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Epilogue

Sitting at home after our trip I’m struck by what an immense world we live in, both in time and space.  Living in the US, especially the West, we don’t get many reminders of our history. Everything is so recent. Our old towns are 150 years old (except for a few missions and middens of course). Even though 900 years is a blink of the eye in the history of man, it is sobering to touch buildings that have been standing for that long and to think about all the events that occurred in them. Then to see the variety of lifestyles and customs was astonishing, and this was just a bit of Western Europe our cultural ancestors.

 

Yet despite this vastness there are wonderful connections and coincidences. On the way home in the Airport Connection van there were 4 of us and one the two other passengers had just returned from Europe where he had stayed in Wengen at the Alpenrose a week after we had left. I do feel lucky where I am in time and place. It is good to be home, but I can’t wait to head off again.

 

P.S.  Google needs to get on the ball. “Search” is so last century. They need to develop a translator chip that will work instantaneously for old brains like mine that just won’t accept new languages.

 

I also enjoyed the trip. The Volvo felt safe and luxurious.  People were friendly, helpful and interesting. We stayed in so many visually exquisite places! It was a feast for my eyes. There was a recurring theme of cities on the water, canals, castles, vineyards, birds, birdsong, cows and mustard in bloom. And walking, up and down! Even when the landscape wasn’t breathtaking it always reminded me of somewhere…the plains of Illinois, crossing big valleys in California, visiting lush areas of Tennessee. Wengen, with the awesome Jungfrau, is another sister to Yosemite Valley.

 I would like to take a trip to Scotland, Ireland and do a little walking tour in England.  I would like those lands to speak to the far past DNA in Bob and me. I wouldn’t mind seeing China, though I wish Tibet were more accessible. And then there’s Bali and New Zealand…..

But right now, I am very grateful for my home and my supremely comfy bed.  I am happy to be back, looking forward to seeing what folks have done at the studio while I was away.  I want to hold on forever to the “ what’s happening today is exciting” feeling that happens a lot on vacation. I am jazzed to make art that helps me stay connected and experiencing my life and our world.

(Thank you, Bob. We did a good job of traveling together!)

Best, Marcy

Not So Final Note

I was planning on sending a few final notes but alas we have just disembarked from our plane at Dulles. The plane that was supposed to fly us home to SFO. The tow bar broke and they are concerned about the landing gear. So we are already delayed several hours and may be here overnight. This is after our plane from Copenhagen had an engine that wouldn’t start. So maybe it is for the best.

Glad we aren’t starting off this way and we have no more connecting flights.

“What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been”

We awoke to a sunny, quiet Aalborg and could see the elegance in the old mansion. I’m glad we got to see it in sunshine. We drove the 45 minutes from Aalborg to Frederikshavn where we boarded the ferry. It is a monstrous ship that holds 18 wheelers and cars. It has a casino and a number of restaurants. Marcy and I spent almost the entire 3 hour trip on the upper deck through wind and rain.

 

Marcy discovered an exhaust vent putting out warm air aimed right at the bench, just had to put up with a little fried herring smell in the hair. It was brilliant sitting outside and being warm during the storm.

 

We turned in the car with 4514 miles and one and a half gallons of gas left in the tank. Remarkably we made the trip without getting a scratch on the car or a back ache. We were very happy with the performance. Just as amazing our bodies performed admirably as well. Neither of us got sick and we must have walked a hundred miles. And most remarkably we spent 34 days together 24/7 and only had a few small “disagreements”.

 

The rain seems to be following us so it must be time to come home. We are spending another Volvo provided night in the Radisson in Gothenburg and after much research on the internet we chose the Källarkrogen Restaurant for our special celebratory, goodbye Europe meal. It really wasn’t such a strange trip after all. I’d write more but Marcy needs the computer to look up some places in Africa for our next trip.

Carnival in May?

We drove the length of Denmark today and saw fields of mustard and lots of rain. We see a lot of Audi Q5’s. That was on our short list of cars along with the Volvo and Jeep Grand Cherokee.

 

We were a couple of miles from our destination, a bed and breakfast in Aalborg, when I noticed someone in costume walking down the street. About a mile further on I noticed another and then another. I thought this must be quite a costume party. One guy was dressed as a zombie and was doing a great acting job, wandering all over the street. I watched him in my rear view mirror and saw him fall over a short wall and looked up just in time to see a guy dressed as a caveman fall into the bushes. I realized these guys were really drunk. There were now hundreds of kids in costume and the traffic was at a complete stop.

 

Marcy had, as usual, gotten us lodging right in the middle of things. Unfortunately this time it was right in the middle of the largest rock get together in northern Europe, their Carnival. Our B&B is a grand old mansion that is normally perfectly located next to the park and art museum. Now the air is filled with a bass beat the least music like music I have ever heard.

 

We walked to the museum in the rain and the streets were filled with soggy, drunken, costumed partiers urinating on every patch of green. I have never seen people more drunk in my life. Fortunately, the Danes don’t seem to get belligerent when drunk. Marcy toured the museum and I opted to stay outside and watch the parade of costumed revelers. We tried to get downtown, to the waterfront and had to detour a mile or so around the gated concert area. It was quite a scene. The main street was closed to traffic and people were everywhere. We ended up finding a great place for dinner and worked our way back “home” through the crowds. It is supposed to end at midnight.

Marzipan Dreams

Here are a few more photos of Quedlinburg before we get to Lübeck, Germany. Here are the 22” floor boards in our room, the patterned floor in the breakfast room, Marcy at breakfast and the hinges on our many hundred year old bedroom door. There is also a picture of one of the oldest surviving houses in Germany. Built in the 1300’s, it is in Quedlinburg. Our hotel was the Kunst Haus, Art House, and Marcy didn’t even know that when she booked it.

 

Lübeck is in northern Germany. We will spend two days here before our last run up into Denmark where we will spend one night in Aalborg and then take the ferry over to Sweden, turn in the car, spend the night in Gothenburg and fly home the next morning, volcano willing.

 

Lübeck was an independent city/state and only became part of Germany after WWII. The original settlement was started in around 800 and a few churches and government buildings still in use today date from the 1200 and 1300’s.

 

They must have been trying awfully hard to impress someone. There are a number of buildings where the top “floors” appear to be fake. There are windows but nothing behind. Like a stage set.

 

We are staying in a pension outside of the old town. It is about the cheapest place we have stayed, €62 a night with breakfast, wifi and parking. It is about a mile and a quarter to the old town.

 

Tonight, in the middle of a thunderstorm, we walked into the old town. It was built on an island. Lübeck claims marzipan was invented here during a famine in the 1400’s. (It was probably invented in Persia several hundred years before). In 1806 Johann Niederegger bought a confectioner’s store in Lübeck and started making marzipan. He added a café in the late 1800’s. Niederegger marzipan is considered the premier marzipan today. Checking out their marzipan was on Marcy’s to do list and while looking for a restaurant tonight we turned a corner and there was the Niederegger Café. So we had dinner there but we finished too late to have dessert. We were the last customers in the store. We missed the marzipan and their famous marzipan ice cream. We will try again tomorrow. The store and café reminded me of the old Blum’s in San Francisco. Marcy said it reminded her of the old Marshall Field’s Restaurant in Chicago.

 

We saw our second Woolworth’s Store here. I thought we had seen the last of them years ago but they survive in Germany.

 

On our second day in Lübeck we headed out again with rain threatening. I was wearing my short sleeved shirt as the wind was whipping up a storm and an older fellow on a bicycle yelled something like, “nicht kalt?” Which I took to mean, “aren’t you cold” I said, “Nein.” And that was a mistake because he started speaking German until I got out that nein was about the extent of my German at which time he switched to almost perfect English. (Marcy and I have come to the conclusion that it may not be a good idea to throw out our one or two words of German since they take that as a sign you can speak the language and then they continue in German like we knew what they were saying.)

 

This fellow was a pensioner on his way into town and he ended up walking with us the next mile into the old town. He told us about the town and his life. Several times he parked his bike and took us into one of the inner courtyards. These were part of the city plan as it was laid out in the 1300’s. Sort of community space shared by a few neighbors in each block.

 

He was born in Lübeck and was 8 when WWII ended. Lübeck was where they drew the line between East and West Germany. He and his mother ended up on the Soviet side. While things were in flux she told him to go to the West. She couldn’t go but she thought no one would bother a child. So he escaped to the West at 8. He ended up traveling the world as a medical equipment salesman and had lived in England and Australia for a time but returned to Lübeck to retire. I tried to buy him a cup of coffee but he wouldn’t accept.

 

Since Lübeck is built on an island we decided to take a boat tour of the city. The tour was a bit of a bust. They offered no English but it just didn’t have a great itinerary. The Swedes have it figured out. Their tour boats come with headphones and 13 languages. The Germans had a loudspeaker. On a good note the rain held off until 30 seconds before we docked.

 

During the downpour we spent time exploring new food concepts. The first one is a bakery where it is all self serve. Even the coffee drinks are made with a machine that grinds the coffee, adds the chocolate, and pours the drink all at the customers command. Just push a button with the type of drink and the size. Once you’ve gathered your items you go to the cashier.

 

After leaving there we discovered a French fry stand called a Pomme Point. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because potatoes are kartoffel in German. I guess they wanted to seem exotic or maybe it is a French chain. It was a simple idea, French fries with a variety of sauces- in addition to ketchup, they had mustard, bbq sauce, chili sauce, cheese sauce and we had curry crème. They were very good.

 

After our fries we headed off to the Schiffer Geselschaft building. It was built in the 1500’s as a place for merchants to hook up with ship captains. If a ship was sailing soon the captain would sit at a table and merchants would come up and negotiate deals. The building now houses a restaurant but maintains the historic setup inside. Now customers sit at the long tables where shipping deals were made 500 years ago.

 

Why are German words so long? I count 34 letters in this word in a business name.

 

Here is the smallest food stand I have ever seen. There wasn’t even enough room for the guy to sit down. He stood next to his crepe grill and that was it.

 

I see a few Fords here that they don’t sell in the US. Here is a small sports car.

 

We then headed back to Niedereggers for the marzipan and marzipan ice cream. The ice cream was a bit of a disappointment, but the marzipan and the experience weren’t. This time we sat upstairs and it was quite a scene. It is definitely the busiest place in town. So we just watched the people come and go until it was time for dinner.

 

We finished off the evening with a shared dish at the Ratskellar Restaurant below the fantastic city government building that dates from 1200 to 1500. You can see some of the elaborate decorations in the photos.

 

Now we are resting and starting to think about home.

Spargle and Flammenkuchen

We left our little spot on the Mosel today for the “far east”. That is what our hotelier said when we told him we were going to Quedlinburg which is in what used to be East Germany.

 

I was curious to see if I could notice a difference between what was East Germany and the part we had been in which had been West Germany. It does seem less tended and less prosperous than the other parts of Germany we have seen. I did notice porta potties at one rest stop whereas the ones we have used before have all been well equipped with actual buildings.

 

Quedlinburg was started in the 800’s and currently has buildings built over the last 800 years. There is one building that is one of the oldest in Germany built in the 1300’s. Quedlinburg was not damaged during WWII and is considered one of the best preserved medieval and renaissance towns in Europe.

We went to the tourist information center to see if there were any tours of the town in English. None are offered, only German tours. Another town with no English menus and off the normal American’s itinerary.

 

We are staying in a house built in the 1700’s. We have a very large room with high ceilings and large windows on two and a half sides. (We have a corner window.) And the boards in the floors are about 22” wide.

 

We had dinner tonight in a restaurant called Himmel & Hölle (Heaven & Hell). We had spargle (white asparagus) soup and Flammenkuchen, an Alsacian, specialty which is an ultra thin crusted pizza like item. They generally come without tomato sauce and the crust is thinner and crisper than the normal pizza. We also had a dark wheat beer which I have never seen before. Then we dropped by the local brewery, Luppe, two doors down from our B & B. It is a relative youngster in town having been started in 1876. We had a Schwarzbier and an apflestrudel. Not as bad of a combination as you might think. The Germans have a different glass for every beer.

 

Even though there are no English menus or point of interest signs American influences are everywhere throughout Europe. Tonight during dinner there was music by Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and others from the 40’s and 50’s. The waitress didn’t speak English but we felt right at home with the music. Coke and Fanta is everywhere, but nary a can of Pepsi will be found. Every third t-shirt with writing on it has an American company or product. A large percentage of the rock songs on the radio are by American singers. And McDonalds has remarkable penetration.

 

I was checking out the things for sale in the gas station and found they were selling litres (a little more than a quart) of 40 weight oil for 28 Euros, which is $42.

 

 

The Zollhaus

We started the day in Bavaria and are zigzagging our way across Germany on the final leg of our marathon. We stopped at a bakery in a small town along the way and found this* cigarette machine. It requires that you swipe your driver’s license to verify your age. *see photo

 

We are into our second day in Beilstein, Germany, a little village on the Mosel River almost on the opposite side of the country from Bavaria. It is definitely not on the British/American tourist route. (Except for a mention by Rick Steves..) We just heard our first English spoken this afternoon by someone other than our hotelier. There are many, many German tourists. And most are on bicycles. It gets super busy in October when every little town along the Mosel has a wine fest.

 

Marcy painted today while I climbed to the castle ruins above town. She sat by the river and was the star attraction. I got a lot of “schön”from the other tourists, think I means nice. Had fun. And admitted quite often that the only language I speak is English.  The castle was started in the 1200’s and built out over the next 200 years then destroyed by the French in 1689.

 

We are staying in the old tollhouse, alta zollhaus in German, built in 1634. We have a bright and cheery room (little stenciled roses surround the top of the walls) about 50 feet from the river. The hotel also has a restaurant and some of the best river view tables in town.

 

There are several hotels in town run by the Lipmann family. The daughter and her boyfriend work in the zollhaus. They seem to be in their early 20’s. We are the only guests in the hotel now so we are getting a lot of attention. I think there are 8 rooms here.

 

The old paintings around the hotel show boats resting on a sandy beach at river’s edge. Unfortunately, they have put in a small dam with a lock just down river to keep the river higher and more navigable for larger boats. This has destroyed the beaches and wonderful riparian zone along the river. It is still a beautiful river though. We walked along it last night to the next village, about 2 kilometers away. They also have a tiny little ferry/barge that crosses the river every hour or so. It runs along a cable to keep it from being swept down river.

 

The region is famous for white wines, both dry and sweet. We had a bottle of excellent, dry Riesling in our room and had a sweet Riesling at dinner last night. We went to the Lipmann wine cellar for a tasting of six different local wines, all Rieslings. They were so much simpler than the wines I am used to. I think I prefer a more complex wine but I did enjoy them. We had a liquor made locally from peaches. It was light, sweet and flavorful.

 

We are downloading the third in the Archer series set in 14^th century France. I know we are in Germany now but it is close enough. You do get a flavor of the time.

 

I got an unexpected surprise while climbing to the top of the castle keep, built in 1268. On a ledge outside one of the windows, up about 100 feet was a falcon’s nest with 4 baby falcons in it. Not much of a nest, more of a ledge. The babies and I were staring at each other separated by a thin pane of glass. That was the carrot held out to get Marcy to climb some more stairs as I revisited the castle with her in tow. We waited around for the mother falcon but she never showed up.

 

Being in the castle keep provokes so many thoughts. The keep is where the castle owner and family make their last stand. It is generally all that is between you and death if you are male, or rape and possible death if you are female or so it says in our audio book. I imagine it was close to that. They didn’t spend all that time and treasure to build these castles to satisfy their ego, at least not until the 18^th century and after.

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

Things are not always what they seem. Those wonderful cows with bells kept Marcy from getting a good nights sleep. They seemed to stay up late and get up early. Even after all that Marcy still went out early to take many cow photos. She doesn’t hold a grudge.

 

Our plan was to visit Neuschwanstein, Ludwig’s fairy tale castle. You buy your ticket at the bottom of the hill and then hike or take a bus to the castle. We met with the dentist/hotelier before leaving this morning and got a tip on a much better path to the castle than the one on the tourist maps. The normal way up is with hordes of people up the front of the mountain. The path we took was an exciting hike up the back of the mountain alongside a large, mountain stream with an abundance of waterfalls. There was a part where you had to walk along a metal grate on the side of the cliff. On a sandy beach people had built hundreds of cairns. It was a great tip.

 

The castle was elaborately designed not as a fortress but more as a fantasy come to life. The king was a big fan of Wagner and much of the décor is related to Wagner’s operas. One of the first castle designers hired by the king was a scene painter for theater. I’m sure the architect and engineers just loved translating his drawings into something that could be built. I guess better to spend your money on castles than war. The castle was under construction for more than 20 years and hundreds of craftsmen were working on it. There were 14 wood carvers working on his bedroom alone for 4 years. I was surprised to hear that the windows were all original and were double pane windows, in the 1870’s that was cutting edge. He also had central heat.

 

It was never completely finished because the king died during construction. He had received a letter claiming he was not fit to remain king because he was mentally ill. He went to Munich to protest and the next day he and his psychiatrist were found dead. He only spent 107 nights in his castle. He was 40 when he died.

 

During the visit we had a great storm with rain, thunder and lightning. It came in quickly. It was warm and sunny on our hike up and we didn’t expect a storm. Fortunately it was after our hike up and while we were waiting for our tour to begin. Marcy enjoyed the downpour while everyone else and I took cover. It stopped raining just long enough for us to get back to the car. These were some of the blackest skies I have ever seen.

 

There were paragliders sailing off the cliffs around the castle. I wonder what happens to a paraglider if he gets caught in a thunderstorm.

 

After the castle tour we went in search of dinner. We were hoping to find something simple like pizza to bring back to the hotel to have with some of our inexpensive wine. Instead I found a restaurant with a menu featuring Bavarian specialties so we changed our plans. I had grilled sausages and sauerkraut and Marcy had roasted pork knuckle with dumpling (one giant dumpling) and sauerkraut. Not a meal for our vegetarian friends. We both had a pint, or at least the metric version, of good German beer. And we found the cheapest gelato yet at one Euro a scoop.

Some Things Never Change

Here are a few photos from the train as we leave Wengen. The great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather started a hotel in Wengen in 1880. Welcoming guests must be in the genes now. It was sad to leave but now to King Ludwig’s castles in Germany.

 

I’m struck by how prosperous the farms seem in southern Germany. All the buildings are in great shape and many of the barns have solar panels on the roof.

 

Some things never change. I found myself in a line of cars behind a Volkswagen bus going uphill and then had the bus fly past me going downhill and I was doing 80mph. I did test the car again and got up to 120mph. That seems to be the upper limit.

 

We finally found our hotel at 6pm after some GPS failures and it seemed like all the main doors were locked. One door was open and it said “Hotel” above the door but seemed to be the door to a dental office. Marcy and I had laughed at the description of the hotel online where it said, “and there is a dental practice next door.” With a little exploration we found a fellow working in the dental lab. Turns out he owns the hotel. After explaining that the advertised whirlpool was only available in winter he showed us our room. It seems nice enough, there is some road noise but there are also cows with mountain bells on across the way so we hear those off and on. The room does have a mirror over the bed, go figure. The owner is charming but his choice of artwork creeps me out, lots of female nudes in provocative poses.  I shared a moment with another wife at breakfast, no words, but a rolling of eyes and face-making that assured me that I wasn’t the only one not responding well to the owner’s fantasy hotel. Bob doesn’t seem to mind…M.

 

The proprietor told us the ins and outs of visiting King Ludwig’s Castle and then insisted we go see the Falkenstein Castle. He checked that we had rain gear when we left and then said we could go when we answered in the affirmative. So we dutifully got back in the car and drove 10 minutes to see this ruin. It was going to be Ludwig’s last castle but he ran out of money before he could do much. There is a one lane road to the top and a magnificent view. Some of the ruins are from 1268. The building was remodeled in the 1500’s and again in the 1800’s when Ludwig acquired it.

 

Rain was threatening and I was checking out a copper cable strung around the top of the walls. Then I realized this was the lightning rod, duh. Marcy thought it was a good time to howl but I didn’t see the moon. Tomorrow we hope to see Ludwig’s finished castle, Neuschwanstein.

 

There is a restaurant about 100 feet below the ruins. So we ended up having dinner there. I had a “Poacher’s Plate” with wild boar, venison and goat with spatzle (sorry no umlauts) and white asparagus. Marcy had salad with goat cheese and strawberries.

 

There is also a picture of a black banana slug for those who are into banana slugs. Marcy asked, “How do you make a black banana slug? Answer: Put it in the refrigerator.”