With Uwe and Astrid in Hannover

During our vacation, a surprising number of places did not have Internet access, and also we visited with our relatives late many evenings.  Now that we're home, we'll finish the story.

29 Sept: Wednesday is Market Day in Bad Pyrmont, and Reinhard sells his eggs and a neighbor's honey.  Mostly he sells 6 or 10 eggs, but he'll sell you one or two if you'd like.

We drove to Hannover to see more cousins, Uwe and Astrid Rabi.

Their daughter Anke and her son Max came to see us.  Max likes dinosaurs and we brought him the book "Danny and the Dinosaur" so he (and his father Frank) can learn English.

Here is a typical cone zone in Germany--we encountered many on the Autobahn and in the cities.

30 September: We visited Hamburg with Uwe & Astrid; it's both a very busy trading port, and a city of parks and beauty.  We took a bus tour of the city and here are typical scenes. 

Shipowners' widows couldn't inherit their husbands' business, so the Hanseatic League built these widows' quarters where they could survive on a small pension.

This wharf now contains many souvenir shops, & restaurants, where we had late lunch.  Uwe's MS has put him in a wheel chair (Rollstuhl); Walt got in a lot of pushing during this week.

Marie was struck by the outside spiral staircases on this hotel.

1 October:  Bremerhaven with Uwe & Astrid.  We particularly wanted to see Bremerhaven (port city for Bremen) because 7 million emigrants, including a few of ours, embarked here for the New World.  The Deutsches Auswanderer Haus (German Emigrant House) is a must-see.  The plaza outside has some stones with emigrant names engraved:

Inside the "Haus" there are re-creations of the emigrant experience: the sounds, the crowding, everything but the smell.  Here we are at dockside, ready to board the steamship, seen looming in the background.  Astrid & Uwe are waiting, Marie is leaning over the mannikins to look at the water.

Typical suitcases & trunks of the emigrants, loaded on board.

On this ship, between-decks was divided into 5-person bunks; if your family was smaller than 5, you'd bunk with strangers.  You could hear the constant rumbling of the engines, various clanks & thumps, someone snoring, someone coughing (hope he's not too close!).

3 October:  Frank & Anke took Max to a wonderful park and playground at Steinhuder Meer,  the largest lake in Lower Saxony.  They invited Heike (Max' favorite aunt) and us to go along.

Max likes firemen, policemen, and all their equipment.  Does this look like a firepole to you?

Heike now has her own apartment, a few minutes from Frank & Anke (and Max!)

German motorcycle riders are serious about their safety.

 Frank rented this boat with an electrically-powered jet.  Max was thrilled to steer, but even more interested in mugging for the camera.

4 October:  On our last day, Marie & I went to Schloss Marienburg, a 19th-century fairytale castle built on the ruins of an earlier fortification atop a hill.

5 October:  Heading for home at last.  An hour's delay in Copenhagen while they disembarked one passenger and his luggage, then fixed a frayed wire in the luggage compartment.  Even though SAS fed us well over the Atlantic, blocked Eustachian tubes made descending painful.  Immigration & Customs  in DC were slow but easy;  our agricultural imports (honey from Glesse) were not a problem.  We were exceeding glad to see Jeff at the Colorado Springs Airport, and he & Karen brought us home.