My husband's cousin is almost the same age as my husband. He lives in Berlin, and the guys have started a "tradition" to visit him once a year. He is married to beautiful H from Japan.
A speedy journey to our capitol! The train rode at 125 m/h. The further east, the more snow was on the ground. This weekend was milder most of the time, the snow was melting.
We were picked up by our cousin and wife and we had lunch in a typical old Berlin pub. Then, we walked to the hotel and dropped our luggage. We had tea with our cousin and then walked to the Xmas market on the "Gendarmenmarkt", a very beautiful square in 1800 style.
It is a very famous market, you even have to pay 1,35$ to get in. There are many shops with food and drinks, and a sweet hot wine, often with a big sip of rum in it, is a very popular drink on these markets. "Gluehwein trinken" has become a kind of party.
I was very fond of a shop for shawls and scarves and especially admired the self-grown shawl of the seller who looked very oriental indeed. The shawls were quite expensive, one was there to die for, but it was 73$.
There was a little craft shop of a jeweller and I saw ceramics, candles, porcellaine, German fairy story glass ornaments for the Xmas tree -- close to kitsch -- and tea shops, spice shops, and so on.
Brushes of all kinds, very nice to look at.
It was incredibly crowded, no place to sit and rest, and the boys had one Gluehwein after another.
We moved on to a café with a tower made of scrap metal, a piece of art. It was nice to sit for a change!
Then we "travelled" through Berlin once more to reach the place where we wanted to have dinner together. We did not ride a car the whole day, but walked or took suburban trains or busses.
We had a great meal in the restaurant "Highway 66" -- very tasty and abundant. I was careful not to eat too fat and took a vegetarian noodle dish with extra jalapenos plus fresh mint tea. What a treat! One more drink in another place. I was knocked out when we reached our hotel!
Next morning, we had brunch together and then took a taxi to a remote
museum for German expressionist art. There was an exhibition of Erich Heckel, a painter who had been banned by the Nazis as "entartet" -- degenerate art. He was a member of the artists' group "Die Bruecke" -- "The Bridge". A great afternoon!
Then we got on the train back to Hamburg. I had taken
a strip of the reptile quilt along and did some stitching during the ride.
A dragon's tail in the larger pic... I'm running out of dragons and snake skins. There is this little chap, hand painted, and there are the iguana and other snakes who went to a party. Here, you see the squares still unquilted.
I had intended to stick to the stash and not purchase new fabrics. Ha!
Why do I abandon tradition in these two issues? (1.) Doubling up the scraps means to hide one half. Some of the fabrics I got from friends or bought long ago are too precious to be wasted. So I just fold it at the edge to create a seam, on the triangles as well. It requires only one seam, due to the method of covering the cut side with the next scrap, like laying tiles on a roof. -- 
This is a new snakeskin patch as a whole, uncut. Until now, I showed them integrated into the quilt and covered with paint, adding a few more layers until the paint looks dense and dark. This piece is different, I wanted to keep the transparency and brightness of the colors. I made a few more reptile drawings and colored them, and there are some more Estonian spells to be cut in stripes and integrated into the quilt. The lizard isn't really cut off, it is just a portrait and ends more or less with the picture edge. The spotty background comes from ironing the cloth before it was dry which makes the steam create a pattern. 
-- This is the view from the kitchen window this morning, temperatures going up and down around the freezing point. Later, there was bright sunshine.
The photos in my latest posting about the reptile quilt were a little too strong, too red. The quilt isn't quite so, but good photo light is rare these days. I dedicate the choice of colors to my hometown. Copper-covered roofs are common on larger buildings, and the climate with grey skies contributes to the magic effect of this color. Brick red is the other prevailing color because clay is a traditional material which was a lot easier to find in this landscape than stone -- exept diluvial granite rocks. 
Here is St. Katharinen church near the harbour.
Could my hometown be a naga place?
It is so much fun to construct and sew the squares. The right row is not yet connected with the quilt because I find it much easier to do the quilting on a smaller piece than in connection with a large space.
Didn't have much time to continue with my quilt, but did some quilting on all the parts finished up to now. I use all the threads I found, many of them have been part of my stash for decades. Some are too thick for quilting, but 6-ply DMC or Anchor embroidery yarn, split in 2-ply-threads, works very well and gives enough color variegation to play.
The Old "Elbtunnel" in Hamburg, 1907-11, is a work of engineering which was admired a lot at the time it was built. 23 meters below the soil, it crossed the river underneath and allowed thousands of workers to walk from the town where they lived to the forges, shipyards and docks. My husband, parents-in-law and I took a walk on Sunday. The picture no.2 is older, we did not have sunny weather. 
