Week 64: Meetups in Belgium and on Bikes

[I apologize for the lateness of these last posts. Between our recent move and other activities, it has been very difficult to catch up. After this post, there are two more coming.]

With the cool summer weather holding on for quite a while in the Eifel, we spent yet another weekend outside. On Saturday, we went to a Meetup member's house for Belgian National Day. As previously noted, Belgium has an uneasy truce between its two biggest groups: the Wallonians and the Flemish, but the national day does not so much celebrate this union as the creation of an independent Belgian state that served as a buffer between the major European powers in the early 1800s.

Much like Americans do for our Independence day, the Belgians celebrate with BBQs, fireworks and other summer outdoor activities--though they do end it with a tented and liquored dance party! We enjoyed it all (okay--minus the dance party) with the Meetup group, despite the cool weather and the rather small fireworks display thrown together in the village where we spent the afternoon and evening.

Spotted on the Way to Belgium: a River Full of Recent Rains

Sunday lived up to its name and we joined some other Meetup-ers for a bike ride along *yet another* section of the Mosel. For this ride, we started in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg. For many, the name Schengen may sound familiar due to the Schengen Agreement, which is the reason why it has been so easy for us to travel from one country in Europe to the next without any boarder controls. The agreement was signed in Schengen in 1985 and removed boarder controls between its signatories. There is a small monument to this event next to the river (and across from the bike rental location where we met up with the group).

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Our ride took us from Schengen to Oberbillig, Germany, up the Mosel river and mostly along bike paths that were lined with Dutch and German Wohnwagons (motor-homes). And the wonderful part of Germany in the summer? Festivals! We found a wine fest, stopped and had some Kaffee, Kuechen and other goodies while listening to the local choir and other choice musical performances. We didn't drink enough to be wobbly on our bikes, but we had enough cake to slow us down a bit. The ride was a total of 35 km (22 miles) and ended at a nice cafe with a beer and a chat before Jason and I caught the train back to our car.

An International Group

The Choir...with a Viking Ship?

Later that week, we did some driving through the countryside near our place and found, as there always seems to be around every corner, a playground with some choice equipment. Not only was there an old school steel merry-go-round (in this bone-crunching style), but there was also a great zip line. Jason was kind enough to get a nice blurry shot of me enjoying the ride!

Being Blurry Makes it Even More Fun!

Week 63: Koeln to Bonn by Bike

A little while back we visited the city of Bonn, West Germany's capital before the end of the cold war linked the two halves of Germany. Bonn is quite close to the city of Koeln (Cologne) and we thought that since they were so close and have a good train connection, that it would be nice to ride between the two cities.

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We started in Koeln and rode south, on the east side of the Rhein. The weather refused to cooperate the entire day and we ended up with 2 or 3 cloud bursts while we were riding. Not ideal, but better than pouring over the entire trip. The total ride was about 35 km (22 mi) based on the map, though we got a bit turned around just outside of Bonn when we couldn't find a way to cross a tributary of the Rhein, so it was probably closer to 40 km (25 km) total. 

Jason makes (very cute!) friends

Once we arrived in Bonn, we didn't have to wait too long for a train--maybe 5 minutes after we bought our tickets. From there it was about a 25 minute ride to Koeln. We dropped our bikes at the car, then walked around a bit. Koeln is the 4th largest city in Germany, and, let me tell you, on a Saturday afternoon in mid-July its shopping district is *busy*. It was a little overwhelming, since we are used to much smaller cities, but after taking a short look at the city's famous cathedral, we found a seat at a cafe and enjoyed a meal outside.

Inside of Koeln's Cathedral

With more rain in the forecast, we forewent a trip to the World Ballooning Festival, which we had seen last year in Echternach, and decided instead to go for another castle. We headed to Bourscheid castle in Luxembourg. The castle looks quite impressive from a distance, though it in more or less a ruined state (and has no place to get Kaffee and Kuechen!), with some restoration work having been completed since the 1970s.

Jason, an umbrella and a castle

Though there were no snacks, we did get a free English-language audio tour that was hosted by Victor Hugo and a couple travelling companions, who had visited the castle in the late 1800s. They told us about how the castle looked at the time of their visit and what renovations had been completed on the castle since that time in surprisingly good British accents for Frenchmen.

Bourscheid's Main Tower

After touring the castle, we visited the town of Diekirch, Luxembourg, which is home to a military museum that we had heard was very good and intended to visit, but we spent more time at the castle than we had originally planned, and so just wandered through town, had a small, late lunch and a cup of coffee and listened in for a while on a small festival, whose theme was related to WWII. We also saw this odd little gem keeping an eye on the town square. I felt much safer under his watchful eye as I drank my coffee.

This little guy makes sure you pay your tab

Week 62: Bodensee Vacation

Last summer we had taken a short trip to the Bodensee, a large lake between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We had really enjoyed our time there, where we spent a fair amount of time biking and decided it would be great to go back and bike some other segments and see things in the area that we didn't get a chance to on our first trip.

The Bodensee is a popular vacation destination for Germans and others in Europe, so it took a little work to find a place to stay that was nice, conveniently located and not tooooo expensive. We finally settled on the town of Hagnau (like is the German Wikipedia site translated into English by Google), which is located on the German side, about 10 km from the town of Friederickshafen, where we stayed last year.

Our main focus of the trip was to complete our ride around the Obersee. Last summer, we did a section from Friederickshafen in Germany to Rorschach in Switzerland. On this trip, we did two separate rides. The first was from Konstanz to Hagnau. For that trip, we first took the ferry from Meersburg to Konstanz. Jason found out that Konstanz avoided bombing during WWII by keeping its lights on. Most cities in Germany during the war went into black out conditions during the night to avoid any allied bombing. Konstanz used its position nestled up against neutral Switzerland to its advantage and kept all of its lights on, tricking the allies into thinking it was part of Switzerland and, consequently, not bombing it.

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We had perfect weather for the ride--sunny with a little bit of wind. The ride for that day was approximately 60 km (37 miles). We stopped at an Imbiss (German equivalent of fast food--mostly sausages and fries) for a very late lunch in Ludwigshafen, where we each had a well earned beer before moving on and heading back to our hotel for the evening.

Stop for a break...and a beer!

On our second day, the weather was not as good and our (or, at least, my) butts were quite sore from our long ride the day before, so we decided to drive to the nearby tiny country of Liechtenstein. While Luxembourg is a small country--about the size of RI with about 500,000 people--Liechtenstein is even smaller--about the size of Staten Island with about 36,000 people. We drove in to Liechtenstein from Austria and first went to the capital city of Vaduz, where we walked around a bit. The city is mostly modern, with a few older buildings, including the Prince's castle.

The Prince of Liechtenstein's Castle in Vaduz

We next drove up, up, up into the Alps to the mountain town of Malbun, the location of Liechtenstein's only ski resort. We were planning to do a short hike, but the weather was against us, so though we could have taken a chair lift up and hiked down, we decided against it, as the clouds and rain were coming in. We did enjoy some Kaffee and Kuechen at one of the few restaurants that was open and walked through the town between raindrops.

Malbun Liechtenstein and its Clouds

Back in Vaduz, we went down to the Rhein, which forms the boarder between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The Rhein flows from there through Lake Konstanz and then up through Basel, into Germany, were it is joined in Koblenz by the Mosel. From there, you can follow it up through The Netherlands where it empties into the ocean in Rotterdam. In Vaduz, there is a covered bridge that crosses the river, so you can walk or ride your bike from one country to the other. Just as common in Europe as it is on the Vermont/New Hampshire boarder.

Crossing the Boarder through a Cover Bridge

For our third full day, we did a second bike ride to complete our circumnavigation of the Obersee. We took the ferry to Konstanz again, and rode from there to the Swiss town of Roschach, where we had finished our ride last year. The ride through Switzerland was very nice. There are fewer tourists and just generally less density on that side of the lake, so it makes for a a very pleasant ride.

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Adding this section to our completed items, we still had one leg left, from Friedrichshafen, where we stayed last year, to Hagnau, our location for this trip. To catch a regular ferry to Friedrichshafen, we put our bikes on the train and took it up to Romanshorn, jumped on the car ferry and, after about an hour arrived in Friedrichshafen, where we enjoyed some Kaffee and Kuechen before getting back on the bikes and to Hagnau.

Jason in Romanshorn

Before heading to the hotel in Hagnau, we stopped by the town beach. I use beach in the Rolf Pond meaning: a place where there is some grass and enough room between the trees to swim--actually, it was a little more developed than that, though in the same spirit. I changed and went in for a swim, which was quite refreshing after a say of biking in the sun, while Jason relaxed a bit and checked his eyelids for light leaks.

Enjoying the Beach in Hagnau

On our drive back home, we saw two interesting things. The first, was the German exclave of Buesingen am Hochrhein. As an exclave, the entire town is not connected to the rest of Germany and is completely surrounded by Switzerland. So, we had the interesting experience of crossing the boarder 3 times within a few miles as we exited Germany to go into Switzerland and exited Switzerland to go into Buesingen then back into Switzerland. It is quite easy now with the Schengen Area--I can't imagine doing that same drive and needing to make all the boarder crossings.

Road-Side Boarder Crossing into Switzerland

The other interesting this was the Rheinfalls, the largest waterfall in Europe. It is quite impressive, as can be seen in the video below. There were people from all over the place there--Chinese, Dutch, Americans, Indians, etc, etc. In the video, you may be able to see the boats that go quite close to the falls. We didn't have the time to go on one of the rides, as we had a long drive home--maybe on another trip.

Me, with the Rheinfalls

And that was our trip. As always, vacations end far too soon....

Week 61: Where did that Castle come from?

We were looking for a bit of a day trip on a Saturday a few weeks ago and decided it would be interesting to check out Gerolstein, home of Gerolsteiner Bunnen, a very commonly seen brand of bubbly mineral water and related drinks in Germany. The town of Garolstein is located in the Vulkan-Eifel and the bubbliness is due to the same type of activity that we have seen more explosively on a couple of occasions.

As we were walking around, we found a public tap for the water. You can drink from it and the water is bubbly straight from the tap. It is a little disorienting. While we were in the park where the tap is located, at least two sets of  people came by to fill up their own bottles at the tap. It is a pretty neat idea, like the spring off in the woods of Maine where we would fill up for our stay at my aunt's camp, but with far more bubbles.

Jason with the Public Garolstein Tap

While walking around Gerolstein, we saw a sign: zum Burg (to the castle). We both said: "Castle?" and proceeded to follow the sign. What we found at the top of a hill over looking the city was the ruins of Loewenburg (Lion Castle). There wasn't too much left--mostly a few walls. The really neat part was that one of the houses we walked past to get to the castle, had the castle's outer-ring-wall as part of it. The only thing cooler than living in a castle would be to have part of a castle built into your house--you get the castle without the *outrageous* heating bills for the great hall.

Looking down from Loewenburg

Me on a wall at Loewenburg

For the second year in a row, Jason ran in a German/American road race in the town of Herforst. The race had a number of people from the base running, including the new head of the base and the new Chief NCO. In addition, there was a 94 year old man who had participated in the walking portion of the race--they had a separate Nordic Walking grouping--with, I believe, his son, who was in his 70s...man I hope I am that active when I am that age. Anyway, Jason had a good run. As each person crossed the finish line, their name was announced. Jason was identified (in German) as "the Runner with the hat".  

"Der Laufer mit dem Hut"

As with any activity that brings more than a few people together in Germany, there was a beer truck present.  I had some Kaffee und Kuechen (coffee and cake) while Jason was running, and listened to the German conversations going on around me. My German is slowly improving, despite the fact I work all day in English and rarely work with Germans in German and I am able to follow some of the incidental conversations going on around me.

After run drink? Don't mind if I do!

Later in the day, we went for dinner in Berkastel-Kues. There is an Indian restaurant there that was recommended by a few people on base and actually had something I would consider spicy, which, frankly, is amazing here in Germany. I am not a big fan of spicy, but, man, is the food here bland. After eating, we walked across the river to a bar that was showing the final EuroCup game between Italy and Spain. We watched the first half and it was a very exciting game--much more so than the game we watched between Germany and Portugal. Spain ended up winning the game 4 to 0. Jason and I joked that the winner of the match would get the bailout money...

Hooked on "the Karlsberg Beer Feeling"

Week 60: Altstadtfest and...two castles!

On the day of the summer solstice, yes, the longest day of the year, I was in the city of Vaasa, Finland for work. Vaase is located at about the same latitude as Reykjavík, Iceland. I should have known I would be in for a tough few days, when I landed at 11pm and it barely looked like twilight, despite the fact that the city was completely covered in clouds. The next day was surreal. It looked like mid-afternoon far into the night. I couldn't, for the the life of me keep the light out of my hotel room. My. I had never been so jetlegged when traveling only one time zone. And, the crazy thing about this place, was that people didn't have the rolling shutters on their windows like they do in Germany. I don't know how they sleep...maybe they do it all in the winter, when they have 20 hours of darkness.

Around 9pm in Vaasa

After I made it home and had a good night's sleep on Friday, Jason and I met up with the Luxembourg Ex-Pat group in the nearby city of Trier for the Altstadtfest (roughly: Old-Town Fest). It was the standard German festival, with plenty of food, beer, wine and various forms of entertainment. We watched a couple cover bands at one stage, then visited the cathedral with a few of the ex-pats. One of the cover bands called out Jason for rocking out and playing air guitar to "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something. Jason *swears* he was doing it ironically and was composing a progressive interpretation of the song in his head. I'll leave it to you to decide if he was telling the truth.

This band liked Jason's air guitar

So, the next day it was raining. And, what better thing to do in the rain in Germany, than to go to Luxembourg and visit castles? So, we did just that. Our first castle was Beaufort Castle in eastern Luxembourg. We had been here before, about a year ago, but they were having a concert at the castle when we arrived, so we weren't able to to tour it. This time, no concert, so we took our umbrella and looked around.

Jason, an umbrella and a castle

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the castle, but it did have some nice tall towers to climb into and a number of passages to explore.

Jason looks at a Beaufort Castle

Our next stop was the castle in Larochette. We had traveled through Larochette a couple months ago when we were hiking with the ex-pat group. We didn't have the time (or, frankly, the energy) to visit the castle as we walked through the town, so we returned on our own. It was very wet out at that point, so we didn't spend too much time exploring the the ruins, but inside one of the restored buildings were a series of exhibits by local artists--I was particularly found of Alice Niederkorn's work. There were a few pieces I might have been interested in taking home, but we can't hang things on our walls...

Ruined Castle at Larochette

Week 59: Turin

A number of years ago, when a good friend was doing some graduate studying Italy, I visited Turin on a cold, rainy night in late December. We walked around, had some dinner and road the glass elevator up to the top of the Mole Antonelliana to view a cold and wet Turin from above.

Flash forward about eight years, and I am back in Turin, this time with Jason, in the hot, humid summer for about two days of seeing the city in both the light and the dark and again visiting the Mole Antonelliana. I was in the area for work and it looked like a great opportunity for Jason to get his first look at Italy. Since he had never been and my impression, other than the food, is not that rosy, it was important for him to draw his own conclusions.

We booked a place on AirBnB. It was one of the nicest apartments that we had stayed in, though it was a bit of a ways outside the city, so we did a large amount of walking. I had given Jason directions to find places for dinner (which, as I will note again as I come to them, he did admirably), as that, we find, when you don't have a sense for the area, is the hardest part.

We ended up walking to dinner our first night, after we got everything set up with our apartment for the weekend. We had some very good pizza, then walked around the very warm and humid city of Turin for the evening, stopping for a while next to the river to enjoy the lights and the sounds of the city.

Turin at Night

After staying remarkably cool in our room, despite no air conditioning. Air conditioning is generally rare in Europe, especially in private homes. You don't see the warts sicking our the windows nearly as often as you do in the States, even where they could really use it (like Italy). Very few of the companies I have been to have air conditioning, unless it is an internal room--even then, it may only be a fan, instead of full-on AC. (I really don't like AC very much, if it wasn't that obvious...though I admit, I felt a little crazy a couple years ago during that heat wave in New England, where I was working from home and had my feet soaking in ice water to stay cool, since we had no AC in the apartment...as with everything else, its use requires balance.)

For our full day in Turin, we started by going to a huge market at Porta Palazzo (translated link--translation done by Google...), which is purported to be the largest in Europe. It was indeed quite big and had very reasonable prices. Jason bought about 1.5 kilos of cherries for 2 Euro (3.3 lbs for about 3 bucks). While it was a good deal, it did mean that we spent the next couple hours walking around Turin, spitting out cherry stones.

A stall at Europe's largest market

We visited the Royal Palace of Turin, which has some really fantastic marble-work in the entry area. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed, so though I did get one of two shots before the docent told me to stop (the sign was *very* poorly placed--there was no way I could have seen it unless I was throwing something out in the trash can it was hidden behind), they weren't the best, so I haven't included them here. I did include a rather appropriate statue of Pan, that was snapped before the docent's correction of my conduct. 

Shh! I didn't take this picture at the Royal Palace!

Around lunch time, we came across a portion of a Roman road and an old Roman gate. Turin was founded by the Roman's and dedicated to Augustus, and there was a statue in place to commemorate that fact. Jason was very excited to see this pose of Augustus in statue form, as it was included in many of the Latin texts he used in high school. He had recognized it immediately from our table for lunch at a nearby restaurant.

Jason and a famous Roman

After lunch, we took some time to walk around the city, including some time to walk by one of the rivers. There were many locals also doing the same, and others relaxing in the grass. After a bit of walking, we joined those with more sloth-like pursuits and found a shady spot for a nap. After a bit of a rest, we located some coffee and worked our way back into the heart of the city via public transport.

One thing that much of Italy shares with less western countries I have been to (including, actually, some parts of the US), is the desire/need to use capital investments, for *as long as humanly possible* despite the rather obvious safety or other hazards that may result from the use of the investment. Case in point--in the video below, is the door of a street car opening and closing (it is taken sideways...you may need to tilt your head). My, I am glad my toe, finger or arm did not get in its way!

We successfully disembarked from the street car with all limbs and other body parts attached and headed to the Mole Antonelliana for a ride in their great, glass elevator to get a nice view of the city. The building is home to Italy's Cinema Museum, which we only visited slightly, due to the glass elevator ride. Since we had good weather, the view from the top was quite nice and we spent quite a while looking down into the courtyards and terrasses of Turin. 

At the top of the Mole Antonelliana

For dinner on our second and final night, Jason had again found a well recommended pizza joint. This one, we had to wait about an hour for a table, but they were nice enough to put our names in and tell us what time to come back so we went and had a beer and some aps, then came back and had some of the best pizza I have had, especially at about 10pm. It was truly great.

Thumbs up on the pizza!

That pretty much wrapped up our trip. We took our time getting up the next day and just had sandwiches at a nearby mall for lunch, before working our way to the airport and back to Germany. On the way home, there was a fantastic sunset over the windmills in the farm fields. Italy was a nice diversion--especially for the food--but it was great to be back in Germany.

Yeah, I'll say it: Windmills are Majestic

Week 58: Wiesbaden and Mainz

In searching through Atlas Obscura, Jason and I came across the Nerogergbahn a water-powered funicular, located a couple of hours away in the city of Wiesbaden. (As a quick note, Wiesbaden is the location of the US Army's European base of command.) We did it as a day trip, driving our around lunch time, stopping briefly at a rest stop for some food and running across an entire row of fantastic cars in the parking lot. It wasn't clear if they were on their way somewhere or were on display at the rest area for some reason or another.

Fantastic cars...and an 18+ store...

We were very excited to see the funicular, our second in a month or so (the last being the Montmartre funicular when we were last in Paris), since, first off, funiculars are pretty cool from an engineering perspective, as they reduce the needed energy to raise any single car up a slope by having an opposing car attached to the other end of a cable. With the power of mgh (potential energy, not the T-stop), the first car assists in raising the second car up the slope.

Most funiculars use a powered cable system to provide the extra energy needed that is not provided by the difference in potential. The interesting thing about the Nerogergbahn is that it uses only the difference in potential to move the cars, by filling the uphill car with water, making the uphill car heavy enough to pull the downhill car up. The resulting speed of both cars is controlled by the brakeman on the downhill car. Once the formerly uphill car reaches the bottom, it dumps its water and the cycle begins again with the uphill car taking on water.

Passengers Disembarking (de-funicularing?) from the Nerogergbahn

The other neat thing about the Nerogergbahn was the tracks. For most of the run, there are only three tracks for the wheels--each car has one at the edge and they share the one in the middle. A problem, of course, would occur with this layout when the cars need to pass each other. This is resolved by having a section of track where there are two complete sets of tracks, so two for each car. Since the distance of the run is fixed, the cars always pass at the same point, so bone crushing injuries are avoided. The video below shows this point on the track.

We enjoyed some coffee and cake at the top of the hill, then took a walk in a nearby park once we returned to the bottom. We then drove to the city center and walked around for a bit, before going over the river to the city of Mainz. The evening we were there was Germany's first game in the European Championship soccer tournament against the Netherlands. We found a restaurant with an outdoor Biergarten and a big TV to sit tight, eat, have a couple beers and see what it was all about. Germany won, with, what we were later told, was a not a very exciting game, though in finding our way out of Mainz, we saw a large number of happy Germans.

Jason made a friend he never wants to leaf...