Upon arriving in Berlin we took a taxi to our hotel which was right next to the landmark TV tower in the picture above, this proved to be quite useful as the tower gave us a landmark visible from pretty much everywhere in the city, making deciding the right direction to our hotel straightforward even at night. The tower itself was built in the late 60's by the DDR (East Germany) as a symbol of Communist power and at 368 meters was the fourth tallest structure in the world at the time. You can go up to the revolving restaurant at the top but we decided it looked a bit like a tourist trap ($$) and anyway, our hotel had a pretty good rooftop bar which was quite high enough for a decent view of the city (and free!)
Of course not every Berlin experience is somber and thought provoking, it's a fun city too as we were to find out in part 2 of our adventure..
The hops featured this Saturday were Strata, Nelson, Galaxy and Saaz and the four beers varied in strength from 5 to 8% ABV and spanned styles from Pilsner thru Hazy New England DIPA. All the beers were good, my favourite though was the Galaxy based beer, hazy and slightly West Coast in style it was rich, smooth and very well balanced featuring classic Galaxy flavours of passion fruit, citrus and peach. The day was punctuated by live bands and various beery talks (see picture above) a great day out with like-minded beer geeks!
I must admit though, I'm somewhat baffled as to why someone would go to the trouble and expense of doing something like this, it's not seemingly a particularly patriotic move since such flags already fly over most government buildings and churches around here? I suppose it's intended to remind all passers by what country they're in, a political point and put there by people who feel that is a necessary step these days. I can see both sides of this, it's provocative for many lefties because of the "hooligan" elements of the hard-right who have exploited this kind of faux-patriotism for many years, although I'm not convinced that's the intent now? On the other hand, having spent a lot of time in the poorer parts of many big cities around the country I do understand that perspective and at least the flag is the correct way up!
Once finished the girls met us in the pub and we tucked into some bar snacks, a couple of rather delicious scotch eggs made from duck and a bowl of roasted new potatoes with a nice garlic dip, all very good. We left the pub around 6pm and headed over to Paddington to catch the train home, unfortunately there were a bunch of very noisy people in our carriage who had spilled out of the Tommy Robinson protest that was going on in Westminster, I got the impression that they'd "had a few" but to be honest they we in pretty good spirits and didn't interfere with anyone, in fact the Arsenal football supporters, also on their way home, were a lot more objectionable. Anyway, we got home nice and early around 7:30pm and had enough time to cook up some dinner and watch a movie, all in all, a pleasant day out!
If, on the other hand, you accept that these books and stories were authored (and plagiarized) by many people over many centuries and are entirely man-made (as opposed to women-made) then everything makes perfect sense.
It seems slightly odd to me that Ireland would choose to boycott a (rather pointless) singing competition (without a national vote?) to make a political point, I don't know but I guess since their army is so small that's about all they can do? I note today that Larry Ellison (the owner of the Oracle corporation) gained around $100B dollars in wealth this week, so now him and Musk together are worth more than the entire Irish economy. On an unrelated point I've decided to boycott the Olympic shot putt competition if there are any Russians involved, I bet they're gutted..
We landed at Heraklion airport on the Northern coast late in the afternoon and a small van (there were 5 of us) picked us up and took us to the hotel, it took about an hour but gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with the dramatic landscape and impressive "heat" of the island and also to be thankful that since I was there in the 80s a new motorway had been built and had decreased the journey time by more than half. When we arrived at our residence we were greeted by the staff there (I'd forgotten how friendly Greek people tend to be!) the welcome was very warm and the hotel and grounds were gorgeous, our younger contingent were so excited that, before unpacking, they immediately changed into swimming costumes and jumped into the sea! It was like they were small kids again, we ordered a cold beer and sat by the beach watching them having fun in the bath-warm sea, they were so happy, we reminisced about simpler times.
Last time I was in Greece I don't think I had a single glass of wine (just ice-cold lager in the bars and discos of the town!) this time around I was determined to remedy this and to try a few of the Greek wines that have, by all accounts, come on enormously in the last decade or so. At dinner that evening I had a good old chat with the hotel Sommelier and we lined up a couple of different wines to try. A couple of reds and a couple of whites later our favourite by far was a white wine made in Santorini from the Assyrtiko grape (see picture below), it was delicious, dry, rich and deep with flavours of honey, apricot and citrus and boasting impressive minerality, a truly world class wine.
Then I had a brainwave, perhaps my Wife had a machine lurking in a drawer somewhere? Luckily she did but guess what, the batteries were also dead and were a completely different size to the ones I bought! So, I went out and bought yet more little batteries, fitted them and bingo the machine sprung into life! So, I went back to the point in the registration dialogue where I'd left off and continued, after filling in all my details and pressing the "next" button a few times I got to the end and successfully registered my new card, the little machine was never even mentioned...
So here's the third in the "experiments in yeast" series from Elusive. This time we have a Saison yeast from France. Saison used to be brewed by farmers in the summer and drunk by hired field hands, it was usually very low in alcohol and also naturally fermented meaning that the yeast was simply "in the air" and inoculated the beer spontaneously. The flavour profile of this beer was classic saison, straw, lemon and slightly acidic, a good example of the style and really refreshing.
