You Go Nate!

"IN THE GREENISH TWILIGHT OF THE RHINE"

This week has been busy and that's a fact.

Wednesday was my last day in Lüssow with Sybille & Wolfgang. I wanted to get something nice for them as a "thank you" but there are no shops within several miles of Lüssow (and nothing in Lüssow itself.) So I decided to make something from scratch. I had a small notebook with tearable pages and I used that to write a whole bunch of little thank you notes: "Thank you for the visits to Rostock" or "Thank you for washing my clothes" or "Thank you for the Toblerone" All in bad German, of course, and with a little picture poorly drawn. I then hid these notes all over the house, and they should be finding them periodically between now and next Christmas.

On Wednesday night S&W took me to Rostock where we met up with their youngest daughter Antje. We ate dinner at a very fun restaurant called the Petrikellar. The theme was Medieval and the lighting was like candles, large wooden chairs and wooden tables, the waitresses wore long "maiden" dress, and the only silverware you are given is a knife. (You are, however, given a bib.)

I had a very nice dinner of roast duck.


Here I am looking very Middle-Aged with my bib sitting next to Antje while Wolfgang is stabbing my duck.


This is Abuk... Master of Locks


I said my goodbyes to everyone for now. Here I am with Sybille with Elias (my fifth-cousin)

On Thursday I had a long train journey across the northern half of Germany to the town of Krefeld. Krefeld is a smaller town between several much larger towns in the Rhineland of West Germany. This is the most densely populated area of the country and a large part of its economic engine.

I am here staying with S&W oldest daughter Solweg and her family for three days. This is my first time meeting them, but they have been very nice. Solweg works as a tax advisor, her husband, Jack, is Dutch and works for Westinghouse. They have a three-year-old son named Sidney. Jack and Solweg both speak very good English and have been helpful with some of my more complex German grammar questions.

Today Solweg was nice to take me to the city of Düsseldorf, about 30 minutes drive away. Düsseldorf is a fairly large city set upon the Rhine River.

Here you can see the Rhine River and the famous Rheinturm (Rhine Tower).


One of the first things we did was take the elevator to the top of the tower for a look around. The weather wasn't too great, but it was still fun.



Don't jump Nate!

...don't worry, I didn't.

Here I am.

Düsseldorf is a very modern city. So modern, in fact, that plastic color people climb on the buildings.


But of course it has its Old City, which is where we went for lunch. We had a great meal at a Spanish restaurant.

Cool churches...

Weird statues....

Spring is springen with this yellow bush over the canal.


And here I am again with a statue of someone important but forgotten.


We picked up Sidney from "kindergarten" on the way home. Kindergarten is more like preschool here, and for Sidney it is in German and Dutch.

When we got home he had fun taking pictures with my laptop. Sidney is also my fifth-cousin.





So that's the scoop from Düsseldorf and Krefeld.

I finally have a fast (WIFI!) internet connection, so I've been able to upload more pictures onto Picasa.

Check out the pictures from my time in Mecklenburg and Brandenburg

and

Check out the latest from the Rhineland.