Could Summer Be Over?

 The camping we stayed in, in Vaals, NL (closest to Aachen) was really, really rural. We think a clever farmer converted some of his land into a campground, added electric, some portable shower/toilet blocks and started charging €20/night. We had to pay for hot showers (€0.50) but at least the electric was included in the price. The pitches (sites) were uneven and soft and we broke our levelers driving up on them to level out.

Lovely – now we’ll need to replace them. Thank goodness the dollar is getting stronger against the euro ‘cause those little plastic wedges are not cheap!

Every afternoon since Koln we have had thunder showers and we are beginning to wonder if summer is over already even though it is only early August. I might think of relating this weather to (what I’ve heard of…) Hawaii’s daily showers, but here it ain’t particularly warm.

This camping seems to cater to young families, there were all sorts of activities for children and it was full of them. That was all fine and dandy for them, but we wanted something with a few more comforts and easier access into town. As it was we found it easiest just to pack up and drive into Aachen.

Unlike Koln, Aachen was not a disappointment. It is in the far west of Germany, or the far east of Netherlands on slightly hilly terrain. Approaching town from the east, it is hard to even get a sense of Aachen, there is so much greenery among the hills disguising the city. After circling around on the inner ring road we found a parking lot for Lily and walked downhill about ½ km into the old town center.

Two (or was it three) squares dominate the old town – one in front of the Rathaus (town hall) and one at the Dom. They are pretty close together but seem to have switched places; the Dom – for once – is at the base of a hill rather than at the top and the Rathaus at the top.The whole complex (it was once that) is where Charlemagne (surely you remember THE Charlemagne from your history lessons!) built his capital over 1200 years ago. A great rock tower on one side of the Rathaus is what remains of his original castle at the site. Today the impressive town hall is where 30 kings held their coronation banquets over the last 800 years.Once again we are smack-dab in the middle of the history of the Western Civilization.

The cathedral has had a presence in Aachen since 800 AD when Charlemagne had an octagonal chapel built within his castle complex. He and 30 German-Roman kings who followed him during the next 800 years were annointed, crowned and enthroned at the Dom on Charlemagne’s throne.

The Dom itself is astounding (did we mention it, too is UNESCO?) – it reminded us of a smaller St. Marks’ Basilica in Venice. Golden mosaics decorate the archways and the interior is lighted by stained glass windows. The floor is intricately tiled and the chapels hold exquisite alter pieces. 

Charlemagne himself (or what’s left after 1200 years) is interred in a golden shrine following his desire to be buried in his church. The cathedral has four famous relics endowed by Charlemagne in his time, that make Aachen a place of pilgrimage. They are: the apparel of the Virgin Mary, the so-called swaddling clothes and the loincloth of Christ and the decapitation cloth of John the Baptist (eeuuww). Every seven years they are put on display for pilgrims.



Our visit to the cathedral was delayed by a phenomenon we, as Americans, are unfamiliar with: That day was the first day of school and groups of children were being escorted by heir parents, first to church and then to school. The children bore gifts packaged in an unusual two foot cone wrapped and decorated in charming childlike motifs. We have no idea what these cones contained but most of the children (or their parents) carried them. 

 

Also the children proudly sported new school backpacks. Our visit to the Dom was delayed as the church held some sort of service before sending the children off to their first day. It was very interesting and evidently there isn’t quite the distinction  between church and state as in the U.S.

We topped off the successful visit with a luncheon of our favorite: a donner sandwich, eaten as we strolled the downtown discovering whimsical fountains and unique art pieces (including a very large kaleidoscope and a moveable “puppet” fountain). The cobblestone streets fronted old gabled buildings that housed various businesses. We sampled an Aachen tradition – Printens – a gingerbread-like cookie and liked them so much we bought a small bag of ones dipped in dark chocolate.

 

Nope – there were no disappointments here.

But we couldn’t stay longer because Lily’s parking pass had expired a half hour previously (due to the first day of school delay) and we didn’t want to return to the camping so we pressed onward to Brussels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped at Waterloo – THE Waterloo – and looked over the battlefield marking Napoleon’s defeat by Wellington and Bucher (the Germanic general whom our English  based histories mention only in footnote). Today the great, flat plain has fields filled with wheat and a memorial hillock has been erected to honor the event and overlook the site. 

A great lion statue caps the hill and can be seen from a far distance. A museum, a panorama painting housed in its own building and tours of the battlefield are available. The area is well preserved and surprisingly popular. We were a little shocked to see so much interest in the area. The town of Waterloo, only 3 km away, is quite cute and boasts of many things having to do with the battle. It also had a McDonalds with our first free (McD’s) wifi in months, which we took advantage of to post to the website.

By then it was mid afternoon and we needed to find a place to stay for the night. A campground in Grimberger – a little town six kilometers north of Brussels looked to be the only thing available but when we arrived there was no room at the inn. Our first (and hopefully only) encounter this trip. The innkeeper directed us to a parking lot near a sports complex/park where we joined others turned away from the camping. Six of us slept at the sports complex that night – it worked out just fine.

 

The next morning we visited the local church and were amazed and delighted with the baroque interior boasting the greatest collection of religious wood carvings we have yet to see. It was stunning church and where was it? In a little town off the beaten track. It makes us wonder what other jewels are to be found in other little towns.

We were in a bit of a bind: We wanted to see Brussels and the Grand Place but we had no place to park Lily for the day and be able to take public transport into the city. So we drove into Brussels.

One must take the time to understand what Bruce goes through everyday of his driving experience. First off we do not understand the road signs, not only are they in a different language, but each country has its own “universal” road signs that often we cannot figure out, so we (he) use logic and common sense to make it through. (A great example of this is the tank sign we’ll post – what the heck is that all about???)

He must also deal with local drivers who speed, know the traffic rules and are often impatient with tourists, honking their horns rudely.

Then, when in towns and cities, he must deal with narrow streets, one way streets, traffic congestion, traffic lights, pedestrians, trams and buses, trucks and Peggy hollering for him to stop! or turn around! or back up! so she can get a picture of something!!!

He successfully manages this zoo-like environment with great outward calm and grace. He appears so calm that I don’t even imagine he is under any pressure.

All of this was going on as we drove through Brussels. We set Sir Gar to take us to the Grand Place and pretty soon we were driving through the center of a very large, very busy city (Brussels is the capital of the EU and consequently draws many, many businesses and people) comparable to driving in downtown Paris or New York.

We were unable to reach the Grand Place but catching glimpses of it through pedestrian alleys we saw so many tourists we agreed we wouldn’t want to mess with them anyways so we slowly retreated through the streets towards the outer reaches of the city. There we found a Japanese Tower and Chinese Pavilion in a park-turned-Far East Museum complex built in the late 1890s for some sort of exposition. We stopped in a parking lot, made lunch then walked about the complex.

Then we also drove to the Expo where the Atomium, a giant metal sculpture of an iron atom rising 325 ft, and a symbol of Brussels, presides over the Bruparck theme park.

By then it was getting late and we still had no place to stay so we drove 37km north to Antwerp finding an inn in town that was convenient, cheap (€10/night – but you got what you paid for)and with a new twist of pay-as-you-go electric. You plug into a numbered receptacle then drop in a euro and push your numbered button for a certain amount of kilowatt use, supposedly a day’s worth (but we had to add another euro in the morning).

It started raining again Tuesday evening and continued almost all day Wednesday. We wanted to visit another UNESCO site in Antwerp – The Cathedral of Our Lady – and a museum or two housing paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Antwerp’s famous son, but we think that will hold until Thursday.

When we were in Prague, we met a young man from Antwerp with some very strong political views regarding his country. He was all for the separation of Flemish (Northern) Belgium from Walloon (Southern French) Belgium, feeling the “wealthier” Flemish half of the country had supported the “poorer” French half long enough. According to him it was time to let them sink or swim. 

I was amazed at his convictions – this from a young man all of 30 years old – and his ruthlessness, but as we approached Antwerp I saw how wealthy the city is and felt I understood a little better where he was coming from. His short life has probably been anchored by comfortable living within a sheltered and biased viewpoint. While he was articulate he was also adamant in his views; I nicknamed him “The Anarchist.”

 

Thursday we took the tram into Antwerp and buzzed around the old town. The Grote Markt (great market) was surrounded by handsome old buildings that reminded us of Brugge only not quite as colorful. A very unique fountain in the middle of the square referred to a legend about a nephew of Julius Caesar killing a giant (a la David and Goliath) and the cathedral was a surprise because it was only the Spire and its carillon that was considered a UNESCO Heritage site. We found that to be pretty different – why not the whole church?

Several of the works of Peter Paul Rubens, the great post Renaissance artist from Antwerp, are in the cathedral but you had to pay €4/person to enter the cathedral and see them. I’m sorry, but we really object to having to pay to go into churches so we didn’t see the masterpieces. (That’s OK though – we’ve seen some of his work before, and since we aren’t experts we can play the attitude of “seen one, you get the jist.” – I would say, “seen one you’ve seen ‘em all” but that is so Ronald Reagan-ish)

We walked to the Scheldt river and took in the maritime museum, housed in the oldest building in Antwerp – an old fortress dating from the 1100s named Het Steen. 

We had fun wandering around the old town and stumbled upon another UNESCO site, the Plantin house, an original printing house from 1560. Inside the quietly elegant multi-story building were enough old printing presses and hot metal type and books and lithographs and bookbinding equipment as to make your head spin. (I guess this Plantin guy was really someone way back then, not the least of which was being one of- if not THE wealthiest citizen in Antwerp at that time.)

We wanted to visit the Museum of Fine Arts and the Diamond Museum and planned to do that on Friday but we ended up so disgusted with the camping we were staying at that we chose not to put up with it for another day and left Friday morning. (The camping had a lot of potential, but the people who ran it left the facilities in such filth it felt unsanitary to use them.)

We are reaching the end of our trip – we have about 3-1/2 weeks to go – and we have accomplished all our goals for this visit. Now we aren't quite sure what to do with the remainder of the trip. We have a couple of errands to do before we leave – we need to buy new luggage and we must get Lily safely prepared for storage until our next trip – but otherwise we are at loose ends. We’ve returned to the Netherlands and probably will visit different areas of the country for the time remaining to us. Delft, Amsterdam, a couple of national parks we’ve visited previously – they are all looking good to us right now.

We decided we'd begin our Dutch mini-tour by visiting De Hoge Veluwe, a 5000 hectare national park known for the 1700 white bikes provided free of charge to explore the 40+kilometers of bike paths within the park. On our last visit, we drove through the park to visit the Kroeller-Mueller Art Museum and Outdoor Sculpture Garden (a fantastic museum with lots of Van Goghs on display) but we didn’t ride the bikes. We decided we really needed to ride those bikes, so Friday morning, 8/15/08 we made our way to Arnhem, a city that almost borders the park. We found a fabulous camping across the street from one of the three park entrances and made ourselves a new home. The camping has great facilities and we can get wifi access for €5/week - dirt cheap! The only problem was the weather, which turned soggy and delayed our bike riding by a couple of days, but it was raining all over the country so we figured we'd found a great spot to lay low in until the weather improved.

 

Tuesday we walked across the street into the park entrance and chose two white bikes out of a selection of several hundred, then rode a 22 kilometer loop through the park. We rode to the visitors center which had an excellent museum/display on the land and wildlife of the park. The rain held off until the last 5KM of our return ride and we dodged rain showers by stopping under trees and hiding under our umbrellas until the rain passed. The 22 kilometers was our longest bike ride in almost a year and riding the single-speed white bikes against the wind and in the rain showed us how out-of-shape we were. We can’t wait to get back on our bikes at home (we need the exercise!)

We plan to get back on the road Thursday, 8/21, heading north so we are making phone calls and catching up on emails while we have internet.

posted 8/20/2008 - Arnhem, Netherlands 

On the Nazi Trail 

 

July 29, 2008

 

The reason Europe fascinates me so much is because civilization here is so old. As a history buff I love that every country has its own history that goes back thousands of years. I tend to focus on ancient history because of that love and forget that history is constantly being made in the form of “current events.”

An important and more recent chapter in the history of the world is WWII and Nazi Germany’s dream of world domination. Like more ancient civilizations that left remnants of their existence via ruins, at times in our travels we’ve come across the remains of the Nazi chapter in the history books:

In our first visit to Europe, Bruce and I haphazardly stumbled on WWII places of interest: London and the War Museum; Bastogne-site of the Battle of the Bulge; the Normandy Beaches and D-Day; The Ann Frank House in Amsterdam; the Hofbrau Haus in Munich where Hitler declared the creation of the Nazi Party, and Dachau, the first concentration camp, outside Munich.

This trip seemed more along the lines of the old Communist Iron Curtain, what with our visits to Slovenia (formerly part of Yugoslavia), Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic; but before the Communists made their land grab, the Nazis had conquered these same lands and imposed their brand of governance – which was “kill everyone who disagreed with us and who was not a member of the master race.”

We’ve seen how the Jewish communities were wiped out in Budapest and Prague and today we saw what Nazi revenge was capable of.

Twenty kilometers northwest of Prague a small village of 500 people was completely destroyed; the land leveled, the men rounded up and shot and the women and children sent to concentration camps. Of the 500 villagers 348 were killed. In 1942 Czech paratroopers assassinated the highest ranking German officer in the Czech lands. Lidice was the town selected by the German command to pay the price of Czech resistance.

Today there is a museum and lovely rose garden that overlook the small grassy valley where the town once stood. A wooden cross and cypress trees mark the spot where the village men were murdered and buried in a mass grave. The foundations of the church, school and one farmhouse are all that remain of the 200+year old town. Not only did the German troops level the town but they desecrated the old cemetery digging up bodies in search of gold from the teeth of the dead.

I want to know how individual people can let go of the sense of decency to commit such atrocities.

A woman artist sculpted 82 statues of children ages 1-16 representing the village children who were gassed in 1942. The memorial is heart-wrenching. The statues are grouped together on a grassy knoll overlooking the site where Lidice once stood. Marie Uchytilova, the artist, said “I am returning, in the name of peace, 82 children to their native place as a warning symbol of the millions of murdered children in the senseless wars of mankind.”

Walking the land and absorbing what happened there 66 years ago was very moving and difficult to shake off.

There were two sites along the Nazi Trail we were following. Terezin was the second. About an hour north of Prague, Terezin was built as an enclosed fortress (a la Vauban) in the mid 1800s to protect Prague from Prussian armies. In 1866 a Prussian army bypassed the fortress and attacked Prague anyway and by 1888 Terezin was disbanded as a fortress.

60 years later the Nazis used Terezin to play a hoax on the western world.

I had read the story of Terezin in Herman Wouk’s excellent 2-volume novel about WWII, “Winds of War and War and Remembrance” but hadn’t known it was fact-based until we came upon it in our Czech travel literature.

In 1941, after Nazi Germany had overrun Czechoslovakia, Terezin became an important phase in their “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” They used Terezin as a way station to ship “undesirables” to concentration camps. An estimated 140,000 people – many of them elderly – took the first step towards the end of their lives at Terezin. Those 140,000 also included thousands of children, whose drawings made during their internment, are displayed in the Ghetto Museum at Terezin and at Pinkas Synagogue in Prague. 

Some statistics: of those 140,000 people, ¼ of them died at Terezin; of the 87,000 shipped “East” less than 4000 survived the war.

The fortress-town originally had 7000 citizens, including a small military garrison, all of whom were relocated by mid-1942 in order to expand the camp. At one point 58,000 inmates were crammed into the same space the original 7000 lived. That was deemed too crowded, so to relieve the congestion the officials transported thousands off “to the east,” the euphemism for Auschwitz and other death camps in Poland.

In June, 1944 Heinrich Himmler used the Terezin Ghetto to fool International Red Cross representatives into thinking the rumors of Jewish atrocities were false. He scripted and acted out a day of “normalcy” where the town looked to be a “Self-administered Jewish settlement territory.” Before the Red Cross visit 7,500 sick and elderly inmates were shipped east so as not to reveal the farce.

The participants all were given their lines and probably threatened with deportation if they didn’t perform accurately. It  was so successful the Germans made a movie of the day, a part of which has survived and is shown in the museum today. Because of the success of the hoax the International Red Cross was fooled and no action was taken to help the Jews of Europe.

We visit these sites because they are hard to ignore and because they should not be forgotten. If everyone were to visit such sites and understand that a whole nation condoned the unmentionable actions of a few, then perhaps peoples of all nations would accept the personal responsibility to make sure such atrocities never happened again.

All you have to do is tell your leaders “no.”

 

Germany again?

 

August 1, 2008

After spending our last two days in Czech Republic visiting sites of Nazi war crimes, we left the country for…Germany! Bamberg, to be exact, a lovely little town that is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

As biased as we are against Germany, due mainly to their part in WWII (Let us explain here that we do not hold the current generation responsible for what their grandparents did during the war, but neither are we ready to pretend it did not happen: we hope they aren’t either), we must admit the country is just beautiful. On our way to Bamberg we passed through rolling hills covered with forests and patchwork quilt farmlands. The moment we crossed into Germany the cities and towns with the great ugly Communist concrete block apartment buildings disappeared. It was a pleasure to see colorful little towns with homes bedecked in blooming flower boxes and charming churches in the town centers.

We found a camping just south of the city – our first of the trip to meter for electric usage. We dutifully recorded our meter numbers and paid 5 euro for 2 days usage – we thought that a little high especially for a low usage VW – but maybe their electricity is more expensive than in the U.S.

 

Bamberg is over 1000 years old and boasts a lovely town center with many buildings dating back 500 years. Bamberg survived WWII with nary a scratch and the citizens, realizing how lucky they were, have worked to maintain the integrity of the town.

Two rivers flow through Bamberg; the Main-Danube Canal and the Regnitz. The town is hilly, reminiscent of Siena, Italy and we spent time walking up to the Dom, the city cathedral (finished in 1237 after 2 previous cathedrals had burnt to the ground) and further up the hills to St Michaels Church, a former monastery with splendid views of the city below. Inside St Michaels the ceiling was painted with 600 different types of herbs and it had some very intricately carved and well preserved funerary monuments dating back 500 years.

The city itself had some wonderful buildings, the most well-known being the Rathaus or town hall, straddling one of the rivers between two bridges. Along the river edge is picturesque  Little Venice, a row of half timbered houses, formerly fishermen’s homes dating from medieval times.

We stopped in a little museum filled with nativity scenes from around the world and spanning two centuries. They came in all levels of detail from scenes with literally hundreds of figures to abstract minimalist scenes. It was all very interesting and the day quite enjoyable.

Bamberg was delightful but even better places were in store for us.

 

River jewels

 

We left Bamberg on Friday 8/1 and decided we would revisit the Rhine/Mosel river valleys where we had such a good time eight years ago.

We had purchased a book-map of Germany from ADAC (German AAA) in Bamberg so we could actually plot our route rather than pray that Sir Gar wouldn’t mess with us, and we plotted our way across Germany to Mainz and the Rhine/Maine River confluence.

The Rhine river, from Koblenz to Mainz is 65 kilometers long and filled with little villages only kilometers apart, each with what seems is its own Castle (often in ruins) on the hill behind the village. The Rhine River Valley is famous for these towns and castles and has come under UNESCO recognition; in fact the middle Rhine valley – where we are now – was acknowledged by UNESCO in 2002.

From Mainz we drove Hwy 9 along the western bank of the Rhine river to Bacharach recommended to us by Frank Goodrick via his website. What an adorable town! It is hidden behind its medieval walls so you can see nothing of it from the road, but cross through the town gates and you are treated to a jewel of a village.

Bacharach is another oldie – building began on the Church of St. Peter in 1100; the Altes Haus (Old House) has a date of 1368 on its walls; the town fortifications were built between 1322-1366. No one knows how old the requisite castle, Burg Stahleck, is but it was mentioned in old records dated 1135. One of the great things to be said of these little towns is they are archetypal German Towns – looking exactly as if the Brothers Grimm should be about collecting fairy tales. If memory serves me correctly we shall be lucky enough to see these towns all along the Rhine and Mosel rivers. And they grow great wines in this region. The Rieslings are as excellent as they are famous.

The day we visited Bacharach a classic car club made the town one of the checkpoints for their 16th annual Rhine River car rally. We were treated to the sight of 140 classic sports cars of all genres from a 1966 Mustang to a gull-wing Mercedes, Austin Healy 3000 to a Rolls Royce, classic Volkswagen Beetle to a Triumph TR-6, our favorite Fiat clown-car to the original Mini Cooper, the list was almost endless with few repeat cars (except the Mercedes Benz which had quite a few entries). Classic cars driving through a classic town – quite the show!

I don’t know what we are doing right this time, or perhaps the essence of Germany knows it is in hot water with us, but we are finding it far easier to communicate with people this time through the country. In fact, dare I say that at this juncture we are actually enjoying ourselves?

We camped right on the Rhine – in a camping about 1 block away from a Stellplatz, the German equivalent of the French Aires where we free camped several times while in France. We had driven for hours when we finally arrived and pretty tired and thinking there were no stellplatzes in Bacharach, we settled for the camping. Had we driven only another block we would have found the stellplatz, but - while this particular one would have been half the price of the camping - it didn’t have available WCs (we could deal with no showers but a toilet is nice) so we aren’t too sad that we missed it. (peeing in our porta-potty is just fine, but when it comes to #2 – the maintenance man gets a little grossed out.)

The Rhine is definitely a working river – we are still so impressed by that; most of the rivers we are familiar with are recreational rivers – the American, Sacramento, Rogue, Coeur d’Alene. The only two rivers we personally know to be working rivers are the San Joaquin in CA and the Columbia in OR. Both are much larger rivers than the Rhine, Neckar or Mosel rivers which are nearer in size to the American or Sacramento rivers.  From our camping we would watch several long barges navigate the river in both directions at the same time. Add to that the several sightseeing day cruise ships and personal pleasure boats and it added up to a busy thoroughfare.

After a couple of nights in Bacharach we loaded up and drove to Koblenz where the Mosel meets the Rhine on its journey to the North Sea. We turned east and continued along the Mosel (Moselle). The Mosel River has carved its way through steep hills that are now loaded with vineyards crawling up the slopes. There was hardly a stretch from Koblenz to Berkastel-Kues (a 60mile drive) that did not sport the vines. All those vineyards were a distinct memory for us from our trip of eight years ago and if anything they seem even more prolific this trip. The Mosel, while still a working river, is narrower and more favorable for recreation watercraft than the Rhine. We watched jet skis and powerboats cavort around the barges as we drove.

Quite like the Rhine there are charming medieval villages dotting the banks of the river that beckon the visitor with promises of wine and relaxation. Among those villages are tiny Beilstein growing out of a crack in the hills and so little if you sneeze you’ll miss it; Cochem, so cute tourists have overwhelmed it with love; Nehren, almost as cute as Cochem with fewer tourists, and Bernkastel-Kues, the paired towns across the river from each other, joined by a bridge. It was at Bernkastel-Kues that we stayed eight years ago and where we chose to stay this time.

Our first night in Bernkastel-Kues a storm blew in at midnight with enough force to knock over our chairs and table – if we hadn’t closed our awning it would have ripped out, I’m sure. After four hours of heavy winds the rain finally arrived and pelted us for the remainder of the night. It was very restful. By late Monday morning the system had blown itself out and we were promised improved weather as the week progressed.

We took advantage of the lousy weather day to do our laundry (a bargain at €2.50 a load) and drive to the market to stock up on food.

Tuesday we walked the towns and remembered why we were so enchanted on our last visit. Bernkastel, on the right bank, is the older of the two towns and more atmospheric with a well developed medieval town center sporting dozens of 400-500 year old half timbered houses, and that required ruined castle sitting on the hill above town. Walking about town it is easy to transport yourself back hundreds of years (as long as you don’t look in store windows to see the contemporary products for sale). This is the side the tourists flock to.

Kues is the commercially developed half, more modern and more affluent - it looks like this is where the wine barons chose to build their magnificent mansions that pay homage to the vine that made them rich.

Behind the towns, on both sides of the river, vineyards march down the steep hills right into the backyards of the towns. Wherever possible grape vines have taken root, trellising up the sides of walls, framing windows or crawling along lamp posts. It is no mystery what the economy is based on in Bernkastel-Kues.

After three nights we continued our drive along the Mosel River towards Trier. Again, for the remaining 60km we followed the course of the vineyards as they rose from the river up steep slopes where they faded into the forested hilltops. With as many vineyards that are in this 120km stretch it is very hard to believe that the Mosel River wine region is considered small.

We bypassed Trier –despite its UNESCO rating and the Roman ruins that brought us to its doorstep, it was a far larger city than we thought and we were saving ourselves for Koln and Aachen. Instead we began driving northeast through the hilly Eifel region – a remnant of an older much greater mountain range.

Searching out a camping for the night proved interesting when we made a hard, sharp left turn into a downward facing road and got stuck. I mean S-T-U-C-K. The angle of the turn created a berm that was impossible to back up over and a steep – I mean S-T-E-E-P, cliff was inches away from our front bumper with only a steel rail fence stopping a quick descent to the camping at the bottom of the ravine.

We were blocking traffic in and out of the road with cars coming up and campers wishing to go down.

What a P-I-C-K-L-E we were in! We didn’t even have a tow rope if we could get someone to stop and help pull us over the berm. A couple of people stopped but they didn’t have ropes – finally a fellow camper waiting to enter the road, helped Bruce inch his way back and forth until he had cleared the rail fence and was able to proceed downhill. (I was of no help to Bruce as I had jumped out of Lily fearing for my life and leaving them to their unknown fate – I’m surprised Bruce doesn’t divorce me! Unfortunately we didn't take photos - it was quite the sight!)

Once at the bottom of the 11% grade hill (I forgot to mention that!) we settled into a peaceful, lovely little camping on the banks of a delightful little river. We can’t believe how many Dutch are at this destination camping. I don’t know how they found this place in such great numbers, it was definitely off the beaten track. The only drawback to the camping was the flies which proved to be such an annoyance we only spent that one night there and in the morning we drove onward to Koln (Cologne).

We arrived at the Municipal Camping, right on the Rhine river, in the early afternoon just in time to be hit by a severe but brief thunderstorm that blinded the camping with great gusts of wind-driven rain drenching everything. It was very exciting. After the storm passed we watched as a fire boat checked the river craft making sure everyone survived the squall.

I haven’t really mentioned the weather since the blistering heat of Italy in June. As hoped, the further north we traveled the cooler the temperatures – never cold and not so hot as to be unbearable. The temperatures have averaged perhaps mid-70s, certainly no higher, but remember that’s in the shade, so at times the days would be a cooker if you are in the sun. Arriving in Germany the days have turned a bit cooler but that is ok because clothes-wise we are in great shape for cool weather – it is the hot weather that we were not prepared for.

We came to Koln to see the cathedral (a UNESCO site) and its Shrine of the Three Kings, said to contain the bones of the kings who visited the Christ child. We shall begin our exploration of the city on Saturday, August 9 since that is when the weather is supposed to improve over the gusty, cool Friday.

On Saturday we joined hordes of weekenders coming into Koln to shop or play. The day and the town was crowded and rather dissatisfying. The cathedral, our focal point, has an interesting history – taking 632 years to complete construction, the finale in 1880 – but was disappointing. The Dom, as it is known in German, is plenty big with twin spires, that made it the tallest structure in the world until the Eiffel Tower was built. But in less than the 130 years since it was completed, the whole exterior façade has been blackened with soot and the interior, while light and soaring - when compared to other cathedrals we’ve seen - was rather boring. 

The Koln Dom is the repository of the bones of the Three Kings – contained in a golden reliquary. They were taken (dare I think “stolen”?) from Milan in the 1100s for the German Emperor Barbarrosa. That should have been exciting but the area where they lay was off limits to the public. I was able to catch a photo only by using my 12X telephoto lens – the result is less than satisfactory.

Koln had the daylights bombed out of it during WWII – they sell postcards with photos from the time – but after the war there was some serious rebuilding that went on. The result, to me, is a modern city with little character…But with lots of shopping opportunities.

No. 4711, the original Eau de Cologne (get the name – Cologne?) is bottled in this city – we visited the flagship store and dabbled in the cologne fountain – leaving the store smelling of a lightly citrus scent. (That’s what Bruce said, anyhow.)

We thought we might spend 2-3 days in Koln but our first day was such a disappointment we decided to move on. Aachen is next, hopefully with more satisfying results.

The nearest camping to Aachen is in Vaal, the Nederlands and that was were we stopped on Sunday, afgter driving through Aachen for a look around. We are rather unimpressed with the camping so on Monday we plan to park in town to visit the Dom then head off for Brussels, Belgium.