Rush to leave!

How quickly things change in these strange times. We had planned to start our holiday in August – drive up to Queensland and get straight into it. But as coronavirus spread quickly in Sydney we started getting nervous about the Queensland border closing to NSW.

Graciously my boss was happy (excited, even) for us to head over the border early and work for a few weeks from Queensland. And so it was that I raced home on a Monday lunchtime, quickly bidding colleagues farewell on my way out, planning to drive to Queensland on Tuesday.

Once home we packed the car (Donna, she/her) for a three month trip in a few hours, saw our parents briefly and went to bed. We slept uneasily, thinking ‘what have we forgotten?’ and ‘how early should we leave?’ or ‘will the border be closed already?’

We drove almost non-stop to the border near Moree. Border passes complete and a motel room booked, we approached the border…and how thoroughly anticlimactic for the road to be uninterrupted! So much so that we felt like criminals when we simply pulled into Goondiwindi Bakery for a pie. No raised eyebrows, so sideways glances, nothing. Huh.

Donna, ready to leave Newcastle

Jan 2, 2020

That was super cool, unfortunately Felix was sick. Jasmine was very kind and drove us on a tour.

The main stop was Teufelsberg. It was once the site of an unfinished nazi technical college which the allies could not destroy, so it was buried in a pile of East Berlin rubble to make a hill. While the wall was up the NSA constructed a listening station to eavesdrop on the Soviet East German military communications. Now the station has become derelict but the structure remains and has become a site for street art.

On the way back from Teufelsberg I remembered that my German relative had once lived in a house nearby (only 5 minutes out of our way!). So we stopped off there. It’s in a quite rich neighbourhood with many mansions, I wonder if it was like that when they were there?

Back in Berlin we went to a photography exhibition at C / O Berlin by Ren Hang which was funny, beautiful, weird (also pretty explicit).