Continued from previous post.

IN PROGRESS

Day five (29 August): Breakfast and katamaran ferry from central Hamburg to Helgoland in the morning

Lovely ferry ride appealing to my obsession with all things martime, and resulting in an overdose of photos below.

First impression of Helgoland: Duty free shops everywhere, and people from the ferry darted towards them as if their lives depended on it.

Secondly: don’t spend the night in Helgoland. Accommodation is GROSSLY overpriced and an even worse rip-off than Kassel during Documenta. Base yourself in Cuxhaven, take an early ferry to Helgoland, walk around the island, see “Lange Anna”, take the ferry to Düne and walk around there, then take the ferry back to Cuxhaven.

That is all the time you need. Beautiful as it is, there is no reason to linger in Helgoland. You will only find junk food (unless you have booked in advance in one of the two restaurants with real food), and bad coffee.

By the way, it is ironic that this island sells itself on its fresh air, and then it is full of chainsmokers.

Here some photos from the ferry ride and upon arrival.

Day six (30 August): Helgoland

First too many photos of the cliffs, and then too many photos of the gulls:

Day seven (31 August): A walk around Helgoland-Düne and later the Katamaran ferry to Cuxhaven

Day eight: in Cuxhaven

A funny thing about Cuxhaven: You are not allowed to eat between 9.30 and 12.30. At all. In the hope of getting back to my routine of only eating twice a day (of necessity, as outlined elsewhere on this site – not because it amuses me), I skipped breakfast, went out quite early, and started to look for a café around mid-morning. None were open. I then tried a couple of hotels in the hope that their breakfast buffets were still open, and everywhere the reaction was the same: “What – you want to eat NOW? But it is 11.00 o’clock!?! – you will not find anything to eat anywhere till 12.30 at the earliest”, looking at me as if I had just dropped down from another planet. Very strange. So the concept of intermittent fasting, a by now common weight (and health) management strategy especially for people over 50, has not reached Cuxhaven yet.

Another thing that has not reached Cuxhaven yet is that people need wifi. The one in my hotel was weak and unstable and close to useless. The hotel staff acted as if I just had to accept that as a fact of life (but life in which century?).

So my idea of spending a couple of weeks here some time in winter has been dropped. Instead, I will try to find out if Bremerhaven might have moved a bit closer to the the 21st century.

Anyway, I ran into some kind of kite-surfing festival and took a million photos.

Day nine, 2 September: Boat tour through the harbour to sandbanks with seals, then trai back to Berlin in the afternoon.

Many second anniversaries this summer.

Two years since diagnosis; two years since I was told I would most likely not need chemo; two years since final decision on double mastectomy without reconstruction; two years since Max my dog moved to his new home – that was schlimm but I had invaluable help from my neighbours Sabine and Frank, and I was so glad my brother and sister-in-law were here that week).  I am already past those anniversaries and coming up is the two years after surgery, and a week later final confirmation that all margins were clear and I would not even need radiation.

Another steep learning curve and meeting new friends in similar situations. Many thoughts still going through my head. Why am I so lucky when women much younger than me are not? About trying to live as healthily as possible with the dual purpose of a) avoiding recurrence (which they say is not likely to happen at my age – in other words I will have died of other causes, but as I increasingly see in other examples – cancer is totally unpredictable – positively as well as negatively), and b) mitigating the side effects of the hormone blockers which some call the evil, turbo-aging pill.

Thoughts about the inequality in health care – even between neighbouring countries like Denmark and Germany – from what I hear from women in Denmark, I am definitely in a better position and could not have been in better hands, and that is the sentiment I still feel. Excellent follow-up and support from both gynecologist and GP, and even from my ophthalmologist 😊 who, when I was a bit anaemic post-surgery advised against iron supplements and told me one spoonful of Molasses (who knew?) would have my iron levels back to normal within days. Small detail, but demonstrates an interest.

About being beyond flat and trying to find clothing styles that camouflage the concavities a bit, rather than wearing the highly uncomfortable and impractical, albeit health-insurance-paid prosthetics and wondering why nothing a bit more comfortable has been invented yet and why we who no longer have breasts but are alive have to suffer further from saving society the costs of complications, implant syndrome etc.

But also about people who I thought were friends who fell totally silent when told about my diagnosis, as in NOT ONE WORD, which I guess might be better than “if there is anything I can do …..” which usually does not mean anything anyway. And not only that, later, even now, I get questions like can I recommend an exhibition, or a restaurant. Just like that. Not even good to see you back on your feet so quickly, for example. As if nothing happened.

I will try to organise all of these thoughts in the following, but I am well aware that I might be repeating myself since much of it is already described in this and subsequent categories: https://www.hellemoller.eu/category/a-bump-in-the-road-summer-2022/.

Before Covid19, I was quite systematically visiting cities and towns in Poland, and did manage quite a lot, since that is now my new neighbouring country, but recently, I seem to have forgotten that project, except those that can be reached on foot from Frankfurt/Oder and Görlitz.

I have also always been hearing good things about Georgia. Unfortunately, in the meantime, I decided to never fly again, so I may have to abandon that principle briefly, unless I want to spend three days getting there.

But for now, I am looking for good websites about all of the above.

Already visited Gdansk, Krakow, Lodz, Lublin, Poznan, Szczecin, Torun, Warsaw, and Wroclaw. Would like to visit Warsaw again.

A rare honour nowadays. Despite my attempts to attract pollinators by sowing several pots of wildflowers amongst the herbs, only the marjoram attracted a couple of visitors.

More unwelcome visitors are the pigeons, rats with wings, that seem to be looking for nesting places almost all year round. One afternoon I watched one flying in and out of a neighbour’s porch with construction material. I think it has been discovered in the meantime and the structure disposed of. It is not nice to return home from holiday, for example, to find a nest full of eggs, or worse ……..

I am still trying to photograph the swifts that are sometimes swarming in great numbers near my balcony, but even with my camera locked and loaded, and a lot of the time perfect light conditions, they are too, well …. swift …..

I am not sure why it has taken me so long to visit “Peacock Island“, except perhaps the fact that I have never really liked peacocks (pompous divas) nor old buildings, nor manicured parks, and all those are represented there.

Bus 218 leaves from S Bahn Station Wannsee once every hour (on weekends twice every hour) and stops by the small ferry which leaves more or less on demand and the rides takes about fifteen seconds. A return ticket costs 6 euro and can be bought from machines – one for cash and one for cards.

As it turned out, most of the buildings there are currently being renovated and therefore scaffolded and inaccessible, so I ended up taking many more photos of peacocks than I had expected.

Fortunately, it is not all overly-manicured park – there are some more unkempt areas more to do with real nature. I heard many birds, but saw just a few. Mid summer is not the best time for birdwatching.

I was pleased to ascertain that peacocks are clumsy and inelegant flyers :-).

The island is easily walkable, though due to the occasional thunder and heavy rain, I did not stay long enough to walk all around it and am therefore definitely planning to go back.

There is a kind of café with food kind of one step up from junk food, and what looked like nice, homemade cakes, and there is also a rather large restaurant on “the mainland” just by the ferry.

Definitely a nice day out

To all the morons and retards who have been keeping many of us awake most of the night by yacking and laughing incessantly and loudly on their balconies, thinking the whole world ought to hear their words of wisdom and that they are wildly interesting and funny to listen to: I have news for you: very few people are, and nothing is that funny, and most people should do the world a favour and keep their mouths shut more often instead of talking such a load of shite most of the time. I wish I had a way to keep you awake all day, now that you have finally gone to bed. #ihatepeople

By the way, on yesterday’s boat tour (Langer Tag der Stadtnatur) with Derk Ehlert, a.k.a. “Berlins Wildtier Gott”, about a third of the passengers blithered their stupid platter loudly and unashamedly THE WHOLE TIME. Wastes of space humans are.

A very enjoyable day extremely well organised by Margot Dietzsch, Thomas Lenk, and Joachim Wenzel. Joachim led a longer walk, and Margot led and narrated an interesting walk around Tegeler Schloß, themed around the brothers Humboldt.

Everybody then boarded the Moby Dick at Greenwich Promenade for a lovely two-hour boat tour, and we finished off the day with a meal at Tegeler Seeterrassen where they coped smoothly with an onslaught of 38 people who all ordered different courses.

Very nice and enjoyable afternoon as usual efficiently organised by Renata Fackler.

I got there early so played with ICM on some rocks, and photographed some birds before we boarded.