Hiddensee Beauty for New Stem Cells

Fog, sun, cool, great air, good feelings, simply wonderful!

Toot, Toot

Choo choo train, bouncy bus, puff puff boat ... and then tomorrow all the engine noises will stop and there will be the island
with only the sounds of horses and bicycles, waves and wind, rustling leaves and joyful birds, and even our own voices will become quieter.
To wake up, there is always the triple horn blast of the first ferry out, and at this time of the year, sunsets are early enough for us to see every one of them before dinner.
It's going to be great!

Hiddensee this year, too!

What a dream is about to come true for us this year...

We are going to make it to Hiddensee for 6 nights!

How often did I look at that water tower outside my window in the KMT-Unit (left) and fantasize that it was the lighthouse at Hiddensee (right), and now I have the medical permission to go, Detlef has vacation days approved for the trip, the train tickets are booked, the schedules for the ferry in hand, and our hosts Gerd & Dorina there are looking forward to welcoming us to the vacation house we've been to every year since we met.

HIDDENSEE, one of the most wonderful islands in the world; and it will be the only vacation we've been able to have out of town this whole year!

We are a lucky couple in love!

Lighthouse

The lighthouse perched on the Dornbusch rise on our beloved island of Hiddensee blinked us a farewell as our cruise ship sailed off into the night from Rügen to return to Kiel this morning. Now we're home and filled with enjoyment and elation!

Slovenly sophisticated ...

On an island of beauty such as this, where the sun shines all morning after tempting us between several downpours yesterday, sophistication is knowing how many layers to put on to go out when it's still cool in the morning and not worry if you already wore those things yesterday, or the day before.

Those bothered with such concerns may consider us verging on the slovenly, but they will never return to this island, and we have been here at least once a year every year for 14 and have no intention of stopping, or of shaving more often than necessary.

Now we have to ride our bikes north to the entrance to the Altbessin and hike down to the Vogelhäuschen, the bird watching hut-tower at the southern most point of that peninsula allowed to humans.

And we'll see if the wind pushes or pulls us.

Island Reality

This island is so much more than a possibility, with fog and sun and sand and cliffs and friends and smiles and skies so blue and hazes so dense you can't see the lighthouse yesterday that you climb up and oversee the whole island from today. Pictures will help, and the video of the whit-fire on Saturday.

The slide show will be expanded daily as we upload more photos from the days on the island.

Laughing While Thinking

Serenity enowns humor as long as we as humans are truly there!

Koko Pleased ...

Home again are we and Koko is, too, hand-delivered by Lea and her dad Heiko, arriving hardly 15 minutes after us. Koko was as usual vocally happy to see us, and Lea was visibly sad to have to return him, but she has exacted from us the promise to let Koko spend all our vacations in future with her and in her care, of course their schedule coinciding. She really enjoyed having a parrot for a week, and received a little pendant with amber stones from the Baltic fashioned on our island of Hiddensee as a thank-you present for babysitting.

More photos have been added to the slide show in the first post from the island, so take a look again or click it to access the picassa album.

Tomorrow will see a return to the routine, but you know what? We're glad to be home again, because it really is the site of our great life in love together! Love and you live a lot better.

Briefly noted...

Concluding the birthday with the puppet theater new production of their own new play on E.A.Poe's life of love and death was a really good idea. This stage brings surprisingly profound and thought-provoking subjects to its little stage and entertains all the while. Now we want to read all of Poe's poems again and his last story as well.

Here a link to the Hiddensee theater in the picture from the new production:

Birthday Joys

New island pix from today so far included in the slide show in the previous post below, which you should keep checking for more during the week.

And we've had chocolate cake.

And this evening we're going to the puppet theater on the island for a preview of the new Edgar Allen Poe Life & Work play opening on Friday evening. We don't need the premiere, we just want the play, for the play's the thing.

On the Island

Sunshine, blue skies, beach weather. Photos from our entire stay:

Island Calling...

Koko is off to spend the week with our niece Lea
(under the supervision of her parents and envied by her little brother Malte)
and will hopefully prove to be the "goody" he says he is.

And we will spend that week in our usual abode on the enchanted island of
HIDDENSEE,
pictorial map to the right,
clickable for lots of information in English about how wonderful it is.
Read and be jealous!
Some of what is most enviable we will try to post up during the week,
but we do have to spend most of the time simply enjoying ourselves and celebrating the true pastoral calm of this island accessible only by sea.

Hiddensee Is Fantastic

one more photo to prove it

many more in the slide show below in the first Hiddensee post

Free At Last !

Yes, that's how I felt this morning here on our magic island when we turned on CNN to learn that Obama had hit 338 electoral votes; that's also how I feel now: FREE AT LAST ! We probably couldn't have slept at all if the indicators had been any different, and at 4am our time it was already looking good before the west coast came in.

[Hiddensee remains wonderful: new pix now in the slide show in the previous posting below.

From Hiddensee Herbst 2008

This one only to give a jubilant hello to a world with a decent US President-Elect.]

Hiddensee Between Halloween & Election Day

Nice easy arrival with perfect connections from tram to train to train to bus to ferry got us to the island around 3pm Saturday, our landlady Dorina waiting with smiles and the keys to the house we have all to ourselves this time (which also results in infrequent surfing online & blogging as the caretaker has also already left for the season and he had the wlan there, now we're sitting in a café). Went across the street to visit our old friends the Forkerts, who were the ones who used to take care of the house, but now they're at the stage that others must take care of them. Happy faces, though, for coffee & cake with them.
Fireplace heated up for the evening, we lounged around and went to a pitch black coast (cloudy) with ethereal lights of civilization glimmering on the horizons.
Rented bikes and rode to the north end of the island Sunday, today to the lighthouse and cliffs, and it's a WONDERFUL FOG here since dawn... only then was it briefly clear.
Below some selected pics, more as we get back over to the internet café.

AND VOTE FOR OBAMA TOMORROW!

What We Can See Tomorrow ...

... you can get a virtual glimpse of today

Home Again ... !!!

Hooray for a relatively sunny beach vacation while the rest of Germany was pretty much rained in the whole week ! And that continued this morning with our departure: it was raining when we got up, cleared up for us to go to and board the ferry, started raining again before the ferry reached the next island port, but we were ensconced in our cozy seats and looking for rainbows, which we found, as the first picture below testifies, also indicating that the rain stopped.

Well, it started again, but ceased and let the sun come out for our short bike trip to the train station in Stralsund, where it again started after we left. On the way to Berlin, we passed through another couple of hefty showers, but, when it was our stop and we were on our bikes from S-Bahnhof Greifswalder Straße, the sun was shining again. Once we were unpacking in our wonderfully clean apartment (Edith had been there while we were away) it started raining again, until we were ready to go pick up Koko, our famous parrot. On the way, while we were dry on mass transit, there was a downpour, stopping again in time for the walk to the site of poor Koko's week-long exile at Rainer's. And then once we got him back here, it started raining again, but will surely stop before we head over to Erich's for his gallery open-house this evening.

And it IS good to be rested and relaxed and a bit tan and home again!

The next pictures give a mere hint of what went on at yesterday evening's grill event with our vacation abode hosts.

And today was once again BEACH WEATHER

Actually, mixed weather: some clouds, some sun, some storm, some beach, and this evening a grill party with our "hosts" the owners of the place here and the other guests. Tomorrow we head out on the first ferry --- at 7 am and should be back in Berlin in time to go to Erich's Atelierfest (gallery party) in his artist-village.

(The earlier post today was before the weather was ready to permit our outings.)

Even a rainy day is enjoyable...

Just walk down the street to the inn for coffee and lunch...

This is the main street of the artists' and writers' town, the fashionable village of Kloster.

Fireworks for Fourth of July at the Baltic Shore

This picture really says it all!

[This morning it's raining, but yesterday was the first time clouds opened up on the western horizon as the sun went down. So even if we spend more time indoors today, yesterday truly was a perfect July 4th, even giving us our first sunset on this trip. Now we can watch the low swooping swallows and listen to the croaking frogs all playing in the drizzle. Later we'll venture out to the beach, enjoy some nature, read, relax, do exactly what vacation means.]