Thursday 5th June Out of the hotel by 7.30 to catch a bus for Berlin. For the next 11 hours we travelled east to Berlin via Leipzig, complete with 4 bus company operatives. Apparently it was its first run on this route & it was quite a journey, all done on autobahns except for about 20km. It was quite noticeable how run down some of the buildings were in former eastern Germany although there has been quite a lot of redevelopment in some parts. Finally we arr...

Monday 2nd June Monika took d*** to her doctor's surgery as he has been getting very swollen ankles each evening. The doc diagnosed that he wasn’t drinking enough water & with the medication his kidney wasn’t working fast enough so he must drink 3L a day of water. Had a lazy afternoon & in the evening we went to a Greek restaurant where we had a gargantuan meal nominally for 3 people but enough for the 5000 in reality. We took home 2 large pi...

A coolish overcast day with rain threatening. Monika took us out to Cloppenburg Museum Village where Peter had a stall to sell his ironmongery. Peter, Monika's partner, makes & sells decorative iron works for the garden ranging from pot stands to small rotundas fabricated from steel bars & tubes. He also makes iron statuary & in Monika’s garden is a metre high dinosaur of his. The museum village has example of old farmsteads, barns & house...

Saturday 31st May We got a lift into town & caught the 8.15 bus to Hamburg, a 2 hour ride on the autobahns, which are in excellent condition in contrast to the autostradas of Italy. The countryside is very neat & green but is so flat. Arriving at the bus station we headed for the MK & G museum, a huge building nearby. This is a cross between the V & A & the British Museum in London & it turned out to be a real find as it covers a huge, ...

Wednesday 28th May Took the train to Milan & then the metro to the Cathedral, which has an amazing exterior with multiple pinnacles & hordes of statues & we took turns to inspect the interior. This was as surprising as the exterior as it was so austere with the exception of its stained glass windows which were wonderful. The other odd feature was that the columns supporting the roof had statues mounted on plinths about 6m in the air which made them v...