ich sagte – nichts Besonderes. Am nächsten Tag setze ich selbstsicher die Farben auf das Papier und es stand in kürzester Zeit folgendes Aquarell. Ich finde die Lösung klasse, den Himmel, das Meer, den Strand, die karge Vegetation, den Baum. Ich mag es heute immer noch, denn „so einfach“ kann man Motive umsetzen, wenn man weiß wie.

Windflüchter

Für mich ist diese Vereinfachung und Abstraktion, oft eine gute Lösung ein Motiv zu erfassen, darzustellen oder mich dem ganzen zu nähern. So manches Mal wünsche ich mir heute, ich könnte mich wieder aufraffen, so zu malen, denn weniger ist manches Mal mehr.“
Nun es gibt viele solcher Geschichten. Wichtig ist es für mich, es nicht zu erzwingen. Sondern es neu zu probieren, zu tüpfeln, zu überlegen, welche Lösung es für das gewünschte Bild gibt oder einfach mal Pause machen und es dann evt. mit einem neuen Motiv zu probieren.

Tammisaari, Finland - 2003

“Oh God, its snowing!” said the SAS flight attendant as the plane descended in Vanta Airport, “I hate it when it is like this,” she continued. And in a way, she was right – it was freezing cold, in an unrelenting, bone-aching way. But this was Finland, where they know the cold is coming and are organised and prepared for it. So nothing was cancelled and all the transport was working.

A few days before I went to a local outdoor shop to pick up some cold weather kit. I told the assistant where I was going and her face fell – she didn’t have anything for “that cold”, she said. But then she laughed and said, “But I don’t suppose you are planning on going out much!” . And she was right – and she was wrong. In the evening, I was with my girlfriend, who was full of tales of puss and root canals (she was a dentist), but during the day I roamed the town, fishing for pictures. When I think back on it, I feel ashamed of the opportunites I missed – note to self – talk to people more – smile.

I think this is the coldest I’ve ever been. What you can see is the Baltic – which was – as it often is – frozen over. Photographed with a Rolleiflex MX which dates from about 1952 if memory serves me. On 400 ASA black and white film – probably Neopan (it works for me). And I’m pretty sure I was using a Gitzo Gilux tripod – I was a believer even then.

Since I am home dealing with some fibro pain in my joints and muscles that’s making moving around excruciatingly torturous, I’ve managed to add more photos, this time for Gdansk and Malbork Castle in Northern Poland. Enjoy! Time for me to bundle up under a pile of heating pads with a good movie…

Checkpoint Charlie, in a brief moment when the lone U.S, soldier was not surrounded by tourists wanting to be photographed with him.

The structure of the Berlin Wall was far less formidable than I had always imagined and I took this photo of the end of a surviving section to illustrate the point. It didn't need to be any larger as there had been several thousand East German guards watching every inch of the other side of it.

The concert hall at The Gendarmenmarkt, where I was out of sight of our tour group by the time I had wandered off far enough to get it all in the picture.

The German Cathedral, also at The Gendarmenmarkt.

The Brandenburg Gate

On September 7th we arrived at Warnemunde and, after an early breakfast,  set off for a coach tour of the Berlin Highlights. The journey to Berlin took approximately three hours. A fine restaurant lunch was provided for us but the day’s schedule was delayed in the afternoon by heavy traffic.

As everywhere else where conducted tours were taken, I am sure that the selection of the route by the guides, inevitably, will have cast a somewhat rose-tinted light on the city as a whole and Berlin was no exception. It was elegant and impressive. We saw wide streets with many palaces and fine churches and other majestic buildings of an historic nature, many of them restored or rebuilt since World War Two.

We saw parts of the former Berlin Wall (1961-89) and also the amazing amount of reconstruction that has occurred since 1989. There were also many examples of modern architecture in glass etc. which I found impressive – and, coming from me, that is a compliment indeed.

It had been a long day by the time we returned to our ship, Ocean Majestry, for a late dinner.  Berlin was one of the few European capitals that Granny-Anne particularly wanted to see and although there are better ways to get there from the UK, our Baltic cruise had presented the opportunity so we took it.

And finally, some of the many very relaxed-looking cyclists and other pedal-powered transport that I saw in Berlin.

We approached Stockholm at breakfast time in fairly calm water, though there was a brisk wind. The sun was shining and the view was beautiful of all the islands on each side of the ship, with various large and small  houses right down to the water, and many moored boats.

Our docking time was delayed by the overnight storm which had been the first experience on this cruise of anything resembling rough conditions. Admittedly it had just started to become a little bumpy in the North Sea on our outward bound journey, before we diverted through the Kiel Canal, but last night was certainly rougher and as I referred to this in the first post in this series  I won’t repeat it here.

We decided to have lunch on board then take the 1.30pm shuttle bus the short distance into Stockholm. We then had a boat tour of the harbour for about 50 minutes but reflections in the boat’s windows put an end to any thoughts of photography.

It was all quite pleasant but we had neither the time nor the walking capacity to see much of the city. In addition it seemed to be a very busy day, partly no doubt due to three  very large cruise ships moored close to the city which could well have disgorged up to 3,000 tourists each into the city centre. Secondly, there was some sort of big-time EU Ministers meeting in the city that day so several self-important looking convoys were rushing about disrupting the traffic (as if paying their expenses wasn’t bad enough, we have to put up with their disruption!) – and doubtless this also explained the presence of lots of police personnel on the streets, many of them apparently armed to the teeth.
On Sunday, September 6th we had a full day of cruising across the Baltic Sea to Warnemunde, in what used to be East Germany. The day started grey and cloudy with a choppy sea but the ship was running smoothly. The wind was quite strong but didn’t seem cold until later in the day. In the Baltic Sea we were rarely out of sight of other ships and on this morning there seemed to be two or three others a long way off but running on a parallel course. 

In the morning we attended a talk by Richard Jarmain on Warnemunde, Rostock and Berlin. After 14 years this was his last voyage on Ocean Majesty. All of his talks were well researched and illustrated and also entertaining.
Lunch was more than ample as usual and was followed by a short nap and then coffee upstairs. Then to the Majestic Lounge for the early quiz in which Granny-Anne and I formed a team with one of our new friends and managed to score top marks – nothing to do with me, I just wrote down their answers for them.
We watched a ritual being enacted by the entertainment team and involving the swimming pool on one of the top decks. This was all about asking permission from Neptune (King of the Sea) to enter German waters. I couldn’t hear what was being said (shouted actually) by the participants but the idea seemed to be that most or all of them would end up being pushed into the swimming pool. There was a very strong wind, which was no longer pretending to be warm.

Around 5.00pm we started to prepare for the evening activities which commenced with dinner at 6.00pm. On booking the cruise we had requested the early sitting for dinner as it suited us better than the later sitting at 8.00pm.  It was the second of three evenings on this cruise for which we were invited to wear formal dress. Meanwhile, the sea had been growing from moderately choppy to much larger swells and I hoped that it would get no worse, at least until both dinner sittings were finished. I had visions of glasses tipping and plates of food sliding off tables – and almost everyone in their best frocks!

Woke up to the beautiful sun. What a shame that I had to drive back to Warsaw within next few hours. The time in Gdynia has been a blast (like it always is) and I will write/post abt this soon.

The last couple days have been full of surprises around every corner as I explore Poland. My last night in Krakow I strolled the Market Square, an absolutely huge plaza in the middle of the Stare Miasto (Old City). The best people watching in all of Poland, if not Eastern Europe. It’s like a never-ending carnival of street performers, flower stalls, crafts markets, and accordians pumping out polka. You never know what you’ll find here, day or night. Over the course of my stay in Krakow, I joined with a group of Polish soldiers heartily singing traditional Polish folk songs, watched with the crowds as a local film crew shot a period film, and listened to the haunting melody of the hejnal from the tower of St. Mary’s Church.

The hejnal is legendary in Krakow. In the Middle Ages, when the town watchman in the tower spotted Tatars invading the city, he began to play the hejnal to alert his fellow townspeople. In the middle of the hejnal, an arrow pierced his throat, cutting him off mid-song. To this day, the hejnal is played at the top of the hour up to the point the arrow broke the tune by a dedicated group of firemen. The hejnal is even broadcast over the national radio to tell the time.

My biggest discovery occurred my last night in Krakow in the hours before I had to catch my night train. A huge stage was set up in the middle of the square and a crowd was gathering. I headed over to see what was going on and ended up in the middle of a moving concert that has been the highlight so far of my trip. It turned out to be a religious concert important enough for the Archbishop of Krakow to attend! As the concert started, I began to piece together what was being celebrated – the life of St. Francis of Assisi and the foundation of the Franciscan order. As a former volunteer with the Capuchin Franciscan Volunteer Corps, I was honored and moved to be there. A large procession of Franciscan brothers encircled the audience in a parade of lit torches. The music was phenomenal – even in Polish, I felt uplifted. The composer of the entire concert was the evening’s pianist and some rather well-known Polish singers had solos. (I gather they were popular by the amount of applause they received when their names were announced.) The entire concert was being broadcast live on Polish TV and radio. I left for my night train refreshed in spirit.

Krakow is an extremely religious city. During Communist rule, the Poles went to church as a way of protesting the regime. They take their Catholic faith seriously, and everywhere in Krakow I saw young men and women wearing the billowing robes of priests, brothers, and nuns. I even spotted a number of Capuchin Franciscans. Pope John Paul II was the archbishop here before his election to the pontiff, and I actually sat in the very pew where he would pray every morning. It is now marked by a small plaque. The church he chose to pray in out of the many in Krakow says alot about his character. It is a small church, but humbly beautiful.

Now I am in Gdansk, a city on the Baltic Sea in northern Poland. It is a gritty, industrial city, but the central part of the city is gorgeous, a medieval time warp to the days when the Hanseatic League ran the city’s economy. The Hanseatic League was a network of trading partners during the Middle Ages, mostly Germanic cities in northern Europe. Trade made the city prosperous and the historic buildings are beautiful, decorated in bright colors, painted murals, sculpted friezes, and dragon rainspouts.

I took an important detour to an important site in modern history and a spot I have been anxious to see all year – the Gdansk shipyards. I stood at the gate to the shipyards where the Solidarity movement started. In 1980, the shipyard workers went on strike, led by Lech Walsea, and it led to a growing movement that eventually weakened the Communist hold on Poland enough that it collapsed in 1989. At one point, before Solidarity became outlawed by the Communist government, 1 in 4 Poles were members. I stood at the gate and thought of how all the dominos fell from there, all across Eastern Europe, paving the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Eastern Bloc, the collapse of Soviet control.  A significant moment for me. There have been a lot of significant moments on this trip!

One final significant moment to mention – I saw the Baltic Sea today! Stood on a pier, gazed out at the choppy sea as the bitter wind tangled my hair, and breathed in the salty air. And then I spotted a gaggle of swans and burst out laughing. Swans living wild on the Baltic Sea? What new thing will I discover next?

Most people have never heard of Usedom Island.  Admittedly, it’s pretty unfamiliar to me, too.  But that’s why we have maps…to find places we don’t really know.  And the map shows me that Usedom is in that V-shaped area between German-Polish border on the Baltic Sea.  Right about here.

I read that Usedom is quite the tourist attraction, with hotels, bed and breakfast inns, and even a castle or two.  So you figure that “peace and quiet” are probably the order of the day.  Tranquility and serenity are all the rage here.

It wasn’t always that way.

If you move to the north and west along Usedom, you’ll find the thumb-shaped part of the island.  It was on this point that Peenemünde existed.  Back in Second World War, Peenemünde was German military’s primary missile testing area.  So it was pretty noisy, what with all the explosions and all that were going on.  Complaints from tourists were likely constant.

There were many different weapons developed and tested here, most famously the V1 and V2 bombs.  The V1 was a subsonic, jet-powered bomb that flew airplane-style at less than 400 mph.  As such, it could be shot down by any number of Allied aircraft roaming the European skies.

The V2 was a completely different proposition.  It was essentially a ballistic missile, designed to achieve low-earth orbit as part of its trajectory.  Spending most of its flight at supersonic speeds, it was impervious to attack from any weapon system owned by the Allies.

But the V2 wasn’t very accurate.  GPS guidance, inertial navigation, and laser range-finding were all a long ways off.  The V2 was, for all intents and purposes, a point-and-pray terror weapon.  It could however, scare a lot of people, which ultimately became the V2’s primary objective.

Its first successful launch occurred on October 3, 1942, and it’s hard to underestimate the significance of something so common it’s no longer news-worthy.  This was the first man-made object launched from the earth that actually reached space.

When launched in anger in 1944, the V2 scared people a lot of people, but didn’t actually kill all that many (when considered against all deaths in WWII).  It wasn’t terribly powerful, almost completely unguided, and was therefore of limited strategic value.

Today, we launch rockets into space all the time.  We hang satellites in an orbit perfectly balanced between “falling back to earth in a fiery conflagration” and “spinning off into the void of space”.  We have space stations and space shuttles that dock there.  We have the capability to launch rockets that can shoot down the satellites that rockets placed there.  It’s a pretty common technology.

But all ballistic missiles are descended directly from Germany’s V2 technology, fired from an island that’s now a German tourist trap.

Recommended Reading: Hitler’s Terror Weapons: From Doodlebug to Nuclear Warheads

…chmurki, obłoczki i chmurzyska – jedno z ulubionych zajęć wakacyjnych

(palma na plaży jest sztuczna , po kliknięciu na zdjęcia otwierają się większe wersje)

Weather in Poland remains summery, although most of adult people started their hard come back to what they call reality (studies, school & stuff). I’m still the opposite : ) Why not escape for a crazy weekend to one of the seaside towns before Poland gets covered by the foggy, suicidal-mood clouds (see: http://wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip.aspx?id=c83f25c9-3e7b-4311-9d53-2d9b0d55a8ec ; )?

And when it comes to sandy beaches, water (regardless of the fact that the Baltic sea temperature is usually about 10 C degrees ; ), wind and sun I’m the first to get involved…

Eu quero mais! (‘Encore’, comme le titre du disque!).

Monday is my deadline to become kinda urban and organised, lol.

Passengers flying between Helsinki and Delhi can now enjoy greater flexibility when planning their travel. Finnair has increased frequencies from its base to the Indian capital to daily service, using a 2-class Airbus A330-300 aircraft.

Flight AY 021 takes off from Helsinki Vantaa International Airport at 1845 hrs, arriving in Delhi at 0400 hrs the next morning. The return flight, AY 022, departs Indira Gandhi International Airport at 0835 hrs in the morning and lands back in Helsinki at 1330 hrs.

Both flights offer ample connections with Finnair flights in Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea area and all of Northern Europe, with Delhi offering connections to the rest of India. Finnair first launched flights to Delhi, India’s main air transport hub, in October 2006.

For more information, visit www.finnair.com.

On the third day of our holiday the ship docked in Copenhagen while we were having breakfast in the enclosed main restaurant on a lower deck. 

Our cabin's window was the second to the left of the top of the gangway.

After breakfast we set off to walk  at least part of the way to the city, only to discover several minutes later that the open top “hop on, hop off” tourist bus actually stopped next to the ship.  A short distance from the ship we came across a row of attractive small shops selling some fine designer goods. After a brief inspection we decided to return later and caught the bus at the next stop along the road.
We stopped to photograph The Little Mermaid (see Granny Anne’s blog) and later saw the English Church and chuckled at large numbers of bicycles parked in most available open spaces – deposited would be more accurate – on our way to visit The Resistance Museum. The museum was a fine tribute to the amazing courage and resourcefulness of those who fought the Nazis during the occupation of Denmark and it was a very moving experience to study some of the exhibits. I found myself reflecting on how lucky we are to live in a free democracy and then I came across a description of the Nazi Party and its methods and suddenly felt alarm bells ringing – though I was not entirely sure why at the time – when I came to the following (which I quote here with due acknowledgement to the Resistence Museum):

Had we seen this view from our cabin at the beginning of the day we might have caught the bus at the ship and missed the shops which proved well worth visiting.

“ The party was anti-parliamentarian, yet the leading politicians made Hitler Reich-chancellor in 1933.  After that the civic rights were abolished and opposition was met with terror. The government legislated without the need for democratic approval. A Fuhrer-state without any legal framework arose. Life according to Nazi doctrine was one endless struggle where the strongest dominated and finally eliminated the weak.”

After the museum we were back on the bus again to return to the ship, just in time for lunch. Then we went shopping. After that we returned to the ship for a leisurely afternoon tea, well, coffee actually, and a rest before dinner. What with the excitement of the past few days, plus getting up earlier than usual and staying up later and losing sleeping time as the clocks were put forward, we were a bit tired even though we had slept well each night on board.

The "English Church" in Copenhagen - actually looking more English than quite a few churches in England - or so I thought.

A view of Copenhagen from the open-top bus.

The fourth day of our holiday was spent at sea, anticipating our arrival at Helsinki the following morning. The weather was fine and the sea a lot calmer since Copenhagen. It was a lazy day. We had lost another hour overnight as the clocks went forward again but I was up at 8.00am and caught up with my sleep after breakfast! What a way to live!  After lunch I found the ship’s gymnasium but wasn’t tempted so browsed in the library instead.
Dress was formal for the whole evening, which included the Captain’s Cocktail Party and Gala Dinner. This included being introduced individually to the Captain (and the event photographed for posterity) followed by wine and nibbles in the Show Lounge where we took our seats  while the Captain introduced the ship’s senior officers and staff. This was followed by a fine dinner in the restaurant where nearly everyone followed the formal dress code and entered into the spirit of the occasion.
Later in the evening we went to the show in the Show Lounge. The theme was “Musicals” and three girls and two men  did all the acting, singing and dancing on a small stage. They were good and potentially very good but the performance was spoilt for me by the usual problem. It was far too loud. Secondly, it seems to be the fashion nowadays to sing very loud while almost touching the microphone so that  it sounds quite unmusical and, more often than not, it sounds flat. All could be rectified so easily.

On the first day of our holiday, August 28th, we were up at 5.00am and starting our journey an hour later. We were due to meet our coach for the journey to Harwich at Cardiff Gate Services coach park at 6.30 and our daughter, Jennie drove us there, arriving more than 15 minutes early.
Unfortunately, the coach drivers (two of them – from Swansea, all of 45 miles away) didn’t know the difference between Cardiff West Services and Cardiff Gate Services. Both are on the M4 motorway but Cardiff Gate is to the east of Cardiff and Cardiff West is…    …you guessed it…      …and the distance between them is (I am guessing here) about 10-15 minutes driving time. So the coach didn’t arrive at 6.30. or even by 6.45, when I phoned our travel company, Page and Moy, to find out what was happening. The lady who took the call quickly put the coach driver in touch with us and eventually Jennie rescued the situation as she described in her blog  later the same day. 
Eventually the coach picked us up just after 7.00am so my guess is that the people who joined us at Newport and Cheltenham had also been delayed  and I can only hope that Page and Moy’s fine reputation wasn’t undermined, as it was not their fault. After further stops at Oxford and Watford we arrived at Harwich just after 2pm.
At the dockside  we were met by a Scottish piper in full kit and piped aboard “Ocean Majesty”. This was a nice touch though it did feel a little incongruous at the time. Boarding was straightforward and our main luggage was transferred from coach to ship for us and awaited us at our cabin.
We were directed to the self-service restaurant on an upper deck where we confined ourselves to light snacks knowing that dinner was scheduled for 6.30pm. Having allowed time for luggage to be distributed to the cabins we found our cabin and started unpacking. At 5.15pm, as we were leaving Harwich, we were summoned (having been forewarned some time earlier) to the mandatory emergency drill in one of the lounges, so that a roll call could be taken and we could be instructed in how to wear our lifejackets, which we had brought from the cabin.
Our first impression of the ship was very favourable and I must say that our opinion of it improved throughout the cruise.  After an early dinner at 6.30pm we went to a presentation in the Show Lounge in which it was explained to us who was who and who did what on the ship. After that we had coffee in the Majestic Lounge and took part in a quiz (an almost daily occurrence for us).  Later, we watched the slightly rough sea from one of the open decks by the lights from the ship. Although Granny Anne and I have known each other for around 40 years I don’t think that either of us realised before just how much we both are fascinated by the sea and love to be on it.
Hurricane Bill had gradually calmed down during the previous few days while crossing the Atlantic from the east coast of America. The remnants of that storm had passsed over northern England and Scotland and, according to the British Meteorological Office, had finished up in the northern section of the North Sea as a gale force 8, possibly increasing to storm 10. The centre of the remaining storm was forecast to be just north of where we had expected to turn east away from the North Sea. On our first evening aboard we were informed that we would be leaving the North Sea further south than originally intended and passing through the Kiel Canal on our way to Copenhagen, our first port of call.
The next morning I was up at 6.40am and had explored the decks and taken some photographs before an excellent breakfast at about 8.30. It was mainly a day to relax. Although we had not booked any shore excurions for Copenhagen we attended the talk given by our Port Lecturer about Copenhagen.  After a light lunch in the poolside restaurant where we had failed to anticipate that it would be a bit windy (and even rained briefly) we both returned to the cabin to rest until we approached the Keil Canal in the early afternoon.

I had hoped to find a better vantage point from which to get pictures of the Keil Canal locks but it was not to be. However, the picture above is best described as follows: The ship is in one of the two channels through the lock which are separated by the strip of “land” on which you can see a couple of small buildings here. To the right of centre of the picture the green object is the roof of the starboard (righthand) extension of the ship’s bridge. The dark grey objects ahead and to the right are the lock gates which slide to the left and right respectively when opened. In the much narrower inland waterways of the UK we are more accustomed to lock gates that swing open and shut.

As the pictures above and below show, the Keil Canal is a very wide waterway and it does carry a lot of traffic. I was surprised and impressed by the fine condition of most of the ships that we saw at close quarters.

One of the great pleasures of this cruise was the very fine meals on board, all of which were included in the price of the cruise, even when we were in a port and could have eaten ashore. 
Late in the evening I explored a bit more of the ship and paid a short visit to the Observation Lounge on Deck 8, the highest deck accessible to passengers. Here the pianist Emily was making good music on a baby grand piano. This was fine for 20 minutes or so but as the lounge filled and the noise of umpteen conversations began to drown the music it became depressing. So I went to bed.

Last week Granny Anne and I returned from a two-week cruise to some of the cities around the Baltic Sea. We visited Copenhagen, Helsinki, St Petersburg, Tallinn, Stockholm and Warnemunde and (just in case you are as hazy about the Baltic region as I was a few weeks ago) these cities are in Denmark, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Sweden  and Germany respectively.
Our ship was the lovely old “Ocean Majesty” and our travel company was Page and Moy.

MS Ocean Majesty at her moorings in Helsinki in the fading light of a late afternoon. The picture was taken near the end of a sightseeing boat trip which had to be slightly revised because rough conditions apparently made it unsafe for us to venture out into the open sea.

Ocean Majesty is considered a small ship with a tonnage of 10.417 and accommodation for a maximum of 621 passengers (250 crew). Page and Moy have chartered her for some time but this arrangement will be coming to an end soon (when Ocean Majesty will be replaced by the Athena). She was built as a car ferry in 1966 and refitted as a cruise ship some years later, which might give the impression that the ship is some sort of compromise, neither one thing nor the other. Actually, this was certainly not the case in our experience. Although Ocean Majesty is quite old, we found our cabin perfectly comfortable and it provided ample space and storage space for two. Admittedly it would have felt a bit crowded had the two additional fold-down bunks been in use as well. The ship is kept immaculately clean and standards of hygiene on board were reassuringly high. This ship has a reputation for friendliness and personal attention and, in our experience, it seems likely that every single member of the crew contributes to this. Everywhere we went on board we were greeted with a smile, whether you met the junior staff polishing the handrails on the staircases, or the senior ranking crew or anyone in between. I couldn’t fault the service. It was excellent, whether from our lovely cabin stewardess, Nina from Romania, or from the tour team, or anyone else on board. The ship’s photographer did a great job for us at short notice and with very little time at the end of the cruise and, as for the restaurant staff, they were brilliant. At breakfast and lunch the waiters guided us to the next available table, which varied each day, as did the other passengers around us. At dinner we had the same table and waiters every day. Thus at breakfast and lunch we met new people – generally a pleasant experience but at the risk of exposure to one of the tiny minority of dedicated whingers who would find fault with any situation. These were the few who imagined that their health problems and dietary pickiness, or susceptibility to seasickness would make scintillating conversation for all within hearing. Fortunately they were indeed very few and soon found themselves ignored by the rest. Incidentally, though there was some seasickness on board during one particularly stormy night, I detected no evidence of it.  
We were lucky enough to have great company at dinner (the same people every day) including the same outstanding waiters, led by Ronny from Bombay,  who had developed waiting at table into an art form.
That we chose to eat lunch on board almost every day was partly a matter of convenience. It fitted in well with all but one of the shore excursions that we had booked in advance. It was also because the food on board was excellent, without exception. There were numerous alternative choices at every meal and the food was well cooked and presented and always arrived hot at the table. I ate far more than I would have considered necessary  at home yet my weight didn’t increase at all.
A well staffed self-service buffet style restaurant offered everything from snacks to full meals on a partly open upper deck. This was popular as the weather was mainly quite good during our cruise.
On the days preceding our arrival at each port our very experienced Port Lecturer, Richard Jarmain, gave excellent and very well attended  illustrated talks on our destinations and on the pre-arranged shore excursions. A daily newsletter, ‘Britain Today’, gave us a summary of each of the main news stories from the UK and another daily newsletter, ‘Ocean Wave’ gave all the details we needed of the daily excursions, times, assembly points etc., plus on-board meals and the day’s entertainment programme throughout the ship. We also received a daily weather forecast and notes reminding us when to put our watches forward or back as appropriate. A wall chart outside the Majestic Lounge showed our route and a marker on it was updated frequently to show our position – and this was in addition to broadcast reports from the bridge daily giving us our position, speed, weather conditions, etc.
There was ample entertainment on board ranging from live variety shows every evening in the Show Lounge to films shown in the small cinema and also in the Majestic Lounge, plus a pianist at the grand piano in the Observation Lounge on an upper deck and my own favourites, Kevin and Shona (calling themselves “2gether”) who sang in the Majestic Lounge while Kevin played the guitar and Shona the keyboard – while occasionally letting the keyboard play by itself so that she could play the saxophone. They were a very versatile and talented couple whose sessions ended all too soon for me. There were also various popular quizzes in the Majestic Lounge, plus games on the open decks.. There was no time to be bored on Ocean Majesty, which also has a useful shop, a library and a small gymnasium, a hairdresser/beauty parlour and an outdoor swimming pool on an upper deck.
On the whole the sailing was smooth though it was comparatively rough on the night of September 4th-5th. Even so it was hardly dramatic. According to the log published at the end of the cruise there were winds in the range of force 5-7 that night  and the ship did a fair amount of pitching and rolling. This was becoming noticeable around 10.30-11.00pm in the Majestic Lounge, just as I was deciding to head for our cabin. Granny Anne had gone ahead of me and the whole experience had simply made her feel sleepy. So she went to sleep and awoke the following morning without any ill effects. Just to be really helpful, I had reminded her before this cruise that we don’t do seasickness – thus paraphrasing the words of her father many years ago, who had been in the Royal Navy on Atlantic convoys during World War Two and who had taken an opportunity to point out to her that no daughter of his was seasick!
I had my own solution when a slight touch of queasiness made itself felt while I was still in the lounge. This was to put on my warm anorak and head for an open deck where I could get plenty of fresh air and watch the sea. In other words, the solution for me was to get out and get into the spirit of the situation. I found a dry place, sheltered from wind and spray, on one of the open decks close to the windows of the lounge and from there I studied the movements of the sea and the ship for some time until I felt that I could relate one to the other, if only in a very approximate way. Equipped with this mental picture, and quite tired after a long day, I was able to go to our cabin and to sleep without feeling any further threat of sickness.
 
To avoid excessive duplication I refer you to Granny Anne’s blog for an account of the cruise itself (possibly a succession of posts will be needed). Her memory for detail is far better than mine and, in any case, she has “borrowed” some of my best pictures to supplement her own!
I will follow the example of The Jobbing Doctor, who returned from a similar cruise just days before ours started and who has since posted pictures.  I will do likewise with brief notes from my daily diary.

Ich hatte ja berichtet, dass ich an meinem freien Tag im Greifswald war. Den Tag hatte ich im Kulturamt begonnen und bis zu meinem Termin in der Galerie im ipp war nur Zeit. Also bin ich nach Wiek raus gefahren, habe die Sonne, das Flair und die Stimmung genossen.

In der Alten Schule habe ich mich auf die Terrasse in die Sonne gesetzt einen Kaffe getrunken und etwas gelesen. Ich mag solche Umgebungen, die alten Häuser, die Boote, die Fischer, die Möwen, die Sonne und etwas Wind von der See genauer vom Bodden einfach nur herrlich…

Hier ein paar Schnappschüsse… wunderbare Motive für die Kamera und zum malen

Möwen im Flug

Minesweepers continue to search the Baltic Sea for some of the estimated 80,000 unexploded mines still in the waters.

One of the largest searches for unexploded sea mines dating from the World War Two began Monday off Estonia, some 70 years after the start of the conflict on September 1, 1939.

“The joint military operation called Open Spirit that started Monday and will last until September 11, 2009 is attended by 16 military ships from France, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Lithuania and Estonia”…

Minesweeping operations in Estonian waters have been organised since 1994 with nearly 600 mines being found, while the estimated number of all unexploded mines in the Baltic Sea is around 80,000, most dating from WWII…

Source: AFP

I tried to take some shots with the long exposures at the Baltic Sea and Zatoka Pucka. As you see, the lack of sunlight can also be an advantage and enables you to reach effects that you would not be able to reach during the day…

Sometimes I think that almost every contradiction may be viewed as The Conflict Between East and West.

“Seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the cultural divide between former East Germans and West Germans is being laid bare at beach resorts,” reported Claudia Rach, Bloomberg News two years ago (see also The New York Sun from September 7, 2006).

K. Bacher in his famous “205 Arguments and Observations In Support of Naturism” quotes Lee Baxandall, according whom

“almost every town on East Germany’s coast has an FKK beach, some 90 sites serving 200,000 campers/lodgers annually; more FKK than textile beaches. A GDR poll found 57% of the population approving of nude recreation, 30% had no opinion, and only 13% opposed.”

FKK-Strand am Schwielochsee

Even, if the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was “Unrechtsstaat” (”unjust state”), while now East Germany is “free,” many of its beaches aren’t. The West is blamed for exporting to the East both pornography and beach restrictions.

Nowadays according to the estimations ascribed to the DFK (German naturist federation) as many as two-fifths of beaches previously used by nudists since Germany reunified in 1990 has lost their nudist statuses.

Claudia Rach wrote that

Since communism’s collapse in 1989, Baltic resorts have added new hotels and restaurants, renovated boardwalks and cleaned up water pollution.
That led to a surge in western tourists, with visitors to the Baltic coast jumping to 5.06 million last year from 1.98 million in 1992, according to the statistical office for the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Property prices in Germany’s Baltic region have risen 25 percent since 1995, more than the national average, according to a study by the GEWOS Institute for Urban, Regional and Housing Research in Hamburg.
“When people with money holiday in freshly renovated resorts, the last thing they want are naked bodies on their doorstep,” said Wolfgang Weinreich, head of the International Naturist Federation.

The reporter quotes Urs Wagner, the German naturist and Berlin retiree, 57, who said, “It’s a really intense feeling of nature that everyone should experience. But who knows for how much longer. We’re a dying breed.”