DAY 1: Departure & Arrival
The boys were very excited to be going to Berlin and seeing "Big! Boy! Härry!"* - though a bit miffed that we weren't going to Beaune or riding bikes with Gamma & Gampa. We had a great trip, once we found a room in a no smoking section of the second train, and arrived happy and ready for adventure.
* They remembered how tall Härry was when I showed them but a head-shot from one of our first blog entries, before we left to see him. Afterwards, they kept yelling, on their tip-toes, with their eyes wide open and their hands raised as high as possible to indicate great height: "Härry! Big! Boy!" and variations thereof.
DAY 2: Der Zoologischer Garten
Since they had been such excellent travellers the day before (by foot, by train and by bus), we started out with a day devoted entirely to the boys. The first two pictures are of a moment towards the end of the U- and S-bahn ride to the Zoo. The second is of a few moments at the Zoo...
DAY 3: A Day Off
We started out with nothing but aimless rambling on our agenda. And we ended up doing an astounding number of things, all within a square kilometer or so of Härry's house (which, it has to be admitted, is smack-dab in the Mitte of things, so...). Uhm... the slide picture needs a bit of explaining. See, the boys went up and I stayed below, the better to catch them on film and in my arms. But the slide was SO slick that I'd barely caught this one of Tomi (the first and only boy to go down, as it were) before he was thumping into me and spraying sand for miles around. It was terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Well... Tomi may only have seen the one side of things, actually. At any rate, we stuck to the smaller, less slick slide after that. And the last picture is a kind of tribute to the Panimixers.
DAY 4:
We did alot (a children's museum and an immense exhibition hall (where I saw Munkacsi photos with Tomi and Jean-Philippe saw Franco-Germanic contemporary sculpture with Leo; and where the boys put on a happening in the gallery café afterwards - stunning, all three shows), but took not one picture. So here are a couple of extras from the next day...
DAY 5:
More museum-going, as you can see below. We spent almost the entire day there, and - what with edible art and all - the boys had as great a time as we did. Afterwards, we walked to the Reichstag: a stunning walk, the length of which has changed to the extent that it's not even recognisable to what it was only five years ago. There was an enormous queue at the Reichstag, so Jean-Philippe approached a guard, who took one look at the wee boykins next to him and directed us to a side door that took us straight up to the cupola - and saved us a very chilly hour's wait! Afterwards, there was a tour around the Brandenberg Gate and the changed scene around it, which brought us to Glühwein and Leibnitz cookies (something for everyone) and then: home-again-home-again, to an evening in with Härry.
DAY 6:
We took our time in the morning, got ourselves and things together and headed out, shedding a tear apiece as we did. We'd had such a great time. And the boys were marvelous; really excellent company and such good sports (aside from a couple of tired moments, but hey! we expected so much more of that than we got, so... no complaints from this corner)!
