traveldiary.stracke.us

On June 7th, we cruised from Muenster to Krefeld. I had programmed our friends Anne Marie and Hubert’s home address into the car’s navigation system, and my new girlfriend ( no competition for Gabi) showed me the way and talked me around the Autobahn exit ramps.
I have known Hubert since 5th grade and we get to see Anne Marie and Hubert only every few years. Last time was in October of 2002, when they came to our 25th wedding celebration in Volkach, Germany.
Hubert had no advance warning when we showed up on his doorstep. We were shooting the breeze with Hubert while waiting for Anne Marie to come home from work. We had a great evening, eating at their corner Italian restaurant ” Amalfi II”. We talked about our journey, our families, politics, economics, education systems and so on. ( Both Anne Marie and Hubert are educators )
It is amazing to see some friends so rarely and still be able to communicate in such a great way. Our evening with them ended close to midnight; they had to get up for work around 6 AM the next morning.

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Have you ever been in a place where around every bend lures another picture? This definitely describes the town of Colmar, in
eastern France, close to the border of Germany. Every house, small canal, lined with beautiful flower boxes, and alley seem to beckon to have their photograph taken. I’m just glad I decided on digital photography, where I can later erase the not so perfect shots. But what do I do with all the others that border on perfection? Right, that’s what CD’s were created for. In the last 4.5 months, I have only filled up 3 – 700 mb CD’s. Not too many, right?
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Gabi always wanted to see the French town Colmar and all its culture and art. ( her post to be published )
We spent June 2nd and 3rd in Colmar, France.
We crossed the river Rhein, which forms the border between Germany and France, south of Strassburg. There are no more border check-points since the creation of the European Union, and I did not have to change Deutsche Marks into French Francs, as it used to be when I was living in Germany.
The weather continued to be very warm and sunny, and we spent the first afternoon in Colmar, sitting in a sidewalk wine cafe, reading papers and drinking local wine from the Alsace region, accompanied by French baguette. The waiter started to look down on us a little bit, after he had to bring us our third basket of fresh bread ! I noticed later that he did not charge us for all the bread, and the afternoon in the cafe cost us a grand total of 8 USD.
We continued our culinary excursion and enjoyed dinner outdoors next to the Cathedrale Saint-Martin.
On our menu : French escargots and Salade Nicoise. ( We never realize how late it is at night. It is still daylight at 10 PM and the birds are still singing at that hour.) It was fun to watch the town life and all the French people around us. Lots of kissing, smoking and cell phones.
The next day, we also saw the birthplace of the French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, creator of the Statue Of Liberty. There is a replica of the Statue located in the center of a traffic roundabout at the entrance of Colmar. We had our American connection again !

On June 2nd, we had left Biberach too late for regular breakfast hours and saw the good old McDonalds sign along the Autobahn in Laupheim. We ended up sitting outdoors, warming ourselves in the sun, eating the usual American fast food breakfast and reading the morning paper.
A German Air Force base is located in this small town and our breakfast entertainment consisted of NATO fighter jets practicing low-level flights above our heads. This is an everyday occurance in Germany, since the country does not have any remote areas for military exercises. I feel sorry for the poor Germans, who are exposed to the jets’ noise on an ongoing basis.
We were on our way to Colmar, France and at lunchtime happened to see a Walmart Supercenter near Baden-Baden. We bought our lunch items at Walmart and had a picnic lunch ( German food ! ) at an Autobahn rest area.
Next stop France.

We spent May 31st and June 1st with thermal water treatments in the “Jordanbad” in Biberach. It was very tiring to move from pool to pool and one bubbling water lounge to the next. After the bike tour last week, the various massage jets helped to treat our tired muscles. In between, we spent time in the steam bath, Finnish sauna and hay sauna. After coming out of the sauna, we dipped into the cold water pond and relaxed outdoors on the lounges by the pool. It was warm enough to lie outdoors and work on our seamless tan. In true European tradition, the whole spa and sauna experience had to be enjoyed without any bathing suits.
We ended up staying in a ” vacation apartment” in Äpfingen. These are located in private homes throughout Europe. Our host Frau Lämmle asked 35 USD per night for this apartment. The house was only 2 years old and we had a whole floor with modern kitchen and bathroom, bedroom, living room and dining area all to ourselves.
In the evening we went with Sonja to Ulm for dinner and had fresh asparagus al fresco at the Rathaus restaurant. We strolled through this old town and admired 550 year old half-timbered houses.
According to a house inscription, Johannes Kepler was here in 1627 and started the town’s weighing and measurement system.