Homeward Bound

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Friday, June 13, finds us heading home. We drove from Glasgow to Heathrow in our rental car (a red MG); we had investigated flying but this seemed like a better idea — far less shuttling about. We got away in good time and were quickly on the motorways heading south. Google tells us this is a 7 hour drive, so you add on a another hour or so for good measure and we're back in London area by the end of day.

While driving in UK cities is nerve wracking (e.g., our trip out to Woking would have been better/quicker/safer via Uber) the motorways are very much like ours. I drove; Kate took some pictures along the way out the window of the car. It's surprising how much green and verdant countryside there is in the UK.

On the way we pass close by Liverpool. We talked about visiting the war time grave of my uncle Walter Dixon in Formby — I have not been there since my first trip to the UK back in 1979. Perhaps next time.

We stayed overnight at the Hyatt Place Airport, as we had on our arrival back a couple of weeks ago. Our Air Canada flight Saturday morning was uneventful getting us to Toronto by early afternoon and then on home to London Ontario.

Glasgow, West End

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We were in Glasgow (Scotland, west side on the River Clyde) for Kate's KBS conference. We stayed in an AirBnB apartment in the "West End". This seemed to be a rather bohemian part of the city and close to the university where the conference was held.

The photo album has some pictures of the area — mostly street scenes captured as I wandered about. Other albums will focus on particular areas, museums, galleries, etc.

We used Uber a lot to get back and forth to the conference. I did some walk about wandering. On the Wednesday we rented a car to go to Loch Lomond with Sam and to return to London on the Friday.

Botanic Gardens

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On Monday, after dropping off Kate at the university I continue wandering city streets north to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. There's quite a bit of green space here with a large glass green house — the Kibble Palace. Like all the museums and galleries around the city, entry is free.

The green house is impressive; but so too are the marble statuary within. The plants are interesting too of course.

Afterwards I continue north in the gardens looking for the Kirklee Bridge (largely obstructed by vegetation) over the Kelvin River; I follow the paths along the river back downstream and ascend stairs back into the Botanic Gardens.

Dresden

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We did a bit of jaunt around England and Germany before Kate's KBS conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

After our visit with Martin and Tina in Oppenheim we took a direct train from Frankfurt to Dresden, in the former East Germany, where our No. 1 son Chris (Martin's son), his wife Amy, and their three kids (Charlotte, Sebastian and Emily) live. Chris picked us up at the train station (he also drove us to Berlin airport at the end of our visit). We stayed in a nearby hotel.

On the first night we had a BBQ outdoors at their home which looks over nearby vineyards on the hillside above them. This was also Charlotte's 8th birthday. We had last seen her when she was just a newborn in Nottingham (see notes on Sheffield, 2017). The children were a little shy but we soon made friends. Sebastian reminds us so much of the impish but fun child Chris was when we first met all those years ago in Nierstein, 1994.

On the Wednesday Chris and Amy took us into Dresden to see the Neumarket town square which has been restored. The kids were off to a nearby school. You may know that Dresden was fire-bombed (February 1945) during WWII; a terrible act of war on a civilian population that today would/should count as a war crime. The horror of it all is memorialized in Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969). I recall reading the book many years ago.

When East and West Germany were reunited (1989-90) a lot of money from the west was used to restore Dresden to it's past and current glory. The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), an iconic Lutheran church in the Neumarkt square, is famously restored -- it was an international effort (1994-2005). It had been completely destroyed in the fire-bombing of 1945, left as a pile of rubble and a memorial to war (and evil of the west) during the communist years. You can see the stained old stones against the new. These days it's a memorial to the reconciliation of the two warring sides.

We shared an Italian lunch on the Neumarkt square and tromped around a bit. The square is huge and there's lots to see. There's a grand opera house, lots of statuary and fine buildings. Were we younger we would have enjoyed wandering around this part of the city. It's obvious that it was an important and rich powerhouse before the wars. It's pedestrian friendly with lots to see including a river, the Elbe, running through it.

Kate wrote a note to Chris and Amy describing our long standing relationship:

"I'm just going through our pictures from Germany and Glasgow and looking at some of the pictures of our visit with your family and it came into my mind — how did we get so lucky to have Christopher for a friend? And then through you, we get to spend time with Amy and your wonderful children. The pictures reminded me what a lovely time we had with you and how much fun your kids were (they seemed to really fancy Reg)."

We hope to see our Dresden family again on this, or that, side of the big pond while we still can.

Ps. the lovely photo of Kate with the Frauenkirche above was taken by Amy. 

Berlin

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Thursday, June 5 we're off from Dresden to the Berlin Airport where we'll stay overnight and fly out the next day for Glasgow. Chris, our No. 1 son, has a meeting in Berlin and has kindly agreed to drive us. It's about a 2hr drive on the A13. We had arranged a bus service, that would go directly to the airport, but it's far nicer to be chauffeured. It's also an opportunity to spend more time with Chris.

Chris has a Volkswagen electric car; a company car. It's modern, new, fast and a comfortable ride on the motorway to Berlin. Chris demonstrates how fast the car will cruise on roads where there is no speed limit. I recall riding with Martin around Frankfurt/Nierstein and him demonstrating the same. 

We arrive at the airport around noon, Chris heads off to his meeting and we drop our luggage at the IntercityHotel Berlin Airport. It's too early to check in but they stow our bags awa. Kate persuades me that we ought to take the train into the city center and see some of the sights.

Kate has been to Berlin several times over the years to GENACIS meetings. I had always refused to go — work and winter travel got in the way. She has fond memories of the city and thinks I ought to see some of it while we're here. There's also a scheduled KBS in 2027 so we might be back.

We find our way to the underground train station (Flughafen BER) and struggle with the ticketing machine. We get some help from some UK travellers and we all have a chuckle, after getting our tickets, to discover that there's an option on the screen to set the language! And of course nobody looks at our tickets getting on, off or during the 20-30 minute ride there and back. I guess it's really just an honor system.

At the Berlin Central Station (Berlin Hauptbahnhof) we find a cafe on the square (Washington Platz) for Kate to hunker down and wait for me as I explore the city with the Brandenberg Gates as my destination. Around the train station, and across the river, there's lots of very modern archictecture with the occasional bit that survived the war and/or has been rebuilt after the war. There's also quite a bit of green space and many government buildings.

It's a reasonable walk I have planned; about 20 minutes or so each way. I pass by Capitol Beach on the Spree River where beach chairs line the water and folks soak up the sun (there's no beach proper); there are largeish boats cruising the river; the Reichstag Building (Reichstagsgebäude, the German Parliament) is an impressive older turn of the century building (where the Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag Fire to stage their coup); and likewise the Brandenberg Gates is also a turn of the century structure.

Nearby is a monument to the Jews killed by the Nazis in WWII. It's a park of about a city blook that looks like a unadorned graveyard of tightly packed simple bare mausoleums. Quite impressive. On the way wandering back I bump into a Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. That's in the Tiergarten across from the Brandenburg gates. These gardens are quite wooded with quiet lanes to wander. I bump into a statue to Goethe (1749–1832 what do I know about German literature) and another of a lioness that has been killed, while the male lion stands over her protecting her body and baby cubs wrapped around her.

Back at the airport, we get checked into our hotel and have a dinner with Chris before he heads back to Dresden. We fly out to Glasgow tomorrow.

It was a real treat to visit Chris, Amy and their children in Dresden. We hope to see them again, they are kind generous family for us.