At the end of the year I made the flowers in my lino-cuts pictures colourful, added a bit of a story to each of them and put them all into a little book. A nice finish of my 'Flower' year.

2015     

I have not yet decided what my project for this year will be, but I am sure it will have something to do with flowers. So my theme for 2015 will be

Blümchen 

Since I have no longer a garden, the herb pot on the little flat balcony has to have also a flower, of course.

On the wall opposite the bed I always put up some pictures and I change them frequently. This year I started off with photos of flower pictures I have done over the years. 

LINO CUT PRINTS

Last year Ulrike thought me the basics of linocut printing. 
And this is my first picture:
It is an old Chinese legend about a women und her two water pots.

                                                                                                                                    February 2015

I had great fun doing this. 

2

And here is another lino cut I made.
It is from poem by Wordsworth about dreaming of daffodils.

                                                                                        March 2015

3

This is about a poem by Goethe: Heideroeschen  

                                                     The Heathrose

                                                                                                             April 2015

4 

And another poem by Goethe: Das Veilchen 

                                                 The Violet

                                                                                                                        May 2015

5

Flowers in the Field

 a village school text

                                                                                       June 2015

6

 A Flower among Ruins 

 a personal experience.

                                                                                                                                  July 2015

7

Tree Ferns in the Blue Mountains

after a poem by Henry Lawson 

                                                                                 August 2015

8

Desert Flower

as seen on our outback trips   

                                                                          September 2015

9

Sleeping Beauty

a Grimm's Fairy Tale

                                                                             October 2015

10  

Girraween

an Aboriginal  Dreamtime story

                                                                                                                   November 2015

11
 Ice Flower  
a German nursery song

                                                December 2015

9 November 2014    

Berliner Mauer    

Twenty-five years ago the Wall came down

1:
That day, 9 November 1989, was so remarkable.  A peaceful revolution changed world politics for ever. The  communist regime in East Germany could no longer control its people. After over 28 years of a divided Germany  the ‘Mauer’  in Berlin was opened and Germans from the East and West could come freely together again. 

The Iron Curtain which divided for decades East and West, the Free World from the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Europe and the Russian Soviet Union, fell. And that started in Berlin.

We left Berlin before the Wall was put up on 13 August 1961. But whenever we visited our relatives in Berlin, on the western and eastern side of the city, we had to cross the Wall. The contrast of life on this or that side of the Wall, only a few meters apart, was unbelievable. Each time we realised how lucky we were to live Down-Under. Still we felt immensely sad, almost guilty to be free. The joy on that day 25 years ago was overwhelming, although we experienced it all only through the news reports on television. 

On each visit to Berlin we went to the ‘Mauer’, and still go to of the little bits of the Wall left of it now. 

And here are some pictures:

Most of the photos are from the early 1980s.

 It was forbidden to take photos  of the Wall in East Berlin, except the ‘Brandenburger Tor’  at a distance from ‘Unter den Linden’ Boulevard.

1981, Brandenburg Gate from the East,                                  and from the West

 
2:

The Wall along the Brandenburg Gate,    

    

                                                                         
                                                          and along the river Spree

                                                           

     

                                                                
  East German Boarder Guard Watch Tower

    Memorials for people killed trying to cross the Wall

3:   Only people in the West could write and paint on the Wall, in the East the Wall was heavily guarded.

After the Wall fell restoration and rebuilding started in Berlin .

Along where once the Wall was, memorial plagues on the ground remind people of the once divided Berlin.

4:

The few segments of the Wall put up at Potsdamer Platz, as well as the Mauer Museum at Friedich Strasse, Bernauer Strasse and Checkpoint Charlie attract lots of visitors

, 

                                      and of course the Brandenburg Gate is a tourist magnet.

But most popular is the East Side Gallery near Warschauer Brücke. 

 

These are mostly artists' work after the Wall came down.

           Some of the real Berliner Mauer still stands at Bornholmer Strasse, 

                 that is where the Wall was first opened on 9 November 1989.

My Wall Memorial is a piece of the Berliner Mauer which our nephew Lars hammered out of it the day after the Wall fell. I mounted that bit of concrete with barbwire onto a collage of some of our Mauer pictures