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Published: October 22nd 2011
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Saturday evening in Rendsburg, Germany and I am writing this sitting at the kitchen table at Gabi and Christine’s house after a day at the beach in Germany……..a day at the beach with a difference compared to a day at the beach in NZ.
Anyway I’d better start from yesterday which was a very early start in Paris as we had to be at Paris North railway station at 5.40am for our 6am train to Germany.
Up at 4am to shower etc and complete packing as the taxi we had booked was due at 5.15am and with the cases etc. to get down 5 flights of stairs it was going to be a two trip mission at least.
We tried to be very quiet as we got ready but at 4.45am there was a knock on the door and a rather angry downstairs neighbour ‘telling us’ to stop walking around as she was trying to sleep so she could work that day. I tried to explain that we had to catch the taxi at 5.15am and would be gone soon. Don’t think she was happy but couldn’t do much about it. We will send a message to the people we rented
the apartment off to advise that it is crazy expecting people on holiday not to get up until at least 8am.
We were waiting on the footpath outside when the taxi arrived and get to Paris North in plenty of time. I just knew that the change of train tickets we’d managed to organise a couple of days before from 8 train changes to 2 changes was too good to be true and we struck the first hiccup when we tried to board the 1st class carriage and the guard informed that as the train went through Belgium and we didn’t have Belgium on our Eurail pass that we had to pay extra. No matter how I tried to convince him that we had been told by the railway booking person that we had already paid extra to cover all this, I had to fork over another 40euro to get on the train. However the next 3 hours went by quickly as we traversed France and Belgium, via Brussels, into Germany and changed trains at Cologne. That went OK and we then sped up through Germany towards Hamburg where our next hiccup occurred. Everything over the loud speaker system on
the train was in German, of course, and I heard the speaker announce ‘Hamburg’ so we gathered everything up and exited stage left only to realise almost immediately that we were not at Hamburg HBF, the main station, but at another Hamburg station. A quick run to the info desk where a helpful man said there was a train to Hamburg HBF leaving in 3 minutes from the same platform we were on so on we got and took that train the 5 minutes into Hamburg HBF. Only a minor hiccup and we had a laugh about it on the way.
A rain left for Rendsburg within 20 minutes of arriving at Hamburg so we finally pulled into Rendsburg just after 4pm.
Gabi and Christine were waiting for us and have to admit we were knackered but very pleased to see them both.
We booked our train seats to Berlin for next Tuesday while at the station and of course that was made very easy as we had our interpreter, Christine, with us.
Home to Gabi’s and a lovely cuppa followed by a home cooked chicken casserole dinner, bit of a catch up chat and off to bed just after
9pm……..earliest night we had been to bed for ages!!!!!
Just as aside, they are heading into their winter up here and as we left Cologne just after 9am and headed north I was looking out the train windows and could see that the whole countryside was completely frozen. The paddocks etc. looked they had at least what we would call a 5 or 6 degree frost on them and at times the fog was so thick we couldn’t see a thing. When we had changed trains at Cologne it was freezing cold on the platform waiting for our rain and we went into a café and had a hot chocolate to arm up. It is very cold up here in the north of Germany.
Today, Friday, we started with a late breakfast, 9am, and then Gabi took us all to the North Sea coast on the west coast of Germany to see their beaches. Last time we were here we went to the East coast beaches so this was certainly somewhere different.
Our first stop was at a very old little town called Friedrichstadt about an hour by car from Rendsburg where we wandered around a very Dutch town dating from the early 1600s when they brought Dutch people here to build sea walls along the low lying coast. A fascinating little place that was neat to wander around, in the freezing cold. It was a nice clear sunny day but the temp hovered somewhere around 10 degrees with a very cool breeze that lowered the comfort levels somewhat.
After this we headed to the beach at St. Peter-Ording. This is an extremely long stretch of beach that runs for miles and is actually divided into several beach areas up the coast. The main difference with our beaches is that the whole beach area is very flat and where the beach comes to at high tide and where it goes to at low tide is at least 2 kilometres apart. Tide was almost out and we walked down a boardwalk, after having to pay 10 euro for the car, YES pay to go to the beach!!!!!!!, about a kilometre to get to a restaurant build about 30 feet up on lamppost sized piles. We had a lovely lunch there and could just see the sea about another kilometre away. Hundreds of people on the beach in the very cold temps flying kites, kite surfing, riding horses and just walking. Don’t know if any brave souls were actually swimming or not. It is the strangest sight seeing the distances involved. After lunch we headed to the other end of the beach, by car, and stopped in a large town centre and after wandering around the shops went down to the beach at this point. Again the distance out to the water was huge and also we were going to be charged 2euro each for the pleasure of walking down to the beach again. We all decided that on principal and seeing that it was almost sunset that they could stick their beach and we gazed out over the low sand and grass flats before heading further north just a bit to another beach that we could drive down onto. This time the ‘ticket office’ was closed but apparently we could have shown our ticket from the first beach and it would have got us onto this one. WEIRD SYSTEM!!!! We drove about a kilometre to the edge of the beach and then walked down to the water. It is all extremely shallow, as you could imagine due to the distance of the tide, and there were no waves to speak of. And IT WAS COLD!!!! even though the sun was still shining.
So a lovely day at the North Sea beaches and I have to say that we don’t know just how lucky we are at home when it comes to going to the beach. Don’t ever take it for granted when we compare it to what the people over here have to put up with. We are truly blessed in NZ. Imagine the Council manning the entrances to all our beaches and making everyone entering pay for the privilege. Can’t see it working somehow.
Drive home was in the dark but it has been a great day of sightseeing and driving through a lot of German farmland and seeing how they farm. Huge big barns for the cattle that are kept inside a lot and paddock full of sheep which is something we haven’t see so far in Europe.
That’s the last 2 days of our travels. Tomorrow morning we are starting with a late breakfast again and then hoping to watch the Abs beat France at the RWC. Christine has a website that she has watched some of the games on so fingers crossed that it works again. The game is on at 10am Sunday morning here local time so GO THE ABs.
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gillian
non-member comment
Hi
great blog Bruce keep it up. Yeah go the AB"S !!!!!!!!!!!!! Gill