The Voyage Home

December 30

We didn't end up taking the same flight back and our planes were leaving at different times. Due to world events, it was recommended that people flying to the U.S. arrive "early" to the airport. I was leaving first (10:20) so I thought that getting there for 7:00 would be best, I'm sure glad that I did - There were quite long, slow lines. Vladimyr however, was not leaving until 12:45 and was able to check in right away with no waiting. The flights for both of us were uneventful. No real stories from that. I finished knitting a scarf and I am almost done crocheting a doily. That's about it. Since I got in first, I took the light rail/bus home and then got the car to pick up Vladimyr when he came in. When we got home, Vladimyr finally got to open the Christmas gifts from me.



We are home safe, the cat and mouse are fine and we are happy. :-)

Last Day

December 29

This was our last day in Germany. It was a busy one. Vladimyr had a lot of things to finish up - we mailed a few packages to ourselves, a few things that wouldn't fit in the suitcases, he had a drop off his work keys and then we had to pack and clean up the apartment. Vladimyr's Christmas gift to me (besides the cute teddy bear) was to give me money to go shopping in Aachen. While he was running a few errands, I did a little bit of shopping - fully putting my bad German language skills to the test. I bought some cute shoes, a few nice shirts, more scarves and a bit of yarn.

In the late afternoon we took the train to Frankfurt. We first took the train from Aachen to Cologne then changed trains in Cologne to get to Frankfurt - the train from Aachen to Cologne was scheduled a little later then we had a first thought so it didn't give us much time between trains in Cologne - but it all worked out.

We stayed overnight at the Sherton hotel attached to the Frankfurt Airport.
We had dinner in the hotel lounge - it was a cute presentation

Maastricht

Monday, December 28

Vladimyr got up early and had to go to the government office here in Aachen, basically to check out, or let them know that he was going to be leaving. After he got back from that, we headed off to have another adventure.
This time, we took the bus to a town in the Netherlands called Maastricht. From what I understand, this town is the next closest big town to Aachen and there is a direct bus service between the two cities.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the bus (online, beforehand) but didn't end up spending really any time looking at what to do there - which is fine, it just meant more wandering around.

We had to cross the River Maas to get from the bus station to the city center. We stopped to take a picture and the birds were not having it.


A statue of some guy (?) holding a flaming thing (?)


The "Winter Festival" was still going on (very very similar to a Christmas Market) and this one had a Ferris Wheel (Riesenrad!!) We got a nice view of the city from there.


Ofcourse there was a Church. This one still had the incense smell from a service and Vladimyr felt that this made being a tourist in the a church seem weird. The other churches that we had been in were just buildings but that the smell really made this one seem like a real church so that walking around it was strange. I thought it was pretty.



We walked around for a little bit then stopped for a beer before catching the bus back


Tonight is cleaning up, tomorrow we clean, shop and pack then we will be catching the train to Frankfurt. We will be staying overnight in Frankfurt so we can make it to the airport nice and early on Wednesday.

Around Town

Sunday, December 27

This was a quiet, rainy Sunday. We went out for breakfast (hot chocolate and croissants) then later in the day we went out for a walk to a near by cemetery - this one had huge old head stones and big trees.


After our walk, Vladimyr made dinner with the left over pork roast and a sauce packet for "Jaeger Sauce" which is quite good.

Later, we met up with some of Vladimyr's friends and we played pool

Here is another classic photo for the "Vladimyr is telling a Story" Photo series.

Vladimyr again...

So, Bonnie has been updating this blog since she got in. I guess it's easier than her getting fed up with me not updating everyday :-)

Brussels was fun. I used my french when we were at restaurants and the like. It turns up that I'm much better with my french than with german. It was actually kinda nice to be able to understand the language being talked all around me. We'll I didn't understand the Flemish bits, but that just sounds like gibberish anyway :-p

Here is a blurry picture of Bonnie enjoying some Gluhwein.

Brussels

We needed an adventure.

In Aachen the shops closed midday on Christmas Eve and were closed on December 25th (First Christmas) and December 26th (2nd Christmas) so we needed to find something to do somewhere else for the 26th. We wanted a place we could get to easily on the train and that wasn't too far away so we could be gone just for the day. Both Belgium and the Netherlands are close but the Netherlands also has the 26th as a holiday so we decided on Belgium. Brussels sounded like a good choice because it was an hour away on the train (on the ICE, the fast train), it was a bilingual city (French/Flemish) and there was a lot to see.
Though the choice of city was done quite in the analytical "Bonnie" way, the trip was a very "Vladimyr" Trip. We went to the train station that day and bought tickets. We arrived in Brussels without a map and only a general idea of where the things we wanted to see were. We made out way through the city in a bit of a meandering fashion and eventually found the main tourist area, through the Vladimyr method of city exploring.

The Grand Place/Grote Markt


We got to go into this building, it was at one time the King's house, it has a museum in it.


We saw some of the other main tourist attractions, like the "Manneken Pis," a small statue of a boy peeing, which is, for reasons that I don't understand, a big thing to go see. They even put costumes on it and part of the museum we went to was a gallery of the costumes (over 800 different ones). We went to see it to see if there was a costume on it, it turns out there wasn't and the fountain wasn't on so he wasn't even peeing. It was weird. There was a huge crowd to see it too. Strange.


Then to the Cathedral


A bit of Vladimyr-style wandering around found a lot of different things:
A part of an old wall


On the map that we eventually got, this was called the "Hallepoort"


This was a strange statue in the "Parc de Bruxelles"


The garden by the "Mont des Arts"



There were lots more little cool things that we saw through out the day. It was a fun adventure.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

We spent a quiet but wonderful Christmas together in the apartment in Aachen.

I woke up to find a wonderful pile of Christmas treats waiting for me.


At my request, Vladimyr made biscuits for breakfast and it worked out perfectly - he was just walking around looking for a tea-towel to keep them warm when I had him open up his gift from me - a hand knit biscuit blanket!


I then got to open my Christmas gift - a sweet little Harrods Christmas teddy bear.

We spent most of the day lounging around, reading, listening to Christmas music and eating our treats. We watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and then made a yummy Pork Roast for dinner (okay, Vladimyr made the dinner, I supervised)


After dinner we played out new game that we picked up the other day. "Minotaurs" is a board game put out by Lego. The game play is like most board games ( you have to get your pieces to a certain point) but the board is made out of legos and throughout the course of the game, the board layout can change. It's pretty neat.


Here's a picture of the Minotaur about to eat one of my guys

In the end, Vladimyr won. :-)

We figured out the timer mode on our camera so that we could get a picture together.


We are thinking of all of our family and friends on this holiday and wishing all a Merry Christmas.

Spinach and Nettle Candy?!?!

I discovered Haribo gummies when I was studying in England. We can get some of them in the U.S. but not nearly as many of the crazy mixes and flavors as in Europe. Vladimyr found a mix that looked pretty good. The pieces were half gummy, half marshmallow with a jelly type filling.


Here is a close-up of the pieces


As I was eating them, I was reading the package which says "Mit 35% Frucht in der Fuelling" (with 35% fruit in the filling) so I was curious what fruits were actually in it.

Here are the ingredients (emphasis mine):
Glucose syrup, sugar, gelling agent (gelatine),Fruit and Plant Concentrates: Raspberry, Mango, Orange, Carrot, Nettle, Spinach, Hibiscus, Lemon, Safflower; citric acid, lactic acid, flavorings, white and yellow beeswax, carnauba wax, carrageenan, vitamin e, sodium citrate and invert sugar syrup.

After reading that, some how, the green pieces didn't seem so appetizing.


-Bonnie

A Walk in the Park

December 24th

We did a little bit of last minute shopping and then went off to explore the city park

I'm not sure what this is but we thought it was neat.

When I first got to Aachen, it was cold and snowy. The cold had come up quite suddenly and many of the plants ended up frozen.


The park was quite nice with a lot of large old trees, a duck pond (that had been drained for the winter) and an old cemetery. On one side of the park, you could tell we were getting to the more expensive part of the city. There was a concert hall, an expensive hotel, the spa and a casino - we didn't go to any of them

The building here is the casino, the concert hall is to the left)

It was a nice walk and it went through a different part of town than I had been to before.
When we got back, Vladimyr made a nice pot of soup - this time with homemade noodles!

Out and About

We went to the Aachen Cathedral today - It is quite pretty inside

The inside is done up with a lot of stained glass, marble and mosaics


We also went to the Cathedral Treasury, but again, no pictures allowed.

After touring the Cathedral, we went for lunch at a cute little Pizza place, it was good. We shopped around a bit for a few things.
We don't really know what shops are open for the next few days so we decided that we needed to get some provisions and such. We got some groceries for the next few days and some Printen (spice cookies) for Christmas


Tonight is the last night for the Christmas market so we went for one last time. It was a lot of fun

Vier Weihnachtsmärkten! (Four Christmas Markets!)

Tuesday, December 22
'Tis the season and all. Today was an adventure! We took the train to Köln (Cologne) which is only about an hour away from Aachen. The first thing that we seen when we get out of the train station is the Cathedral.


We went inside and looked around for a while. We went to the Cathedral Treasury that has reliquaries (ick!) and other treasures of the Church. That was neat, but no photos were allowed :-(

Right outside of the Cathedral was one Christmas market. We stopped quick for a glass of Glühwein


After a quick look around, we headed off to try to find the next Christmas Market. This one was right on the Rhein River, next to the Lindt Chocolate Museum (we didn't end up going in - it was getting late). This one was a Medieval Christmas Market. (Kind of like a Renaissance Fair. . ) This one was really fun - it was pretty small but there were some cute booths, fun food, and some entertainment.
Vladimyr eating some meat on a stick

The Juggling, Balancing, Taunting the Crowd show (we didn't know what he was saying but could tell it was funny)

After leaving that market we went to another Christmas market that was not too far. This one was known as the Altermarkt. It was cute. Vladimyr bought a very nice pair of fur lined gloves - hopefully he will wear them :-)


After this market we headed back to the train station and back to Aachen. On our walk from the train station in Aachen to the apartment we passed the Elisenbrunnen which is a fountain that has the water coming up from natural hot springs (and smells like it too) Historically, the hot springs were something that brought people to the area and signs on the wall tell of the famous people who have come there.


We then went though the Aachen Christmas Market again (that would be market #4 for the day) and had another glass of Glühwein. These were super cute cups!

Vladimyr (and Bonnie) & The Chocolate Factory

Today got off to another slow, but relaxing start. It was snowy and slushy out - warmer than yesterday which means that all the snow was slowly melting. Slush + cobblestone streets and sidewalks = very slippery goings.

We walked through some of the shops here in Aachen. We went to a department store and walked around in the fancy grocery section, we walked through a toy store and a book store. Vladimyr bought one of the market bags from the book store. We stopped for lunch at a place called EssBar and had Schnitzel - it was quite good.

We decided to go to the Lindt Chocolate Factory, this was pretty much on the opposite side of the city from where Vladimyr lives so we got to see quite a few things. This is a picture of the old city gate from back when there was a wall around the city.


Not too far from the old city gate was the Lindt Chocolate factory. We didn't get to see where the chocolate was being made, we just got to walk around the outlet store - so no swimming in vats of chocolate for us. :-( But there were more types of Lindt chocolate than I had seen before and I was able to find some types that I know that I like in the big factory discount bags. I took a chance on a discount bag of a type that I don't know what they are. It's an adventure in chocolate!


On our way back from the chocolate factory we stopped in a yarn shop - I do want to buy some yarn while I am here but I wasn't too excited about any of the stuff - it was all good yarn, but nothing that really jumped out at me. We passed the Christmas Market again and stopped for another glass of Gluwein, this was from a different stand and it didnt' come in cute mugs but it was still warm and tasty. We also got some roasted chestnuts.


We dropped off the packages at the apartment and took a little rest. We then went back out and met up with one of Vladimyr's friends, Tue, and his fiancee. We had sushi for dinner. It was pretty tasty.

Weihnachts Market

After sleeping in quite a bit, Vladimyr and I went down the street to the bakery to get a bite to eat. As with many places in Europe, there is really not much open on Sundays. At the bakery we had croissants (mine was Nutella filled, Vladimyr's had ham and cheese), hot coco and an apple filled pastry. It is very (by German standards) snowy here. It was colder than it has been (25F ), which is not nearly as cold as Minnesota was this past week so it was not too bad for going out and about. We went back to the apartment for a little bit, so Vladimyr could finish up his laundry and the we went to the Christmas Market.

It was really cute and a whole lot of fun.


We walked around and bought a few things We then had a quick snack


And some Gluwein, which is a hot, spiced wine. We got to keep the cute mugs that it came in.


We plan on doing some more adventuring around the city tomorrow.

-Bonnie

Bonnie Arrives!

My trip to Aachen was about as uneventful as a transatlantic flight can be. Cornelia, one of the yarn shop owners, was kind enough to drive me to the airport with time to spare, my flight was on time, there was enough food, water and stuff to do. There was a small delay in Amsterdam, the plane I was supposed to get on had a mechanical problem and we had to wait for a new plane to be ready. Because I didn't have to catch another plane, this delay was not a problem for me.
I always love looking out the window of planes - no matter how many times I've flown, I still think it is cool I managed to look out just in time to see this:


When I arrived in Frankfurt, I met up with Vladimyr right away. We bought our train tickets and then had a quick snack before catching the train. We took a train to Koeln (Cologne), which was a very nice train, then we changed train to get to Aachen. This train was not quite as nice (kind of the difference between taking a coach bus and a city bus). This train had a weird door that would open and close by itself but would be hard to open and then shut on people as they tried to go through. There were a few drunk transient type people and a random dog. It was. . interesting.

It was then just a quick walk from the train station to Vladimyr's apartment. We had a nice dinner of chicken and fries from a shop near by.

-Bonnie

Today's Presentation.

I think that the presentation that I gave today went very well!

It's probably in part because the presentations was heavily based on a presentation that I had already given.
Also there was good dialog with the people I was presenting to.

Anyway, I'm happy about it.

Trip to Cologne

After a couple failed attempts to get some people together to go on a planned-out trip, I decided that if I was going to travel around while I was here, I would have to do it the Vladimyr way. That is, I went to the train station, bought a ticket, and just got on a train.

I went to Cologne because it is only an hour away from Aachen, and the return trains ran pretty often.
This is the first thing that I saw when I left the train station:



Which is pretty impressive. Here is a more detailed picture of one of the sides.



It is HUGE! I went inside it, and the height inside is quite impressive. With interruptions, it took some 600 years to complete, which is a couple times older than either Canada or the US. Though I don't really have a clue how old Canada is supposed to be considered (New France: 1600s, BNA: 1800s, Canada Act: 1982).

Anyway, I walked around a bunch looking at things until I wasn't really sure where I was, then figured out my way back to the train station.

Here are some things that I saw, and took pictures at (other than the Llama in the previous post.) :

The river Rhine:



The place where the original "Eau de Cologne" is from:



I was actually looking forward to finding this place, and maybe getting some of the "cologne" since I learned of it over half a year ago. I think that the scent actually is quite good. It has been used by Emperors/Kings/Princesses/Presidents/Famous People for some 300 years now...

Oh, and here is a close up of some wall/statue thing I saw.