What a find!

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Yesterday in Bern we just happened across Klotzli the most amazing knife and scissor shop. I love good knives and scissors and it was like heaven – all sorts of specialised ones, beautifully made. I got chatting to the owner (it’s a family business from 1846) and he showed me some of the more specialised scissors – those with lovely patterns that he said wouldn’t be available when his last ones had gone; those like old editors ones where the blade is much longer than the handle part; and leather scissors where the opposite happens so there is much more leverage for tougher cutting. I fell for a beautiful tiny pair of high precision scissors for paper cutting and a more general pair for my work.

Testing and traveling

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The view from our flat during our stop-over in Hong Kong.

I’m traveling for the next three months in Europe. Michael is on long service leave, and we are visiting Tim and Tanya who are now living in Switzerland, and then taking off somewhat nomadically east to west across the Mediterranean countries. I feel very fortunate.

This is a test of using the WordPress mobile app.

On the water

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Photos from the short Star Ferry trip across to Kowloon. Apparently the junk is only a tourist thing, but it looked picturesque in the mist. The fog didn’t lift enough for us to take the cable car up to Victoria Peak.

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Bamboo scaffolding

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Amazing to see bamboo scaffolding even on really tall buildings. It’s bound together with tough black plastic strips. I saw bundles of bamboo scaffolding piled on the street ready to be used. The builders also use large slightly flexible plastic bowls with rope handles to carry concrete around, which stack together pretty neatly when empty.

Around the flat in HK

Some more images from Hong Kong. I liked this conglomeration of aerials that we could see from the flat.

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Characters stuck on the wall opposite the entrance to the flat. Are they girl and boy worms do you think?

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Outside many of the flat entrances were these little offerings.

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Michael in the main entrance to the apartment building we stayed in.

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Swatches of floor coverings on the wall of a store.

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Hong Kong

First night in Hong Kong, staying in a tiny flat in Wan Chai. Caught the CityFlyer double decker bus from the airport, sitting up the top at the front which gave us a great view of the city and docks! The buses have wi-fi, too.

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Bus terminus at the airport.

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View from the flat. There were mostly buses and taxis on the streets; apparently 90% of the population uses public transport, which is impressive.

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We had a wander on the streets before crashing. This building changed to many different colours.

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I loved the really narrow traditional trams. They made me think of sardine tins.

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Michael in our airbnb flat. The bed was in a window nook, and apart from a postage stamp bathroom and balcony, that was it :)