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travel

The Family Reunion

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As I have written before, I went to a family reunion last weekend. I left here Thursday in the morning and came back on Sunday just in time to have dinner with my own family.

My father was the one to organize this, and I didn’t realize how much organization there was needed until I saw that there were 27 of us, who came from all corners of Germany, and that our days were nicely structured. I was a bit scared beforehand because I didn’t know anybody there, apart from my parents and me, that is.

On Thursday I was mightily proud of myself because I had everything packed the day before, and I left with time to spare, and I was calm and composed. It seems that in going in panic mode the week before I had gotten over it. The whole train ride was very pleasant, even changing trains went smoothly and uneventful. The only thing I didn’t like was that the table in the train was so small that when the woman sitting across from me put her laptop down there wasn’t any place left for me. I ended up squeezing my lace pattern under her computer cables, where it was hanging precariously. (And on my way back the same thing happened. First a guy with a laptop (who also kept his big luggage under the table so that I didn’t have any room for my feet), and then a woman with a big writing pad and a newspaper. Next time no table for me.)

The hotel we stayed in was about the ugliest hotel I’ve ever seen. (I won’t link to it here for obvious reasons.) The rooms though were big, and so sparsely decorated that they had a serene feeling.

After unpacking I went down to have dinner with the first bunch of relatives. Four of my father’s cousins with their respective spouses. I was surprised at how nice and kind everyone was. Through the whole weekend I felt blessed that these people on the whole are very friendly and warm, intelligent, and with a sense of humor. (I always had taken sense of humor for granted until I met a bunch of my mother-in-laws relatives. Somehow they just don’t get this whole laughing thing.)

The next day the reunion started in earnest and the remaining people arrived. We had lunch together, and then went for a guided tour of Wernigerode. The guide was not as funny as he thought he was, he played guessing games and gave away bonbons for correct answers but at least we got to see something of this really beautiful town. At one point in the tour the guide’s wife approached him saying, “Is this the second tour? When will you be home?” And he answered he’d be home at half past four but you could see that she didn’t believe him. At which point I gave up on ever being warm again.

On Friday evening we had dinner at the hotel, again, talked to each other, and saw part of a video about a historical play one of my father’s cousins has written about the town where my great-grandparents come from. It’s a bit weird to be related to so many people with a totally different dialect. A lot of these people are from Erzgebirge, that’s Saxony, another group came from Hamburg (you know about Hamburg, don’t you, no need to link this one), and the rest from various places around Germany, Hesse, Lower Saxony (totally different from Saxony, and in a completely different part of Germany), and then there was me, living in Bavaria. In viewing the film it was evident that quite a few people didn’t understand a word of it because the actors talked dialect, and two thirds of the audience didn’t understand a word. Interestingly I didn’t have much difficulties. Living in Bavaria for ages and having friends from all over the country obviously has trained me in understanding different dialects. Well, German ones at least.

There was another thing that had me wonderfully prepared, my father sent me an e-mail beforehand, explaining who was expected to come and whom they were related to. I took that out quite frequently to help all those conversations that went like, “And that is Fritz, I think, and he’s the son of the youngest daughter of my great-grandmother. And this is my grandmother, and the guy over there is my father,…” and so on.

There was only one other person in my age group, also a singing teacher, and also called Susanne who came with her son. Creepy, isn’t it? And our mothers have the same first names too. It would be even creepier if both the name Susanne and our mother’s name weren’t so common in our respective age groups.

It also seems that all of my paternal grandmother’s relatives like to sing. There was an episode on Saturday with spontaneous bursting into song. With harmony. Nice. Who would have thought.

It was really fun to look at all these faces and see their similarities, and differences. To see people in the hotel lobby whom you had never seen before in your life, look at them and think, “Oh yeah, she’s one of us, just look at her nose.”

On Saturday we took a steam train up to the Brocken, the highest mountain in that area. Sadly, it was a very foggy day but we were lucky, and just before we had to go down again the fog lifted and we could see a bit of the beautiful landscape.

On Saturday evening the hotel had a dancing party, and someone (might have been my father, also the hotel manager) thought it would be a good idea to attend. Well, the food there was the best I had in that hotel. (The food I ate in those four days had me longingly think about vegetables, and even salad by the second day. They did have salad, in a way, but it mostly consisted of cooked green beans and shredded carrots with sugary dressing.) But then there was a big woman telling jokes, interspersed with one of these unspeakable dance duos, you know the kind, a keyboard and a guitar, and one of them sings, and they play all the songs that I try to avoid as much as possible. And then the music is so loud that you can’t talk to anybody.

And so I excused myself just after dinner, went up to my room, knitted and read the latest Terry Pratchett. A very nice evening but I regret that there were some of my relatives that I haven’t spoken to.

Sunday morning I went back, this time the trains were a bit more crowded but not unpleasantly so.

I found that I really enjoy traveling alone. It was very relaxing to just do what I wanted when I wanted to without having to consult with anybody. It was nice to have my own quiet room. It’s also much easier when I only have to pack my own things without trying to cram my son’s stuff into the same backpack as well. It was lovely for a change but I also missed my family (you know, my son and husband) and was very happy to be back home.

As I’m writing this I’m still a bit tired and overwhelmed by my weekend, and I feel that this account is brittle and dry and doesn’t do it justice. Anyway it was decided then and there to meet again, in about two years at the place where my parents live. And I’m looking forward to it.

And once again I don’t quite know what to write about

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And as everybody knows a post that starts like this can only be more than a thousand words, not less. I am, again, in mild panic mode. In fact this may well become my new “normal”. This time it’s because I will be away for the weekend. Yes, you heard right, I, a capable, somewhat intelligent woman, am completely flustered because I will be going on a trip from Thursday to Sunday. Alone. On a train. In fact, all I have to do is to remember to take my wallet, ticket, and toothbrush and be at the station on time.

I really despise people who make a big deal out of nothing but, sadly, I appear to be one of them. I have been thinking about what to wear since June, and have gone into more detailed planning mode since two weeks ago. I still don’t know how the weather will be. So, I asked my husband to please wash all my clothes and hang them up to dry today because I had a very urgent hair dresser appointment.

I’m sorry to say that I spent hours of my life debating which purse to take, and – much more important – which books, and which knitting projects. I decided not to take a drop spindle though. (And I won’t take my spinning wheel. I’m sure you’re happy to know.)

So, where am I going, you might ask? Well, it’s a family reunion. Cousins of my father will meet and I thought it might be fun and/or interesting to meet a whole bunch of relatives that I’ve never seen before. There aren’t even that much stories about them. They are all descendants of my maternal grandmother’s siblings. Of her many siblings (and I don’t know how many there were) none is still alive.

Since most of my father’s relatives come from Saxonia there was a long time after World War II when it was very hard to meet. They lived in the GDR, and we lived in the FRG. Nowadays there is only one German Republic again, and so, some years ago, my father went to see his relatives again. That family reunion seems to have been a success and so they planned another one. Which I’m going to attend.

At first I was all excited, and then I realized that I would spend a weekend with my parents without my son and husband as a buffer between us, and that – because my son will stay at home – they will be smoking constantly all day long. Also, I’m nervous about the 25 or so people that I will meet for the first time. I want to make a good impression. On the other hand, these are people who have known my father for more than sixty years, and they still want to meet him.

I wonder if these relatives of mine will look like me. I’m looking more like my father than like my mother, and I have been told by my grandmother that I resemble her grandmother very much. Will there be more who have heads shaped liked that of Bert from Sesame Street, who have a yellowish tinge to their skin (like Bert again, come to think of it), and freakishly small hands?

My father sent a newsletter to everyone beforehand where he misquote me, told everybody that I was excited about meeting them because I had heard so many stories, and got my whole education wrong. The problem is that I was interested in the meeting because I didn’t hear any stories at all.

So I might be facing a weekend of meeting cousin this, and cousin that without ever getting them straight.

Of course, like usual I deal with all this uncertainty by worrying about the least important things first. What to wear. And I know perfectly well that I always do this, and that I still hope to somehow magically conjure the perfect traveling wardrobe that transforms me into the woman I long to be without having to iron anything or wear heels. It’s like I still dream of this very stylish hairdo that will make my hair look much more thicker and luscious than it actually is and that only needs to be dried off with a towel, and maybe brushed casually. Just today my hairdresser reminded me – again – that she can’t work miracles and so I’m looking like I always do only without my bangs hanging into my eyes.

Same with the wardrobe. I’ll wear the same things I always wear. Though if I manage to buy a button for my new, um, cardigan, and sew said button on I might have something new to wear. My mother won’t like it though. She’ll pull at the hem every time she sees me from behind, and tell me I should have made it longer to hide my big butt. And then I had this fabulous idea of knitting myself a matching scarf from my handspun. Until Thursday. I’ll only have to wash and dry the yarn, and then knit about a hundred hours or so. That shouldn’t be a problem, shouldn’t it?

So I keep telling me that there is nothing to get nervous about, and that I just pack the same things I always pack, and that everything will be alright.

You know what I’m looking forward to the most? On Thursday and Sunday each I’ll have eight hours on the train. All by myself.

Things I learned last week

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You might have noticed that I read and commented even less than usual last week. The reason for this was my trip to my parents. As you know, “Reisen bildet.” (Travel gives you an education.), and so I present you with the things I learned through that trip.

  1. When your taxes are due to file in the week when you’re away it might be a good idea to do the taxes slightly earlier than the day before you have to leave.
  2. When you finish your taxes the afternoon before you have to leave it’s not a good idea to think, “I’ll just put together my new desk chair before I pack.”
  3. It’s a good thing to have all the clothes laundered before leaving.
  4. It’s also a very good thing to lay out everything you want to take with you in advance, and pack the bags the day before.
  5. When you have washed and dried and laid out the only pair of jeans that currently fits you and, upon putting them on, you think, “These jeans are awfully tight, I can’t have gained that much since Tuesday.” it might be a good idea to check if these are indeed the pants you intended to wear instead of the other pair that’s a size too small.
  6. If since last year you have gained weight enough to need bigger pants you might also consider to buy new pantyhose for the skirt you brought.
  7. When you decide not to take your bathing suit this time because you haven’t needed it the last thirty times that you visited your parents, this will be the time you’ll go and do aqua fitness with your mother for the first time ever. (In a bathing suit borrowed from her that while being the right size (she had three sizes to choose from) might be suiting a, well, slightly different fashion sense.)
  8. When you go on a thirty minute hike with your child, and your child has spent some time playing in the sandbox beforehand it might be a good idea to empty said child’s shoes before going on the hike, not after. The hike will be much more pleasurable for all parties involved.
  9. When you’re staying in the middle of nowhere for a week it’s a good thing to stack up on sock wool beforehand. Especially since the middle of nowhere doesn’t contain a yarn shop.
  10. When you’re visiting smokers who think that a slight draught in all rooms is the best way to make sure that the rooms don’t reek of smoke, it’s a good idea to take an extra layer of clothing or two.
  11. When somebody pays for highspeed and wireless internet access it doesn’t mean that any of those have to work. You might have to fall back on stealing bandwidth from a neighbor so you can at least check your e-mail.

I’ll resume regular blogging shortly (I hope), also I will be reading your blogs in the course of the next week…

Yarn Expedition

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Last Friday I did two things I’ve never done before, I went on a little trip just to buy yarn, and I met some people whom I only knew through there blogs before. I have an excuse though. A) I don’t get out much, and b) it was Wollmeise-yarn. Claudia, the Wollmeise, has become increasingly famous for her beautiful, colorful hand-dyed yarn. When she updates her online shops these days, it takes about 30 seconds for everything to become sold out again. So when I heard that she would be at a market nearby I immediately decided to go.

Since I didn’t know the place where the market was supposed to be, at first I thought we’d have to take the car and make a family day trip out of it but further research showed me that getting there was actually quite easy. I only had to get on the train that passes the nearest train station and stay in there for about 50 minutes. Then I found out through ravelry, the knitting and crochet community, that of course there were a lot of people planning to go there, and i figured it’d be best to go there right when the market opened.

So I dropped off my son at kindergarten, for once wearing makeup and carrying my enormous purse with my knitting and something to read and such, and got on the train. I had posted on ravelry which train I planned taking and there had been a couple of other people saying they would be on the same train, so I sat in the first car, knitting, so that they could find me.

That didn’t work out though. At one station suddenly the train was turned around. The first car became the last. Just before leaving the train though I spotted Elemmaciltur, Mrs. B, and needlegnome (That last one is link to a ravelry profile. You have to be a member to be able to see that but she doesn’t have a public blog.) We went to the market together.

I’m not meeting many knitter in real life and so I found it quite refreshing to hear things like, “Is that the Kaffe Fasset-yarn in your scarf?”. Also it got me so confused that I answered yes before realizing that the Kaffe Fasset-yarn actually was in my purse instead of around my neck, and that probably nobody there possessed x-ray vision. I also did that confusing thing where I talk English a lot, and then with different people keep switching between English and German until I need a few seconds to answer to anything because I first have to make clear which language I’m currently hearing.

The market was very nice but of course we made a beeline to the Wollmeise’s booth first. I had prayed beforehand that it would be a pleasurable experience for me, and it was. Though right after we arrived all hell broke lose. I went in with a vague idea of wanting about four skeins of sock yarn, preferable oranges and reds with at least one skein of something turquoise like Pfefferminz Prinz for my husband, and at best two skeins of lace yarn, preferable something earthy, and something orange or red. When I went in the lace yarn was invisible under all the people so I just grabbed one delightful skein of sock yarn after the other, then when there was a slight opening at the lace yarn basket, dived in, pulled out the two reddest skeins I saw, decided that I didn’t like the other colors that much, found a salesperson, paid, and waited in front of the booth, the paper bag with my yarn firmly clasped to my bosom until everybody else was finished.

wollmeise sock yarn

I had ample opportunity to see that not all shoppers are as decisive as me. I saw one woman agonizing over a skein of lace yarn for about half an hour. She put it next to herself and looked in the mirror, she asked a friend and two other people for advice, she thought about whether it would be enough or not… I saw people going in there with a list as long as my arm, people who had to get something like 20 skeins for other people. I can tell you, I was very happy to be standing a bit apart from this. Well, I could have had a list too, you know, in fact I did have a list. I told one woman whom I met on ravelry that I would bring her something, if possible. She told me her favorite colors, and I was happy to have found something she’ll like.

wollmeise sock yarn

After that we wandered around the rest of the market, I bought a marble for my husband, had waffles, and then after hitting the booth a second time (not me) we went home.

It was an interesting experience to meet people whose podcast I have been listening to and blogs I have been reading for months. Mrs. B started to tell me about the spinning wheel she borrowed and I already knew it. I felt a bit like a stalker. Especially since none of them reads my blog.

I’d love to meet knitters more often but then I’m already doing too many things as it is. The only meetings I could manage to attend would be on Sundays and that’s family time.

The very best thing for me though was that I found out that there is such a thing as enough talk about knitting (and spinning) for me. When I came home on Friday hungry and thirsty, and my husband had prepared a lovely meal, and I then started to teach again I was so happy to making music again! I had feared that my longing for knitter talk were bottomless. With the people I know I usually talk about knitting until their eyes start to glaze over and then I try to stop. But there I met people who are willing to talk about fiber and such for hours on end without getting tired of it. And that eventually I was ready to talk about other things again. You know, like other people.

To Paris and Back

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So, I’m back from France. We only went for four days to be precise. I spent the last few days here catching up reading all your blog posts. Somehow I had this feeling that I could only write a post of my own after I had read all the unread blog posts accumulated in my feed reader. I know this is beyond silly. I’ll better start posting again before I have read everyone’s posts.

On a less silly note, the two fabulous social wedding brides, Jen and Mad Hatter, have asked Hel and me to co-host the Just Post roundtable starting this month. I feel very honored and hope to be up to this task. (For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, just click on one of the buttons with the purple dove on it in the sidebar.)

So. Last week me and my husband went to Paris. Our son just stayed home with his grandmother. We thought he’d rather not go sightseeing non-stop for days. The packing and preparation went well, and we didn’t even have the traditional fight on the way to the train station. But then, packing for two adults for four days in August is not as stressful as packing for two adults and a child for a week or two in December. In fact, I was giddy at how light my backpack was. (And no, we didn’t take the laptop. We are a disgrace to bloggers everywhere.)

We took the train, which was fast and pleasant. Our hotel was small and quite shabby (okay, very shabby) but friendly and right in the midst of the tourist quarters. (Also we very much appreciated our room not facing the street.) We walked everywhere and didn’t take the metro once. On the train we talked about the things we wanted to see and do while in Paris. I had two things on my agenda: a boat trip on the Seine to see the major monuments, look at pictures in the Centre Pompidou, apart from that I was content with soaking up the atmosphere. My husband wanted to go to the cemetery Père Lachaise if possible and go window shopping in a street that has dozens of music shops next to each other.

Before we went everybody had told us the must-sees in Paris. “You have to go to the Louvre!” Every single person said the same. And one person told us that we could do a virtual tour of Notre Dame and so we didn’t have to see it in real life. Well, what a relief. Wait. I thought I was the one who could choose.

So, into the hotel, out again, consulting the map and off to the Seine.

The boat ride was very pleasant though it is quite tiring to hear all the guide’s explanations twice, once in French and once in English. On the other hand it helped to have it repeated because I always get confused by numbers in French. I found that one thing at least hasn’t changed since the last time I was in France (24 years ago), I can’t understand English when spoken with a French accent. Most people though, hearing my attempts at speaking French, immediately switched to English or German, so the discomfort seems to have been mutual.

After the boat ride we went in search of a restaurant. We finally settled on one because we were very, very hungry and tired too. We had quite a good meal and some very good wine, and we would have enjoyed it more if there hadn’t been a huge screen in the restaurant showing music videos. The waiter probably thought he did us a favor by cranking up the volume once we had our food in front of us. Well, he didn’t.

Off to the hotel. And to sleep. Before the trip I had briefly considered packing our sleeping bags, and we should have. We are not used to share a blanket. And the older I get the more I love my own mattress. Breakfast was very “continental” with a thimble full of hot beverage (the tea is about as bad as in German hotels), a croissant and a bun with an amount of butter and jam that you had to spread very thin. The second day we knew our way and ate the croissant dry to leave an adequate amount of butter and jam for the bun.

After breakfast (and morning pages and meditation) we immediately purchased orange juice and water and then headed off for the first round of real sight seeing. We went to the cemetery. When we went to Vienna a couple of years ago the visit to the big cemetery there was one of the highlights of the trip. We hoped for a little green and quiet.

While Père Lachaise is indeed beautiful there is not much green, rather crypt next to crypt next to tombstone. We looked at the grave of Jim Morrison, together with dozens of other tourists, had a snack on one of the benches and left. We spent the rest of the day happily at the Centre Pompidou looking at modern art. Well, classic modern art. We spent four hours in there and only saw the exhibits on one floor. It definitely counts as one of the highlights of our trip. I even found several artist of whom I had never heard before and of whose work I’d like to see more. I even made a little list.

After that back to the hotel to a dinner of bread, cheese, and wine. We had wanted to take our food to the banks of the Seine but that seemed too cold, windy and far away at that point.

On Thursday we woke up with almost all of our personal must-sees seen. From the Centre Pompidou we had had a view of Sacre Cœur, and decided it was time to look at Montparnasse. It took a while to walk there but it was definitely worth it. Once there we entered serious tourist country. Nonetheless we found a little pocket of quiet at the foot of the stairs leading up to the church. There was a playground where we had a snack again and watched other people’s children and thought of our own. After a look inside the church we strolled through Montparnasse always trying to avoid the crowds, got lost, found our way again and looked for Rue de La Douaie and the music shops, passing Moulin Rouge and such on the way. There really is one music shop next to the other, there even was a shop dedicated to only guitars for left handers! We looked at guitars, some old and some new and talked about which ones we’d like to buy if we had the money. We were happy to find that so far we are very content with the guitars in our lives, only I might want an electric guitar of my own at some point in the future. But not now.

So there we were, with sore feet and half a day left. We decided to head back and look at the Tuileries, Champs Elysées, Arc de Triomphe and such. That, by the way marked the lowest point of the whole experience. It was crowded and unpleasant and loud and full of cars and motor-bikes and people smoking. At the end of the day after about ten hours of walking we finally managed to find a nice little restaurant near the hotel, and that was it. (Oh, and it was a nice little Mexican restaurant. Food was good, beer was good but quite expensive.)

We spent our last morning in Paris relaxing at the hotel and when we had to leave we went to the Seine once more, walked around the Île de la Cité, decided not to view Notre Dame from the inside because there were huge crowds pressing into it, had a snack in a park and went back home.

I know this sounds like a very boring trip but that’s the way I like it. We looked and talked and looked some more. I wanted to write something about the differences between France and Germany and about how I played a little game trying to guess the country people were from but maybe some other time.

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My husband took most of the pictures, apart from the ones that show him, of course.

To Paris and Back

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So, I’m back from France. We only went for four days to be precise. I spent the last few days here catching up reading all your blog posts. Somehow I had this feeling that I could only write a post of my own after I had read all the unread blog posts accumulated in my feed reader. I know this is beyond silly. I’ll better start posting again before I have read everyone’s posts.

On a less silly note, the two fabulous social wedding brides, Jen and Mad Hatter, have asked Hel and me to co-host the Just Post roundtable starting this month. I feel very honored and hope to be up to this task. (For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, just click on one of the buttons with the purple dove on it in the sidebar.)

So. Last week me and my husband went to Paris. Our son just stayed home with his grandmother. We thought he’d rather not go sightseeing non-stop for days. The packing and preparation went well, and we didn’t even have the traditional fight on the way to the train station. But then, packing for two adults for four days in August is not as stressful as packing for two adults and a child for a week or two in December. In fact, I was giddy at how light my backpack was. (And no, we didn’t take the laptop. We are a disgrace to bloggers everywhere.)

We took the train, which was fast and pleasant. Our hotel was small and quite shabby (okay, very shabby) but friendly and right in the midst of the tourist quarters. (Also we very much appreciated our room not facing the street.) We walked everywhere and didn’t take the metro once. On the train we talked about the things we wanted to see and do while in Paris. I had two things on my agenda: a boat trip on the Seine to see the major monuments, look at pictures in the Centre Pompidou, apart from that I was content with soaking up the atmosphere. My husband wanted to go to the cemetery Père Lachaise if possible and go window shopping in a street that has dozens of music shops next to each other.

Before we went everybody had told us the must-sees in Paris. “You have to go to the Louvre!” Every single person said the same. And one person told us that we could do a virtual tour of Notre Dame and so we didn’t have to see it in real life. Well, what a relief. Wait. I thought I was the one who could choose.

So, into the hotel, out again, consulting the map and off to the Seine.

The boat ride was very pleasant though it is quite tiring to hear all the guide’s explanations twice, once in French and once in English. On the other hand it helped to have it repeated because I always get confused by numbers in French. I found that one thing at least hasn’t changed since the last time I was in France (24 years ago), I can’t understand English when spoken with a French accent. Most people though, hearing my attempts at speaking French, immediately switched to English or German, so the discomfort seems to have been mutual.

After the boat ride we went in search of a restaurant. We finally settled on one because we were very, very hungry and tired too. We had quite a good meal and some very good wine, and we would have enjoyed it more if there hadn’t been a huge screen in the restaurant showing music videos. The waiter probably thought he did us a favor by cranking up the volume once we had our food in front of us. Well, he didn’t.

Off to the hotel. And to sleep. Before the trip I had briefly considered packing our sleeping bags, and we should have. We are not used to share a blanket. And the older I get the more I love my own mattress. Breakfast was very “continental” with a thimble full of hot beverage (the tea is about as bad as in German hotels), a croissant and a bun with an amount of butter and jam that you had to spread very thin. The second day we knew our way and ate the croissant dry to leave an adequate amount of butter and jam for the bun.

After breakfast (and morning pages and meditation) we immediately purchased orange juice and water and then headed off for the first round of real sight seeing. We went to the cemetery. When we went to Vienna a couple of years ago the visit to the big cemetery there was one of the highlights of the trip. We hoped for a little green and quiet.

While Père Lachaise is indeed beautiful there is not much green, rather crypt next to crypt next to tombstone. We looked at the grave of Jim Morrison, together with dozens of other tourists, had a snack on one of the benches and left. We spent the rest of the day happily at the Centre Pompidou looking at modern art. Well, classic modern art. We spent four hours in there and only saw the exhibits on one floor. It definitely counts as one of the highlights of our trip. I even found several artist of whom I had never heard before and of whose work I’d like to see more. I even made a little list.

After that back to the hotel to a dinner of bread, cheese, and wine. We had wanted to take our food to the banks of the Seine but that seemed too cold, windy and far away at that point.

On Thursday we woke up with almost all of our personal must-sees seen. From the Centre Pompidou we had had a view of Sacre Cœur, and decided it was time to look at Montparnasse. It took a while to walk there but it was definitely worth it. Once there we entered serious tourist country. Nonetheless we found a little pocket of quiet at the foot of the stairs leading up to the church. There was a playground where we had a snack again and watched other people’s children and thought of our own. After a look inside the church we strolled through Montparnasse always trying to avoid the crowds, got lost, found our way again and looked for Rue de La Douaie and the music shops, passing Moulin Rouge and such on the way. There really is one music shop next to the other, there even was a shop dedicated to only guitars for left handers! We looked at guitars, some old and some new and talked about which ones we’d like to buy if we had the money. We were happy to find that so far we are very content with the guitars in our lives, only I might want an electric guitar of my own at some point in the future. But not now.

So there we were, with sore feet and half a day left. We decided to head back and look at the Tuileries, Champs Elysées, Arc de Triomphe and such. That, by the way marked the lowest point of the whole experience. It was crowded and unpleasant and loud and full of cars and motor-bikes and people smoking. At the end of the day after about ten hours of walking we finally managed to find a nice little restaurant near the hotel, and that was it. (Oh, and it was a nice little Mexican restaurant. Food was good, beer was good but quite expensive.)

We spent our last morning in Paris relaxing at the hotel and when we had to leave we went to the Seine once more, walked around the Île de la Cité, decided not to view Notre Dame from the inside because there were huge crowds pressing into it, had a snack in a park and went back home.

I know this sounds like a very boring trip but that’s the way I like it. We looked and talked and looked some more. I wanted to write something about the differences between France and Germany and about how I played a little game trying to guess the country people were from but maybe some other time.