David has been a great traveling companion. You should always choose your travel companion carefully, because you will spend a lot of time together. Even close college friends can end up driving each other up the wall after all that close proximity. Not so with David, though this was the first time we ever undertook any trip together apart from a run from New Orleans over to a day on the beach at the Redneck Riviera in Mississippi. His patience has been remarkable and appreciated, especially when I’d go dashing off on a tangent to get just the right photo of something interesting, or when I’d disappear into a CD store for an hour or so.

One thing he does, which was by no means irritating but was rather amusing, is he gets lost when checking his e-mail on his iPod and loses track of time. Hence, on our second morning in Leer, he was still sitting on the bed in his shorts e-mailing a friend in Dallas when it was breakfast time. I had showered first, then walked across the square to the wonderful, friendly neighborhood bakery we could see from Ed’s living room windows, and had returned with Brötschen and goodies for breakfast, but he hadn’t moved from the same spot I left him in. So by the time Ed returned with the rental car for our drive to the Netherlands that day, David was still eating breakfast.

After getting the swing of “Grüße Gott” in Bavaria, “Hej då” in Sweden and “Bon jour” in France, I have had to get acclimated to “Moin” (pronounced like the onamatopeaiatic “boing” without the G at the end) here in Ostfriesland. Everybody Moins each other left and right. This morning I paused en route to the bakery to swish off my shoes in a puddle outside as they still had remnants of sheep poo from our walk last evening on the dykes. An old man came walking along, stopped, and stood looking at me very inquisitively, so I just Moined him. With that he seemed perfectly satisfied. Sometimes they Moin each other twice in succession, as when we walked in a shop and the proprietress said “Moin, Moin.”

Leer is a really neat town. As it wasn’t bombed in the war, being not very important, all the old buildings are still intact. The Rathaus with its tower is red brick, as are most buildings, and is very ornamented inside. Woodwork is heavy, and the vaulted ceilings are painted in subdued dark colors with coats of arms and trompe l’oeil trimwork painted on them. The floor was composed of tiles set in a simple geometric pattern. Of course it has a Ratskeller, but it is spelled without the H found elsewhere in Germany. Up here they still speak Plattdeutsch, so there are a lot of regionalisms I can’t understand. Many signs are both in Hochdeutsch, the ‘High German” spoken elsewhere in Germany, as well as Plattdeutsch, or “Flat German,” named for the flatlands along the North Sea coast.

Ed said though Leer was the first German city to be declared “Jew free” when the Nazis rose to power, the people were actually not vehemently Nazi nor rabidly anti-Semitic. The two old Jewish cemeteries in town were not vandalized or desecrated during the regime. We walked past one last evening.

Last night Ed took us to a pizza place run by an Italian friend named Mikael, whose German was about as bad as mine. He seems to do everything in his restaurant himself, though we could hear someone else clattering around in the kitchen. Thus, service is very leisurely. We started with a delicious shrimp soup on Ed’s recommendation, followed by individual pizzas. Mine was topped with ham, cheese and onions. It was the good thin crust we like.

Our side trip into the Netherlands today took us Groenigen, a big university town where Ed received his doctorate in law. It is very lively and people mainly get around by bicycle. When you try to cross a street, you really have to watch out for the cyclists rather than cars, trucks and buses. You’re more likely to get run down by a two-wheeler than by anything on four or more wheels. Groenigen suffered some damage in World War II, but has many restored buildings lining its broad squares and boasts a lot of the red brick architecture we’ve been noticing in these North Sea communities.

Ed took us through the red light district just for the sake of our cultural enlightenment. Many of the windows had their drapes drawn, as it was still early in the day, but ladies populated several of them. Some just sit and watch TV or read magazines. Some feature little decorations such as sexy garters or high-heeled shoes on display. A couple had handcuffs and other, ahem, implements, and little signs reading, in Dutch, “SM is also available here.” I tried to take a surreptitious picture but the ladies are on the lookout for cameras and would run and hide or draw their curtain. Ed said the industry is highly regulated and inspected, including the premises, the, er, equipment, and the ladies (or men, though we didn’t see the male district). One can argue the pros and cons of legalized prostitution, but law enforcement sure seems to like the legalized version. At least the police know where the hookers are, that they are regulated, and the cops can concentrate their efforts on more serious crimes.

We stopped for tea at a neat three-story little house tucked in the corner of St. Martin’s church. It used to house altar boys and other church staff, or workers for the cloister behind the church. Ed ordered some typical Groenigenish (is that a word?) snacks, which were little fried things: two small balls about an inch in diameter, one with a reddish spicy stuffing and one with a more smooth creamy potato-like filling. There were also small eggrolls. He also ordered us salsa with corn chips, which were like Doritos in size, color and triangular shape, but were lighter in texture. (You know how Doritos can lacerate your mouth? These don’t do that.) The tea was by Twining’s.

We mostly walked around and looked at the buildings. A light, misty rain came in off the North Sea while we had stepped into a used CD shop. While we were in it I bought the soundtracks to the first two “Godfather” movies, which I didn’t have on CD, and a CD of TV themes done in rock and ska styles. It should be interesting. The let up after a short while.

Ed had to go to his office after we returned to Leer, as they are having some difficulties with a client, so David and I walked over to see the Bünting Teemuseum. Tea has been a huge part of the Ostfriesland culture since the 1600s when sailing ships would bring it to port. The Bünting Tea Company has been around since the 1800s. Frau Gisela Buss runs the museum, which consists largely of her humongous collection of teapots, tea strainers, tea heaters, tea boxes, etc. After we toured the museum we were invited to drink tea with some other guests. Frau Buss lectured on the proper Ostfriesland way of drinking tea. I was surpised to find I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. Or at least I would’ve been had I been an Ostfrieslander.

“I think you just drink coffee in America?” Frau Buss supposed. I assured her we drink tea, too. In fact, I told her, iced tea is very popular in northwest Florida. She looked at me as if I just said we commonly shoot puppies, too. “That is not tea,” she declared. “Iced tea is not good for the body.” She did a somewhat involved lecture to the room of eight other guests on how cold tea doesn’t refresh the body on a hot day as hot tea does, which draws out the heat. Or something.

There are three stages of drinking a cup of tea in Ostfriesland, Frau Buss explained. First, begin by dropping a lump of rock sugar, called a Kruntje, in the bottom of the cup before the tea is poured over it. The hot tea cracks the sugar, which is metaphoric for the difficulties of life spoiling its sweetness. Then the cream is added, but is poured along the rim of the cup by a little scoop that looks like a teaspoon with the bowl bent at a right angle to the handle. Thus, it flows down the side of the cup and is then forced up in a little fireworks-like burst from the bottom when it reacts with the heat from the tea. And whatever you do, don’t you dare stir it!

Frau Buss instructed us to slurp our tea. You do not linger over a cup of Ostfriesland tea, chatting and eating cookies as if you were an Englishman. Oh no, you must drink it as rapidly as possible, hence the acceptibility of hearty slurping sounds around the tea table. “Think only of the tea!” instructed Frau Buss when we’d dare stop slurping to exchange comments. David got hollered at for swirling his tea. “You are not James Bond mixing a martini!” she declared. You must savor the three stages of the tea, she explained patiently. First is the creamy part, which segues to the strong middle, then you at last reach the sweet bottom portion. The ten of us dutifully slurped our ways through three cupfuls, permitted one cookie apiece in between each cup of Bünting Nr. 7 tea.

Only after the third cup of tea was consumed was a spoon permitted to be introduced into the cup, and that was to dig out the by now mostly dissolved slush of the Kruntje. Everyone agreed it was quite a cultural experience and Frau Buss seemed pleased to release another table of cultured tea drinkers. Afterwards we obligingly purchased two types of Bünting tea in the front shop, Bünting Nr. 7 and “Moin Moin” breakfast tea, plus a little plastic bag of Kruntjes. I also bought a tea cup that said “Moin Moin” on the side.

Back in the U.S. for almost a month now, I still can’t drink iced tea without imagining Frau Buss’ disapproving glare burrowing into my skull. But she would be proud to know that at Saturday breakfast recently, after a bit of practice, I finally got the fireworks burst of cream to appear in my cup of Nr. 7.

I found a tremendous souvenir soon after our enlightening visit to Frau Buss’s tea emporium. Poking in the used section of a book shop, I discovered volume II of a photo book about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I had bought volume I last year during a visit to New Orleans. I dithered, as it was a rather hefty, atlas-sized book, but David pointed out the likelihood of my ever finding it again was slim to none, so I broke down and bought it. I think he was just taking a fiendish delight at seeing more weighty things added to my increasingly heavy backpack.

Dinner our last evening in Leer was at a wonderful, cozy schnitzel restaurant off the usually busy main pedestrian shopping street. While I’m not big on Wienerschnitzel, which I usually find rather dry, I love Zegeunerschnitzel, which is smothered in an onion gravy. However, this time I had the Jägerschnitzel, or Hunter’s Schnitzel, which also had a rich onion and green and red pepper gravy with mushrooms. It was outstanding. Ed insisted we try the restaurants version of the shrimp soup, but I had spied the French onion soup on the Speisekarte (menu) and couldn’t resist. It, too, was heavenly. However, I did try a spoonful of David’s shrimp soup and found it richer and heartier than the excellent shrimp soup we had the night before at Mikael’s.

Leer is just absolutely delightful. It’s one of those gems of a European city that one will never tire of seeing over and over again. I hope to do exactly that. Plus, it was great spending time with Ed again. He is another friend from my Tulane University days, where he used to be the school’s speech and debate coach while he was doing his graduate studies. He returns once a year to teach a maritime law class in Tulane’s Law School. In our youth, I had a key to the University Center pool and Ed and I, with the occasional friends along, would slip in and swim laps on Sunday nights when the pool was closed. Ah, the memories…

All too soon, however, it was time to start reassembling our backpacks for our 8.20 a.m. departure. Before we left, however, I had just enough time to run across the square and visit the fabulous bakery on the corner one last time. I can never get enough of those German bakeries!

Yawn! Was I ever sleepy!

We got into Münster right on time at 5.55 Tuesday morning, 14 October, and consequently had to hustle through our onboard breakfast to disembark on time. The wagon attendant came and opened our compartment door and said, “It is coming Münster and you must go.” In our haste I left my glasses behind, but luckily remembered them when I stepped onto the platform. I had just enough time to dash back aboard and run down the corridor to our compartment. I had laid them on my backpack so I wouldn’t forget them, but in the haste of leaving, they fell off on the floor. Good thing we didn’t smush them as we dashed out the door. They already had to have their arms replaced when the right arm fell off in Munich.

I slept a bit on the regional train to Leer, which was good as I couldn’t get to sleep the night before, which is unusual as I generally sleep quite well on the trains. At one point I checked my watch and it said 3.30. Ugh!

I had a nice treat Monday night when our Thalys train from Paris pulled into Bruxelles (Brussels). Tomas Grönberg, a longtime friend whom I met at the end of my college summer of study in Sweden, was waiting on the platform to say hi! He is a Swede who works for the European Union in Bruxelles. That was so nice of him, considering our transfer time was less than half an hour. It was good to see him, though. I really didn’t expect that he’d drag himself to the station at that hour. I had received e-mail from him last week saying his mother, who had been very sweet to me when I visited his family in Lappland, had passed away, and they had to put his dad in an old folks’ home. I mentioned I was in Europe and would be passing through, so he asked for our train schedule.

But first, a review of our visit to Paris:

We arrived on the TGV from Noirmoutier at the Montparnasse station and took the Métro up to Gare du Nord, the north station. One of the inconveniences of the Parisienne railroad layout is that you come and go from different stations all over the perimeter of town. There’s no, nice, handy, “central station” as you find in many other major European cities.

As our Monday night departure would be from Gare du Nord, we left our backpacks in a locker there, taking only what we’d need for our one night in town. We took the Métro to Place de République and, I was proud to say, I unerringly led us right to the Hotel du Nord where I had stayed in 2004. It is a very tidy, quaint, friendly little boutique hotel. Our room was comfortably furnished with two beds, a couple chairs, an armoire, and a nice, big bathroom with shower. It overlooked a narrow, chimney-like courtyard that soared up five stories. As it was only about 2 metres across, we could see into apartments in the builing behind us. We left our stuff in our fourth floor room and set out to see Paris.

After the wonderful hospitality of Noirmoutier, Paris was a bit of a letdown. It really is overrated and overpopulated by tourists. Maybe if we had gone there before visiting our joyous sister city, Paris would’ve struck us differently. Paris has that New Orleans-esque aroma, a melange of pee, food, and trash on the sidewalk awaiting pick up. David took to saying, “ah, oui-oui,” when we’d pass through a urine-scented place, which was not an infrequent occurrence, particularly in the Métro station tunnels.

Fortunately we had nice weather and it was pleasant walking around. Sunday was T-shirt weather, in fact. David didn’t want to do the real touristy things, which pretty much eliminates doing anything in Paris, but I, too, was content just to walk around. It was as much fun watching the gaping tourists as it was seeing the world-famous landmarks they were mobbing. I was actually surprised to find so many tourists in mid-October. If it is that crowded in the fall, I shudder to think what it’s like in mid-summer. I didn’t recall it being that bad in mid-August 2004.

We went first to the Île de Cité, an island in the Seine River and the most visited section, which includes Notre Dame and other popular attractions. We looked at the cathedral, including a quick breeze through, around and out the other side. David didn’t want to climb the tower with the mobs, so we headed on to the Memorial to the Deported, which was interesting. There were no signs explaining the admission procedure, however, so whenever anyone would walk up to see what the line was about or to see if there was any posted information, a grumpy guard would yell at them to get off the grass. I thought he might better serve visitors by being at the rear of the line politely explaining the admission procedure, but then he couldn’t yack with the other guard as easily. The memorial, by the way, is very somber and moving and worth a visit, despite the grumpy guards yelling at anyone not familiar with the admission procedure.

We crossed over into the Latin Quarter and strolled along the river, where numerous booksellers traditionally set up their stalls. Most also hawk tourist junk, including reproductions of old French posters for can-can shows and cabarets. I started to take a picture of a middle-aged woman’s paintings she had exhibited by hanging on the railing of the bridge across the river, but she freaked and ran up to tell me they were all private. David and I couldn’t figure out why she’d hang them out for all to see in one of the city’s most touristy places if they were so private. Must be a Parisian thing. My French friend Alain, who lives on the Côte d’Azur, had warned me about the Parisienne attitude a few years ago, so I was more amused than taken aback. “They don’t just hate foreigners,” Alain assured me. “They hate everybody, including other French.”

Crossing back onto the Isle de Cité, we walked to Ste. Chapelle, the 13th-century church with the fantastic stained glass windows. David didn’t want to go in, so he walked around the neighborhood while I waited in the ticket line. The ground floor is pretty in an overwrought sort of way and is mostly dominated by a large souvenir shop, but after you go up the small spiral staircase to the chapel level, it is breathtakingly magnificent. The celebrated stained glass windows just soared, bathing the sanctuary with a magnificent bluish light. It was packed with visitors, including a couple tour groups, and the din was remarkable, especially for a church.

I was probably the only photographer obeying the “no flash” signs, but my pix still came out nicely: I just used the plethora of flashes from everyone elses’ cameras. Afterward we saw the famous Sunday bird market across the street from the Prefecture of Police. (That building is where Inspector Clouseau worked, but we didn’t see him. Maybe he was on patrol. “Do you have a leesahnce for that minky?”) At the bird market I wanted to ask a vendor if he provided any recipes with the sale of a bird. Nearby was one of the classic Art Nouveau Métro station entrances, which led to a fascinating station designed in stainless steel with a distinct nautical feel, including oversized nuts and bolts seemingly holding everything together.

In the late afternoon and early evening we walked around the Tuilleries Garden and looked at the Louvre. I.M. Pei’s pyramid doesn’t look so out of place in person, but still doesn’t belong there. The garden was a welcome respite from the mobs of tourists that populated the other places we’d visited. Here locals strolled, played with kids, tossed balls, and visited. At the other end of the garden, opposite the Louvre and a smaller, less imposing arch than the “de Triomphe,” was the Place du Concord, where there had been an exhibit and conference of aerospace and aircraft vendors. There were a bunch of oversized aircraft and rocket models, plus cockpit mock-ups on display. Quite a change. During the Revolution, this was where the heads would roll. The obelisk in the center is Paris’ oldest monument, so says Let’s Go.

Blue lights had been hung on all the lampposts down the Champs Elysées, with white strobes that chased down the street to the Place du Concord. We watched the evening lights come on, snapped a few pix, then headed by Métro back to the Place de République. Dinner was near the hotel at Café Pierre, a nice restaurant with a sidewalk café. The entire Place de République area has many, many restaurants. We didn’t eat outside because Paris’ new no-smoking laws have forced all the smokers to the sidewalks. Though they’ve cut back ever so slightly, it will be a long time before Parisiennes completely quit the vile, lung-searing cigarettes they like. Inside, though, it was rather hot, and the stench of those nasty, pungent French cigarettes wafted in anyway. I had a nice, big green salad and pan grilled steak tartare with remoulade. Isn’t that funny: grilled tartare? Sorta defeats the intent of eating a mound of raw cow meat.

Monday we took the Métro to Place de Concord and walked up the Champs Elysées. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the boulevard was loaded with strollers. Workers were dismantling the tents and barricades that had been erected for the big international aerospace conference, and had already taken down the blue lights hung from the lampposts. We came across a Virgin Megastore and I did a little damage to my debit card, but got some great stuff. I found a soundtrack to The Man from Rio, a Jean-Paul Belmondo film, for which I’ve been searching for years. It made the visit all worthwhile. I also now have The Sound of Music on DVD in French!

At the Arc de Triomphe the tourists were out in force. I had fun videotaping people taking pictures. As it was so crowded David didn’t want to climb to the top, so we headed down the Avenue Kleber, stopping to pick up sammiches and a chocolate-almond flaky pastry for dessert for our lunches. We took them to a bench below the Palais de Chaillot, which is the only building left from the 1938 or ‘39 world’s fair. It is at the end of the big linear park in the middle of which the Eiffel Tower sits. Some kids were playing a game behind us in the sunny park. It was rather nice and relaxing. We noticed an interesting phenomenon: all over the touristy sites we came across a bunch of African immigrants selling models of the Eiffel Tower of various sizes, which they had strung on strings for ease of carrying. The guys laughed and joked and called out to each other across the plazas. Must be some sort of concession just for them.

We then walked under the tower, and finally over to les Invalides, as I wanted to see Napoleon’s tomb. We got there a bit before 5 p.m., but by the time we got oriented, they had closed the church, so I didn’t get to see where Nappy is laid to rest. We sat in the Invalides garden for a while, deciding what to do next. Stores and sites were closing and we didn’t have to be back at the north station until 9 p.m. to get our bags from the locker. (You have to go through a metal detector and send your stuff through an X-ray to get in the locker room, so we wanted to allow plenty of time for hassles before catching our 9.55 train.)

We decided to take a Métro to the Montmartre area to watch the sun go down. The street up to the Sacre Couer was horribly mobbed by both tourists and numerous tourist junk shops, but also several second-hand clothes stores packed with Middle Eastern and African-looking women. Clothes fell off the racks and from the massive piles stacked on tables, some pieces falling onto the sidewalk and into the gutter, as the women scrabbled over the bargains. It was nasty. We avoided that street on the way back down.

I finally got to look inside the Sacre Couer, which we had missed during the Paris Death March of August 2004, in which Dr. Mike, a New Orleans friend dragged my friends Joe, Troy and me to many of the sites around town in just one day. A Mass was being celebrated, so we politely kept to the rear of the church just while admiring the somewhat plain interior. Suddenly a little Indian or Pakistani man with lax personal hygiene habits accosted me because I was carrying my video camera. It is something I had been doing all along, rather than putting it away and taking it out again whenever I saw something interesting to tape.

I had forgotten to switch it off from taping outside, so the green “ready” light was on (though not the red “record” light) and he must’ve thought I was taking illegal video. Never mind that any footage would’ve been upside down, as using the hand strap, which is an easier position to carry it, the camera hangs top down. He was quite indignant and kept saying “La liege, la liege.” We still have no clue what he meant. Maybe he was going to summon the king. He kept trying to pull my camera from my hand, which I was not about to let him do. Finally he made me play the tape back to prove I wasn’t taping in his church. When he saw video of kids playing in the fountain below the church, he was satisfied, his attitude changed immediately and he said I was now very welcome to visit. I told him I wasn’t used to being treated like some sort of criminal in a house of God and had no further interest in visiting his grubby church, and we left. So there.

We had a few more Métro tickets to use so we went back to Notre Dame to see it at night. We actually enjoyed the stroll along the Seine and around the one of of the island before heading to the station and getting our packs. It is a prettier city by night, especially when the hoards of tourists who are out by day vanish to wherever they go. (Where do they all vanish to?) By then we, David in particular, were about over Paris and were looking forward to our departure.

The underground locker room at Gare du Nord was also considerably less hectic at night. In fact, it was all but deserted. The guards were by themselves, laughing and talking. When I set off the metal detector, the large, smiling guard just said “is OK” and let me in. When we got to the Thalys platform, our train had just been posted, so we boarded, showing our tickets to a real character of a wagon attendant. We had onboard Internet service, which took several tries to set up, but ultimately worked. But by then the battery wore out and my laptop shut itself down. I had to finish up the next morning in my friend Ed’s spacious apartment, which overlooks Leer’s main square. We had arrived in Ostfriesland, a markedly different section of Germany on the North Sea coast. The language here is Plattdeutsch, and the culture is friendly, hospitable and relaxed, particularly after Paris. We eagerly awaited our visit to a place that was new for both of us.

Our last day in Noirmoutier was really delightful. We met the mayor this morning, a dynamic young guy named Noël Faucher, whom everyone seems to like. We also met the fire chief, Jean-François Paquier, who invited us back to the fire station for a tour. David and I got to ride there with him in his little Citroën chief’s truck from the Hôtel de Ville.

Station No. 18 was already busy when we arrived around 11.30. The junior firefighters, of whom there are six, ages around 12 to 18, were doing their weekly four-hour training under the supervision of two or three volunteer pompiers (firefighters). The kids had on full regalia, including yellow helmets and black coats as they hurried hose from the bed of a firetruck, hooked it up to a wheeled hose cart, then hustled it to a designated location. Later we saw them undergoing fitness training in the engine bay, including an exercise in which they had to jump up and grab the rim of a platform about ten feet off the ground, then hoist themselves up on it. (The trained firefighters hoisted the shorter kids up so they could grab the platform.)

Chief Paquier commands another full-time pompier, who is his assistant chief, plus a battalion of 38 volunteers. In the busy summer months, when the “summer people” and visitors flock to the island, the station is staffed around the clock by 12-man shifts. Six spacious dorm-like rooms on the second floor have two beds each, and views over the salt marshes or the town. They have a roomy dayroom, and a kitchen with an adjacent lounge. Even when they are not staffing the fire station, the firefighters are required to do a minimum of one hour of weight training in the station’s well-equipt gym. “Of course they can come use it anytime they wish,” Chief Parquier explained through an interpreter.

The engine bay is quite huge, housing five vehicles, a high-speed rescue Zodiac boat, and two tank trailers, one for water and one for chemical fire suppressants.

The fleet includes two Renault pump trucks and a Land Rover Defender fitted with a snorkel for use on the marshes. Two new Renault ambulances recently joined the fleet. Paquier said they are replaced every year due to their heavy use. A new fire engine is expected to be delivered next month to supplement the fleet. Equipment is modern and up to date, and includes tools such as the “jaws of life” and oxygen tanks. Everything is sparkling clean and properly stowed. The station serves most of the island, particularly the more populated north end. There is a small satellite station in the south.

After our tour of Station 18, we walked around town a bit before visiting a creperie for lunch. Apart from a few souvenirs (I got Montavius a little something, too), we have not had to spend a cent. The generosity of our hosts is almost embarrassing. They paid for lunch before we could flag down the waitress. After lunch we walked around the old part of town with its narrow street, and visited the church in which we saw St. Philbert’s vertebrae in the crypt. He’s the patron saint of Noirmoutier, and I’m curious where the rest of his is stashed, and how they came to get that hunk of his spine and another relic.

After a nice stroll on the levee along the canal that fills the harbor, we went to the local youth center where we met with most of the students who will visit Crestview next year, and their parents. They had many good questions for me. Later the mayor joined us again, as did the headmaster of their school. Everyone always wants to know what I think of Noirmoutier. I wasn’t lying when I’d tell them I find the place captivating. I really want to come back again. Parents’ concerns mostly centered around hurricanes, and they were relived when I told them hurricane season is about over when they are scheduled to arrive.

Before dinner we went to see some of the German blockhouses from World War II, part of the Atlantic Wall. As the Allied invasion of occupied France came from the beaches of Normandy, Noirmoutier’s blockhouses were never attacked, and today form an indestructible reminder of France’s years of German occupation. There were nine of them all in the same area on the northwest beach we visited. One has been turned into a sort of museum for fishermen. Our translator, Dr. Marie-Thérèse Reed, who holds dual U.S. and French citizenship, told us that she has friends who converted a blockhouse in another section of the island into a home, building the residence atop the concrete. The blockhouse itself “makes a very fine wine cellar,” she said.

Saturday evening we had a farewell dinner at the home of the president of the sister city committee, René Relandeau, and his wife Madeleine. It started at 7.45 and we didn’t leave until almost 11, as French dinners are delightful social opportunities. It was a superb meal and their home is beautiful. We had to be up for breakfast at 6.45 Sunday morning in order to leave at 7.15 to catch our 9 a.m. train in Nantes for Paris. It was sad bidding our new friends on Noirmoutier “adieu,” but as the island’s allure will most certainly draw me back again–many times, I hope–it was more of an “au revoir.”

On board the Thalys train to Brussels

On my first full day in Noirmoutier Friday morning, I ate mussels and found them surprisingly tasty. They are not anything special-tasting, but they were cooked in a garlic, onion and butter sauce, which was good. I was really afraid they were going to be slimy and yucky like oysters (another Noirmoutier specialty), and was a bit worried when our hosts ordered them for us without telling us what was up. We were shown how to use a set of shells as a sort of pair of tongs for plucking the meat from the shell. The mussels were served with pommes frits, which is apparently the usual way of eating them here. So that answers a question that’s always been on my mind: Yes, the French eat French fries.

The people in Noirmoutier are absolutely wonderful. They are treating us like royalty. The only drawback is we have no time to ourselves to explore on our own. They have quite a busy schedule for us. After picking us up at the Nantes train station following our very speedy TGV train ride from Paris (we hit 300 km/h for some of the ride), Gérard Moreau, his wife Marie-Thérèse, and Dr. Marie-Thérèse Reed took us to lunch at a restaurant “on the continent,” as the signs say, overlooking the Passage du Gois, the road that at, low tide, connects to the island of Noirmoutier. It was high tide, though it was slowly going out, so we could walk along a bit of the road afterwards. I had grilled dorade, a local fish, served with Noirmoutier potatoes, which I thought would be salty, but are actually a little sweet. They are quite small.

The island is tremendously diverse and exerts a very unusual allure over you when you arrive, which I feel grows stronger the more you see and experience. They people seem very content; none of the surliness you see in the cities, particularly Paris. Dr. Reed, who lived and taught college in Minnesota for 20-something years, had us to dinner tonight at her home, and has the Order of Merit hanging on the wall for her work toward the maintenance of French and American friendship. To avoid confusion, we were told to call Mme. Moreau “Marie-T” and Dr. Reed just Marie.

Marie, who is very active on the local historic preservation society, reminds me a lot of our News Bulletin photographer Ann Spann. She showed us the society’s office and library in the château, which she then toured us through. It only recently reopened after a two-year renovation. Our hosts raved about the sunny, warm weather we “brought from Florida” with us.

On our first night in Noirmoutier we had a delightful dinner party at the Moreau’s house, joined by Marie, and René and Madeleine Relandeau, who are other members of the sister city organization in Noirmoutier. René is the president. French meals are wonderful parts of the peoples’ culture. In a home, or when out with friends at a restaurant, there are multiple courses and folks linger and socialize, so the meal can last two hours or more.

Dinner began with an aperitif, called Kire, which is cassis (a berry liqueur) and wine mixed together, and little salted thingies, in this case Pringles. Knowing I don’t drink alcohol, they had a litre of orange juice for me. Then came a square squid loaf thingie with homemade mayonnaise topped with chives from the Moreaus’ garden. It was absolutely delicious. The main meal consisted of regional specialties, a bean and bacon dish in a casserole, and smoked ham. Then came the cheese platter, followed by a delicious gateaux Marie-T had made. It was a custard pie. Conversation sparkled the entire time, and continued around the table a good half-hour after everything was consumed. Gérard and Marie translated for us, and we were always included, never feeling left out.

We were up and ready by 8.30 Friday morning (OK, I was ten minutes late as I didn’t hear David wake up), but Marie-T was still putting the breakfast things out, so I didn’t feel too badly about my tardiness. After we ate, we had enough time to drive out to see the Passage du Gois at low tide before our first appointment. There were about six other vehicles parked by the ramp leading down to the road, observing as it came close to the time for the tide to come in. We drove halfway to the continent and then turned around at a turn-around spot. As traffic was light, we parked in the right lane (there is no shoulder) to take photos of one of the four towers build along the way, one every kilometer, that stranded motorists can climb as a last resort.

Fishermen keep an eye on the Gois as the tide comes in and sometimes must go out to rescue people who didn’t pay attention to the electronic tide schedules posted at each end of the passage. We found little escargot snails clinging to the concrete base of the tower we examined. Marie-T was filling a plastic bag with them.

We soon noticed the water was lapping at the edge of the roadway, so we hopped back into Gérard’s Mercedes and headed back toward the island. With about 100 metres to go, he said we could hop out and walk to the car that he drove ahead, so that we could observe the tide coming in. He said it is a slow tide today, but we could visually see it moving more and more into the road, soon reducing the passage to one lane from two. Then with a gurgle it went completely across the road in one spot. You could hear it gurgling as it flowed. We snapped a last couple of photos and headed for the car. By then the passenger-side wheels were in water, so Gérard moved the car into the dry lane. We actually had to jump over a 3-foot-wide flow of water at one point before we got to the car. What a cool experience, and one of the things that makes Noirmoutier so special! (There is only one other place in the world, in Australia, where access to a residential island is by a road only available at low tide.)

We were then expected at the Collége du Sorbet, a local middle school, where we met the headmaster, whom I was expected to interview, though I didn’t know it until we sat down with him. Marie translated as we discussed the students’ expectations for their upcoming visit to Crestview. Then he took us upstairs to meet an English class, some of the students from which will be coming to Crestview next year. They are sharp, well-informed kids, and asked me questions about topics such as the presidential elections, what people in Crestview think of the French, the financial situation, if kids like video games in the U.S., and does Crestview have a football team. David helped me out with some of the answers, such as the financial situation one. They seemed a great bunch of kids.

A headline in the latest “Challenges,” a business magazine, reads “Palin devient un risque pour les Republicains.” Sen. Obama is hugely popular over here. Dr. Reed, who holds dual French and American citizenship, is eagerly following the campaign and has placed a lot of hope in Obama.

Lunch was the mussels I described above, served in a nice sidewalk place near the harbor, which is more of a wide canal. It was starting to fill up as the tide we had watched cover the Gois reached inland. The boats were beginning to rise from the bed of mud they were resting in. After lunch we met another Marie, who is a representative of the local tourist authority, and who joined us on a tour of the north end of the island. We saw several pretty beaches, quaint little towns, a major harbor with a ship-building and fishing industry, and, most interesting, the salt marshes. The premium salt is called Fleur des Sel (flower of salt), which forms naturally on the surface of the square pools in the salt harvesting areas. It requires a good easterly wind and dry weather to form, but as this season was quite rainy, production was not good.

Back in town we visited a boat maker who continues the craft of wooden boat manufacture. Many of his commissions are restorations of existing vessels, including several traditional local oystering boats. He has a worker who speaks English, to whom we were introduced. His name is Evan and his English was flawless—because he is a Franco-American, born and raised in Paris, but moved to Maine as a child with his French father.

Evan was a real nice guy, and explained a lot about boat-making, which he studied at an academy in Maine after he graduated college and did a stint in contracting. The boats they were working on were traditional fishing and pleasure boats, though they also had a sleek sailing yacht they had just refurbished in their dry dock barn. Evan expressed interest in the sister city program and said he’d be glad to receive and answer questions from Crestview residents considering a visit to our sister city.

We had time for a little stroll around town and a poke in a shop, where I got a couple souvenirs. We walked back to the Moreaus’ and departed for René and Madeleine’s where we met with three students who won’t be able to join us for a reception tomorrow for the other students and parents who will come to Crestview next November. The two boys and girl were shy and only one exercised any English, reading questions he had previously prepared very carefully to me. Gérard helped translate my answers.

Then it was off to Marie’s beautiful hold home, stuffed to the rafters with all sorts of very cool bric-a-brac. It was like being in a museum. She had the pre-meal aperitif, which was champagne this time (and OJ again for me), and the little salties were French potato sticks and a cheese filled little round snackie. Dinner in her compact dining room was served on her mother’s service, which was octagonal and rather rare, we were told. It began with a fish soup, followed by roasted little birds of some sort, which were cooked with carrots, peas and Noirmoutier potatoes. Next came the cheeses, served with a green salad with a mustard vinegrette. Dessert was a fabulous apple torte.

Saturday we had a 10.30 reception with the mayor and fire chief, but first visited the Atlantic beach to see some historic windmills. In the afternoon we met with the students and parents who will visit Crestview. More on that in my next post.

I can confidently assure readers that you would really like this place. It is so varied and diverse, and the people are tremendously kind and hospitable. They all eagerly await the visit from their Crestview “sisters.” I certainly want to come back and have more time to explore, spending at least a day at the wonderful little beach Marie showed us. She assured me we could have the use of beach hut number 3, which is hers.

Right now we’re aboard the speedy red Thalys express train hurtling toward Brussels, where we’ll switch to an overnighter to Münster, Germany. There we will change to a regional express bound for Leer, a maritime town on the North Sea.

Oops, this post is out of sequence. It goes right before the next one. Sorry ’bout that. It’s easy to lose track of time when you travel.

After the rain on our first day in Munich, Sunday couldn’t have been more beautiful. We popped the clothes we’d washed the night before into the basement dryer, and even started them tumbling after a few minutes of trying to figure out the instructions. Luckily Markus left a sticky note with some dryer basics. Then we ate our breakfast of yoghurt, crispbread with Schinken (smoked Prosciutto-like ham), and multi-fruit juice.

We did a lot of walking that day and the weather was great, cool (I’d say the highest it got was the very low 60s) and sunny all day. We found Hitler’s office building (now a music school) and the Nazi Party HQ across the street (now a bunch of departments for Munich University). We walked down to the Hofgarten, which is adjacent to the Residenz, the palace that was the “town home” of the Wittelsbach ruling family of Bavaria. It has a temple-like round thing in the middle in which a man was playing the violin.

The Eisbach (Ice Brook) is the stream that runs through the Englischer Garten, Munich’s vast city park. It is a man-made tributary of the Isar River, and enters the park at a rushing culvert near the Haus der Kunst, the House of Art, one of the first urban architectursal projects of the Third Reich. (You can still see swastikas set in the mosaics of the coffered portico ceiling.) Where the Eisbach enters the park, surfers were out in force gliding through the swirling water, and the bridge above was packed with people watching them. There were about a dozen wetsuit-clad surfers this time, alternatively entering the water from opposite banks of the stream.

We walked across the bridge over the Isar River to a big monument my friend Dieter liked to drive around, but could never stop so I could visit it. We climbed up it and continued down the Prinzregeninstraße to the Prinzregenin Platz, where we found the apartment building Hitler lived in. Its downstairs is now a police station.

We hopped aboard the U-Bahn (subway) at a convenient station in the square and headed to the University district. From there we walked into the Englischer Garten to the city’s main Biergarten at the foot of the Chinese Tower for lunch. The place was busy but not packed solid, yet the lines for the serving windows were a bit long. We waited about 10 or 15 minutes until we could shuffle up and order our meals. I got a slab of ribs with a nice, tangy BBQ sauce. They were pretty good, though a tad tough this time, not as tasty as I have had there in the past. I also got a potato Knödel (dumpling) in brown gravy with it. David got a big Bratwürst, sauerkraut and pommes frits. He had a half-litre of bier and I had a half-litre of Spezi, which I made myself at the soda fountain, mixing it with about two-thirds orange Fanta and a third Coke. European Fanta comes in both orange and citron (lemon), and is fantastic. Not the sweet, syrupy glop we get in the U.S. Must be a matter of taste.

We then strolled through the Englischer Garten a bit. On the big lawn below the temple on the hill, we saw a man playing what looked like a small Alpine horn, though it sounded almost like a didgeridoo. Another man played tom-toms next to him. It was an odd combination. The Englischer Garten was really busy. We even saw some equestrians on the horse trails, and their calling cards where the horse paths crossed the pedestrian path. Every Münchener seemed to be there, enjoying the great weather.

Well, not quite all the Müncheners. We took the U-Bahn over to the Olympia Park on Tobi’s recommendation. It was neat seeing the competition stadiums from the 1972 Olympics. We ducked into the Schwimmen Halle and watched people swimming and diving in the pool where Mark Spitz won all those medals. It is a big sports club now. Behind the stadiums is a wonderful, huge park, which was also very busy. At one end is a huge hill, with a winding path up to it, called Olympiaberg. It turned out to have been made with the rubble of Munich buildings destroyed in World War II. The view was spectacular, and the day was so clear we could clearly see the snow-covered Alps in the distance!

I figured out how to take panoramic photos with my camera. In that mode, when I take a picture, it pauses a minute, then puts up a “ghost” of the left third of that shot to use as an alignment guide for the next shot, and so on until you tell it you’re done. The software that came with the camera then assembles the panorama, apparently. I guess I need to install it when I get home.

As it was about 5.15, I thought it would be nice to go see the sunset over Schloß Nymphenburg, the Wittelbach’s “country palace,” though now very much in the city limits. (By the way, we got to the Theatiner church in Odeonsplatz right after morning mass, but the crypts were closed on Sunday. However, the air was filled with a powerful incense. They must’ve burned a ton of it. The smoke lingering in the air made neat shafts of light in the sun coming through the clerestory windows.)

Anyway, back to our walk: we saw a sign to U-Bahn 1, and thought we could take it to the neighborhood of the palace. I remembered from reading in my Munich guidebook that we would have to change to a tram or bus. It turned out the station was a huge distance, much longer than had we just gone back through the park to the station at which we’d arrived. When we finally got to U-Bahn 1 station, we realized we weren’t too far from Schloß Nymphenburg; it was about the same distance we had just walked, so instead of taking the subway anywhere, we opted to follow the canal (really more of a nice brook) toward the castle. It ended up being a little farther than we thought! About a mile or so, in fact!

However, when we got there the dusk was rapidly settling over the vast expanse of palace grounds. We had missed the sunset by a good half hour or more. Still I tinkered with the settings feature on my camera and found the “night landscape” mode. I think I got some interesting photos. We walked around the front of the palace a bit, then went back to the main street, where we caught a tram back to the Hauptbahnhof. We had bought an all-day transit pass for €5 at the subway station near Markus’ apartment, and it was good on the tram.

Morning morning we were off to Ludwigland in southern Bavaria again, one of my favorite places in Europe. This time I was determined to do some walking in the paths beyond the bridge opposite Neuschwanstein castle, something I have hoped to do with every visit to the “King’s Nook.”

We had quite a treat on Tuesday evening. A very nice friend of David’s mother lives in Munich and invited us to be his guests at dinner. He drove us way the heck out of town to a village called Herrsching on the Ammersee lake at the end of the S-5 Schnellbahn (commuter train) line. He wanted us to see the sunset over the lake from the Biergarten in front of a favorite restaurant, but we got there about 30 minutes too late. We did get to see a lovely, clear evening settle in, though.

We then were his guests at dinner in a very good local restaurant. I had a tasty bacon and sauerkraut spätzele served in an old beat-up pewter skillet. Spätzele, those wonderful little dumplings, are one of my favorite German foods, a speciality of the Schwäbisch region, which includes Augsburg and other points west of Munich. We had a great evening, but before we could get some sleep, we had a load of jeans and a couple sets of undies, T-shirts and socks spinning in the dryer in the basement. We needed to pack them that night before we left at 5.30 in the morning to catch our train to Friedrichshafen.

The hiking in the foothills of the Alps behind King Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein castle was really spectacular. We ended up off the marked trail following footpaths that clung to the edge of the sheer drop most of the way, so we got treated to different viewpoints of the castle, the lake, the Alps, the surrounding communities, and as we got higher and higher, we could see Hohenschwangau castle (Ludwig’s childhood home) behind Neuschwanstein. We got about to the point where they take the postcard pictures, but we were much, much higher. It was just incredible. We had packed lunch treatments, and made ham and gouda sammiches on brötschen (small rolls, soft inside, crusty outside) on a semi-flat spot along the way.

Very few tourists make it beyond the Marien Brücke (the Maria Bridge) that Ludwig had built across the Pöllat Gorge, so our experience was extra special. It was a hike I have wanted to do since I first saw Neuschwanstein, but for one reason or another, mainly having to do with pressing time schedules or snow blocking the paths, I never got to do before.

Afterward we hiked back down, following the path this time, which only took about 20 minutes, the tour of the castle with a senior administrator was really interesting. We got to see a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, including the structure that supports the domed roof of the throne room. It’s ironwork, as Ludwig had visited Paris and was impressed with Monsieur Eiffel’s structural work. We also got to go up the highest tower and walk around the balcony. The little room attached to the side of the tower top was going to be a little library room, but it wasn’t completed inside. It was raining at this point, one of those showers that springs up in the evening in the area, but we still walked around the outside balcony.

After a great breakfast (no one makes breakfast like the Germans, and the buffet at the guest house was superb. Herr und Frau Bastian are to be commended!) Tuesday morning we went to the Kristall-Therme, a rather nice spa near the Gästehaus Charlotte where we had spent the night. It was filled with mostly old people bobbing up and down in the pools. There were also several squealing kids. I wondered why they weren’t in school. We were a bit bummed that they closed the lap pool, which I never noticed the last time I was there. It is behind a round, very salty pool. It was T-shirt weather again Tuesday, as it was the day before (until we got higher up in the mountain). It was not bad outside, even though we were wet and in swimsuits. Two of the popular pools were outside. The last time I was there, the snow banks were about 6 feet away from the pools! Then it was quite a refreshing dash from pool to pool or to go inside.

After our swim and wallowing in the warm pools, we enjoyed a walk to the town of Füßen, the regional administrative center, which is where the trains to and from Munich stop. I was glad we only brought enough stuff for the night, and hence just had our daypacks, not our full backpacks. I did make the mistake of lugging this laptop, which was not needed as I really didn’t get any time to do much on it. We enjoyed a walk around the town, stopping to visit the Franciscan monastery and its church. The latter is tremendously ornate in that overdone Bavarian Baroque style. An interesting feature is a glass coffin with a bejeweled skeleton inside, apparently the relic of a minor saint.

We poked in a few shops where I bought a couple souvenirs, then bought stamps for my post cards at the post office near the station. Postage for a postcard to the U.S. is €1. I know not to complain about our own postage rates now! I wrote the postcards on the train back to Munich.

Back at the apartment, we had just enough time to toss in a load of clothes, primarily our two pairs of jeans each, before Sten picked us up and took us out to Ammersee for dinner. We got back about 10 p.m., and still had to put the laundry in the dryer (we used two €.50 coins to get almost an hour of drying time this time). We gathered our stuff from around the apartment, left “thank you” sticky notes for Markus and Rike, and when the clothes were dried, repacked our suitcases. It was after midnight when I got to bed.

I didn’t hear David up and about Wednesday morning, and woke up at 5.12. We had to be at the station no later than 5.30 to catch the U-Bahn to the main station. Talk about hustling! Good thing everything was packed. I ended up shaving and brushing my teeth on the train to Ulm, where we would change for the train to Friedrichshafen and our Zeppelin flight. More about that fantastic adventure in my next post!

It seems weeks ago that we were in Germany, when in fact it was just a couple days ago. Tuesday morning we caught the airport bus in Darmstadt back to Frankfurt Airport. I had booked us on one of Europe’s many budget airlines to Stockholm. The fare was just €45 each, though after taxes and fees, that climbed to about €86, or about $132, which is still a great price, as it saved a day of rail travel and gave us an extra afternoon in Sweden.

Though I had booked us on Air Berlin, the closest we came to an Air Berlin plane was to pass it on the bus to and from the plane of the airline we were actually on, which was an Austrian company called Niki. We loved it. For starters, the stewardesses wore pert hot pink ‘60s looking caps and black jackets. It was nice to see them liveried identically, except for their crew chief, who wore a hot pink shirt as well. Then we actually got fed! None of this “$2 for your favorite Coca-Cola products and juices” nonsense I got on USAir and not even a bag of salted peanuts. Niki passed out some darn tasty sandwiches on both the Frankfurt-to-Vienna leg, and again on the leg to Stockholm. They also had one of those cool in-flight progress maps up on the video monitors so we could see how we were doing, which is something I missed sorely on the flight to Frankfurt from Philadelphia. In short, USAir could learn an awful lot about in-flight service from Niki.

We arrived at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport at the new Terminal 2, had no trouble getting our luggage and sailed right past the customs officers gaze. There was no passport control, hence no new stamp on our passports. Due to construction we couldn’t figure out where to meet my friend Curt Borgdén, who was picking us up, but fortunately, after we wandered into the lower level of the parking garage, he found us.

It was raining when we arrived, but as we headed to Drottningsholmslott, the royal country palace, we could see the sun trying to peek through the grey clouds. It ended up being a lovely day to stroll the grounds of the palace. The royal standard flew over the residence, indicating a member of King Carl XVI Gustav’s family, if not the king and Queen Silvia themselves, were at home. Hence, some of the elegant formal gardens were roped off for security reasons.

But Swedes take very seriously their right to stroll public lands, so most of the gardens were open to walkers. We headed for the Chinese Pavilion, a 1700s gift from one of the kings to his wife, done in the gaudy chinoise style that was fashionable at the time. First, though, we passed what appeared to be a medieval fair tent, which I mistook for some sort of setting for an outdoor theatrical. It turned out to be the guards’ headquarters for the Chinese Pavilion, and was, in fact, made of festively painted and shaped wood.

The pavilion was closed, but we could walk around it and admire, or maybe chuckle a little, at what 18th-century Swedish court artisans assumed was Chinese ornament. Surprisingly, the façade reliefs were all repetitions of the same, not very Asian scene. We took a break and had an ice cream cone in the little café in the cellar of one of the side service buildings. It had once been a kitchen, perhaps serving the pavilion, and had old bread ovens and warmers around one wall.

At the Borgdéns’ home that evening, Curt’s delightful wife Ann-Louise made fabulous thin waffles for dinner, topped with a choice of strawberry or raspberry sauce and fresh whipped cream. Earlier she had dispatched their youngest son, Jonas, to the store for the cream on his bike a bit earlier. Afterwards, we went to check out a local mall, for the fun of comparing ours with theirs. They are about the same, though most of the stores were different. We did spy a Bath & Body Works, though.

One store really fascinated us. It was a sort of Target, stocked with everything from housewares and hardware to soft goods and, this amused us, a surprisingly large equestrian tackle section. The food section was extensive. We got an assortment of licorices to sample, including nasty salted ones that the Swedes love. There were also some varieties that really cleared my sinuses.

The next morning we took the local commuter train into Stockholm central and set off on foot. The plan was to walk along the harborfront Strandvägen street to the Wasa Museum, but after a quick exploration of stately St. Klara’s Church and a walk as far as the promenade near the opera, alight rain started falling. Soon it was a heavier rain. By the time we ducked into St. Jacob’s Church, ostensibly to check it out but really to get out of the rain, it was a very steady downpour.

We were to rendezvous with Joachim Öiwall, a friend of many years, at 1 p.m. at the “Spitting Cup,” a circular opening in Central Station’s main floor that looks down into the lower level. It’s a popular rendezvous spot. At this point in our progress, or rather lack thereof, we realized we’d never have enough time in the Wasa Museum before having to hightail it back to the station, so we decided instead to check out the royal treasury in the palace. While asking the way of one of the guards, who love the opportunity to both chat to someone and avoid the otherwise boring duty of standing with a gun looking stern, we learned that there was to be “a big ceremony” at 12.15, which I took to be the changing of the guard. I was right.

We joined the throngs gathered in the right-hand circular colonnade in the palace forecourt, all jostling for position out of the rain. The office for tour tickets (and its inevitable gift shop) didn’t open until noon. As the clock chimed 12 atop the adjacent Storskyrkan church, which is where the royal family worships when they are in residence at the palace, a dapper officer stepped into the court and began to announce which regiment would replace the one currently serving guard duty. At this point everyone dashed forward to get a place along the line strung halfway across the court.

A military band led in the new guards, which, who, we learned, belong to a transport regiment. There was lots of ceremonial marching about, and while the soldiers looked respectable enough in their blue uniforms with white gloves and berets, there was a nice simplicity to the proceedings, with periodic band accompaniment. After the new guards were in place and the old ones marched out of the castle, the band performed a nice little concert. Unfortunately, it was raining steadily and most of us left by the second number, that old Swedish folk tune, “The St. Louis Blues March.”

We found Jocke, as he is more familiarly known, and he led us to a great Thai restaurant for lunch. My padh Thai was delicious, the portion American-sized, and the price about $9. Thus fortified, we decided to visit the Stadshuset, or city hall, which is where the Nobel peace prize is conferred, and the Nobel dinner and dance held. It was a soggy but not long hike over to the building, which is topped by Sweden’s royal three crowns emblem, but alas, we had missed the last tour by 20 minutes. No big deal; it was in Chinese anyway.

We decided, therefore, that since we wanted an indoor activity, we would go to the Wasa Museum after all. We hopped a couple buses and disembarked in front of the ornate Nordic Museum, then in a very steady rain, worked our way behind it to the Wasa Museum.

The Wasa, an early 17th-century warship, is one of Stockholm’s greatest must-sees and is quite remarkable. On August 10, 1628, it set sail on its maiden voyage to join the Swedish forces then battling in Poland. It made it across Stockholm harbor, heeled over in a sudden wind, righted itself, heeled again, took water in its gun ports, and sank in less than a minute. Its maiden voyage lasted about 25 minutes.

Because of the clean, cold, almost salt-free water, the ship remained virtually intact, except for its masts, which embarrassingly, stuck up above the surface and were cut off to avoid further humiliation. In the late 1950s, an amateur archeologist found the ship and soon efforts were underway to raise it, which happened in 1961. The present museum was constructed in the late 1980s. The Wasa is an amazing time capsule of life aboard a 17th-century man-of-war.

Work has progressed on analyzing paint samples to determine how the ship was decorated. A large model is constantly being painted to show how the ship looked in all its splendor. The conservators were a bit embarrassed to discover that the Swedish Baroque was a lot more gaudy than they thought. Much of the stern castle was painted a Pepto-Bismal pink with bright primary color and gold accents.

Jocke went back with us to the Borgdëns’ home in Sollentuna, where Curt and Ann-Louise had prepared a scrumptious dinner of roast deer meat, a potato and cheese casserole, a heart brown gravy, and salad. After the meal we took dessert in the living room, a nice ice cream log. We made and changed (multiple times) plans for the next day, weaving them around Curt and Jocke’s respective schedules and the opening hours of places we wanted to go.

Did you know Apple iBook’s bounce? I learned that the hard way when my laptop dropped out of my backpack in Charlotte-Douglas Airport as I settled down to eat my Cinnabon. Horrors of horrors: it was to be one of the integral tools of communicating during this adventure. Fortunately, the only damage it seemed to suffer is the AirPort card is apparently dislodged so I could no longer connect to the Internet wirelessly. Luckily, at our hosts’ home here in the suburbs of Darmstadt, I can be hard-wired. And thus you can be reading this port. And more luckily, David, my traveling companion, is wonderfully computer literate and figured out the problem. The jolt not only knocked the wireless card loose, it popped the antenna out of the card. He fixed it and it’s working!

My flight into Frankfurt from Philadelphia, the third and final leg of my journey that began at 5 a.m. at Northwest Florida Regional Airport, got in 35 minutes early. It was still dark in most of western Europe as we landed. Airlines have gotten real stingy, as most travelers know. Breakfast was a single blueberry muffin and a glass of OJ. I was expecting that and had a water bottle in which I poured a packet of powdered Tang-like “orange breakfast beverage,” and also had with me two packets of dried fruit to nibble.

But worst of all is what little legroom there used to be has vanished. My knees were already touching the seat in front of me even before its occupant reclined it the little bit that coach seats can actually recline (which is precious little). They are also skinnier, I think, unless my bottom has widened, which I hope isn’t the case! When I dropped my glasses on the floor midway through the flight, I had to wait until the guy next to me to get up to deplane before I had enough room to bend over and find the wayward specs.

Passport Control in Frankfurt went smoothly. I got the first visa stamp in my new passport, then claimed my luggage. I had plenty of time to tidy up and shave in the men’s room until David’s flight came in, also a bit early. After we gathered his luggage, we cleared German customs without a hitch and entered Germany.

Two regional trains and about 45 minutes later we stepped off the second train in Darmstadt Main Station, where my friend of 23 years, Dieter Heck, waited for us. His wonderful wife Regina had prepared a typical, massive German breakfast for us of various sliced meats, including the “Schinken” that I love, a smoked, thinly sliced ham similar to prosciutto. Fresh Brötschen, or hard rolls, and an assortment of jams also were on the table. Regina knows my fondness for fruit teas, despite her insistence that they are “children’s tea,” but brewed a pot anyway.

Despite being a tad jetlagged, we were eager to start our holiday. Dieter and Regina proposed a simple visit to downtown Darmstadt, where we enjoyed strolling a shopping mall and an outdoor food market. The visit also included a walk up to the 1920s Ludwig Church, a massive dome sitting on a square pedestal base. The dome was entirely rebuilt, having been bombed during the war. The inside was inspired by the Pantheon.

Our next stop was the hilltop Mathilde neighborhood, noted for many buildings of the Jugendstijl design movement, a variation of the Art Nouveau style. There is also a very ornate Russian Orthodox church on the hill. After strolling around, including passing through an interesting grove, we settled at a delightful outdoor terrace café where we had some refreshment. I enjoyed a sort of chocolate milkshake with a couple scoops of ice cream bobbing in it.

Then it was off for the nice drive through the countryside to Burg Frankenstein, the ruins of the hilltop castle once visited by English author Mary W. Shelley. (See the video here on our Web site.) Inspired by her hosts’ tales of the castle’s onetime use for medical experimentation that apparently included body parts, she crafted the famous Gothic novel Frankenstein. Today the castle is predominantly in ruins. An entry tower and the tower and some of the keep survive. Techies were busy decorating the ruin for a Halloween haunted castle production while we were there, taking full advantage of the castle’s reputation.

Back home we enjoyed one of Regina’s famed do-it-yourself dinners, in which we grilled various meats, shrimp and veggies hibachi style on a table-top grill. Afterward, the jetlag really caught up. Bed time! We slept like rocks for almost 10 hours.

After another great breakfast, we were off to Heidelberg Sunday morning. My college roommate had his high school senior prom in Heidelberg castle: how I envy him. It’s a fantastic town for walking around. You can rent PDAs with a preprogrammed tour and a pair of headsets and stroll around the various sites listening to guided history lectures. A medieval fair was underway in one of the squares, which we enjoyed poking around. Lots of food, crafts, jugglers and a sort of theatrical recounting local legends were going on.

We ultimately wound up on the hill in the castle after taking a funicular ride up there. Much of the castle is also in ruins, but what is left evidences its former beauty. A popular attraction is the world’s biggest wine cast, which actually has a dance floor on top of it. We enjoyed a pause at an outdoor terrace in the castle where we had some drinks before proceeding to the back terrace overlooking the town and the Neckar River below. We followed a path down the hill on foot, checked out the bridge, which is under renovation, then drove home in Dieter’s speedy Cadillac STS. At one point Regina, our driver, got it up to 200 km/hr.

As Regina and their son, Martin, were attending a dance performance, and their daughter Sophie is a picky eater, Dieter, David and I took the bus into town and had dinner at a Mongolian restaurant called Khan. It had a great Chinese buffet, plus a side buffet where you could load a bowl with various meats and veggies, almost as we did the night before, and chefs would grill them for you. We were ready to roll away from the table after our huge meal, which culminated with fried bananas and honey.

Monday morning, Regina had her piano lesson so Dieter assembled a good breakfast including my fruit tea and lachs (smoked salmon) for the Brötschen. Upon Regina’s return, we hopped back in the Caddy and headed up to the state of Hesse (where Hessians come from) and toured the Kloster Eberbach. (Video will be up soon. Keep checking.) The monastery was started in the 1100s, and finally went secular in the late 1800s. It is noted for its variety of wines. In fact, the lay brothers’ dormitory became a pressing room! Many indoor scenes for the film version of Humberto Eco’s book, The Name of the Rose, were shot at Eberbach. Imagine, I was in rooms where Sean Connery (and Christian Slater, in his screen debut) once trod!

Kloster Eberbach Monastery

After a visit to the gift shop (where the primary “gifts” available are bottles of the monastery’s wines!), we drove along the Rhein River to Rüdesheim, a very charming, very touristy river town noted for the famous Drossgasse, a narrow alley lined with restaurants and shops hawking tourist junk. We had lunch in a place with an outdoor eating area, which, I believe, is the same place I ate at with my relatives during my first backpacking trip in 1985.

We took the two-person cable car up to the Niederwald Denkmal, a mammoth statue of Germania overlooking the Rhein valley below. It was erected by one of the Kaiser Wilhelms in the 1800s, during his drive to unite the various Germanic principalities into one country. Dieter and Regina scoffed at the patriotic jingoism of the inscriptions, while I noted that Germania was having a very bad hair day. We took a half hour to walk back down to Rüdesheim, passing through vineyards and sampling the grapes along the way. Most were the blue variety and were very sweet. It looks like 2008 will be a good year for Rhein wine.

Now back in Darmstadt, Regina is preparing a soft cheese dinner comparable to baked brie. It smells great! I’ll keep you posted on our adventures. Now it’s dinner time.

I think all the pieces are in place for Friday morning’s departure now. I’ve had a check list-slash-packing list going for the last several weeks. Sometimes I return home from work with scraps of paper in my pocket on which I’ve jotted other things to add to it. On Friday it was “Eddie Bauer bottle and peanut butter for Martin.”

The “Eddie Bauer bottle” is a great Lexan water bottle that will hold 18 ounces (or, when I get to Europe, half a litre) of a beverage. The cap is spill-proof, which is especially nice. Now that airlines are charging for onboard drinks and airports have jacked up the prices for beverages knowing you can’t take more than three ounces of any one liquid past the TSA checkpoint, having a water bottle along is a must. I carry those little individual drink mix packets ($1.50 for ten packets of the Wal-Mart brand) in my carry-on daypack. Once past TSA, I fill up the bottle at any drinking fountain. Hopefully aboard the plane they won’t deny me basic water for free! I’ll fill up the Eddie Bauer bottle at a water fountain again shortly before boarding to be sure.

Oh, as its name suggests, I got it at the Eddie Bauer outlet in Silver Sands. They always have the coolest stuff there, including lots of great gear for travelers. My daypack came from Eddie Bauer. It’s just big enough but not so big I’ll be tempted to overstuff it.

The “peanut butter for Martin” came to be on the list last week. David, my traveling companion and a longtime friend from our Tulane University days, and I will be visiting my friends Curt and Ann-Louise Borgdén, who live outside of Stockholm. Their middle and youngest sons, Axel and Jonas, still live at home. Their oldest boy, Martin, is in his first year at university in Malmö. He wanted to meet us, and will take the train into Copenhagen and meet up with us a week from Saturday.

I had introduced Martin (and the rest of Curt’s family) to the wonderful “Fluffernutter” sandwich, something I enjoyed as a kid and still do. They particularly like crunchy peanut butter (they call it “chunky”) so David picked up a large jar to leave at Curt and Ann-Louise’s house. I didn’t want Martin to be left out, though, so he’ll get a jar of his own.

Taking presents to our hosts is a tradition. (They always bring me great European food, like chocolates!) Fortunately most the bulkier stuff, including a Sam’s Club-size canister of Creole seasoning for our first hosts, Dieter and Regina Heck and their kids in Darmstadt, and the peanut butter for our friends in Sweden, will be offloaded first. Our next stop being Munich, I also have some locally produced cane syrup (pronounced “sirp” locally) to leave behind for Markus and Rieke, who kindly offered us their flat in Munich while they are on holiday in the Orient. Otherwise, Munich is pretty much booked up for Oktoberfest, which ends the weekend we arrive.

I confirmed my flight info last night. Thank goodness I did. USAir has been diddling with my reservation since I made it in February. This time they told me there is a “glitch” in the first leg of my return flight. As it is the Frankfurt to Philadelphia portion, it’s rather substantial, and a “glitch” is not a good thing. They tried to blame it on Travelocity, which is interesting because I didn’t book through Travelocity. In fact, USAir handled the return flights themselves, which was necessitated because they cancelled my final leg back into Northwest Florida Regional Airport. I gained an extra vacation day out of the mess!

The “glitch” had one bad effect. I lost my window seat. The agent told me the “Travelocity problem” caused the “glitch” and hence it’s not USAir’s fault that I lost the seat I wanted. Even though I booked back in february, I seem to have lost my priority over someone who booked just recently. There’s something really screwed up in our air travel service. Airlines have adopted a “take it or leave it” attitude. “Service” is certainly not something practiced any longer. But thankfully, the agent assured me the “glitch” would be rectified before I try to board upon my return in October. We’ll see.

One good thing I learned: for overseas flights, I’m allowed TWO pieces of checked luggage. I think I’ll take a small duffle bag with the gifts. When the gifts have been distributed, I can use the duffle for souvenirs I’ll bring back. When not in use it will squish up flat and can  be tucked away in my backpack. That crtainly solves the problem of the extra stuff to pack in the form of gifts.

For this trip we booked most of our train reservations before even leaving the States. In the past I have waited until we get to Europe, but I have had several uncomfortable situations in which we find a train—especially some overnighters—has been booked full when we go to make a reservation. The cost to make a reservation here does not appear to be more than it would had we booked it in Europe. David was able to make the bookings through his AAA Travel office in Dallas, which deals with RailEurope. He also got our railpasses (we’ll be using a Eurail Select Pass-Saver, with eight days of travel in five countries) through AAA, which provides the pass protection insurance policy free of charge, unlike if we bought it through RailEurope directly. There are only one or two trains we’ll have to book once we arrive in Europe.

German Rail’s Web site, www.bahn.de, was a real help on this trip. It lists just about every station in Europe, whether Die Bahn handles it or not. For example, we will take a pair of French high-speed TGV trains from Paris to Crestview’s sister city and back. French Rail’s Web site was really convoluted. In fact, the TGV service has its own Web site. I finally gave up and returned to bahn.de and found all the details I needed. You can click a button for printable versions of each itinerary you settle on, but I just did screen captures and printed them instead.

We decided to purchase our roundtrip tickets to Füßen from Munich and back rather than use a day on our railpass. When you get a railpass, calculate the value of each day of travel. If it’s cheaper to buy the tickets (German Rail’s Web site shows you the price), don’t burn a day of pass usage; save some money. I was able to buy our first class tickets online and print out the voucher we’ll present to the ticket-taker.

Yeah, we could’ve saved some money traveling second class, but the train to Füßen is one instance where you’ll wan to be in the first class carriages at the front of the train. Why? Füßen is the starting point, sort of the port of entry, if you will, for explorations of King Ludwig II’s romantic Bavaria, including his famed castle Neuschwanstein. (That’s the marvelous fairytale-like castle that inspired Walt Disney.) The rest of the train, no matter when you go, will be packed with tourists, most of them Japanese. When you arrive in Füßen, there’s a mad dash through the station, across the street and aboard the local country bus waiting to take visitors to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles.

Neuschwanstein in winter.

By being in the front of the train, it’s a quicker dash to the bus. It takes the Japanese, who are a societal people, a few minutes to get oriented before they dash en masse for the bus as well. If you’re getting out before Hohenschwangau, as we will in the village of Schwangau, which is the stop before it, be sure you are by the exit doors in the rear of the bus or you’ll never squeeze through the hoard of tourists. It’s especially tricky if you have luggage to carry as well!

I’ve started a folder of valuable information. From Rick Steves’ France, I copied the pages pertinent to what we plan to see in Paris. It will sure beat lugging the fat guidebook in my luggage. With my interest in World War II history, I spent some time perusing the Third Reich in Ruins Web site (www.thirdreichruins.com), and made a page of notes of places I wanted to see in Munich. I also discovered on the site that one of the Hitler Youth academies, called Ordensburgs, is not far from my relatives’ home in Koblenz. (See my last blog for a bit of information about Koblenz.) These sort of notes, plus rail itineraries, our trip calendar (I updated it last Thursday evening), contact information, flight info, the one set of roundtrip train tickets I had to book online (see above), and city maps are all in the folder, which will travel in my carry-on.

I was still debating taking my laptop up until last Friday. The iBook is a great tool, though, and I will certainly be blogging as we go along. In fact, I may decide to make entries from Europe in this blog my journal, although I am taking with me the handy little 5” x 7” 100-page notebook our friend Janice gave me in a “journalist’s kit” she assembled for my birthday. I think David solved the dilemma: He wants to use the iBook along the way, too, to check e-mail and so on, and has offered to help tote it from time to time. Works for me. I think the iBook will get to see Europe.

There are still several stories for me to write for my “vacation folder” at the News Bulletin. I was hoping to get more done, but several have been gathered just in the last few weeks. Friday looked like it was going to be a good day for writing, until I realized we were parading in Crestview’s Homecoming parade Friday afternoon. Bang went two hours! Pre-departure work will get done somehow, I’m sure. It always seems to.

My next entry will probably be from Europe. Wish me a “gute Reise” (good trip)!

The days of September have flown by. Usually the weeks leading up to my departure for an extended trip seem to drag. Not September. Suddenly I find I have just four days before I fly out of the newly monickered Northwest Florida Regional Airport, known among the flying cognoscenti as VPS. (Airline personnel learn its code by the phrase “very pretty sand.”)

There were a couple uncomfortable hours last month when I received a message from Priceline.com telling me the airline changed my itinerary. I’ll return in three legs, Frankfurt to Philadelphia, Philly to Charlotte, S.C., then Charlotte to VPS. Well, USAirlines cancelled that last leg for the Saturday I am to return. But not to fear, the Priceline agent assured me, they rebooked me on a different flight.

But herein was the problem: the flight left Charlotte at 2 p.m. but I won’t arrive in Charlotte until 6 p.m. “There is a scheduling conflict,” the Priceline agent understated.

As it looked like the sort of adjustment that would take a while, she offered to call me back once everything had been worked out with the airline. Through my mind went the horror stories I had heard of people who booked tickets for extended trips online only to be left with no recourse when something exactly like my situation occurred. However, within 45 minutes, the agent called me back.

The solution USAir offered was to have me spend the night in Charlotte and then fly me home to Okaloosa County the next morning. That seemed reasonable enough—until the agent told me I would be responsible for arranging and paying for my own accommodations in Charlotte, plus getting to and from them. No go, I firmly told the agent, who chuckled and said, “I didn’t think you’d like that.”

Fortunately, the change was not my doing. If I had originated the change in itinerary, then yes, I almost certainly would be stuck paying for an overnight visit to Charlotte. But knowing my rights as a passenger, I stuck to my guns. After a further quarter of an hour of discussions with USAir, my agent again returned to the phone. I was to receive an extra day of vacation! I’ll return Sunday, 19 October, instead of the day before!

That extra day will be spent in Koblenz, from whence my relatives on Dad’s side of the family hail. It’s a 1,000+ year old city situated strategically by the Romans at the confluence of the Rhein and Mosel rivers. It survived World War II pretty much unscathed, apart from a few stray bombs. But in early 1945, Allied bombers did some heavy damage, severely decimating its ancient heart, including many beautiful old churches. I guess our guys were making up for lost time, because with the Germans in disarray, Hitler just weeks from suicide and the surrender of the Third Reich imminent, it sure wasn’t necessary.

My cousins Ingrid and Gisela live there now, both sweet ladies enjoying their early golden years. They were children when the bombs of early 1945 fell. When I first began visiting them, Ingrid still lived in the 1930s flat her parents had moved into when it was new and part of Germany’s vigorous urban housing program. When she retired in the early 1990s, she bought a larger flat across the hall from Gisela and her husband Karl in a similar 1930s building down the street. Gisela and Karl’s bouncy daughter Christel lives two floors below her parents, sharing her flat with her boyfriend Rolf. Our family is under one roof!

Koblenz is special to me, and not just because of its rich history, lovely, lively Alt Stadt (Old Town, the historic district), and its situation as the perfect headquarters for exploring several dozen castles in the Rheinland-Pfaltz Palatinate, of which it is the capital. Koblenz is also a place to which I can trace part of my family’s roots and connect with relations who still live there today.

The first time I visited, during my first backpacking trip in 1985, we sat at Ingrid’s kitchen table and surrounded by old family photos and documents, drew a family tree in my journal, supplementing Ingrid’s material with family information I knew. (Later, when I got home, my mother and I used family information in my grandfather’s Bible to fill in some of the blanks, so I could send a more complete lineage back to Ingrid.)

(In case you wondered how we’re related, Ingrid and Gisela’s grandmother was one of seven sisters, some of whom immigrated to the U.S. during the late 19th century wave of German immigration. One of the sisters was my Great-Grandmother Schnabbe, whose name was changed to Schneider upon settling in the area of Mount Holly, in southwest New Jersey. My paternal grandmother, Lillie, was born very soon after they cleared immigration at Ellis Island. She married Edgar M. Hughes and they settled in Collingswood, a New Jersey bedroom community near Camden. Two years ago, while visiting Philadelphia, my roommate Leon and I visited Nanny and Poppa Hughes’ house. Apart from vinyl siding and the removal of the wall between the kitchen and dining room, and expanding the front bedroom out onto the porch, it is not too drastically changed. From this house a constant stream of post-war relief parcels organized by my grandmother through their church, was sent to Ingrid and Gisela’s mother to help alleviate the deprivations and squalor forced on the innocent German population after V-E day.)

Koblenz is also special because it’s the place where I usually begin or end (or both) my trips to Europe. Frankfurt’s airport is one of Europe’s most convenient, and usually less expensive, to fly in and out of. It’s just an hour’s train ride up the Rhein. When I arrive for a European trip, it’s nice to relax and shake off my jet lag with “die Koblenzer,” as Ingrid often signs her letters. And when I depart, I enjoy connecting with my roots again while visiting the jovial, hospitable folks who share my blood. Plus, I know lots of great stores in Koblenz where I can do last-minute shopping for gifts and souvenirs!

On this trip, my traveling companion David and I will begin with a visit to friends in Darmstadt, a manufacturing and research center south of Frankfurt. But as no visit would be complete without a stroll around Koblenz’ cheerful Alt Stadt, that’s where we’ll wind up. There’s a great ice cream café in Am Plan, one of the main squares, where I hope we’ll have time for some spaghetti ice cream. If we get some, I’ll let you know what it’s all about. Suffice to say, there’s no tomato sauce—nor spaghetti—in it!

Best of all, I’ll get to enjoy Koblenz for an extra day after we bid David “auf wiedersehen” at the newly renovated Main Station!

The Liebfrauenkirche rises over Koblenz