Neuschwanstein Schloss, Germany – a jigsaw puzzle

Jigsaw, Neuschwanstein Castle Germany

Jigsaw Box, Neuschwanstein Castle

Our second jigsaw puzzle (and possibly the last) of the year is of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. It’s a place that I almost visited because back in 1970 I was in Bavaria staying with a penpal, and we were supposed to be visiting the castle, but I was so homesick and was not having a good time so I decided to go home a week early. I’ve always wondered if I made a mistake doing that – so when the saleswoman in the shop we bought this puzzle in told us that she had visited the place with her parents in the 1970s when she was a child, and her father was furious when they got to the castle I realised I hadn’t missed much. Apparently it’s a long hard walk up to the castle and when you get there it is completely empty! The original owner spent all his money building the place and couldn’t afford any furniture. I wonder if it has been furnished now. This is supposed to be the most photographed and prettiest castle in the world but to me it looks like a barrack with a few pepperpot turrets stuck on it.

Completed Jigsaw of Neuschwanstein Castle

Anyway, this autumnal view of the castle almost did me in, the building was easy, the trees not too bad but the sky was a nightmare, after a few day’s rest we tackled it again and got there.

We still have a queue of four or five other puzzles to do but I might leave them for next winter!

Warnemunde, Germany

The very first Baltic place that we visited on our recent cruise was Warnemunde in the former East Germany. Some people took bus trips to Berlin from here, but it was a seven hour round trip for a very short time in Berlin so we opted to stay in the lovely small town and enjoy walking along the beautiful sandy beach. Actually it was really quite warm and we really had a good time here.

Warnemunde beach , Germany

I have no idea what it was like during Cold War times but there are now a lot of fairly newly built hotels and the place was heaving with German tourists so it’s obviously very popular with the natives. You can also take a train to Rostock from here if you really pine for a large town or city.
deco , Warnemunde, Germany

The streets were well planted up with mainly tulips and pansies.
planting in Warnemunde, Germany

planting in Warnemunde, Germany

We chose to walk back into the town using the beautiful woodland walk which edges the beach, it got us out of the glare of the sun, a good thing as I had forgotten my sun hat.
woodland walk, Warnemunde, Germany

The town was very busy but we did manage to get one photo of a typical street with very German looking buildings.
Warnemunde street, Germany

There were some very talented sand sculptors around. Neptune is somehow very Germanic looking don’t you think?
sand sculpture , Warnemunde, Germany

I don’t know how anyone could have the patience to do something like this, especially as they are so fleeting and won’t last long after all the hard work expended on them.
sand sculpture , Warnemunde, Germany

So that was a glimpse of the coastal area of Warnemunde, I’ll leave the park for another post.

Greece

It isn’t often that I feel the need to stick my head above the parapet and blog about politics but the crisis in Greece just goes from bad to worse and I have an almighty urge to knock heads together.

We all know that if an individual has a credit card then they are given a maximum sum which they can spend on it. So why did the countries who have loaned money to Greece not have something similar in place. The lenders have a duty to only lend what can be paid back, if they ignore that then as far as I’m concerned the lenders are more at fault than the borrowers are. Anyone who is owed money from Greece should just write off the debts and learn from their mistakes.

Apparently the UK is owed around £1 billion from Greece but for the Germans the sum is closer to 40 billion Euros. I haven’t been following the minutiae of the subject but I have heard that the Germans loaned the money to the Greeks so long as the Greeks spent a large part of the money on buying German goods, mainly armaments, which is something that I’m sure the Greeks didn’t plan on spending any money on.

This is a strategy which goes on in Third World countries with the so called overseas aid money from First World countries coming with long strings attached to boost the manufacturing in those countries.

This evening on the news I heard that the Dutch prime minister was the latest leader to wag a finger at the Greeks and tell them that they must abide by the rules of the European Community. What a laugh. I happen to know that the Dutch governments have been cocking a snook at European rules for years and years. They still have tax relief on mortgages there, something which they should have stopped when the UK did some 20 years ago when the EU told us to stop it. The UK government is always very quick to obey any rules whilst other governments just say – our people will not stand for that – and ignore the rules which don’t suit them.

At the beginning of the German bullying of Greece I said that as far as I was concerned it was come-uppance time for the Germans, a bit of pay back for what they did to Greece during World War 2, and I still feel that way. The Germans have completely forgotten that at the end of the war their debts were written off and more than that – they had money thrown at them so that there would not be a repeat of hostilities within 20 years – as there was after the First World War.

Meanwhile the UK was debt ridden and in fact it was only a few years ago that we paid the last instalment of our debt to the Americans. Angela Merkel was brought up in East Germany so she almost certainly doesn’t know that the difference between 1970s Germany and 1970s Britain were vast. I was in Germany in the 1970s and I was astonished by the country. Compared with Britain it was so wealthy looking and the standard of living was way beyond that in the UK. In 1970s Britain there were still bomb sites which still hadn’t been re-built on. Areas of housing in Germany which were thought of as being poor were in fact of a far higher standard of anything in the UK. That’s what happens when a country is given a blank cheque to re-build.

As everyone has been saying that the financial meltdown of 2008 will have to be paid for by generations to come – I see nothing wrong with expecting the post Nazi German generations to write off the Greek debt – as war reparations, a fine for what they did to the Greeks during World War 2.

Apart from anything else, have you had a look at the map of that area of the world. Syrian refugees are making their way there to get away from the mayhem in Syria. How easy it will be for the real bad guys, ISIS or whatever the hell they call themselves – just another kind of fascist if you ask me, to follow them to Greece when they want to, if we don’t get on top of it. And of course, Greece has loads of tanks and armaments which nobody wants to fall into the hands of nutters who will turn them against Europe.

We can’t afford to let Greece fail as a state, we stand together or we’ll fall together.

And another thing … I heard somewhere that Greece has actually already paid off the amount of money which they have borrowed, the money they still owe is actually all interest. If that’s true then shame on anyone for hounding them for more payments.