Bart & Tineke's wedding

The last big thing I need to tell you guys about is the wedding we went to last week. We were honoured to be of the party when Bart promised eternal love and devotion to his amazing Tineke. He could not have a chosen a more beautiful spouse and they both looked brilliant. The got married in a beautiful chamber at the old city hall in The Hague and after that we were swiftly transported by tour bus to a beach club near Scheveningen for the reception and the party. Here are some of the pictures we took of the event:

The bride and groom

Joost and Kim, who are to be wed in August, were nice enough to let us stay

The happy couple about to drive off into the sunset in Bart's personally done up VW beetle cabrio. Quite literally into the sunset, actually, as they are going to be cruising through Italy, the land of sunset, for their honeymoon

After a while, the bride started to announce the less formal part of the wedding, i.e. the party, by messing up her groom's hair

Olaf tried to make a pass at the groom

And I tried to take steal some of the bride's brilliance

But in the end we had to admit they looked too perfect together and we decided to content ourselves with each other

We had taken an extremely early morning flight in and had some time to visit The Hague before the wedding. And where did we accidentally end up? At the gay pride, obviously!

For some pictures click here.

I have now brought you up-to-date of all the great things that have been happening in my life. I have got some more work on as well, which is not bad at all. The one thing I have to get used to is having to start teaching at 7.30am on two consecutive days, which seems to be a lot for my body to be able to cope with and I have not been sleeping well since that started. Oh well, as soon as I get into a rhythm it will be fine.

The sun is out and the temperature has suddenly gone up a bit. It is now 25-30 degrees C on a daily basis and I am actually started to get a summery feeling. No doubt that will all change again very soon, what with the fickle Berlin weather, but one must look at the bright side of life. I did all my summer shopping today and have decided not to wear anything but linen trousers and summer shirts until September, come rain or come shine. Olaf has left for a series of conferences and I have basically got the rest of this month to myself. I am planning to relax, get a tan and work on my social life.

And cycling back through Tiergarten park around noon, looking at all the unemployed Germans showing off their perfect bodies (for unemployed people have far too much time on their hands and all go the gym all day), with my summer playlist at maximum volume on my MP3 player (Taio Cruz' 'Break your Heart', Owl City's 'Fireflies' and Train's 'Hey Soul Sister' stand out this year), I realised I am quite content...

Max!

I am an uncle again! My sister-in-law Jolien gave birth to another healthy baby boy on 2nd June. His name is Max and he weighed almost 5,5 kgs. That must have been like giving birth to a Ming vase, my father told me I weighed less than half that when I was born! Here are some pictures of when we visited them on our way back from Dalen:

Little Max with his proud uncle

Max's older brother Neo, who was actually wearing a t-shirt saying 'big brother' in Dutch

The loving parents and their new offspring

Part of being an uncle who lives far away is making sure you always bring lots of presents when you come by for a visit to make sure your nephews and nieces don't forget you. We really hit home this time with a plastic piano which also produced animal sounds. Unfortunately, Neo associated this cow - everything he likes is called 'cow' - more with Olaf than with me

One for in the picture book about early his childhood 'My first meeting with my wacky uncles from Berlin'

Our wedding party

Our wedding party. Where to begin? It was awesome. The weather was amazing, we were so lucky to have planned our party for the first sunny weekend of the year. The garden was beautiful, the guests gorgeous and even the preparations were already so much fun. I could not stop smiling the whole evening, because I simply could not get over how awesome it was to see so many friends and family members again and to be able to celebrate with them all. Thank you all for being there and making this night a night to remember. A proper photo album will be made at some point once I have collected everybody's photos, but here are just a few to give an impression of the night, the people and the atmosphere. For more pictures click here and here.

Dresden with Nicole and Pieter

The weekend before we went to The Netherlands to celebrate our awesome wedding party, we finally made it to Dresden. We had been wanting to do some exploring around Berlin but somehow we have not managed to do much. Besides Lutherstadt Wittenberg and now Dresden, we are still nitwits as it comes to sights outside of the capital. Let us hope this great experience will spark many more similar outings! We had a lot of fun and enjoyed some lovely weather. Oh, and we drank too much, naturally. Check out the pictures:

Dresden's rebuilt Frauenkirche, a symbol of the city which was completely destroyed in WWII. I am not so sure they should have rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. It is very new and shiny and obviously fake right now...

The first of many hilarious photoshoots

What a lovely couple they are!

What a decent, bourgeois, married couple we are!

The Hofkirche

One of the walls of the Schloss (palace)

Another part of the Schloss

The Zwinger, a beautiful baroque complex somehow called 'prison'

The 'terrace of Europe', elevated 14 meters above the Elbe and affords nice views of the Neustadt on the other side and is quite picturesque itself

At the end of the first day of sightseeing, we men felt we had deserved some beers, and Nicole felt she had deserved a lady beer

The inside of the Schloss, all the details pretending to be caryatids, columns and irregular bricks are all painted on. That style was apparently popular in the 1800s and reminded me of Portofino.

Pieter has had enough of me

"Pose for me, darlings". Olaf's favourite phrase.

On top of the Schloss with the Frauenkirche in the distance

The view without the models

Just the two us

On our way back we paid a quick visit to Schloss Pillnitz in the Elbe valley

Clay SuperKitty to the rescue!

Apart from all the architecture, the beer, the food and the history, we also managed to catch the Eurovision Song Contest finale in one of the local gay bars. When Germany won, we expected massive dancing in the streets but were disappointed. Even the Germans at the bar did not care that much. I do believe we were the happiest people in Dresden at that point, and we were already quite sarcastic about it!

Oh, and we say a cherry pit with 185 faces carved into it. Talk about useless!!