Birgit and Holger

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Woke early at 7am, up and showered in our tiny shower room,(no change there!) we walked round the ship and watched Amsterdam come into view it was a lovely clear morning and I noticed horses and carriages on the beach at Ijmuiden, like the ones Prince Philip drives .
We had our coffee and then set off to the car deck ready to disembark.
Drove off the ferry at about 10. 30am and Duncan ( my name for the Sat Nav man) guided us skillfully through the docks around Amsterdam and onto the motorway, no problem.
Stopped for Brunch just after Osna brück (Wiener Schnitzel). We called Birgit at 1pm to let her know our ETA and then we just kept on driving untill we reached Kiel
Robert says it was so much easier having the left hand drive, he could compete with the Germans at the same speed !
We tried to get straight to Birgit´s front door but Duncan would only take us to the street behind her, so we had to call her to come and get us.
We, of course got a very warm welcome, coffee, cake and our lovely room in the eaves. Some snow here and quite cold. Later we ate a traditional German evening meal, a type of meatloaf with mushroom sauce, it was delicious. We sat up talking untill quite late and then we slept very well

Thursday 19th February.

Rob was up early to have breakfast with Holger and Birgit , I slept in, but when I came down for breakfast there were lovely Möhn brötchen (poppy seed rolls) which are my very favourite. and home made jam.
In the afternoon we set out in Birgit's car for Tönning on the North sea coast, it is a marine life museum and preservation area on the mud flats with huge Aquariums and interactive information installations. It was well worth the visit especially listening to the the Whale songs.
The weather was very wet and misty
The country side is very much like England but the houses are vry different with high pitched roofs that are thatched and the barns are too.
When we came home Birgit did some baking for Saturday, when relatives are arriving prior to Holger's birthday party

Friday 20th February.

Today we went to Flensburg, an old town on the border of Denmark, we went to visit an Science exhibition called Phänomenta. It was great fun playing around with electricity, building bridges withbig wooden blocks and then walking over them, there were many inter active water games, and puzzles to solve using computers, also Krypton Factor type games. We enjoyed it so much we were there about 4 hours.
We then drove over the border to Denmark, which I thought was really expensive untill some one told me they were still using Kronen not Euros , I thought 21 euros was expensive for a sandwich! The town was called Sonderborg, on the coast , very pretty.
The shops were very nice, different , especially the clothes shops, and the furniture stores were full of very modern well designed
things.
Later that evening at home, Birgit's sister Jule came to dinner (she is an English teacher) also some friends of Holger's from Berlin, luckily for us every one could speak great english and we had a great time.

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