Howdy Gaudi

Whether you love him or loathe him, you have to admit that Gaudi was a master of creativity.

We've just spent a few days traipsing around Barcelona looking at his buildings and the city park and have been amazed by both his attention to detail (from doorknobs to frog gargoyles) and his approach to architecture.

That sounds a bit brochure-speak I know, but he really had a unique way of looking at things. This photo is of a chimney from the roof of an apartment building he designed. The building has no corners, virtually no walls (lots of windows and arches to let in natural light), an attic modelled on a snake skeleton and an undulating roof with these crazy chimneys and air vents.

Octopus in the garage

I like speaking Spanish - I'm not sure anyone else enjoys me speaking it, but I like it. I never really got the hang of the Castilian lisp - perhaps people thought I was from South America...and perhaps not.

Words I particularly like:

• Llave, billete, sencillo - not because I'm fond of keys, tickets or one-way streets, I just like the sound of the double l.



• Quisiera la cuenta por favor - this has such a lovely rhythm, and everyone knows what it means.



• Helardos, cerveza, tostados - because very good things happen when you say these words!

My favourite phrase, for when you feel out of place, is encontrarse como un pulpo en un garaje - like an octopus in the garage. Unfortunately I couldn't work it into casual conversation.

Andalucia

If you're sick of winter and over work, best not read on - just know we're in Spain.

For others, I raise my cerveza to you from a beach bar in the south of Spain. Have just spent some warm days in Andalucia, searching for Moorish arches, mountains and good food, and discovering the joys of shady plazas, colourful tiles and olive groves.

Things to cross off my list-of-things-to-do: survive an EasyJet scrum in Berlin airport, spend a luxurious afternoon in an arabic bathhouse, perfect the art of tapas grazing, bodysurf in the Mediterranean (never seen anything other than a ripple before!), have breakfast in a Spanish truckstop, see the Sierra Nevada (would also have stopped at some Eastwood and Wayne film sets if I'd been driving), finally say entiendio (I understand) to someone, rather than my usual no entiendio.

Five fab figures about Berlin

5. This is official closing time (5am to 6am) as stated by Federal law. No-one seems to pay any attention to this - crazy nocturnal people.

106 kilometres of Berlin Wall, 3.6 metres high, 302 watchtowers, separating east and west Berlin for 28 years. There is now a double row of cobblestones to mark where it was.

21 seconds to go from 0 to 100km/h in the mostly plastic, official East German sedan, the beautiful Trabant.

410 000 deciduous trees in the city, as well as 174 museums (my pick is the Pergamon which, amongst other gems, holds the Ishtar Gates of Babylon), 200 galleries, 9 500 pubs and restaurants and countless statues and monuments (my pick is the empty-shelved underground library marking the burning of over 20 000 books in 1933).

2 favourite quotes about Berlin: JFK's well-intentioned declaration of solidarity "Ich bin ein Berliner" by which he identified himself as the pictured pastry; and a reference by the mayor of the city's financial status "Arm arbor sexy" - poor but sexy.

Berlin by night

Arrived at Berlin’s glossy new hauptbahnhof after dark and because the rain had cleared, we were treated to our own guided bike tour of the city sights – highly recommended!

Rolling with the Rhine

Have just had a cruisy week pedalling down the Rhine with a Berlin-based friend (aka 'Hildegard') - starting at bustling old Heidelberg and ending (train-assisted) with the gothic spires and gargoyles of Cologne.

The days were clear – which I understand is an anomaly for this German summer – and packed with vines and wines, castles, medieval villages and aquatic traffic (and a fair bit of ugly industry and electricity towers, but if you squint a bit, it all looks lovely).

Much to Flash’s relief, we sent the tent back home and have been mostly staying in quirky little guesthouses along the river and waking up with church bells in the morning.

One of the nicest things about the guesthouses is the ceremony of fruhstuck or breakfast. Guests are shown to their tables in the special fruhstuck zimmer, greeting other guests as they enter and then share a fruhstuck buffet and some heart-starting beverages.

As Jane Austen would have said (had she been cycling down the Rhine with us in anything other than the book I’m reading), “to wish one’s fellow fruhstuckers a pleasant morning and a hearty appetite is a very agreeable exercise in cordiality and good will”.