Swimming in Memories of Europe

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Europe jumped out of the wee bag that holds my swim access card today.  My first time in the local pool since before my summer, 2016 trip to Europe, I found in my wee bag a receipt for cookies,  from the Tesco grocery store in Hove, beside Brighton.  I also found a one-cent Euro coin, from Germany.

I remember paying 40 British cents for those cookies on the sunny early-September day I walked through Hove, where we house sat for two weeks, to a Medieval church, in whose by-donation book box I found a 2009 English translation of Celestina, Rojas' 1499 picaresque novel, a century before Cervantes' Don Quixote.  I read and gave away Cervantes' decades ago, and Rojas this fall, before I gave it to the local recreation centre for the person who teaches conversational Spanish.

The recreation centre, two rinks, a concert hall, and the pool, is halfway through a  two-year expansion which will result in two pools and a water slide.  The wading pool, hot tub, steam room, and sauna are gone; in their place the lane pool goes up, across a temporary wall from the current lane pool.  When the new lane pool's done, the current lane pool will close, for the building of the leisure pool and water slide in its site.

England, the mother of parliaments, votes, as did Williams Lake in the October, 2015 municipal election referendum to approve the borrowing of ten million dollars for the recreation upgrade.

While I upgraded my own recreation this morning, I thought of Hamburg, Luneburg, Cuxhaven, Berlin, and Rostok, the German cities I saw this summer, courtesy of my generous sister.  I know not where the one-cent coin came from, but I am glad I kept a few European and British coins as souvenirs.

"Was I in Europe this summer?"  I marveled.  "Did I spend four weeks at a Hamburg house-sit?  Three nights in Berlin, the farthest east I ever was?   Day train trips to Cuxhaven and Luneberg, on the North and Baltic Seas, respectively?"  My generous younger sister was why.

"Did we walk the Brighton beach many times during our two-week house sit in adjacent Hove?  Did we eat great fish and chips in a London restaurant, after a day in renown art galleries?  Did we house sit for two weeks in Manchester, ride its funky street cars, and see the canals still plied in this Industrial Revolution epicentre?  Did I watch 75 000 pour out of the Manchester United stadium after a soccer game? 

As I swam along, back crawl, this morning, I thought, "My, what a generous younger sister I have!  She bought me a plane ticket from Edmonton to Hamburg, and another from London to Edmonton.  She fed, sheltered, and entertained me.  She translated for me in Germany.  We spent eight weeks together, our longest time together in more than 25 years."

We flew together to Canada, her first time out of Europe in more than two years.  She plans to return to Europe in early 2017.  Why not, eh?  I'm glad she got me there, this time, and two times before:  2015 to Britain and Ireland, 2011 to France.

The Tesco receipt and European one-cent coin, sitting on the desk beside this laptop, remind me that I was in Europe this summer.  What memories!    

U Boat, The Blitz, Ice Cream, and Dome Poem

Sunday, September 11, 2016   Brighton, England

A U Boat, the Blitz, ice cream, and a dome,
Are memories I put into this poem,
Two weeks before my roam brings me home.

U-234 sat in Hamburg's harbor,
A floating chunk of the second world war.
No submarine hat I bought on that score.

Across the channel, by a church, locked,
A woman, 90, told Blitz tales that shocked
Me, lifelong in peace happily docked.

Europe's craze, ice cream, Curator Loske told,
Rose two centuries past, in King George's bold
Brighton Pavilion, under a dome now old.

The shore raged under moving clouds last night.
Now the sun shines under waves rippling bright.
Past and future exist now, in the mind's sight.

Hamburg to Brighton

Monday, August  29, 2016  Brighton

We got from Hamburg to Brighton in one busy day.  My sister is a great trip planner. 

A Neugraben neighbor drove us two kilometres to the nearest city train station.  We rode a train for several stops to the main Hamburg station.  We rode another train more than 15 stops to the Hamburg airport.  

A couple hours later, we were on a plane bound for London.     Heathrow is a big airport.  Our plane landed, then taxied past 20 or so planes parked to unload or load people.  Customs clearance took mere minutes, after we walked many halls in the terminal.  A train took us through more than 20 stops to downtown London.  Another train took us to Brighton, where I type this. 

We stayed Sunday night at a guest house, or bed and breakfast, after we met the owners of the place we will stay in during the owners' trip to Spain.  They will house sit the Seville place for which my sister also applied.   Brighton, cooler and by the sea, unlike Seville in hot southern Spain, is a preferable place for us to spend the next several days.

Apples and Photos

I walked over many small apples in  the back yard. Why not recycle the apples into the bush for the squirrels and other animals, some of which I saw there?  I bagged the apples, most of them on the ground too long for human use. 

 The bags are by the compost bin, but the apples might go through some forest creatures before they become compost.  I have seen many beetles, among nature's best composters.  I will put the apples in the bike basket and ride from the hot sun to the shady woods.  It is noon, soon lunch time for whatever animals find these meals on wheels.  

You see that photos now endure on this blog, thanks mostly to my sister's determined efforts to find a way. 

Rostock and the Woods

Thursday, August 25, 2016  Neugraben, Germany

On Wednesday we went by train to Rostock, the main Baltic Sea port of East Germany, a country from 1945-90.  Today, we walked around the woods near Neugraben, this Hamburg suburb in which we have a few more days.  Years ago, even months ago, I did not think I would see such sights as I saw these past two days.

Since West and East Germany merged in 1990 to become Germany, Rostock's population has declined from about 260 000 to about 200 000, due to its port becoming less busy; but there is still a port, and tourism seems to be a new and growing industry.  The beautiful sandy beach several kilometres long, about  20 km north of the city, boasted many bathers, and many walked along the road of shops of many types, to the breakwater, rock-supported fingers that stretch into the sea for a kilometre to keep the waves down on shore.



Pleasure boats,  yachts, ferries, and the biggest cruise ship I ever saw were floating, colorful sights on the warm, sunny day we visited.

The train station is modern and clean.  The old city, whose university began in 1419, among Europe's oldest, is a maze of glamorous streets, some with names that reflect East Germany, the socialist country that was here:  Rosa Luxemburg, Bebel, Gotha.  There also remain statues that show the distant or recent past:  a rowboat holding three people, a statue of a little girl holding flowers.

The railway from Hamburg to Rostock went through smaller places, the biggest of which was Schwerin.  I noticed many empty buildings along the tracks, especially close to the train stations, but people getting on and off at the many stops call this or that place home.  History is longer than the post-1945 era that dominated my youth:  Danes, Swedes, and later the Renaissaince-era Hanseatic League ruled Rostock.  This city, this country, can hold much history, and much life now.

Life near here includes the forest less than a kilometre from where I type this, in a Hamburg suburb after a relaxing day walking in the woods.  One might imagine what humans have done over the centuries in those woods, but here I mostly note what they do there now, and what the woods do regardless of humans.

People live in these woods, along roads no bigger than wagon trails in the Canadian Cariboo, where I live.  There are street signs, direction signs toward train stations, a museum, and other streets, and a burial mound more than 3 000 years old.  People have lived here for a long time.

How long has the heather been here?  Fields up to a kilometre long and half that wide are full of millions of small, light purple flowers topping plants up to 50 centimetres tall.  Trees such as I do not see in Canada, this heather that is older than I care to guess, this shady forest in today's hot sun, made me peaceful, patient, and happy.  All this will outlive me, but I was privileged to see it, to try to see myself as part of nature.

Trees, heather, and Rostock people consume something to survive, as did we, after our forest walk today:  1.20 Euro hot dogs from the kiosk in Kaufland, the main grocery store in this suburb.  A hot dog, and a couple unpronounceable but delightful pastries on one of my last days in Germany sweetened my growing memories of here.  I eat in German better than I read what I eat in German.           

German Food Prices and Energy

Tuesday, August 23, 2016   Neugraben, Germany

Here in a Hamburg suburb, there is Kaufland, a big store of groceries, housewares, some clothes, hardware, liquor, and most memorably, a hot dog kiosk.  The wieners are almost twice the length of the buns, and thicker than Canadian wieners, a good 1.20 Euro deal we have eaten more than once.
Multiply that by 1.5 to see an equivalent Canadian price.

Multiply these Euro grocery prices by 1.5 to make Canadian prices:

500g ground pork:   1.59
200g tilset cheese:   0.99
1 kg nectarines:       1.39
300g liverwurst:      1.49
12 rolls x 200 sheet
 toilet paper:            1.95

Now go to the Portugese section of Hamburg, near the harbor, for a 9-Euro, thin-crust pizza about 30 cm across.  Or go down the Elbe River, which we did by train, to Cuxhaven, for an even better pizza the same size for about 7.50 Euros.

In a Berlin cafe, my sweet tooth got three glazed, danish-shaped pastries covered in walnut pieces for 3 Euros.  Each is a full snack, and I needed two days to eat the three.

Back here, the Turkish grocery store near Kaufman had a dozen kinds of Turkish delight, 200g per box of 30 or so cubes 1.5 cm on the side, for 1.99.  Pop goes the pancreas.  I also bought, for 3.49, a 750g jar of nutella, to give to the nutella-loving owner whose house we stay in until her return by month's end.

There is a 0.25-Euro deposit on most non-alcoholic beverage containers, and some alcohol containers.  There are glass and plastic bins for them.  I saw in Germany four-part garbage cans, one part for garbage, one for glass, one for paper and cardboard, and one for metal, I think.

One standout item is windmills, many, some alone, some in groups.  Their three 8m blades describe an arc whose peak is more than 30m above the ground.

I learned months before I came here that Germany has more renewable energy than most countries.  It is reducing its nuclear energy.  A few months ago, its grid ran for two straight days on renewables alone.

I saw many bicycles here, and a still higher concentration of bicycles in Berlin.  This country of more than 80 million, on a land mass many times smaller than Canada, which has fewer than half as many people, seems well fed and powered.     

I Love Hamburg Rock and Roll, and Pizza

The Hamburg portside Sunday market today, more than 100 stalls selling vegetables, fruit, fast food, clothes, souvenirs, and much else, was almost over when we got there; but the music was still booming in the cavernous brick building nearby.

As we walked in, the band at one end was  finishing "Knocking on Heaven's Door," as Guns 'n' Roses would sing this Bob Dylan song.  Then they blistered through the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" for an encore.

A few minutes later, an energetic trio at the other end of this building launched into older rock and roll, including "Peggy Sue," a Buddy Holly song.  People, including children and elders, danced around.  Adults drank beer, ate sausages, or waffles, and this last band of the day rocked  through its encore as we left the building.

The blocks-long cardboard and food container mess of the street market faced us outside, but a clutch of garbage trucks and band of cleaners had the area clean within an hour.   Seagulls flew in for the food scraps.

After we walked along the Elbe River, we had pizza in a Portugese place a few blocks away, in the place we had had great pizzas two Sundays before.  This time we split a pizza, having discovered the previous time that a pizza each put us to sleep on the green space in front of a nearby church, among others sleeping off a pizza, or their Saturday night revels in the rock and roll brick cavern. 

Soon, we took to the sea, or at least to the river, plied by a handful of ferry boats on fixed routes of several stops along 2-3 km of the river.   Each ferry holds a couple hundred, some below, some on the uncovered deck above.  Some ferries were packed; some had more room, especially toward the other end of the line, away from downtown.

One ferry stopped near a U-Boat, circa World War Two, now a museum; may war itself one day be a museum piece.  We wondered if our dad chased this exact submarine during his war service with the Royal Canadian Navy in the North Atlantic  Ocean.  I declined to buy a hat that said U-Boat 234, although the hat fit my fat head.  Wearing it in Canada might get me a fat lip.

Sun, rain, sometimes pouring rain, us happily finding shelter from it, and a train and bus ride back to the suburbs helped make a full, fascinating  day in this city with the biggest port I ever saw, and I lived in Montreal and I know Vancouver.

Where go the ships?  To the whole world.  I hope the sailors get time for Hamburg music and pizza.

Public Transport, Germany and Canada

We went from Berlin to Hamburg, 280 kilometres or so, by bus, for seven Euros each, less than 11 dollars Canadian.  A bus ticket from Williams Lake to Kamloops, about the same distance we traveled, costs more than 70 dollars Canadian, more than six times as much for the same distance.

Ours was no special ticket.  The Berlin bus station advertised tickets to other cities for the same amount, or for a few Euros more, for example to Munich, farther away than Hamburg.

Berlin and  Hamburg are bigger than Williams Lake and Kamloops.  More people on a route makes each person cost less, and pay less, than on sparse routes.  Still, public transportation seems more valued here than in Canada, even noting that Germany has more than twice Canada's population in a land much smaller than Canada.

A couple Sundays ago, we rode Hamburg buses, river ferries, and trains for 3.20 Euros each, about 5 Canadian, for up to two hours.  This cost more than a Cdn $2.75 Edmonton bus and train ticket, and more than a Cdn $3.00 Vancouver bus, seabus, train ticket good only for one fare zone; a ticket to cover all three Greater Vancouver zones costs about Cdn $6.00.

Another comparable ticket, but we did not get one, is a 7.00 Euro (Cdn $10.50) one-day pass for Berlin buses and trains.  A similar Hamburg pass costs 6.40 Euros, about Cdn $10.00  In Vancouver, one pays Cdn $9.00 for a one-day pass for buses, train, and the sea bus, but in only the one, core zone, not the adjacent second and third fare zones.

Trains here are as frequent as I found in the French Riviera in 2012, and buses go frequently to outlying neighborhoods and towns, as I found in Ireland in 2015.  A few Euros got a train ride of up to 20 km on the French south coast, 25 or 30 got me from Ventemiglia to and from Turin, Italy, across the mountains to the north.  Eight Euros bought an Irish bus ride from Dublin to Galway, across the island.

Canada had good passengers trains until I was a teenager in the mid-1970s.  Economics and ecology will bring trains back, from their current use by the elite and the romantic, to their use by everyone.  Remember what Canadian Pacific Railway builder William van Horn said in the 1880s as rails crossed Canada, "If I can't export the scenery, I'll import the tourists."  For a century, trains carried tourists as well as people merely trying to get somewhere.

Mom and I went by train about 300 km from Drumheller to Edmonton around 1970.  From the 1920s-50s, there were passenger trains from Edson, where I was born and raised, down the Coal Branch, a mining that stretched 100 km to the south.  

Today I bicycled on paths in a forest a kilometre from Neugraben, the Hamburg suburb where we are staying.  I rode past a horse-riding business.  Sitting later at a shaded picnic table, I saw a horse-drawn wagon of ten or so tourists go by.

By foot, horse, bus, train, or bicycle, people get around.
 

Berlin, Old and New

Berlin, centuries old, millions strong, two cities become one in my lifetime, was three days of surprises.

We stayed two nights in a very nice, glassy, affordable hotel, in what was from 1945-90 East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic.  Neither the country nor the capital remain, but many old buildings retain the contrast with West Berlin, a sprawl of big roads and new buildings.

There are streetcars, a subway, above-ground trains, buses, and many routes for bicycles and pedestrians, and many of both.

On the first day, we walked around the towering radio tower and its adjacent squares and old streets, and on Museum Island, some of whose museums we would visit on our third, last day.

On the second day, we walked to many historic sites based on the Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to strengthen the divide between the two Berlins.  We saw plaques and artwork, some on pieces of the wall kept for display.  We saw a graveyard, some of it moved to make a buffer on the east side of the wall.

We saw Checkpoint Charlie, a former gate between the Russian and United States sectors in this city divided in 1945 among them, France, and Britain.  Again, there were pieces of the wall, vertical slabs of cement about a metre wide, three tall and 20 cm thick.  Here played American rock and roll music, for the touristy area which displayed photographs show to have been a sombre place for decades.

Another part of the wall still up, covered in artwork on one side, exposed re-bar on the other, was by a bridge from the 1200s which once formed part of this barrier between the cities.

On this second day, we walked more than 33 000 paces, according to my sister's pedometer, more than 20 kilometres.

A trendy area in the south part of the city had a busy south Asian restaurant where we ate a memorable lunch on a sidewalk table.

A sunny area near the centre of the city had Rosa Luxemburg Place, with lines from her writing embedded in iron on the surrounding cement.  

Day Two's long, fascinating walk almost over, we passed a concentration of army vehicles seemingly now used for Roma housing.  A city election campaign is on, and  one night online I found one possible reason for graffiti on a nearby wall telling one candidate to go away:  there was a 2016 police raid on Berlin Roma, and perhaps this candidate helped bring about the police raid on these peaceful people.

Power poles along many streets sport party signs, from the ultra-left Communist Party, through The Left, the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Free Democrats on the right.

On our third and last day, we left the recent past for the distant pass because we toured notable national museums, grouped together a ten-minute walk from our hotel.  The two-hour line up to enter the Pergammon Museum was longer than I waited to enter the Louvre in Paris or the British Museum in London, each with neolithic and Babylonian artifacts at least as old as I found in the Pergammon; but this museum had whole stone gates, five m high and 7-10 metres wide, hinting at quite a feat of transportation from the Eastern Mediterranean to Berlin.  Much from Ancient Egypt was in this and one other museum.

The national art gallery had many paintings by Germans from the Romantic Era, from the late-1700s to the mid-1800s, when industrialism and capitalism replaced cottage industry and feudalism in Europe.  Much artwork celebrated military distinction then and after, for example victory against France in 1870; much ancient stonework sported armed Assyrians in chariots.  A room of colorful paintings of peaceful scenes from the late-1800s and early 1900s contrasted sharply with this dark art.

One museum had ancient European artifacts, from the Celts and Germanic people, whose migratons some displays explained.  One could press a button to blow a horn such as Celts used.  One display, in about five minutes, traced the evolution of humans.

In my lifetime, this city has evolved from a military flashpoint between empires to a example of peace and multinational harmony.  The West subjugated the East; displays brag about that, and vilify the East.  Tyrants, from Assyria, Egypt, and Rome once crowed over their defeated foes.  Where are those tyrants and empires now?  In Berlin, I felt both change and permanence:  fleeting martial glory and fulfilling human potential.    

Photo Free Blog

Monday, August 15, 2016   Neugraben, Germany

Dear Blog Readers:

My blog lost its photos, I noticed a few hours after I posted many.  Where photos were, only blank spots remain:  Europe 2015, Europe 2016, Canada, almost all photos, except a few from Wales, 2015.

These photos were on the blog when I checked after I posted them.  I uploaded them from my Android to Google Drive to relieve the Android's filling storage.  To post each photo on the blog, I made a URL of it on Google Drive, which saved it to the clipboard of the computer I was using, whether my Android or my sister's Apple.  I then opened the blog entry, and imported the photo via the blog's image link icon.  Each photo appeared on the blog entry when I posted the photo, and later, after I logged off and then back onto the blog to check.  Some photos I posted using the Android did not appear on the blog, so I posted them again using the Apple.  I explain all this because some reader might offer a solution, note a step I missed, or propose another way to do this.
 
A few hours later, all the photos I put on the blog, whether by Android or Apple, are gone, except a few of Aberystwyth, Wales, May, 2015.  My sister posted those, using her Apple, on which I type now.  She figured out how to do this and showed me, but I seem to be doing something wrong.

Blogged photos are superior to blank spaces, but I don't fret over this, which has taken more of our time so far than I like.   I am here to see things, not puzzle over computerizing them; but a person can do both.  The computer, indeed the internet, are mere tools.  People who use a tool better have always taught others to use a tool better.  I am open to advice, readers.

If I do not blog another photo, from this trip or from any experience, I will not feel deprived:  I will have had seen and perhaps photographed the sight, and that is worthwhile, away or at home.  I'll work on this problem and probably solve it.  For now, with a jaunty step,  I'll continue this trip of a lifetime.

I take Android photos.  I can email them to people who email me.

For now, my blog entries will be text only.

From Tuesday-Thursday, August 16-18, we will be in Berlin.  I'll paint you word pictures about it.

Bicycling in the German Sunshine

On Monday, August 15, we rode downtown on two of the four bicycles stored in the shed behind this house my sister is watching during its owner's vacation.  The bikes are heavy three speeds with coaster brakes, but they're bikes, and that's enough for me.

We got to downtown Neugraben, two kilometres away, locked the bikes to a bike stand, one of many in this land of many bikes, and bought no ordinary hot dogs from a kiosk in the big grocery store.  For 1.20 Euros, one gets a boiled wiener bigger than in Canada, a wiener that sticks a few centimetres out each end of its bun.  It's like a cartoon hot dog.

Dogs eaten on a street bench outside, we went grocery shopping, cloth bags in hand.  Groceries later in the bags on a table outside a nearby bakery, my sister had coffee and I had a Danish-shaped, glazed bun with walnut pieces on it.

Groceries in their bags in the big baskets on the front of the bikes, we rode back to the house.

While my sister unpacked the grub, I loaded into a bike basket the 20-odd wine and beer bottles that were here when the homeowner left.  I rode a kilometre or so to the recycle bin I saw near the graveyard yesterday.  Tombstone and flower sellers are nearby, and a couple blocks away is a home business making tombstones, a dozen or so on display in the front yard.  "Great place on Halloween," she said yesterday.

Still physically fit, years before I'm recycled to dust, I want to ride this bicycle again today, in no particular direction.  "Not all who wander are lost," J.R.R. Tolkien wrote.  I will soon ride toward the graveyard, which on a bushy hillside, and ride on some of the forest paths beyond.  This is not the Great Beyond, but it is a great beyond.

Long live the bicycle.

Affordable Travel

Do you think travel is too expensive for you?

Do you worry that you will never see great places?

Do you fret that, if you reach great places, you won't have the means to get home, and be forced to wash dishes in another language for a long time, to buy passage home?

Your worries would be over if you contacted my sister, whom I call a genius at travel planning.  In past times, she has showed genius in other areas, and if you want to pass time elsewhere, rest assured that her genius would help you do it.  Alas, she plans only for herself, me and a few others.  She does not make a business of travel planning.  You might still end up washing foreign dishes.

I can help you, basking as I have been, here in Germany, in the glow of her planning skills, which shone on Sunday, August 14.

That day, she booked, online, our late-August flights from Hamburg to London, train from there to Brighton, where she is to house sit after this current house sit, and passage for us, on different days, north to Manchester, her next and last house sit of these two-plus years of house sitting in Europe.  She also found easily-affordable train tickets, actually one-day train passes that cover  one or two states, for our remaining time in Germany.

The north passage is different for each of us because she is to be in Manchester while she still has three days of Brighton house sitting, which I am to do.  Always happy to help, I am confident that I, a travel babe in the woods, will get, alone, from Brighton, through big London, to Manchester.

"Staple your passport to your chest" is among the helpful travel hints she has given me.  Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, but I do not think this break heralds a break of north from south Britain; I therefore will not need my passport.  The staple marks on my chest from flying from Canada to Germany this month are almost healed, so I am ready to heed good advice.

Her Sunday booking session might have included more passages than I recall above, but one thing it did include was economy.  She looked carefully for the best plane and train deals.  The fares she found tell me to tell you that travel is within your budget.  She also considered when the German home owner  would return, which remains an uncertain day, and when the Brighton home owner would leave, a certain day she learned of which she learned only the night before the Sunday booking session.

"You get good at what you practice," is another one of her axioms, and her many axioms merit a book.  This practiced traveler has lived rent-free in Europe for three quarters of the time since she arrived in mid-2014, more than two years ago.  I am far from home, but in good hands.

A few brief years ago, I did not expect to see Europe.  This is my third trip to Europe, each trip heavily subsidized by one or both of my sisters.   After this trip, the longest of the three, I will have seen Europe enough.

In late September, we will return together to Canada.  By early October, we will go our separate ways.

If you have not seen Europe enough, know from me, who saw my sister in action, that travel to and within Europe costs less than you might expect, even if you do not have generous siblings, such as I have.

As my late father-in-law said, you live only once, so go where you can and see what you can during that life.

 

Luneburg and Cuxhaven

On Saturday, August 13, we visited two quite different places, Luneburg and Cuxhaven.

Luneberg, south of Hamburg, has many pedestrian streets, old buildings, cyclists, and a Saturday street market in the city square, near some historic churches.  There is also a salt museum because for centuries this was an area of salt mines.  We did not visit this museum, but we saw the street market and walked many of the narrow Medieval streets of cobblestone.

Cuxhaven, northwest of Hamburg, is on the Elbe River delta at the North Sea.  Few pedestrian streets, if any, are in this industrial city where freighters pass the city and harbor of a couple cranes, a few ships, and many yachts, moored in an area which a seaside promenade passes.

These cities, each with fewer than 100 000, are in the same state.  A one-day state train pass, for about $20 Canadian, is enough to reach both cities.  Bremen and Hanover are in the same state, but we did not see them.  I am happy with what I do see here, in a country I never expected to visit.

Trains and Umbrellas

It is Saturday morning, August 13, here in  Neugraben, , the Hamburg suburb where we are house sitting for two more weeks.

How many days of trains and umbrellas will that be?

Trains are bargains here:  a one-day state-wide train pass costs between $20-30 Canadian.  Such passes got us north to Lubeck and the Baltic Sea beach beyond, the other day.  Such passes will get us south to Lunenburg, which has a street market on Saturdays.  We could also get to Hanover and Bremen on the same pass.  Hamburg, its own state, borders two states, and these passes include travel from Hamburg to and from these states.

Umbrellas are also a good deal, especially for the people who get the ones we forget in various places.  My sister is very good at booking cheap train, plane, and bus tickets, and very good at giving away umbrellas.  Good heart.

On Friday, a rainy day, while she booked this and that train for our England house sit time which will follow our German time, I walked the two kilometres to the commercial area of this suburb and bought her an umbrella.  A day or two earlier, she had left behind her sixth umbrella, I think, since her arrival in Europe more than two years ago.

We Canadians are generous people, in this case helping others stay dry.  The other day, we saw an umbrella forgotten on a train seat.  Was another Canadian nearby, or is such generosity international? 

Hamburg Kunsthalle (Art Gallery)

On Thursday, August 11, we went to the Kunsthalle, the main art gallery in Hamburg, a rainy afternoon well spent.http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/&prev=search

Not Lost in Hamburg

I did not get lost in Neugraben, , the Hamburg suburb where we are staying.  Wednesday, August 10 was my first time out alone, a rural Canadian bird trying its wings, or in my case legs, alone.  The signage is in German, which I do not speak, but my sister emailed me a Google map of the neighborhood before I left.  My Android charge permitting, I could look at this map if I got lost, but I didn't get lost.

We walked the two kilometres to the business district, had a 1.20 Euro boiled sausage in a bun from a kiosk at the front of a huge grocery/dry goods place, a tasty regular habit, and parted.  She went  on various errands and I retraced the route back to the house.  Then I boldly walked around the neighborhood and into the large green space a half kilometre away.

Daily we bring umbrellas, which usually prevent rain, but that day the umbrellas were useful against rain.

Nightly, including last night, a neighbor and the niece of the homeowner visit.  The niece stays here part of the week. The neighbor was  going on a date but the niece joined us for supper, and a sing-along later, with my sister tinkling the piano keys.

Today, more explorations, this time in Hamburg itself, a bus ride from this suburb.

Yesterday my canny sister figured out how to get the photos and videos from my crammed Android onto Google Drive, a step toward putting them on this blog.  Soon you faithful readers might see pictures, even videos, as well as words. 

Lubeck, Mein Lubeck

On Tuesday, August 9, we went by train from Hamburg to Lubeck.  On the train, I saw a small boy with a soother on a beaded chain hanging off his shirt, a handy chain I could have used years ago, to save washing a soother my daughter regularly dropped.  Sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Lubeck, we saw a stroller go by, with a child inside eating a bun with meat in it.  Alongside walked a small dog, waiting for the child to drop the bun.  People aren't so different around the world; neither are dogs.

"Welcome to Europe," my sister said as we walked on a bridge over the canal, between a round church made of brick and a line of brightly-painted buildings.  We went up another church's tower and saw this old city spread in all directions.

Rain, sun, cloud, rain, sun, cloud, bag lunch on a canal side bench began our seaward trip that day.

It continue with my sister's brilliant idea of going by train to the sea, 20-30 leisurely minutes farther north.  The sandy beach,  bordered by a 15m-wide band of large rocks to keep the sea in the sea, and the cobblestone boardwalk reminded me of Nice, France, where we were in January, 2012.  This was the northern, not the southern shore of Europe.  This was the first time either of us saw the Baltic Sea.

Freighters went up and down the inlet, bound for distant lands or for Lubeck.  A cruise ship floated by.  People were setting up a bandstand for a concert, whose last part we saw after walking two km down and two km back, the boardwalk's length.

"Lubeck, Mein Lubeck" was the choir's encore song  Many in the seated and standing crowd of several hundred swayed in time and sang along.

We swayed on the train back to Lubeck and  Hamburg, on one-day train passes for the whole state, costing a mere15.50 Euros each, money well spent, for Lubeck Mein Lubeck.         

Hamburg Portside Sunday Market

Hamburg's port is more than 800 years old, from its era in the Hanseatic League, a Medieval trading system along the North and Baltic seas.

It remains a busy port, but it had room for commute ferries, such as we rode on Sunday.  More than a hundred packed the ferry, which moved up the Elbe River, sometimes crossing the Elbe to a dock to give or get passengers.  Tugboats towed freighters, tour boats passed, small boats passed, the many cranes for loading and unloading container ships drifted by, and we passed a shipyard.  This port seemed bigger and busier than two I know from Canada, Montreal and Vancouver.  We saw from the water the Elbe Opera building.

We got off the ferry at a vast open air market that covered several intersecting streets.  There were clothes, fashion items, and lot of fresh vegetables, fruit, and fish.  Breakfast was smoked salmon on a bun for me, pickled herring on a bun for my sister.  We bought a flat of more than 10 avocados for one euro, about a dollar and a  half Canadian.

Then we found the music.

Inside a cavernous building, people drink and dance Saturday night, through Sunday morning, when they eat breakfast, but can still drink.  We saw plates of waffles go by, beer, and at each end of this 75m  long building a stage.  Bands played for an hour each, music coming from one stage or the other.

We listened to two bands, the first playing old rock and roll, such as "All Shook Up" and "Let's Twist Again," the second, at the other stage, following with newer, more metal-sounding songs such as "Radar Love" and songs by ZZ Top and Guns 'n' Roses.

We rode a ferry back downriver, and went ashore near a Polish Catholic church whose mass was just ending, in a nearby neighborhood, near the red light district   A walk of a few blocks took us to a Portuguese district and great pizza in a sidewalk cafe.  Another short walk took us to St. Michael's church, with its bright blue and white interior.  A nearby grassy park was a good place for a nap, as others found.  Children played, some with soccer balls, and families had picnics.

A couple buses brought us back to this suburb where I type to you, using my sister's laptop.  It is morning and she is not up, but she has been so busy guiding me around this city, speaking German for  me, interacting with the owner of the house we are at, an owner now away on vacation, and visiting with the neighbor who always seems around this house, and feeding its cat, that I am glad she sleeps late.

Without her, I would not have this trip of a lifetime.  Me, in busy, lively Hamburg! 

Hamburg Singalong

The song "Bei Mir Bist Du Schein" has a German title but mostly English words.  I have known and liked the jazzy tune for decades, but this week I heard it sung live for the first time.  My sister played the piano and our host sang the words.  Our host also sang, in its original English, "Summertime," with great feeling.  We three sang "Someone Like You," "Cry Me a River," and other songs familiar in many countries.  She sang "Autumn Leaves," whose tune I know, and whose words I have heard.  My sister played the piano with the creative charisma that has seemed natural to her since she was a little girl.  This was a memorable evening, as are all musical times.    

Translation Titters

Here in a suburb of Hamburg, the neighbor often visits the house owner.  Both speak German to my sister, who also speaks German.  All three speak English, my and my sister's first language.  Translation often produces funny results.

For example, we were talking about poetry, having seen the Heinrich Heine statue in Hamburg.  Philosophy came up.  I said something with the word "philosopher" in it, but the German equivalent sounds very different.  Our host heard "floss" and though I was  talking about the candy floss, or cotton candy, such as one eats.  My sister then said that in the future, when she walks past the philosophy department at the University of Alberta, the university where she worked for years, that she will imagine its people holding and playing with candy floss.

When she explained the work of a psychologist, another word somewhat different in German, she called him a brain mechanic.  The house owner, a special education school teacher, then explained the work of her school's guidance counselor by calling him a child mechanic.

There have been dozens of humorous incidents such as these since I arrived two days ago.

Before  our host left on Saturday afternoon in her motorhome, bound for the North Sea coast, where her boyfriend will meet her, before they board their boat to sail the sea, her neighbor invited us to supper at her place.  We had a nice stir fry of chicken and vegetables with ginger, in a creamy sauce that included peanut butter.  Dessert was a frozen torte we bought a couple days ago.  She suggested various sights to see during our time here, notably Berlin and especially Dresden.