Be Excellent To Each Other

What are your holiday plans?

I'm currently torn between the south of France (Eurostar to Avignon!), the Baltic states (before Putin goes there), or just returning to the US (yearning to get back to Gettysburg). Got some guidebooks for the first two so will sit down over the next few days with some wine and beer to see which is most appealing. And then go for the other because it's cheaper.

Book a holiday cottage in The Cotswolds in November.

Summer will be spent wafting Mimi with ferns.

Menorca in June with wife and kids, plus my bro and his wife and kids.

3 weeks and counting!

I went to Germany, so that's me done.

Nothing booked yet.

Kern, Fly down to Nice and use the trains.

Yes, that's the other option for the south of France. Until such time as 'London' Oxford airport starts offering regular commerical routes, getting airborne is a real pain here in the 'Shire. I also rather fancy the idea of idly watching the French countryside zoom by whilst I quaff railway wine and solve murders.

Gaz, what are our holiday plans?

*adds Nuerburgring to list of options.*

You Googled the spelling of that, right?

You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment.


Ich kann Deutsch, aber ich muess es ueben weil ich vor fuenf Jahren am letzen mal in Deutschland war.

"I may be German, but I search it practice because I was five years ago at the last time in Germany."

Thanks, Bing.

Dammit. Now I want to be walking along the Promenade des anglais on my way to sit outside the bar in the market and watch the acrobats. And they have trams, too.

I'm considering a weekend in Ibiza. Not to go clubbing or anything but just because it ticks quite a few boxes:

• Nice weather
• Close to the sea for swimming
• Relatively cheap
• Lots of flights
• A nice place to wander around in with the old town and whatnot

Aside from that the only thing I've got planned is a weekend in Centre Parcs with my family later on in the year. This is mostly for my niece's benefit but I'm quite looking forward to it myself for being able to cycle around the forest and all that jazz. It probably won't be as interesting a time as the last time I was there* but still.

*At age fifteen with my family and best mate in tow. The two of us decided that the swimming pool was the ideal venue for our first experimentation with acid. We only nearly drowned twice so it was all good.

We're off to Berlin in a month for four nights, then at the end of August going to the Lake District where it will clearly piss it down all week long.

Off somewhere in September new MsKov is sorting it

In a caravan in Norfolk in the rain at the moment.

It's the filthy English spelling, if he did.

Still, not as bad as the filthy English spelling of Köln.

Today I learned that if you hit alt-u in the reply box it sticks in the BBCode tags for underline.

True fact: the only premiership-level football game I've attended was watching Bavarian Munich at the Olympic Stadium.

Weird. Me, too.

FTFY.

I thought in Hochdeutsche umlauts had been gone, along with the esszet. Or was that a weird dream?

Now I'm thinking I should be considering Germany too (albeit perhaps not to see how well the Lacetti really handles corners at high speed).

Hmm...perhaps a long weekend in Berlin or Hamburg later in the year might be in order?

Working all summer. Will hopefully get myself to American again in Octoberish time.

Via the Cottage, natch.

It's a bit of a way for me

Pish, sir!

Berlin certainly looks promising, and copious amounts of beer with meat-inna-bun can't hurt.

Going camping this weekend, provided I can find a decent campsite that still has pitches available.

Jem and I have a week off booked towards the mid-end of July, but no plans yet. Thinking somewhere like Andalucia, or I may consider Portugal again...

Given the boy can't leave the country without the help of Make A Wish (£2,500 for three days travel insurance to go to eurodisney, ffs) and actually we have to go through a load of admin to leave the county overnight, I'm looking at buying a tent. If its going to be to somewhere uninspiring he may as well get a kick out of unusual accommodation options.

Berlin is fucking awesome, I've been there on holiday probably about 12 times.

Any recommendations?

I think he's re come ding Berlin?

Someone’s hacked Malc’s account.

Come camp on Wandsworth Common. We'll get shitted, it'll be ace.

Decided to go for the south of France. Two weeks at the end of August, by train. I've always wanted to ride a TGV.

Had a week in Spain in early May and just got back from a week in Yorkshire

Not got any more plans as yet

My father in law is a bit under the weather so my wife is going to Dublin for a week every couple of months, so I'm tending to stay at home and take a few days off to catch up on the garden and other house jobs that I never have time for anymore.

Look, if Saturnalian can make it, so can you.

Do I remember my French lessons correctly that this stands for Tres Grande Vitesse? In which case it means Very Big Speed.

• Go to the dome on top of the Reichstag. You need to register in advance for this for security reason but that's massively better than the previous system which was 'queue for a billion hours'. Now you just turn up at the appointed time and pretty much walk right in.
• Book to eat lunch or dinner up the TV Tower. There's a great view due to the height and the fact that the restaurant revolves constantly; plus the food was pretty damn good when I was last there.
• Check out the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It sounds hella depressing but it's actually very, very cool and weird and definitely worth experiencing.
• If the weather's decent go for a walk in Tiergarten. It's massive and a very chilled out place to be, especially if you go to the Cafe am Neuen See beer garden.
• Still on my own 'to do' list is to explore the Spreepark. It was a funfair in the middle of a park that was shut down years ago without being properly cleared out so you now get the spectacle of all these old rides and fun park furniture being slowly over taken by the landscape. There's some pictures of it here and you can now apparently legally book a tour here.
• Similarly there's the remains of an allied listening post in Teufelsberg that's been left to rack and ruin leaving some spectacularly odd imagery. Like Spreepark you used to have to sneak in but you can legally book tours here.
• In previous years a visit to Tacheles would've been on my list of recommendations but that's long since closed now.
• Depending on your taste in music a visit to Paule's Metal Eck is a must, if only to marvel at the cheesy metal decor inside. Indeed that whole street and the surrounding district of Friedrichshain is filled with good restaurants and bars.
• I usually fit in a trip to the Liquidrom spa. It's not cheap but it's incredibly relaxing, with the definite highlight being the massive salt water pool with ambient music piped in underwater so you can hear it tinkle away as you float around. That main central image on the website there is the pool in question which is a sight to behold in and of itself.
• If you're in a drinking mood there's a branch of The Pub in Berlin which puts a beer tap on your table then allows you to 'compete' with the other tables in Berlin, and indeed in all branches across Europe, to see who's drinking the most booze.

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting but having a browse through the Unlike pages for Berlin will find you a load of interesting stuff as well.

I don't think it'll be possible this year for anything fancy. I'm probably going to a week or so to the southwest of the country, do some bodyboarding and get tanned.

Sheffield for a couple of weeks hopefully. I'm also supposed to be going to Beirut for a long weekend at the end of July as well.

Great list Bamba, thanks for that. Will have to bookmark it so I can refer back to it when I go there.

We're going to Venice the last week of July for three nights and then to Begur in northern Spain in the middle of July for 4 nights. That's it so far.

Pembrokeshire is very beautiful and there are some excellent campsites near Freshwater west, which is a fantastic beach for kids. Alternatively rent a house inland, near Narberth. It isn't very big, so getting to any part of the coast usually only takes 30 mins in a car and you have Morriston hospital in Swansea about 45mins away in the worse case scenario. It's also pretty quiet there, as in nowhere near as busy as many coastal resorts. It does suffer from a lack of great pubs, but there are a few.

Well, begurs can't be choosers!

Are you taking the Delorean or the phonebox?