Postings from Germany

Fun on Pfingsten

It's an alliteration - fun and Pfingsten have the same first sound.  Even though y'all reading this in the US of A probably don't know what Pfingsten is.  But I'm here to tell you!

It's Pentecost (American) or Whitsun (British) depending on which brand of English you speak.  Here in Germany it's a public holiday and yet another that is based on the Church calendar but has very little to do with public practice.  I'd venture to guess that a goodly less than 50% know what Pfingsten celebrates.  It's a day off and a long weekend in most minds.

But it's a holiday and we had company!  Nicole and Jeremy came from Berlin to visit and not incidentally pick up the goodies we'd brought back for them from our last trip - dried peppers, chipotle sauce, hot sauce, vanilla, chocolate chips, pecans - the usual essentials unavailable here.  And would you believe it, the weather was nice!  Not warm, mind you - I don't know if summer will arrive at all this year - but it was nice and mild and sunny.

Since we'd "done" Bremen the last time they visited, it was a bit different this time.  A little bike time was one element.  That's me in the waaaay back having had a bit more difficulty getting up the hill than the other guys!  How can that be?

And there was a little visit to Worpswede, the artist colony outside of Bremen.  Since so many tourists go there, the shopkeepers have exempted themselves from the usual Sunday  closing laws, so it's fun not only to see some of the cultural things, but peek into the shops as well! 

Nature confronted us when we got there.  Here, an inchworm that found Nicole as soon as we stepped out of the car.  I always think of the song from the Hans Christian Anderson movie , Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigold..... 

And then first a stop at the windmill.  It is such a pretty one and on our list to visit when Hunter Hannah and Kenley are here.

We didn't really want to spend the lovely day in museums, but we did manage to visit a couple of minor sites.  One is the Barkenhoff, or the birch tree cottage, where many of these artists lived and met.

Here we are sitting under the arbor and the view that we have of the lovely house from there.  Hey, I could live here!

Unfortunately what I DON'T have pictures of are the local beers we tried and the chicken wings and the seared fillet that we cooked and ate.  Boy, did we eat!  It was all in all a wonderful weekend (except perhaps that Bayern lost to InterMailand in the Champions League, but we are of two minds about that) and we are looking forward to having these two back for our annual Thanksgiving fest in November.  Then we can have more fun and more food. 

OK, I'm up for that.