Köln: day 1

Last weekend was a long weekend for Morgan so we decided to do an overnight trip somewhere and Priceline ended up having a good deal on a hotel in Cologne.. so Cologne it was! We headed down there on Friday morning (it is about a 2 hour drive) and when we arrived we left our car in the parking deck at our hotel (the Maritim). Our hotel was right on the water, but since we did the cheapest room and booked through Priceline, we had a view of the atrium rather than the Rheine. We walked along the river towards our first stop, the Romano-Germanic Museum an archaeological museum in Cologne.

Day 1:

–       Romano-Germanic Museum- It has a large collection of Roman artifacts from the Roman settlement of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, on which modern Cologne is built. The museum protects the original site of a 3rd century Roman town villa, from which a large Dionysus mosaic remains in its original place in the basement (they found it in 1941 while building an air-raid shelter). They had lots of Roman and medieval glassware and jewelry.

Side note– They had a special exhibit set up for artifacts that have been found while digging for the extension of the U-Bahn (underground railway). What they didn’t mention (or maybe we just missed it) is that in 2009 the building of the City’s archive collapsed into the Stadtbahn’s tunnel under construction below it. Poor construction, the theft of necessary iron reinforcements and several ground water break-ins into the tunnel, which were not reported and not controlled properly by construction supervision, are among the alleged causes for this catastrophe. Given that they city had been achieving important documents since the Middle Ages, a substantial proportion of the written records of the city’s history is believed to have been destroyed. So sad! – If you had been incharge Bern, this wouldn’t have happened!

–       Kölner Dom (construction started 1248)- Catholic church and the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne. The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. It is Germany’s most visited landmark and after visiting I can see why! Between the stain glass windows, altar pieces, paintings, the Shrine of the Three Kings, and the relics held in the Treasury, we were completely amazed. The Treasury has a separate entrance and has an entry fee, but it is totally worth it.

–       Coffee and a snack sitting outside at Café Reichard. There was a nice view of the Dom from here.

–       Cologne Rathaus – Germany’s oldest city hall.

–       Farina Haus- The birthplace of cologne!  Italian perfumier Johann Maria Farina began producing Eau de Cologne in the cellar here. The Eau de Cologne composed by Farina was used only as a perfume and delivered to “nearly all royal houses in Europe”.  At the time, a single vial of this aqua mirabilis (Latin for miracle water) cost half the annual salary of a civil servant.Napoleon Bonaparte used an entire bottle of this stuff every day. We bought a 4oz bottle to try out and it has quite a strong smell. – I’m not sure how Napoleon didn’t get a head ache!

–       After checking into the hotel we headed out for dinner and on the way we checked out the colorful houses on Fischmarkt. We ate dinner at Peters Brauhaus, so we got to enjoy some typical Kölner Kölsch (the particular type beer they brew in Cologne). Kölsch comes in a fairly small glass (.2 liters), so until you put your coaster on top of your glass (to signify you are done drinking) they just keep bringing you glasses when you get low.  For dessert we tried out the rhubarb compote (other than the rhubarb liquor that is popular here I’ve never had rhubarb and I’d also never had a compote- so we had no clue what we were getting). It was kind of like a cold fruit soup, it had smashed up pieces of rhubarb and strawberries in it with ice cream and whipped cream.

–       After dinner we walked across Hohenzollernbrücke. Since 2008 people have placed love padlocks on the fence between the sidewalk and the tracks (and then thrown the key in the Rheine). As you can see from the pictures there are thousands of locks… almost the entire length of the fence is covered!

Hanging pictures and Afternoon coffee

     I will never take hanging pictures on drywall for granted again! Back home all you need is a nail, a hammer and maybe a level to hang a picture. Here, you need a hammer drill with a special drill bit for use on brick, screws, all-purpose fixings, and a vacuum to suck up all the brick dust as the hole is being drilled.  Yep, you have to get it placement right the first try because there are no re-do’s here (the screws with the fixings around them leave HUGE holes… thank goodness for caulking!). We are pretty close to being done hanging things for a while- which Morgan is really excited about!

     Last week one or Morgan’s colleagues invited us over for coffee with his wife at their house. When we first arrived we went on a walk around their village, Ostercappeln, with Jan and his son Jasper (who is about 15 months old.. just a couple weeks younger than Abbie!). There is a beautiful Catholic church there and a nice town square.. hopefully we can go back to look in the shops sometime.  In addition to coffee we had waffles (they were sweeter than waffles in the US) with whipped cream and warm cherry sauce on top. It was delicious! After eating we sat in their backyard to enjoy the sunshine (finally!) and let Jasper play on their new swing-set. They lived in Shanghai for 5 years, so they can relate to our predicaments of living in a country where you don’t speak the language!

Maiwoche

When we got back from London, we were smack dab in the middle of Maiwoche (May 11th-19th). Maiwoche is an annual festival in Osnabrück that is supposed to let everyone celebrate the arrival of spring (but spring has yet to show up here in Germany- cold and near constant rain so far….). Anyway, they still had it – every night for a week there are several bands playing around the old part of town plus beer and food stands, rides, games, etc. We braved the rain one night to meet up with a group from Morgan’s work. My favorite part was the yummy srawberry drinks they were serving!

Sunday we took a drive to check out to see the Rapeseed -the bright yellow fields were beautiful!

London! Part 4 (the end)

Monday: Considering the “See London in Two Days” itinerary told us to “get our walking boots ready” for today, we should have guessed how much we would be walking, but it turned out to be sooooo much more than I imagined. We walked up and down both sides of the Thames and by the end of the day we all thought our feet were going to fall off!

–         We started at the Temple Church which was built in the 12th and 13th centuries for the Knights Templar (yep, think the Da Vinci Code). It was pretty interesting to look around and the stained glass in there was beautiful.

–         We walked up Fleet Street to St. Paul’s Cathedral. We walked all around the nave, checking out all the beautiful mosaics on the ceiling and then headed up to the Whispering Gallery (here if you sit on opposite sides of the dome you can whisper and the person on the other side can hear you!) and then up to the Golden Gallery (for a total of 1,161 steps (per the brochure). It was pretty windy up top but we had a great view of the city!  Then we headed down to the crypt where we saw the tombs of Wellington, Christopher Wren (the architect of the church), and Nelson.

–         Next we headed to the Tower of London (built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century) to check out the White Tower (where Morgan and Stephen got to check out swords and suits of armor), the Jewel House (where the crown jewels are), Beauchamp Tower, and the Tower Green (where the aristocratic prisoners were beheaded- including a few of Henry VIII’s wives).

–         From there we walked across the Tower Bridge (from here you can see City Hall and the HMS Belfast) and prepared to walk aaallllll the way back down the other side of the bank to the London Eye.

–         While walking down the far side of the river we passed the Globe Theater (think Shakespeare) and the Tate Modern. We had hoped to stop by the Tate, but we were trying to make it to the London Eye as quickly as possible so we’d have time to ride it before we had to get ready for dinner and a show that night. I think it took about 2.5 hours of walking (pretty quickly) to get from the Tower Bridge down to the London Eye. By the time we got there it was about 4:30 and we needed to be back to the hotel by 5:30 to get ready for dinner. So, sadly the line was too long for us to wait for the ride and have time to make it to dinner before the show (and we weren’t willing to pay an extra $10 on top of the $40 it already cost for a regular ticket). So we decided to head on back so we could have a relaxing dinner and enjoy the show (about this time it started to rain on us, but thankfully .

–         We ate dinner at an “American” themed restaurant that had drink and meal specials on Monday nights.. so Morgan got to have a nice big steak (that is really hard to find here in Germany for a decent price).  Then we walked on up to The Ambassador where Stomp was playing. We all really enjoyed the show! It was funny, entertaining, and wasn’t crazy expensive. They played one set on metal kitchen sinks that I really liked and Morgan’s favorite was one where they played a song with lighters (I know, I can’t describe it very well, but it was a great show!).  

Tuesday we grabbed breakfast at a place between our hotel and Kings Cross Station called 06 St. Chad’s Place – and it was amazing! I would definitely recommend it! Then we started the long trip home (Kings Cross to Heathrow, Heathrow to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam to several different stops in the Netherlands and Germany to get home by train).  But we did get to pick up some American and Dutch goodies before leaving Amsterdam so now we have some Mac and cheese and Hershey’s syrup to enjoy!

 

London! Part 3

Sunday:

We met Stephen and Athena at Trafalgar Square around 10 to get our two days of our walking tour started (I’m not sure how they did it; they had flown in from Ireland that morning and had been up since like 4 am).  So we grabbed some breakfast (including big cups of coffee) and then started the tour which included:

–         Trafalgar Square (including Nelson’s Column)

–         National Gallery – to fit everything into one day, we had to pick between the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery and I think we made a great choice. The brochure they give you highlights the most famous/important pieces so we used that as a guide to see paintings by Botticelli, Michelangelo, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and (my favorites) – Turner, Monet, Degas. We picked up two prints from the gift shop (The Fighting Temeraire by Turner (Morgan’s favorite) and The Skiff by Renoir (for me)) and even ended up framing the bag they came in (one side was A Wheatfield, with Cypresses by Van Gogh) and it turned out pretty great! We are so excited to have three new pieces of art for only £10!

–         Next we headed down Whitehall to Parliament Square. On the way we passed the road where the cabinet war rooms are and Downing Street (where the Prime Minister lives). We were lucky that when we made it to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben we got to see some blue sky.

–         Next we walked around the outside of Wesminster Abbey a little, but sadly we couldn’t go in because it is closed to visitors/tours on Sundays. We hoped to fit it in on Monday but ended up running out of time.. we’ll just add it to the list of things to do next time!

–         From there we headed through St. James’s Park up to Buckingham Palace. I guess the Queen was still hanging out at Windsor because they were flying the British flag over the Palace rather than her standard.

–         We walked up Constitution Hill towards the Wellington Arch (where we were almost run over by a heard of roller-bladers) and then towards Knightsbridge and over to Brompton road where we go to look around in Harrods. We did get to walk through the accessories section, but then we went to the food halls and picked up some chocolates and coffee.

–         After eating our yummy chocolates we walked up towards the Natural History/ V&A/ and the Science Museums. We only had time for one, so we looked around the Natural History Museum.  We mainly checked out the dinosaurs and mammal exhibits before heading out to try to make it to our last stop of the day.

–         We left the Natural History Museum around 4:45 and practically ran to Kensington Palace because they cut off allowing people in at 5pm. We were literally the last people in the door! Here again, we sadly didn’t run into Prince William or Kate (they are moving in to part of the Palace later this summer). But we did get to check out the King and Queens apartments, including some clothes that Kings and Queens have worn over the years.

–         Once we finished up at Kensington we made our way back to Stephen and Athena’s hotel so they could drop off their bags and then we went to dinner at All Bar One (which turned out to be a chain because we passed 5 the next day while walking around town). It had a really good atmosphere and had really good food.. plus the manager let Morgan take home the Meantime beer glass he was drinking out of (this is probably the best souvenir Morgan could get)!

London! Part 2

Saturday:

            Today we went straight to Kings Cross/St. Pancras station (which is really pretty itself) to get on a train to Paddington. From there we got on a train to go to Windsor. This was one day we were really, really happy to have bought the London Pass, the line at Windsor Castle was extremely long (a girl that worked there said it was as busy as a day in July, but in July they have twice as many staff) but our pass allowed us to cut straight to the front of the line.

-We checked out St. George’s Chapel first (thankfully Morgan noticed it was going to be closing early that day) we took lots of pictures of the outside but sadly they don’t allow pictures inside. St. George’s is the church on the grounds at Windsor Castle and is the chapel of the Order of the Garter. While in line to get into the church, the family in front of us (from Arizona but currently living in London) pointed out that the Queen was in the castle that day because her standard (flag) was flying over the castle. Sadly we didn’t run into her!

-Next we toured the oldest and largest inhabited castle in the world (and the Queens favorite weekend home) Windsor Castle – it was just as beautiful as I remembered! Here again, no pictures inside, but I snagged some off the internet.

– Once we finished touring around the castle we headed across the street to the Horse & Groom for some fish and chips. This is the same place I ate with my mom and sister 7 years earlier when we visited Windsor!  When we finished lunch we walked around the town a little before hoping back on the train.

-When we got back to London we decided to head down to the Westminster pier and catch the Thames River Cruise up to the Tower pier. It was kinda chilly and windy, but it was so worth it! It was great seeing the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Tate Modern, the London Eye, Parliament and Big Ben (and lots of other stuff) from the water.  When we made it to the Tower pier we only had 45 minutes until the last boat was leaving so we hung out at Starbucks to warm up and borrow the internet.

-After the cruise we headed back towards our hotel and decided to see Iron Man 3 (while we were in a country where they were showing it in English).  Turns out movies in London are kinda expensive!  It was £30 for two movie tickets and we had to laugh when we got into the theater because it was probably the smallest movie theater screen we had ever seen.  But, the movie was really funny so it was nice to just sit for a few hours and relax after two days of running around.

London! Part 1

We visited London from May 9th to the 14th and had the best time!  We took the train from Osnabrück to Amsterdam Thursday afternoon and then flew from Amsterdam to London. Once we got checked into our hotel (the Tune Hotel – Kings Cross), we hunted for a Barclay’s ATM (since we can get money out of our Deutsche Bank account without any fees), and then went back towards our hotel to The Lucas Arms for dinner. It was a typical English pub – I had some pretty yummy mac and cheese with bacon pieces in it.

Side note about our hotel – I tried to find the cheapest place I could – without being a hostel or looking creepy/unclean/in a bad part of town- so we thought we try out a Tune hotel (most of their hotels are in the Asia Pacific but they do have 5 hotels in the UK). You get a very basic, tiny but clean room and pay extra for things they consider amenities (towels, hairdryer, in room safe, TV usage, WiFi, etc). AND from you picture, you can tell we decided to try out a basement room – meaning no windows, but this took off about £100 from the cost of our stay. Kings cross has a major underground station (6 lines run through there) so it is really easy to get just about anywhere from here (our hotel was only a 5 min walk from the station) – so it was a great location- and we only paid €322 for 5 nights.  I’m not going to lie, I was a little worried what we would find when we checked in given it was so cheap, but we were pleasantly surprised. The staff were all nice and helpful, we couldn’t hear trains going past our heads (since we were underground), the room was clean, Morgan even enjoyed not having a window since it allowed him to sleep in later! We would definitely stay in one again!

Friday:

We headed to the Victoria & Albert Museum Friday morning and ate breakfast near the South Kensington Station first at Muriel’s Kitchen (it was delicious and really cute inside!). Across the street from Muriel’s was the Lamborghini dealership, so Morgan got to stare at the pretty manly cars during breakfast.

-The Victoria and Albert is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design and is divided up into 5 themes: Asia, Materials & Techniques, Europe, Modern, and Exhibitions (there was a huge one for David Bowie – that we weren’t interested in at all – and one called “Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars” that looked really cool, but we had hardly enough time to see the regular museum so we decided to pass on the exhibitions). The V&A has 4.5 million objects, covers 12.5 acres, and its collection spans 5,000 years of art. Also, the building itself is beautiful. We enjoyed this museum just as much as the British Museum and may have liked it even more. Below we’ll include some pictures of some of the favorite things we saw (well at least things we were allowed to take pictures of, most of the Asian galleries didn’t allow pictures)!

-Next grabbed lunch and then picked up our London Pass tickets. Next we walked up towards the British Museum, but stopped first by Museum Street to look in the shops.

-I had been to the British Museum before, but Morgan hadn’t soooo I think we saw every single room in there (though some we walked through pretty quickly towards the end because our feet were killing us). The Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece and Rome rooms were amazing and Morgan also really enjoyed the Clock and Watches room. Oh, and the jewelry room was pretty amazing (too bad they don’t let you take pictures in there! Some of tiaras were just as beautiful as those you see in the crown jewel display at the Tower of London.

– By the time we left the British Museum we were completely exhausted from being on our feet all day so we ate a quick dinner at a fast food Mexican place (think Moe’s) and then got to bed early.

 

VfL game and Meeting Mia

On Saturday we went to the VfL game since it was so nice outside. The stadium is just a couple of blocks from our apartment (which we were a little worried about when we first looked at our place), but we are on the far side of it (not between the stadium and downtown) so the traffic on our side really isn’t bad at all. This was our second game- we even broke down and bought a scarf to fit in with everyone else. When VfL scores everyone swirls them around in the air over their heads so their is purple everywhere. Thankfully VfL won this game 2-1 (the last game we went to they tied), so maybe we aren’t bad luck!

On Sunday we skyped with the Philo’s to catch up before baby girl Philo arrived (this was her due date). Little Mia Maria Philo was born on May 6th and we got to see her a couple of days later once they were home via skype. For the trip home from the hospital she even wore a onesie that was from Kelly, Morgan and me!  We can’t wait to meet our future God-daughter in person! 🙂

Also, last week we tried out Spargel (the white asparagus that is very popular in our part of Germany). Thankfully our German teacher told us that you have to peel it and that when you boil it you need to add some sugar to the water to help with the bitterness… we wouldn’t have known to do either since you don’t do that with green asaparagus!  We just put a little butter on ours and thought it was ok (I still prefer green asaparagus), but we’ve been told it is much better with Hollandaise sauce on it, so we’ll try that next time.

Tomorrow we head to London for a few days and we are so excited, time to finish packing!

 

Meeting Isa/ Painting the Wohnzimmer/ May Day

Our new niece  Isabella Marie Siqueira Dawson was born on the the 23rd (she has the same birthday as her uncle Andrew!). We were sad we couldn’t be there in person like we were when Celo and Abbie were born, but we did get to see her two days later via Google Chat. Morgan was in China, I was in Germany, Vironica and Isa were still in the hospital (getting ready to be discharged), and Marcel was getting Celo ready at the house to go to pre-school for a little while – isn’t technology amazing? We can’t wait to see her in person at the end of June!

Morgan got back from China on Sunday and had a few days off to relax at home… so what do we do Monday? – Paint the living room! We had to go buy the paint and a few other things, so we didn’t get started until 2:30 and several times I wanted to call it quits and finish the next day but, Morgan wanted to press on so we finished the entire room around 9:30 that night. It was a bright blue and now it is Seidiges Beige. One of our walls is slanted because of how the roof-line comes down in the front of our building so you can’t really hang paintings on it (without rigging something up special) sooo I’m thinking about painting some stripes on it (like the picture below)- just subtle stripes, using a color that is just a shade or two lighter/darker than the one already on the wall. For now we’re going to leave it… but it may end up with some stripes in the future!  In addition to painting, we worked on getting the paint off the glass in the pocket doors. We couldn’t scrape it off because of the etching on the window, but thankfully paint thinner did the trick and now they look a lot better.

May 1st is called May Day here in Germany and is a holiday sooo we went on a bike ride with a few other couples to Knollmeyer (a bier garden that also has a high ropes course, putt-putt, etc). Morgan described this trip to me (before hand) as a short ride to a bier garden in Osnabrück (I assumed he meant in the city limits, turned out it was about 6km away!- so technically it is within Osnabrück, but within the county not the city).  Needless to say I thought I was going to die. For someone who hadn’t ridden a bike in about 4 years, a 9 mile bike ride is pretty tough.. especially when you are with a bunch of Germans (who have been riding bikes long distances regularly since they were 3) and your husband who is a mountain biker! When we did get to our destination we were surprised how many young people were there.. there were probably 500 16-20 year olds hanging out in the lawn in front of the bier garden drinking. They all had wagons they had pulled on their walks there full of beer and liquor. It looked just like a tailgate that had gotten really sloppy (haha). Other than one guy who was being taken away in an ambulance, it seemed like they were all having a good time. We had some drinks and brats with french fries and then some ice cream before starting the ride home.  The ropes course and putt-putt looked like a lot of fun, so hopefully we can take some of our visitors there later this year!

Sunday Funday: A walk up a mountain and Horses and Dreams

 Morgan left for China yesterday and I spent the day with a few of our friends going on a short hike/walk up a mountain near Osnabruck and then to the Horses & Dreams horse show in Hagen . From the top of the mountain we could see the castle in Bad Iburg (this is the same castle that Morgan visited in December) as well as Osnabruck (and several other towns) in the distance.

The show had jumping and dressage competitions and is the second largest horse show in Germany (I couldn’t get over how many people where there!). Between the various rings there were tents set up selling all kinds of horse riding related gear as well as really expensive clothes and accessories (some of the tents had chandeliers…). A lot of people brought their dogs with them- there were tons of Jack Russell’s.. which made me miss little Maggie! The theme this year was “Horses & Dreams meets Russia” so towards the end of the day the Kremlin Equestrian Riding School did a performance – they were amazing! I included some of my pictures below, but because I was missing my super-duper tall husband and we were in about the third row back standing up against the side of the ring, I could only see bits and pieces. 🙂 

 

Keukenhof Garden

Before Morgan’s most recent trip to China, we went to Keukenhof, a HUGE garden in Holland. We were a little early, less than half of the 7 million flowers were blooming, but it worked out best with Morgan’s travel schedule and our trip to London which is already planned for early May. Even with only half the flowers blooming, I’ve still never seen anything like it! The greenhouse had every type of tulip you can imagine (plus several other types of flowers) blooming. On the way home (about 2.5 hr drive) we stopped in Amsterdam for a snack, which was a great end to the day.

Trip Home

I thought I would put up a few pictures from our time at home in March, we had a great time seeing everybody! 

Hamburg Trip: Day 4

Tuesday:

–  HafenCity- This part of town hold most of the warehouses and lots of new/modern looking office buildings, hotels, shops, residential buildings, and the almost completed Elbe Philharmonic Hall. Also this is where several of the museums/ attractions are including the Miniature World which was our next stop.

–  Miniature World- This was probably Morgan’s favorite stop on our entire trip. It is two floors of a ware house with HUGE model train displays, each one featuring different landscapes from around the world (aka there was a US Section which had a wild west scene and a Las Vegas scene), a Scandinavia section that had a miniature cruise ship sailing around, a miniature airport, etc. All the displays were so intricate… Morgan was in heaven! He took about 500 pictures while we were there.. we’ll just include a few of our favorites. J

–  Fabrik – Avett Brothers Concert- Our last night in town we had a great time at the concert. The venue was pretty small compared to what we are used to in the US, so we ended up really close to the stage- actually we were right above the band. It was a great way to end our trip!

Whew, that’s all folks!

Hamburg Trip: Day 3

Monday: Lübeck

–  Holsten Gate- Originally it was the only entrance into the city.

–  Marienkirche-  A Lutheran, gothic style church, construction started around 1250. The painted detail on the ceiling was beautiful. The church also held several beautiful pieces of art (you can Wikipedia it!). The Palm Sunday air raid in 1942 badly damaged the church and the bells of the church, which fell down during the ensuing blaze, still lie where they fell.

–  Rathaus – City hall – famous for its unusual turrets.

– Dom zu Lübeck (Lübeck Cathedral)- Another Lutheran church- construction started in 1173 by Henry the Lion. It also suffered a lot of damage in the Pal Sunday air raid (are you sensing a theme here?). Though it is the Cathedral in Lübeck, it is not the tallest church in town (which is unusual)- Marienkirche is taller and had priority in being rebuilt after the war.  There is an inscription in the church that I thought was pretty interesting: “Ye call Me Master and obey me not, Ye call Me Light and see Me not, Ye call Me Way and walk not, Ye call Me Life and desire Me not, Ye call Me wise and follow Me not, Ye call Me fair and love Me not, Ye call Me rich and ask Me not, Ye call Me eternal and seek Me not, Ye call Me gracious and trust Me not, Ye call Me noble and serve Me not, Ye call Me mighty and honor Me not, Ye call Me just and fear Me not, If I condemn you, blame me not.”

–  Travemünde – Before heading back to Hamburg we drove a little farther up to the Baltic Sea cost. It is pretty much a resort town (there were lots of older, rich couples strolling around, shopping, having coffee, etc). They did have some pretty cool roofed wicker beach chairs that would come in handy for a day at the beach!

–  Tower Bar- When we got back to Hamburg, we got drinks at the Tower Bar (a bar at the top of a tower attached to a Hotel that is up on a hill overlooking the harbor) and had some really tasty frozen drinks. Then we ate dinner at the Hamburg Hard Rock Café – it is right on the water. Morgan had never eaten at one and it was close to our hotel so we got to enjoy some hamburgers!

Hamburg Trip: Day 2

Sunday:

–  Fischmarkt – We started off the day bright and early at the Fischmarkt, which is only open from 7 to 9:30 in the winter. Despite its name, you can buy just about anything here – fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta and pasta sauce, flowers, fresh fish, crepes (with candy bars in the middle), Hamburg souvenirs (purchased a magnet to add to our collection), coffee, etc. At the far end of the market is the Auktionshalle (auction hall) where there was a live band playing rock’n roll music. Yep at 8 in the morning there is a rock band and people are drinking gluvine (wine mulled with spices and served warm).  We really wanted to get one of the “Hamburg” baskets with fruit in it, but since we weren’t going to be going home until Wednesday, we were afraid everything would go bad before we had a chance to eat it all. Next time!

– Ahrensburg Schloss- We drove to Ahrensburg to visit an estate there built around 1600.  It had some pretty cool details, I especially loved the floor mosaic in the ball room.. Morgan snuck and took a picture for me!

– Stade- We had a great time walking around town; it still has lots of the old half-timbered buildings. The area around the Alter Hafen (old port) was especially nice, that is where the Bügermeister-Hintze-Haus (aka the mayors home) is. While in town we ate dinner at a little restaurant called Messerchmiede and it was delicious!

Hamburg Trip: Day 1

At the beginning of March Morgan and I took a trip to Hamburg (including day trips to Lübeck and Stade).  On Friday (the 1st) there was a going away party for one of Morgan’s colleagues and on the following Tuesday (the 5th) night was the Avett Brothers concert that Morgan had given me tickets to for Christmas.. so we made it into an extra-long weekend trip! We didn’t know much about Hamburg before going, I would have thought of Berlin and München has the biggest cities in Germany, but Hamburg is actually the second largest behind Berlin, is the second largest port in Europe (behind Rotterdam), and  has more bridges than Amsterdam, Venice and London combined. Who knew?  When we first booked our hotel stay I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to keep busy for 4 days, but that turned out to be barely enough time! We hit most of the historical sights/churches/most popular attractions, but there were several other museums we’d like to visit (the Chocolate Mesuem, the Kunsthalle, and the International Maritime Museum) and when the weather is nicer we’d like to do a harbor tour. Hamburg is also known for having lots of plays and musicals, so we’ll just have to go back there at some point in the future!

Since we drove up there, we had the flexibility of being able to drive to a few other towns nearby. One day we drove to Ahrensburg to visit the estate there and then went on the Stade- which had some of the most charming little streets (with lots of great windows & doors for me to take pictures of) and a picturesque old town center with old half-timbered houses along the canal in the middle (which was my cover picture on Facebook for a while).  Another day we drove up to Lübeck where we were able to see the Holsten Gate as well as many beautiful churches  and buildings with Gothic brick architecture which it has become known for (in addition to its Marzipan- though neither Morgan or I are fans so we didn’t buy any). On the way back from Lübeck we stopped by Travemünde which is a borough of Lübeck that sits on the Baltic Sea. We walked along the water and had coffee and dessert in a restaurant overlooking the water. All in all it was a great trip!

Below I’ll list the major places we visited with a little info about them so you know what you are looking at in the pictures!

Friday:

–   Dinner at Herzblut – Restaurant where the going away party was. The district it is in (St. Pauli) is known for its bars, clubs, strip clubs and the red-light district (not exactly my first pick for an area to hang out); but it was where about 30 of Morgan’s work buddies were. Later in the night the restaurant turned into a club and there was a DJ and everyone was dancing, which was fun.  Also, I learned that in the winter the prostitutes in Hamburg all wear moonboots so you can pick them out (since it is too cold to be barely dressed outside). Friends – don’t wear your brightly colored moonboots out on the town in Hamburg… people will think you are a lady of the night!

Saturday:

–   Michaeliskirche- A Lutheran church that has become the landmark for the city. The inside is beautiful and you can walk up a TON of stairs to an observation platform in the tower that provides a great view of the city and the harbor (as long as it isn’t really cloudy/foggy like it was when we were there). It was sooo cold up there – there were ice crystals forming on everything!

–  St. Nikolai- Now it is just a monument/museum, but originally it was a church that had the highest steeple in the world (when it was built). Unfortunately during WWII its steeple was used as a point of orientation for bomber pilots and the church was mostly destroyed. We took the elevator up to the viewing platform, where we were able to get a much better view of the city since the clouds and fog had cleared up a bit!

– Rathaus- Enormous and beautiful town hall. The front doors and main hallway were very ornate… I loved all the arches inside!  We were peeking out the windows into the courtyard and there was a newly married couple having their pictures taken. I would have died being in a strapless dress, outside, in Hamburg at the beginning of March (it was oh, I don’t know, about 3°C or 40°F)! Brrr!

– Shopping district – Hamburg had so many nice stores! My store of choice was a chocolate shop and Morgan bought a pair of Puma’s.

– Binnenalster – We walked around the smaller of the two lakes in Hamburg and warmed up at a café on the water.

– Katharinenkirche – This church was very simple compared to St. Michael’s. It was pretty much all white inside other than a huge stain glass window behind the alter.

– Deichstrasse – One of the few surviving streets in old town, with the original facades visible from the road and the canal.

Moving on up

Over the past two weeks we’ve been working on getting our new apartment set up. Our container was delivered on the 15th, so we’ve been unpacking, organizing, cleaning, and building furniture ever since. – I think we are keeping Ikea and Hornbach (like Home Depot) in business! There was no storage space in the bathroom and a limited about in the kitchen, so we’ve bought shelves and drawers for the bathroom and a large shelving unit for the kitchen. This week we also bought a bed frame for the guest bedroom… now we just need to buy the slats (the beds here don’t use box springs) and mattress. Other big news (because I’m a dork) is we bought a washer and dryer. Thankfully they both fit in our apartment (washer in the bathroom and the dryer in the pantry) so we don’t have to walk down three flights of stairs to the basement to do laundry. We didn’t have much damage to our furniture on the container. One wood shoe holder snapped in half, but other than that it is just scratches to finishes and a few chipped edges. Morgan sent in pictures for our claim to his company (since the moving company said they wouldn’t pay us anything), so we’ll see what they say.

We’re getting used to the quirks of our new apartment – our dinner plates don’t fit in the dishwasher and the toilet is designed kind of weird – but over all we are really happy in our new place. We have painted the entryway/hallway and are planning on painting the living room, probably when we get back from the US in April. I was pleasantly surprised that the paint here doesn’t smell at all BUT it can be pretty expensive. Originally I had picked out a color that is mixed by the paint department at the store, but we found out that 1 LITER is €38… sehr teuer! (aka very expensive!). For the small entryway we needed 2.5 liters, for the living room we’ll need more like 6 or 7. Thankfully they had premixed paint that comes in about 30 different colors so for the entryway we just picked the premixed color that was closest to the color I had originally picked. This way we got 2.5 liters for €35 rather than 1 liter for that price.

Speaking of Ikea, I’m guessing you’ve all heard about the Pferdefleisch (horse meat) they’ve been finding in ground beef around Europe recently? I think I ate some!  If you click on this link it takes you to an article about horsemeat being found in meatballs in one of the meals at Ikea… I ate this exact meatball and mashed potato meal two weeks ago at Ikea! Yuck! We’ve talked to our German tutor about the whole horse meat situation, and she said that horse meat is actually pretty popular in Germany (and most of Europe). What people here are upset about is that the meat was claimed to be all beef and that it is horse meat from eastern European countries where the raising of the horses wouldn’t have been regulated as far as antibiotics and other medicines that they would have been given. She said the butchers at the famers market at the Dom on Saturday mornings would have good quality horse meat if we want to try it, but I don’t think I could do that. Horses are too much of a pet for me to (knowingly) eat one!

Tomorrow we head to Hamburg for a few days. Tomorrow night is a retirement party for one of Morgan’s colleges, so about 35 of Morgan’s colleges will be there with us. We’ll stay on in Hamburg through Wednesday morning since we are going to the Avett Brothers concert Tuesday night. We are both pretty excited to go on our first vacation over here! We’ll spend three of the days sightseeing in Hamburg and one day we’ll drive up to Lübeck on the coast.

Below are some pictures from the past couple of weeks! A few side notes to go with the pictures:

1. “Imbiss” picture – Germans love to eat while they shop! Pretty much all the big stores have a food stand in their parking lot, and a lot also have a restaurant inside. This one is in front of Hornbach.

2. Eggs aren’t refrigerated here! Kinda weird, huh?

3. Morgan is a speed demon – Yep, that is what a German speeding ticket looks like. Morgan had hoped the picture wouldn’t be clear so he could say it was me, but alas it is a crystal clear picture of my hubby.  Thankfully he was only going 11km over, so the ticket is €25. If you get caught going 20 over or run a red light, you lose your driver’s license for a month! I think they are more strict on speeding around town (most of Osnabruck is a 50 zone, but residential areas are 30) than they are on the Autobahn.

Kohlgang

We took a break from unpacking/getting set up to participate in a Kohlgang that Morgan’s colleagues put together. The best way I can describe it is a 4 hour long walk down country roads playing a drinking game and you end the day with a pre-ordered family style meal made up of a few types of bratwurst, potatoes, and grünkohl (green cabbage). We took the train to Lemförde (the small town where Morgan’s office is) and met up with 15 of his work buddies. They already had the wagon full of two cases of beer and about 7 bottles of liquor. Everyone was given a shot glass (on a string around your neck) to keep your hands free for the game. We were divided into two teams and numbered 1 through 8. Taking turns, the ones went first (followed by twos, threes, etc), rolling the hockey puck looking piece of plastic (the center is metal) down the road. Then the whole group walks down the road until ou get to the point where the shortest roll went. If you accidentally walk past where the shortest roll went you have to take a shot (which was easy to do b/c it is white and there was still some snow/ice off the sides of the road). Also, any time you come to a cross street you have to take a shot and in between all the shots you drink beer. – I guess German’s haven’t heard of beer than liquor, never sicker!  It was such a cold day (-2 celcius) and snowing for the second half of the 4 hour walk. My feet were frozen!  I was so happy to make it to the restaurant. The dinner was delicious and was a great end to the day. 

Karneval in Osnabrück

This past Saturday was the karneval celebration in Osnabrück. Karneval is a period of pre-lent festivities that is pretty common in most of Europe and South America (traditionally held in areas where there are larger Catholic populations… because we like to have fun!)…. also similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The main event here is the parade that was held Saturday afternoon. Everyone wears costumes and sings along to “Schlager” music. As the floats go by they throw out bags of popcorn (Morgan was pretty sad he missed out on this), candy, and other trinkets like jewelry. When the parade is over everyone goes to city center where there was a DJ playing music as well as lots of stands set up by local vendors selling drinks and snacks. It snowed most of the day which was pretty, but also meant it was chilly!

Over all it kind of felt like Clemson on a game day (plus Halloween costumes).. people start drinking pretty early in the day, there are port-a-potties set up every where, the bars and restaurants are packed, and everyone is in a good mood!

Ta Daa!

Here is our new apartment!