A happy Christmas from Mitza & Sven!

As we both have been a little bit lazy the last weeks (but I promise there will be some pictures from the visit of my ex-colleagues), just small season greetings with the smallest Christmas tree of the world!

Craziness or just laziness?

Doing some shopping in Westfield Stratford (Normally our weekly prayer at the altar of consumption, as one user of Foursquare puts it, this time on my own), I came across some lazy guys who drove up right to the bar! :)

By the way, Foursquare is a neat tool to tell people that don't care where you are right now! 

27.11.2011 - Another stroll in the park

Just one week later, weather still going strong, we decided to explore another part of green in the city, this time the infamous Hyde Park. Unfortunately a lot of pictures are on Mitza's mobile which has no possibility to transfer them to a PC, therefore this will be just quick and dirty...

What I don't understand, Brits are so obsessed with Grade I or II listings, conservation and planning permissions, and then sometimes there are buildings that ruin the whole view. I wonder who gave the permission (or better said how expensive the permission was...) to build some concrete dice directly at the border of the park?

Crossing the park from north to south we soon arrived at the Royal Albert hall, the saucer in the background. Pictures from the monument you just see partly will be added after Mitza's return!

As we were close to the museum street we decided to go to the Science Museum, which is admission free as most museums in London. Although quite interesting and with a lot of effort to make the exhibitions interactive, I found it in some parts quite old fashioned. Showing 7 different engines from ships doesn't make it any more interesting, although the models were quite impressive.

Here the interactive parts: The first two are showing a simulator where you fly a WWII fighter and can make any kinds of maneuvers. (Watched just a few minutes, got sick from just watching and no one tried an Immelmann!)

 Here you can see DJane MFPS with her latest device, some synthesizer from the seventies.

And now to the models:

They also had a cross section of a 747, which was really huge and interesting to see why the air cargo containers have this weird shape!

On the way back to the station (Which is quite an underground walk) we decided to have a look at one of the many ice rinks and eat a waffel. The waffel was one of the most disgusting I ever had (Fried!), but the surrounding helped to get into the right mood for the advent season.

20.11.2011 - A stroll in the park

As my wife is good in bullying me around (even if she is far far away), it is again my duty to catch up with the blog and give you some news about our life. As I am not as good as Mitza in preparing these maps where we have been, it will be more of a Bravo Foto Lovestory (For all non-German readers - never mind, you have not missed anything). Additionally, no food stories, as my cousin complained we are just writing about eating - I wonder if any of my friends was surprised that the blog would take this direction...?

So we went out on Sunday to enjoy the nice weather and do some serious sightseeing, as I have been several times to London, but always without the chance to visit the famous landmarks. But as we not have learned our lesson from the restaurant opening hours (see post about the trip to Bath in August) we of course did not look up opening hours before. This meant: Westminster Abbey closed the whole day for service and House of Parliament shut down, too...

Nevertheless we took some pictures of the surrounding architecture to give you an impression of the area:

Something else you will start to see at the end of October are small red paper flowers at the coats and jackets of people, the so called "Poppy". This is a charity for the military service. In connection with the remembrance  of all soldiers that have served in the Royal Army there is also a temporary memorial for the soldiers that lost their lives so far, which gives a quite impressive picture that we can hardly show with one picture, but nevertheless we try. What you see here is a small wooden cross for each victim.

We then decided to take a walk through Green Park to Buckingham Palace. The autumn was in full effect and  the squirrels were used to tourists.

 By the way, from the two above the lower picture shows the squirrel... :D

After a short walk we reached Buckingham Palace, and the Queen was at home (according to the flag) and had some oriental visitors (according to the other flags).

Below is Green Park Station, or to be more precise the building above the station, where I arrive each day to go to work. 

Of course we could not miss to make a famous "tourist in a red telephone cell" - picture. The state of these leads me to the assumption that they are really just for tourist to take pictures and drunken guys to pee...

We then walked up to Bond Street, which is the most expensive retail street in London. Below is a picture from the window of Faberge, the Russian jeweller famous for the eggs, that opened a store in London recently. Cute little furniture, no price tag. 

 Just around the corner is the building where I work. No, I am neither selling hand bags nor do I get a discount!

A finally some nice cars that are really useful in London's jammed streets. There even was a price tag on, the Bugatti was just £1.6m - birthday present anyone?

And if I get a Bentley, why in this colour? This was almost as bad as the mint green Porsche I saw a few days later...