Vacation, Miscellaneous

Realize it has been a LONG time since I posted--6 weeks, a new bad record.  Anyway, I got sick at the beginning of June with some sort of virus that wiped me out for a week, then we went on vacation for 10 days to northern Germany (including a week on the north sea island of Wangerooge) . . . since we have been home I have been buried under projects, and the kids are heading into the last month of school/Kindergarten, including Schützenfest and all the hectic activity that entails, not to mention that Johanna has a birthday coming up.  And we were gone last weekend to Hannover to visit dear friends who were throwing a big party, which was 5 hours of driving on the way there and an 8 hour trip on the way home (including a good 2.5 hours in a traffic jam).  I guess that's the short version of why there have been no updates.  But here are some pictures from the last weeks:

Garden goodies just before we left on our trip

The roses out of the garden this year were lovely.  I credit the warm, dry weather in June.  Our "Lily" is also beautiful . . .

Close-up of the roses

The first day of our trip, we made a cruise on the Rhine to the Loreley and then stopped in Koblenz for the National Garden Show, which was fantastic.  The best part was riding on the cable car stretched over the Rhine river--the cable was stretched from a castle up on the bluffs, over the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers, to a park on the other shore.  Here the kids are an exhibit of perennials up by the castle.

Thorsten's mother Dietlind and Johanna on Wangerooge. Thorsten's parents came over from the mainland for an afternoon.

Johanna enjoying the water

Lilia, our little civil engineer, worked like crazy on canals the entire week.



Lilia, Thorsten, Hermann, Johanna, Dietlind



Lilia and Johanna in the vacation apartment.  It was perfect--spacious, well-appointed, and 1 minute from the beach (good job, Thorsten!!)





Johanna had to have a picture taken in front of this B&B



One day we rented bikes and rode to the west end of the island.  There, you can climb up the West Tower, which used to be a landmark for seafarers and is now a youth hostel.  You check out the key from the guy at the desk and climb up to the top, including several stories of open wooden stairs, and end up in a little room with a trap door that has to be closed as soon as everyone's up in order to prevent someone from falling down said open stairs.  I was incredulous that anyone could do this . . . in the U.S., I am positive it wouldn't have been allowed due to liability issues.

Anyway, from the tower you get a nice view of Spiekeroog (the next island to the west), which you can see on the picture above.  You can also see some curious small round ponds, which are actually bomb craters:  Wangerooge (with an area of less than 5 square kilometers) was blanketed with 6000 bombs during a British airstrike on 25 April 1945, less than 2 weeks before the end of the war in Europe.  Over 300 people were killed (including forced laborers), and most of the island's village destroyed.  Today the bomb craters are microhabitats for birds and amphibious life.



Here a view toward the Weat Tower from the top of the old lighthouse in the center of the village





Lilia working on a sea mermaid we created on the beach















Lilia at the top of the old lighthouse--first she didn't want to go up, then she didn't want to come down.

OK, I'm having lots of trouble with the pictures function on blogger so I will call it quits for tonight before I throw the computer out the window.