Lots of things happening over here in Duesseldorf, keeping me from my appointed blogging rounds. I’m going to post up some chunks on different things we’ve been doing. I have almost completely given up on getting Tony to write entries, as he’s useless. (:) He’s working, entertaining parents, trying to keep me happy and also finishing up a paper for publication that he started at UBC, so has many sorry excuses…
We are now nicely settled into our apartment and had our first guests last week!!! Jim and Breeda Kelly (the co-creators of James Anthony, otherwise known as ‘Tony’) came and joined us in our pad for about 10 days. It was a great visit, despite the rain that insisted on pouring down in sheets for the first 2 days. We toured around the city and the Rhein promenade, visited a palace, had a visit from Tony’s aunt Lori who lives 2 hours away in Holland, and watched the Germany – Ireland European Cup qualifier game in a packed O’Reilley’s pub (Ireland bitterly defeated themselves). We drank many pints of beer, galleons of tea and filled ourselves up with sausages, schnitzel, sauerbraten and spuds.
Then we rented a car and drove down south to a town called Cochem on the Mosel River. The whole place is a fairy tale - and yes, I got to be the princess - with a huge castle perched on the top of a steep hill overlooking the town. The area was spared during the war, so unlike Duesseldorf and other major centres, all the little old houses, narrow cobblestone lanes, secret passages between buildings and city wall towers are still there, painted up all pretty for the tourists. The Mosel twists and turns through green hills saturated with growing grapes. Every restaurant and cafe in town has real grape vines loaded with fruit growing up around their signs and doorways. We stayed in an old inn which must have been in the family for generations, filled with old photos, collections of pocket watches, rocking horses, vases and rugs. I like old stuff, so needless to say, the inn and whole town were a goldmine for me.
On our way down we also stopped at the Maria Laach church and monastery in the Eifel region. It’s 850 years old and stunning. Chris Suen, you need to come visit us and see it! It’s a whole kind of retreat centre today as well as a functioning monastery, with a lake nearby for boating, walking trails, fields of grazing cows and organic food and wine production on the grounds.
Besides the town itself, the trip was significant because I drove us there and back in our trusty VW steed, on the German autobahns, reaching speeds of up to 130km/hr, and NO ONE WAS HURT. Jim, a seasoned Irish bus driver, wondered that we made it home at all, what with me driving counter-clockwise on round-abouts and entering the right-hand lane after left-hand turns.
That’s all fer now, folks! :) Kate
