July 17th

 

Three days family-vacation in the Bavarian Forest, the home of both of my parents. This area in Southern Bavaria covers about 1/3 of whole Bavaria. It is hilly with beautiful forests and meadows, a bit like the Shenandoah mountains in Virginia, but still with settlements, villages and farms.

 

 

 

 My mother enjoyed this nature park for hiking and retreats. My father, his 3 siblings and his mother had to build a new existence in a tiny room in the middle of a little village in the hills. The family Brettschneider fled from Silesia as an aftermath of WWII as a part of the million German Gentile residents of the East parts of Germany that went back to Poland. My dad’s father got sick and died short after the arrival and the young widow had to deal with the new refuge situation. Today, my father talks about the hardship of going in the forests looking for food, but he also loves the landscape and likes to return to the hills and forests. We stay in the guesthouse of a brother congregation that also hosts groups. Every day they offer one vegetarian dish and one dish with pork. It is amazing, the catholic German world and its insider mentality!

 I enjoy the surroundings, the meadows that smell so good, all the herbs in fresh cut hay make me lie in the meadow and just sniff.

 

Forests with blueberries in the size of little marbles, but all nature and tasty! We hike routes of my parent’s youth and they hike the hills telling stories of camping and thunderstorms.

As hard the daily life is for them at home, here they enjoy every moment and we even head out after dinner for a sun set walk. I am touched and try to save the good moments.

 

 

 

5. Juli, Goslar

 We = my friend of more than 20 years, Ingeborg, and I are for a weekend without children and work distractions in a women's guesthouse. The culture of guesthouses, hotels, B&Bs, seminar houses, campgrounds etc. is still available in Germany and Europe although its peak with dozens of places was in the 1990s, the height of a time of active women’s projects. Doris, a daring woman and friend of mine of nearly 25 years, had opened her Women Pension Arleta 20 years ago, in April 1995.

 

We, Doris and I were happy to meet again!

 

Arleta is a Greek singer whom we both very admired. She has a warm and erotic voice and in difference to me whose Greek stayed very minor, Doris would understand what Arleta sings here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBxzjbx9dHk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlZXjje4tq4

Anyway, her guesthouse is a treasure and Ingeborg and I sat mainly in a cool shady corner of the garden and caught up with our lives, while Germany was sweating under more than 38 degrees Celsius (101 F). Germany is not equipped with air condition.

 

I added some information about Doris place and women’s places in Germany/Europe, just in case, it tickles you to explore it yourself!
 

http://www.frauenpension-arleta.de/index.php/en/

http://www.woman.de/katalog/freizeit/

 

 

 

 

July 1st

I am for a week in Hamburg with my friends, former colleagues from my German occupational therapy life and first of all, with my godchild. But today I have a afternoon all for my self and off I am into a special area only an hour from the metropolis  of Hamburg.

German Landscapes – I am in a nature park in the North that is so sparse that it could remind of open areas in Canada. Meadows with heather, juniper bushes, sheep, sheds.  Germany is inhabitated very densly. To have an open area like that is bathing the eyes and souI in green. The German railway had provided me with an easy connection into the Lueneburger Heide and I was prepared for an afternoon of solitude. Unfortunately the bus never came or I had missed it. I started talking to some guys on the street corner and we discovered that they were occupational therapists as I was. They spontaneously offered to drive me to my travel destination. What a beautiful flow of life! We had a great talk and I arrived safely. Then I rented a bike and disappeared in the forest and moor.

 

Soon I was on the ancient salt route:  

The Old Salt Route was a medieval trade route in northern Germany, one of the ancient network of salt roads which were used primarily for the transport of salt and other staples. In Germany it was referred to as Alte Salzstraße.

Horse-drawn carts brought the salt from Lüneburg to a crossing of the Elbe river to Lübeck, a major seaport on Germany’s Baltic coast. However, for the most part, the historic trade route was composed of unsurfaced, sandy and often muddy roads through heathland, woods and small villages, making the transport of salt an arduous task. In addition, the route was somewhat dangerous, since the valuable cargo attracted thieves, bandits and marauders of myriad ilk. The dangers faced by those who make the long trek and the fact that only relatively small quantities of the precious crystalline substance could be carried in any single journey, made moving salt via overland routes very expensive. In 1398, though, the Stecknitz Canal, one of the first manmade waterways in Europe, was completed, making it possible to transport much more salt in a single shipment and to do so with much greater ease and safety. That change helped merchants satisfy the salt requirements of an ever growing demand.^[4] In the 16th Century, for example, about 19,000 tons of the product were carried from Lüneburg to Lübeck each year.

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Salt_Route)

I even climbed the Wilseder mountain  (more a hill), of 169 meters, the tallest hill in the area and enjoyed the view.

 

Later back in the village I returned the bike and the owner of the rental who also runs a guesthouse and a horse cart business gave me a ride to the next train station. German hospitality! I really felt home and in my element!

 

Back in Hamburg I watched the full moon rise over the harbor – here an attempt to give you an impression: