Remember that short note about elderflowers in the previous month? We collected a bag full from Ilkas garden and decided to make some elderflower syrup – by soaking the flowers, adding them to sugar syrup and storing them in a jar with orange slices. A few days later they were ready to bottle. Turns out neither Manja or I love the stuff, but it was fun making it anyway, plus we can just use it in any upcoming sparkling wines 🥂
After that we decided to head down to a local lake by bike, just to get outside a bit. It was really lovely at the water!
The following Saturday we headed back over to the house from the old lady, because she was willing to discount it…. Which made us take a second look. But even though we really liked her, and we really wanted to make it work, the low ceiling ended up being a dealbreaker even on second look. On Sunday we headed to a place near Heiligensee – a rather posh suburb by our standards. The place was unspectacular from the outside, but really quite nice on the inside. There was only one problem, which I was surprised to have to bring up with the Agent: The facade was made of Asbestos! It also had another quirk – a really old heating oil store was buried under the lawn…. Â It was apparently empty, but pretty expensive to remove, so they just disconnected it and left it there….. Seems a disaster waiting to happen! Needless to say we decided against the place pretty quickly. As we got out of the train at Alexanderplatz in the city center, we noticed that there was some sort of demonstration happening which the Police had come out in force to deal with. We didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out to be the Black Lives Matter rally, which was peaceful until the crowd got so large that they were breaching corona rules and were told to disperse. Apparently some people didn’t appreciate that, and started having a go at the police. After the dog squad were brought in to separate the crowd by creating a one-way line which allowed people to leave the demonstration but not enter, we left too. I have to say – respect for the professional nature in which the Police dealt with this here. We repeatedly saw them target and remove key aggitators from the crowd by going in as a small group focussing, removing and backing out; all without being needlessly brutal. (It’s always going to have a degree of violence to it, but it doesn’t have to be brutal).
Anyway after the dogsquad was called in we decided to leave before it escalated further.
The next Saturday we headed over to Manjas family early. The train driver had a sense of humour and when we arrived at the station all the displays suddenly said “Kiss me”.  Manjas Mum picked us up and was kind enough to loan us the car for the day, so we headed straight over to the Grandparents place for an early lunch. When we arrived we found that the whole garden had totally sprung to life!  Her Grandfather even has a Banana tree which is growing well. We fixed Omas Alexa before heading over to Hagens place for the afternoon.
At Hagens place we helped him prepare for his Birthday party a bit, which included putting up a rain cover across the whole courtyard to deal with the downpour which had been forecast. We also got to meet Franzi – his new girlfriend who is really awesome. She’s still a bit shy about meeting the whole family (it’s a new relationship, kids involved etc. etc.) and so we got to be the first people in the family to meet her. But of course the family were all super curious, and asked us to send photos. We complied with the request, and sent a whole lot of photos from the birthday party where Franzi was either just visible as a silhouette, or behind people or in some way unrecognisable. 😂
Hagen also once more made his famous BBQ – he really is the man at the grill. Beers were prepared in the kids pool and when the rain did come we all remained reasonably dry. I say reasonably, because I took a seat at the edge and only realised much later that the back of my shirt was soaked from a continuous subtle drizzle.
It was a great afternoon none the less, but we eventually had to head off to catch our train back.
We had to be back home because the next day was my birthday, and Manja and my family had gotten together to arrange a surprise. When we got up I got a Skype call from my parents, and to my surprise they had invited a whole group of my friends to come together and have a party to celebrate my birthday. It was really touching to see everyone, and I was honestly a bit overwhelmed!
In the early afternoon we headed over to Ilkas place to have a birthday party in the garden and make use of the really awesome weather. Â Katrin, Killian and the Kids all joined too, so we had a day of playing in the garden, having some cookies, cake and coffee, dancing, having punch and champagne, being silly and eventually having a really nice BBQ. Â It was a really really nice day.
Over the next week we checked out a few more houses in the evenings – one as far as Caputh; which is a 1,5 hour train ride away. The house was awesome, as were the surrounds. It’s pretty much living in a holiday location, near a river. We decided against it for one reason only: the 1.5 hour train ride. It would be too intense to loose 3 hours every day going to and from work. We also checked out a place a bit north of Berlin in a suburb called Birkenwerder, but it didn’t match our needs.
The following Saturday we were back to Cottbus once more – this time to the Grandparents place to celebrate all the Birthday which happened in June with the family – there’s 5 all up in the family!
The following Sunday we looked at another house, this time in Karow, wich was unfortunately a complete dump. We also prepared to head over to Föhr where we would catch up with Stefan again!
On the 28th, just before leaving, we had another house – this one we lovingly called “tiny house with big tree”. It was a nice enough place, but really not what we were looking for in the end.
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