Rainer Brockerhoff

[Quarter Life Crisis]

Quarter Life Crisis linked to this post

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Almost there... the past 2+ weeks after our return have been more complex than I anticipated. Lots of offline stuff to take care of. Everything should be back to normal in a day or two, and I'll resume posting, working on software, and all that. Stay tuned.

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Back home, yay! As usual, there are lots of things to do and catch up on.

My email server got somewhat confused, as I normally use Eudora in POP mode, and on the trip alternated between Mail in IMAP mode (neither of which I'd ever tried before) and webmail. Somehow it started to refuse deleting messages, duplicating them instead on the server, a process that would have gone exponential had I not shut everything down in time.

Still, later today the email situation should be normalized again, and I'll try to reread the thousands of messages since the middle of May just in case I missed something important.

If you emailed me in the past 3 months and I didn't reply, please resend? Some message may have gotten lost in the process.

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Now at the train station in Kiel (Germany). In a few hours we'll go back on the ship for the last leg of our trip, visiting Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Talinn.

Kirkwall and Lerwick were great and the Scots very friendly. I have over a hundred selected pictures ready to upload but little time to do all before coming back home. Hopefully at least a dozen will be up today. More anon.

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Typing this in an Internet café in Reykjavik, Iceland. Very nice town! Yesterday we've also been to Akureyri where we visited the thermal baths.

Everything's going very well. Before going back to Kiel we'll also look in briefly at Kirkwall and Lerwick in Scotland. Hopefully some more pictures will be ready for publication by then...

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Found a nice Internet café at Honningsvåg, Norway - the world's northernmost town. Cold and windy.

Our Norway stops before this have been in Geiranger and Gravdal; both very beautiful places, at least in the summer. Tomorrow the ship leaves for Iceland (stops at Akureyri and Reykjavik) and then goes back to Kiel over Scotland (Kirkwall and Lerwick). More from there, I hope...

Update : I managed to upload a few more pictures from the start of our trip; no time to tag them properly or describe the location, though.

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Early tomorrow we go onto the ship (Costa Victoria). I'll have sparse or no Internet connection there, so updates will be few and far between; sorry about that. More anon.

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

We're back in Berlin and the Poland trip is over, after visiting Malbork (Marienburg), staying overnight at Toruń (Thorn), and today finishing with the cathedrals in Gniezno (Gnesen) and Poznań (Posen).

Overall the Poland trip was great. More later; we'll have one day to rest up and on Sunday early we leave for Kiel, where our cruise will begin on the same day. Stay tuned...

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Now in Gdańsk (Danzig). The last few days were in the very impressive Masurian countryside, with rolling hills and thicker woods - I like it better than the usual flat Polish landscape. We also visited Hitler's Wolfsschanze headquarters in Poland.

We'll stay here another day, then it's off to Marienburg and back to Berlin on Friday.

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

Had a full (and tiring day) in Warszawa... the city is 95% reconstructed, many modern buildings, and some surprisingly well reconstructed old buildings. For instance, the royal palace was restored from original drawings and paintings, and using the same materials too.

Tomorrow early we're off to Mrągowo (Sensburg) and will do some side trips into the Masurian countryside.