Its Thursday- must be Nürnberg

Hi all. The whistle stop tour continues.

We last left you in Örbyhus, Sweden. Since our last post we spent a lovely day crusing around Uppsland looking at old industrial estates (the best iron produced between about 1600-1900 anywhere in the world was from here). The estates (bruks) always have a big old mansion house/palace type bit, a nice palace garden (Orangerie (sic)), which you can still buy produce from), and an artificial lake or two as well as the factory buildings. We also had some lovely home-cooked meals (despite Matt suffering a nasty potato harvesting injury at the sharp end of my elbow- sorry Matt).

We then caught the train down to southern Sweden to go visit a wee village that Lisa's grandfather and great grandparents lived in. She phoned her parents at an unsocial hour so her Dad could direct us to their old house. We think it was this one.

Or maybe this one.

We did find her great grand-parents grave and gave it a bit of a polish and found some wild-flowers to adorn it with. I imagine its been a few years since anyone gave their grave some attention. Lisa was feeling happy and at one with her roots.

Sweden was lovely, lots of lakes and trees, but too flat to be taken seriously.

Have just spent the last couple of days staying in Köln with my fiend Alina and her partner Markus. Climbed all 509 steps up the steeple of the amazing Köln cathedral and got a good look at the town. The thing we noticed about German cities compared with Sweden is the relative lack of old buildings, especially the industrial cities in the west (near the Rhine). We eventually worked out that all these cities got hit hard in 1944-45; suddenly made WWII a more tangible thing.

Speaking of which we spent a few hours today at the Nazi party parade grounds on the outskirts of Nürnberg. Sobering stuff. The way the Germans deal with the history is as fasinating as the history itself.

We're spending the night with a friend of Lisa's; another European that speaks flawless English (bless them). We had a we stroll around an artificial lake (reminded me of Lake Dunstan actually- except for the artificial beaches) and then retreated to the local pub/restaurant for pretzel dumplings and mushrooms. Gotta love these German pubs- beer is cheaper than coke :-)

Was also wondering how come the people of northern Europe were wise enough to leave so much forest standing- at least as much forest cover as Northland, and makes the Canterbury plains look positively scorched earth!

Prague tomorrow, and we haven't even learnt how to say "sorry, we don't speak Czech" yet.

More anon.