Hello Everyone,So it is our fourth day in Germany and we have finally found an internet cafe and the time to write. We were lucky to fly into frankfurt and have my Aunt's foreign exchange students family pick us up and open their home to us!! It was so nice to have a house to go to and relax and get to know the Duffy family. It was also nice becuase as a selfish american they spoke english so it was not an instant culture shock. At first i was bummed that so many peope spoke english because you don't feel like you are in a different country, but now we are in Munster Germany and few people speak english and I feel like a dumb american!
Unfortunately the second day here I hit a low and had a really sore throat but we were still with Nicola and her family and they took care of getting me some throat stuff and I think it is getting better!! We slept about 12 hours today!! How nice. We plan on going on a bike ride through munster seeing that EVERYONE rides bikes, you can't walk in certain places becuase they are only for bikes, nice but scary when they start honking at you becuase you are in the bike path!
We are running out of battery power so I am going to let Sam type sume stuff because he is gagging to. I will hopefully be able to write more sometime soon but things have been fun and nice to be away as a couple again. Here's sam!
Hey, so ya, it was a blessing to have the Duffy family take us in and speak English to us, thank you Duffys! They showed us Wiesbaden, which, being a conservative spa town, is a twin city of Tunbridge Wells! However, their spring waters, though salty, are definitlely less disgusting than what you can taste in TW. The father of the family, David, is an irishman who grew up in england before moving to Germany, he lived here before the Berlin Wall fell, and so it was fascinating to hear some of his stories of that time from him and his wife Moi. They were saying how this is the first time they'd seen the German flag displayed so prominently. It'd always been seen as too nationalist to display the flag and people just wouldn't fly it. yet this summer, for the World Cup, for perhaps the first time since WWII, germans everywhere were flying their flag. We watched Germany vs Ecuador with them in a li'l cafe on one of Wiesbaden hills
and afterwards there were cars honking and people leaning out of windows letting the flags stream as they raced down streets. Talking to Nichola later, she too was saying that Germans typically could not display any pride in their country but are finally letting it show for the football.The following night, our last one in Wiesbaden, we went to a local park fo a public viewing, they had a large screen set up, and a number of swedes and english people were there watching. it made it a great atmosphere, though i was gutted that the second swedish goal even went in, what a crap goal! David and his youngest son, Konrad came along with another english friend of theirs and his daughter Linda.
So after Wiesbaden, we met up with Nichola in Cologne,
and saw a bit of the Cathredral (i think its bigger than Durham, which is saying something, but its close) climbed the hunderds of steps up to the tower, 
we walked along the Rhine, visited her university, drank some cheap german lager and watched yet more football. They had this ultra cool set-up for the luggage at the train station where you filled this box with your bags, paid 4 euros, and the machine would give you this ticket and automatically whisk your bags away into the bowels of the building. We were nervous about getting it back as they was no human interaction whatsoever. It did, but it was impressive that it did at all.Yesterday we arrived in Munster, and Erika wasn't joking about the bikes, its especially freaky for a deaf man because the high tinny noise the bells make are undetectable by my hearing aids, and I keep forgetting that the red sections of the side walks are for bikes only so I keep jumping out of my shoes everytime a bike screams past me. Its Erika's ears that save me, as she keeps pulling me out of the way time and time again.
So, as she said, she wasn't feeling good :-( altogether now, aaawww, but we had some great rest today, and we're about to go join the biking crowd before watching the US vs Ghana.
One last thing, here's the breakfast page of the menu of the cafe I am typing in right now, can you see what's on offer for the items entitled: "Humprhey Bogart" and "The Day After"...pretty cool :-) Anyone think of other good menu items to put in there?
posted by SamErika @ 7:22 AM
3 Comments:
sorry you have been ill Erika hope the footy makes you better..Not... USA lost, poor you, but I am glad we have an African country going through. poor old Owen why doesn't he just retire! we are watching all here just about to watch Brazil/Japan. I like the phots keep in touch.
Mum
Mother's Ruin
full English, 3 mugs strong tea. triple gin in pt glass...free
Thanks for posting these pictures. It was so great to read and see about this family so near and dear to my heart. I'm enjoying your travel pages! love Aunt Shellie
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