Weekends in Plauen and Bremen
Now Im beginning to feel like I'm in school again and not doing my homework. The only problem is I have no deadlines so theres no push in the wee hours of the night to get Blog writing finished! I am so incredibly good at procrastination it isn't even funny anymore. Let me see if I can catch up on the past few adventures since Christmas (yes I know it's March now :p)
The first trip was a family weekend in Plauen to visit my Host mothers grandma. Plauen is a town in Far East Germany just north of Bavaria right by the Czech border. It started with a three hour drive that included a lovely narration of the happenings on the autobahn with a bonus quiz of unanswerable questions such as "Where is the car in front of us going?", "why is that car blue?", and of course the ever popular "Are we there yet?". The chorus of questions prevented me from assuming my typical car ride position of sleeping against the window, now thats going to take some getting used to!
When we arrived I had the pleasure of meeting one of the funniest and sweetest ladies I've met; My Host mothers Grandma, or "Omi" as the children all her. Despite fast approaching her nineties Omi is incredibly fit and quite possibly keeps up with the little ones better than I can! On top of being all around lovely and inspiring she also happens to be an outstanding hostess, chasing anyone who tried to help out of the kitchen and always having tea and snacks ready. There are just some people who I am honoured to get to know and she is certainly one of them! Omi lives in a beautiful corner apartment with several bedrooms and a plant filled sunroom which I had the pleasure of sleeping in. With it's slated, window-lined ceiling couldn't help but feel like some kind of princess up in a tower!
Plauen itself is an interesting city though thanks to whatever virus I was fighting off that weekend a pounding headache kept me from seeing as much as I would have liked. I did get a good tour around on the tram and a couple brief walks which included a stop by the water to feed the many hungry ducks (one of my favourite activities with the little ones, their eyes always light as the bird swarm and run after crumbs). We also took the kids swimming which as I'm sure you can imagine is a three person job but was quite fun! We had an afternoon trip to the neighbouring
town of Hof which is just inside Bavaria. Hof has a nice central street lined with shops that we walked up and while snacking on Bretzel (which are apparently supposed to be best in Bavaria so I can cross that one off the the bucket list)
We ended our trip with a delicious Asian feast prepared specially for us from a local restaurant thanks to a lovely friend of Omi's! The next more after a round of goodbyes and thank you see set back out for another one of those oh so quiet three hour drives home ;)
A couple weekends later I had the pleasure of taking a trip to Bremen to visit one of my favourite Canadians! For the many of you who don't know my "uncle" Seamus, the relationship is a little hard to clarify, but in a nut shell he was a friend of my moms as I was growing up and I call his kids my cousins. A few years ago his life changed drastically when he met a lovely German Thekla while she was working in Canada. They fell in love and they had an adorable son together. Now they live in Canada but put aside a few months every year to spend with Thekla's family in the town of Lilienthal just on the outskirts of Bremen. Cause life is funny some times it's been about six years since I had seen Seamus and had yet to meet this new wife and son, I never would have imagined that would happen for the first time here in Germany. Full of excitement I hoped on a train to Bremen and oh my gosh actually wrote a blog post on the journey. Upon arrival I was welcomed with warm hugs (Seamus is one of those people that just gives great hugs!) and lots of catching up and getting to know the beautiful little family.
Upon arrival at Thekla's family home I was amazed to find a piece of farm land that has been in the family for centuries, and comes complete with a house and barn built in the 1800s(?), several horses, alpacas, cats and a pair of dogs (FINALLY got my doggy fix after three months of missing my furry baby terribly!) There was so many heart warming things that weekend, a wonderfully kind and welcoming family. A complete adorable and talented little boy, Ily, who at just four is fluent in both English and German (perks of having parents with two different native languages)! Aside from being a totally wild, nature and animal loving hippie child just like his big brother Ily's language skills totally blew me away. With Thekla and other Germans he only speaks German and with Seamus and other English speakers he only speaks English. We however had some very very interesting conversations as I regularly spoke to him in both languages by the end of my stay he would talk to me and switch back and forth between English and German several times in one sentence! I couldn't even repeat something that he said because I cant switch languages that quickly in my head, it was really quite astounding! It was really fantastic to get to know the little guy and his lovely mama while catching up with Seamus. Not to mention how absolutely fantastic it was to be with people I consider family again after so long away from home in a strange place,
The weekend itself included a day trip to one of the many little towns nearby the name of which I didn't write down and have of course now forgotten :< It was full of history and beautiful to walk through. We then had dinner at a delicious Mongolian all you can eat grill before heading out with Theklas sister for a night on the town. The next day when we all eventually got up we took a trip to Fischerhude another neighbouring town the was home to an artists commune on the early 1900's. Lucky for us Theklas mom is a big fan of several of the prominent artists from said colony so we got a private guided tour of the museum and gallery. While I'm not usually a huge art person I was really impressed by the work and history of the place. That little trip was concluded with a walk through the little woods for Ily who had so patiently come through the museum. (I tried to teach him to play eye spy in the paintings, but that never quite worked out) Monday started with a fantastic morning horse back ride on the families gorgeous Icelandic horses. Since my train didnt leave until much later in the evening we spent the afternoon in Bremen itself too see the important tourist spots. A walk through the Schnoor, the particularly old part of the old town, which was like walking through the pages of a fairy tale with its narrow streets and adorably colourful old rickety buildings home to unique little stores and scattered hidden alleys and passages. Next was the Town hall and cathedral which to my disappointment was closed so we could only admire from outside. The town hall was first built in the early 15th century with its "new" facade completed in 1612 and is a UNESCO world heritage site and I dont think I could get a single picture that did it justice. Then we went to see the Bremer Stadtmusikanten (the Town Musicians of Bremen, a story most are probably familiar with) because you cant go to Bremen and not see them. I have to admit I was a little surprised when we came around the corner of the town hall and attached to the back wall was a life sized statue of the animals I'd always pictured it bigger and in a place of more importance. None the less popular rumour has it if you hold the donkey's front legs and make a wish it will come true, we didn't pass up the chance to wish so lets all cross our fingers he's a lucky donkey. After a quick dinner we headed the train station and said goodbye and I was on my way back to Braunschweig.
There I finally did it! The two adventures are finally written down! Obviously I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to meet and reconnect with so many warm, welcoming and lovely people. The next post which hopefully will be up soonish (but I'm not about to make any promises) will cover last weeks eventful Mainz adventure when I get around to writing that one!
Thanks as always to everyone for your love and support!
Love Cedar
RSS Feed