Kerstin's Tummy

For those of you, who haven't heard yet - We are going to become parents at the end of July!!! We are excited and looking forward to the addition to the Sandford family.
Here is a photo of Kerstin, showing her tummy around the 25th week of pregnancy (they count 40 weeks to the estimated due date).

Hamburg and Holland over Easter

Over Easter Lindsay and I headed up North - to Hamburg and Holland.

Hamburg is a great city, but unfortunately we couldn't enjoy the lovely promenades and cafes right next to the canals as much, due to the freezing cold wind, which made us want to go inside as often as possible to warm up. However, we still managed to see a fair bit in our day and a quarter of being there and apart from Lindsay catching a cold, it was a nice experience.

After our long drive from the middle of Germany (my parents' place), we settled in our hotel, which was near the airport. In fact, the hotel was so close to the airport that you felt like you were able to touch the planes flying above your head. We headed into town on the subway, which in Hamburg goes more above ground than below and in some parts is more a sky train. We had a picnic in front of the Alster (mix between canal and lake) and then walked through the city, which was slowly getting dark.

The next morning we headed into town quite early, to make the most of the short time we had available. We looked at the main church of Hamburg, the "Michel", went into a little alleyway with flats for merchants' widows from the 17th century and walked through the storage city ("Speicherstadt"), which allows tax-free storage of goods from all over the world. We watched some workers pull up a bunch of oriental carpets into one of the storage houses. After warming ourselves up with a nice hot soup, we headed over to the landing docks of St. Pauli and did a tour of the harbour - a very windy affair on the outside deck, but very impressive. Next we went down into the old Elb Tunnel, which not only passengers, but also cars are transported down into with lifts. There are two tunnels, one for each direction, and there are very narrow lanes with a footpath for pedestrians on either side of them. We walked through the tunnel and back.

To warm ourselves up, we took the train out to the rich-peoples' suburb of Blankenese. It is like a little town in its own right, with a cute centre and it is located on a hill right next to the Elbe river. We walked down to the Elbe passing houses, which are only reachable on foot via a network of walkways. All of the sudden a huge container ship appeared from behind one of the small houses and looked completely out of place.

In the evening we met up with our colleague Andreas, who works from his home office in Hamburg and his girlfriend Merle. They took us to a really cool Italian restaurant, which was very crowded, but had waiters who still managed to keep everyone happy. Because we had to wait for a table for a little while, we got a couple of glasses of sparkling wine each (although not very useful for Kerstin). Both the atmosphere and the food was very good. After dinner, Andreas did a little sightseeing tour of the harbour and the harbour bridge with us from the car.

The next morning we headed west to the dutch city of Groningen. The weather got better and the sun finally came out. We met up with our dutch friend Matthijn and enjoyed a drink in one of the street-cafes. There was a flower market happening in Groningen, which we strolled around. Matthijn took us to a seal nursery, where lost or injured seals are cared for until they are ready to go out to sea again. We ate dinner at a fish restaurant with a view of the sea and took a little walk to watch the sunset.

After staying the night in a hostel, we headed into a small town to get some breakfast and then made our way over to the island of Ameland on one of the ferries. The island was pretty busy, especially with cyclists. It was easier to walk on the road than on the path that cyclists and pedestriants shared. We walked over to the other side of the island and went to the beach there. It was a very wide and open beach, despite the tide being almost in. So nice to be by the sea again and smell the fresh air. We took the ferry back to the main land and drove to Lelystad, where Matthijn lives. He was a very good host, even lending us his bed and sleeping on a matress on the floor.

Because Lindsay had caught a cold in Hamburg, we took it easy the next day: we slept in, rested, went for a small bike ride along a dyke, rested, went for a drive to see some tulip fields, rested, got some dinner and rested again.

Our last day was spent driving all the way back to Munich, which is about an 800km drive. We left early and stopped off in Wiesbaden to visit my grandparents and auntie and uncle. The weather was amazingly summery and we sat outside in the garden wearing t-shirts, while eating cake and drinking tea. What a nice end to our holiday.

Kevin's Konfirmation

Here are some photos of Kerstin's brother Kevin's Konfirmation:

Konfirmation is a big moment in a kid's life here in Germany - they have to go to church for about 2 years learning all the traditions, stories, etc from the bible, then there is a ceremony that is almost like a wedding - everyone dresses up for the occasion, and gives them money (including random people from the surrounding area).

Kevin was pretty glad to have it over with - his priest was old and very boring - it was his last Konfirmation before retirement.

Tramping to a hut in the Ammergauer Alps

After a very mild winter with hardly any snow in Munich, we decided to do a tramp to a hut in the alps and experience a bit of snow at the same time. Off we went to Unterammergau, from where we walked for about 3 hours to get to the hut. There was quite a bit of snow around us and the weather stayed dry, despite the weather forecast predicting rain or snow. The hut was very luxurious compared to New Zealand's huts' standards. There were rooms with bunk beds, out of which we had one to ourselves, there was running water and flushing toilets and there was a restaurant. We ate a nice meal and sat together for the rest of the evening.

The next morning we were woken up by beautiful sunshine and sparkling white snow. It was beautiful. We walked down and were jealous of all the others, who had sleds. We tried to slide down on a couple of plastic bags, but gave up due to our butts getting a bit too sore.

The remainder of the second day we spent looking at Oberammergau with its painted houses, going for a walk through the gardens at Linderhof Castle and looking at the monastry in Ettal.