Oct 23 -- Drive Halfway to Amsterdam

These are the windblown trees we saw before, but this photo
illustrates the wind effect better.

Today we left Denmark and drove about halfway to Amsterdam, stopping outside Bremen, Germany in an out-of-the-way hotel called "Peaceful Forest". We have a small balcony and a woods outside our window. Quite the contrast to being in the middle of the old city last night. Before we left Ribe, we stopped at the bakery and spend our last $10 in Danish currency on two luscious raspberry danish and a small bag of coconut macaroons. With as little walking as we did today, this will not be good for our waistlines, but definitely yummy.

At my daughter's urging, we settled on a more German name for our guidance system, and are trying out "Liesel" instead of Alice, even tho she doesn't speak with a German accent. We'll see how it goes -- I keep thinking of her as Alice, so the new name may not stick.

Either the Danish or Schleswig-Holstein countryside -- FLAT!

The drive was uneventful except when there was a major speed reduction on the highway and single file, everyone drove past a large police presence at about 25 mph. The car behind us got stopped, but we apparently looked pretty innocent. We took photos of the scenery -- pretty much what we have posted before. Lots of flat farmland. I wanted a photo of the Schleswig-Holstein sign, but was too slow. I did get to read it carefully though: it said "Land of Horizons".

Interesting building on the way to the hotel

After checking into the hotel, we drove to the nearby town to see if there were dining choices besides at the hotel, but zip there, so we went back to the bigger village we had skirted on the way in. Most of the dining choices there are lunch places or cafes with coffee and bakery. We did spy the top of an old-style windmill however, and searched it out. It looks like it is the bottom of a feed store today, and there was an old grinding stone leaning against the building. Probably in the old days, it was a wind-driven grist mill.

Store in Harpstedt called Arizona, selling southwest US goodies

The old windmill in Harpstedt

One of several lovely stained glass displays in a Harpstedt church

Dinner was at the hotel, where not too many guests speak English. Our waitress knew about as much English as I know German. With a dictionary and a phrase book, Jim and I managed to select dishes we both enjoyed and it only took about 30 minutes to figure it out! If we lived here, we might become competent in a year or two.

Oct. 22 - More Ancestors, the North Sea, More Ribe

Typical readability on old stones

Easy to read/hard to find in this condition

We asked our host about cemeteries here in Ribe and whether they might hold people from smaller surrounding towns since this is the main city in the county. We were directed to the old cemetery about a block away. After walking around and finding a few old stones, many of which were barely legible or worse, Jim found an old section. While some of the names were similar to those we were looking for, there were no matches so we went to the tourist office to ask more questions.

There we found out that the body of water closest to us is not the North Sea, but a branch of it called the Wadden Sea (or Mudflat Sea in English) which extends from Esbjerg (north of here) all along the coast south to Holland. To find the real North Sea, we had to go north of Esbjerg. But first things first, we set off to find another of the main villages here where my ancestors were born, married, or died: Tjaereborg.

Sneum cottages. Dike is on right blocking the Wadden Sea.

There was also a location called Sneum that the tourist office said no longer existed though there is a Sneumvej (Sneum Way) on our car map. Tjaereborg is just past Store Darum, where we were yesterday, but our route was closer to the sea. When we saw a road for Sneum, of course we turned off. About 1-2k off the main road, there was a little village of cottages that looked like a resort community, all along a dike and the Wadden Sea. There is a bike path on top of the dike which runs all along the coast here. We stopped long enough to take a few pictures, but there wasn't much to see.

The view at Sneum

Homes in Tjaereborg

Tjaereborg Church and Cemetery

Next was Tjaereborg -- as we neared the town, I saw a square steeple like yesterday, and after wandering around town, trying to avoid the new asphalt that was being laid on the roads, we managed to locate the church and its cemetery.  I ended up only taking one photo of the village because it was all so sparkly and new, and we didn't see an older section. The church was lovely inside, but no one was there to ask about anything. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. This time as we wandered in search of headstones of known ancestors, we kept seeing the same names from later times over and over again. It was actually kind of overwhelming realizing that this village is probably full of my distant cousins. Again,  there was a separate section of really old tombstones, but they were horribly difficult to read. I took a few photos hoping to be able to process them into something., but most seemed only to be candidates for rubbings.

Old section of the Tjaereborg Cemetery

Interesting wind vehicle on beach

Then we headed to Vejers Strand and the North Sea. This is a tourist town that has pretty much shut down for the winter. We had brought a lunch but hoped to eat there and save the sandwiches for dinner. No such luck! We did go to the beach -- long and populated, but WINDY. It reminded Jim of Padre Island in South Texas where you drive on the beach and park there and it stretches on forever. For me, it was just like 90 Mile Beach on the North Island of New Zealand. We collected some sand and looked for shells and stones to create yet another glass pyramid of sand from around the world -- very few shells except for some strange elongated ones like short cigars and LOTS of crab shells and a few small pieces of waterlogged driftwood.

Jim at the North Sea

Lynn in front of a LONG stretch of beach

Park in Ribe

There was one more potential place to look for ancestors, Tinning, near Aarhus, on the east side of the Jutland peninsula. When we fed the name into Alice, she couldn't find it, so we tried Aarhus and got an estimate of 117 miles and 2 hours for one direction. Since locating Tinning was now a long shot, we gave that up and went back to Ribe where we looked for a self-service laundry (none) and then wandered around town some more and found a lovely little park by the river with a large colony of mallards.

Mallard near wooden bridge

LOUD waterwheel in old town Ribe

One interesting challenge here is that we have to pay for the hotel in cash and they don't take Euros. We arrived Monday after the banks closed, so we used an ATM and ended up having to take out $100 more than we needed. Meals were so expensive that we charged the first one, and now were looking at how we could spend about $80 worth of Danish Krone. Most of the restaurants were over that budget, and we finally settled on an Italian place and manged to use up all but about $10, which we can probably clear out with a stop to the local bakery before we leave tomorrow. This IS the land of the Danish pastry after all!

Oct 21 -- Drive to Denmark, Start the Ancestor Search

Hamburg harbor cranes

Hamburg railroad bridge -- interesting suspension design

We headed out after the major rush hour in Hannover and took the autobahn north towards Denmark. Our biggest slowdown came in Hamburg, where there was  huge line of trucks apparently waiting to exit to go to the harbor -- lots of big cranes hovering over the harbor. Our route took us UNDER the Elbe river, and it seemed to go down quite a ways. As a non-tunnel/cave person, this 4k segment of the trip was the most uncomfortable. North of Hamburg, we entered the section of Germany called Schleswig-Holstein, which had an entry sign that said something like 'land of the horizon'. This place was VERY flat. Lots of fields, but amazingly, also lots of woods.

Even though Denmark is in the EU, there was a border guard. Most everyone was waved through, but our tourist license plates got us a chance to meet our first Danish officials. Fortunately, their English was pretty good (my Danish is non-existent and I managed to misplace the page of the guidebook that had simple things to say like "Do you speak English?"). We told them about our journey with the car and they seemed really interested in the whole European Delivery concept and let us continue after checking our passports.

Jutland, southwest Denmark

Driving through southwestern Denmark (Jutland, the peninsula attached to Germany), two things were noticable: 1) in Germany, there were lots of little farming villages in the midst of big fields, but in Denmark, it was more like the US with singular homes/farms spread across the scenery, each with its own land to tend. 2) There were trees planted along the roads that had a noticeable slant to the east, especially along the top half. I suspect the wind from the North Sea blows all the way across the flat land, deforming the trees in the windbreaks.

Jutland road - can you guess which way the prevailing winds blow???

Our car, our B&B in the back.
We're in the end room, top floor

We got to Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark, and site of our B&B for two days, about 45 minutes early and remembered we were supposed to have called an hour in advance of arriving.
So I dug out my cell phone, turned off airplane mode, and tried to call. Calling inside Europe with a US cell phone is like calling from the US: you need a country code. I had neglected to research this before we left Hannover, and data on an international plan is prohibitively expensive, so I tried a couple ideas, then called my carrier for help. The first person told me the number already had the country code and to try a 0 in front. That didn't work, so I called them back, and was on hold wondering if I will have to pay the $2.50/minute rate for calling them! Finally a person arrived and told me not just to dial 0 before the number but to hold the 0 down til it became a +. Lo and behold success, but now we had an hour to spare.

Lille Darum farm buildings

So we gave Alice the chance to locate one of the villages the Hansen side of the family came from -- there were two: Lille Darum and Store Darum (after seeing them I guessed that meant Little Darum and Big Darum, and later the tranlator app confirmed it).

Store Darum church with cemetary

I picked Lille and as soon as the map came up, I could see they were related but they were only 1k apart so no big deal. There were some very interesting old houses in the little town, and the first thing we saw in the big town was a church that had a cemetary. Pay dirt! Jim and I wandered around for about a half hour looking for old headstones with the proper names, but didn't come up with any that were on my list -- none were old enough -- though a few looked like they could have been the next generation that stayed in Denmark, so I took pictures.

Old Store Darum home

Old hotel & restaurant in Ribe

Back in Ribe, we got into our room, which appears to have been an old warehouse with the rope and wheel for hauling things up still in our room. Very cool! Our host gave us suggestions on where to eat and how to find an ATM (we have to pay in cash(!) and Denmark does not use Euros). We set out to explore the town, which is very quaint. We found the two recommended restaurants and only one was open tonight, so we made reservations at his suggestion -- and were glad we did. The place is TINY -- room for 3 tables of 2-3, 2 tables of 4, and 1 large table in the back that looked like it could handle 8-10. That one was filled with a family. We were the next to last people in and then they started turning people away. Very good food, but a bit pricy (like everything else here).

Our first restaurant, the red brick building, in Ribe, along the river that leads to a bay on the North Sea

It has been raining on and off all day, and drizzled on us while we walked to and from dinner. I am hoping the weather forecast for tomorrow is correct and we get no rain and more sun. In addition to searching out a couple more towns, we want to visit the North Sea shore too because we are very close to it.

Oct. 20 -- Drive Half Way to Denmark: Hannover

Leipzig city street -- this style building is everywhere here

In the spirit of not spending TOO much time in the car each day, we drove about half way to our Denmark stop today, staying overnight in Hannover. We took our time leaving Dresden so we didn't arrive in Hannover too early and decided to veer from our official highway route and drive through nearby Leipzig. The reviews of it had been iffy, and in driving through the center of town, there really wasn't much to see. We followed a hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus for a couple miles (it said "I <heart> Leipzig" on the back) but it was tough to get the sightseeing on the main roads.

An old style windmill in Leipzig -- no idea why/significance.

The trip was pretty much like our other autobahn trips -- fast, good roads, scenery that mostly looks like it could be Wisconsin. I can see why my ancestors picked Michigan and Wisconsin to settle in---looked just like home.

Church along our route to the park

Even with a rest area stop to eat our packed lunch and the side trip through Leipzig, we still arrived a couple hours before check-in time at the hotel. I had looked up what to do here and the best bet seemed to be the Herrenhausen Gardens, a series of three different style gardens on the northwest side of town. Unfortunately only one of them was free, so we skipped the formal English garden with the largest fountain in Europe (though we walked along side it and got a glimpse of the fountain) and the botanical gardens (which reminded me of a green-house sized version of the botanical gardens in Milwaukee) and walked along the lakes and paths in the Georgengarten, which was free. There were tons of folks there with their dogs, and swans and ducks on the lakes, and in general, just a nice break from all the city stuff.

Biggest fountain in Europe viewed thru the formal garden

Pretty bridge in the Georgenpark

Just like home, people out in the park with dogs on Sunday.

Birds in the park

About a mile from our Hannover... www.mels-diner.de

Back at the hotel, we asked about dining options in the area: the hotel buffet and a Mongolian restaurant 10 minutes walk away. I have been avoiding European versions of Chinese because I've read that Chinese-American bears no resemblance to Chinese-German and if you like the first, you won't like the second. I used Yelp to find other near-by dining choices and up popped Mel's Diner, less than a mile from here. I looked at their website and decided we had to go. Besides, we haven't had a hamburger and fries since we got here. The place is a total rip off of the real Mel's Diner, or what you thought it might be like if you only saw American Graffiti and had never been to the real place. The waitress was cheery, spoke great English, and found us a booth after announcing we'd have to sit at the counter. The place was totally packed, lots of families with little kids. No jukebox at the table, but a big one near the corner, not playing anything we recognized unfortunately.

Our lovely waitress, whose English was
way better than my German.

Oct 19 -- Saxon Switzerland

Today we took a break from city sightseeing and went hiking (sort of) at a German National Park called the Saxon Switzerland. It is not alpine, but lots of interesting sandstone formations, which actually reminded me of the Stone Forest, near Kunming, China. A very popular spot is called the Bastei Bridge, a foot bridge created in the 1800s as a tourist attraction.

Since it is Saturday, we had lots of local company enjoying the view as well and I suspect we were the only Americans within 10 miles. Only the parking toll collector spoke any English at all, so I got to practice my German -- without the book, no less.

Countryside on the way to the Saxon Switzerland Nat'l Park

We started out by seeing how Alice, the nav system, would handle our change of plans. I had mapquested a route and saw an easy one that drove us through the towns instead of the autobahn for the first part, and guessed that Alice would prefer the autobahn. I was right about that part, but we took the slow road, and Alice tried to get us to turn toward the A17 several times before she gave up and went with the program. We headed to Bad Schandau for the National Park Info Center, hoping to find a hiking map, trail head info, etc. Once we got to the village, we discovered that all the parking was chargeable and we did not have small enough coins to make that worthwhile, so I hopped out and went in on my own. The park staff managed to understand my German and we ended up with a road map of the whole area, but nothing like a good trail map.

At the Bastei area, the close parking area was full, so we got to walk an extra 1.5km past high fields and forest to the close parking area. It was noon when we arrived, so we went to a fancy restaurant there with a panoramic view for lunch and stumbled our way thru ordering. Although there was a menu in English (thank heavens -- I can look up the words otherwise, but its a lot slower), the waiter (a very sweet older gentleman) prompted me to use the German terms. The last two big meals I've had have been very interesting variations on turkey with fruit. Last night, I had pasta with turkey and a lemon-orange sauce: super yummy, and today I had turkey breast with cheese and a slice of pineapple, peach half, maraschino cherry, and cranberry garnish. I am going to have to try to recreate them when we get home!

Rock formations like the ones in Kunming

Now that we were full, it was time to hike. Mostly down to start, which was good -- gave the digestion process a head start, tho I did have some 'turkey revenge' going back up that made my legs felt like lead. The views out over the river were stunning, but the bridge itself was underwhelming. We walked across it without even realizing where we were. It was only later, when we came back, that we started to figure it out and then went out to the side trails (I was saving them for photo ops on the way back, figuring I could recover from turkey issues with the side trips) and saw what we had come to find.

Jim at the bridge before we realized it, with crowds on bridge

Lynn on the bridge

View down the Elbe River from the Bastei Overlook

This is the bridge...designed in the 1800s as a tourist attraction!

Then we hiked back to the car and let Alice to tell us how to get home. The rest of the evening was getting ready to head to Denmark, by way of Hannover, tomorrow.

Oct 18 -- Explore Nuremberg, Hof, and Dresden

Oldest bridge in Nuremburg at river's narrowest
point to avoid washout during floods.

We had kind of a lazy morning. Waiting for our laundry to be done, we couldn't leave Nuremberg until noon, so we got up late and wandered around the southern part of the old town we had skipped yesterday. We followed a guide of historical details on the buildings til we came upon a shoe store with short red boots, and Jim pushed me to try some. European shoes are not a good fit for me, but I gave it the old college try and left with nearly a dozen rejected pairs in my wake and nothing to show for it. When we checked out of the hotel and got to where the car should have been, we discovered that it had been elevatored down overnight (we could just barely see it in the gap of the lift) and hotel staff had to come out to rescue it.

Oldest pharmacy in Nuremburg

Old hospital for poor funded by a rich guy
to help him skip purgatory. First part built in 14th century

Fountain of Seven Virtues

On the road again, I noticed that our route to Dresden passed near Hof, which is one of the towns some of my ancestors came from (actually, it appears there may be several Hofs, but this was the only one we'll be near) so we diverted briefly and drove through. Amazingly, Alice (navigation system name changed from Edith -- Jim wanted it to be Lynn, but that was going to be way too confusing, and I wouldn't let him use any other of my family's names either) didn't freak out. She tried once to get us to turn around, and quickly re-oriented to take us on a 5 mile detour and back to the main road. Maybe I'll get to like her after all. Hof looks mostly new, and we only took photos as we drove thru, but still, maybe in the 1600 and 1700s, our family ancestors were born there.

Street on main road through Hof

Just before we got back to the autobahn, Jim pulled off the road and I got my chance to drive. It is so cool to be able to drive over 90 mph and not worry about a speeding ticket. I edged up to 98 a couple times, but now we know we're not supposed to go over 100 for a while, and we'll be back in Germany later, so we're being cautious. Surprisingly, there were lots of slowdowns on the road, including one accident.

The Zwinger -- palace complex of rulers from 1200s to WWI.
Now houses several museums.

We quickly found our next apartment hotel in Dresden -- looks a bit seedy outside, but very nice inside. Best kitchen/room combo so far, but we had to pay for wi-fi and can only use it on one device at a time. We stocked up on breakfast foods at the local grocery store and headed into the old town to look around (we're about 15 minutes away on foot). The city was devastated during WWII by the fire-bombing and the Soviets got control over the war, so fixing up the beautiful old stuff was not a high priority for them. Many buildings were just razed, but some remained and have been largely restored since Germany reunited. The stones are really black, which I suppose is the result of the fire more than soot from coal burning like in most places. There are some really spectacular buildings, but I didn't bring the guide so I wasn't all that sure what we were looking at. I'll probably figure it out when I label the photos.

Interesting tower on the Zwinger

Taschenberg Palace, now known as Residenzschloss,
which operates as a museum

Something really special was a horn trio playing for spare change in the covered part of a gate. They played a couple classical tunes I am familiar with (but don't remember the names of), both of which I really loved. And of course the resonance in the arched stone hallway was spectacular. We found a place for dinner, then walked back to the apartment and focused on what to do next.

Palace Gate. The horn trio played on the right of the center section.

Just south of here is a German national park known as Saxon Switzerland which it looks like it might be fun to hike in. But the first order of business was to decide how much we wanted to drive each day and where we would go. I now have a route planned out for the rest of the trip that includes a day of hiking tomorrow. AND I think I know what to tell Alice for her to get us there. YIPPEE.