We got back two nights ago from the 3 week tour of Europe and we had a great time. We regret not being able to update our blog as often as we would've liked during the trip, but free highspeed wireless internet is about as rare as hen's teeth in Europe. Or rather, it's rare at campgrounds; if I had risked taken my computer with me out on the town then maybe I could've written. But no bother, it just means that we have better stories to tell when we get back. Right now we're in the process of repacking all of the stuff that we brought, in addition to a treasure trove of goodies, so it's a bit hectic and tomorrow we're meeting up with the family for some last pictures and some "bier zeit." Though we're ready to come home and get back to our real life, I'm pretty sad about having to leave. This has been one heck of a trip, and I have 3000 pictures to prove it. Yes, everyone has to sit through all the pictures.
So on this trip, we managed to visit 6 countries: Germany, Czech Republic, France, Great Britain, Belgium and we drove through about 10 miles of the Netherlands so that counts too. By unanimous decision, Belgium was the favorite place that we visited and without a doubt is the best kept secret in travel. I didn't manage to visit any breweries in Belgium as they are all on banker's hours and are open at weird times. Also, they don't give many tours as they all jealously guard their advanced brewing techniques or something like that. Actually, many of them are run by monks so they don't have a lot of time to give tours, between the 30 times a day they have to pray a day and making beer. But... Pe and Axel secretly arranged for a private tour at a local brewery this morning near their garden. It is the smallest brewery in Saxony, and it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. A brewmaster, actually, THE brewmaster, took us on a personal tour all through the brewery and showed us all the operation and how they make beer and all of the equipment and ingredients and everything. He spends 10-12 hours every day brewing the beer there, and it is without question the best tasting Pilsner beer I have ever had in my life. It was awesome, I got to talk beer talk with him, thanks to translator Anne, and we hung out for a while and drank a couple of cold (in a German sense) ones with him. And when my German gets better I can come back and help out in there over the summer, no seriously, he said I could. Anyway, we ended up leaving with a few beers and a beer mug and he gave me some labels and stuff. So anyway, Belgian beer is no longer my favorite, that guy's beer is my favorite.
Well, I think it's pretty much impossible to write about everything we did given the amount of time we have left here in Germany. I will write a comprehensive recap of our events and we'll eventually post all of our pictures on-line. Though, as I said, I alone took over 3000 pictures, and I'm sure Anne has a few hundred, not to mention all of the pictures I have on the computer that Pe took. But we'll be seeing everyone soon anyway, so we can personally share with you everything we've done.
As far as the rest of the trip goes... we're leaving Germany on Saturday morning (August 11th) and we'll be arriving in St. Louis on Sunday evening (the 12th, duh.) So I'll be probably pretty hungover for our early morning trek into Berlin. We'll be staying in St. Louis for a few days, and then come back to Kansas on Tuesday the 14th, if we survive the jet lag. Poor little Anne has a meeting on Wednesday morning while I play with the kitties and my long neglected Destroyer. Then school starts, I think we both have class on Friday. Then in about 2 weeks, I start teaching again, and summer then officially ends. But I think I'll still be working for the German department so I can keep up all of the great German that I've learned while I was here. I'm fluent at ordering bread and meat.
Well, I guess that's about it for now. In a few days we'll be seeing all of our English speaking friends and family, so that'll make another 23 hour trip worth while.
Tchuss
Thursday, August 9
Tuesday, July 17
Last Update before the trip
Ok, this here is the last update for the next three weeks - if we won't find internet anywhere.
Everything is packed and ready to go. Tomorow we will get the caravan and load everything in it and on early Thursday morning we will leave. The first stop will be Ingolstadt, Bavaria. There we will visit some distant family and go to the Audi Factory, including tour. From there it will go to France. We will stay at a campground north of Paris for 5 nights and we will explore the area from there. After France we plan on 4-6 days in Britain and than back to the continent and towards Belgium. I will try to update as much as possible, but I cannot pronise anything.
Since we are back from our study tour we havent really done anything. We visited my grandparents on my Dads side on Sunday and we did a lot of laundry and tonight we went to Oma and Opa for barbecue and a nice time. it is very hot since Sunday and we had over a hundred degrees yesterday. Today it was a bit cooler, just 97° so we went swimming at a nearby lake to cool down a bit. Ted and I don't mind the heat that much, but the average german isn't used to that so everybody is suffering and complaining. The only problem are the missing A/C in the apartment and for next week in the caravan.
Ok, as you can see on my very bad English today, I am tired and I have to go to bed. I try to write as many postcards as possible and keep everybody up to date.
Everything is packed and ready to go. Tomorow we will get the caravan and load everything in it and on early Thursday morning we will leave. The first stop will be Ingolstadt, Bavaria. There we will visit some distant family and go to the Audi Factory, including tour. From there it will go to France. We will stay at a campground north of Paris for 5 nights and we will explore the area from there. After France we plan on 4-6 days in Britain and than back to the continent and towards Belgium. I will try to update as much as possible, but I cannot pronise anything.
Since we are back from our study tour we havent really done anything. We visited my grandparents on my Dads side on Sunday and we did a lot of laundry and tonight we went to Oma and Opa for barbecue and a nice time. it is very hot since Sunday and we had over a hundred degrees yesterday. Today it was a bit cooler, just 97° so we went swimming at a nearby lake to cool down a bit. Ted and I don't mind the heat that much, but the average german isn't used to that so everybody is suffering and complaining. The only problem are the missing A/C in the apartment and for next week in the caravan.
Ok, as you can see on my very bad English today, I am tired and I have to go to bed. I try to write as many postcards as possible and keep everybody up to date.
Saturday, July 7
Another Update
Hey everyone it's another update. Anne and I went out today and walked around Berlin a bit. We finally got to go to the zoo and see Knut the little polar bear, albeit in the pouring rain, but we did it nonetheless. It was very strange weather out, torrential rain one minute, then sun, then rain, then wind, then rain, then sun, repeat, repeat, repeat ad nauseum. Berlin has a very nice zoo, and there was plenty to see besides Knut, such as baby leopards and baby sun bears and baby orangutangs and all kinds of babies. They have a very nice nocturnal animal display unlike anything else I've ever seen in my life, so people can see things like aardvarks and bats up and about during the day; that was worth the price of admission. We got to see the feeding of the sea lions too which was great. We went out for dinner and had some Lebanese food which was delicious. The weather has been pretty sucky for the most part, but at least our high temperature has been lower than the low temperature in Kansas. I guess that's pretty much it for right now since I posted yesterday. I still won't have the cable for my camera for about a week so I'm still sorry but no new pictures. Tomorrow Anne and I will be traveling to Kiel in the north of Germany. I'm unsure whether or not we'll have internet available where we're going so this may be the last update for about another week.
Friday, July 6
Update finally
Braunschweig- Ironically they don’t know what Braunschweiger is.
I’m writing this entry from Braunschweig, so it’ll be uploaded once we get back to Hoyerswerda, or someplace else with a high-speed internet connection.
Once again it’s been a little while since the last entry. We had a few days to waste in Hoyerswerda before coming to Braunschweig, giving some time to recover from the gout attack. We had our party out in the garden on that last weekend in June, and it was pretty much a roaringly drunken good time. It was a lot of work, frying up a roost full of chicken and frying up several jars of pickles, but everyone seemed to like the deep-fried American style food. It’s amazing to me that Germans don’t really fry chicken. And they don’t have hot wings either. And of course, they’ve never heard of fried pickles, though not many people have outside of Lawrence, Kansas. They do have Kentucky Fried Chicken here, but it’s just not all that popular in Germany; KFC doesn’t really fit into the whole scheme of things. Fast food is something on a roll, whether it’s a wiener, schnitzel, herring or a hamburger. You can’t put a chicken leg on a roll. So chicken is sit down food, but KFC isn’t a sit-down kind of place. Germans need a bar that serves fried chicken. And hot wings. Don’t tell Hooters, it’s my idea.
Hooters wouldn’t work in Germany either. First, Germans don’t tip waiters. So the whole concept of scantily clothed girls allowing some drunken guy with wing sauce smeared all over his face to clumsily grope their scantily covered asses for an inordinately huge tip is pretty much out of the question. Second, you see naked titties during prime-time T.V. in commercials, so why go to Hooters and pay twice what you should for seriously crappy wings and the pleasure of seeing titties covered in a t-shirt that would be too small even for a starving Somalian? Third, they don’t have much Meth in Germany, and Meth is the primary cause in the development of Hooters girls. Fourth and finally, Germans have a very weird sense of theme restaurants. I mean, if you say Hooters in Germany, they’d probably be expecting a place at which chicken wings are served up by a waiter dressed like an owl pantomiming the regurgitation of said chicken wings onto your plate. Oh, you want ranch dressing? He’ll squat over your plate and lift his tail feathers to dispense that. Germans like crazy stuff. You all think I’m kidding? There’s a restaurant in Berlin at which they serve wieners in bedpans and beer in urine specimen bottles. That restaurant is the most popular tourist attraction in Berlin. Hmm, maybe my version of Hooters isn’t such a bad idea.
Okay, so the whole point of all of this is that I think Germany is ready for hot wings. They already have the beer. The thing is Germans just don’t fry up that much stuff, so it’s not much of a surprise that they don’t make fried chicken at home. Well, they probably will now.
The party went very well, Oma and Opa brought their friend Irena to the party. Irena is an 80 year old German professor from Ukraine that Oma met during her latest stint at the hospita. Irena loves Anne and me. Oma and Opa brought Anne and me Triominos, because we had such a good time playing it with them during one of our dinners at their garden. I spoke a lot of English with Pe and Axel’s neighbors, Frank and Margarite, who incidentally just got married a few weeks ago. They’re chemists, so we didn’t talk about chemistry at all. We talked about brewing beer and spices I think, I can’t remember much from that day, between the whiskey and the pills. Anyway, Frank and his wife have sheep, BOY sheep, which they keep during spring and summer in the field next to their house. . Their names are Franz and Fritz. The sheep do a very good job at keeping the grass short. In the fall, the sheep become kebobs and chops, yum.
Besides Frank, Margarite, Oma, Opa, Irena, Pe, Axel, Anne and myself, those in attendance at the party were Holm (unfortunately without Sandra, but that’s okay, we understand,) Stefan, Kirsten, Ronnie, Helga, Torsten, Bea, Wenke, Vivi, Vivi’s boyfriend Frank, Marja, and Jenny.
Braunschweig-
I am trying to figure out why no one has ever said anything about Braunschweig before. This is one of the most interesting and friendly cities that I’ve been to in Germany. It’s one of those places that you have to come to in order to experience it, I can’t really write enough to do justice. First, we’re staying here in a guest room at the Georg Eckert institute, where they have a huge textbook library. It’s the cheapest place to stay in Germany and very nice. Second, the people at the institute are actually friendly. I was looking for Anne the other day, and all I did was say her name to a librarian, and the librarian smiled, (yes, the librarian smiled) and she took me up to Anne personally. And she said something about it was nice that Americans would come here or something. Okay, and then I went to Starbucks, and I had to talk to all the people behind the counter for about 20 minutes because I’m American, and they just wanted to talk. People actually wanting to help in stores, people being friendly in restaurants, I even had some old guy wanting to give me a tour of the city yesterday. Everyone is very patient when I try to speak German and are very encouraging. It’s also a very international sort of town; there are lots of people here from all over the world. I guess that would help explain why we had the best Döner in the world here in Braunschweig. Besides the very friendly people, there are all kinds of historical buildings, churches, museums and that sort. Every town in Germany has old buildings and museums. Braunschweig also has to have more statues and fountains per square inch than any city in Europe. Of particular interest is the nice statue of kitty cats, as a tribute to a street in Braunschweig that was the favorite of kitties for centuries.
Fourth of July in Braunschweig wasn’t very interesting, except that it was about 65 degrees and intermittently rainy. I don’t remember many Fourth of Julys at which I wasn’t sweating my butt off and waking up the next morning without blisters and charring on my fingers. Instead, I spent the day walking around town, and Anne came along with me after she finished doing her research for the day. It was Fourth of July, and I was walking around in jeans and a sweatshirt, gotta love Germany.
I’m not sure what the plans are for this weekend. We may be heading to Berlin to stay with Holm for the weekend, or we may be heading straight up to Kiel. We have to be out of here on Friday, so we’ll be definitely going somewhere. The weird thing is that by the time we get to where we’re going, then we’ll know where we were going, so there’s not much of a point of writing what I’m writing right now as I’ll be putting it in the blog once we get to where we’re going and therefore I will have known where we were going when I publish this. See, it’s like I’m pretending I don’t know where we’re going once I’ve published this, but as of right now, while I’m writing this, I don’t know where we’re going. Anyway, Kiel is way up north near Denmark. I will probably head up north to Denmark just so I can say that I’ve been to Denmark. Yeah, just like I’ll head to Poland just to say that I’ve been to Poland. I’ve never been to Poland. Pe and Axel are too afraid that I’ll stop at a red light and the Poles will steal the car. Russian car thieves have to steal 2 cars at a time in Germany, that way they’ll still have a car left when they get through Poland. It’s sort of like East St. Louis, but not as nice, from what I’ve heard.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m going to head out and see what kind of interesting stuff I can see that I may have missed yesterday. Here’s some GPS coordinates so people can look us up on Google Earth to see where we’ve been.
Braunschweig Rathaus- N 52°15.850’, E 10°31.502’
Braunschweig Mall (has the façade of an old castle as the front, really cool) -
N 52°15.801’, E 10°31.627’
Crazy House (you have to see the pictures)- N 52°15.850’, E 10°31.502’
Georg Eckert Institut (Where we’re staying) - N 52°16.088’, E 10°30.634’
Unfortunately, I forgot the cable to the camera, so everyone is going to have to wait for new photos, sorry about that.
I’m writing this entry from Braunschweig, so it’ll be uploaded once we get back to Hoyerswerda, or someplace else with a high-speed internet connection.
Once again it’s been a little while since the last entry. We had a few days to waste in Hoyerswerda before coming to Braunschweig, giving some time to recover from the gout attack. We had our party out in the garden on that last weekend in June, and it was pretty much a roaringly drunken good time. It was a lot of work, frying up a roost full of chicken and frying up several jars of pickles, but everyone seemed to like the deep-fried American style food. It’s amazing to me that Germans don’t really fry chicken. And they don’t have hot wings either. And of course, they’ve never heard of fried pickles, though not many people have outside of Lawrence, Kansas. They do have Kentucky Fried Chicken here, but it’s just not all that popular in Germany; KFC doesn’t really fit into the whole scheme of things. Fast food is something on a roll, whether it’s a wiener, schnitzel, herring or a hamburger. You can’t put a chicken leg on a roll. So chicken is sit down food, but KFC isn’t a sit-down kind of place. Germans need a bar that serves fried chicken. And hot wings. Don’t tell Hooters, it’s my idea.
Hooters wouldn’t work in Germany either. First, Germans don’t tip waiters. So the whole concept of scantily clothed girls allowing some drunken guy with wing sauce smeared all over his face to clumsily grope their scantily covered asses for an inordinately huge tip is pretty much out of the question. Second, you see naked titties during prime-time T.V. in commercials, so why go to Hooters and pay twice what you should for seriously crappy wings and the pleasure of seeing titties covered in a t-shirt that would be too small even for a starving Somalian? Third, they don’t have much Meth in Germany, and Meth is the primary cause in the development of Hooters girls. Fourth and finally, Germans have a very weird sense of theme restaurants. I mean, if you say Hooters in Germany, they’d probably be expecting a place at which chicken wings are served up by a waiter dressed like an owl pantomiming the regurgitation of said chicken wings onto your plate. Oh, you want ranch dressing? He’ll squat over your plate and lift his tail feathers to dispense that. Germans like crazy stuff. You all think I’m kidding? There’s a restaurant in Berlin at which they serve wieners in bedpans and beer in urine specimen bottles. That restaurant is the most popular tourist attraction in Berlin. Hmm, maybe my version of Hooters isn’t such a bad idea.
Okay, so the whole point of all of this is that I think Germany is ready for hot wings. They already have the beer. The thing is Germans just don’t fry up that much stuff, so it’s not much of a surprise that they don’t make fried chicken at home. Well, they probably will now.
The party went very well, Oma and Opa brought their friend Irena to the party. Irena is an 80 year old German professor from Ukraine that Oma met during her latest stint at the hospita. Irena loves Anne and me. Oma and Opa brought Anne and me Triominos, because we had such a good time playing it with them during one of our dinners at their garden. I spoke a lot of English with Pe and Axel’s neighbors, Frank and Margarite, who incidentally just got married a few weeks ago. They’re chemists, so we didn’t talk about chemistry at all. We talked about brewing beer and spices I think, I can’t remember much from that day, between the whiskey and the pills. Anyway, Frank and his wife have sheep, BOY sheep, which they keep during spring and summer in the field next to their house. . Their names are Franz and Fritz. The sheep do a very good job at keeping the grass short. In the fall, the sheep become kebobs and chops, yum.
Besides Frank, Margarite, Oma, Opa, Irena, Pe, Axel, Anne and myself, those in attendance at the party were Holm (unfortunately without Sandra, but that’s okay, we understand,) Stefan, Kirsten, Ronnie, Helga, Torsten, Bea, Wenke, Vivi, Vivi’s boyfriend Frank, Marja, and Jenny.
Braunschweig-
I am trying to figure out why no one has ever said anything about Braunschweig before. This is one of the most interesting and friendly cities that I’ve been to in Germany. It’s one of those places that you have to come to in order to experience it, I can’t really write enough to do justice. First, we’re staying here in a guest room at the Georg Eckert institute, where they have a huge textbook library. It’s the cheapest place to stay in Germany and very nice. Second, the people at the institute are actually friendly. I was looking for Anne the other day, and all I did was say her name to a librarian, and the librarian smiled, (yes, the librarian smiled) and she took me up to Anne personally. And she said something about it was nice that Americans would come here or something. Okay, and then I went to Starbucks, and I had to talk to all the people behind the counter for about 20 minutes because I’m American, and they just wanted to talk. People actually wanting to help in stores, people being friendly in restaurants, I even had some old guy wanting to give me a tour of the city yesterday. Everyone is very patient when I try to speak German and are very encouraging. It’s also a very international sort of town; there are lots of people here from all over the world. I guess that would help explain why we had the best Döner in the world here in Braunschweig. Besides the very friendly people, there are all kinds of historical buildings, churches, museums and that sort. Every town in Germany has old buildings and museums. Braunschweig also has to have more statues and fountains per square inch than any city in Europe. Of particular interest is the nice statue of kitty cats, as a tribute to a street in Braunschweig that was the favorite of kitties for centuries.
Fourth of July in Braunschweig wasn’t very interesting, except that it was about 65 degrees and intermittently rainy. I don’t remember many Fourth of Julys at which I wasn’t sweating my butt off and waking up the next morning without blisters and charring on my fingers. Instead, I spent the day walking around town, and Anne came along with me after she finished doing her research for the day. It was Fourth of July, and I was walking around in jeans and a sweatshirt, gotta love Germany.
I’m not sure what the plans are for this weekend. We may be heading to Berlin to stay with Holm for the weekend, or we may be heading straight up to Kiel. We have to be out of here on Friday, so we’ll be definitely going somewhere. The weird thing is that by the time we get to where we’re going, then we’ll know where we were going, so there’s not much of a point of writing what I’m writing right now as I’ll be putting it in the blog once we get to where we’re going and therefore I will have known where we were going when I publish this. See, it’s like I’m pretending I don’t know where we’re going once I’ve published this, but as of right now, while I’m writing this, I don’t know where we’re going. Anyway, Kiel is way up north near Denmark. I will probably head up north to Denmark just so I can say that I’ve been to Denmark. Yeah, just like I’ll head to Poland just to say that I’ve been to Poland. I’ve never been to Poland. Pe and Axel are too afraid that I’ll stop at a red light and the Poles will steal the car. Russian car thieves have to steal 2 cars at a time in Germany, that way they’ll still have a car left when they get through Poland. It’s sort of like East St. Louis, but not as nice, from what I’ve heard.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m going to head out and see what kind of interesting stuff I can see that I may have missed yesterday. Here’s some GPS coordinates so people can look us up on Google Earth to see where we’ve been.
Braunschweig Rathaus- N 52°15.850’, E 10°31.502’
Braunschweig Mall (has the façade of an old castle as the front, really cool) -
N 52°15.801’, E 10°31.627’
Crazy House (you have to see the pictures)- N 52°15.850’, E 10°31.502’
Georg Eckert Institut (Where we’re staying) - N 52°16.088’, E 10°30.634’
Unfortunately, I forgot the cable to the camera, so everyone is going to have to wait for new photos, sorry about that.
Monday, June 25
Walking around
Well, the last couple posts have sort of been filler. There's not much one can do when they're crippled. The doctor hasn't gotten back to us yet on what was up with my knee, though it's feeling much better now. A couple days ago Anne and I went to Bautzen which is a cool old town about 18 miles from Hoyerswerda, and it's where I would live if I had to live in Germany. We had a pretty good dinner there, and we walked around and saw all the old buildings and stuff. Torsten had his birthday, so we went over to their place and had dinner and hung out a bit. Everyone seems to be doing pretty good. We also went over to Oma and Opa's to hang out and have dinner. They have a really cool garden house with a nice little lake near by, though we didn't think to take our swimsuits. It seems that swimsuits are, though officially required at that lake, optional. Then yesterday we went with Pe and Axel to the Czech republic to buy groceries for the big party next weekend, the 'Anne and Ted are in Germany' extravaganza. We're doing an American theme with hamburgers, hotdogs, potato chips, fried chicken and lots and lots of beer. We're also trying to find something that will be a good substitute for Margarita mix since it's unavailable in Germany. It was originally supposed to be a fourth of July party, but there's a wedding somewhere that weekend so we had to move it a bit ahead. I also picked up a tasty bottle of Absinthe in the Czech Republic though I've yet to meet any green fairies. Anne's making arrangements for our next round of trips for information gathering. Next week we're heading up to Kiel which is close to Denmark and heading over to Braunshweig which is home to the famously disgusting meat spread. She loves that stuff, but she also loves raw pork. There's a guest house up there where we can stay for cheap so that'll be very nice, and there's a sale on train tickets too!!!
Right now it's actually horribly hot and humid, just like Kansas, and there's a big thunderstorm rolling in. It seems like it rains here a lot, which would explain all the really nice gardens we see. Pe and Axel's garden has been growing like crazy and now looks like something out of the Amazon.
I've started reading all the Harry Potter books so I can be caught up when the last one comes out. I've only previously made it through the first two or three so I've got a bit of reading to do.
I'm expecting that we'll have more interesting stuff to write about if things go as planned for the next few weeks. Just a couple more weeks of research, then the big trip with Pe and Axel. We had to decide, because of our detour to Britain, on whether to visit Belgium or Amsterdam; this was a very hard choice but we have decided on Belgium. This will also guarantee that we will spend the 36 seconds needed to drive across Luxembourg. Anyway, it seems like everyone goes to Amsterdam, who the hell goes to Belgium? And it's the Mecca of beer, which had a lot to do with the decision, so Belgium it is. And out of our disdain for Brussels Sprouts, we will be boycotting Brussels on this trip out of protest; it is a protest against the forcing of every child of the world to sit for extended periods of time at the dinner table staring at those little green globes of Jolly Green Giant poop. No one like Brussels sprouts, so Brussels, you can go to hell, we hate you.
Right now it's actually horribly hot and humid, just like Kansas, and there's a big thunderstorm rolling in. It seems like it rains here a lot, which would explain all the really nice gardens we see. Pe and Axel's garden has been growing like crazy and now looks like something out of the Amazon.
I've started reading all the Harry Potter books so I can be caught up when the last one comes out. I've only previously made it through the first two or three so I've got a bit of reading to do.
I'm expecting that we'll have more interesting stuff to write about if things go as planned for the next few weeks. Just a couple more weeks of research, then the big trip with Pe and Axel. We had to decide, because of our detour to Britain, on whether to visit Belgium or Amsterdam; this was a very hard choice but we have decided on Belgium. This will also guarantee that we will spend the 36 seconds needed to drive across Luxembourg. Anyway, it seems like everyone goes to Amsterdam, who the hell goes to Belgium? And it's the Mecca of beer, which had a lot to do with the decision, so Belgium it is. And out of our disdain for Brussels Sprouts, we will be boycotting Brussels on this trip out of protest; it is a protest against the forcing of every child of the world to sit for extended periods of time at the dinner table staring at those little green globes of Jolly Green Giant poop. No one like Brussels sprouts, so Brussels, you can go to hell, we hate you.
Friday, June 22
Wednesday, June 20
Meow
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