Oh! Let's go fly a kite! Up to -

Well, no, not Up.
For once Scheveningen beach was totally windless.

Please note: a totally windless Scheveningen is nothing short of a miracle. I have never experienced a windless day at the beach unless in high summer - and even then.
And here the last weekend of September, already autumn, lovely weather - it was amazing.

Apart from windless it was also warm - warm enough to stroll along the beach in t-shirts.
We enjoyed it very much - not so all the kite flyers that had come to this yearly Festival.

Nevertheless, there were still 'photo opportunities'.
See for yourself!

 

Sgrafitto in Eastern Europe

I know of two parallel methods to make the walls and paintings I'm about to show you.
These walls are fascinating, all over Italy via Austria to Eastern Europe, and 'trompe l'oeil' or 'Art Deco' spring into mind (but the technique is much older than that).

Ok. Sgrafitto: say you want to decorate a wall. You start with a black layer of plaster, white layer on top and before it's all dried (and it dries in 24 hours) you scratch your image, which is then seen in black because of the underlying black layer.

Or: white plaster, you scratch your image and fill the lines with black paint. That's what you often see in Art Deco sgrafitto. I think that's the way all the 'tiles' were made. Now they are trompe l'oeils if there ever were ones!
You see them on the first pictures. We had to feel each and every one of them to convince ourselves they were flat, not three dimensional. They are flat!

Eastern Europe is a sgrafitto lovers treasure trove. You see it everywhere. You need a bit of a dry clime for it because it washes away easily. That's why we don't have much of it in Holland ;)

These photos were made in Poland and the Czech Republic. The 'colourful' picture is taken inside the major postoffice in Prague and we weren't alllowed to take pictures there so there's only this one, in a right Art Deco temple.
The last one is a bit of a maverick. I included because I liked it. Someone made something special out of a drainpipe.
I love those details!

 

Kliczkow. Yes. Kliczkow.

Life hides it's miracles, till - - - who would ever have thought we'd be spending half a week in a place called Kliczkow? It took me a while to get it pronounced properly.
That was after we realised it had a great big castle and that we were spending aforementioned half week in it.

Part of another dance holiday. We've really been spoiled, this year.
After Bournemouth and Bishopsgate we drove to Poland, mid September. We had had the loveliest Indian Summer imaginable in Holland (plus in the rest of Europe!) and Poland wasn't cold and dreary this time - it was green and just starting to feel a bit Autumnal.

The castle was huge. Our room was impressive. The dance floor was endless.
We had the time of our lives.

The photos are a bit diverse. It's the castle, and a bit of 'rural Poland', but - oh well. I guess it's as new to you as it was to us, so enjoy!
(I still might not know the word for 'thank you', I do know 'Zamek'. That's castle ;)

  

Malina. Maliny. Malinowky, Malinowa, Malinowym...

After I found out that no one outside Holland - like my family and friends in Australia, Indonesia or Canada for example - could properly pronounce my first name and felt really embarrassed about it I changed it into Malina.
I was quite glad with the new name: for certain this would be an easy one for anyone to pronounce & remember.
It was.
The only bit of a snag was the sniggering when I introduced myself to East Europeans.
I soon found out that for anyone east of Germany, all the way to Mongolia, the name Malina means 'raspberry'.
Great.

Oh well - it's fun really. I run into my name every time I visit my fav Polish supermarket here in The Hague. Fizzy drinks, tea, syrups, jellies, joghurts, cookies, sweets, chocolats, raspberry filled dumplings, even beer (! I did buy it but I never dared taste it. Yeach!)

And I ran into even more 'Malina' in Poland.
Here, for once, a blog about - me. Malina. Whoa!

Wroclaw's Market Hall

Anyone keeping up with my blogs will know I rave about Market Halls, covered markets, open markets - everything with stalls and strange food.

I never expected Wroclaw to have a market hall. Allways thought it was a bit of a Southern Europe thing - mmm, Stockholms Saluhallen, yes, forgot about that one.

So here we are. A 19th century red brick railway building on the outside and a sort of huge concrete Soviet church on the inside. Amazing when we stepped into it - totally unexpected, this cathedral feel - but my heart leapt: this was a seriously good market. In a strange country with a strange language, it was going to be fun having a good look around.
I hope you know what I mean after you've seen the photos!

(Pieter had to drag me away after almost two hours, he did because we had to leave Wroclaw to go to our next part of the Polish trip: the Kliczkow Castle)