Backbeat

This week the Kitchen has been in Hamburg, working hard by day and maybe, just maybe finding a quiet watering hole for a small beer in the evenings. I arrived early on Monday morning and headed for Kiel by train. The lady in the ticket office sold me a rover ticket which meant I could travel on any train in Schleswig-Holstein that day. Speeding over the landscape that was covered in snow a montage of images came and went as we sped along: The field shrouded in mist with roe deer standing and watching the train pass; the field full of sheep (it is strange to report but that was definitely a novelty); the sun burning through and coating the white landscape in a brilliant luminescence before we plunge into the dank cold of Kiel.

After that is was back to work in Hamburg and it was an intense couple of days that were challenging and rewarding in parts and deeply frustrating in others. However the evening with colleagues from around Europe were fun, although it seems that this lark fell in with a crowd of owls and learnt that hard way that "one more beer" is a German euphemism for 4 or 5!

We were also treated to a walk through St Pauli, it's history (Gaststätte Zur Ritze) and we were told how The Beatles are a Hamburg band. However despite that the enduring image of my night out in Hamburg was of standing down at the Elbe river with it's ice floes looking at Abramovich's yatch in dry dock.

However it is now good to be home and to marvel at how the little one has changed in only 4 days. I now have a week off and am looking forward to a little quality time with the family and in the kitchen.