Friends, glorious friends

So I'm finally getting to post up photos from the last couple of weeks, when we were lucky to have visits from friends from Ireland. It's been two weeks of hanging out, sight-seeing, walking, talking, catching up, eating good food and drinking good beer and wine. At first I thought it would be weird to see people from Dublin here in Berlin, as the old song from Crowded House goes, 'two worlds colliding'. But actually we got used to having our friends here very quickly, so much so that it's actually a bit weird now that they are gone.

First came Emma and Una (pic above), who were actually our first visitors here in Berlin. (We were very excited, maybe even a little over-excited.) These guys are old pros when it comes to Berlin having been here a few times already. Actually with its laid-back and arty atmosphere Berlin suits them down to the ground.

We had a really relaxing time with them which included taking a big long meandering walk through Berlin's famous Tiergarten (pic above). We also managed to bump into the Berlin Gay Pride parade, which was a stroke of luck since we weren't too sure when it was on but had been trying to find it. I have to say that we were just settling into their visit when it was over so we've made them promise to visit again hopefully very soon.

Next came the lovely Mark Joyce, who was on a "working holiday" here in Berlin. This meant that in between working with Eric on web stuff we got to hang out and see some of the sights of Berlin. We got to show him things like this quirky shop near us that sells all things DDR, including gasmasks, old army jackets, posters and medals.

We also got to visit a cool DDR bar in the Hackescher Markt area of Berlin, complete with memorabilia and packed with a gang of young backpackers.

One of the other things we did with Mark was go on a boat tour along the Spree river in Berlin. It was a really nice way to see the city, taking in the old quarter of Berlin, the Museum Island and the Reichstag (pic below).

Though Mark was here for nearly a week there were still lots of things that we still didn't get to show him including the Fernsehturm, the Stasi Museum and the Bauhaus Museum - just to name a few. We are hoping that these will serve as a carrot to get him back to Berlin on another visit.

Next up, Mulrooney-Heffernans in two weeks time!