Guests, guests and more guests

With the email from Zoya, the subject line of which was "pass the sister game" we received our next guest - wonderful cousin Anya. She spent some time being an auntie in London and now had a chance to spend time being a cousin/cousin-in-law in Berlin.

Sadly my cold continued and I couldn't do very much some of the time. But we did manage two trips to the Gemäldergalerie in the Kulturforum, where they have one of the best collections of old European art in the world. We went for a couple of walks, and rides on the bus, and did other touristy and cultural outings. On top of that we spent some good quality time playing 'durak' (aka. the fool).


By the weekend I was better so we went to the Cat Empire concert in the Kulturbrauerei (old brewery turned culture complex) - the concert was a blast and we even dragged our Aussie flag with us and hung it right opposite the band on the back wall. On Saturday was Inna's birthday and the party was a total cultural mix with Kazakhs (mainly Inna), Ruskies, Germans, Aussies and Americans. The absolute climax of the evening was a verbal slaughter of a completely off-his-face American Jonathan by a German bloke Mathias which basically involved pearlers such as "But how can your country be so dumb to elect an idiot such as Bush?!" . It was a good night.

She was the only person in this household to play our Thailan-acquired drum... and after taking a couple of lessons from the internet she was a pro! Last night we went to an all-german pub where Anya got a chance to try the good old German specialty of Eisbein (knuckle of pork)... and then of course we had drinks and shisha afterwards. Sadly shisha didn't turn out to be very good - I think it might be something with the tobacco that we bought last time - it seems to just burn and it tastes as if one is smoking coals.

As usual - it was great to have our friends visiting and now we're looking forward to Julia in March!