I found DOS to be a friendlier way of interacting with a computer than the crap Sony wants me to use with my walkman.
If you can find a way around using this awful piece of shit do so.
I recently heard a rumour that if god existed he would send everyone that was involved in making the software to hell.
I’ve been really quiet lately and I apologise, although I don’t know how many of you are really waiting with baited breath for every post. But I thought it was about time that I gave you all an update on how we’re doing.
Today is officially the start of Week 35, so I’ve got about 6 weeks left to go. As you might have seen from our photos on flickr I’m definitely expanding, but I haven’t reached whale proportions yet. This I expect to happen any minute now. The baby is moving around all the time now, which I’ve been told is a good sign – hopefully it’s not going to be hyperactive!
I really enjoyed our last two holidays, the Baltic Cruise and Ireland, and now I’m back at work. I’m not really enjoying that, but there’s only 5 weeks left and then I’m not working for at least a year! I bet after a year off, I’ll be keen to go back to work at least part-time, just for the adult company, if nothing else.
The main thing that’s on my mind at the moment is preparing for the baby (funnily enough). So far we’ve got almost all the main things that we need and also quite a few clothes. Here’s a list of things we’ve got already:
• pram (bought from ebay)
• car seat (bought from ebay)
• cot (given to us by friends)
• bassinette (bought in Ireland, as you can’t buy them in Germany)
• travel cot (just bought on ebay today)
• baby bouncer (bought on ebay)
• nappy bag (bought from pharmacy for €20, came filled with product samples)
What we still need to buy are:
• mattress for the cot
• sheets for the cot
• another chest-of-drawers
• change-mat
• wash-clothes and towel
• baby-sling
• rain cover for the pram (guaranteed to get lots of use in Düsseldorf)
• baby bath (but I think we’re getting one from some friends)
Things I’m not decided on yet are:
• nappies – this is the main one. Do we go with disposables (and damn ourselves to greenie hell for ever and ever), eco-friendly disposables (the lazy, slightly more expensive but mostly guilt free option) or cloth nappies (a fair bit of extra work but a clear conscience)? If we choose cloth nappies, there’s also the choice between using plain squares or getting the fitted ones (which are easier but much more expensive). Any suggestions would be appreciated (although not necessarily acted upon!).
• bottles – obviously we’ll need some, but I want to breast-feed (or as they say in America ‘nurse’ because the word ‘breast’ is some how naughty) so the question is how many bottles etc should I buy now ‘just in case’?
So anyway, I wonder if any of you can spot things that I’ve missed from my list? Or any suggestions about my undecided things? I’m definitely suffering from baby-brain at least some of the time, so I’m sure I’ve forgotten something!
Alex’s sister and the kids are visiting at the moment. We went to the Kirmes yesterday, which is a large fun fair by the water. The rides are mostly the standard crappy looking ghost trains and gravitrons that you find at traveling shows, but there are five or six more modern rides that look like they belong in a proper amusement park.
It seems that the weasel gene that carnival folk in Australia have is also present here and there are just as many games of chance(1) for men(2) to lose money on while trying to win their sweetheart or child a large plush panda. Taking the kids along made the day a whole lot more interesting. We went the last two years, but stayed only long enough to walk half the length of the carnival, buy a bratwurst and sink a beer. Yesterday we stayed for around four or five hours because the nieces loved it and through them we loved it. I imagine lots of things take on new meaning we you take kids along.
On Wednesday we are off to Ireland for a week. Dublin, Kilkenny, Derry and Belfast.
1. I don’t know why they call them games of chance, because you never see anyone win.
2. Pandering to certain stereotypes.
Beautiful weather today made the Ruhrgebeit go crazy.
We had normal summer weather today and so after a few weeks of rubbish the normals are ready for some silliness.
I wrote this during our sea day, but because the overpriced internet available on the ship was a slow and wobbly piece of shit, it didn’t get published.
In Riga it was interesting to see how a country could come out of communism and within two decades become consumed by rampant capitalism. There were department stores just like anywhere else in Europe, but instead of seeing old bent women in scarves fighting over the last mismatched pair of socks(1), we saw fashionably dressed people of every age, engaging in civilised shopping expeditions. The other thing about Riga that surprised me was that they had a mall. Even in Germany the idea of huge collections of specialty shops hasn’t taken off (thank goodness), but in Riga it was obviously booming.
The standard stuff also applies: the place was beautiful and alive with history. (2)
Finland is a maudlin country, unsuitable as a holiday destination. (3) Helsinki is also beautiful, but nothing about it really grabbed me. I found it interesting that the inside of the cathedrals were quite plain as opposed to many others where the gold is itself gilt and Jesus has a racing pony instead of a donkey. The presidential palace which is also a tourist draw card is also boring (the MacDonald’s in Riga was a grander affair) and really worth about 90 seconds of time. The market was interesting in that we could buy tacky souvenir crap and receive Finnish coins to complete our set, but apart from that, Glebe market is far more interesting. Having made these criticisms, I don’t think you go to Helsinki to be blown away by ancient monuments or gaudy buildings. Helsinki seems to be a little bit subtler. The beauty is that the place is not overdone and the people seem genuinely happy. Having said that, let me say that the Esplanadi was beautiful and well worth a stroll through.
St Petersburg was what I was most looking forward to and I enjoyed what I saw of it, but the place is so big that we barely scratched the surface. A contributing factor to our lack of complete immersion was that we were stuck in traffic most of the time and we were on a bus tour. Despite the traffic, we still managed to buy some Russian dolls, but unfortunately my quest to buy a Zenit shirt was unfulfilled.
Europe; it will be great when they finish It.(4) This sums up my overall impression of the places we visited on this trip. Everywhere we went they were repairing or cleaning some of the monuments we went to see or in some way destroying the roads and pavements to make travel by foot difficult and any other for of transport impossible.
(1) Thanks Bill Bryson
(2) Yawn
(3) Thanks David Walliams
(4) Thanks Nath
Our scheduled lunch time stop in Visby was pushed back to three o’clock because of fog, so instead of a leisurely stroll around the former Northern Hanseatic capital, we were reduced to a brisk tour de force. Visby seemed to me to be marked by its ruins, as there were so many that we became blasé about the seventh or eight that we came across. The reason for this high number of ruins and a complete (but of course ruined) city wall is hard times.
The city was for centuries a rich trading port, but fell on hard times in the 18th century and went into decline. This meant that the city didn’t have the money to pull down the ruins created by war and replace them with modern buildings like everywhere else in Europe was doing. This also meant that the city wall remained intact the whole way around, which was a rare thing by the 19th century.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, artists and poets came to the town, entranced by the town’s rustic nature they made return visits and others came in their wake. Hence, Visby began to rely on tourism by the very early 20th century and all the ruins were left to their own devices.
Coming soon: “Latvians have had shoes now for more than 15 years.”
We arrived in Kiel after the stupidest train ride ever. We boarded in Düsseldorf and then changed after half an hour in Dortmund. The main leg of the journey now began and after just under three hours we were in Hamburg, where we changed again. In Neumünster we changed again for Kiel. So much for the vaunted German efficiency.
The boat is bloody huge. It is so big that it dwarfs even Alex and at the moment that is no mean feat.
Our cabin on board is small, but we have stayed in smaller places on dry land and anyway it is quite nice and cosy.
This morning we docked in Copenhagen and after a gigantic breakfast we headed out into town. We had approximately eight hours there, so we really only got a glimpse of what Denmark’s capital had to offer. Having said that, what we saw was great. The Amalienborg palace, where the royal family lives is quite majestic and we were lucky enough to be there during the changing of the guard.
The city itself is old and beautiful and most of the people seem quite happy. I suppose the later is because like most of Scandinavia, the government actually looks after all its people; we saw only two homeless people all day. The only downside was the prices. Copenhagen is the most expensive place we have visited in two years of exploring Europe.
The weather over the last week has been pretty atrocious, but we were lucky and had a lovely sunny day with about 40% cloud cover in Copenhagen (touch wood that it continues that way), of course it was just cloudy enough for us to forget our hats and just sunny enough for us to get a little bit sunburnt. But of course, this is civilised European sun, so we don’t expect to keel over from skin cancer any time soon.