Monthly Archives: July 2012

Taking the slow road north

This will be the last article on Under a Grey Sky for four weeks, as we close up the shutters for our summer holiday. When we started back in the dead time between Christmas and New Year, I wasn’t sure how far or how long we would go. I knew that I would need support, both from readers and contributors in order to create the type of website that I was aiming for. I wanted Under a Grey Sky to be collaborative project, and eight months on when I look down the list of contributors and have a read through the archives, I think that we have achieved this.

I am hoping that by the time we open things up for business once more, the Grey Sky inbox will be filled with words and pictures from the diverse and dispersed group of friends around the world. And hopefully Katrin and I will have our own stories to tell from our journey north to Sweden. It is exciting, because for the first time since our daughter was born we are camping during the drive to a small house on the edge of a forest, and as with our trip to Paris via Saarbrücken earlier in the year, the journey is once again part of the excitement of the trip, not just the destination.

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A walk through the woods, Schorfheide

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With each turn off the road dropped a category, from autobahn to overland street, to village lane, to dirt track. We were invited to a cabin on the edge of the forest, for a summer party around an open fire even if it was punctuated with bursts of rain. We stole the only solid dry hour of the afternoon to take a walk in the woods, following one of our hosts along the trails between the birch and pine trees, whilst the kids picked their way through the trees and the undergrowth. We were penetrating just a little way into the Schorfheide, one of Germany’s largest forests and part of the UNESCO-protected Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere, that starts about fifty kilometres north of the Berlin city limits.

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Roadside Britain

St. George’s Market, Belfast

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Markets have been something of a theme on Under a Grey Sky in recent weeks. Thanks to Barry Sheppard for his exploration of the St George’s indoor market in Belfast:

St George’s is situated in the south east corner of Belfast city centre, a stone’s throw away from the relatively recently redeveloped waterfront area. I know it is a stone’s throw away because many a stone has been thrown in this general area over the years. However, on a relatively sunny Sunday morning in a more placid era the cycle from home to the market is a somewhat more pleasant experience.

The market is well over 100 years old, having been commissioned by The Belfast Corporation in 1890 and completed in three stages by 1896. The market is one of my oldest and fondest memories of Belfast. In the very early 80s I remember quite vividly being brought to the market by my mother and being amazed by the sheer size, smells and colours of the place. What amazed me most of all was the swarm of strange and unusual faces, not that there was anything Picasso-esque about Belfast people in those days. It was just exciting as a four year old to see that many people in the one place towering over me going about their business. The place was a great spot for people watching, a pastime that I’m still partial to today.

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Sick note and a street festival

Palace of Tears, Berlin

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Just outside the Friedrichstraße station is a simple building that – when I first came to Berlin – housed a nightclub called “Tränenpalast”… Palace of Tears. The name came from its former function, as the border departure hall for people travelling from East to West Berlin. The doors of this pavilion would have been last point of goodbye, as western visitors headed back across the border that split the city in two, and left their family and friends behind.

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