Munster and Cologne - Münster, Germany
Münster, Germany
Tuesday 9 August Whew. It feels like a long while since I could find time to sit down and reflect. The first 10 days have been a whirlwind of activity, socialising and feasting. I think the rest of the trip around Italy and France should be a little less hectic because we won't know anyone, but I could be wrong. We are in the "say 'yes' to everything" frame of mind at the moment, but I suspect that will change. We caught up with Narj (our au pair) a few days ago. She caught the train down to stay with us for a couple of nights. It was SO lovely to see her and the boys were very happy to catch up. Unfortunately she is still having problems with her knee and it is in a brace. She had surgery on it after a running incident (see, running IS bad for you) and since then, she's had 6 more surgeries. The doctor mucked up in one of the operations and cracked her tibia when they were putting in screws. They didn't realise until afterwards. Now she's got a loose bit of bone in her leg requiring yet another surgery. I don't know how that girl stays positive actually. So we've just been staying at Egon and Elke's house in Mulheim an der Ruhr for the past 2 nights. What an incredible house! They had it built for them and it's an interesting mix of eclectic, modern and downright odd. Downstairs has a sauna with changing lights (red, yellow, green); an outdoor feng shui area and water fountain draining through rocks; and an amazing huge temperature controlled wine fridge. The middle floor opens out onto a lovely garden with a 1.8m deep pond, the size of a small swimming pool. They have about 20 varying sizes of coy carp, which cost quite a bit in Germany I believe. Elke was telling me how one of her carp tried to swallow a frog and got it stuck in its mouth. It was like that for 24 hours with legs sticking out and eventually they had to get someone in to anaesthetise the carp and pull the frog out! Both of them were fine and the frog hopped away, looking for a princess to kiss. Gribbit. Back to Elke's house... every single surface is covered with something (even more than your place Mum!). She does a lot of work with business people in China and her house is full of Asian paraphernalia. Books everywhere, little ornate tables and chairs, dog mats in every room (for her 'pseudo child' golden retriever Monty) - it's really quite difficult to navigate! Upstairs is the bedrooms and more bathrooms. Elke's bath is bigger than a jacuzzi! 4 people could fit it in comfortably - noooo, we didn't go there... But what was amazing was the little "thingies" in every room. Lollies in bowls, glasses, towels and toothbrushes for each person, mini toiletries in the bathrooms, sparkling water bottles, all kinds of thing(ies). Each of their wardrobes was the size of a normal bathroom. I've probably harped on enough about the house. One more thing that surprised us was their eating times. They get up about 10:30am and potter until "breakfast" at midday. The afternoon consists of coffee and pflaumenkuchen (cake/tart with plum slices or strawberries) and cream. Dinner...wait for it....comes along about 10pm - although last night it was 11pm. This was challenging for us with the kids, but they took it all in their stride. Mind you, today Alex is beside himself with tiredness. I can just see him face-planting into his dinner plate tonight... Yesterday we went on the train to Cologne to see the Dom Cathedral. Yes we climbed the 533 spiral steps to the top to get magnificent views of the Rhine and the city... - along with the other gazillion people going up and down. The foundation stone was laid in 1248 and it took over 200 years to build, barely surviving WWII. Apparently they took down all the stained glass windows during the war and hid them away underground. The kids were amazed at the level of detail in the construction and didn't understand how it was built without modern tools. Afterwards we enjoyed a "kolsch" beer and currywurst with Egon and Elke. Great fun. What I did notice was the ever present Polizei vans in the area. Presumably Cologne may be a bit of a hotspot for stupid terrorists and angry refugees. On that point, the German sentiment for this mass influx of refugees is very negative. So many immigrants are coming in to Germany without papers (passports etc) to verify where they're from. They don't mix with the Germans but are happy to receive money. The women walk around in burkas and the men are simply arrogant. It is not a good situation here in that regard and there is growing animosity. The real stories of the Cologne New Year's attack are a lot worse than what we heard on the news and seemed to be a coordinated ambush by north African men. There are currently over 1000 lawsuits going on from that night for assault, however many of the men cannot be tracked down because they were never registered in the first place. It's horrible. Talking of churches, we had a funny experience in St Lambert's church in Munster with Alex. I shouldn't actually tell you this one because it makes me feel like a negligent mother... but I will anyway. Alex looks up at a statue of Jesus on the cross and asks why this man was killed and why he is nailed to a cross (take in context that Alex has just been told about the men kept in cages on the outside of the church and left there to die...). Mark tries to explain the story of Jesus and Alex promptly burst into tears saying that he hates Germany and all Germans and he wants to leave immediately. Yikes! We had some explaining to do after that and told him that the Germans weren't responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus (even though they've got plenty of skeletons in the closet which we needn't get into!). I suppose Alex's knowledge of "God" is not necessarily connected to the story of Jesus. Anyway..... When we came back to Munster, Ferdi (Anja's dad) took us for a ride on his horse carriage through the countryside. It was a lot of fun and the boys took turns to sit up the front. He's in his 70s and goes out every second day to run the horses. Actually he's just been on a tour of Mongolia for 3 weeks, while his wife Kristel has been in Norway with her friend. They travel a lot, both together and separately. Tomorrow morning we're off to Berlin for 2 nights to see Dave's sister, Lyn. It was funny trying to arrange that one. Initially she said she was too busy and couldn't spare us the time. We said we were coming anyway (once Mark gets something in his head...) and then we get an email a day later with plans all laid out :). Apparently we are going on a boat trip to see the sights of Berlin. Don't you love Germans?