(Flowers for sale at the Winterfeldplatz market)

Saturday in Berlin. Today it’s the Winterfeldplatz market at ten am, the Musical Instruments museum at noon and the Technology Museum at three. The boys sleep through the market and the girls market through the musical instruments and we all meet in the technology museum. We’re off to a Jazz club tonight.

We went to a Jazz club last night too. My first time. After a late dinner we set off on the underground. There’s a strange thing that happens here, we saw it in the zoo and now here it was on the underground. People searching the rubbish bins. They are taking out the glass bottles, although last night one man also took a beer can and began to drink from it…. They put the bottles into a plastic bag or box and move on to the next bin. My best guess is that they get money for returning the bottles?

(Beautiful hand painted delph for sale at the market comes from a little village in Poland)

But it’s just as well because otherwise the bins would be overflowing with bottles. There’s a lot of bottles of beer consumed on the streets, in the parks, on the platforms, and in the trains. And the drinking is generally done by ordinary looking people, not down and outs. At 11.30am as we wheeled our suitcases from the airport there was someone sitting on a platform waiting for a train and drinking a bottle of beer.

But I haven’t seen anyone drunk….. in Berlin drinking in public doesn’t seem to cause drunkenness in public. And in spite of the bin-searching, and the beer drinking this feels to me like a very safe city, a very friendly city and it’s definitely a very entertaining city. I like it.

(Huge Lego giraffe for Lusi… may have to take it apart to fit in suitcase)

Jazz last night was at a club in the east side, called Schlot. They played contemporary jazz and the drummer came from Montreal. My music education is taking a steep upward rise lately… I’m going to my first open air classical concert on Sunday night….. I may soon need to take up an instrument.

What’s an easy musical instrument to learn? Mairead.