Picking up the birthday girl!

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Thursday, June 3rd:

Today, we got up a little later, and had a leisurely breakfast and walked Falco. We were going to go pick up my Mom’s cousin, Margit. Margit was the whole reason for our trip in the first place. She had turned 70 on May 1st, and we were going to have a big family reunion to celebrate. She lived approximately 2 hours away, in the hillsides of Bergkrahlingen (near Bonn). She lives by herself on a large plot of land in a cute little cottage. This was the day that we got up to 200 km per hour on the autobahn!!! That is 124 miles per hour! Whew!! I was holding on with white knuckles!  It’s amazing to me that a car can go that fast with 5 people and 1 dog on board! But that was short lived because we drove most of the route on back roads! The route we took, took us on a famous motorcycle route, and since it was so beautiful that day, there were a ton of people, in groups and individual, riding their motorcycles. We were all marveling how fast they were going with all of the curves and switchbacks and not getting in accidents! But that was spoken too soon! We came around the corner, at one point, and there was an accident that had just happened. There were two bikes in the ditch and a biker was laying on the ground pretty banged up…you could tell he had skid quite a bit because his leathers were all torn up. One of the people, who stopped to help, was holding his head, still in the helmet. We all hoped he would be ok, as we continued on our way (there were plenty of good Samaritans, so we would have just been in the way if we had stopped). No sooner than 10 minutes had passed, when we saw another accident involving motorcycles!! The two guys looked ok, but one of their bikes was in another ditch and a tow truck had just arrived. That would seriously suck to be stuck in the middle of nowhere and not have a ride out! No other scary exciting things happened…thank goodness!

When we got to Margit’s house, we had refreshments and explored the yard. We did not stay very long, because my aunt was going to have a late lunch waiting for us when we returned. We spent the rest of the day lounging in my aunt and uncle’s yard, visiting, sunbathing and climbing trees. 

Later on that evening, my cousin, Christian (my Bitburg aunt and uncle’s son), and his girlfriend (Denisa) and her three daughters arrived. They live in MÜnchen. The girls, Jessie, Tasmin, and Charlize, were all around Kenya’s age, and spoke little English. But you’d never know that! The girls all got along fabulously and Kenya showed them all of the things she had been doing around the house (tree climbing and Legos) and the playground a few blocks away. It is amazing what communication happens when you just use a few words and lots of hand gestures! They even got to play the same game that Kenya and I had learned when we were staying at my Bavarian aunt and uncle’s house! 

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