Honouring Berlin’s Workhorse

I wrote about the graffiti hoofprints that appeared around Berlin in 2006 in If Wishes Were Horses, but I didn’t know about these on Reichenbergerstrasse. A permanent memorial to the trammers of the city, maybe?

Riding in the Kaiser’s Berlin

I cannot help thinking that the Germans are more devoted to riding than any other Continental nation. I have not hunted in Germany, as I was there only during the summer; but I sold a good hunter to a German Count who was a fine horseman and a Master of Foxhounds. He told me that …

Introducing Children to Horse Racing

Hoppegarten is a beautiful old race course just outside Berlin, somewhat past its glory days (owing to the vicissitudes of German twentieth-century history) but still charming. I’ve been going there for years, and though there have been little indicators of fresh investment (smart new signs, posh ladies’ loos) the essential character remains the same. The …

Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the Game

“Ever since he had drifted into India on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing debt, The Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars’ team on the Skidars’ stony pologround. Now a polo-pony is like a poet. If he is born with a love for the …

Polo at Maifeld

Thank you to Christoph Curvers and Annika of PACE Magazine for being my guides at my first polo tournament in Berlin. I’ll publish a few photos I took this week, along with some tidbits which are probably familiar to polo fans, but were fresh and fascinating to me, and may be to non-polo-ers who are …