Thursday, May 27th, 1999
Our trip to Germany started the day the house almost burned down. It wasn't my fault -- the computer was turned off and I was working in the other room when it happened. I had smelled acrid fumes earlier, and thought it was a little stronger in Judson's room, but everything in the room was turned off. So I went back to work when suddenly I heard a loud "Pop" that sounded like a light bulb exploding. I immediately got up to check the other rooms, and in Judson's room I was very astonished to see wisps of smoke wafting from the monitor. I was even more surprised to see it spit out sparks as it sizzled and crackled. Fortunately, nothing caught fire, but I wasn't taking any chances so I disconnected the monitor and lugged it outside where I discarded it in the garbage can.

After that I finished some work, but it was hard to concentrate as I kept thinking about what could have happened to the house. I ran out of time and went to GMU to take some classes on Web technology, and then I met with a graduate student about her dissertation results. I broke it off at 2:30 p.m. because I had promised Monika to be home by three. When I got home, she had packed everything into the car and so we were on our way by 3:01, which should have been plenty of time to get to BWI airport. As it turned out, we needed the time because we went north around the Beltway and had stop and go traffic for about 10 miles in Maryland, which set us back a half-hour. I still thought we were early when we checked in at the British Airways gate at about 5:00 -- after all, the plane didn't leave until 6:30 p.m. -- but the clerk said we were late and almost everyone else had already checked in. Apparently, the new norm for international flights is to check in two hours early. One couple had come already at noon in order to get the exit row seats with more legroom.

In any event, the plane, a Boeing 767 named “Sweden”, was late arriving from England, so we really had plenty of time. We wandered over to the other concourse to eat at the Roy Rogers there. What Ausflug would be complete without that? In my recent experience with domestic flights, I had either no meals at all or just pretzels or peanuts, and I found it hard to believe that an airline would feed you any kind of a decent mail although Monika assured me they that they would. As usual, she was right. Not only did British Airways served a very nice dinner and breakfast on the overnight flight, but they also provided extras such as complementary wine before the meal and a nice package containing socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a mask for the eyes to shut out light. The socks and mask can both help in sleeping on the airplane, which is difficult because you're sitting bolt upright in a chair. Light doesn't bother me, so I didn't use the mask but rather kept it for my Lone Ranger imitations. I did use the socks because I usually sleep with my shoes off, but when you take off your shoes in an airplane your feet tend to get cold. I found wearing two pairs of socks kept my feet pleasantly warm.

Friday, May 28, 1999
However, it was all to no avail -- I just could not get to sleep in the few hours available before we landed at London's Gatwick airport the next morning. After a 2-hour layover in the airport terminal, we boarded a Boeing 737-300 for the flight to Hamburg. Landing at Hamburg was a little unusual because they have you walk down stairs to the tarmac and then take buses to the terminal. We had just had our passports stamped and were leaving customs when we saw Heinke, which was a relief. We found Gustl who drove us back to 77 Edwin-Scharf Ring in his new Mercedes 190 "Classic". I was groggy after losing a night sleep, but we decided that the best way to reset our internal clocks was to stay up the rest of the day and then turned in around 9:00 p.m. Hamburg time. We unpacked and settled into the guest bedroom, and I tried not to look at the bed too much.

For lunch we had a special treat, German asparagus, potatoes, and cured ham. German asparagus is quite different from American asparagus and is considered a delicacy. The asparagus is pure white, very tender, and quite large, at least a foot long. It is white and tender because it is grown under the earth in little mounds. Monika had once been visiting on a farm and helped in asparagus harvesting. She reported that you would only cut the spears where the head was just peeking above the top of the mound of dirt in which it was growing. She used a special knife that was long and had a curved end so that you could reach down way underneath and cut the asparagus off at the base. That's a lot of work and partly explains the high prices for it, but it sure tasted wonderful!

After lunch we took a walk around the nearby Bramfelder Lake, which was a 5 km loop and took us about an hour at our usual pace. Along with the usual ducks and children playing in the water, we saw four or five heron nests and as many herons on an island in the middle of the lake. The walk helped me to wake up and have more energy for the evening, which was a good thing. We called Kim and arranged to meet her and Jule at their former apartment -- former because they lived right above a nightclub that had been torched the week before. Fortunately, they and their two dogs were in Berlin for the weekend when it happened, so no one was hurt but the insurance representative declared it a total loss. Soot covered everything in the apartment and the reek of the smoke was so bad that we could not stand being in there for more than 10 to 15 minutes before our eyes were watering and our throats were sore. Heinke, knowing this, had made us wear old clothes for the visit and they smelled so badly of smoke afterwards that we hung them out on the balcony to air out for a week.

We all went out to dinner at a cafe down the street that had outdoor seating. We ate for an hour and then chatted for another two hours, which was a great way to get to know Jule who had lived with Kim for the last few years. We discussed their wedding plans and whether they would be interested in Tante Size's old house after Birgit and Eberhard moved out in the next few months. Their two dogs sat absolutely quietly under the table for the whole evening, which rather surprised me. I know my kids would never have sat under a table that long -- they get bored so much faster than dogs, I guess.

By the time we got back to Heinke and Gustl's we were quite exhausted because we had been up about 36 hours straight. We just crashed on our beds. I went out like a light, but unfortunately I also woke up like a light near dawn when the birds started singing. We had the windows open and boy were they noisy! I also think my biorhythms were still adjusting to the time zone.

Saturday, May 29th, 1999
We had found a Volksmarch scheduled in Bad Segeburg, which was just about an hour's drive from Hamburg, and we had asked Heinke and Gustl if we could do this while in Germany. Gustl drove us there and then we all went on the walk together. The route of the walk was a big loop around the Bad Segeburg Lake that adjoins the city. The lake was a pretty, natural lake with a small marina, sailing club, and even paddle boats! The route was marked with striped streamers tied to the trees just as in the U.S., except they were about twice as broad and therefore somewhat easier to see. Not that it was hard to follow in any case as the route was basically an 11 kilometer loop around the lake with an optional 20 kilometer extra loop. We were surprised to find hot dogs and other snacks at the controlled checkpoint, as the most we had ever seen in the U.S. was candy. But we knew that the start/finish point had a much larger selection of food and we weren't really hungry at that point, so we just had our card stamped and continued through the outskirts of the city back to the start/finish point.

We bought new, German Volksmarching books at the start/finish and had them stamped for our walk. The IVV rule is that the first walk stamped in any book must be in the country of origin, so getting the German walk stamped in our new German books made things legal. We also bought two patches for the walk of course, and Heinke liked them so much that she bought one for herself. We decided on lunch at the start/finish point because they had potato salad, sauerkraut, various kinds of hot dogs, and a good selection of baked goods for dessert. I had potato salad, sauerkraut, the big fat wurst, and cake for dessert. As I recall, each part of my meal was under a dollar. I must also say that the variety of food available was better than any American walk, although the Methodist-sponsored walk came close!

Another difference we noted is that we were insured for accidents during the walk rather than signing a liability waiver as in the United States. Possibly for that reason, an ambulance was standing by next to the food tent with a very bored-looking driver/medic lounging around next to it. Since everything is more expensive over here, I knew that must cost of bundle and I wondered how the club managed to turn a profit with that much overhead. Possibly the selling of food made up the difference, but they sold the food so cheaply that I didn't see how they could be making much profit on that either. In any case, we all had a great lunch on the tables outside the start/finish point and then drove on to see Tante Gertrude.

On the way over to her apartment, we passed a small airport that had a large crowd of people and cars in its parking lot. Since something was obviously going on, we stop to look and found out that they were skydiving! We arrived just as one set of folks had completed their jump and were repacking their chutes, which was interesting to watch. They were very careful! We wandered around the airport while we waited for the next group to jump, and found that the airport offered ultralight flying lessons and sky diving lessons as well as normal flying lessons. They also were apparently giving helicopter tours as we watched them fill up a 4-place jet helicopter and fly off around airport for while. I saw what looked like a two-place ultra-light for the ultra-light lessons, but no one was flying it at the time.

The airport also had a small cafe next to the tie-down area with a good view of the runway. I found during the week that small cafe's or restaurants are almost everywhere around Hamburg. The majority of the train stations (all the ones I checked) had a cafe even if on a miniature scale with only 2-3 tables. All of the small villages had cafes, and even major street crossings seem to be populated with a restaurant or cafe of some sort. I do wonder how they all stay in business, especially the small ones, but somehow they must make a profit. The other type of store that is in almost every train station and very frequently in villages is flower shops or stands. In fact, many gasoline stations also sell flowers. German spend much more on flowers than a typical American, partly for their own use and partly due to the custom of bringing flowers along for the hostess when visiting, which I found to be a charming custom. The numerous outlets and transaction volume seem to keep the prices the same or lower than in United States, which is a little surprising considering how far north Hamburg is and the fact that these flowers must all be imported.

Our examination of the airport ended when the next group of jumpers "hit the silk" and glided gracefully to the ground. I say "glided" rather than "floated" because the chutes were the new steerable type that work like a flying wing rather than the old dome-shaped type. In fact, the jumpers seem to enjoy spinning around in circles as they came down. Their descent was quite rapid and they had to pull up into a stall to land softly, which they all did perfectly. That climaxed our airport visit and we continued on or way to Tante Gertrude with a small detour to see Kim's studio, which she was building in a barn. We easily broke into the barn, which is now the second time I've done "breaking and entering" on Ausflugs -- I hope it doesn't get to be a habit! The wall Kim had built to separate her section of the barn was decorated with children's drawings, which are always cute, but her paintings were still under a tarp. The paintings still smelled of smoke since they had been in her apartment during the fire, but Kim apparently will try to restore them. We were disturbing a swallow that lived in the barn, so we left and "locked" the door behind us.

We continued to Tante Gertrude's apartment nearby, and really surprised her since we had not phoned in advance. She was very happy to see us, though, and we sat on her balcony chatting about various members of the family. Although almost totally blind, she made her way around for apartment quite skillfully because, as she said, she knew exactly where everything was and is always very careful to replace something she uses in the proper place. She showed us a photo of her in a cowboy hat that she had taken while visiting relatives in Canada. She couldn't actually see the photos herself, of course, but as she said she held all the pictures in her mind so didn't really matter. Such a cheerful, upbeat, optimistic view of life despite severe difficulties! We took our leave of Tante Gertrude after the kitchen folks delivered her evening meal and rode back to Hamburg for our dinner. After dinner, we looked at one of Heinke and Gustl's recent photo albums which had pictures of trips to Majorca and Norway, both of which looked like a lot of fun. We couldn't hold out very late, however, and turned in early to catch up on some more sleep.

Sunday, May 30th, 1999
Our big thing for Sunday was to have brunch at Detlef and Susanna's house with all of Heinke and Gustl's family. Since the brunch was set for the late morning, we could sleep in, which was a good thing because we couldn't drag ourselves out of bed until 9 a.m. or so. We showered and pulled ourselves together in time to drive over to Detlef's by the appointed time, arriving on the dot.

Punctuality is a big thing here. Partly no doubt it is a long-term aspect of the German culture. In fact, I wonder how far back the punctuality value can be tracked -- was it already present before the Industrial Revolution? In part, however, punctuality is supported by the extensive use of mass transit, which all runs exactly on-time and therefore rewards punctuality and punishes tardiness in the natural and inevitable ways. It was funny to see elegant young women in tight skirts and high heels running for a train or bus. Supporting this "culture of time", there are clocks everywhere and they all are set to the same exact time. The evening news starts with a countdown ticking until it strikes 8 p.m. when electric bell tolls and news begins exactly on the second. They even had "radio-clocks" which received a timing signal sent out from the master time station of the government and reset themselves every hour for exact accuracy. I set my watch to the exact minute early in our stay and found myself referring to it much more frequently than I would have in the U.S. because, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do!".

In any case, we arrived exactly on-time at Detlef and Susanna's house, and sat down to brunch in the backyard after a quick tour of his new townhouse, which was quite nice. Detlef's brother Eberhard came with his wife Birgit, and Kim and Jule came by bicycle along with their two dog-tired dogs. Altogether 10 of us sat around a large patio table and had a very leisurely brunch. We chatted for a couple of hours afterwards about everything that was happening in all parts of the family, and finally left in the mid-afternoon.

From Detlef's we drove south to a park around a small lake next to a branch of the River Elbe. The park was crowded with families grilling their dinners and kids running hither and yon, which is about what I would have expected for Sunday afternoon in a nice park in a densely populated area, so I enjoyed it. But Heinke, Gustl, Kim, and Jule (who joined us on their bicycles) were looking at it with a view for use as a wedding celebration site and were very disappointed. Apparently they wanted a place that would be more private and quiet than this park would probably be on the Saturday afternoon for which the reception was scheduled. Heinke and Gustl were also put off by the fact almost everyone in the park was of Turkish ethnicity, which made them behave in un-German ways.

For one thing, they did not mark off separate territories and keep to their spaces, rather flowing over and across the areas. Typically, at a beach the German families will establish a moat, dike, or ditch around their territories and carefully respect the "property rights" of the territories of others. Turkish-Germans, or Americans for that matter, tend to scatter themselves helter-skelter all over the place and not properly respect the "space" of others. The Turkish families also had more children (I estimated 2-3 on the average), while German families stick to 1 or 2 children on the average (I think). Being American, I didn't notice these things and didn't even really think about it until I tried to understand why Heinke and Gustl were put out about the beach scene. At one point of the walk we saw people driving their cars across a grass field like crazy, and I certainly agreed that that was quite dangerous, but otherwise it was a normal park-with-beach scene for me.

On the other side of the lake, however, things were very different. This part of the park had fewer people in general, and we were startled to see naked man. Some were alone, but others were in pairs. After I saw one pair of males with cute matching red swimsuit, I began to catch the drift the we weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto! Monica was caught in a bind -- she didn't know whether she was supposed to stare or not stare. I opined that it probably didn't matter to these guys. Myself, I was getting a bad case of the giggles because the guys seemed to be taking this public nudity thing so seriously, and it just struck me as funny. In any case, Jule and Kim were disappointed enough with the entire situation to start seriously considering other venues for the wedding, and we suggested Tante Size's old house in Reinbek, which was currently occupied by Eberhard and Birgit.

They returned home but we drove a little farther out-of-town to a sailplane airport. This airport was just for gliders, but of course it had the obligatory cafe on the area next to the "runway", which was just a very large open grass meadow about 1/8 of a mile wide and 3/4 of a mile long. At this airport they used a winch tow to elevate the sailplanes, which I had never seen in operation. The line was attached to the nose of the sailplane and the winch rapidly pulled it forward. The sailplane climbed at an exceedingly steep angle, maybe 30 degrees or more, until it reached a height of about 1000 to 1500 feet at the end of about a one-half mile long tow. The pilot then released the towline, which fell to earth with braking provided by small parachute. Then they attached the end of the line plus the parachute to a car that drove back down the field to the next glider waiting for tow. They had this system down to a science and wasted very little time between launches. At one point they had five or six sailplanes in the air at once by towing them alternately from both sides of the "runway".

This soaring area used dynamic lift from the wind striking a small ridge below the airport, but the winds were not that strong when we were there, so the flights were all relatively short. The sail planes coming into land aimed for the part of the meadow in the middle and thus stayed out of the way of the winch launches on either side of the "runway". The sailplanes landed on a single wheel and stopped in a very short distance due in part, I think, to landing on turf rather than on pavement. For sure these were "wheel" landings made at a relatively high-speed rather than "full stall" landings which are made at the slowest possible speed. Nevertheless, they stopped very short indeed. This interested me because I have often thought about taking soaring lessons, but Heinke was not interested in it at all. On the other hand, she was very interested in taking sky diving lessons that didn't really interest me that much.

We returned home in time for dinner, and Monika, Heinke, and I looked at old books that were stored in the cellar. Monika retrieved some of the books that had belonged to her when she lived in Germany. I was particularly interested in World War II or inter-war era books, and found a great book on phrenology published in 1940. I'm looking forward to reading it and maybe even using it as an example of pseudo-science in my class. After dinner we talked until 10 p.m. or so, when we finally turned in although it was still light outside.

Monday, May 31st, 1999
Our main goal for Monday was to go shopping in downtown Hamburg. First, though, we had a breakfast that was an interesting mix. Heinke made orange juice by hand squeezing several oranges, which results a lot more pulp in the juice, which I like. The "main course" was a large bowl of chopped fruit -- bananas, and sections of oranges, kiwi, or strawberries. We added uncooked oatmeal to this mixture and as many raisins and prunes as we wanted. Then we covered the mixture with Frosted Flakes ("Frosties" in Germany) for little sweetness. Heinke and Gustl put yogurt on this mix and ate it that way, but I added milk to the yogurt to have a little more liquid for eating. Monika skipped the yogurt. This was the most fruit-concentrated "Muesli" that I've ever eaten, and I really liked it. Also, one bowl was as filling as 2-3 bowls of normal cereal. The breakfast continued with a hard roll, which we sliced and covered with butter, jam, honey, or molasses, and finally with slices of either pumpernickel or wry crisp with the same garnishes. This breakfast could carry me until one or two p.m. and was essentially the same for our entire visit (lunch and dinner changed, of course). The largest meal in Germany is the lunchtime meal (Mittagessen) while the smaller meal is the evening supper (Abendessen). Often, a coffee/tee time is inserted around 4 p.m., which was a nice break and gave extra energy for the activities of the evening.

Fortified in this manner, we set out on our trip. The first step was to buy a daily family pass for the Hamburg mass transit system. Heinke shooed us out of the house with a warning that the bus left in exactly two minutes. We ran as fast as we could but just missed it. It didn’t really matter because we only had to wait 10 minutes for the next one. Really, the public transportation network is so effective in Hamburg that you don't have to worry about missing a train or bus. Until 11 p.m., the trains run every 7-10 minutes and the buses every 10 minutes or so, so you never have to wait very long. The fares are basically on the honor system, but reinforced by spot-checks and heavy fines for anyone caught riding without a ticket. We rode the public system extensively for 2 days and were checked once by three transit police. They worked as a team and carefully blocked the exit before they checked everyone in our train carriage.

Once on board the bus, we just paid 13.80 Deutsche marks and the machine that took our money printed the daily pass. I saw a motor scooter shop as we went around a corner and decided I would like to come back to check the prices. Otherwise, the main streets were lined with various shops, predominantly food stores or restaurant/cafes. Noticeable by their absence were the typical American fast-food outlets, although I later saw McDonald's and Burger King at some of the train stations. The density of gas stations was also far less than in the U.S.

I practiced reading the German shop names, and was occasionally jolted by the English words or phrases thrown into the German ads. Gustl in fact later complained about the increasing use of English and the decline of the German language, especially among the younger generation. One curious development is the development of new American-styled German words. In particular the German word for cell phone is "Handy", which looks like an American word, is spoken like an American word, but was absolutely not American at least in the sense of being a noun. It took us a while to figure out that it meant a portable cell phone. English is also used for all computer-related terms. For example, "monitor" is used as well as the German "Bildschirm" and "printer" as well as the German "Drucker".

We arrived at the station on time (of course!) And raced with all the other folks into the entrance and up the stairs to the subway-to line. I again noticed that I was definitely not the fastest Walker of the pack as I typically a.m. in the US. Even with all our Volksmarching conditioning, we were only in the middle of the pack. I was satisfied to see that at least we beat out the little old ladies; otherwise I would have been very embarrassed. But the young Germans, particularly the young males, blazed past us just as they had on our previous visits to Germany. They must about walking somewhere over 4 mph.

The train system here combines and old subway system (U-Bahn), that is often, however, elevated, and a surface train system (S-Bahn) that is often contrary wise underground. That is, I can't really see much difference between them except the S-Bahn has first and second class carriages and we were limited to using second class by our tickets. But the two systems were separately developed by the city of Hamburg (U-Bahn) while the federal government develop the S-Bahn. Hamburg being more socialist, the U-Bahn did not make the class distinctions that were made on the S-Bahn. The systems were combined in the 1960s, about 30 years ago, but some of these differences persist.

On our trip into the city, it was clear that many other things had not changed since my first visit in 1973, or even since Monika left in 1964. We saw the same landscapes of mixed old and modern buildings -- "modern" being anything newer than 1930. This lack of change was very comforting, somehow, in comparison with our area where rapid growth and change are the norm. However, one thing had changed, and that for the worse. The graffiti which was only occasional on my previous visit was now almost everywhere. On either U-Bahn or S-Bahn, it was unusual to not see graffiti-decorated walls along the elevated sections of the routes. It reminded me of New York's experience that when graffiti was tolerated, it rapidly became the norm and spread everywhere. But when New York made a concerted effort to clean it up and punish the perpetrators, the level of graffiti went way down. We even saw a World War I soldier’s Memorial in the middle of Hamburg with the boots of the soldiers spray-painted red and green. Defacing the Memorial was apparently a political protest against the participation of the ruling red-green coalition in NATO's bombing of Serbia. The free and ubiquitous use of graffiti for political protest seems to set the norms or social climate for everyone else to spray paint the walls everywhere.

In Hauptbahnhof (main train station downtown) we left the train to start our shopping trip. We walked along the Spitallerstrasse to Brinkmann's department store. We checked for the pattern of dishes that we wanted to get but couldn't find it, and then went to the toy section were Monika looked at the dolls and I looked at the boat and plane kits. We saw a working model steam engine that was quite interesting. Even more amazing were the available attachments that you could buy for it, including a working reciprocating saw, drill press, and drop hammer among other things. These can all be connected by an overhead shaft and belts to the steam engine to effectively recreate a machine shop. That struck me as fun, but it was too expensive and cumbersome for us to take with.

In general, even after adjusting for the exchange rate, things were pretty expensive. The steam engine, for example, cost several hundred dollars; premium gasoline was about one dollar a quart (liter); whole milk was also about one dollar a quart (liter); and other things were comparably expensive. The next store was Karstadt were Monika checked out the dolls again and we bought some knitting wool (on sale for 60 cents a bundle). At the Alsterhaus, Monika checked for guess what -- dolls! -- and I bought a leather pouch for my hip belt, a new wallet, and a tourist street map of Hamburg. The map was a great find -- it only cost 6.80 Deutsche marks and had all the museums and other points of interest listed on it. I used it the whole time I was in Hamburg in a vain attempt, usually, to find out where I was during our drives. In the toy section I bought a rubber band powered Cessna airplane and looked over an open-sided dollhouse very carefully. It was open on all outside walls rather than just the rear wall as on a typical American dollhouse. There was a set of three interior walls which enclosed a bathroom area (1 wall was still open for access). Although this design lost some "realism", it gained a great deal of play value and I thought it was very clever.

We were both getting a little foot-sore and peckish, so we went up to the top floor and ate lunch at the "Alsterblick im Alsterhaus" restaurant (Alster overview in Alster house). It was a good meal and we had a nice view over the inside part of the River Alster, which is essentially a very large pond or very small lake made by damming the River Alster. I had a chicken salad and Coca-Cola, while Monika had goulash soup and a "Alster-Wasser", which is a 50-50 mix of beer and Sprite or Seven Up. I was a bit surprised by the bill for 28.15 Deutsche marks (about 16 dollars), but the tip was automatically included in the bill and they accepted my American Visa card without hesitation or asking for any ID.

After lunch we re-stocked our cash at Dresden Bank and visited a music store where Monika found some classical arias for Alto voice and some baritone arias for me. I found books of German folk music songs and bought a couple. Along the way we also picked up a serving bowl that matched our dish pattern and bought it, so we finally accumulated quite a bundle of things and were tired of shopping. We hopped back on the S-Bahn for a quick trip west to the grave site of Monika's mother. We had to change over to a bus to reach the cemetery, but at least it stopped right across the street from it. We watered the flowers on the grave, which was the least I could do after all the hospitality she had shown us on our previous visits. After paying our respects and thanking her for all the nice memories, we continued on the bus to her old house about a mile away (Friedrich-Ebert-Hof #18).

We tried to contact her old friend Rosie, who lived nearby, but she wasn't home so we walked over to the old apartment. Monika found that all the names on the mailboxes had changed in the last 10 years, but the rose bushes that her mother had planted were still growing and had beautiful blooms. Someone had even planted a bed of annuals around the two old rose bushes, which would have made Monika's mother very happy. We also saw the kids of the new generation of residents playing in the same playgrounds our children had used in our previous visits, which gave us a feeling of continuity over the generations and made us feel very happy even though our memories of her mother were so poignant. I was captured by my memories of the past and had a nostalgia attack, which took a while to work out of. But the past is past, so we continued over to the Bahrenfeld train station, eating a curry-wurst at a nearby Imbiss (like a small cafe but you eat standing up). We chose the "hot" sauce and boy was it spicy! We drank our entire water bottle while leading these really HOT hot dogs, but they were good.

The S-Bahn took us all the way back through the city center to Barmstedt, where we transferred to the 272-bus line to get back to Heinke and Gustl's house. We had been warned about blacks and Turks on one section of the S-Bahn, we did see one pair of black men who were listening to a boom box and happily speaking a mixture of German and some African language. The boom box was only at a moderate volume, however, and we didn't feel at all threatened. The only folks that made me uneasy were the young German girls with their large pit Bulls, which did not have leashes. If those dogs attack, I very much doubt that the girls could have controlled them, and they are known to have a vicious temper (the dogs, not the girls!). In any event, we arrived safely and had an evening meal with Heinke and Gustl. After dinner we looked over another of their trip photo albums that evening. This album had pictures of their walking trip in Greece that were as beautiful as the Norway pictures. Gustl is very selective in taking pictures and only puts in the very best ones in his albums. We, in contrast, take lots of pictures and put in enough to tell a story, perhaps sometimes too many when we have a lot of what we think are good pictures.

At 8 p.m. on the dot, a gong sounded on the TV and the Taggeschau ("daily show") news program began with all of us watching. This show is a rapid 15-minute summary of all important national and international news, completely without commercials. I found is to be a very efficient way to keep up with the news, and a very refreshing change from the interminable U.S. newscasts that have two hours of local news and a half hour of national news. During all this time we usually get repetitive coverage of the same stories and at least one half hour of commercials, promos, and teasers about the evening's upcoming programs! The 15-minute news show is really a much better way to go unless you have nothing better to do with your time than watch TV. We always watched this show every evening except when we were away at 8 p.m. After chatting for a while after the newscast, we turned in early as we wanted to get an early start for our sailing trip the next day.

Tuesday, June 1st, 1999
We wanted to get an early start because it takes two hours to drive from Hamburg to Kappeln, where Heinke and Gustl's boat is moored. With that in mind we all turned out about 7 a.m. and had an early breakfast. We packed the car and drove to Kappeln on the autobahn, arriving about 10 a.m.. Driving on the autobahn with a Mercedes was quite an experience. There is no speed limit, so left lane had speeds of 120-200 kilometers per hour (moderately fast to ungodly fast). Gustl drove at speeds between 120 kilometers per hour and 160 kilometers per hour, so we often moved over into the right hand lane to let the faster traffic pass. Although very fast, everyone drove precisely and in an orderly fashion. In fact, during 10-15 hours of observing German drivers, I only saw the American pattern of tail-gating and weaving across lanes three times. During rush hour in Washington, you would see that many bad drivers in about three minutes.

The German drivers are very assertive, insisting on their rights, but not aggressive in the sense of bending or violating safe driving practices or rules. However, this assertiveness can often become obstinacy. Gustl told a joke about the engraving on a tombstone of a driver to read, "He had the right-of-away!". Gustl, in fact, could make a joke about almost everything around him, even the poor driving of others. I remembered on our last visit when I asked about speed limits on the regular highways while we were driving, and he said "the speed limit is 60, I'm driving 80, and everybody is passing me!". Given the often congested traffic conditions -- the number and size of the traffic jams reported on the radio was astonishing -- maintaining a sense of humor about it all seems like a very sensible approach to avoid high blood pressure.

Heinke demonstrated all the controls as we drove along. The Mercedes had a smart radio that kept the main German 1, 2, or 3 broadcast tuned in by automatically switching among local stations as we drove along. The radio also had a speaker mute button that silenced it but kept it on and tuned to the same station. That way, Heinke could pre-tuned the radio to the right station for the weather report but keep it muted until exactly the time of the weather report broadcast. The car had separate thermostatically controlled heating and cooling for either side of the front seat, and supposedly also had an automatic rain sensor that would vary the frequency of the windshield wipers depending on how much water was on the windshield! The wiper was, however, one large wiper rather than two as on most American cars.

The activation of that single windshield wiper was much more complex than the simple swipe across the windshield that it first appeared to be. In fact, the wiper arms started in a retracted position, shot out to wipe more of the upper left corner, retracted again as it swept across the middle of the windshield, and then shot out again to wipe the upper right corner more thoroughly, and then finally retracted again as it came to rest at the lower right. The net effect was a very thorough coverage of the windshield, but that reciprocating mechanism must make the actuating machinery much more complex. In some sense the struck me as typical Mercedes -- damn the expense and make it as complex as necessary to do the job. Other nice features of this car were a first-aid kit built inside the rear window shelf and in emergency triangle built-in underneath the trunk lid.

By the time we were done playing with the controls, we were off the autobahn driving the two-lane roads to Kappeln. We crossed an old two-lane swing bridge over the Schlei River in the middle of town and then curled around to the shipyard just downstream from the town center. We put our stuff on a cart and rolled over to Heinke and Gustl's boat, which is a 35-year old, 28-foot long wooden sloop. They have owned it for over 20 years and keep it in tip-top condition, which takes a lot of work for wooden boat. On the average, they said they spend the entire month of March working on the boat plus frequent weekend trips. The boat was built in the shipyard adjacent to the marina in 1965 and has been moored in Kappeln ever since, I assume. There were several identical boats in arena, but Heinke and Gustl's was really in the best shape because the others had cracked or crazed glass, chipped varnish, faded paint, etc..

Heinke removed the tent-like structure the covered the cockpit while Gustl connected the electricity and stowed things aboard. They work both separately and together like a pair of ice-dancers, so Monika and I just tried to stay out of their way. It was interesting to see all the preparations, though. Heinke told us about their first sailboat (about 1975) which had been their "practice" sailboat after they had taken sailing courses and passed the test required for sailing any large sailboat. In Germany, almost everything requires a test including flying ultralights -- which is entirely unregulated in the U.S. If it doesn't require a test in Germany, it probably requires a permit. Permits are required for remodeling your house, cutting down a tree on your own property, building a car port, and so forth. If it doesn't require a test or permit Germany, it probably is regulated. For example, mowing your lawn on the weekends is limited to early morning and late afternoon hours so that the "mid-day pause" is not interrupted for your neighbors. Gustl defended this as due to the requirements for civil behavior in a crowded country, but I don't think Americans would put up with it.

We put out into the river channel, but almost immediately shut off the motor and put up the sails. Once we got out onto the Baltic Sea, the wind was reasonably strong for while. We were fascinated by the variety of boats that we saw on our way out -- everything from small fishing boats to large sailing yachts and even Navy warships. One thing I remembered from our sailing trip with Heinke and Gustl 15 years ago were the "butter-steamers" which were still operating. These ships steam out to the three-mile limit, then sell the maximum allowed of duty-free butter and other goods to the passengers, and then turn around and steam right back in. This is a curious but pleasant way of avoiding the high import duties on Danish butter and other dairy goods, and had brought visitors to Kappeln for many years. But Gustl said that they were scheduled to stop sailing at the end of June. The Danes had complained about the loss of revenue in the new combined European market. We also saw signs that the duty-free shops in the airports and harbors were being threatened with closure due to the new rules, which the owners of course objected to. But I hate to think that the pleasant jaunts on the butter-steamers will also have to come to an end.

While we still had wind, I practiced steering which is tricky with the tiller because you move it left to go to the right and vice-versa. This is definitely not a natural control movement, and although I have sailed very small dingies years ago, I had to think about the control movements. Just as with an airplane, however, the boat' s response lags behind the control movements and this also complicates matters. In short, it's hard to steer straight and the wake behind us showed the telltale zig-zag pattern of a novice helmsman. Ah, but it was fun, at least until the wind died. Of course, that was when we're about five miles out to sea and had just turned around to come back. In the end, the stretch that had taken about an hour on the way out took four hours on the way in. Finally, Gustl fired up the motor, a one cylinder diesel engine without a glow plug of all things, and we motored back into port.

Monika and I had a very nice time, but I expect it was a very boring time for experienced sailors such as our hosts. I know that when I had accumulated some dingy-sailing experience, I started to enjoy the challenge of the windy, gusty days rather than the calmer days that my guests seem to like. That was back in my army days on Lake Elmer Thomas in Oklahoma. Now I was again the novice who was enjoying light winds -- such as life!

Back in port, we set up a special table in the cockpit and then proceeded to have dinner. Heinke had built this table to fit exactly around the tiller bar and to stow away snugly under the seats. After some knackwurst (long thin hot dogs), potato salad, tomatoes, etc., we started home about 8 p.m.. The bridge in the middle of Kappeln was opened to let the sailboats go through, so we watched them go by and then continued on our way through the never-ending dusk toward Hamburg. The dusk at this time of year in northern Germany lasts from about 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. and is a very gradual darkening. However, the light gave us a decent view of the countryside on the way back, which was very pretty. The landscape in northern Germany is a very gently rolling plain with fields, woods, and the occasional farm building. Small villages with the inevitable cafe or hotel-restaurant occurred about every three to five miles or so. Very picturesque. We arrived home about 10 p.m. and immediately hit the sack.

Wednesday, June second, 1999
Heinke and Gustl had recommended the Lewis Comfort Tiffany exhibit at the museum for arts and crafts in downtown Hamburg, so that became our goal for Wednesday. We took the bus and U-Bahn downtown after breakfast and after walking around three sides of the building, we finally found the entrance. A group of elderly women and a group of chattering schoolchildren were the line before us. I wondered what it would be like to try to read German plaques while in a crowd of kids, but shortly after we went in the kids disappeared and we never saw them again. The group of ladies gathered for a guided tour, but we went on our own to the exhibit as I like to take my time to read things, especially when I am reading German. However, in the exhibit I was accosted by a formidable female museum guard and told in no uncertain terms that my water bottle was not allowed in the museum.

I had to re-trace my way to the first floor, find the correct wardrobe, and explain to the attendant what the guard had said in my very imperfect German. I decided to take no chances and left my entire walking belt there which included the water bottle, wooden whistle, camera, tripod, Band-Aids, and my 17-in-one tool (which has everything else including a flashlight, knife, etc.). The attendant looked at this with his eyes bulging out like it was a snake and refused to take it when I tried to hand it to him. He said something like, "Why don't you come in and put it on the table by the window there." He opened the gate into the inner sanctuary and I nervously complied, not being totally certain he had understood me or I had understood him. The last thing that I wanted was to begin my visit to the Tiffany exhibit with a strip search! In particular, hollow would I see the exhibit after I was searched? Little old ladies, for one, might object. This was not, after all, a walk in the park! My worries were for naught, however, and the attendant just stared at me and closed the gate behind me as I left. Possibly my "Indiana Jones" pants with seven pockets and zip-off lower legs plus the walking belt with its entire set of attachments made me look a little bit odd, I don't know.

When I returned to the exhibit, no one said a word but there was always a guard in the room with me no matter where I went in the exhibit. I thought they were hovering over me and waiting for me to make a suspicious move, but Monika thought that this was my imagination. The "watchful waiting" did not, however, in any way diminish my enjoyment of the exhibit. Tiffany did so much more than invent the type of lamps that bear his name. He also invented the copper foil method of making flat stained-glass windows, innovated a "Favril" glass which was melted together glasses of different colors, developed a lava glass which imitated the appearance of flowing lava, and invented a special glass coating which gave the glass opalescent, rainbow-hued sheen. All these inventions were a matter of visual appearance, which is very difficult to describe in words, so just go take a look at this exhibit if you get a chance (through July 1999).

Monika thought it was interesting that Tiffany initially developed his lamps because people found the new electric lights were too bright compared to the oil lamps they were used to. So the initial function of the stained-glass lampshade was to mute the glare of the electric light bulbs. All of the lamps in the collection were nice, but two that stood out in my mind were a completely round, ball-shaped lamp (how do you change the bulb, I wondered), and a lamp imitating a cluster of lily blossoms. For the latter, each glass blossom had its own stem, glass flower, and small light bulb in the middle of the flower. That was a very artistic lamp.

The Tiffany vases that most attracted my eye were the melted-glass vases where the forms of the flowers seemed to flow within the walls of the vase as if suspended in water. It was beautiful and I still can't quite see how you can melt the different glasses together and still have any degree of control over what comes out of the process. Enchanting. The opalescent, rainbow-hued vases were not, in contrast, to my taste. For these, I found it much prettier to peer into the inside of the base and get the "reverse view". The inside view was often a warm, soft yellow or ocher color that I liked very much. Of course, when I leaned over the vase and craned my head to peer into it, I noticed the museum guards suddenly coming closer to me, so I tried very hard to act normal.

Tiffany also made doorstops that were beautiful patterns of melted colored glass embedded in a big blob of crystal-clear normal glass. Some of them were as colorful as looking at a coral reef embedded in crystal-clear ice, which is a great effect. Tiffany pioneered the copper foil method for stained glass because he did not want the thick lead cane to dominate and dilute the effects of his glass compositions. I have worked with both copper foil and lead cane, and I can clearly see the advantages of the copper foil method, which I use exclusively now. Despite the fact that his work fell out of favor and his companies went bankrupt, he really seemed to be a great innovator and creative talent in this medium.

His early career as an artist and his associations with other artists in the 19th century France no doubt helped his artistic creativity, but the technical innovations that he made, taken by themselves, are quite impressive. One curious piece was a stained-glass panel designed to imitate a painting by Henri Toulouse Lautrec. The painting and the lighted panel were hanging next to each other in the exhibit, and it was fun to compare the impression made by the same basic composition in a light-reflecting medium and a light-transmitting medium. I had fun hopping back and forth from one to the other until I got too close and the museum guards started to close in again.

After quickly leaving the exhibit, we bought some cards because pictures were not allowed in the exhibit and I really didn't want to get those guards excited again. I bought the book in which I write this journal, among other things, after we found we had (barely) enough cash -- they didn't accept Visa. We next took in the slide show on Tiffany's life on the top floor of the museum, in part to rest our feet after 2 1/2 hours of standing. The show was a good condensation of his life and added some details about his personal life including the untimely deaths of his first and second wives. Also documented was his unwillingness or inability to change or shift his artistic style with the advent of Modern Art, and his increasing eccentricity toward the end of his life. This was apparently something on the order of the way Howard Hughes became increasingly strange or weird as he got older.

After the slide show, we quickly canvassed the other exhibits in the museum on the other floors, but we were getting too tired to thoroughly read and appreciate everything we saw. In fact, we were both hungry and finally whizzed through the last couple of galleries and set out to look for lunch and a Dresden Bank to get more money. We had lunch at a bakery in the main train station which had stand-up tables like an Imbiss. It had great sandwiches and great desserts. I had a turkey breast sandwich while Monika had a chopped steak sandwich, then we split a slice of strawberry tort, another slice of raspberry tort, and a cherry-filled Bismarck. It was a great meal and only cost 15 Deutsche marks (less than ten dollars) because we were again drinking from my water bottle, in part to save money and in part because it was convenient. I enjoyed watching all the people go by in the train station because there was an interesting mix of Germans of all types and outlanders from various countries.

Unfortunately, the nearest branch of the Dresden Bank was a good half-mile away on the Jungfernstieg next to the Alsterhaus. But we did get the money, and then took a quick look at a toy store across the canal to see if they had better dolls, which they didn't. There are an awful lot of canals in the city of Hamburg -- they claim to have more canals than in Venice, but of course Hamburg is bigger. We then took the U-Bahn home to Heinke and Gustl's house. We hooked up with Heinke and Gustl to drive over to Tante Carla's house because they also wanted to see her. The streets in Hamburg are narrow and filled with parked cars wherever possible, so precise driving is a must and the tolerances are in inches rather than feet. Gustl handled all this with aplomb and we found a parking spot not too far down the street from her house.

Tante Carla had just celebrated her 90th birthday and had to use a hearing aid, but otherwise she was alive, alert, and in high spirits. Gustl and I had mineral water (Germans refuse to serve tap water), and Monika, Heinke, and Carla had coffee that was strong enough to set your heart racing (and there was a lot of it!). Tante Carla had baked cheesecake and butternut cake for our visit, and both tasted great. I was definitely off my fat-free diet by this time, so I just enjoyed eating whatever everyone else ate.

Judging from our experiences, the German diet is high fat, and even the foods offered in the stores do not allow a low-fat diet. There is no dietary information on any of the foods in anything like the standardized form that we have in the U.S., so you basically don't know anything about what you're eating beyond the basic list of ingredients. No-fat foods simply do not seem to be available. We searched high and low for skim milk and never found it -- the best we could come up with was 1.5 percent fat which we used. When Monika was shopping, she never found any trace of non-fat yogurt, pastries, potato chips, pretzels, or anything else for that matter. Indeed, folks found it strange that we did not use butter on our bread, and the cakes and desserts generally came with real, freshly-whipped cream, which tasted great.

I was considering why more Germans don't die early of heart attacks given that type of diet, and the only thing I can come up with is the high level of physical activity which counteracts the effects of the diet in somewhat the same way as our pioneer forefathers did not have heart attacks despite high-fat diets. The number of people walking or riding bicycles was much greater than in the U.S.. Even people who own cars, like Heinke and Gustl, don't use them for routine shopping trips. Heinke and Gustl would walk or bicycle to the grocery store or to do other shopping, only taking the car for excursions.

As an example, Heinke told a hilarious story about balancing a box of thirty geranium plants on the back of her bicycle and trying to ride home. The plants fell off in the middle of a major four-lane arterial street, and there Heinke was, rounding up 30 plants and putting them in the box while traffic whizzed by on either side of her. She didn't get hit, but I wasn't sure the risk was worth the prize. Nevertheless, she got the plants home safely and later planted some of them on her mother's grave where we saw them blooming, so they appear to have survived the experience OK.

Bicycles do, however, have the right-of-way over cars in Germany, as do pedestrians on a crosswalk or path. Cars scrupulously observed this rule and if they did not, there would be a lot of dead pedestrians. On one of our drives, a jogger ran off the sidewalk right out in front of Gustl, forcing him to slam on his brakes. Similarly, all cars will immediately brake when a pedestrian enters a crosswalk. I had to be careful when I came back to the U.S. not to make the assumption that drivers would stop for me in a cross walk, which is a dangerous thing to assume in the U.S., at least in our area.

At Tante Carla's, we discussed many family topics during the afternoon -- that is, I was basically listening while everyone else was discussing. The topic that caused the most reaction, however, was Kim and Jule' s upcoming wedding. Tante Carla's first reaction was, "Oh my God, not in our family!". Gustl presented it in a very matter-of-fact manner, and then gave a spirited defense of the marriage as she continued to decry it. I am sure neither one of them convinced the other, but it made for a very interesting discussion. After catching up on all the other family members, who were experiencing the normal life events one might expect, we all drove home.

Heinke and Gustl stayed home for the evening, but Monika and I turned around and got right back on the bus and S-Bahn to go to the western part of Hamburg to Nienstedten to see Silke, an old school friend of Monika's, and her husband Ulf. We were supposed to call when we arrived at the train station, but when we got off the train we found the phones there would not accept coins since they were set up solely for phone cards. So we used my Hamburg map to find the right way to walk down from the Hochkamp S-Bahn station to their house, which was about a half a mile.

They were very happy to see us although 14 years had elapsed since our last visit. We had a glass of wine -- I had given up even trying to have a soda or, God forbid, a glass of water, at anyone's house because even asking for it seemed to offend them. We talked rapid fire for about a half hour, and then we jumped in the car to go out to eat. As we got into the car, we met their daughter Sophie who had been just five years old at our last visit, and we were pleased to see that she had turned into a nice young woman.

Sophie stayed home, but we adults drove to a fancy Greek restaurant. Monika said that was one other thing that had changed since her time -- there were many more ethnic-food restaurants. We didn't do any kind of systematic sample, but the dominant variety in Hamburg seems to be Greek, followed by Italian and then a rare occurrence of something else like Turkish or Asian cuisine.

Since Sophie had stayed home, we adults could freely discuss her, and we found out that she was finishing the Gymnasium (academic high school). She was preparing to take the German version of the college-entrance exams (das Arbitur), which in Germany decides whether or not you will get into any university as well as being able to attend the University of your choice. First, though, Ulf and Silke were going to have a nice graduation party for her. We also told them what our boys were up to both academically and socially.

Then we shifted over into discussing our respective professions, and both professional and political issues on which we agreed for many but not all. Ulf and Silke had traveled much more than us, in particular in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), South America (Columbia, Peru, etc.), and the Middle East (Jordan). In comparison with that exotic travel menu, I felt like a provincial bumpkin. I asked if they did this in groups or on their own, and somewhat to my surprise they said they always did it on their own. Furthermore, they normally " winged it" and just drove into a city and started asking the local folks where to stay and eat -- that way they got cheap digs. Also, they ate the local cuisine and said that they had never been sick, although they were careful to drink only bottled water.

Silke was still working for the Brigitte fashion magazine, and Ulf was still a judge, roughly corresponding to a circuit judge in the U.S.. But the last year he had investigated corruption in the Socialist party that had ruled Hamburg since the 1960s. He had, in fact, just finished the report and submitted it to his superiors. He implied that there was quite a lot of misspent money, but that it was very hard to trace accurately and pinpoint responsibility. He was also translating books from English to German, and we could have just spoken English but that would have not been pleasant for Silke, so we struck to German.

We had a wonderful evening with them, but one thing that was brought home to us was the fact of how much people in Germany are still smoking. Both Ulf and Silke are extremely intelligent, educated people and yet they smoked, as did many if not most of the folks around us in the restaurant. In the U.S., I believe, the stats show that upper class Americans are predominately nonsmokers while working class and poor are smokers. In Germany, smoking was much more ubiquitous and seemed to cut across class lines. For example, Eberhard, a lawyer, and his wife Birgit also smoked. It didn't bother me physically, but smoking may have caused one of my sisters to die of brain cancer and another sister to have a stroke, so I'm emotionally very anti-smoking.

But what do you do? In Germany the smoking ads are everywhere and I never saw an anti-smoking ad although admittedly I only watched a total of 2-3 hours of TV in 10 days there. Also, there are cigarette vending machines on many street corners where any one large enough to push the button good buy cigarettes. Obviously, controlling the onset of smoking in the young is impossible unless there are big cultural changes like what occurred in the U.S. over the last 10 years or so. In the U.S., we are now to the point of no more printed ads and an avalanche of lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers, whereas the Germans are back where we were in the '50s when smoking was an integral part of the culture.

Comparing the ways that the German and U.S. cultures had either changed or not changed over the decades raised the fascinating question of why one culture changes so dramatically while the other does not. I absolutely do not understand this and would very much like to. After discussing this and many other things with Ulf and Silke, they drove us to the Blankenese train station around 11 p.m. This was the first time I had seen it get really dark during our stay in Germany. We took the train back, but had to wait a few minutes for a bus since they switched to a 20-minute interval after 11 p.m.. So we finally rolled in at about midnight, let ourselves quietly in the door, and then collapsed into bed.

Thursday, June 3rd, 1999
Monika managed to get up in time to help Heinke fix breakfast, but I barely dragged myself out of bed when I heard people eating -- always a Clarion call for me! I threw on some clothes, went to the bathroom, and hustled to the breakfast table. I was so groggy and in such a hurry that I put my glasses on upside-down as I sat down to eat! Everyone had a good laugh and I caught up on breakfast while they chatted. Our main goal for the day was a walk in the Lueneberge Heide or heath, and a visit to Monika's cousin Rolf (on her father's side) and his family. I, of course, had already caused some delay and preparations for a picnic lunch delayed us by another half-hour, so we didn't leave until 10 or so. To get to the heath, we drove west and then south from Hamburg for about an hour to Undeloh in the middle of the heath region.

Gustl had laid out a 15 km circuit through the best parts of the heath, and it was a great walk. First we walked across the moorland with mixed patches of trees, somewhat like the patches of forest in the Black Forest. The sky was a deep clear blue, the wind was roaring out of the west, and we had a great view, especially in the open heath areas. The heather plant itself is a low green shrub, but it blooms a beautiful mild red in October and the long vistas of red must be a most unusual sight. We walked a big loop to the high point (Wiselde Berg), which had a concrete marker and a fire watch tower. The wind was blowing like crazy, and made a tangle of Monika's long hair. The marker had a bronze comical cap that showed the directions and distance to the major cities of the world, and I got a good picture of her looking at it.

We then walked a smaller loop trail around the tiny three-house village of Wiselde. We stopped on an overlook on the other side of town and had sandwiches and fruit from Heinke's napsack while enjoying the great view. The puffy cumulus clouds were racing across the sky and throwing the heath into alternate bands of brilliant sunshine and deep green shadow. It was so beautiful that I am not sure I noticed what I was eating, which is pretty unusual for me! After lunch we walked one km or so to the village, which is essentially two houses, a large barn which doubles as a farming Museum, a large cafe, and a medium-sized hotel or Gasthof at the edge of town. The gift shop attached to the restaurant was closed, but the museum was open and had a little doll of a shepherd and a little doll of a special variety of sheep that is only found in the heath. Monika was ecstatic. I found some postcards of the heath in bloom and the village that might supplement our pictures, so we were both as happy as pigs in clover.

The one unusual part of this town is that no cars are allowed and all the tourists either walk in, ride a bicycle in, or are ferried in by horse-drawn wagons or carts. We saw several of these, ranging from a fairly elegant carriage to your basic farm cart converted to hauling people. It was pleasant walking the roads and just having to watch for horse carts, bicycles, and pedestrians. It was so quiet when the wind was still that I could hear the shepherd blowing some kind of horn. It sounded musical, but I guess it was some signal for the sheep dog or for the sheep themselves -- I don't even know for sure it was the shepherd, but I think so. So we walked the road/wagon track back to our parking place, which was the main pick-up point for the horse wagons. It had been a good three-hour walk, what with eating and all, so we were all a little tired when we climbed back into the Mercedes.

Since Rolf and Gudrun lived on this side of Hamburg, we just drove northeast about one-half hour to get to their house in Harburg. They made us welcome and we chatted for a while before sitting down to tea, coffee, strawberry tort, and a nut-covered cake of some type. After all that walking it was nice to have the snack, and I only hoped that all our activity was roughly balancing out all the extra calories I was eating. But it sure tasted good! We did not linger over tea and coffee, however, since we wanted to drive to Rolf and Gudrun's vacation cottage, which was about an hour's drive east of Harburg. We drove the picturesque (but slow) route through all the quaint little villages rather than using the autobahn, which I very much enjoyed.

Their cottage was on an unimproved lot off a gravel road in Buchholz. Rolf's parents were part of a group of friends that had bought cottages there together, and some of them still lived there including Erica, Rolf and Monika's cousin and Tante Carla's daughter. She joined us later in the evening as did Petra, Rolf and Gudrun's daughter, and her husband Nils. Rolf grilled bratwurst and pork chops while the rest of us chatted away about all the family doings. We spent a good half-hour looking at Petra and Nils' wedding photo album with Gudrun. I enjoyed the pictures of the "Polter Abend", which is a celebration the night before the wedding where everyone comes and smashes crockery on the ground. The bride and groom must work together to clean it all up.

Naturally, the subject of Kim and Jule's wedding came up at one point, and it was very interesting to see the different reactions of the three generations. Tante Carla, the 90-year-old matriarch of the clan, was dead set against it and considered it a blot on the family escutcheon. The next generation of that family was Rolf, Erica, and Gudrun. Rolf was quietly negative about the issue while Gudrun and Erica were surprised but essentially tolerant of the idea. The youngest generation was Petra and Nils, and they were strongly positive. In fact, they said, "In 10 years they will have full legal rights (like for pensions and health-care benefits), and no one will think twice about it." So you can see the shift from very negative in the oldest generation to tolerance in the middle generation and to positive in the youngest generation. I think this is just documenting a shift of cultural attitudes toward homosexuality in Germany, but in this case the German culture has changed much more than the American culture at least in the last 10 years and in the area of Hamburg. We talked about many other things, including bee-keeping with Nils and left sometime after nine. So we didn't get back home until sometime after 10; I can't remember exactly because I fell asleep on the way back. I think we were all pretty tired as we straggled off to bed.

Friday, June 4th, 1999
Friday was the traditional wash day, and it involved a lot of work. First, the dirty wash is carefully separated into hot, middle, and cold wash clothes. Then each batch is taken to a wash house with a little cart. Finally, each batch is washed and hung up to dry on the balcony (if it's sunny) or in the basement (if it's raining). It is a curious fact that neither my sister Lois nor Heinke believes in using a clothes dryer.

Fortunately, I wasn't invited to participate in washing, so I left Heinke and Monika to have fun with that while I went off in a solitary search for adventure (a faint fanfare!). Of course, I didn't get very far because I was way laid by a museum in the nearby town of Barmstadt. Gustl had mentioned a "Museum of Work" in that town, and I had found it on my map (hooray!). So, map and money in hand, I set out on the bus to see what I could see. I found the museum less than one block from the train station where the bus dropped me off.

There I spent three happy hours, reading my way carefully through three floors of the museum. The first floor had a complete example of a small medallion-making company that operated in Hamburg continuously from 1906 to 1984 as a family-owned business. The operation of each workstation was completely described along with quotes from the workers themselves, some of which were funny and some of which were quite poignant. I now know how medallions are cut, stamped, enameled, and gold or silver-plated. It was almost all hand work -- the last automation purchased for the firm was a hydraulic -powered punch in the 1930s. Ultimately they were forced out of business by cheaper competition from Asian firms, but I think the lack of any investment in automating the business when it was still viable must have played some role. Once the business entered its "death spiral" starting in the 1960s, they could not, of course, have attracted enough capital to make that kind of investment, so the firm was essentially doomed. When they went bankrupt, the family turned over the entire intact workplace to the Museum of Work--that was a stroke of luck for the museum.

The second floor was devoted to printing and the cocoa and rubber trades as a examples of Hamburg's role in world trade. The printing exhibit had operating presses were I found a group of young students bubbling over with energy and printing postcards and broad side sheets. Three boys were on one hand-operated press, and I heard one boy shouting "No! No! That's the wrong way to turn it!", while another shouted, "Wait! It should go this way!" And they both yanked at opposite directions on the press. I found it hugely entertaining. A teacher quickly came over to restore order and made only one boy at a time operate the press, so I moved on. The entire history of printing was detailed from Gutenberg to the modern off-set or lithographic press. Representative machines from each period were on the floor along with very thorough explanations (in German, of course!). That's my kind of museum, and I just kind of dwelled there, soaking it all in. It was a bit laborious since I had to in for much of the vocabulary, but I had the machines right there in front of me to refer to, which helped a lot.

I moved on to the cocoa and rubber exhibits after trying my hand at a manual German typewriter and finding out that the letters y and z are switched while the umlauted letters a, o, and u are added to the right of the right hand. They gave the test requirements to be a certified German typist, which was measured in the number of keystrokes per minute rather than words per minute as in the US. I haven't checked yet, but I confidently expect that my best speed of 50 words per minute would not be good enough to qualify me as a German typist. The one good part of having all vocations qualified by tests is that in Germany you can be assured that your skilled worker of any type basically is competent and knows the trade. In contrast, in the US you're never sure of skilled workers because some bozo may get a union card by knowing someone in the union and, as a result, not have any testing or certification at all. However, this also reduces the supply of skilled hand-workers in Germany and keeps the prices correspondingly high. Each system comes with its own pros and cons in my view.

I was totally shocked and horrified, however, by evidence that Indians were used as slaves in the Brazilian rubber trade as late as 1900. In fact, they estimated that the 30 years before rubber plantations in Malaysia replaced Brazil, this trade cost the lives of 30,000 Indians. The evidence was irrefutable. I saw a picture on the rubber plantations that had the Indian workers shackled head to foot with really heavy chains, just like they did with the Negro slaves in America prior to emancipation. For me, that cast a pall over the entire business enterprise of rubber in the 19th century. For the cocoa industry in Africa, Western religion was used as the instrument of coercion rather than chains and whips, but the end result of the destruction of the indigenous culture and the economic slavery of the natives was the same. The letters of correspondence between the plantation owners and the church made the hand-in-glove nature of this cooperation quite clear. It was more humane than chains or the slaughter of natives in the Belgian Congo by King Leopold's armies, but it was still cruel and ethnocentric at best.

Slightly depressed, I continued to the third-floor and an exhibit on male and female work and home roles from 1850 to the present in Germany. Tracing the changes from the "me Tarzan, you Jane" sex role divisions of the 1850s to the present was quite interesting. What I found especially funny was the Nazi sex role propaganda. Before the war, this propaganda said that a woman should stay at home and bear sons and daughters for the Reich while men should be the workers and soldiers. But when they ran short of manpower during the war and needed to get women into the workplace, the propaganda suddenly changed. The new model was, "Different Times Call for Different Customs" and told women that their duty was to work for the Reich. As in, "Oops, forget that last propaganda message!" It was a little bit Orwellian, but funny for all that.

I ran out of time before completing the exhibit and ran back down the stairs and back to the train station where I caught the next bus to Heinke and Gustl's. But I hadn't timed it right, and I arrived a little after our scheduled lunchtime of 130 p.m. But Heinke assured me that the meal preparation was running a little late also, so I was not in deep doo-doo. We all sat down and had a nice lunch, and then Monika and I went downtown for a final round of shopping. We took with us one of our old plates to the Brinkmann department store to see if they could get more pieces like it from a catalog. But when they saw it they said nope, they had never seen anything like it. Monika did find a simple white coffee can that fit in with our stuff, so she bought that. She also bought a doll that was handmade in Germany, who coincidentally enough is to be called, "Monika", and added to her doll collection.

Our next port of call was a ship chandler's shop where we acted as an agent for Heinke in buying a set of kapok cushions for the boat. And if you are sitting on those wooden benches in the cockpit of the boat for six hours, trust me, you will need the cushions. We hurried back home and smuggled the cushions into the cellar when Gustl was not looking. That was lots of fun. After dinner we sat and chatted some more about this and that. Heinke set up an ironing board in the living room so that she could join in the conversation but still get her ironing done. She ironed pretty much everything, including underwear, for the next couple of hours while we talked. This surprised me a bit because most of the Americans I know have either given up or minimized the amount of ironing they have to do.

I had seen an article about an exhibit of classic airplanes at the Hamburg airport, which we would have liked to see if we had the time. I mentioned that one of the aircraft was the German World War II Storch, an amazing STOL airplane that had flaps and slots and good land and takeoff in a hundred yards or so, but it flew rather slowly. Gustl replied, "The Russians also had an airplane that flew very slowly. I was in a bomb crater waiting for the dark in order to escape, but that dammed machine flew slowly overhead dropping parachute flares all night long which made it too light. It's a wonder that I survived [the war]." Obviously these were unpleasant memories, so although I was very interested in his war experiences, all I asked was his age at the time, which turned out to be 18. I cannot really imagine how terrible that 18-year old Gustl must have felt on that night long ago.

I did encourage him to write down his life history so that future generations could read it, something I try to sell to my family also. He also noted how much he wished he had written down his parents' stories the way that I had written down my mother's tales of life on a farm in Michigan just after the turn of century. I offered to exchange biographies and really hope he does it. Only those who have experienced war know how horrible it really is. This might explain some of the visceral reaction of some Germans against the NATO bombing of Serbia, but I don't know -- the people who directly experienced World War II like Gustl are getting old and do not, I think, play a dominant role in Germany's politics today. In any event, we turned in for the night shortly thereafter.

Saturday, June 6, 1999 (Gustl's birthday!)
Our focus for this day was celebrating Gustl's birthday. As is the German tradition, we presented our gifts to him the first thing in the morning after wishing him happy birthday (but not singing it). We had brought a desk clock and pen set from the U.S. for his birthday. He placed it on his desk so that he could immediately see the time while he was working there. Heinke gave him the two new kapok cushions for the boat. All morning long the phone rang off the hook as everyone in the family and a large number of friends and old colleagues from work called to wish Gustl happy birthday. Detlef, on a business trip in Taiwan, even called from Taipei to add his birthday wishes, but it was so early in the morning that he left it on the phone recorder.

While all this was going on, I took some time off to write in this journal and pack some books and chocolate while Monika helped Heinke make to strawberry torts in the kitchen, which pretty much used up the morning. We had been invited to afternoon tea and coffee by Eberhard and Birgit, who live in Tante Size's old place, so we left to drive to Reinbek in the mid-afternoon. We left a little early to give us time to visit the grave of Tante Size and her husband, Onkel Hans-Henning, which were in a nearby cemetery. It was raining when we went to the gravesite and a little dark. Whether it was the weather or seeing the grave of a nice relative that made me sad, I don't know, but I do know that I missed her cheerful, friendly greeting when we visited her house immediately afterwards. However, enough had changed outside and inside the house that it did not evoke the expectation of seeing her pop around a corner at any moment, which was probably just as well.

The fence in front that had held her dog Brita on the grounds was gone, and of course Brita did not come out with Tante Size tugging on her collar to bark a greeting at us. A car port had replaced much of the garden and had Eberhard and Birgit's Rover in it, but the fruit trees and compost pile that had been there were long gone. I still remember how proud she was of the compost pile and how she ran her fingers through the compost, declaring proudly, "Completely good dirt!" At the time, it seemed a little strange, but now I have a compost pile of my own and I know exactly what she meant. Eberhard and Birgit did, however, maintain a new compost heap in another part of the yard, so the tradition was carrying on. Eberhard had also felled some 18 small evergreen trees on the other side of the house, which opened up both the yard and the house to more sunlight, which I thought was an improvement.

He and Birgit had also made many improvements inside the house, making two big bedrooms out of three small ones, putting in new plumbing, and so forth. Some traces of the past remained like the chicken coop in the basement from the period where Tante Size raised chickens for their eggs -- which, however, had been prior to my first visit. The floors and furniture were beautiful, but I missed the Oriental rugs scattered all over the bare wood floors which slipped like ice whenever you stepped on them. Walking across that floor could be trickier than walking on a frozen lake because you just did not expect the rugs to slide around that way. I expect that they did because the floor was well waxed!

We sat down for tea and coffee in the living room at a large table rather than in the small dining nook off the kitchen where we always ate on my previous visits to Tante Size. This only made sense because the dining nook was only big enough for four people, which were usually Tante Size, Mammi, Monika, and me, but today we totaled eight people (Detlef had not returned from Taiwan and Jule was at work). We had a very nice time drinking coffee, tea, and “Caro”, which is a substitute coffee that Gustl and I drink because it has absolutely no caffeine. It contains chickory and other ingredients, but I have not seen in the U.S.

After tea, we all went for a short hike around the neighborhood with Kim and Jule's two dogs. I was surprised at how quickly and suddenly we transitioned from walking on city streets to walking on the edges of farmer' s fields. Fortunately, the trail didn't get too muddy as everyone had good shoes and clothes on in anticipation of Gustl's birthday party meal that evening. After returning to Eberhard and Birgit's house, we collected our things, distributed ourselves in the available cars, and drove in a caravan to the hotel/restaurant "Waldhof in Reinbek", which was a very posh place!

It was so fancy, in fact, that it reminded Monika of our cruise ship experiences, especially when the waiters would add or subtract the number of knives and forks in front of you depending on what you ordered. I ordered fish and got an extra fish knife, for example. They did not, thank goodness, try to spread our napkins for us like the waiters tried to do on the cruise ship -- that is just too much service! The prices were, of course, correspondingly high, but consider the source (we often dine out at Roy Rogers for fewer than ten dollars for the two of us, and are rather more used to that price range.). The food was excellent. My rainbow trout fell apart without using the fish knife, and had absolutely no bones. I also had some of Monika's dinner, which was also a very good beef dish. Fortunately Heinke and Gustl were also sharing some of their courses, so I didn't feel like I was breaking any social norms although I might have been.

The dinner was really five courses and spread out over several hours, which gave us a lot of time to talk. Jule joined us after finishing her work, which gave us an opportunity to also talk with her again. Kim and Jule discussed with Eberhard and Birgit having the wedding reception at their house, and they seemed to work out all the details to everyone's satisfaction. Jule had just had a really short haircut, so Gustl of course teased her about it. But then Kim mentioned that Jule was, among other things, a licensed hairdresser, and we all joked about her doing our hair. The whole family has a good sense of humor, which may not characterize all German families. It does, however, make social interaction so much more pleasant. Gustl also tried on Jule's modern fashion sunglasses, and of course they looked quite odd on this distinguished gentleman in a conservative suit and tie. So we all got a good laugh out of that.

The one thing I still have trouble accepting is that Gustl had to pay for his own birthday celebration. I thought we would do it American-style and all chip an extra to pay for his and Heinke's meals, but Monika told me absolutely not. Not only could we not pay for his meal, but he had to pay for all our meals as he was the one who had invited us. I'm aware of the "person who invites pays" norm, but somehow I expected that norm not to apply to someone's birthday dinner. Having been quashed in my attempt to pay for dinner, I talked to Kim and we arranged for all the relatives to sing a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" in front of the restaurant as we were leaving. Since that's an American thing, we sang it in English and in tune, also. Gustl was a bit embarrassed at this unexpected event, which made me happy.

We then took a loop walk through the small forest that adjoins the restaurant/hotel. We let the dogs out of the car and they were of course overjoyed to go for walk. Each dog displayed a completely different personality. Nutte, the German shepherd-mix female, was quiet and guarded us all like a mother hen guarding her chicks. She really went down the line of us several times and appeared to be counting noses. Only when she was satisfied that we were all still there would she return to the front of the pack. In contrast, Chester, a black male Labrador, was a happy go lucky soul who wanted nothing so much as to have a good stick in his mouth -- the bigger, the better. He spent much of our walk either carrying a stick, retrieving a stick thrown by one of us, or ripping off a new stick from a dead tree branch. It was amazing how much energy and persistent he put into tearing new sticks off branches, even though many of those turned out to be unsatisfactory to him for some reason only he knew.

We walked in pairs and triplets along the trail as it wound down through the forest to a strain and then along the stream and back through the forest to the hotel/restaurant. The stream-side trail was an improved, officially marked trail, but I could not tell how far it extended. I got the feeling that these little walking trails are quite common in Germany and are congruent with the cultural values that include hiking and wandering. For example, there used to be a wandering year in the training of skilled laborers, and a very early ancestor of Monika wandered from Germany all the way to the Baltic states area (as a mason or brick layer, I think), where he met his wife and settled down. The official E-1 trail that we walked on the heath is similar to our Appalachian Trail in stretching from the North Sea through the entire continent of Europe to the Mediterranean Sea on the south. Boy would I like to walk that trail someday! After the walk we all said a happy good night and drove home during the never-ending dusk. And so to bed.

Sunday, June 6, 1999
Sunday is, or least can be, a day of rest. We had done quite a lot over the preceding week and felt the need for some rest. So we told Heinke and Gustl that it would be okay with us if we canceled the plan to do another Volksmarch in favor of spending the day sorting through the old family books, packing, and resting. They understood and we scaled down our plans accordingly to just taking a little hike around the Alster around midday. We spent the morning finishing our packing -- Monika had to re-do some of my packing from the previous day -- and looking through the old books in the basement. Our plan to use the two extra bags we had packed into the big ones on our trip out for the overflow stuff on our trip back worked very well. We packed one large duffel bag with dirty clothes, and use the space that was freed up in our large wheeled luggage to pack dishes, chocolate, licorice, wool, and above all, old books.

The old books came from the cellar, but represented the books packed up after Tante Size and Mammi died. They represented part of the book collections of Monika's father and Onkel Hans-Henning, who had been a judge after the war. I found some, however, that had belonged to her grandfather. Some were quite old, and one set of two volumes dated from 1887. Several other books had publication dates prior to World War I. Most were from the interwar period, especially the group from Monika's father who seem to have been a voracious reader all his life. The curious thing was that many of the older books were in better condition than the newer ones. I think that had to do with the quality of the paper, especially the composition of the pulp and the amount of acid left in the paper. The problem with the older books was that they were written in the old German print fonts, which makes it very hard for me to read. The S and F letter forms, for example, are similar and can cause repeated errors to somebody not used to the fonts.

As you might expect since the collection came from different people, the content was a curious mix of books with a military or war-related theme and novels. There were four to five books, for example, on Bismarck, Germany's "Iron Chancellor". Scientific books were rare, but I did find a book on phrenology from 1940 that I might use in class to illustrate a pseudo-science. The novels were quite varied, and I didn't know the authors for the most part. I found a little short one, however, that had colored pages (possibly hand-painted -- I'm not sure), a romantic theme, and a happy ending, so I specifically asked if I could have that. The books in particular made our bags very heavy and we were almost overweight going back to the US. We distributed them as best we could, set out our clothes for the trip, and finished packing the two wheeled suitcases and the two duffel bags.

By then Heinke was done cleaning and we were already for a walk, so Gustl drove us to the Alster, getting briefly lost in the process. It was a relief to know I wasn't the only one who could get confused by the maze of streets in Hamburg! After parking we hiked along one side of the outer Alster. Similar to the inner Alster, the outer Alster is a medium-sized lake caused by a dam across the Alster River in downtown Hamburg, but this lake is large enough to have marinas, sailboat races, and passenger ferries crossing it. The area right around the Alster is landscaped as an inner city park. The trail we walked kept us close to the shoreline and gave us good views of the lake.

As we walked, we watched the regattas of both sailing dingies (they looked like Optimist Prams) and larger star-class sailboats. One of the star class sailboats tacked so close to the pier we were standing on that he was within a yard of us when he finally put over on the other tack. It was pretty exciting to look down into his cockpit as he went by us. I remembered so clearly the time in 1973 that Heinke and Gustl had taken us sailing on the Alster from the same pier. In fact, the marina looked pretty much the same and had some of the same type of wooden sailboats that we had used that day. I wondered if the boat we had sailed on 27 years ago was still there. I can remember and visually recall the image of Gustl sitting impeturbably at the tiller of that boat and calling out and his calm voice "Klar zu Wende" ("clear to tack") when we had to go about. It's a wonderful memory.

We turned around at the American consulate where a group of three protesters were staging a desultory protest against the NATO bombing of Serbia. They were across the street from the consulate, blocked off by low barricades, and carefully watched by a van with police in it, so there was not much chance that things get out of control even if the protesters were so inclined. Their posters and slogans were one-sided and did not mention the deaths or moral rights of the Kosovars, which is perhaps to be expected but nevertheless disappointing, especially as the British now estimate that 10,000 Kosovars were killed by the Serbians. Then we walked back to the car, snapping pictures along the way, and noticed several swan nests along the shoreline. A lot of people and bicyclists were on the path, and everyone was enjoying a Sunday stroll in the nice weather. I enjoyed just spending the time with Monika's family after a 14-year absence. Fortunately I got the chance to see some of them last time that afternoon after we drove home.

Detlef and Susanna came by to pick up his ticket so that he could get his luggage, which had been delayed on his way home, and they stayed for tea and coffee. Detlef was his usual exuberant, upbeat self, and we all had a wonderful time chatting about Gustl's birthday dinner which Detlef had missed, Detlef's trip to Taiwan, digital video, and many other topics of the day. After they left, we watched the Bremen elections on TV while Heinke and Gustl talked to the owners of the apartment downstairs while waiting for Kim and Jule to come. Apparently there was some kind of rule that they could not show projected results on the TV for the election until the polls were closed. This being Germany, they actually engaged in a 10,9,8,... type of countdown to the precise second when the polls closed and they could show their projected results. This they did on the dot, with all the appropriate fanfare. I found it slightly amusing, and we were both hoping that the TV coverage would return to the Agassi match, which, as it turned out, he won in a really exciting comeback.

Kim and Jule were considering sub-letting the apartment below Heinke and Gustl for six weeks until the permanent resident moved in, by which time hopefully their apartment would have been cleaned up from the smoke damage and once again be livable. The two girls finally came, saw the apartment, and apparently came to terms with the owners, after which the owners departed. We then came out to visit with them for while before they had to leave. We gave Kim a spark plug wrench and a bronze bristle brush to clean spark plugs with. These were for her car, which, like an old East-German Trabant or my old SAAB, has a 3-cylinder 2-cycle engine that burns oil with the gas. The oil is necessary for lubricating the engine bearings, but burning it always fouls the spark plugs sooner or later, so she's going to need that wrench and brush, I think.

Both of them were happy about having a single place to stay for six weeks as they had been living week-by-week, moving around with various friends. They made arrangements with Heinke for some tables and finally left before dinner for their other engagement. After they and the dogs had departed, we had dinner and then sat in the living room and chatted away again, drinking a bottle of rose wine along the way. So our last evening of the visit ended as so many other evenings had, with a long talk about different topics punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter, which were usually caused by one of Gustl's jokes. It is a very pleasant family to have married into.

Monday, June 7, 1999
We were all up at 5 a.m., so none of us got a full night sleep, but we got away quite quickly for all that. Monica and I threw our dirty clothes into the duffel bag, scrambled into or traveling clothes, and grabbed our stuff. We were out the door around 530 a.m., at the airport by 545 a.m., and checking in at the counter before 6 a.m.. We said goodbye outside the terminal as the traffic was too bad for Gustl to park, and we were both really sad to go. We plan to go back to Germany more frequently now, as long as there are nice people there who want to see us. I wish we had gone back more frequently in the past, but as my mother used to say, "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." In any case, it was a great visit.

Our plane trip home was long and smooth, which gave me the time to write most of this journal. At London's Gatwick airport, Monika bought a "Bobby Bear" doll that is a teddy bear outfitted like a London Bobby. I had some time in the terminal' s bookstore, which was dangerous, and I bought about 80 dollars worth of books! Having the price in pounds made it seem cheaper than it really was, whereas having the prices it marks as in Germany made things seem much more expensive than they really were. We also bought some Cadbury's chocolate to go with the German chocolate, and generally had fun while waiting for the flight to Baltimore Washington international airport. On our flight, British Airways came by with a drink, snack, or a meal at least four times during the flight, and the quality of the food was again quite good.

We were in for a shock when we landed, however, because it was a record high of 94 degrees Fahrenheit at Baltimore when we got out of the terminal. There we were in our long pants, long sleeve shirts, and jackets that we had worn all week long in Germany, just baking in the heat. Aside from that, everything went smoothly in getting to the car and driving through rush-hour traffic back home. We got home in just under an hour, which was little short of miraculous given the traffic. The house was still standing, the grass was green, and neighbors greeted us warmly. Jet lag and being up 20 hours finally got to us, and we just had a salad from Giant with a glass of skim milk and fell into bed.

This little book is almost at its and, and so is my journal. I hope you have enjoyed this little story of a family visit. We can't go back to the past, but we can visit the living and remember those who came before with love and tenderness. Remember if you can to visit your loved ones and to write down, per chance, your thoughts and feelings for those who will come after us. That way they will know the kind of people we were, and if they judge us perhaps they will do so gently when they also reach the time of life when they look backward. At least they will know how we dealt with life and hopefully learn from us. Where we did right, we may help them to do right. Where we did wrong, we may help them avoid the same mistakes we made. But in either case, and whatever the cost, let it be the truth so that the lessons will be true ones.