Baltic Cruise
Here's a picture of the massive cruiser we went on after our travels around Cuba. It is called the Celebrity Silhouette and was pretty smashing. Except I felt guilty when we watched CNN and the BBC news and saw all the refugees on the road in Europe. Life can be cruel and when I get grumpy, MUM always reminds me how lucky I am with my lot. In fact, she was in a real good mood the whole time we were on this boat 'cause every time she asked DAD if her bum looked big, he replied, "Not on this boat darling!" Well, the truth is, most of the other people on the boat were enormous and they made MUM look like a super model. And, that's sayin' something...
Berlin - germany
Our first stop was the port of Warnemunde and we hopped on a bus which took us straight to Berlin. MUM and DAD hadn't been there for twenty-nine years when they attended the Berlin Film festival. MUM had acted in a film and she had to get up on stage in front of the audience. In the film she is murdered and carted off in not one, but two BIG green garbage bags. Here I am looking sad just in case anyone recognised her as I would have been soooooo embarrassed...
Berlin is stuffed full of bears everywhere. I met so many of them and as you can see in the pictures they were a varied lot. I especially liked the BIG ones and if you look closely you can see me perched on them. I couldn't get much sense out of any of them 'cause they spoke German, but we bears all get along anyway. I tried to cram a few of them in MUM's bag but she wasn't having any of that.
I found these two in a souvenir shop and I was very tempted to steal some fur off the one on the left, to patch up my bald ears. If you look closely at the picture on the right, you can see that I am not making it up. My ear looks like it has been chewed. I blame that bird in Bali who pecked it years ago. DAD bought me my own Golden Bear! |
We spent a long time looking at the Brandenburg Gate. It was pretty impressive and there were lots of tourists about.
You may have noticed the strange looking vehicle behind me in the above picture. The driver asked me if I was interested in going to the event advertised on the back. I got very confused because he told me there would be some fellow 'bears' there. I told him that bears don't wear underpants and have lots of fur. He said I was right about that. At least I think that's what he meant as my German is not very good and maybe I just heard what I wanted to hear.
In 1989 the Wall came down. One of the tourists on our bus thought it was built to stop the Russians from invading West Berlin. Even I am not that stupid and I have a head stuffed full of cotton-wool. Here's a picture of a bit of the Wall that is now part of a memorial for the people who tried to escape to West Berlin and they didn't make it. I kept wondering which side of the Wall all the bears lived on.
Tallinn -Estonia
Our next port of call was this pretty town called Tallinn, in Estonia. It was picture postcard stuff and I decided to just show you all the postcards on offer. If you pick one and let me know which one it is, I'll send it to you next time I'm there. But don't hold your breath...
St petersburg - russia
Here are some mug shots of President Vladimir Putin. He is so tough he can breathe under plastic! In this next picture MUM made me tie on a 'babushka' to get into the spirit of being in Russia. She can be mighty cruel sometimes...
We went to visit the Peterhof Palace and gardens which were amazing. It was like being in Disneyland, not that I have ever been there because MUM keeps telling me I should appreciate the finer things in life. There were so many fountains all over the place. As you can see in this picture, the statues were pretty amazing too!
I couldn't stop laughing when I saw this sign everywhere we went. I thought at first it was the name for 'toilet' until MUM clipped me across the ears and told me it means ticket. Those Russians are pretty funny after all...
Our next stop was Catherine Palace, in Pushkin. There was a long line to get our 'kaccas' and this man was entertaining the queue. He kept staring at me and I got nervous because I had spent all my pocket money in Cuba and I couldn't leave him a tip. The BIG PEOPLE had to put these covers over their feet. It's just so great being a bear sometimes as I was told I didn't need to wear any. I thought of asking the guards for a tip as I had polished the palace floor with my own paws, but decided to keep my big mouth shut for once.
Here's a picture of our guide Elena. Every time she told us something she would say,"it is the reality..." - if it was raining, if there was a long queue or even if some of her clients got lost in The Hermitage. She was a smashing lady and I gave her a big hug at the end of our time together. She looked a bit startled and kept muttering "is this the reality?" I was soooooo sight-seed out by the end of our time in St Petersburg. I put my tour stickers over my glass eyes to give them a rest. All that gold had made my eyes sore as...
helsinki - finland
We had a smashing day in Helsinki. It was my favourite stopover on this trip. The sun was shining, people were out and about selling off all their stuff in the parks and there was a fantastic market down by the water. I gobbled up a huge piece of salmon from one of the many food stalls. As you know, we bears love fish - and honey. Then to cap it off, MUM and DAD dragged me along to the Rock Church, which was amazing. It was like a giant space ship! In this picture I am sitting imagining we are about to take off into outer space.
stockholm - sweden
Our next stop was Stockholm. I found this giant lion sitting outside the Royal Palace who reminded me of Signor Leone in Venice, except he didn't try and gobble me up. Here's a picture of me with my new pal looking out for Agnetha, Bjórn, Anni-Frid or Benny to saunter past. I kept humming the tune 'money, money, money' and a couple of times bewildered tourists threw coins up at us. How weird is that?
copenhagen - denmark
Our last port of call was Copenhagen. I gathered outside the Amalienborg Palace with all the other Aussies who kept calling out 'cooee' to Princess Mary. We knew she was there 'cause the flag was up. I snuck around the back of the Palace in the hope that she was looking out the window. Maybe, just maybe, she would call out to me to join her for a cuppa. We could have chatted about life back in The Land of OZ. Imagine my disappointment when the guards came and moved me along.
As I mentioned before, one of the koalas didn't get left behind in Cuba. He was a real clinger as you can see in this picture. By this stage of the journey I was so grubby and looked as grey as he did. In the end he did me a massive favour. MUM sent me off to the laundry and I got Janice (our housemaid) to tell MUM that I was hanging up in the drying room for three days. I had 'borrowed' Dad's Sea Pass card and spent three nights living large with the Jamaican boys below deck. I was really scared because I thought we had maxed it out as I was feeling very generous and the boys got a real taste for Cuba Libres. Fortunately all turned out okay as DAD thought he'd lost his card and was given a new one and I discovered that the old one had no limit on it. I was so happy and gave the last of the Kennys to Janice. She was going to give him to one of her nieces in the Philippines when she went home for a holiday.
amsterdam - again!
At the beginning of the film Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen says,"Saigon...shit, I'm still only in Saigon". I felt the same way when we got back to Amsterdam. It was almost a year since I was there and the air was still thick with funny cigarette smoke and many of the tourists were laughing and bouncing off the walls. We went on a canal cruise and ended up back at the flower market. I snuck a can of cannabis seeds into MUM's bag and got another clip around the ears when she discovered them before she went through customs. I had hidden some seeds in my ears and nearly got caught by the sniffer dogs at Sydney airport - again! Imagine my surprise when I went shopping with MUM back in Sydney and saw hemp seeds for sale at our local Harris Farm.