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In a rather spontaneous decision (and after making sure that the streets are no longer in snow chaos) we took a trip to Cologne [ケルん] (Köln) today. My dad’s family is from there and we wanted to visit his 2 brothers but of course, once in Cologne you just have to visit the Cathedral of Cologne.
I guess you can get lots of fascinating historical and architecual facts from the above link … so I will keep my sermon to just our personal experience: |
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I have been scaling the Cathedral many times when I was a kid .. it is fun .. but doing the same thing with a 25 lbs kind in your arm is a new experience. It was also friggin’ cold. The ascent is over 300 ft and over 509 steps. The very narrow spiral staircase is for up AND down traffic .. which can be quite challenging at times (Especially when you carry a 25 lbs child) . About halfway you can see the HUGE bells (and catch your breath) …
Once all the way on the top, you get a stunning view of Cologne and you are being chilled so that you want to get down pretty quickly. The whole adventure costs you 2 Euro per adult and takes 30 – 40 minutes.
Julius was fascinated (hey, 2nd church within a week) and loved running around the inner area downstairs. I later learnt that he was not supposed to waer the hat .. ah well … I saw many other tourists with hats. And speaking of other tourists … there were some even taking pictures of Julius! No idea why …
We found this really sweet outfit for him (well, the pants are still a bit long, so we used one of his fitting pants) and I realized that this is his first real shirt. He looks so handsome in it!
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He really loves eating banana:
Look at those two bottle feeders:
no further comments … unless you have anything to add 
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It is always fascinating to check out another country’s supermarket and for me it is very interesting to see what has changed since I last lived in Germany.
We went to Aldi, a well known discount place. They have mainly non-brand name copies of brand name products, they don’t bother putting stuff on shelves, they just stack box on box. But their selection has become incredible (compared to Fiji and even Italy now) … High end products include frozen salmon filets, frozen duck breasts and the best of all: frozen sushi! (Ritsu and I were laughing very hard about that one). But they also had a 32″ LCD TV somewhere in the aisle and just tons of stuff. What I did not find (and needed) were capers and anchovies.
Julius enjoyed being in the cart which filled up quickly and he inspected every item. Again he called brocolli ‘kukela‘.
| While traveling around the north of Germany we had the great chance to pig out on one of my seafood favourites (right up there with uni and ikura): North Sea Shrimp … |  |
These are tiny shrimps with a very subtle, destinct flavour. It seems that they are only popular in Holland, Germany and some parts of the UK (I saw one website once calling them ‘briny shrimp’)
I take it they are quickly cooked right on the boat, then sent out for peeling and then the meat is sold as is, no further frying or spiecing up. There are some very interesting stories as to where the peeling takes place. In old days it used to be the fisherman’s wife and maybe the grandma doing that tedious job. But now, since tourism has become more interesting (and it smells better) the peeling has been outsourced. First I heard Poland, last weekend I heard Tunesia and Morocco and this article (in German) seems to confirm that .. if anyone has any other cool links on that topic, please let me know …
I never understood why in great fish restaurants in NYC, where they offer flown-in fish from Scandinavia, why they never try to add these north sea shrimps to their menu. I still think there could be a market there. But then again, these shrimps are best offered ‘in the raw’, maybe with a bit of sour cream … but nothing fancy that would kill the flavour.
Büsum is especially known for its soup with those shrimp “Büsumer Krabben Suppe” … you can order a premade version of it on ebay. All recipes I found were once again German only …
Last night we returned to Bad Homburg. The trip started very well, but the last hour became 4 hours once heavy snowfalls set in. Gladly my dad had switched the tyres just a week ago and we were fairly safe and Julius was amazingly patient the whole time … only the last half hour he started whining.
But as a nice surprise, we found the garden all snowy this morning and I took Julius out to play.
There is a reason why he is not wearing gloves: I wanted him to touch the snow (and realize that it is cold) … and yes .. he did … but he had lots of fun.
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Last night we checked into our hotel at Hannover’s Maschsee.
I remember this lake very well, I used to run around it (sometimes twice) every day when I lived here. Since then my knee joints have given up and jogging is not an option anymore. We walked around a bit while the sun was setting and it got really dark very quickly.
The hotel was very good, staff VERY friendly, Ritsu enjoyed the sauna, the only bummer was that they actually expect people to pay 29 Euro (35 USD) for 24h internet usage with a 400 MB bandwidth limit. How come the hotel we stayed in Hamburg with could offer that for free? I mean, I can see that the Marriot in the desert in Egypt that we stayed with earlier this year is asking 20 USD (no BW limit) … but here ???
We enjoyed a very nice dinner at the adjacent restaurant. They screwed up Ritsu’s order, so we had to wait a bit longer, but they were very sorry about it and gave us a bunch of xmas cookies and free coffee / drink at the end.
And this was the great, 10 Euro extra, view we had from our room of the sun rising over the Maschsee:
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Our first stop when arriving in Hannover (a city I lived in from 1990-1992) were the Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen:
“The royal gardens of Herrenhausen are a real treat for visitors to the state capital. These unique gardens were created in 1666. You can enjoy a variety of stylistic orientations, baroque horticulture in the French style, the English landscaped garden and the botanical garden.”
And another link
Julius enjoyed running around fairly freely, although he managed to fall on his face once and got all dirty … but no major injuries, other than being mad that daddy rather takes a picture before cleaning his face.
While the weather wasn’t great (but hey, admission to these gardens is free in winter), the sky made for some dramatic backdrop on the photos.
… you rub a balloon against your hair?
On our way down south again, we stopped by the only place that we were sure was open on a holiday like xmas (yes, McD again) and Julius had lots of fun redoing his hairstyle using the balloon he scored.
Before we left this morning we took a nice family pic of all of us:
My mom in the middle, with her three sons, her 2 daughters in law with their 3 kids.
Last year he was too small to unwrap his own gifts. So this year, a huge box from Kai and Petra was his first to unwrap. He was a bit puzzled, why suddenly people want him to tear down paper, something he is usually not supposed to do?
Inside was a huge elephant, nearly as tall as he himself.
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We had a fun evening last night, exposed Julius to his first christmas church service (which was interesting, once the music started playing he was totally mesmerized, but towards the end his patience-meter dropped to empty), exchanged presents and had typical northern German xmas food (fish, tiny shrimp, breads, salmon, fish salads … great stuff).
We are still in the middle of celebrating and taking even more pictures … but I wanted to share this perfect post-card moment:
Julius and his 2 cousins went out to a nearby playground and had a lot of fun. The little boy especially enjoyed playing in the snow sand.
We have arrived in Rendsburg (Northern Germany) where we will spend Christmas with my brother’s family plus my mom and my other brother.
Julius is having a blast playing with his cousins (Marla, 7 & Lara, 11) and I took a bunch of pictures, which I will post later, maybe after the xmas frenzy is over. Ok, some pics now:
We wish everyone lots of eggnog, presents and fantastic holidays.
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Now, that was fun. I have been in chat contact with a bunch of people sharing the same taste in music for years now, but never met any of them in person. Last night 3 of them, who I know by fancy names like shag, hennker and koomi, met with me and my brother at a bar called “439″ which is known for their killer generous gin & tonics. Even my mom showed up on her way from the airport and joined us for a white wine.
But after 2 of these GTs I was more than ready for bed.
In the afternoon we drove a short distance to Hamburg where we checked into our hotel. After settling in we took a Taxi to the city center and walked around and explored the christmas market at Gaensemarkt, where 2 guys in Santa coats played Rock’n Roll songs. At some point, while carrying Julius on my shoulders, I felt his head resting on mine – he fell asleep.
At 6:30 PM we had a dinner appointment with my brother at Matsumi and gladly we had a table at a bench where Julius continued sleeping for a while, which gave us the rare chance to explore the extensive menu. I was thrilled to see my usual sushi highlights (uni and ikura) and we ordered a plethora of nice food items, had draft Kirin beer and towards the end some nice Sake, served in a bamboo container.
The green tea ice-cream for Ritsu was mainly eaten by Julius.
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One thing I remembered about Lueneburg was a really nice turkish eatery. Julius had fallen asleep during our last shopping trip (and Ritsu managed to get a haircut) and when he woke up, we were already eating our Doeners, which were very yummy.
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