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This Has to Stop.
  • Mark Britt
  • Mark Britt

This Has to Stop.

The is absolutely, positively, most likely the last time we do this. Read more
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  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    Here
    Gone

    Brandenburg Gate

    September 8, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Despite Bernadette doing a very good imitation of a coma we eventually did wake up and get about for the day.

    First a quick look at what Berlin had to offer in regards to coffee with a little whole in the wall coffee and pastry shop next door.
    Had its own residence wasps in the display cases. We figure everyone has just given up and let them be.
    Trialled a capuchinno and a latte. Well maybe not the latte in the future. At least here you don’t get a bucket of milk to go with the coffee.

    Two tradies out the front had the German equivalent of a bacon and egg roll. Two boiled wurst (sausage), an unbuttered roll and mustard. It was 9:15 after all.

    Off to the Brandenburg Gate by U-Bahn (metro).

    Every other tour bus in Europe had drop off their passengers there so the platz was packed as they say in Germany.
    The good thing 15mins later they are all gone. It’s a bit like watching snow melt on a hot footpath.

    It’s very impressive and like a lot of things impossible to photograph although Mark did try in vain.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Humbolt University

    September 8, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    A seat of higher learning.
    And at the time more importantly a toilet seat.

    There was also a “Creative Bureaucracy Festival” on that day so how could you not go in?
    Merchandising for this was a bit thin but we looked. Not much creativity on that side at all.Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    German Historical Museum

    September 8, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    Strolled down the Unter de Linden, as one does, looking for the German Historical Museum.
    Finally found this place by standing out the front and wondering where it was. By way I’d excuse it is covered in scaffolding.
    Fantastic place, one of the best laid out and comprehensive we’ve ever seen. And you will all admit that we do a LOT of museums.

    Just as importantly it has a very good cafe and excellent toilets. Two attributes that are assuming greater and greater importance as time moves on.

    Had a fantastic extension out the back (More latter) by I.E. Pei, he of the Louvre pyramid. The man has museums sown up.

    Went to a special exhibition called “Saving- History of A German Virtue”.

    We are able to hear the laugher from here but it was very good and thought provoking. Saving vs investment. Think on this a bit. You know who you are.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    1

    Church of Peace, Potsdam

    September 9, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    The church is really rather neat and is adjacent to the Sans Souci Park of Fredrick the Great.

    This is a World Heritage site and was created of Fredrick the Great in Potsdam about an hour from Berlin by the mighty S Bahn and a bus trip.
    Missed the stop Mark had planned and got off at the right one!
    Enormous place, gardens, palaces, an art gallery the size of a bus station.

    The church was built by King Frederick William IV in 1884, it’s based on original sketches that he made.
    Gave his architect two instructions: has to be based on the early Christian Basilica di San Clemente in Rome and it had to accommodate the apse mosaic from the church San Cipriano from Murano in the Venetian Lagoon, that he had bought in 1834.

    It’s good to be king.

    For a while it serviced as his mausoleum but he along with a lot of other Royals ended up in the Dom in Berlin.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    1

    Sansouci

    September 9, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    If you are king you need a weekender to getaway for the Summer.
    Fredrick the Great thought he need a little place so built a few conveniences in the park at San Souci.
    The Palace was a start, terraced the front for a vineyard. (Grapes died a couple of times so put in cheeries and plums, not even absolute monarchs have it their own way all the time).
    Built an Orangery (more of this later) as you need you fresh fruit, had a ruin built to give the vies some interest.

    Amazing place and the target for every drive by tour group in Germany.

    The foundation who run the place do not seem to believe that human need to excrete and are in serious need of a consultation with English Heritage regarding customer facilities. They haven’t got the cafe, toilet, shop thing going at all. And the hedge trimming would never do for the UK.

    Excellent time despite the houses of convenience.

    For more:
    https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/schlo…    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    1
    1

    Remember the Orangerie.

    September 9, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C

    What do you do with your art collection when you’ve filled the Palace?
    You convert your Orangery into another Palace to house it of course you silly little Democrats.
    That just what Fredrick the Great did.
    We originally thought the place was San Souci itself but was only the shed to store the artwork.
    Ridiculously beautiful with marble, gold and seemingly hundreds of paintings (140) it’s called simply the Picture Gallery.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Retracing some Steps.

    September 10, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C

    Back to the Brandenburg Gate because we forgot to see the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
    You should google it as any photos that we might take are insufficient to convey the size and feel.
    It consists of x concrete stelae of different heights arranged in rows and rows and rows.
    The museum was closed. Monday is museum rest day all over Berlin.

    Designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000-square-metre (200,000 sq ft) [2][3] site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 metres (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 metres (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 metres (7.9 in to 15 ft 5.0 in).[2] They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew.[4][5] An attached underground "Place of Information" (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.[6] Wikipedia    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Gendarmenmarkt

    September 10, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    We knew it was somewhere as we’d seen from the Dom.
    The Gendarmenmarkt is a lovely square that houses the home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra (built 1824) and 2 churches, one build by French Huguenot in 1704 and the second matching one for German Lutherans in 1708.

    Nice to have matching bookends.

    Also has excellent public toilet reminiscent of Parisienne pissoir.

    Something for everyone really.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    11

    Dom Cathedral Berlin

    September 10, 2018 in Germany ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    What do you give the King and Queen for their 25th Wedding Anniversary?
    I know a Cathedral.

    That’s what the German State did in 1905 when they opened the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church (German: Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin) in Berlin was finished.
    The Evangelicals are the collection of Calvanists and Lutherans in Germany and it’s not a Cathedral as it doesn’t have a Bishop.

    It’s all a bit complicated as there’s been a church here since the 15th century and this one survived both the Allied bombing and the communists although both took their toll. They can call it whatever they want.

    So we had to go and arrived just as a 15mins midday service was starting. They lock the doors so you are staying and although it wasn’t entirely clear on the content the organ is amazing. So’s the church for that matter.

    The climb/ascent to the dome walk is a little challenging (400 steps or so) but the view amazing.

    Many started, few got to the second stage let alone the third.

    The sign in the way actually says “The way up is physically demanding “.

    Have decided some people can’t read.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Alte Museum

    September 13, 2018 in Germany ⋅ 🌧 14 °C

    Placement of cafes in the most inconvenient part of a building with no hint of signage

    Weight difffet e between Germans and Brits,,, Brit’s need bikes

    A museum which attracts 1000000 a year has 4 toilets.

    Any museum, public building ,,, entrance not marked, closed door with a belt across... oh yes of course we’re open    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    1Berlin Hauotbahnhof
    Palace of Science and Culture

    Train, Train

    September 14, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    Left Berlin for Warsaw by train.

    Local train to Berlin Hauptbahnhof which has train tracks on 3 levels, an enormous glass dome and 300 shops. Very similar to Bardwell Park. BP has more poker machines nearby.

    Bit disappointing train left 1 minute late. Someone was probably counselled.

    Easy trip of a little over 6 hrs for 576 kms.

    Germans check your ticket, train crosses Oder river into Poland and Poles check your ticket, train stops at Poznań, Poles check your ticket. Everyone clips your ticket until it loos a little tatty.

    Fellow selling drinks and snacks moves up and down the train but in Poland can only sell them to people who got on at last station. His response to question “Why?” By German dying of thirst was a laugh and “Only in Poland.” Love it.

    Hotel at back of massive shipping centre that connects to railway station. Very easy walk and not killed by Friday afternoon traffic.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Warsaw Museum

    September 15, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    Made up of 11 townhouses on the old Market Square it is a very odd museum. Comprises 29 rooms all of different themes. Some demographic data on Warsaw and a room of bronze and statues and postcards and wrapping. You get the picture. All if it spread across 3 houses and 4 floors. Quite unique and very entertaining. Very strange as well in parts.Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    11

    Church in Ketrzyn

    September 17, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    After a lunch of potato pancakes what do you do?

    Walk it off.

    Large church nearby so it was an obvious destination.
    Very nice place with usual Black Madonna.
    A set of deepest cellars that halfway down seemed less of a good idea as we would never be found if a leg was broken.
    Then noticed the helpful/suspicious local fellow who had followed into the church following a cigarette.
    Smiling until we left then back to another ciggie.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Lunch

    September 17, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    What do you have for lunch in rural Polish town?
    Anything you can buy and understand.
    On our way to the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s headquarters in what was then East Prussia now Poland) about 4hrs drive from Warsaw.
    What was supposed to be a couple of potato pancakes with a side of goulash ended up as below.
    Will not be returning to Oz any lighter.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Gdansk

    September 19, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    I always thought of Gdańsk as Solidarity and shipyards, as industrial and a bit run down.
    It’s all of those things and restored and lively and lovely.

    90% of the city was destroyed during the war, the old town gone, the medieval and gothic obliterated. The Poles do like a project and although still not complete the Old Town has been largely reconstructed.

    Fantastic waterfront by the river and street after street of Renaissance building. Other bits, well it is an industrial city. Salam and look, walk and look, all mind numbingly beautiful.
    One difference from UK is that they had clay and remembered who to make bricks for every and anything.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    2
    1

    Torun

    September 20, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    Not much to say about Torun. Ha.

    City of 200,000 on Vistula River founded by Teutonic Knights in Middle Ages and birthplace of Nicholas Copernicus.
    Hasn’t got a lot: city walls , ruined castles, gothic houses and streets, Renaissance town hall, another church the size of a small mountain, biggest gothic bell in Europe, couple of squares surrounded by more gothic architecture. Everything brick as they had a lot of clay and not a lot of stone. Seems to go on for street after street.

    Unlike a lot of cities sin Poland it”s all original as Torun wasn’t destroyed in the war and only the local Communist city officials did any real damage to the place.

    Walking tour in 31 degrees was very good if a little sweaty but place well worth 3 hr drive to get there.

    Have a frog fountain based on legend similar to Pied Piper. Replace rats with frogs and you get the idea. Rub frog and you will return to Torun. A Soyuz can see frogs are very shiny and great opportunity for kids to splash each other.

    One high light was demonstration march by kindergarten children who appeared from nowhere holding banners and flags.
    Converged on central square with a police escorts, stood in front of fountain, sang 3 minute song and dispersed back into the side streets.
    No one was able to explain purpose of event. We don’t thing it was political although the Apprentice Hairdressers School (everyone’s hair braided and warming hives yellow jackets over traditional dress) looked most determined. One group looked like they were wearing Polish Olympic Team uniforms including white hats for boys. Some fairy dresses on display and lots of red and white.
    Most bizarre but very enjoyable.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Contributing to Human Culture.

    September 21, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    A trip to a Polish pottery factory was on the agenda for today.

    That and driving across Poland. We are now in the western part only 30 kms from Germany. Total time 6 hrs.

    Today was also take your truck for a drive day as semitrailers are not allowed to drive on the weekend.
    Exception is for perishable goods and in Germany no exceptions at all. So everyone is trying to get wherever they need to be. Result is a moving wall of trucks on the right hand lane.

    Long day but interesting in a how many corn fields they stuff into Poland sort of way.

    The Pottery Factory has confirmed that despite the EU OH&S Poland could still do with a little work.
    Breathing masks in a clay filled room?
    Never did got an answer.

    What we did get was opportunity to contribute to the world’s cultural store by decorating a pottery plate.

    Have to say the results, which will be sent to us, did not seem worth the price of the postage.

    Strangely enjoyable day however.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Auschwitz

    September 22, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    A long drive to a depressing by required day.

    No photos only memories.

    Rabbi Lord Sax wrote:

    Today, on Yom HaShoah, we call on You, Almighty God, to help us hear Your voice that says in every generation:

    Do not murder.

    Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbour.

    Do not oppress the stranger.

    We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future.

    We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain.

    And so, on this Yom HaShoah, we commit ourselves to one simple act: Yizkor, Remember.

    May the souls of the victims be bound in the bond of everlasting life. Amen.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Krakow

    September 24, 2018 in Poland ⋅ 🌬 8 °C

    Lovely city. Old capital of Poland. Unusual for Poland wasn’t destroyed during the war so has quite a different feel. Four hour walking tour and then a couple of hours wandering, church, market, cemetery. The usual.
    Biggest market square east of the Pennines and a few of the biggest buskers.
    Why aren’t we losing weight?
    The answer, Polish cuisine.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Zakapone

    September 24, 2018 in Poland ⋅ 🌧 8 °C

    What do you do in a mountain resort in the rain and sleet.
    Look in H&M where it’s dry.
    Zakapone is about a hundred kms from Krakow and is the “Winter Capital “ of Poland.
    It’s in a valley with sky resorts around and the usual sort of mountain things. Funicular, mountain lookout, rain, sleet, sun, repeat.
    Has a great wooden church and an excellent cemetery . Also had market that sold cheap gloves As it was about 6 degrees these were the best investment of the trip.
    Out travelling companions took it in their stride. In Vermont and Michigan this is spring weather.
    Lovely place.

    Dinner in restaurant with traditional music and dancing, yes we were both forced to participate with varying degrees of reluctance.
    Night time drive home to hotel, bus very quite.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler
    1

    Wyjscie Salt Mine.

    September 25, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C

    They have been mining salt here since the 12th century and it is enormous.
    The source of one third of mediaeval Poland's total revenue it still produces 8,000 kilos a year but that's just to sell to the tourists.
    Only 2 of the 20kms of tunnels are a open to tourists. That’s the 2 million that visit each year.
    To get to the first level at 64 metres you walk down 380 stairs. There are 800 by the time it’s all over.
    Absolutely amazing. Chapels, reception rooms, stairs and stairs. One room is over 35 metres high, they used to do bungie jumping a few years ago.
    In the middle ages there were 60 horses stabled underground and hundreds of workers.
    Condition have improved since the. Now there are just 400 guides.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Our Lady of Czestochowa

    September 26, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

    National shrine of Poland.
    Believed to have been painted sometime between the 8the and 12th centuries it was brought from Ruthenia (Ukraine) in 1382 and entrusted the Pauline monks.
    In 1439 it was renovated and repainted in a more gothic style after it was damaged by Czech Hussites. This is when it went dark as the different paints reacted.
    In 1655 the monastery was besieged by the Swedes but wasn’t taken after a 49 day siege. Our Lady was credited with the success and was crowned Queen of Poland.
    Place is nuts as almost every kid in Poland gets brought here. Small chapel with the painting. Huge baroque basilica with we hope very repentant Polish teenagers. Groups of every other shape, size and nationality. Older monk mad sure we were directed to the gift shop. Somethings are the same everywhere.
    Not a bad finish to Poland.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    On the way

    September 26, 2018 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    Chopin airport is obviously in Warsaw.
    Nice modern, well laid out and could show Manchester how to do security checks. Then again Albury could as well.
    Traffic around airport incredible and only our bus driver could have gotten us there.
    Waiting for the Copenhagen leg. A long day but making progress.    Read more

  • Mark BrittThis Has to Stop.Traveler

    Copenhagen.

    September 26, 2018 in Denmark ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    Made it to Copenhagen and staying at most expensive hotel we have ever slept in.
    Upside is at 1035pm it is 3mins walk from airport.
    Mark’s original plan was a train ride, a walk down a highway and a hotel in what looked like an industrial estate.
    This one is worth every krona.    Read more

    Trip end
    September 28, 2018
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