May 2, 2007 - ***Wednesday - visit Poel Insel and travel to Hamburg

Wednesday morning had a buffet breakfast - today's buffet had all sorts of tasty offerings - what looked to be raw sausage meat, lots of pickled herring -matjes or something like that, didn't look to appetizing for breakfast- I did finally have some braunschweiger which I love, was raised on that stuff. Funny side story one of the first things I craved when I got home from my tumor surgery was braunschweiger - which is liverwurst. Anyway I hopped in auto and drove to nearby Poel Insel a few km away. What a delightful little island. Not...

Apr 15, 2007 - The journey pauses..

But not the adventure! After nearly two years, 45,000 Km and 14 countries we are flying back to Canada on April 18th. We made the difficult decision to ship Gypsy back to Canada meaning our future trips to Europe will be done in a very different fashion and our future motor home camping will be done in Canada or the USA (or Mexico.... or Central America.... the possibilities are endless). We are going to (try to) settle down in our cottage at Madeira Park for the next year - to decide whether we are ready to renovate/build a house or...

Apr 2, 2007 - Hamburg

We headed toward Hamburg, stopping for the night at a place called Braunschweig, or West Bum F__k as Fatima called it, so crude! We had booked the hotel on line using a search for Hanover, and the results said this hotel was in the old town's tourist area. Unfortunately we thought it was Hanover, surprise, it was 30 k away. The hotel was in the old town area but the wrong town! From then on, while booking on line, we looked at the address' of perspective hotels more closely. The hotel was OK, supposedly 3 star, but that must have been a few...

Mar 18, 2007 - Hamburg

After seeing some advertising for a new airline with good flight deals to destinations in Germany I booked us a trip to Hamburg. From what I had read it sounded like an 'interesting' place, not your typical sightseeing tourist destination but definitely a place to have a good time. We managed to arrange a host in the form of the lovely Birthe, a fairly young German lady who lived by herself and had spent time living in London previously. As soon as we got to Birthe's place we got changed and headout out with her to meet her friends for...

Oct 23, 2006 - Back in Hamburg, Germany

Back to another familiar city! We are beginning to feel very international having friends in all the big cities in Europe. Our friend Brita had arranged to get the collision damage we incurred earlier in the year repaired. None of the mechanics spoke a word of English so it was ideal having someone who was bi-lingual along with us. Not that it was easy for her to accompany us as she was hobbling around on crutches having broken her leg badly six weeks earlier. Gypsy was in the shop for three days so we felt badly imposing on her when she...

Oct 13, 2006 - Hamburg

Days 1-2, Hamburg: Our visit to Hamburg was basically a layover on the way to Denmark. This layover ended up being filled with obstacles, not the least of which was the cold and persistently rainy weather. When we arrived in Hamburg it quickly became clear that we goofed on our choice of hotels. We underestimated how big and spread out Hamburg is and booked a hotel that was over a half an hour outside of central Hamburg in a neighboring town called Bergedorf. We were so far away from the Hamburg tourist sights that we could have easily been...

Oct 13, 2006 - Back to Hamburg

Day 1, Back to Hamburg: In order to break up the long train ride from Denmark to Belgium, we decided to return to Hamburg for one night. We got lucky and were greeted by a beautiful sunny day upon our return. We did our best to capitalize on the nice weather and spent most of the afternoon exploring the city. We had read in our guidebook that no visit to Hamburg was complete without a boat tour through the city's numerous canals, so we set off to find a boat tour. Well, we got the boat tour part right, but saw no canals. We got caught up in...

Jul 31, 2006 - Hamburgo, o bom filho a casa torna.

Voltamos para Hamburgo para ficar dois dias, suficiente para mostrar para Rê e para Nancy um pouco da vida que levei há 14 anos nesta bela cidade. Para matar as saudades dormi no meu quarto antigo, fomos até o colégio que estudei e andamos pelos pontos da cidade que costumava ir de bicicleta quando morava aqui. Tudo em nome da nostalgia. Tive sorte em morar com os Mebus em Hamburgo, a família e a cidade são espetaculares. Aqui é a segunda maior cidade da Alemanha, atrás de Berlim, e um dos maiores portos da Europa. O centro é marcado pelo...

Jun 23, 2006 - Day 1 Hamburg

We woke up, joined the massive line to get a shower then packed up camp. We then returned to the Franken Centre for breakfast. John picked up some more shoes and kevin picked up a battery charger so that he could finally start using his camera again. We then said goodbye to Nuremburg for the second time and we were off to Hamburg. We somehow managed to make it to Hamburg by 7pm despite running into lots of construction and traffic jams. We drove to the city centre and parked illegally like all the rich germans did. ie we were parked behind...

Jun 13, 2006 - Germany Part 3: With Ulrike and Danny in Hamburg!!

For those of you who don't know, Ulrike Sigglekow was an exchange student in Mooreland when I was a sophomore in high school. She was in the senior class then. She was the first exchange student Mooreland had ever had, so she was definitely a novelty to us. I'm sure she got tired of answering our dumb questions and having to speak... just so we could hear her accent. Anyway, everyone in Mooreland really loved having Ulrike around because she had a fresh perspective, wore cool clothing, and listened to techno music from Germany! Well, it has...

May 24, 2006 - Rhine river cruise

Today we had a great tour of Bacharach with the lovely Herr Jung. He told us many stories about the town, and his life during the war. Then off to Rheinfels Castle and St. Goar. Rheinfels is a huge ruined castle, beseiged many times but never taken. Finally the current prince surrendered to the French, because the alliance would be good. They occupied the castle for two years, then blew it up!! Some friends. Below the ramparts are mine tunnels, where gunpowder was stored. They are about 3 ft high, and dark, dark, dark. We walked through...

Nov 7, 2005 - Hamburg

The trip to Germany was very relaxing after the 14 hours of travel in 2 trains. I stayed with Daniel and Jan at the house of Jan's parents (Guter and Ute Tolkien). (Jan is studying pedagogy in Bologna this year). We made this trip because Jan had his wallet stolen in Bologna along with all of his identification. He brought us with him while he took care of this business part of Thursday and Friday. After our arrival and showers, Jan's mother, Ute, took us to a nice community nearby their house. It is called Volksdorf and is in the outskirts...