I wanted to see this exhibition in Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig and decided to make that visit coincide with the “Herbstrundgang” in the galleries in Spinnerei Leipzig.

Bad idea. Much as I used to enjoy the two annual open weekends in the Spinnerei, and to think that it is one of the most interesting places to visit on a daytrip from Berlin – that was before Corona, and now I just can’t stand the crowds, half of which are probably spewing BA.2.75 aerosol all over the place. Also, there were long queues to get what looked like junk food to me, and it was impossible to get even just a cup of coffee. Clearly no longer my thing. From the minute I arrived there, I heard the comfortable ICE train which transports people between Berlin and Leipzig in just an hour and 15 minutes, as well as my home calling out my name :-).

The Museum of Fine Arts, on the other hand, was a great discovery (for me), and I should have spent a lot more time there and skipped the Spinnerei, where I only popped into a couple of galleries, but the “magic” and my interest in the place had vanished. If that comes back, I will make sure to visit during the week when there is barely anybody else there.

And I definitely want to go back and see more of the Museum of Fine Arts, so perhaps a two-day visit to Leipzig is in the cards. Leipzig is an underrated city with an interesting recent history, and there are still a lot of abandoned places (which for some strange reason the Germans call lost places) to photograph :-)).

With Fritz Heiber from Empor Berlin, and interesting as usual. A small group of us ended the walk with coffee in Arminiusmarkthalle.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record the route, but Fritz Heiber has very kindly provided this map:

Together with my visitors – my niece, who is a zookeeper, and her girlfriend.

Before you say anything, I agree that for me, in my current state of health and mobility, it is utter luxury to have a cleaning help. I will get back to my reasons.

My flat is about 85 sq.m., with two bedrooms and two bathrooms – one tiny and one medium-sized. Most of the time, it is just me living here. It should be an easy job – right? Wrong.

It all started when I adopted a dog and suddenly had dog hairs everywhere in addition to the dirt we dragged in from the – often wet – streets after four to five daily walks. I was lucky enough to find someone who liked Max and also did not mind having him around and even take him for a quick walk as part of the job to give me a bit of “me time”. I therefore paid him for four hours every week, and it all worked out well for a while. So far, so good, and it felt like the best thing I had ever spent money on. I thoroughly enjoyed coming home to a clean flat.

After I no longer had a dog, I decided to keep the cleaner on, still for four hours per week, at least for a while. When I went on “reha” for four weeks in November last year, I also decided to keep paying him, since, not that that was any of my business, but due to things he had said over time, I sensed that his financial situation was precarious. In return, I asked him to clean the nooks and crannies that often get neglected in everyday life, and to keep an eye on my mailbox in case it started to overflow.

I therefore expected to return to a home that felt almost newly spring cleaned. After four whole weeks during which he could basically work when it suited him – was that really asking too much? Apparently. In stead, I found cobwebs in the corners and a general feeling that he had barely been there, and a completely overflowing mailbox.

I hate being made a fool of, so that was the end of that relationship, and I decided to go back to doing my own cleaning.

However, after a little while, I decided life was too short and that the enjoyment of going out and returning to a clean home once a week, was too big to miss, and I asked around for recommendations and quickly found a new cleaning service.

They charge 17 euro per hour, which I find so reasonable that I decided to round up to 20 euro per hour (i.e. a relatively good tip), and we agreed on three hours per week. However, except for the first couple of weeks, the cleaner only works for two hours each time. He rushes through and off to another job, while I still pay him 60 euro each week. I have discussed that with him many times but he is adamant that that is his right, so it is clearly something his employer has OK’ed. There are many things he never does, for example hoover under the beds even though the hoover can easily reach the farthest corners (he says that would be “deep cleaning” and that would cost extra …..!). From time to time, the chrome legs of my kitchen chairs need to be cleaned (and generally, parts of all the furniture have to be dusted off), but he also does not do that, and there is also a thick layer of dust on all the floor panels (is that also considered deep cleaning although they can easily be hoovered at the same time as hoovering the floors?) And things like light switches, which in the end were so dirty it was the first thing I saw every time I moved around the flat, I had to remind him before he did them.

Is it me? Am I asking too much? Giving my floors a quick hoover and wash, and cleaning the bathroom sinks – I can do that myself and at the same time spare myself these frustrations.

Again, after discussing these things with him for months, and he still insists on disappearing after two hours, walking off with 60 euro, I am tired of being treated like an idiot, and am again looking for a cleaning help. Would it work better with a “professional” service where everything is agreed on-line (but costs almost double)?

In English, they call it “Heavy Load-Bearing Body” which just for once sounds much clumsier that the German version, and the hyphen looks out of place :-).

Anyway, I have been so close so many times, but never actually seen it and decided to drop in on my way to the Flixbus stop in Alt-Tegel to meet my niece and her girlfriend coming to visit for a couple of days.

Later, while waiting in Tegel, I walked a bit along Tegeler See, And finally, after the girls had arrived, we tried out one of the no less than three Indian restaurant in the area, two in Alt-Tegel and one just around the corner. We opted for Darjiling, which I can’t recommend. The food was incredibly bland.

I have never been so badly prepared for an excursion as this one.

I had made a last minute decision to do this tour on Komoot today. But since the weather looked as if it could turn either way, I was waiting for it to brighten up just a little bit.

When I finally left, I was ridiculously unprepared, so for various reasons, the walk was cut even shorter.

As it was still grey and drizzle when I left home, I did not expect relentless sunshine and clouds that were always everywhere but between the sun and me, so I did not apply sunscreen, nor did I bring sunglasses, let alone a hat. Of course with not much in the way of shade from big trees in that kind of landscape, that in itself put a damper on the amount of time I was able to spend there.

Also, even more idiotically, I forgot to put a battery in my camera so had to make do with my phone for photos.

And finally, I forgot to bring a power bank. With my non-existent orientation skills, I am always afraid of getting lost, and if my phone runs out of battery (which of course it does much quicker when I take a lot of photos with it ….), I am f……

Still, I hugely enjoyed the walk, and would definitely like to go back and walk further and spend more time there. And since I now know what blooming heather as far as the eye can see and in all directions looks like, it does not have to be this time of year.

A couple of bonus tips: Take the regional train to Bernau (that really takes no time at all) and bus 900 to Schönow church. From there, it is just a short walk.

There are no toilets, and also no really great options (for women) to go “al fresco”, so make sure to go before boarding the bus in Bernau, which is also the last chance to find something to eat and drink if you have not brought your own. There is a “restaurant” – Alter Dorfkrug – by the church in Schönow, but their opening hours are prohibitive. I did have a cup of the worst coffee ever there, but I saw no evidence of any food being served. However, it did look as if they had good beer.

And finally, leave the road either well before the cemetery, or just after the cemetery. Some maps make it look as if you can exit through the back of the cemetery, but I learned the hard way that that is not possible.

My route on MapMyWalk here.

Once every two or three weeks, I wake up feeling like I have been run over by a bus, and strangely weak. Whether that is one of the many potential side effects of the hormone blockers which it has been recommended I take for five years after the mastectomy, or just a getting-old thing that would happen anyway, it sometimes means a change of plans.

I had been signed up for a 17 km walk – with Empor Berlin, led by Fritz Heiber – in a loop from Kratzeburg, involving leaving home shortly before 8.00 in the morning, and going straight to an internations.org dinner in Alt-Moabit on the way home. I had been looking forward to it (and the destination will be added to my list of places to go to some other time) but it suddenly seemed insurmountable, and I granted myself a slow morning and instead visited the Isa Gentzken retrospective in Neue Nationalgalerie in the afternoon and took my camera on a slow amble through Tiergarten on the way to dinner in Indian vegetarian restaurant Agni in Moabit (with internations.org, organised by Rakesh Singh, and the food would turn out to be very good indeed).

Tiergarten is lush right now – probably having profited from the relatively heavy rainfalls, and although parks are not really my thing, I was wondering why I do not visit more often, given the size, diversity, and relative proximity to my home. My mind was also cast back to last summer, before everything went sideways, and we had some very hot days so I took Max there very early in the morning on his longer daily walks and we saw all kinds of wildlife which you do not see later in the morning. It is a nightmare on weekends, with all the bikes and e-rollers whizzing around all over the place, even on paths which should really only be for pedestrians, but during the day on a weekday, it is quite lovely.

In late winter/early spring I came across a bag of bio sunflower seeds for sowing and thought it might be interesting to try.

Bad idea. They are not suited for pots on balconies. They consume an inordinate amount of water – on sunny days three times a day – and definitely seem to need more soil under their strong roots. Most of them did not survive the unusually windy conditions on my sixth-floor balcony this year – it seems that about every four or five summers it is more windy, and the wind tends to come from an easterly direction directly on to the balcony rather than a more north-south direction which is not felt on this side of the building.

Five of them survived, and grew much taller than I had expected – I think the tallest one may be over 2 m tall.

In any case, they are finally blooming, and finally attracting some insects (and we finally have a blue sky again).

According to NABU, the swifts, of which there have been many around my building this year, headed south yesterday, so perhaps I will finally see more insects making their way all the way up here.

Short walk organised by Museen Tempelhof-Schöneberg, led by Uwe Sawitzki.

Read more about Freizeitpark Marienfelde here.

Most of the route on MapMyWalk here.

First some garbage, since we were on our way up a “mountain” created by garbage:

The view from the top:

A couple of insects – unfortunately an increasingly rare sight:

Passed through one of Berlin’s largest industrial areas on the way back:

And finally, the black and white photos of the day: