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Grüss Gott from Aalen! We're in southern Germany, and that's how you say "hi". (Really, just say "goose guts" really fast and they'll think you're a local).
We are now hanging about with Nick's relatives in a small town called Unterkochen, close to a slightly larger city called Aalen, in the south of Germany. To find it, first find Stuttgart, then slide your finger east until you are roughly halfway between Stuttgart and Munich. We're in the more rural south, where churches dominate every town, no matter how small. There's an Unterkochen and an Oberkochen, both named for the Kocher river (here it's more like a fast-moving creek that cuts through the town) in this land of low hills and valleys. We are in Swabia, and here they speak a dialect of German called "Schwabisch" (shway-bish). Of course, like anywhere, there are many dialects in the country. And everyone understands the German you learn in school, called "high German".
Oh, but that's assuming you can speak German. We can't very well, so that's all what Sarah likes to call "a moo point".
From Leipzig we were able to take a couple of day trips, one to a town called Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Luther's town). Nick dragged Sarah here to see a couple of churches where a guy named Martin Luther, in the early 1500's, got pissed off because the Catholic priests were taking bribes for forgiveness. And so he nailed a whole list of complaints on the door of this one church, hereby getting himself in trouble with the church and launching the Protestant Reformation as well as the Lutheran church. This really screwed up Europe for a couple of hundred years. Good work buddy. Anyways, Wittenberg only takes a few hours maximum and so a day trip to and from Leipzig is perfect.
The following day we headed up to Berlin just to be in the crazyness while we watched the Germany-Ecuador game, the final group stage match for Germany. They had the "Fan Mile" set up along the main street from the Brandenburg Gate (which by the way is an amazing arch) all the way to the Victory Column...reminding us a bit of the Champs D'Élysées from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. Imagine that stretch filled to capacity the whole way with people, and every 3-400 metres a massive television screen facing both directions. That is the Berlin Fan Mile. Surely an experience! But good enough once, as we're not 18 anymore and we weren't drunk, so we actually enjoy sitting down to watch a game. But oh man, when Germany scored, you've never seen so many German flags waving, as far as the eye could see.
As we got in a few hours before the game started, we were able to walk over to Checkpoint Charlie, where the old Berlin Wall stood and where foreigners were allowed to cross into and out of East Germany (albeit with a thorough check of the car). Nick's parents have photos of the Checkpoint in the seventies, with all the barbed wire, watchtowers and the Wall. Nowadays there is just one booth in the centre of the street, protected by sandbags on either side, and flanked by a double-sided sign which states "You are now entering/leaving the American Sector", depending on which side you see it from. One of the buildings on one side of the street has been converted into Die Mauer Museum (Museum of the Berlin Wall), and has large painted sections of the wall mounted by its front doors. By the way, you can STILL buy pieces of the Wall for cheap prices. We almost did but realized it wasn't too smart backpacking with a chunk of concrete in the bag, no matter how cool that concrete was. One of the more striking things about the pieces of the Wall we saw was the amazing amateur art covering it.
A really neat piece of history, and the symbol of the Cold War, which kids these days can only read about. Weird eh?
Unfortunately, the last train back to Leipzig left an hour after the game ended, so we couldn't really see too much else in Berlin, but we did take a little walk and were so impressed with the city that we have vowed to come back at some point if we can.
Leipzig itself continued to be interesting, waves of fans moved in and out - one day we saw all the South Korean fans because the team was playing there...another day we saw the town filled with the French. (Constant cries of "Allez les Bleus!" announced the groups before we ever saw them). Funky hair and costumes were everywhere, and we loved it. This time is a good excuse for people to get crazy and nationalistic, but in a fun way. More often than not we saw fans of opposing teams walking by each other with a smile and a shout for their respective teams, and then share a laugh and depart. Great stuff!
From Leipzig we left for Dresden, a city that was almost 100% levelled near the end of the war with incendiary bombs, but has been rebuilt. The interesting thing is that they've gone for heritage reconstruction and have just this year finished one of the huge churches. We did take a walk around the old town, but since it is the 800th anniversary of the city this year, we couldn't get any rooms close enough to the city (or cheap enough). And so we left - for a tiny town called Bayreuth in northern Bavaria.
Right now you're saying "Bayreuth?". Yeah, we did too at first. There was a choice between Bayreuth and the medieval town of Bamberg. What determined the choice? Beer. Can you guess who made the decision based on beer?
Wrong. It was Sarah. She fell in love with one type of wheat beer in Leipzig and when we read in the Lonely Planet that Maisel's Weisse headquarters was in Bayreuth, she was the one (for the record) that made the executive decision. While drinking our fill in Bayreuth, we also learned that the composer Wagner spent a lot of time here, had a house and even had an opera house custom-built for his works. Apparently Wagner wasn't a very nice guy, he spent a lot of time hating specific groups of people - let's put it this way: Hitler thought he was a real cool guy. But what the hell, you don't get famous by being nice. We saw his "Festspiel" theatre, walked around the small but excellent old town centre, through a beautiful park and generally hung out for a couple of days (camped out so we had a place to watch the Germany-Sweden game). With a great bit of luck we ducked out of the hot sun into a covered beer garden which had two televisions set up. We were quickly joined by a bunch of local Germans (good company if you're a Germany fan) and the game was fun to watch. What we didn't bargain for was that after the game, the town went nuts. It was a tiny town, and we swear everyone living in the town must have gotten in their car with a large flag in order to parade down the main street and honk constantly. This was really cool for the first two hours, but since our hotel room was on that street, once 10 pm came around it started to give us a headache. Oh well, party time.
Our plan was to steadily make our way down to meet the family here in Aalen by the 27th, so we took two days prior to that to stay in Dinkelsbühl, a medieval 16th century town that still has the wall and towers around it (and possibly part of an old moat around a third of the city). There's even a night watchman who leads tours at 9 pm every night, dressed in 16th century clothes with a lantern and a horn. Nick desperately tried to get Sarah's picture with this guy but with a Melville on his arm couldn't get anywhere near. We found a GREAT bed and breakfast called the Hotel Appelberg, which itself was a 16th century building - our room was even filled with antique furniture. So cool! Since the whole town inside the walls is constantly meticulously kept in its original form, we enjoyed just wandering through the streets. It's hard to get lost when you eventually must hit a wall! We noticed that the towers also had address numbers written on them, and thought that people must actually live in them. Who wouldn't want to live in a tower, just for the neat address?
"Number 2, Large Tower, such and such street, Dinkelsbühl, Germany".
And finally, on the 27th we took the bus (apparently Dinkelsbühl is the only town in Germany without a train link) and then a train to Aalen to meet up with Nick's Oma, Aunt and Uncle and cousin. Nick has German relatives in Unterkochen (for Mary Jo's benefit the kids are Nick's third cousins), who are still close to the family. Around here they like to tout the fact that there are health benefits to living in Aalen, and so some of the sights we've seen have revolved around "Gesundheit", meaning "health". We took a tour of an old iron ore mine which is cut about a kilometre into a hill, and after riding a few minutes in a mine car and walking around this cold, dank tunnel we came to a large, state-of-the-art spa room where people actually come because they believe this air helps their asthma. Something about fresh, pollen-free air. Okay, yes the place is well ventilated and because of two tunnels the air circulates, but that's a bit ridiculous in our book. Another Gesundheit sight is the little cold water spring in a park near our hotel here in Unterkochen - actually they call it the "knee bath" because it's a little cement pool filled knee-high with ice-cold, fresh water coming down from the mountains. You're supposed to walk a couple of laps and get out onto the warm grass to let the blood circulate back into your legs and feet. They swear this helps your circulation. Well, we only made one or two laps before we couldn't feel our legs anymore, and we did feel pretty good when we could feel our legs again, so who knows?
Nick's family has been great, and so much fun to see again! It's a beautiful hilly area and they've taken the time out to take us around a bit, for which we are so grateful!
We will now be here until Sunday when we take the train back up to Frankfurt airport to pick up Nick's parents.
.....
Okay, now it's July 6th, we've met up with Nick's parents, about to go walking in the Black Forest. We are sorry for the lack of photos --- there seems to be a big problem with TravelBlog site lately, so we are publishing this a little late.
We promise the next one will be better!!
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Wiebke
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Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag!!!
Dear Sarah....all thevery best to you....sorry I am late....but I was thinking of you very thoroughly on Monday!!! :) Hope you are well! Keep twisting it, ey!!! Miss you a lot! Send allison off today! Am all alone now...Come Back soon!!! Love, Wiebke