Pictures

We have not been finding great internet access where we have been around lately. Since we are on slower than dial up right now we won't post anymore pictures until we come along faster service. Check back later...

Bavarian Forrest

We have made it to Bayer Eisenstein Germany. This is where we will stay for about a week. It is situated in East Bavaria literally on the border with the Czech Republic. There are about 1400 people who live here. The village is surrounded by 8 mountains. The Bavarian and Bohemian ranges are on each side. The area was originally owned by a master glassblower who expanded the glass industry. It is just amazing how much glass there is everywhere. There is some great WWII and Cold War history here. There is a train station that is the only one in the world apparently that is in 2 countries. The border goes right through the middle of the entrance where in the station. In 1948 the station was closed and the tracks were removed on the Czechoslovakia side and became part of the “Iron Curtain” There is still many visual signs of the past division. One story that was written was that the children in Ruda ( a village just across the border) were taught in school that evil was on the other side of the fence but when the bells from the Church were heard on the other side in Eisenstein that many of the skiers called them “freedom bells”

Traveling Germany

As we make our way eastward through Germany a few things seem to jump out right away as compared to what we have seen so far. Wind generators seem to be almost everywhere, as well solar collectors are on many house roofs. In some of the Villages that we have passed through it even looks upwards of 75% of houses. Things seem very clean and orderly. Even when comparing a small village to what we saw in England to a small village here there is a marked difference in how clean it is here. We have also seen how many people are on bicycles, very young and very old. The level of people being active has to be far higher than North America. It is set up for it though, with bike/ski paths running between many villages and towns. You could ski and bike for hundreds of Kilometers with huts and shrines marking many of them. We talked about how sometimes we think we are so advanced environmentally in Winnipeg, one example and difference was in a few grocery stores that we stopped in. Shopping bags are not even offered or sold in the store. There is just an expectation that you will bring your own reusable bag. What a great idea! We will continue to travel toward Eisenstein.

Deutschland

Guten Tag...We have headed off east and are now in Germany. Spirits are good considering the trying time we seem to be having keeping our coordinants straight. We seem to make short distances long with some of the German language and sign reading that we are working with. That being said, we are exactly where we wanted to be. Having no timetable is still working out good, our lack of booked accomidations caught up with us a little but some good fortune has seemed to fall our way. It didn't hurt stoping at St. Michael, the Archangel Cathedral in Luxemburg to light a candle for our safe travel, who better to help look after us. We spend a night in Heidelberg and have worked our way to a place called Herrieden Germany. What a great place we stayed at very small and suited us to a tee. We will post some pictures later. We will make our way to set up base camp for a week or so tommorrow. It is in Eastern Germany on the former "Iron Curtain". We are looking forward to exploring out there. Jackie, Peter,Natalie and Rob walked in the town of Herrieden this evening after dinner. It is very small and the only place where a person could buy a beer looks like where we are staying. With Oktoberfest coming to an end Sunday it has been fun to listen to all of the singing going on by the men who are drinking the local beer. It also looks like Abby was getting into the Oktoberfest spirit..

Luxembourg bound

We have done road trips before. Rob really thought the tension at the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago with 8 lanes each way was as tense as it may get. Well our plan was simple a short drive to Luxembourg our hotel was a shoe in, plenty of time to eat and start the next leg. It only took us 4 hours to get off of the Paris expressway and finally make our way out. At one point Jackie needed to open a cattle gate for us to do some unorthodox driving to get back in the right direction. Once we had our bearings the middle leg was quite nice. We were able to get lost in some grape fields and some great French towns. Of course we couldn't pass up our lunch along the way without grabbing a baguette, amazing how many people walking around with those things. Lots of harvest is going on right now in Eastern France, the soil has more sand then what you see in most of Manitoba but the sugar beet crop and trucks look like we are driving down Hwy 75.What we have realized quickly is when you are not on a major highway how long driving can take. We drove 500 kms the last 150kms took us 4 hours. With so many small towns along the way the driving just takes time.Life is a Highway has had already its share of airtime... Fascinating though every town. Lots of great pictures of locals and stuff. I think we were somewhere around 15 lost times our first day of driving but eventially got into Luxembourg and bedded down. We have hung around here now for a bit. Luxenbourg we are sure is passed up by many people, what a jewel it is. One market we went to just sold olives, there was perhaps 20 or 30 5 gallon pails with different types, Peter ate a whole wood scoop full. It is also interesting to listen to one person speak French and another answer in German. Very interesting about how other countries deal with more than one official language.

Landing in Charles de Gaulle

After we actually got in our seats the fight was a breeze. We were all pretty gunned up and excited to be getting into our own vehicle when we got into Paris. Our plan has always been to do the France leg of our trip at the very end. So land pick up our bags and head off east. It wouldn't be a trip though without losing a few bags. Yep. Some luggage never seemed to make it on the plane from England. We decided that because we were of now real fixed address we should wait for the bags to get on another flight before we left France. We hung around the airport for a few hours to try and get an update and then headed off to get our vehicle when we new the luggage was on another flight. Anxious to drive ( surprisingly the vehicle had no fuel ) so we ventured out to find a gas station with no gas. Yes we got lost, we knew it was going to happen so we figured lets just get good and lost. A fair bit of French prayer was going on in the back 2 seats, likely the reason we didn't run out of fuel.

Closing out England

We have been having a time getting back to the blog. It is hard to even remember all the things that we keep doing as everything still seems to go so fast. It is really good that Olivia, Abby and Ruby are keeping written journals and we have taken collectivley over a 1000 pictures. That should help with our recall. We took another road trip on the Britrail out to Salisbury. We walked the town and also went to Stonehenge. One of the things that seems to be popular is this recorded information handheld as you walk through some of the sites. Peter just loves those things, he has been following on at each one. Not quite sure why he asked for the next one in Chinese though. As we got ready to leave our place in England, Rob decided to give in to losing our damage deposit. There was some serious Spiderman being played at points and somehow we managed to pull down the marble casing around the fireplace. A trip to the local lumberyard to pick up some mortar helped to make it look better but the Swiss Army knife and kitchen utensils only went so far. We decided as a group to leave Catford and make our way to the airport by tube. Well, that will be a good in person story from any of us. The trip with the 9 of us and 10 bags started by a 15 minute trek to the Catford station to catch a train and then on to a bus and then on to the tube to get us to Heathrow. About a 3hr journey. We ended up staying in a hotel close to the airport as we had a morning flight. We mangaged to still be one of the last people to the boarding gate somehow? Must be genetic. Not quite sure what our last word on England is yet. Still can't quite get over an info person at Windsor Castle saying that 99% of the UK is in solidarity with the Monarchy and "there are not many republicans to be found in England". Off to France....