Sep 25, 2009 - Hameln

On our way from Hannover to see our friend Roland and his family in Gutersloh, we stopped in the town of Hameln.....yes, of Pied Piper fame. What an adorable little town. It has a wonderful old town, with a large pedestrian only area. There is a guy dressed as the Pied Piper wandering around, and telling the story of the town. He must have been quite funny, as people were laughing a lot. My German was not good enough to follow everything, and ironically the guy is an Englishman, and his German with a British accent was really difficult to...

Sep 24, 2009 - Hannover

We left Horst & Magdalena’s on Monday 21 Sept. My parents were flying back to Canada on the 22nd, from Frankfurt (about 2 1/2 hours away), and we thought it best if we got our goodbye’s said and done the day before. We left some stuff at Horst & Magdalena’s place; as we knew we would be back in a week or so. We left fairly late in the day, as we only had about 220kms to go to our next destination, Hannover. This is the town that Barbies’ Mother’s family is from. Most of the family immigrated to Canada shortly after Barbie’s Mom in the early...

Jun 9, 2009 - All that glisters is not gold

Monday 8th June. Today we said goodbye to Ralph and John who had baked us some farewell Yorkshire scones to eat on our way. This was our third present in twenty four hours as Ralph presented us with a bottle of Merlot and the owner of a fabulous local restaurant, Speiserestaurant Sophien-Klause, gave us a pen in a Xmas box! Our destination was Shloss Moritzberg, which featured in a local brochure of castles of Saxony. The picture showed a beautiful Baroque palace set in the middle of a lake and the write up extolled the wonderful gardens...

Oct 18, 2008 - Battle Of The Year 08

ALLLLLRRIIIIGGGGHHTT!!! TONIGHT YOUR GONNA SEE SOME BREAKING AND SOME RAPPING AND SOME BREAKING AND SOME SCRATCHING AND SOME BREAKING AND SOME GRAFFITI AND SOME BREAKING AND THEN...... YOUR GONNA SEE SOME MORE BREAKING Yes it was that time. The reason we travelled around the entire world. It was time for battle of the year 2008! To those of you people living on another planet, the battle of the year is the biggest bboy battle in the world!! now your edumacated, back to the story this year it was in Braunschweig Germany. We jumped in Eclckes...

Oct 6, 2008 - Hannover with Teresa

On Saturday Teresa and I decided we wanted to go on an adventure. To do something we hadn't done before. Being limited on money and time we decided to go to Hannover together, a city about an hour south of Bremen. We met up in the morning in Bremen Hauptbahnhof and took the train to Hannover. In Hannover it was rainy and crowded and we decided shopping was not on the to do list today. We were hungry so we set out on our search for food. Which ended up being an hour adventure on the kinda creepy subways there. Which are confusing. Originally...

Sep 8, 2008 - The first week in Bremen

Hello Everyone! I've been living in Bremen now for one week and 3 days. I'm liking it here. For those of you who don't know I am living with a family in a small town. I have three younger sisters and two dogs and of course parents. My family is really nice and open. The parents work a lot and tend to hardly be home during the week. But the girls are home and they're nice. They argue like siblings do but everyone gets a long well. Its a good thing that I like kids. My sisters are 10, 12 and 8. I play games with them and we cook together....

Aug 18, 2008 - On to Friesland, Deutschland

We woke up early this morning since we had a long drive before us. We packed up the tent as quickly as we could between periodic dribbles of rain. There was nothing to eat for breakfast since we are now trying to finish all our food before we leave in a few days. We figured we can just find something on the way into the town of Odense. Well, we figured wrong! Either it was too early or we were in the wrong part of town, for nothing was open to provide us with breakfast. We made it to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum right when it...

Jun 20, 2008 - Germany - Hameln

Friday 20th June You may have heard of the town of Hameln. It is the town where the Pied Piper (of Hamlin) led the rats from the town. When the town’s people did not pay him, all the children from the town disappeared. If you don’t remember the story – now would be good time to refresh your memory; go find a book! There’s not a lot here in Hameln, but we were greeted by the Pied Piper himself at breakfast…no really… We made a brief stop in Wolfsburg, affectionately known as ‘Golfsburg’. This is the town where the VW is made and the...

Nov 30, 2007 - Woltzeten (North of Emden) Germany- 2km from the North Sea

Hello to all our friends and family, We are in the last few days of our visit here in Woltzeten (produced Voltzee-en or thereabouts). This is a town in Germany where Kay's family (the Groenewold's) lived in the 1800's. Kay's mother was named Lorene Groenewold. We are staying is a lovely family farm home completely restored about 20 years ago after a fire destroyed the attached barn and part of one wall of the home. The family home was purchased by cousins of Kay's by marriage (Eildert (pronounced Idert) & Sylvia Lübbers). They share the...

Jul 8, 2007 - Hanover

I love Hanover!! We took a 3-hour bus and Anja, our friend we met in Ireland, was waiting for us at the bus station when we got in around 1100. We had a fantastic German breakfast that lasted for almost 2 hours. Breakfast consisted off fresh rolls and spreads, sausage, eggs, tomatoes and cucumbers, cheese, coffee, and a few other things. Then we headed out. We took the elevator up to the top Neues Rathaus for a wonderful view of the town. It also had some neat models of the town before, during, and after the war. Over 90% of the city was...

Jun 11, 2007 - Heide Park

Today we got up early(ish) and went to Heide Park. It is an amusement park near Soltau Germnay. It ended up taking us around 4 hours to get there because of the train wait times. Oh well it was worth it. We spent the whole day there. The roller coasters were so much fun. There is one that has the World Record for the steppest drop on a wooden coaster. It was 61 degrees and it was called Collosus. We also went 120km/h! There was another one that just opened in May called Desert Racer which launches you so fast. No idea how fast we went on...

Mar 28, 2007 - Family homelands

We made a mad dash today for two towns in the north of Germany to complete our hat trick of ancestral villages visited. Several of John's ancestors came from villages around the town of Osnabrück. Our first stop was Dissen, home of the Kicker family. We explored the town for a few minutes (a few was all it took) then ate Greek food - yes, Greek food. I see a pattern developing. When we were in the small village of Tobercurry, Ireland we ate Indian food. When we finally get to visit the Russian village where my mother's family lived, maybe...