The Streets in Hamburg

Hi Ali,

Went to see The Streets on Tuesday night. It was an excellent gig. Mike Skinner has so much energy and the songs took on a whole new sound when performed with the live band. He also had a lot of fun letting himself be entertained by the audience, having us all stop and pose in the middle of one hit, and sit down during another. I thought about you a lot - I know how much you liked The Streets and you would have loved this concert, particularly as he also did a short cover of the Prodigy's "Out of Space" which was very cool.

Elbow next, and the Kooks after that, so will report on those in due course.

Love you and miss you
Sha xxx

Joy Rides

Hi Ali,

We went to Heide-Park Soltau yesterday, a place where you would have had fun as well. Went on a lot of rides – »Colossos«, the world's steepest wooden roller coaster with a 65 m/61 degree drop, »Desert Race« which catapults you to the speed of 100 km/h in only 2.4 seconds. Sharon was sitting in front of this ride and nearly crapped her pants. Here you can see a video of Sharon and our friend Carsten riding the »Top Spin« and a couple of photos.

Coldplay live in Hamburg

Hi Ali, we saw Coldplay tonight in the Color Line Arena, Hamburg. Here you can see some of the really impressive show:



Here are some of the paper butterflies we caught during the show:

Germany vs. Turkey

Hi Ali, we're just getting ready for the Euro game Germany vs. Turkey, but all we got was a flag for car windows. So we had to use a book to hang it up.

Bottle-feeding Lambchops-to-be.

Hi Ali, we visited the Open Farm near Tobermory where we were allowed to bottle-feed some cute lambs. They went mental once they saw the bottles.

Birds going Nuts

Hi Ali, these birds went crazy when we offered peanuts and cashew nuts during our picnic at Loch Buie.

Tourist Church

Hi Ali, just took this picture inside the old church in Tobermory. They have turned it into a souvenir shop for tourists. Probably because they have enough other churches here.

View from Tobermory Golf Course.

Hi Ali, today we walked to the Tobermory Lighthouse. On our way back we had to cross the golf course. Nice place to have a rest.

Tobermory View

We just arrived in Tobermory and we posted this from our mobile. You can see the view from our appartment.

Impressions from Lochinver

Hi Ali, here you can see where we stayed last week: in our nice wee lodge in Lochinver.

Apple Juice for German Youth

Photo: Friederike Ott, found on welt.de

Hi Ali,

today we witnessed a huge demonstration here in Hamburg (yes, the picture above has been taken in Berlin, but the video further down is from Hamburg). The NPD, an ultra right wing party with lots of Nazis amongst their supporters, announced to march through Barmbek, so thousands of people gathered together to do their own demonstration against the Nazis. Days before that all the shops here showed their support for the Anti-Nazi demonstration by displaying posters and offering stickers and flyers to the customers.

Just ahead of the big move there was a little group ("Front of German Apples") taking the piss out of the Nazis by dressing themselves like them but replacing the swastika symbols on the flags and the armbands with an apple and shouting: "Was gibt der deutschen Jugend Kraft? Apfelsaft, Apfelsaft!" Which can be roughly translated with: "What gives power to the German youth? Apple juice, apple juice!"

We didn't actually spot any Nazis so maybe they decided to take an alternative route through Hamburg.

Panic! At The Disco

Hi Ali,

yesterday we went to see Panic! At The Disco in the Hamburg Docks, the band you used to have as a ringtone on your phone. As always, we've had a look for videos taken by other folk who were there (we don't really like filming during concerts – we rather enjoy the show). We also linked to the official video "9 in the Afternoon".