It looks as though things are finally returning to a normal routine, and I have a chance to write about our most recent trip. We had a long but uneventful trip to Amsterdam, where we were met by representatives of the IAAAM (International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine), the group holding the conference, and our reason for being in Europe in the first place. We had also invited our daughter, Nicole, to come along, partially as a college graduation present, and partially to play tour guide, as she lived in Germany for a year as an exchange student. We took a bus to the hotel in the small town of Putten, about 45 minutes away. Rooms were not ready, but they had a breakfast buffet set up, so we relaxed while we waited. Once we were in our room, we discovered that we had brought the wrong adapter for the electrical outlet, and inquired about hair dryers at the front desk. The recommendation was that we go into the nearby town of Harderwijk, so Nicole and I got a cab to the train station, found someone to show us how to buy a ticket, as it was Saturday and the station was void of human personnel, and we took the train about 15 minutes down the track to Harderwijk. From there, we found our way to the city center, a typical European shopping area. At some point, we realized that we didn't know the name of our hotel, which would make returning a bit more exciting. After some enjoyable wanderings, we found a shop that sold an inexpensive hair dryer, which I decided to purchase. The staff was helpful and spoke English, and looked up the name of our hotel for us so we would know where to tell the cab driver to deliver us.
We returned to the hotel, showered, and relaxed until it was time to go to the icebreaker which was on board a boat. We discovered that Nicole is not nearly so quiet after she has a few beers. Dan and I returned to the room around 10, and Nicole remained with the partygoers until much later.
Breakfasts were included with the hotel room and we learned that the Dutch have chocolate and multi colored candy sprinkles on the breakfast table, not to have them ready for ice cream at lunch time, but to put on toast. I preferred the traditional jam. Dan went off to his meetings and Nicole and I wandered the countryside around the hotel, enjoying a day of very nice weather and beautiful farmland scenery. Lunch was included with our conference fees, so we returned to the hotel and enjoyed way too much food. Wandered out the other direction after lunch. Nicole's experience with Europe made sure that we stayed on the side roads and didn't stray up the autobahn on ramps. We watched a man flying a parakite on the beach, and then we watched the kite fly the man along the sand until it made him let go so it could come to rest in its favorite tree.
The next day was a trip to the Dolfinarium in Harderwijk for lunch, a tour, and dinner. They certainly don't mess around when it comes to feeding you. A generous lunch, a tour of the facility, marred only by intermittent showers, and then back to the restaurant for an elegant dinner. The cream of eel soup was divine. Also, beef Wellington, and a variety of strawberry desserts.
Tuesday, Nicole and I had signed up for a tour of Holland. We boarded the bus at 9 am and headed out to the Keukenhof tulip gardens, which are open only 6 weeks of the year. It was really cold that day, and drizzly, so we spent a bit more time in the greenhouses than out in the formal gardens, but the flowers were gorgeous, and although the sky wasn't blue, it was still quite bright, and my pictures look great. We learned a lot about tulips, including the fact that the fields only look so pretty until the flowers begin to mature, because they're being raised for the bulbs, and allowing the blooms to grow to sexual maturity would weaken the bulbs. So, they chop the heads off all the flowers and leave them by the side of the fields.
Then, we went out to the beach to a nice restaurant for lunch, along with several other tour busses of people. Next to the Haag, and finally to the Delft factory for a tour and time to shop. Along the entire tour, we continued to be impressed with how clean everything is. However, I am not going to start cleaning my windows every other day when we get back to the states. No time for the village of Delft, because this was the night of the closing banquet and we had to be back at the hotel in time to change and catch the bus to the Dolfinarium. There may be a lot of bicycles in Holland, but there are a lot of cars, too, and most of them were on the road from Delft to Putten. However, we made it with at least 20 minutes before the busses left. The closing banquet was a buffet, with 5 stations representing 5 countries, plus a dessert extravaganza complete with fireworks outside and sparklers on the cake. The usual boring speeches and award ceremonies were endured, and we were returned to the hotel.
Dan got up early the next morning to listen to a few more papers while Nicole and I packed and got ready to leave Holland. I negotiated a fair price for an almost new hairdryer with the hotel clerk. A bus was provided to take folks to the airport and train station, so we said our farewells and got ready for the next phase of our trip.
Berlin
We boarded our train in Amsterdam,
stowed our suitcases and sat back to enjoy the ride to Berlin. This took
about 8 hours, but it was very relaxing and gave us a chance to see the
country. The train became more crowded as we approached Berlin, and we
were glad we had reserved our seats. We arrived, took a cab to the hotel,
and had dinner in the hotel dining room. The next morning, we took the
UBahn into the city for a city bus tour. The tour took us all around Berlin,
and we could get off at any of about a dozen stops, wander around, and
get on another bus. Nicole was a pretty good tour guide, as she had been
to Berlin before. It was a holiday, so the shops were closed, which makes
sightseeing a lot cheaper. We stopped at a café for hot chocolate
and kuchen before resuming our sightseeing tour. We returned to the hotel,
ate at one of dozens of Turkish "gyro" shops, or donner-kebab places, and
walked the hotel neighborhood for a while. The next day we went back to
the city, this time to the zoo (although it was not the one with the manatees),
and into some of the shops which were now open. I think half the country
was in the city that day. The streets were jam packed. Nicole found a souvenir
coin for Tim in the KaDeWe, and Dan bought some stamps from Tobago with
marine mammals on them. They had some Danzig stamps, too. I thought about
buying them, but decided not to.
The next day we packed up, went to a café for breakfast, and headed to the station for the train trip to Nürnberg. By now, we were getting pretty good at this train stuff, so we found our car and our seats and watched the country change. There is still a visible difference between east and west.
Our hotel was not far from the train station, inside the "old" city, and a very modern hotel, although it was set back from the street and the reception level was on the first floor (which meant up one flight). Nice room, good breakfasts, and close to everything. We arrived just as the bi-annual market was shutting down, billed as the largest flea market in Europe, so we roamed around a bit and looked at all the wares. Nicole pointed out some of the landmarks she remembered, and we rambled about a bit and had dinner at an Irish pub.
The next morning we walked to the train station (not a problem without luggage) and took a train to Neustadt/Aisch to visit the Pitanns, the family that hosted Nicole for her first orientation month in Germany. Neustadt is a fairly well to do Bavarian village, and the Pitanns and their two children were glad to see Nicole again. After some conversation on their patio, which was limited somewhat by the fact that no one was truly bilingual, we were treated to a home cooked Sunday lunch of salad, pork roast, pasta, klosse, and plenty of gravy. Hermann spoke adequate English, but his wife, Elvira, spoke even less English than I spoke German. However, there was no doubt that she enjoyed serving us food, and that we enjoyed eating it. I think Dan's three helpings of everything spoke much more than words. Fortunately for Dan, bier and beer are interchangeable when spoken. Hermann's favorite brew was Hefeweizen, which Dan and I both enjoyed. After lunch, there was some ice cream served on the patio, with an Eirliquor topping, something we hadn't seen before. A bit rich plain, but pretty good over ice cream. Next, we were taken into the town, where we were given a tour of the highlights of Neustadt, shown the school where Nicole studied, and the local community airport where skydivers were busy packing their chutes. When we returned to the house, Elvira had coffee and two kinds of cake waiting, and, of course, a bowl of schlag -- these people could have been Jewish grandmothers, no problem. Nicole looked at me and said, "see what I had to put up with". According to her, this was no special occasion, just a normal Sunday lunch.
We returned to Nürnberg and walked around for a while, had a drink in the hotel bar and played a game of Trivial Pursuit, but it was a British edition, so we didn't know any of the answers. Next day we went on a walking tour of the old city, and walked up the hill to the Kaiserberg where we had a wonderful tour, I think. I understood about one word in ten, and Nicole served as translator. Dan was fascinated by the ceramic ovens in the rooms. After the castle, we took a streetcar to the zoo, which did have manatees, but they were very well hidden in the tapir house, which we walked by twice without entering. After questioning a keeper, Dan and Nicole hiked back up the hill to find them, and I checked out the bus stops to find the right route to the Zeppelin field. We took a bus out there, and saw the parade grounds and the half built coliseum, and then managed to find a streetcar stop so we could get back to the main station in the city. By the time we returned to the city, it was dinnertime, so we found a restaurant between the station and our hotel and had dinner. They had menus printed in about eight different languages - I guess they cater to the tourists, eh?
The next morning, we had time to do some shopping before our trains to Belrieth, so we went through the Handwerk shops and bought some Lebkuchen and some chocolate, and went to the department stores and shoe stores to find the Birkenstocks that Nicole and Jessica wanted. Much cheaper than in the states, by the way. I got a pair, too. Before leaving, Dan and I turned the ring on the top of the church tower that's not on top of the church. It means either good luck, or that you will return. Nicole had heard that it meant she would return when she turned the ring five years ago, and it worked for her.
Belrieth, Meiningen, and Erfurt:
We had two train changes to make to get to Grimmenthal, which is the town next to Belrieth. Belrieth doesn't have a train station. When we arrived, the Dieter and Karola Antler, Nicole's host family while she lived in Germany, were there to meet us. We piled into their car and were given a quick drive through Belrieth (took about two minutes) before going to their house to unpack. Die Oma (grandmother) was waiting there and was ecstatic to see "her Nicole". Of course, she had three different kinds of cake waiting - apple, plum and cherry - all delicious. We were taken to get a quick overview of Meiningen; the Antlers pointed out all the things that had changed since Nicole lived there, and we climbed to the top of a castle tower for a better look at the city. We also saw the school that Nicole attended, the theater, which is quite famous, at least in Europe, and stopped at a market that was featuring a dairy product showcase, and we sampled several cheeses made in Belrieth. Dan even milked a pretend cow. We returned to the Antlers for a barbecue dinner featuring Dieter-grilled cutlets and Thuringer bratwurst.
The next day, Karola and her daughter Nadine drove us back to Meiningen where we toured their historical and art museum. Karola did a wonderful job explaining things to Nicole who could relay the information to us. There was a special exhibit on Brahms, who lived there for a while, and more ceramic ovens for Dan. We had lunch at an "American Pizza" stand, and then returned to the house where Dieter was waiting to take us on a tour of the Thuringer Wald. First, we stopped at a small marine aquarium, as it seems to be a requirement of any travel that we stop at some sort of zoo or aquarium. Small, but well done, and there was even a manatee on a mural. We drove all through the forest, and stopped for a picnic supper. There was a resort nearby that was on the site of an old WWII SS bunker, but the tours were over for the day. We got back to Belrieth and walked through the village, and die Oma showed us her new garden and her old garden plot. Her new garden is much closer to the house, so she doesn't have to go so far up into the hills, but we saw her riding her bike back, and she's doing just fine for a woman of 78. After the garden tours, she left us, and we continued through the village to the soccer field to meet with Dieter after his team practice. There is a small restaurant/bar/ice cream parlor there, so Dan and I sampled some of the local brew while Nicole and Karola had some ice cream concoctions.
Since Karola and Dieter had to work the next day, we decided to take advantage of an extra day on our rail pass (the German crew that took over at the border when we left from Amsterdam didn't quite understand our US tickets, so they never validated the first day of our rail pass) and go to the city of Erfurt, which is the capital of Thuringen. It was supposed to be hot that day, but when we got off the train we found that nobody told Erfurt, so we had cold temperatures and cloudy skies. We walked from the train station and saw the major attractions as mapped out by Karola - the bridge with houses, the cathedral, and the marketplace. Skipped the zoo this time. We stopped for lunch at a small Bistro and warmed up. All throughout our travels, the locals would be eating ice cream, and we'd be searching out hot chocolate.
Nicole had been given some money for a wedding gift, so we looked for something that would be special, something she couldn't get easily here, and something easy to pack. We found some nice kitchen knives and decided that was probably the best way to go.
We were met by Karola at the station upon our return, and returned to find Dieter busily fixing the dinner that Nicole had requested. We had roasted rabbit with gravy, which was very good as long as you didn't think about all the cute bunnies in the hutches under the back stairs, and klosse, and some bread pudding sort of thing - made with day old bread, eggs, milk, and then baked or steamed. Can't remember the name, but it was good. Some salad from the garden to round things out. Dieter had to leave to go to a bachelor party, and Karola was going to take us to see the theater from the inside. A performance of Faust was to begin at 7:30, so we planned to get there around 7 and look around. However, the traffic into the city was terrible, and the signals were out, so we scratched that plan and Karola took us to the new hospital that had been built. She seemed to be very proud of how modern it was - at least that's the only reason we could figure that we stopped there. Nicole agreed that it was a major improvement over the hospital where Nadine had gone when she broke her ankle while Nicole was living there.
We returned and sat around the living room with everybody, and Karola kept opening more and more packages of chocolate and cookies and Eirliquor, which she served in chocolate cups. She also covered the kitchen table with food for us to take to tide us over on our train trip to the airport the next day (we were to leave the house at 8, arrive in Frankfurt at noon, and our plane was due to leave at 2). There was enough food to feed six people for two days, and she seemed surprised that we didn't take very much. They don't believe in paying train or airport prices for food they can bring along, but after all we'd been eating, skipping lunch wasn't a big deal. Nicole took some fruit and a bottle of water, but our bags were full enough.
After a goodbye at the Grimmenthal International Train Station (all of two tracks), we were on our way home. We arrived home at about 10 pm local time on Friday. Of course, the trip wasn't really over, because we left the next morning for St Petersburg for Jessica's graduation activities followed by the ceremony on Sunday.